The director Matt Damon accidentally turned into a pariah: “I’m cast as a traitor to cinema”
Hollywood can be a treacherous business. Huge egos and huge amounts of money on the line can be a dangerous combination, and the industry is famously full of backstabbers, underminers, and generally unkind people. It’s a cutthroat place, so those involved need to be careful who they talk to. As it turns out, one person who can’t be trusted is Matt Damon.
Steven Soderbergh found this out the hard way. The Oscar-winning director has worked with Damon many times, including on the popular Ocean’s trilogy, in which the actor played criminal gang member Linus Caldwell. Damon also appeared in Soderbergh’s pandemic drama Contagion as part of an all-star cast and opposite Michael Douglas’ Liberace in Behind the Candelabra, a biopic of the famously flamboyant musician.
Despite their profitable working relationship, the pair haven’t always been good for each other. As he explained to The Guardian, Soderbergh was once done in by a few innocent comments he made to his friend. “All I did was mention, drunkenly, to Matt Damon in a bar one night that I needed to reboot and stop making so many movies,” he said. “Since he blurted that out, I’m cast as a traitor to cinema.”
This is in reference to Soderbergh’s brief ‘retirement’ from filmmaking in 2013. He’d been on the verge of walking away for some years before that, giving numerous interviews about how he’d grown tired of the Hollywood system and how it restricted creativity. In the same interview, he said he still felt “like I did when I was 17” when making his movies, but that it was getting harder and harder to tell stories in that way.
“That’s what pisses me off,” he said. “I’m not bored, but I am frustrated.”
“Business-wise, there are projects I’ve started, and I’m going to finish those up,” he continued. “But yes, I’ve been winding down, clearing the books. It’s been great turning down scripts. People say, ‘Can I send you scripts to read?’ and I say, ‘No, sorry, I’m not doing anything more now’. I guess when I start to miss making films, maybe that’s when I’ll feel I’m ready to step back in. Will they still let me back in? Huh. I’ve not really thought about that, but if they don’t, it’ll be like starting again, and I’ll make films that are low-budget and under the radar, and it’ll be cool.”
Soderburgh’s hiatus lasted just four years. He returned in 2017 with Logan Lucky, a heist comedy about a plot to rob a Nascar track. Since then, the Georgia-born auteur has returned to his absolutely insane work schedule, putting out at least one movie a year since his comeback. While Damon hasn’t had a major role in any of them, he has cameoed in two – 2018’s psychological thriller Unsane and the 2021 gangster flick No Sudden Move.
While his relationship with Damon doesn’t seem to have been damaged too badly, Soderbergh learned a valuable lesson about saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. In a world as tense as show business, even a drunken confession can cause massive ripples that affect one’s image. Soderbergh recovered through his sheer talent, but he almost certainly thought twice about inviting his old buddy for a drink ever again.
