The domino effect that led Matt Damon to the Coen brothers: “I was dying to work with them”
In Hollywood, an actor’s path to working with a director can be straightforward. But just as often, it’s a winding road of coincidences, chance encounters, and perfectly aligned dominoes. That was the case for Matt Damon and the Coen brothers. Though he’d wanted to work with them for nearly two decades, it took an unlikely collaboration from his past to finally bring him into their orbit.
In 1994, Damon was a young Bostonian trying to find his footing in Hollywood. Five years after he and his best mate Ben Affleck showed up as uncredited extras in Field of Dreams, he’d picked up roles in Rising Son, School Ties, and Geronimo: An American Legend. But it was ’94 that marked a turning point, when he landed his biggest job yet: a part in The Good Old Boys, an Emmy-nominated western directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones. The film also featured Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, and Frances McDormand – and with that, the first domino on the path to the Coens fell.
However, there was a second connection on that West Texas set that knocked over another domino. As previously mentioned, the director was Jones, who would memorably star for the Coens in their 2007 ‘Best Picture’ winner No Country For Old Men.
Despite forging these two connections way back in 1994, though, it would take until 2010 for Damon to be cast by the Coens. Fittingly, it was in a western – their excellent remake of True Grit – and Damon couldn’t have been happier to finally get the chance to work for the brothers. “So, I had met Joel in West Texas 16 years ago, and it took them that long to offer me a job!” he laughed. “But I was dying to work with them and any actor you talk to would say the same thing. If you ask for a shortlist of directors, they would be right there.”
Why had the Coens waited so long to enlist Damon in one of their films? Had he not made enough of an impression on Joel when they met on The Good Old Boys? Was there simply no suitable role for Damon in their films until the pompous blowhard Texas Ranger LaBoeuf cropped up in True Grit? Only the Coens truly know. But, one thing that is for sure is that the final domino fell when Damon began getting into character as LaBeouf and working on his West Texas accent.
“Actually, I had Tommy as a frame of reference because he’s from West Texas,” Damon admitted. “And he’s also somebody who is really fun to listen to, he knows a lot about a lot, and there’s something of the English teacher in him – you can ask him an obscure question and he enjoys knowing what he knows.”
Ultimately, Damon didn’t specifically do an impression of Jones as the arrogant LaBoeuf, but he did mix some Jones-isms in there. “We kind of riffed on that,” he smiled. “It’s not exact but it’s a similar way of presentation.”
