Gamespotting
"This is really, really, really, really weird." Matt Damon is sitting at a table in the poker room at Trump's Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, looking over at the big plate-glass window that separaes two entrances to the room, both of which are being watched closely by a combined force of security guards and production assistants. "I'm sitting here talking, and they're... taking pictures." The "they" in question is a motley, but mostly young and mostly female, phalanx of fans who will hand out well into the wee hours mostly just to catch a glimpse of Damon. The production of Rounders, the movie Damon is in the middle of shooting, had many such visitors during the previous weeks of shooting on the streets of New York City. But that was a different crew - the intelligencia, as it were - of mostly young and mostly female fans. Tonight it's different.
It is February 11, the evening of the day after Damon received two Oscar nominations, one for the screenplay for Good Will Hunting, which he wrote with his buddy and costar Ben Affleck. The other, somewhat more surprising nomination is for Best Actor, and interestingly ennough pits Damon against four of the biggest and most respected actors of a previous generation: Nicholson, Fonda, Duvall, and Hoffman. Heady competition for a lad of 28. This nomination seals the verdict: The kid's a star. And while Damon is by no means backing off from the honor, he's somewhat bemused by the magnitude of attention it has brought him. "I was trying to watch CNN like a normal human being," he sighed, simultaneously overwhelmed and frustrated and strangely proud, "and I'm fucking all over it."
Someone at the table suggests that The Weather Channel hasn't been giving him much play.
He chuckles appreciatively. "Then that's my new channel."
"Now it's officially insane," confirms coproducer Joel Stillerman from the other side of the plate glass, where he is organizing some peripheral Rounders activities. (Interviews for an electronic press kit are on the agenda for tonight, and the second unit will be shooting sundry extras s they glare at the parsimonious slot machines.) A group of four young women are commiserating nervously, each one holding a corner of a quilt; later, at the 4 A.M. "lunch break", they will unfurl it, revealing a banner they've crafted in praise of Damon, and Damon will, bleary-eyed, sign autographs for them and pose for pictures and so on. "Some star," mutters an aging mall princess, addressing no one in particular as she desultorily puffs on a Virginia Slim. "I don't even know who he is."
"Will Hunting," a friend of hers offers. "Isn't that his name? Will Hunting?"
The fact that, um, Will Hunting is starring in Rounders is a kind of happy coincidence, or perhaps a confirmation of the Krekinesque powers of prescience possessed by Harvey Weinstein. A rough Rounders chronology, as far as one can make out: Longtime buddies Brian Koppelman and David Levien research and write a screenplay based on the world of undergroung poker clubs, focusing on what happens to an ace player and indifferent law student Mike McDermott when his best pal, Worm, gets sprung from the slammer and sucks him back into a scene he had recently forsworn after a big loss; ostensibly, Mc Dermott starts gambling to get Worm out of the gaping hole of debt he's dug himself into with a Russian-mob loan shark. The terrifically engaging screenplay makes its way to the office of Spanky pictures, run by director Ted Demme and his producing partner, Joel Silverman who go spontaneously nuts for it and enlist the aid of Miramax. After some contemplation, Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein says, "Let there be greenlighting," or words to that effect; and then one day Weinstein calls Demme and Silverman and says, "Guess what? You'll never believe who I got to play McDermott!"
"Tell us please."
"Matt Damon!"
"Who?"
For this was before Damon became known to the world as Will Hunting, and now it is
after, and the coproducers and the screenwriters and just about everybody are happier
than they ever were before, even if for Damon himself, nothing (big celebrity profile
moment coming up...wait for it...) will ever be the same again.
Damon's costar Edward Norton, who plays Worm, stands near the table Damon has just vacated and, positively blithe in his indifference (his Oscar nomination, for Primal Fear, was last year), tosses a playing card sideways, up into the air. It swirls, or something - it's hard to tell if it's actually rotating - and then appears to fly back into his hand, and he grabs it, again blithely, with his fingertips. He's not doing interciews at the moment - hey, he's working here! - but what's a little small talk between acquaintances...so:
"I hear Ricky Jay taught you how to do that."
Norton doesn't look down, doesn't even nod. He throws the card again, this time father, and raises his eyebrows. The card makes the tiniest swishing noise as it slices through the air. Norotn catches it perfectly - it's barely stopped twirling - and he throws it again.
"I can boomerang now" - another catch, another throw - "farther than Ricky."
What chutzpah! Those who rever Jay as a master raconteur, card manipulator, historian, illusionist, and philosopher king of the con game aren't going to enjoy hearing some actor make that claim. Even if it's true. But as Norton continues to toss his card, oblivious, it becomes clear that he is not participating in this conversation. Not exactly a strapping guy, Norton on this shoot has been kind of hunched over, but not really - folding his torso in on itself, making his body smaller and longer simultaneously, the better to slither with. In other words: becoming Worm, who is speaking and throwing playing-card boomerangs right now.
