Making hasnt been updated. Before the actor strike started damon opened up about his role in one of the years most advertise paid movies. We said theres a chance when we push that button we destroy the world. And friendship with ben affleck. And later acting powerhouse, laura linney on her new film. I wouldnt have recognized you. And her unforgettable character from prosecutor to matriarch of a crime family. She was fun. Is that part of your super power . Get it done. It was possible i may not see the end of the year. Im a little pistol. Thats what it is. This is not where i thoughts the story was at. Good evening. Welcome back to whos talking. Tonight hollywood is on hold. We are in the second week of the actors strike and the third month of the writers strike. Meaning nothing is being created in tinseltown. Both groups are demanding higher pay and more Revenue Sharing from tv and film studios in the face of streaming services and artificial intelligence. And some of the best paid actors in the business are supporting rank and file members some of who are struggling to make ends meet. Because of the strike all movie publicity is suspended. So tonights conversations with taped before the strike. We start with matt damon and his big movie out today. Your latest movie is just out, oppenheimer, about the scientist who led the effort to create the first atomic bomb. You play general leslie groves, who is military leaders of the manhattan project. He thinks you have integrity but he strikes me as a guy who knows more about science than people. Here you are. You dont take much in trust. I dont take anything on trust. Groves was a bulldozer who called Scientists Children Crack Pots and prim don as. The director is one of the best directors to ever live and makes extraordinary movies. It plays like a thriller but the groves character i found him very funny because i found him humorous because he was how manierless. There was such a kind of philosophical difference between the military mind and the scientific mind. The military guys were obsessed with secrecy and the scientists were of a mind we need to share all the information to get to the truth because thats what scientists do. They build on each otheres work so there was this natural tension in the relationship. But on top of that groves was a Brusque No Bs military man. He had no problem putting people in their place or dressing people down and people would say he wasnt well liked and i said id bet on his list of objectives. Well liked was at the bottom. Under the first 500 things he was trying to accomplish. What they were trying to do was so logistically it was near impossible. It was also the guy that built the pentagon in a year and a half. Exactly. Before he did the manhattan project. Which is how he got the job. But oppenheimer the movie talks about played a huge rule ending world war ii because he develops the bomb that dropped off on hiroshima. Then hes swept off In The Red Scare and shunned. The question as i watched the movie do you see any parallels to Politics Today . Clearly oppenheimer was targeted politically. He postworld war ii he came out against the Hydrogen Bomb which was a bigger bomb and lot of the scientists went from their ambition and that kind of scientific very human kind of curiosity of can we do this to oh my god what have we gone, you see that repeated all the time. You see that borne out in our culture all the time when somebody the being attacked you know you always have to look who is attacking them and why. Whats the agenda behind this person who is being attacked and why were they the hero of the country two minutes ago and now being attacked . Its a very interesting phenomenon. Anyone who deals with a subject and i wrote a book and youre in this movie i think ends up with having to deal with a central question. Was the u. S. Right or wrong to drop the bomb on hiroshima . Thats such an impossible question. I remember talking to ben afflecks grandfather who Wroos A Marine and he had done in the pacific he had landed on, hes done these Beach Landings and he had lost a lot of men and they were told in advance of the mainland invasion they were going to lose 6 out of 10 men and he said when we heard about the bomb drop we cleared and he said, you know, this is 50 years later hes telling me. Right. I live with the fact but this is what they were telling us. You know that, they were going to the fight to the last man and we were going to you cover it in your book. They said between 250,000 and a million americans. You read my book. Countdown 1945 available on amazon. Its not on spaceshiplessly pumping your book but it reads great. Your point is exactly rightchy think people fail to realize and i didnt until i studied and wrote the book. Its not like youre going to kill all these people in hiroshima and if you dont kill them theres going to be invasion of japan by u. S. Soldiers extend the year another year and a half and probably more people were going to die in the Invasion Americans and japanese than died at nagasaki. The Moral Question is. What would you have done . Boy, i probably would have had a head of gray hair but its like president s their hair goes white, you know. Its funny because when you look at it, you think theres really only one choice to make. Yet you look at the people who made that choice it was like a shock wave going through them. Speaking of politics, the trump campaign. Oh no. Posted a video that in which they used a pitch that you make to Michael Jordan in your recent movie, air, only they make to it promote donald trump. Take a look. Everyone will be forgotten as soon as our time here is up. Except for you. Youre going to be remembered forever because some things are eternal and your story is going to make us fights and never give up. [laughter]. I think they took it is down. I was going to ask did, they take it down . I know you denounced it. We said you dont have our permission to use that. Last i heard it