Matt Damon: Bill Kristol "An Idiot," Bond A "Misogynist Sociopath"

[Cash_thatswhatiwant]

Matt Damon gave an interview to his local Miami Herald speaking out against, among other things, Bill Kristol, torture and James Bond. Damon has done his research, having played Jason Bourne in the "Bourne" trilogy and starring in two CIA movies, "The Good Shepherd" and "Syriana."

"The small talk -- if that's the right phrase -- ranged from which New York Times columnist is the worst (conservative William Kristol, according to Damon: ''He's an idiot -- he wrote that we should be grateful to George Bush because he won the Iraq war. We! Won! The! War!'') to the proper place of torture in American foreign policy.

''Look, the best line about torture I've heard came from Milt Beardon,'' Damon says. ``He said, `If a guy knows where a dirty bomb is hidden that's going to go off in a Marriott, put me in a room with him and I'll find out. But don't codify that. Just let me break the law.'


He also said what he thinks of James Bond:

''They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,'' Damon says scornfully. "Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive."


And he explained why he missed Obama's inauguration after campaigning on his behalf:

''Luciana and I decided we wanted to go,'' he admits. 'But when I called my contacts from the campaign, they just started laughing: `We worked on the campaign for 2 ½ years, and we're not going. Forget it.' But then they called me back the next day and said, 'Hey, we've got two tickets for you, in the bleachers, and you'll actually be able to see Obama take the oath. Just $25,000 apiece.' So I'm going to watch. From my couch.''

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/26/matt-damon-bill-kristol-a_n_161036.html

[xchrom]

1. ok -- other than Bond -- i aree with him nt

[TTUBatfan2008]

2. Yeah, very strange rant from him...

considering Bourne kills even more people than Bond.

[xchrom]

4. yeah -- but he's 'liberated' -- er bourne is.

damon really is very very cool.

i'd love to have lunch with him and clooney.

[CTyankee]

31. Uh, could Ijust have lunch with Clooney? I find him irresistible...

n/t

[xchrom]

32. i don't blame ya -- he's yummy.

but then again i find them both yummy.

[CTyankee]

49. I know but...

one at a time!

[XemaSab]

58. Lunch?

As long as it's a Xema sandwich. :9

[XemaSab]

59. Lunch?

As long as it's a Xema sandwich. :9

Good enough to say it twice. :9 :9

[xchrom]

62. sandwich is what i had in mind --

and i think of that triple decker often.

[asdjrocky]

39. You need to watch the movies.

Jason Bourne kills very few people.

[TTUBatfan2008]

45. Ha...

I own all 3 of them thank you very much. Bourne kills plenty of people in cold blood, some of whom are actually innocent American citizens. He's been brainwashed by the CIA not to give a damn when he kills. He's a killing machine. Almost every single person that Bond kills is an over the top comic book-esque villain.

[asdjrocky]

50. Wrong.

Jason Bourne, aka David Web, didn't become a killer until he was brutalized and brainwashed by the Treadstone program. All he wanted to do before that was serve his country. After he fled from the boat just 5 miles off of the coast, once he realized what he had been doing, he did all he could to avoid killing. In fact, many times he goes out of his way to avoid collateral damage.

I'm a total Bourne geek, and I'll go through the movies scene by scene to show you how often he doesn't kill when he can, or it would be the easy thing to do. Does he kick ass? Sure he does, with a book, a car, a towel or a magazine, but he only kills those who are sent to kill him and sometimes, he even spares their lives.

It's one of the reasons I love the movies.

[TTUBatfan2008]

51. He killed a guy right when he was initiated...

He volunteered for the program and said he'd do whatever it took to "save American lives." His first test was shooting a random guy. When he asked what the guy did, the Treadstone big shots told him that "it doesn't matter." And despite his guilty conscience, he went ahead and killed the guy. Killing is killing, and we are led to believe that off screen he has killed many people as an agent for Treadstone. So when Damon claims that Bond runs around killing people, the same can easily be said of his Bourne character. Guilty conscience or not, brainwashed or not, killing is killing.

