Matt Damon Is Real (original) (raw)

Media Platforms Design Team

Published in the August 2013 issue

Media Platforms Design Team

et's face it, the guy is ridiculous.

He's ridiculously handsome. He's ridiculously accomplished. He's ridiculously smart. He's ridiculously kind to those in need of his kindness. He's ridiculously funny. He's ridiculously magnetic, with a ridiculously white movie-star smile and a ridiculously resonant voice-talent voice. Despite his ridiculous sense of ease and casual aplomb, he cannot go anywhere without making an entrance for the simple reason that people who feel ridiculous staring at him feel even more ridiculous not staring at him. All he has to do is smile and open his mouth and he switches on an inner light that turns every head, even Matt Damon's.

Now, just to be clear, Matt Damon is also ridiculous. Indeed, Damon is so ridiculous — so ridiculously handsome, accomplished, smart, funny, etc. — that he has been holding forth on the subject of German Holocaust awareness while drinking beer and eating steak on the patio of a hotel restaurant in Germany without sounding ridiculous himself. Damon does this a lot. He holds forth. He drinks beer. He holds forth while drinking beer, often with members of the crew of the movie he happens to be making, which in this case is The Monuments Men, the story of the American soldiers charged with recovering the vast stashes of priceless art stolen by the Nazis. Damon's the most social of movie stars, the most easily conversant, and so he holds forth lightly, his knowledge of history just as much a social lubricant as the beer he keeps ordering for the table. He's sitting with a young actor, a military consultant, a script supervisor, and me, and with a ridiculous lack of anything resembling effort he keeps all eyes trained upon him until —

"Ah, he's back!"

It's Clooney. It's the boss. It's the guy who's directing The Monuments Men as well as starring in it, and it's the guy whose unabashed incandescence makes Damon's feel suddenly like the light from a sustainable bulb. Did I say Clooney's ridiculous? Clooney's ridiculous. He's back from a weekend in Berlin, nearly three hours away, and he looks...