Your origin story is, has kind of become a legend that you were working on a script at Harvard that you then started, uh, working on it some more with your high school buddy, Ben Affleck.
You go to Hollywood, you sell it and it ends up becoming good will hunting.
Here you are.
There's my number so maybe we can go out for coffee sometime.
Do you like apples?
Yeah.
Well, I got a number.
How do you like them apples?
I have to tell you that is a line in the Wallace family we occasionally use on each other.
How do you like them apples?
I'm glad it lasted.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was a, that was a funny one.
What, uh, is the most interesting thing we don't know about this whole story?
I guess probably this generation probably doesn't know a lot of the stories.
I mean, we were, um, you know, Ben was living on my couch when we sold it.
Um, he had, he had, it was in a, um, uh, an engagement gone wrong and so he was on our, he was on our couch, me and another buddy we went to high school with and so we were really writing it to try to kind of get out of the living situation we were in.
Yeah.
Yeah, everybody get, get their own room and, uh, and, and we just really, um, you know, we, we, we really believed in it and if the movie got made, we had to be the, the ones who played the roles and that really was the difference.
Ok. So Ben and you win the Oscar for best screenplay and there's a story I read that you go home that night with Oscar and you say to yourself, thank God, I didn't screw over anybody to get this because it wouldn't have been worth it.
Right?
Is that true?
That's totally true.
Yeah, I found myself like three or four in the morning just sitting alone with the thing staring at it.
And, uh, and that was the thought I had, I had this kind of weird flash forward to a life that didn't happen, which was I was for some reason, 83 years old, I don't know why.
And, uh, and I was, and I had the Academy Award finally and, um, and I had this life of, you know, carnage behind me and it was just, and so I was 27 at the time and I just kind of that, that thought just kind of revealed itself to me.
Thank God and to the degree that you were at 27 were thinking if the Oscar wasn't gonna bring you happiness.
What did you think would?
Well, that was the question, right?
And what?
And so it really, it was a real gift in the sense that it kind of released me of every ever thinking that anything external was gonna make me any, any, any item thing, material object, anything would ever fill, uh, my soul up.
You know, it was, it was the work itself that I really, really love and still do and really enjoy five years after Goodwill hunting, you make the first of four Jason Bourne movies.
Here's the first one.
How's your time?
You kinda like, I look like I'm about 12 years old.
I can't.
That's all.
So again, directors because this is directors.
Mean Doug Lyman is just, was, this was all that was all Doug's idea.
This idea.
He was like, we need a James Bond for us for our generation.
Like, yeah, and that was his whole thing.
And, uh, it's just so funny looking at it like I, because I remember saying to him like I'm, I, I can't, you, me because I've never done anything like that.
But, well, I, but I wanna pick up on that because one of the trade papers said after, uh, the, these movies that you were the decades best mixer of brains and braun and, and I, I guess the question I have is, is how calculated was it your move?
All right.
I've done Goodwill hunting.
I've shown sensitive now, I'm gonna show I can be an action hero and just generally speaking, how strategic are you as you plot your career decidedly uns strategic.
Yeah. Really?
Yeah, because I, I've, I've talked to people about this and, you know, all the inside baseball and we all talk about it all the time.
I've never believed that you can, uh, nobody knows what movie is gonna be a hit and what's gonna make.
You don't, you just don't know.
Right.
You know, I've been in some terrific bombs.
You know what I mean?
It's like, you, you, we just don't know.
And so to say, well, I'm gonna do a big movie and a small movie and it's like, forget it.
It'll never, it'll never work.
You just, to me, my calculus has always been about the director and, you know, I'll even go to work with a great director with no script and I have, um, and I'll put my faith in that result more than just about anything because it's really, it's all about who's directing the movie in 2006.
You play a mob spy inside the Massachusetts State police in the departed.
We got a cop in my crew.
Yeah, I know.
I'm kind of getting that feeling too.
I have to say I hated you so much in that.
Yeah.
Yeah, because, uh, yes, exactly.
That was it as we saw from the final season.
So, uh Jack Holson.
Leo Dicaprio directed by Martin Scorsese.
How amazing was that a bunch of hacks, you know?
I mean.
Yeah. And you, and you kind of lifted them.
I, I really, I, I carried him on my back.
Um No, it was an amazing opportunity.
II I, you know, and, and it was this weird thing where Brad Pitt was gonna play the role and he was producing it and he just gave it to me.
That's the, probably the only time in my career that something like that just fell into my lap.
It was incredible.
You and Ben have created along with some other people, your own independent studio called Artist Equity.
And I wondered to what degree is that because the economics of the industry has changed with streaming.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's, and largely because of that and also because the economic model of movie making hasn't really been updated.
And so we, you know, since for 100 years.
So there, there's, there's bloat in, in budgets and, and, and people who make movies know really where it is.
And, and we felt like we could make movies uh on average about 20% cheaper um than, than other people if we worked smarter and we could pass that savings on to our crews.
And so that's what, so we've made three movies at this point, we ran the numbers and our, our crews have made on average over 20% above their highest quote.
So far on the first three movies.
I, I wanna ask you one question before I go on about you and Ben because, I mean, for years, Matt and Ben.
Ben and Matt and they were in high school, you're working together and now you're in your fifties and you're together.
Did you ever have a falling out?
Did you ever, in those years have a point where at least for a period of time you weren't talking to each other.
We've been, uh, bizarrely close for, for a long time.
You know, I was watching the, uh, um, get back the Peter Jackson documentary and at the end of that, you see the Beatles.
Yeah, it's all about the Beatles and at the end they're playing on the roof in London and, and, and it says this is the last time that they ever played together and it, it live and it made me so sad, like to think of these because you look at them and they're so happy and Ben and I, I called him and I said, look, man, you know, we were talking about doing this and it's like, you know, we've, it's been 25 years or something since goodwill hunting.
Like, let's what are we doing?
You know, we both kind of hit the lottery.
Why aren't we, why aren't we working together more often?
And, you know, after my dad passed, you know, um, in 2017 and Ben was very, very close with him.
It's like, it, it, it changed something in us, I think in, in, uh, you know, you start to really, you start to see the end game and you start to feel like I want to make every second count.
You know, I really, I, you know, I, I don't want to fritter away time anymore.