Damon & Pythias

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SMITH: How has your birth order informed who you are as a person?

MATT: I've thought about this a lot because my wife is the oldest of three and I'm the youngest of two. I really think that's one of the reasons we work so well. Because I think as the youngest— and you can tell me if this has been your experience, it certainly has been mine. I'm extremely adaptable. I have no need to be in charge.

And I remember, as a kid, my brother's girlfriend was on the YWCA swim team. And so my brother joined the YWA swim team, right, as the only boy. And I had to join the YWCA swim team because my mom, you know, is a professor— She was, you know, a single mom. My dad, they were divorced, but my dad had us like every other weekend and one day a week. So my mom had to figure out what to do with us after school. So I was just on the swim team with my brother. Like she just kept us together on the swim team. And it didn't strike me at the time that this was some kind of unfairness or injustice that I didn't want to be on the swim team. I just did it, you know, and I think I'm that way.

[In] my career— your career as an actor, you're living out of a duffel bag for the whole first part of your career. And you're in this Best Western Hotel and you kind of live in the production, which is always a little chaotic. And I never really had a problem with it. It never— it seemed like, "Yep, well, that's what I have to do." But I think Lucy and I gel together really well because she— She's five years younger than me, but she just takes on the role that kind of— naturally takes on that kind of leadership role. Then I'm completely fine with it.

We bought our house in L.A. years ago. We were living in New York, and we had talked about moving to L.A. And we were going out because I was going to shoot Behind The Candelabra in L.A., and so we needed to rent a house for the summer. And she went out to find the rental and saw a house for sale that was on the same street that Ben lived on, and called me and said, "There's this house and I love it!" And Ben came down and looked at it. And so I had my two favorite people on the phone. And Ben was like, "You should get this place." And Lucy said, "I love this place." And I was just like, "OK." Like we bought it and I'd never seen the house. But I knew if they love it, I'm sure it's great. And if she loves it and she's going to be happy, I know I'm going to be happy. I know it's nicer than some of the hotels I've stayed in while I'm shooting. So this is going to be totally fine. And it was. And we lived there for nine years.

SMITH: That's amazing. And now they run your company, basically, right? Artists Equity?

I honestly love it when they go into the ins and outs of their creative partnership. And as much as I adore all facets of it, there are always some very interesting dynamics that crop up whenever they venture into the directing side of things. I'm fascinated by how people deal with the feeling of agency in their lives and how that affects their interpersonal relationships. And in the case of Matt and Ben, I think it's very telling how they behave in the face of a potential power differential.

The director ultimately has creative control.

“When I first started getting work, I felt like acting was the most important thing,” he says. “But the more you do it, the more you realize that in the end, the director has all the power.”

— From Matt Damon’s interview with GQ (December 2011).

I find it fascinating how Matt built his career around carefully putting himself in the hands of great directors. And that Ben's own career almost came crumbling down because he was too optimistic about his power as the lead actor to shape the outcomes of a project.

Affleck: But you [Matt] were more savvy and smarter [about picking roles]. I remember you saying, “I really just am looking at the director.” I wouldn’t have turned down Spielberg or Scorsese or any of the incredible directors that you worked with, but you also knew that was the key to things earlier than I did, and you had maybe more discipline about what roles you chose during that period. Damon: But from the time we were kids, Ben and I went to the movies all the time with our friends, right? Didn’t matter what was playing. We could walk out of a movie and eight of us would be like, “Oh, that was terrible.” And Ben would go, “Yeah, but you know what would have made it better? If this happened and then that happened...”, and he would script-doctor the movie in the parking lot. He would get into these movies where he knew how to fix it, but he didn’t have the power to fix it. Affleck: They call it wishful thinking. Damon: And once he started directing, the whole trajectory of his career changed, because he was the person making those decisions and it always reflected in the work.

— Interviewed for Empire Magazine (18 December 2025).

In the late 2000's, Ben ended up in the director's chair out of necessity. With his acting career suffocating under an avalanche of disappointing movies and tabloid scandals, taking on the reins behind the cameras seemed to be the only way to survive in the industry. A chance to win or fail on his own merits, not because of someone else's choices. It's at once a powerful and vulnerable position to be in.

