Matt Damon brags about his comfy Martian set: Leo, we werent cold at all
These are photos of Matt Damon at the Oscar Nomination luncheon yesterday. I think he knows Best Actor is going to Leo DiCaprio and I think he’s ok with that. I also think that’s what’s behind some mild ribbing he gave DiCaprio at the Directors Guild Awards over the weekend. More on that in a moment.
On Saturday I saw The Revenant. I thought I was prepared for it. I thought it would be gruesome like Walking Dead, and that I could take it and that the violence would be necessary for the plot. The first half of the film was decent and watchable but the second half devolved into pure torture p0rn that made me cringe. Some of the scenes were just ridiculous and seemed to exist for no other reason than to shock the viewer. (I’m thinking of a certain horse scene which did not happen in any version of the historical account.)
Alejandro Inarritu took a lot of liberties with the history behind the film, and he also put the actors through so much in order to film his gory, bleak, seemingly impossible plot. He insisted on using natural light, refused to use CGI, even for scenes in which actors were plunged in freezing water, and dismissed criticism of his filming style by saying that if his actors were comfortable in front of a “greenscreen with coffee… the film would be a piece of sh*t.” And of course DiCaprio has said many, many times how tough it was to film.
All of this is preface for Damon’s barbed remarks at the Directors Guild Awards over the weekend. Damon was introducing his Martian director, Ridley Scott, for whom he campaigned for an Oscar to no avail. Damon made it clear that he was very comfortable on set and that Scott came in under budget too. He said “Every night at 6 o’clock, the horn blew and Ridley and I went to dinner. And that’s how you make a movie, and we finished the film really early and we saved 2 million bucks. And Leo – we weren’t cold at all. I’m just sayin’. There’s another way to do it.” So Damon isn’t going to get an Oscar this year but he made bank and he didn’t have to suffer at all, unlike DiCaprio.
Vanity Fair points out that The Martian was completed in 70 days for $72 million while The Revenant took over a year and cost $135 million. The Martian has made over $600 million worldwide with The Revenant, still in theaters, is at $326 million. I doubt Revenant is going to bring home best picture, but it may earn another director Oscar for Inarritu, he just got his second DGA in a row over the weekend as Kaiser reported. Unfortunately Ridley Scott wasn’t even nominated for a Best Director Academy Award.
As you know, the trailer for Jason Bourne, which is out July 29th, premiered during the SuperBowl. EW has an interview with Damon about his character’s story arc as it pertains to current events. He talks about new characters played by Alicia Vikander, who plays a computer expert, and Tommy Lee Jones, who is old school CIA. You can read that here.
In the photo below Damon and Scott are holding the feature film nomination medallion, not the winning medallion. That’s probably why they look bummed. That category went to Inarritu.
Photo credit: WENN.com
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