The Talks
Matt Damon: “These types of movies are going away”
Mr. Damon, how do you define success?
It’s the work. It’s the process itself. I have done enough movies now — movies that have failed, movies that have been successful. All we have as the people making it is the love of the doing of it. I am aware of the results because I have to be; it has an impact on my career so I can’t be ignorant of the movies that I am doing. But it’s really about feeling that I did my best work, the best work I could do under the circumstances, feeling that we told the story we wanted to tell in the way we wanted to tell it. That’s really the definition of success.
So for you it’s about the journey?
The journey is everything! It’s a cliché, but I have really felt it in my own life, in the 25 or 30 years I’ve been in this… The goal is the process, really enjoying the process. You can’t really predict what is going to happen with movies… I have made movies that I thought were really going to be well received and successful, and they failed miserably. And I have made movies that were very successful that I didn’t see coming.
“Being creative and keeping your brain occupied is very sensible because if you don’t you die, slowly. Sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don’t want to just retire. I enjoy it all.”
“As I began to take risks, leaving my very comfortable and secure job and taking this first leap into fashion, every subsequent risk became easier to take because I began to see the kind of opportunity and excitement that risk-taking offered.”
“I think my photographic career has been one of growing, learning, experimenting and trying different things. That was a big journey for me! It’s always a progression, it’s about challenging the idea of what photography is.”
“I don’t regret anything. I feel that I’ve made what I would call mistakes. But everything you do is a part of you. And you get something from it. The idea and excitement of being in these situations and places — they are more than just memories, they inform your life.”
“Just about anything is possible if you can find the map or the blueprint to get there. I think you’re only limited by your imagination.”
“It’s a huge peace to allow yourself to be vulnerable. You gain a sense of freedom and understanding and forgiveness for being human. Instead of trying to control things and make it the way you want them, you have to be more open.”
“I just keep imagining myself thirty years from now thinking, ‘Why didn’t you take advantage of all the opportunities you had? Look at all the people you could have worked with, the roles you could have done. Go for it.’ And that’s what I am thinking.”
“I’m trying to not play it safe. I learn more when I fail than when I succeed, so if I push myself to do something that’s really difficult, I could fail and I’ll learn a lot. But if I don’t fail, then I’ll be in a great movie. I hope to be the kind of actor that isn’t always great.”
“I think the key to having a successful career is to find the thing you do well and do it again and again for the rest of your life. But I’m interested in expanding my language as an artist and as a composer. And I try to expand it with every project.”
“I don’t like plan Bs. If you don’t have a plan B, then you can’t take plan B. Don’t give yourself an out.”
“We're not having to run from predatory animals like we did for hundreds of thousands of years before. So now we have to make up new activities to fulfill those emotional needs. There is a certain something about the ever-present danger of death that makes living so great.”
“It all comes down to realizing how good you are and really consciously working with that. I think as an artist we always try to hide the imperfections. But the imperfections are there because we’re all humans, and this is what makes us interesting.”
“If people don’t like the pictures, I don’t care. To me, there’s only one point of view: that’s mine.”
“I think every person who is curious is more fascinating, and exploration is a big part of that. If you know everything in advance, if you're too self-confident, then everything will stop at some point.”
“If you have to defend something that you like, it makes you to like it even more. My parents hated the comic strips, they hated rock ‘n’ roll, and when they found out what movies I was going to they also were against that. So everything I loved I had to defend.”
“I would say that a strong work ethic is a vital ingredient for success. That’s something I was born with, I’m convinced of it; it was nothing that I acquired. If you take on anything, you try to do it your best.”
“You better make every moment count. Live your life now; start in the morning. You mustn’t sit around waiting to die.”
“I think you have to slow down a little bit. But I am just trying to make work; I am just out there making work. I take care of myself so that I can survive. I used to not take care of myself so well, but now I do.”
“Failure is just something you have to go through on your own. Nothing can prepare you for it, just like a broken heart. I thought about folding, but I’m not a quitter. I’m not going to quit.”
“It’s hard to watch the misses, it’s hard to be criticized. But you’re always trying to hit it into the rafters, and damn the consequences if you don’t make it.”
“I am tireless, I’m relatively fearless. It’s hard to hear “no” all the time. It can be tough; you have to have the stomach for it.”
“The only thing that you have to be very sure of is that nothing can go wrong. You can’t get in the way of the whole thing by messing it up with great ideas or smart moves. Absolute trust is, I think, the crucial ingredient.”