was still up. I dont know what to make of it. You know, im glad they like our writing. I want to talk briefly about you because there is a saying in hollywood to do a matt damon. You dont know if you ever heard that expression. Is it flattering or unflattering . No, its to show up do a good job and be a good guy and i wonder how odd does it is field to you to be singled out for doing the right thing . I dont know. I think there are a lot of ive met a lot of nice people ive worked with. I havent had any bad experiences . Hollywood . In hollywood. I was going to say to put it differently when youre making so much money and there are so much people catering to your every whim how hard is it not to be a jerk . In my case it feels very easy. I feel very fortunate. Do you understand how somebody could go down that path . What i could understand for sure i think for one thing, i think its very surreal to be say the words, movie star. Right, to be famous. Right. So this is something you could appreciate. But that i was very careful early on to be thoughtful about not having that infect my most primary relationships. It becomes really convenient to have Friends Shins and associations where nothing is asked of you where its like every joke you make is funny. You know what i mean and thats a great feeling but its not real so i really wanted to semitic make sure that with my friends and with my wife and with my kids that my ideas were still getting pressure tested and i still had to compromise and there were challenges and the relationships were felt equal. So george clooney, Who By The Way got your book and flipped it over and great he got george to blurb it. If i sent it to you what would you have done . I would have blurbed it. George clooney wants e once told me in the movie the monuments map he had the Wardrobe Team take in your uniform each week so you would think you were getting past. One, is that true works duties work and three did you ever get him back for it . First of all you know george so you can answer the first question, is it is true. Of course its true. He totally did that. I never tried to get george back for anything because i know the countermeasures are going to be so severe. I saw it happen once on oceans 12 brad pitt sent outleters in italian to the italian crew. Now george had just bought this place in lake como, proud to be living in italy, loves the country, Everybody Loves george there and brad put this let toward the crew outs as if it were from george or georges people, please understand you understand youre working with mr. Clooney. You cannot look him in the eye. You can call him mr. Clooney or mr. Ocean. George read that because hes the life of the set. And we were all staying together at his house and he came home and thats the maddest ive ever seen him was brad got him and he sat there and said leave everybody else around me out of it. Just leave other civilians out of it. Up next, we go back to the beginning. And the real reason matt wrote Good Will Hunting. And we go inside his famous friendship with ben affleck. Did you ever have a falling outs . Did you ever in these years have appoints where you werent talking to each other . As long as you can make an impact, why stop . Were here today to set the record straight about dupuytrens contracture. Surgery is not your only treatment option. People may think their contracture has to be severe to be treated, but it doesnt. Visit findahandspecialist. Com today to get started. A bunch of dead guys made up work, way back when. Its our turn now well make it up again. Well build freelance teams with more agility. The old way of working is deader than me. Well scale up, and well scale down before youre six feet underground. Yes, this is how, this is how we work now. Hey little bear bear. Im gonna love you forever to have and to hold from this day forward. You dont. Cmon, bear. You dont have to worry. Be by your side. Ill be there. With my arms wrapped around. Matt damon is a proven leading man but hes also been a part of some star studded casts from oceans 11 to the departed. We will get to all that. We continue the conversation with list first movie, Good Will Hunting. Your origin story has kind of become a legend, that you were working on a script at harvard, that you then started working on it some more with your high school buddy, ben affleck, you go to hollywood, you sell it, it ends up becoming goods will hunting. Here you are. Theres my number. So we can go out for coffee some time. [knocking]. Do you like apples . Yeah. I got a number. How do you like them apples . I have to tell you that is a line in the Wallace Family use on each other. How do you like them apples . That was a funny one. What is the most interesting thing we dont know about this story . I guess this generation doesnt know a lot of the stories and ben was living on my couch when i sold it. It was in a an enghaijt gone wrong so he was on our coach so we were writing it to try to get out of a lynchburg situation we were in. Get him off your couch. Yeah everybody get their own room and we just yeely you know believed in it and the movie got made. We had to be the ones who played the roles. Okay, ben and you win the oscar for best screenplay and theres a story i read that you go home that night with oscar, and you say to yourself, thank god i didnt screw over anybody to get this because it wouldnt have been worth it. Right. Is that true . Thats totally true. I found myself like 34 a. M. With the thing staring at it. That was the thought. I had a Flash Forward to a life that didnt happen, i was 83 years old, i dont know, why and i had the Academy Award finally, and i had this life of, you know, carnage behind me and so i was 27 at the time and i just kind of that thought just kind of revealed itself. To the degree at 27 you were thinking if the oscar wasnt going to bring you happiness what did you think would . That was the question. It was a real gift in the sense that it relieved