Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s friendship has been well-documented in Hollywood folklore for decades; there isn’t a more famous celebrity friendship in modern-day pop culture. The duo, most recently, collaborated on last year’s sports biopic Air, directed by Ben and starring Matt; both the superstars produced it together under their newly-formed production company Artists Equity.
So what could be better than working with your best friend?
“Working with your best friend’s brother too!” grins Matt.
While he has collaborated several times with Casey Affleck in the past, (the Ocean’s trilogy, Good Will Hunting, Interstellar and Oppenheimer are just some of the titles they have starred in as part of ensemble casts) Apple’s The Instigators will be the first time Matt and Casey headline a movie together.
Playing reluctant partners-in-crime in the Boston-set heist comedy, the two (a desperate father in need of money and an ex-convict) serendipitously join hands to loot a corrupt politician. The only hitch in their plan? They are both terrible at being thieves. When they botch their audacious attempt, a chaotic chase ensues involving not only cops, but also bureaucrats, crime bosses, and… a therapist. Will the squabbling duo manage to resolve their differences and escape their adversaries?
This image released by Apple TV shows Matt Damon, left, and Casey Affleck in a scene from ‘The Instigators’
Directed by Doug Liman and written by Chuck MacLean and Casey Affleck, The Instigators also stars Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, and Toby Jones, with Jack Harlow and Ron Perlman.
Talking to us over Zoom, Matt Damon reminisces on his off-screen and on-screen equation with Casey Affleck, what makes their Boston brand of humour special, and why he is a producer with a purpose.
Excerpts from an interview:
The headlines have always been about your life-long friendship with Ben, but clearly you share a similar bond with Casey too. How does this equation translate on-screen while working with him?
We are very close having been in each other’s lives for 43 years now! Casey’s a little younger, so when we were teenagers, he was maybe the guy tagging along a little bit. But then, we were all out in LA together when he was 18, and Ben and I were in our early 20s, so we all lived together as struggling actors. We’ve been through every phase of life together since we were kids.
When it comes to work, there is a real giant kind of reservoir of common experience, because we’ve known each other for so long. Sometimes when we’re talking about scenes — not while we’re in them, but before we go to do them — Casey will ask me to recollect a person we both know or something from our childhood, and ask me to use that lived-in experience for the scene. That’s special stuff.
Matt Damon and Casey Affleck pose at the premiere of ‘The Instigators’ at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City
| Photo Credit:
KENT J. EDWARDS
On the more analytical side of what we’re going to do eventually, we’ll talk about it in terms of things we’ve seen before, or that we always wanted to see in a movie. But once we’re doing it, we are very much in the moment. That is what’s really fun for me in working with Casey, because having done nine movies with him and a play in London 20 years ago, I never know what to expect from him. It is such a joy to come prepared and relaxed and go wherever we go, because we are always exploring together.
Of course it’s taking chances and going in different directions. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes they don’t, but you really feel like you’ve mined the scene for everything that’s in there by the time you go home.
After last year’s ‘Air’ this is the second film you have produced with Ben under the banner of your production company Artists Equity. How diligent are you as a producer while acting in the project as well?
That reminds me of all these light bulb jokes we tell… there’s a good one about a producer. It goes, ‘How many producers does it take to screw in a light bulb? And the answer is, does it have to be a light bulb?!’ (laughs)
But no, in fact, the way we have set up our model with Artists Equity is that we run the budgets, but we’re also responsible for the overages. So in this case, director Doug Liman and I were responsible, so we were all very mindful. I didn’t need to remind Doug to rein it in; his salary and mine were on the line, and Artists Equity was on the line. But everybody was being incredibly efficient, rowing in the same direction and we got really good results in the most efficient way possible. But when it comes to what the movie needs… if it’s going to be a tank smashing into a fire truck on the streets of Boston, well, that’s what we’re going to do! We spare no expense in making the movie the way it should be made.
Director Doug Liman, left, poses with actors Matt Damon, Hong Chau and Casey Affleck to promote ‘The Instigators’
| Photo Credit:
REBA SALDANHA
Since the movie is essentially about a heist, do you have any favourites in the genre? Don’t say ‘Ocean’s’ cause that’d be too easy….
Ooh… that’s a tough one, then I’d say Rififi? (the 1955 French crime thriller adapted from Auguste Le Breton’s novel of the same name) I agree with Casey’s pick too; The Sting is a good one as well.
Those movies are really fun because of the joy you get in watching people be clever and navigate around a system that’s built to keep them at bay. But our heist movie is very, very different; this is like the Bad News Bears of heist teams, and that’s kind of the point. We wanted the movie to be fast, fun and light.
‘The Instigators’ is set in your hometown of Boston, where you have filmed numerous projects earlier. Along with the Affleck brothers, you have referred to the distinct Boston brand of humour several times over the years, and it’s evident in this movie as well. How would you explain it to someone?
Ah… so it’s a very cynical brand of humour, sarcastic and a bit fatalistic. To give you a real-life example, the Boston Red Sox didn’t win a title for 86 years, and in the last 20 years, they’ve won four. We were at a game last night and got a brief moment with the owner of the team Tom Werner. He told me, when he was walking through an airport, a guy stopped him and asked, ‘Are you Tom Werner? And he said, ‘Yes, I am.’ And the man from Boston said, ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of.’ (laughs)
Get what I mean? You can be self-deprecating and superior at the same time.
Actors Matt Damon, left, and Casey Affleck, right, talk with Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner, center, before a baseball game against New York Yankees in Boston
| Photo Credit:
MICHAEL DWYER
How was it to reunite with your ‘The Bourne Identity’ director Doug Liman after two decades?
I want to do as many movies as I can with Doug; I love working with him. All of the things he did well 20 years ago, he still does really well. I think he got unfairly labelled earlier as somebody who was reckless. That was one of the reasons I wanted to put my own salary up to cover overages, because I just wanted to send a signal that I completely believe in him.
His process is chaotic, creatively speaking, which we both really love, because Doug is just really open to finding the best idea and very inclusive of everybody’s ideas too.
The cast of ‘The Instigators’ is pretty stacked; some major names have signed up for almost-cameos in it. How did you guys pull that off?
The really exciting thing for writers — Casey was a co-writer on this movie, and I’ve felt the same on titles that I’ve written in the past — is this incredible joy when you get to set and see what you have written being elevated by these incredible actors. Doug started to tell us in pre-production some of the names that he was hoping to attract, and we couldn’t believe it.
Hong Chau, Casey Affleck and Matt Damon in a scene from ‘The Instigators’
They were all some of our favourite actors and thankfully, they wanted to come and play smaller parts, even just a scene or two, and just have fun. They saw things that they could do with the characters, and that’s really what makes the movie: this diverse cast of really interesting actors that helped us build this world.
Any fun memories from the making of the film?
There was a scene we shot in City Hall where we were dressed as firefighters and had to go up and down the stairs all night with the fire gear on. There were probably 100 other actual firefighters who had the full gear on with the oxygen tanks and fire hoses in the scene, but Casey and I were only pretending to be firefighters, so we didn’t have any heavy equipment.
And I was just about to complain to Casey about how tired I was getting, when I looked over and saw a firefighter who had probably 100 pounds of gear, walking in front of us doing the scene over and over again. She turned and gave me the biggest smile, and went, ‘This is really fun!’ Then I realised that we are really just whiny actors.
The Instigators will premiere on Apple TV+ on August 9