“I have a tattoo that goes around my right wrist that looks like barbed wire, but it’s actually ANDAND linked together, which stands for “A New Dawn, A New Day.” It’s about waking up every day knowing that you have a chance to start again and forgive and be forgiven and to let go of yesterday.”
“To be an artist, you must start with a considerable drive; in my case it was a fierce madness, a wildness. I think that’s the mark of an artist, actually, that they are rebellious, unruly… And I was one of them myself.”
“I think you always have to have risk when you’re creating a piece of art. Without that, I don’t understand really what the drive is to succeed. It’s the risk factor that, weirdly, keeps you feeling safe. It keeps you on your toes.”
“Having come out as a gay man and the self-confidence that gives you is huge! It affects every aspect of your life, including my work. People like honesty. They respect honesty. And my film career took off once I came out.”
“I never thought of art as a career. I thought it was more like a monastic practice. It is something that you do – you can't not do it. If I made money doing it, I would do it; if I didn't make any money, I would do it. Obviously I’m not perfect but the thing I am best at is painting.”
“You can work hard at this skill forever, you never reach the end; you never are a master, you’re never done. Writing is endless and I like that. I like that you can never conquer it.”
“I have the freedom to express myself. And it doesn’t matter if somebody’s going to pay me or pat me on the back for it. I chose to do things that I embrace, that I feel passionate about for whatever reason and I create my freedom around that.”
“I always try to concentrate on the process and where the real goal is, which is trying to get up every day and be the best possible version of myself and do the best work I can do.”
“The recognition of luck is extraordinarily important — as well as making the best of it and creating to the best of your capabilities on that one opportunity you’re given so that it doesn’t end up in the museum of errors.”
“I wouldn’t ever compromise on the essential, on the essence of a project, the ideas or the themes.”
“I think when you’re an artist who’s been around for a while like I have you understand that it’s almost impossible to make work that is unanimously loved or understood! You can’t please everyone, and that is a great realization.”
“If you work with somebody for a long time, you have to challenge them otherwise you jeopardize your relationship. You have to constantly reinterpret your work together and provide a new vision of your relationship.”
“When I was younger I had these moments where I was surprising myself with my spontaneity, and I thought, ‘This is what you should be chasing.’ The cerebral part of acting and the perfectionism can be exhausting, but the spontaneity can be very joyful.”
“Part of being a designer is to fail every day, to try things that don’t work out. In a way, every project fails every day until it succeeds! That’s what the iterative process of design is about. Timing in many ways is key.”- “I was a soldier in Korea and I got into a situation where I knew I was going to die. The rest of my life I have lived every bloody moment from the moment I wake up until the time I go to sleep.”
“I just want to do everything as good as I possibly can but it is also good to act on an idea and fail — and then you get something out of it. I think it’s really important to not be afraid of failure and to push yourself to try things and jump in the cold water.”
“I really lacked confidence at the very beginning. At first I was quite intimidated! I wasn’t accepted in the kitchen initially, I wasn’t part of the system; the other chefs didn’t welcome me. But in the end, those experiences made all the difference. It freed me.”
“Sometimes when you lose faith and you understand that something will never be possible the way that you dreamed, but you keep trying, suddenly one thing flips and everything re-accommodates. It totally flows. You don’t give up — and suddenly it’s almost a transcendental thing.”
Wally Pfister: “I had to shift to storytelling”
Mr. Pfister, in your opinion as an Oscar winning cinematographer, what makes for an iconic film scene?
It's marriage of all the elements: something that works photographically, that tells a story perfectly, that has lighting elements that contribute to the story, the color palette, the metaphorical imagery, the musical cues… If you look back at what we call the iconic images in the Batman movies that I made — one which is a silhouette of Batman standing on top of a building in Gotham city with our helicopter circling around in him at dawn, for instance, or another where he is standing on top of a pile of rubble in a burning building — what's interesting is there’s really very little performance in those scenes, but they are iconic images, and all the information, and mood is within the frame.
So it’s really a collaborative effort between every player in the film’s making, more than just a visual impact.
Right, it’s a great collaboration of all these forces: Chris Nolan, in his storytelling best, finding these moments of reflection. It's the performer, in this case Christian Bale, having that moment of reflection, and it's myself and unseen collaborators creating the mood with the images and the music. So those iconic shots that we did, I can't speak for anybody else, but they all fit together in a perfect way, and they come in a perfect place in the narrative, where you need that moment of reflection, amidst all the action.