Damon’s not naive: He knows that if he sucks as a director, it will be a very public failure. “There are just too many decisions over the course of too long a time, and if you’re not a truly great director, you just can’t hide."

— From Matt Damon’s interview with GQ (December 2011).

[Ben]’s made three fantastic movies, one better than the next. And one thing I’ve learned is that you cannot make a great movie by accident. Anybody who makes a great movie is a great director. Period. That’s true. Because the director is responsible for literally everything. Everything. The framing of the shot; where the camera is; what the actors are wearing; the color of the walls; the color of the drapes; the color of the scarf around the leading lady’s neck; the way she says that line. Everything. It’s all manipulated. Every single decision. These directors are making hundreds and hundreds of decisions a day, over hundreds of days. You just can’t do it by accident. It’s literally impossible.

— Matt Damon presents Ben Affleck with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Modern Master Award (February 2013).

Directing saved Ben's career. He was forced to take complete control of his creative output, but when he did, his merit was finally recognized. I find it interesting that almost four decades into his acting career, Matt has yet to step fully into this role, despite various tentative approaches through the years.

Then Damon will direct himself. Beginning sometime in early 2012, he is going into preproduction on an as-yet-untitled movie he’s writing with John Krasinski, of The Office. [...] “I just found writing with him really easy—like writing with Ben,” Damon says.

— From Matt Damon’s interview with GQ (December 2011).

As to the actor’s long-held plans to direct, they’re some time from happening, especially while he is back at the peak of his acting career with Martian and the new Bourne. “I have to find the time,” he says. “I have to find the right project that’s going to fit with my life.”

— From Matt Damon’s interview with The Hollywood Reporter (30 September 2015).

Somewhere along the way, he will eventually direct. He has come close twice but stepped aside. He was initially scheduled to direct Promised Land, a movie about fracking that he wrote with John Krasinski, and was also supposed to direct Manchester by the Sea, which was based on an idea Krasinski had proposed to him over dinner. But when Kenneth Lonergan subsequently tendered the script that they had commissioned, it was obvious to Damon that Lonergan should direct it instead. (He likes to joke that the best move he made as the movie’s producer was to fire himself as the movie’s director.) Most likely, though, more acting will come first. “I feel like I’ve been steadily improving at my job for a long time,” he says. “And that’s a great feeling.” He muses about how sometimes, for all one’s effort, movies may still misfire. “I really want people to care as much as I do about the things I’m putting out,” he says. “And, you know, some of them have really worked, and some of them really haven’t.”

— From Matt Damon's interview with GQ (8 September 2021).

Maybe it's like Ben said: Matt just has too many good opportunities offered to him as an actor, and directing would take up even more of the precious time he'd prefer spending with his family. Maybe he's already sufficiently satisfied with his creative output as an actor, writer, and producer that he doesn't feel the need to take on the director's chair. Maybe there's something about the weight of responsibility, those hundreds of decisions, how "if you’re not a truly great director, you just can’t hide," that have turned him off from fully committing to the role.

It makes it all the more compelling that one of the times he's been the most publicly enthusiastic about directing was so he could give Ben a safe haven as an actor:

MATT: The great thing is we have this little company together [Pearl Street Films]. And so now my partner in the company is the hottest director in Hollywood. […] I would love to be directed by him. I think that would be a lot of fun. And he’s clearly a fantastic director. And I’d love to direct him! You know? He was in actor jail for a while. I remember talking to him 10 years ago, when he was on the cover of those magazines every week. And no one knew more than him what a disaster it was. He said, “I’m in the worst place you can be. I sell magazines and not movie tickets.” And it was just a big hole and it just took him a decade, but he dug his way out. And I know what he wants is to work. He loves acting! And he’s at his best when he trusts the director. He wants some directors that he can trust to work with. So I’d love to direct him in something. And now I’m sure his performance in The Town and then his performance in Argo are so good that now the big directors I think are starting to call and want to hire him, just as an actor.

— Matt Damon Career Retrospective in SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations, moderated by Jenelle Riley (6 December 2012).

Like, I have to reiterate this: Matt loves Ben so much that he was willing to make his directorial debut — something that, for some reason or another, he has avoided doing for his entire career — just so he could create a safe space for Ben to act; to give him someone he trusts in the big chair, so Ben can also do the front-of-the-camera work he loves.