[asdjrocky]

52. Wrong again.

It was not the first test, it was the final test. Watch again.

[TTUBatfan2008]

53. Whatever you wanna call it...

It was his test to join the program. And he "passed" it by killing someone in cold blood. First, final, whatever you want to call it. Doesn't change the fact that he killed the guy and then went into the Treadstone program where he killed who knows how many people before coming out of his trance and realizing something wasn't right (beginning of Bourne Identity). As I said, killing is killing. And he volunteered to do it even if he didn't know what he was getting himself into at the very beginning. But once they told him to kill the random hooded person, he had his chance to back away but he didn't. He followed through on it.

[Kalyke]

20. I agree totally about Bond.

Won't watch any of those misogynistic movies.

[jobycom]

3. Bourne calling Bond misogynist and socipathic?

This is the film series that started out the second installment by killing the love interest in the first installment for no other reason than to give Bourne a reason to slaughter a bunch more baddies? Puhleeze! That's the oldest and most misoygynist cliche in films. At the very least, Bond is fighting against horribly evil bad guys to save his country and the world. Half the time Bourne is fighting against other government agents to save his own skin or to avenge his cliche dead girlfriend, and most of the people he is killing believe they are the good guys.

Both series are fun escapism, but to claim either has any moral merit over the other is believing one's own press releases too much. :rofl:

On edit: he's right about the rest, of course.

[Teaser]

16. I hate Bond. I long to see him die

.

[jobycom]

24. You and a lot of other villains. Yet somehow he escapes every time.

You're supposed to just shoot him. Quit taunting him, just shoot! :rofl:

[izzybeans]

22. Bond was a tool of Imperial power, Bourne tried to escape it's grasp.

That's all he's saying.

[jobycom]

23. He used the words "misogynist" and "sociopath," so that's what he was saying. nt

[izzybeans]

37. Both were sociopaths.

he got that part wrong.

[NashVegas]

33. He's Just Jealous Cause Bond Gets the Steady Cam

[ericgtr]

5. It is pretty cold to charge him after all that work

I'm sure Obama didn't have his hands in all of the invitations but someone should have worked that out for him.

[JeffR]

6. Damn. From the post title I assumed he was talking about Kit Bond

a Misogynist Sociopath if ever there was one...

Oh, well.

[Terran]

30. Heh, me too.

Not sure if either word describes Kit Bond, but chances are good. "Useless drunk" is how I usually think of him, and he's my Senator.

[JeffR]

57. "Useless drunk" is highly appropriate too.

:rofl:

[Occam Bandage]

7. He's apparently of the belief that torture actually gives reliable information.

Perhaps he is beginning to confuse action movies with real life.

[druidity33]

13. well

at least he doesn't want to make it legal...

:shrug:

[boppers]

14. Having spent some time with one of our rendition boys...

I think you might be missing how the game works.

The concept is to "Suspend the law" to get the data.

That can mean a few things.

[jobycom]

26. It can, but that wasn't really his point.

If you are torturing someone and saying "Confess to murdering your sister!" or "Tell me who else is involved in your plot!" then the person being tortured will say anything to stop the torture. If they didn't kill their sister or if no one else was involved in the plot, they will lie to avoid the torture.

In situations like Bourne described, where you have a specific suspect and know that they know the time and place of of a bomb plot, for instance, then it can work. Torture makes the victim willing to say anything to stop the pain or fear. They may try to lie while they are still in control, but after a while they will tell the truth because they know that is the only thing that will stop you.

The problem comes when the answers you want aren't true. Confessions, or secret plots that don't exist, or names of co-conspirators, or any open-ended question. If they can't give you the truth to save themselves, they will lie, and that's what they mean when they say that evidence under torture is unreliable. Unless you know exactly what information you are looking for and have some way to judge whether the confession is true, you can't rely on anything you get.