Months later, and fully himself again, Norton will express the proper obeisance to Jay, recalling that in his days as a struggling actor (which were not too long ago), he used to volunteer to usher at Jay's wonderful, almost perpetually sold-out off-Broadway show "Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants" at every opportunity. The who-can-boomerang-farther question is not brought up, as it would be in poor taste. So yeah, it's true: Norton is a Method actor, sort of, but ah, what results he gets; in the near-finished film, his scruffy, nihilistic, and jaw-dropping irresponsible Worm is utterly irresistible by dint of being utterly, at the core, unlovable. And yet you know that Damon's McDermott (who's a bit like Will Hunting, truth be told, only more well-mannered and clearly conscience-stricken, up to a point) does love him. It's a complex interaction, which manages to work in the context of what is, finally, an entertainment - but a substantive one, with a good amoung of the funk of reality sticking to it.
That's what screenwriters Koppelman and Levien seem to have been aiming for. Inspired by the likes of The Hustler, but not necessarily wanting to go that dark, they trolled the world of underground poker and concocted a convincing, eccentric group of supporting characters for their skewed buddy team of McDermott and Worm to bounce off of; to the writer's delight, some of these characters are being played by the likes of John Malkovich, John Turturro, and Famke Janssen (yes, kids there is such as thing as a Poker Babe). Koppelman and Levien are also street-smart enough to know how to resolve a seemingly impossible situation: When a character writes a $10,000 check to Damon's character at something like three in the morning, the way he ends up getting the green will have every New Yorker in the audience nodding, "Sure, right."
Tonight, Koppelman and Levien are gassed - ver gassed- about a bunch of things,
probably in this order: (1) that their screenplay's in the process of being made
into a movie with Damon and Norton, and that the inspired John Dahl (The Last
Seduction, Red Rock West, and the underrated Unforgettable) is
directing it and the genius cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier (Good Will
Hunting) is shooting it; (2) that World Series of Poker Champion Johnny Chan
is in the house tonight shooting a scene for the movie (and quite the impressive
figure Mr. Chan is, too, engulfed as he is in a virtual bubble of placidity;
resplendent in a purple blazer; his small hands, hands that have been essential
instruments in earning him pots of money, immaculately manicured - a man to reckon with
and reckon with again, Mr. Chan); (3) that they themselves are going to get made up
for their cameo appearance as suckers who get taken by a group of undeground poker
pros on an Atlantic City busman's holiday, in a montage sequence (Levien to Damon:
"Hoy you doin'?" Damon: "I'll live." Koppelman: "How many hours of sleep you get?"
Damon: "Five." Levien: "Five? Shit, man, I got six and I'm totally wired!").
It's a tough night. ("It passed like a dream," Damon says later. "To shoot within that glassed-in-room - at one point I fell asleep at the table.") Things go okay for a while, and then not so great. The filmmaking team is exemplary in the we're-here-to-work-and-not-be-ego-driven-Hollywood-assholes department, but still, it's after midnight and there are all sorts of not really welcome distractions, and, well, even a saint could get itchy.
Norton and Chan are striding off to the elevators when two women in their
midtwenties, guests of the hotel, overtake them and ask Norton to pose for a picture
with them and (after Chan, basking in his relative anonymity, has bolted) insist on
riding up on the elevator with him. A couple of minutes later they're back down with
their spoils, an ace of spades with a little hole in it, autographed by Norton. This
is presumably where Norton draws the line at being "in character" - and quite
mercifully, to, for if Norton were being fully Worm, he could very well have lured
these women to his room, engaged them in unspeakable acts, gone through their handbags,
sent them paking, and used one of their credit cards to procure varied and expensive
services. Which, of course, he didn't do. "We didn't understand a word he said," one
of the women says, more amused then let down. "He seems like a fun guy. Fun to hang
out with," the other says, brightening. "We were gonna ask him if he wanted to hang
out with us." But?
Rounders is a low-budget production, so until 4 A.M.'s "lunch," the Starbucks (!) on the upper level substitutes for craft services. It's a small Starbucks, so a production assistant placing orders for ten and then carting it all downstairs in two shopping bags constitutes a commotion. A few minutes later, the lid of his baseball cap shadowing his granny glasses, director John Dahl enters to get a cup for himself.
Physically he's the definition of average, which maybe says something about his ability to make such resolutely nonaverage movies, or maybe not. Though unfailingly polite, something about his manner makes it clear that now is not the time to talk.
QUESTION: "How do you adjust your body clock to these grueling late-night shoots?"
ANSWER: "You don't."
At about 6 A.M. a clearly frustrated Norton mutters, "I see they're not going to
get to me tonight," and heads back upstairs. The north end of the poker room is
still open for business, and it's a frightening sight. If you're fresh, you can win a
lot of money at this hour. Those who are still playing are just trying to get theirs
back. Levien and Koppelman don't get their shots, meaning Levien had slicked back his
hair for no good reason. Turturro, in the building but suffering from the flu,
doesn't make it downstairs. Nobody yells. Nobody screams. Everybody wants to collapse.
The notes in the journalist's notebook grow increasing illegible. Even the once-gawking,
once-autographing-seeking fans seem to have finally understood what's going on,
because the've all gone home. The differentce between them and Damon, Norton, Dahl,
the poor souls still looking for a great hand et al. is that Damon, Norton, Dahl, the
poor sould, et al. can't do that just yet. Such is the nature of their game.
Glenn Kenny is a senior editior at Premiere
If you have new information on Edward Norton (and you can provide a verifiable and reputable source), please email me- Susan
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