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Matt Damon returns to familiar territory in "The Bourne Supremacy," the second movie to be adapted from author Robert Ludlum's series of novels about undercover operative Jason Bourne. This time, though, Paul Greengrass is at the helm, replacing "The Bourne Identity" director Doug Liman. As Damon told MTV News' Jeff Cornell, doing a familiar job with an unfamiliar boss was no problem, but if they want him to come back for a third flick, the script had better meet the high standards set forth by the first two installments.
MTV: It must be an unusual challenge playing the same character again.
Matt Damon: Yeah, something that I hadn't done before in movies. I've done it with plays. Back in college, we'd have a good run of a play and the next semester they'd go, "Let's do it again." So I've done that before, but with a movie this is the first time. And it was great, because I put a lot of work in on first one and really knew kinda what worked for me and what hadn't. It was a lot easier to get back into it the second time.
MTV: What did Paul Greengrass bring to the franchise as a director?
Damon: He's incredible, obviously. I mean, that is one of the reasons I did the movie was because he was going to direct it. Basically, it's his style. The way he wanted to shoot the movie was to make it feel very observed, never theatrical. You know, none of his scenes feel theatrical or staged or anything — you feel like you are a fly on the wall.
A good example of that was, one of the first days I worked with him was in Russia, in Moscow, and we were walking through a tunnel, and in the scene I'm supposed to check my shoulder because I've been hurt at this point. I'm supposed to check my shoulder and then check my hand for blood. The Steadicam operator was right next to me, and I turned to him and said, "Hey, all right now, what is your bottom frame?" And he said, "I'm cutting you about here." [He motions to his chest.] I said, "OK, well listen. I'm gonna check the blood, but I'll pull my hand up there so you can see the blood." And Paul came running, and he said, "No, no, no, no, no." He said, "You just do it natural. You do it exactly naturally." And he turned to the Steadicam operator and he said, "Clemens, go down for the blood when he goes to check it, and even if we don't see it, we'll know what it is. It will tell the story." And so it completely liberates the actors to be as natural as possible, and he captures it kind of in his own style.
MTV: This is a tale of an extraordinary person in extraordinary circumstances. It's grounded in realism, though — you know, he gets hurt, he has to read maps.
Damon: Well, that was something that is a bunch of stuff left over from the first movie — we just really wanted him to logically think his way out of situations. And we always thought that was the cool part of him because he's the guy, you know, in the first movie, in the embassy, he pulls the map off the wall and gets a radio. He throws the gun away. The gun is useless to him because he's not gonna confront with a 9 mm, you know, the [entire group of] Marines [pursuing him]. He has to figure out another way to get out of there. So he goes with a map and a radio and he makes his way out. And we really liked that part of the character. In any situation, we just wanted to make it as real as possible. Like, yeah, he's in Russia, he doesn't really know his way around, he's being chased by the cops — he's gotta look at a map. That's what you gotta do.
MTV: Do you see yourself returning for another one, two of these?
Damon: I'd like to only if we have a good story to tell. I'm really happy to let it just lie here because I'm really proud of this one and I was worried making it. Not worried, but I felt a lot of pressure because I didn't want to add my name to the list of people who make a crappy sequel to a good movie, you know? And it's hard to make a good movie, but particularly with a sequel I think the audience really resents you when you make something and they're like, "You just did this for cash, you bastard." And I didn't wanna be a part of anything like that. So I'm open to it because I love the character, I really love these two movies, and I'd love to make a third one that's as good as these first two, but we gotta make sure we get it right before we do anything.
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Photo: Warner Bros.
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