So in cases like the Salem Witch Trials or the thousands of coerced confessions our law enforcers get, or even psychological pressures like the McCarthy hearings, people will confess to crimes they didn't commit and will turn over innocent people to avoid the torture. But in a case like Damon's source was describing, where you have a specific criminal and you know they have specific information, then torture can be effective. That's where the confusion lies for a lot of people. Conservatives think torture always works because they are visualizing Bruce Willis beating a suspect into revealing the whereabouts of a kidnap victim--something that might work--whereas liberals are visualizing the Spanish Inquisition with thumbscrews getting an ignorant shephard to admit he flies on broomsticks and drinks the blood of babies in Satanic rituals--something that only reinforces a belief the torture holds, and doesn't get anything resembling the truth.

Damon (or the guy he quotes) is right. Torture should never be legal, and on the very rare occassion where it can save lives, break the law and then suffer the consequences. No court would convict the man who uncovered and diffused a nuclear attack on Denver, for instance, but no court should be able to excuse the over-zealous CIA agent who beat a false confession out of a shopkeeper in Falujah just because the CIA agent believed the victim knew something. If you ever make it legal, you let the latter agent get away with it, and you don't empower the former agent to do anything he wouldn't do already.

That was Damon's point--emphasis on keeping it illegal while overcoming conservative hypothetical arguments, not emphasis on using it. That's how I read it, anyway.

[ObamaFan19]

8. Fired

I'm glad the NY times fired him. He wont be missed.

[Dreamer Tatum]

9. Translation: Spend your $10 on Bourne, not Bond.

In the last movie, wasn't it revealed that Bourne signed up for the program of his own volition?
Didn't he bust a few caps in the hooded guy for his initiation?

Not exactly Johnny Appleseed, is Bourne?

[blonndee]

10. Kind of a strange statement from Matt, but I agree with him.

Now, whether or not Bourne and its franchise is ALSO "misogynist" could be discussed at length as well. But I LOVE Matt Damon...yup, I'm a Matt Damon fangirl. There's not a smarter, more involved, more liberal celebrity spokesperson out there, with the exception of Robbins/Sarandon, and at this point I think Damon is far more valuable in terms of exposure and popularity. Plus, I met the guy at the Denver airport a few years ago. Made a fool out of myself, but he was awesome. Very polite and friendly.

Weirdly enough, I'm watching/listening to "Good Will Hunting" as I type this.

[MrSlayer]

11. Hey Damon, ease up on Bond.

James Bond rules.

He's right about the other stuff though.

[RepublicanElephant]

12. bond still kills anyone without question. just following orders.

bourne used to. but at least he started to ask why.

"Do you even know why you're supposed to kill me? Look at us. Look at what they make you give."

[asdjrocky]

40. That's my favorite part of the third film.

And the first.

[Freddie Stubbs]

44. Apperently you have never seen The Living Daylights

[RepublicanElephant]

46. bond didn't kill that blond because she was a babe.

if she looked like phyllis diller, she'd be toast.

p.s. dalton is the best bond!
;)

[Hawaii Hiker]

15. Totally agree w/Matt on Kristol, but I don't get the Bond rant

Look, sometimes the Bond movies are alot more style over substance, but I don't find Bond as some rogue agent like Jack Bauer in the incredibly over-the-top "24"...

[old mark]

17. I started to read the Bond novels back in 1960, before the movies

and Bond IS all that was stated and more. The novels were written as farces - Bond was never to be a serious character - and Flemming grew very tired of him after a few books, seemingly killing him off. Bond returned in "You Only Live Twice" due to popular demand after the success of the first Bond films and a great amount of money offerred by the publisher. I think Matt might be upset that Craig is playing the part and not Damon, just be the usual movie star bullshit - "It should be ME up there!"

FWIW, Ian Flemming, who actually was in British military intelligence service in WWII referred to James Bond as, "a blunt instrument".

