Don't Mess Around With Damon

August 3, 2011

Matt Damon peps up Anderson Cooper's 'RidicuList'


Matt Damon is a terrific movie actor who has also developed a media persona as an All-American guy for a wised-up age: go-getting and idealistic, but with a hip, wry streak and an iconoclastic attitude toward everything, including his own success.

On talk shows, he projects strength and virtue without feeling the need to lay them out and beg for affirmation. He's not afraid to speak his mind and declare his preferences (he declared early for Barack Obama -- and also was early to declare his disappointment in the Obama presidency).

In movies or on entertainment shows, a wicked deadpan and a wholesome poker face are his stock in trade. He famously reduced David Letterman to spluttering, "Excellent, excellent!" when he did a spot-on imitation of Matthew McConaughey, with his gravelly drawl, asking a director whether a scene would play better with his shirt off. When Damon was on location in North Africa for "The Bourne Ultimatum," he pulled off a hilarious bit for the American Cinematheque's salute to George Clooney, pretending to give Tangiers moviegoers their money back for seeing Clooney's abysmal "Batman and Robin." Then he requested more cash because Clooney's equally terrible "The Peacemaker" was due to open there soon.

But I don't think Damon has ever been more authentic or appealing as a public personality than he is in this clip that Anderson Cooper showcased last night. When he immediately sizes up the ideology of a reporter asking leading or slanted questions about public-school teachers (and movie actors), he slices through misinformation and cant with an unshakable sanity.

The times cry out for an edgy, contemporary version of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Damon would be the guy to star in it.

Posted by Michael Sragow at 8:50 AM