Matt Damon names his favourite Coen brothers movies: “It has made a lasting impression”
It’s been a long time since Matt Damon faced any issues manoeuvring himself into a film hailing from one of cinema’s greatest directors, which was always part of his post-Good Will Hunting plan.
Once he’d gotten his name out there, cracked Hollywood, and won an Academy Award, Damon favoured filmmakers over fame and made films with Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Anthony Minghella before the end of the 1990s, and he’s maintained that mindset ever since.
As well as becoming one of the latest additions to Christopher Nolan’s list of regular collaborators, Damon has partnered with Steven Soderbergh, Terry Gilliam, and Paul Greengrass on multiple occasions, in addition to pictures with Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Ridley Scott.
These days, directors are knocking on his door trying to secure him for their upcoming project, but the shoe was on the other foot when Damon spent over a decade actively pursuing the Coen brothers. He’d always been a fan, and it was an unusual domino effect that finally brought him into their orbit.
1995’s made-for-TV western The Good Old Boys featured Frances McDormand in the ensemble, which was the first time Damon met her husband, Joel Coen. Tommy Lee Jones was the director, and he became an important reference point a decade and a half later when Damon was cast in True Grit as LaBoeuf.
16 years had passed between Damon coming face-to-face with a Coen brother and finally getting the chance to be in one of their films, which was an exercise in wish-fulfilment. He’d been a fan long before anyone in Hollywood knew who he was, and he’s got a lot of favourites.
“I love Lebowski,” he told Get Frank. “No Country was brilliant. I love The Man Who Wasn’t There. Miller’s Crossing. Blood Simple. Raising Arizona. Fargo. There are all these lines. The other week, we were on a movie set and quoting lines. Somebody said something about a deal, and I said, ‘This is my deal, Wade,’ you know, that line from Fargo. Everyone started laughing. It has made a lasting impression.”
Damon must have been stewing when some of his closest friends and allies in the industry, including George Clooney and Brad Pitt, were making movies with the Coen brothers while he remained on the outside looking in. Patience is often a virtue in Hollywood, though, and his desperation to be welcomed into their idiosyncratic world eventually paid off.
Unfortunately, it was a one-time thing. While he could always reunite with Joel and Ethan if and when they make another film as a unit, the closest he got to a second bite at the Coen-shaped apple came in 2017’s Suburbicon, which the siblings initially scripted before it was rewritten and directed by Clooney.
Still, once is significantly better than not at all, and True Grit instantly became one of Damon’s most cherished cinematic memories because, after enviously watching them from afar and watching their entire filmography, he got the chance to play a major role in a Coen brothers flick.
