-Our first guest tonight is an Academy Award-winning
writer and actor you know from films such as
"Good Will Hunting," "The Martian,"
and "Ford v. Ferrari."
He both produces and stars in "Air,"
which is in theaters now.
Let's take a look.
-I'm willing to bet my career on Michael Jordan.
-Come on, man.
-You asked me what I do here. This is what I do.
I find you players, and I [bleep] feel it this time.
Okay, it's risky.
When you were selling sneakers out of the back of
your Plymouth, that was risky.
It took balls.
I mean, that's why we're all here.
Don't change that now.
Phil, I mean, if you look at him,
if you really look at Jordan like I did,
you're going to see exactly what I see.
-Which is what?
-The most competitive guy I have ever seen.
He is a [bleep] killer.
-Please welcome to the show Matt Damon, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪
I'm so happy you're here. -It's good to be here.
-How are you? -I'm doing really well.
I really enjoyed this film.
It looked like it was a lot of fun to make.
Obviously, you're collaborating with people
you've been working with over the years.
And a really nice wardrobe for you.
Just a solid '80s wardrobe.
-Yeah, I got a shout-out to Charlese,
our costume designer.
She crushed it.
In fact, the guy that I play is a real guy, Sonny Vaccaro.
And when Sonny came to the set to visit with his wife,
she looked at what I was wearing and she turned to Charlese,
our costume designer, and said,
"It's like you broke into his closet."
So that's about the highest praise you can get.
-Absolutely. Now, I guess, like, not a lot of '80s clothes
were cool, but Sonny was definitely
not wearing the coolest of the era.
-No.
-I don't feel like anybody's going to watch this movie --
None of the teens are going to watch this movie and go like,
"I want to dress like Matt Damon in this movie."
-No. Like, there's those things that you can get,
like the rider in your contract where you keep the wardrobe.
Like, this wasn't one of those jobs.
-Your rider was, "I never want to see it again."
-Please. -A lot of beige.
I think you found out if beige was your color.
-Yeah. We found out that it's definitely not my color.
But, actually, yeah, when I showed
a rough cut of the movie to my wife
and the movie ended, and I turned it on and I said,
"What'd you think?"
She goes, "That movie's great. You look awful."
Yeah. -Very nice.
At least you started with praise.
-Just two really true declarative statements.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-So, this is based on the team of people,
you know, behind the scenes who are putting together
the deal for Michael Jordan to come to Nike,
which changed, obviously, the future of of basketball shoes.
And I guess it was inspired --
Maybe the writer came up with the idea
of watching ""The Last Dance," which I think everybody did
during those early days of the pandemic.
-Yeah, yeah.
He -- Alex, the writer, I think was inspired by that.
And, I mean, we all, you know, sat and watched
"The Last Dance."
I think that's how we all spent the first --
-I would have watched it anyway, but it certainly showed up
at the right time.
-I think I watched it a lot faster.
-Yeah. I will say this.
I don't think my wife would have watched it with me
unless it was a pandemic.
-My wife, my kids, like -- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
My COVID bubble. We all -- We binged it together.
-In the COVID bubble, did you try to --
I mean, first of all,
I don't know how much your kids engage with your work.
Do they like watching you?
-Uh...no.
-Yeah. Did you take advantage of the COVID bubble to say,
"You know, let's go revisit some of dad's early work?"
-Absolutely not. -No, they wouldn't stand for it?
-No, I have -- Well, my my 16-year-old
likes to give me a hard time, and she is very clear
about not wanting to see anything
that I'm in if she thinks it might be good.
-Oh, interesting. -Yeah.
So she'll watch anything she hears --
Like, if I get bad reviews in something,
she's like -- That's the one she wants to see.
-Oh, my God. -Yeah.
-That is the most ice-cold 16-year-old thing
I've ever heard.
-There's one movie I did that's not very good,
and it's called "The Great Wall."
And my daughter was talking to one of her friends
and she was talking about this movie.
"My dad did this movie 'The Wall.'"
And she kept calling it "The Wall."
And I was finally like,
"Isabella, that movie is called 'The Great Wall.'"
And she was like, "Dad, there is nothing great about that movie."
[ Applause ]
-Okay.
-I like thinking that she knew for months,
"I'm going to just keep calling it 'The Wall.'"
just setting you up, setting you up.
-She's like -- Yeah, like, just like this
for months until I'm like, "It's not called 'The Wall.'"
Yeah.
-The old-school boxy car phone.
That was a really nice thing to see in this film.
Do you remember the first time you saw
someone on the car phone?
-Yeah. In fact, we put this line in there like,
"I'm calling you on the -- There's a phone in the car."
Like, he's really excited about it,
because we remembered when -- you know, in the '80s,
when we first saw a car phone, and it was like, "Wow!
Like, that car has a phone in it."
It's like the craziest idea.
-I think most of those early calls were just people
telling them they were calling them from a car.
-You know what?