me from thinking anything external, any Item Thing Material Object would ever fill my soul up, you know. It was the work itself that i really love and still do and really enjoy. Five years after Good Will Hunting you make the first of four jason bourne movies. Heres the first one. You look like im about 12 years old. Thats again, directors. Doug lyman, that was all dougs idea, we need a james bond for our generation and that was his whole thing and its so funny looking at it because i remember saying to him, me . Because i had never done anything like that. I want to pick up on that one of the trade papers said after these movies that were you the decades best mixer of brains and braun and i guess the question i have is, how calculated was your move, ive done good will hundreding, now im going to show i can be an action hero and generally speaking how strategic are you as you decide your career . Decidedly unstrategic mike. Really . Yes, because we have talked about there. Nobody knows what movie is going to be a hit. You just dont know. Ive been in terrific bombs. You know way mean. We just dont know so to say im going to do a big movie and a small movie and its like forget it. My calculus last always been about the director. Ill even go to work with a great director and no script and i have and ill put my faith in that result more than anything because its all about who is directing the movie. In 2006 you play a mob spy inside the Massachussetts State Police in the departed. We got a cop in my crew. Yeah, i know. Im getting that feeling. I have to say i hated you so much in that movie. You were such a rat. Yes, exactly. As we saw from the final scene. Yes, so jack nicholson, leo dicaprio, directed by martin scorsese. I carried them on my back. It was an amazing opportunity. It was this weird thing where brad pitt was going to play the role and he just gave it to me and thats probably the only time in my career that Something Like that just fell into my lap. It was incredible. You and ben have created along with some other people your own independent studio called artists equity and i wonder what degree is that because the economics of the industry has changed with stream something. Yeah, its largely because of that and also because the economic model of movie making hasnt really been up death for a00 years so theres Bloat In Budge Et Cetera and people who make movies know really where it is and we felt liked we could make movies on average about 20 percent cheaper than other people if we worked smarter and we could pass that savings on to our crews so we have made flee movies at this point. We ran the numbers and our crews have made on average over 20 percent above their highest quote so far on the first three movies. I wants to ask you one question before i go on about you and ben. Fore year matt and ben, ben and matt, high School Working together. Now youre in your 50s and youre together. Did you ever have a falling out . Did you ever in those years have a point where at least for a period of time you werent talking to each other . We have been bizarrely close for a long time. You know, i was watching get back, the Peter Jackson documentary. At the end of that you see the beatles. At the end theyre playing on the roof in london and it says this is the last time they ever played together and live and it made me so sad because you look at them and theyre so happy and ben i called them and i said look man, we were talking about doing this and its like its been 25 years or something since Good Will Hunting. What are we doing . We both kind of hit the lottery. Why arent we working together more often . After my dad passed in 2017, ben was very, very close with him, its like it changed something and you really start to you start to see tend game and you start to feel like i want to make every second count, you know. I really, you know, i dont want to fritter away time anymore. Finally, you have been involved more than a decade with a Organization Called warner. Org which provides access to safe water and to sanitation. What exactly is it that water. Org does . How does it, if youve got a village in india africa or whatever, how do you get clean water to them. Its actually through microloaning. What we have realized and the neat thing about it is we have reached 55 Million People with safe water and sanitation by just letting them take charge of their own solution. Theres Municipality Piping water beneath the feet of people so theyre leaving jobs to go stand at a water tap or at a designated time and its inofficial so if you give them a 250 loan. Literally . Literally. These are people surviving on dollars a day so they have no savings but if you front them money for a Water Connection they can connect to the utility and then they dont have to leave their jobs to go do these things and they pay off the loans above 98 percent. With Climate Change isnt access to water going to become even tougher . Yes, and massively important so you have to have infrastructure thats climate resilient and the people who are going to feel the brunt of in are going to be the poorest people so you dont want to back slide on the gains youve made and you want to start preparing to make this your infrastructure resilient. And your community resilient. From one celebrated actor to another. Laura linney is next. We talk about working with a legendary cast in her new movie. Plus i finally get to ask her a question thats been on my mind for 20 years. In real life, what would you have done, kept kissing or answered the phone . Sleepovers just arent what they used to be. A house full of screens . Basically no hiccups . You guys have no idea how good youve got it. How old are you . Like, 80 . Back in my day, it was scary stories and flashlights. We dont get scared. Oh, really . Mom can see your search history. Thats what i thought. Introducing the next generation 10g network. Only from xfinity. Hi. I wouldnt have recognized you. Actress laura