As for Bill Krystal being a flap mouth idiot, well sure he is.


mark

[Blue_Tires]

18. wow...I'd hate to hear his thoughts on Austin Powers or Derek Flint

lol

[THUNDER HANDS]

19. Jason Bourne could kick Bond's ass with a toilet paper roll

in fact, I think he did that in one of his movies. I know he killed a guy with a magazine.

[lumberjack_jeff]

29. Bourne could whup Bond AND mighty mouse. n/t

[BootinUp]

35. but not Underdog, lol nt

[underpants]

42. The coolest part, for me, was in the first one when he pulled the fire evacuation sign off the wall

when he was trapped in the embassy (or whatever it was) he comes out of a room and clearly has no bearing on where he is...
he grabs a fire evacuation map off the wall and now he has a basic floor layout to work with

THAT was when I sat back and though WHOA! that is brilliant

Kick ass movies.

[lumberjack_jeff]

43. The thing I like about the movies is allowing viewers to follow Bourne's logic nonverbally.

Like when he's sitting at breakfast at the house and the dog is missing.

He needs a gun, the camera scans the room at all the kids toys. Bourne instantly reaches to top of the tallest cabinet to pull down the unseen shotgun. :thumbsup:

[smiley_glad_hands]

21. My wife agrees with him on Bond, which is why I never get to watch Bond films. eom

[acmavm]

25. I don't know, I saw the Good Shepherd. What a crapfest. I don't

think I'll take this very seriously because I'm sure he thought he was good himself in that cinematic disaster.

[glitch]

27. I agree with Matt Damon on all points except one.

I bet Obama's team had to search for and find tickets from some hawker, and could not pay for them themselves legally. He should have understood that and not been so snarky about it.

[bridgit]

28. Yes, Matt, whatever you say, Matt; and Edward Wilson was just a paper pusher...

Please, Damon is upset cause Daniel Craig is more handsome, walks as though he could do more damage, and is living a form of Bond's life throughout Europe while Jason Bourne 'the batman without wings or stretch underwear' has to be scalped to see his own president mouth some words at a distance.

The Bourne Identity Franchise ~

You may as well set the shots, SCREAM "Sound! Lights! Camera...ACTION!!" and then toss the Panavison down the Spanish Steps cause that's what it looks and plays like: a jumbled, frenetic mess interspersed with multiple pleas of, "Please, Jason, don't kill us don't kill us all!!!"

He is right about Kristol, Kristol is on his own working his own game

[bkcc]

34. Um, Matt...Bond isn't real.

I only wish I could say the same for Kristol.

[Beacool]

36. Pretty accurate description.

''They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,'' Damon says scornfully. "Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive."

Though, the last two Bond movies have tried to tone down the sexist crap.

;-)

[asdjrocky]

38. I have such a man crush on Matt Damon.

I can't stop watching the Bourne movies. And I do like his politics too.

[lumberjack_jeff]

56. Damon is great. I love the Bourne movies and I especially love Good Will Hunting. n/t

[underpants]

41. Damon is a devotee of Howard Zinn-took his class at Harvard I think

the audio book reading of "The People's History.." was read by Damon

[RepublicanElephant]

47. in conclusion....

matt rocks!
:yourock:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

48. Jason Bourne films are cinematic trash for ugly Americans.

Their audience consists of gaggles of Thomas Kinkade customers and Prop. 8 voters.

[knitter4democracy]

55. I liked the Bourne movies, and I don't fit your profile.

I'm too pretty. :P

[bridgit]

61. Ding! I rather disagree with your take on matters but *this* time you are spot-the-fuck-on!!

:popcorn:

[avaistheone1]

54. Damon is correct on all counts and especially about Bill Kristol.

Bill Kristol has been wrong about everything. It is an embarassment to see Kristol as a talking head on TV.

[XemaSab]

60. Why the hate for James Bond?

:shrug:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_(ornithologist)

[anonymous171]

63. Bourne is superior to Bond.

I think he would tie with Daniel Craig's bond though.

[invictus]

64. Matt is right about Bond and other things.

nt