Actually, Ben and I had a roommate for a summer
in California in 19-- I want to say '90, '91, maybe.
And this kid, he couldn't afford a car phone.
He bought a plastic phone. This is a true story.
Bought a plastic phone and would --
at red lights, would put it up to his ear
with, like, a cord going to nothing.
And that was his attempt to try to, like,
pick up women, like, at stoplights,
because it was such a rare thing.
-I mean, it definitely seems like he didn't plan for whatever
Step 2 was.
-No. Like, can you imagine?
"Can I borrow your phone for a second?
I got to make a call."
-"Oh, no!" -Yeah.
"I'm out. I'm out. I'm out."
-"You ask too many questions." -Yeah. Yeah.
-We had a your co-star Jason Bateman here,
and we were talking about the '80s.
And Jason was admitting that he kind of crushed the '80s.
Like, he had a really good decade.
You were mentioning L.A. with Ben in the early '90s.
Obviously, you know, the '90s
eventually worked out pretty well for you guys.
But how were the '80s and '90s for you as far as
fashion, hair, just a general vibe?
-We did not crush the 80s? -No, you didn't? Yeah.
-We did not. We did not crush the '80s.
Up to the mid-'90s, we were struggling.
Yeah, we weren't crushing anything.
Bateman was dominating. That's true. Yeah.
Yeah, Bateman -- I can see how he loved those years.
We were not.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
Do you feel like -- Do you ever look back --
I have this, I think, very false sense of myself
through the '80s, which is, I don't think
I wore the worst fashion, forgetting that
even like a middle-tier bad choice looks awful now.
-Yeah. I don't think I wore anything that looked good.
Like, I haven't seen a good picture of me in the '80s
or really, you know, until about 1996.
Like, until people start-- professional people
started dressing me for movies.
-Yeah, right. -Yeah, yeah.
-Like, someone who knows what they're doing
comes over with a comb and is like,
"I'm about to fix everything."
-"You need to put this on and you need to ask no questions."
And -- Yeah.
-I feel like every almost-good picture
I see of myself in that era, like, one thing will ruin it.
It's like, "Oh, hardcore pleated pants."
-Right. -Just like...
-Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah.
I'm thinking back to my prom picture.
Yeah, there's not -- I don't think I --
-It wasn't a good era. We didn't grow up in a good era.
-It was not strong.
It was not -- But I feel like we
represented it well in the movie.
-You really did.
I should stress, you -- And it was a lot of nostalgia.
Obviously, we both -- we're Boston sports fans.
M.J. is someone that you could watch and have appreciation for,
but at the same time, you know, he --
You know, I was rooting against him for most of his career.
-Yeah. -Did you see him play live?
-I did, yeah.
I did because my dad had tickets through his work
that we could go to one game a year.
And. obviously, Boston in the '80s,
it was Celtics-Lakers that --
So Lakers tickets were not offered.
They were off the table. That was those were for clients.
They were like, "Any other game you can go to."
And so my brother and I would always want to go see M.J.
just to say that we saw him live, because it was --
You know, I mean, he just kind of transcended the game.
He was -- It was just so exciting to watch him.
And then, of course, like, they became kind of
America's team because the national game
every week was the Bulls.
And, you know, he was just kind of bigger than the game.
-I mentioned we were Red Sox fans.
You were very kind.
This was, I think, the beginning of my second season.
You hosted the season premiere of "SNL."
You were kind enough to do something.
Look at -- We are the same. We did not age.
We did not age at all.
[ Cheers and applause ] -Wow!
Wow! -You know what?
Do you remember, in the beginning of
the "Captain America" movie,
they, like, -- They use, like, digital effects
to make Chris Evans look like a smaller version of himself?
I feel like I'm the smaller version here.
That's, like -- That's before the super serum.
-That's amazing.
-Do you -- That was --
So, that's 2002 that you hosted. -Yeah.
-Do you remember, like, getting the call to be asked to do that?
I mean, obviously, you're pretty established in your career
at that point.
-Yeah. You know, what was funny about that
was I actually -- My agent, Patrick,
who's been my agent for 30 years,
called me up and goes,
"You're hosting 'Saturday Night Live.'
You know, it's the season opener."
And I was like, "Yeah, great."
I was like, "But I'm not promoting anything.
I don't have any --" And he goes,
"No, no, no, of course."
And he goes, "Bruce Springsteen's
the musical guest."
So I was like, "Oh, yeah, of course."
So, like, we're big fans of Springsteen.
So, like, just we -- I basically hosted the show
so that I could go watch him do the two songs.
-Not a bad play. -No, not at all.
I had a great time. I really -- I loved it.
But I didn't host it for another 16 years after that.
-Well, man, it is just so nice to have you here.
It has been far too long. And the movie's great.
And it's always such a pleasure. Really appreciate it.
-Thanks, Seth. I appreciate it. -Matt Damon.
"Air" is in theaters now.
We'll be right back with more "Late Night."