Arab Times

Damon talks positivity of ‘Martian’

Actor lets time inform ‘Bourne’

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OBy Kristopher Tapley

n a break, finally, from shooting the latest installmen­t of the “Bourne” franchise, actor Matt Damon made it to Los Angeles earlier this month to discuss his work in Ridley Scott’s “The Martian.” With a worldwide box office haul approachin­g $600 million and plenty of Oscar buzz heading into 2016, it could net him a nomination for a largely solitary performanc­e. He spoke to Variety about the importance of maintainin­g a light and positive tone in the film, letting time go by before circling back to the Jason Bourne character and how anyone at any time is on the verge of breaking out in this business. Oh, and “Star Wars,” too. Because “Star Wars.”

Question: So do you and Tom Hanks ever commiserat­e about having acted opposite, you know, nothing for long stretches?

Answer: You know what, I’ve thought about this, obviously, because I’ve had this question asked of me. But the key difference is, when I first met Ridley about this, he said he always wanted to do “Robinson Crusoe,” and he felt like this was his chance. And then as we got into it we realized the key distinctio­n is that in “Robinson Crusoe” -- or in “Cast Away,” for that matter -- the journey the character is going on, it’s about whether or not anybody is ever going to know that he was alive. Whereas the character in this is surrounded by these GoPros and every minute that he’s staying alive on Mars is a minute longer than anybody has ever been there and he’s got kind of a purpose. He’s got this chance to record for his colleagues the experience that he’s having. So that feeling of being useful is kind of the exact opposite of the existentia­l crisis that somebody who’s marooned on a desert island goes through, which is, “Oh my God, is anybody ever going to know that this happened?”

Q: And with a story like this, often you might have some sort of “back home” context, either family or friends that contextual­izes the character, that the character is eager to get back to. You didn’t really have that in the text of the script here, so what kind of background work did you do to really get where he was coming from?

A: When I looked at it I felt like Andy, the novelist, did that, because what he was really interested in was kind of the thought experiment of whether or not somebody could survive. In the interviews I read with him, and subsequent­ly when I talked to him, he said, “I just came up with that premise and then let the science steer the story.” So he wasn’t concerned with writing a novel about a guy. He was more concerned about, “All right, who would a person who could survive this incredibly challengin­g situation be? OK, he would be a botanist. He would be an astronaut.” And he kind of worked backward from there. So I think a family or a wife at home or kids or something would’ve felt, in an odd way, kind of an extra layer of artificial­ity to the movie or a conceit or whatever. It’s a pretty lean, focused story. We talked about it but it just didn’t feel right. And it felt good that you don’t know what he’s trying to get back to. He could be anyone. His story could be anyone’s.

Q: What did that do for you as an actor in trying to bring that sort of inner life out when you’re dealing with something that’s so plotdriven, particular­ly given that you don’t exactly have sparring partners to help with that illuminati­on?

A: I think any actor carries their own emotional baggage. It’s not that you go in there and there’s a vacuum. You go in there full and kind of, depending on the role, you’re teasing different things out. But he wasn’t a total cipher. I knew that he had gone through this training. In the book they go into detail about the training and how he’s particular­ly suited to this kind of work. Like, these guys who we send out there, they have to be incredible cooperator­s and they have to have this incredible positive outlook. Like one astronaut said to me, he goes, “We’re this kind of strange thing where we have to be very smart and there’s all these PhD.’s and all these very brilliant minds, but we have to be stupid enough to sit on X numbers of thousand pounds of rocket fuel and get launched into outer space.” Q: You have to be a little crazy, I guess. A: Yeah. Yeah. They were doing this thing with the six astronauts who are literally pretending that they’re living on Mars and they’re sealed into this habitat together for like a year and they cannot leave unless there’s a medical emergency. Because we’re studying the effects of this type of work on the human psyche. It’s so much for a human being to endure. So particular­ly well-suited to that and well-trained for this type of thing. When he comes up with this idea of these GoPros all over the habitat, those just become his de facto Wilson, basically. Although he’s recording these things and the expectatio­n is that someday someone is going to come and retrieve these and they’re going to watch them. So even though he’s sending those missives out into nowhere, they are being recorded for posterity’s sake and he is operating under the expectatio­n that he’s being watched, that he’s, like, in a lab. I think that’s something that buoys him, that keeps him going.

Q: That speaks to an interestin­g thematic element, of positivity and problem solving. I spoke to Drew Goddard about this, how this genre is often given to gloomy, more cynical material. Tell me about the importance of that positivity for the narrative, and perhaps even for science. Like, I love Drew’s way of putting it, that this was meant to be a love letter to science.

A: Yeah, which Drew literally said that to me the first meeting we had. That was one of the first things out of his mouth, that he wanted it to be a love letter to science. And I agree with what you’re saying about these movies tending to be kind of gloomy. I think that’s one reason I really responded to it. It was so different. And I think because space travel is so desolate and it’s so dangerous, I think it doesn’t give itself to bright and cheery stories, because you’re living under the threat of death constantly. But that really is something from the book. This character was so clearly drawn in the book and I thought Drew did a great job adapting it. He’s really funny, like that sense of humor.

Q: Material like that can be so given to cynicism, I guess, because in essence that becomes what’s thematical­ly powerful about it. It’s often serviced for cautionary tales. So presenting this kind of outlook is sort of vital.

A: We definitely talked about wanting to put this out into the world right now. It felt good to make a movie that was uplifting, and certainly Ridley and I aren’t necessaril­y known for that. And Pietro, our editor -- he edited “Good Will Hunting,” also, and I’ve worked with him a bunch over the years -- I saw him early on in the process and he was like, “Don’t you two f--ing lose the humor!” Because he knew our instincts might lead us toward that darker, cooler space movie, and this is light and entertaini­ng and difficult, tonally. And I say that really because that was all down to Ridley. I mean it’s really hard to keep the stakes as high as they are while throwing off these one-liners. It’s a really tricky tone to strike and I thought Ridley just did it perfectly. He was so sure of every single scene and exactly how to play it. (RTRS)

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