Which brings me back to Ben and his directorial style. What always strikes me when I hear Ben talk about directing is the extent of his openness, his generosity. For someone who had a string of bad experiences when he was powerless, I find it remarkable that once he stepped into a leadership position, Ben did not close ranks and tried to defensively control everything around him. Instead, he humbly recognized his own shortcomings and actively welcomed everyone's contributions. Ben's whole ethos is embracing the collaborative spirit at the heart of filmmaking and sees his role as a director to create an environment that facilitates others' creative output. Here are Ben and Casey talking about it after Ben's directorial debut with Gone Girl:

“One of the things Ben does as a director is listen to other people’s ideas and take the best and leave the rest. He’s not territorial, a mistake I’ve seen other directors make, I guess, because they feel insecure about their position. Ben let them try their ideas, which makes them feel like their ideas are on the line. They invest more. But he’s pretty discerning. Including some of my bad ideas, where he would go, like, I’m not going to do that.” Ben interrupts. “In terms of directing Casey it was just providing him with the best opportunity he could to succeed.” Here he accelerates. “Doing whatever that took, creating that environment for Casey and whatever that meant, and keeping out whatever I had to keep out … ” He’s talking even faster. “ … and allowing Casey to make whatever choices he wanted to make and, if he had an idea or instinct or experiment he wanted to try, doing what I could to let him try that, even if that meant holding off 10 other people who were going, ‘What? No! We’re not doing that!’ That to me is directing.”

— Ben and Casey Affleck’s interview with The Washington Post (17 October 2007).

I believe it's this same spirit that is at the root of the creative partnership between Ben and Matt. I find it endearing how certain things Ben says stick with Matt; how he goes on to repeat them like gospel. Like the story of how Matt was stumped about where to go with Good Will Hunting's prototype script, so he brought it to Ben, who replied, "I don't know what to do with it either, but let's do it together." And how, when they started working on it, Ben asked Matt "not to judge him for how bad his bad ideas are, but how good his good ideas are." There's an amount of vulnerability, sincerity, and trust in these two anecdotes that paints a pretty clear picture of why these two have remained close friends and partners for the overwhelming majority of their lives.

Another point of interest to me is why, then, did it take so long not only for Matt and Ben to work together again, but specifically for Ben to direct Matt. Especially since this was something Matt expressed clear interest in all the way back in 2012, when they started Pearl Street Films (Artists Equity's predecessor). There were even concrete plans in place:

Meanwhile Damon and Ben Affleck, the man he calls his “hetero lifemate,” remain as tight as ever. The two have a production company, Pearl Street Films, and Damon lets slip that they are developing a biopic about James “Whitey” Bulger, the onetime godfather of the Irish Mob in Boston, who was on the lam for sixteen years before being apprehended last June. Damon will play Bulger and Affleck will direct. But that won’t be for a while yet.

— From Matt Damon’s interview with GQ (December 2011).

The project was ultimately dropped when Black Mass came out:

The friends came close to reteaming on a biopic about Boston criminal Whitey Bulger, but they got beaten to the punch by Johnny Depp‘s Bulger film Black Mass. “We had a very different take on it,” says Damon, noting he has not yet seen the Depp movie, though he has read the book by Dick Lehr and Gerard K. O’Neill on which it is based. Explaining the difference between the projects, he cites a letter he received from a South Boston author. “It was a really moving letter that basically said: ‘Don’t glorify this man any more. Please stop.’ And this is to take nothing away from Black Mass. I hear the movie’s great. But Ben and I agreed with the guy who’d written us. And so we came up with this idea of doing it more like an anti-gangster movie. Make it look like what it was: something grotesque.”

— From Matt Damon’s interview with The Hollywood Reporter (30 September 2015).

It might have been that no other good opportunities came along in the decade that separated this project and Air. A lot of things have to align just right for such projects to come to fruition. That's why the Get Back Epiphany™ is so moving to me. Matt and Ben made the clear choice to take further control over their lives and careers and prioritize the things that made them happy: spending as much time together as possible, engaging in the creative collaboration that brought them here in the first place.