Posted on 07/12/2021 3:15:52 AM PDT by gattaca
Actors are strange folk and generally out of touch, but Matt Damon’s cluelessness about Donald Trump supporters might really take the Hollywood cake.
The actor — known for “Good Will Hunting,” “Saving Private Ryan” and the “Bourne” franchise, among other roles — is an outspoken leftist even by the standards of Tinseltown who had to stoop to play a Trump supporter in his latest film, “Stillwater.”
The movie sees him playing an oil rig worker whose daughter gets caught up in a European murder case a la Amanda Knox, according to Reuters.
How do you play a Trump supporter? This should be a rhetorical question. And yes, you might think that’s easy for me to say as a Trump voter, but pay me enough money and I could play a Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton voter. Heck, if you really want to bankroll me, I could pretend I was an Eric Swalwell volunteer. (I’d need Chinese spy money for that, but it could be done.)
Damon, a professional actor, needed to live with Trump supporters to get the role down. In a news conference at the premiere of “Stillwater” in France at the Cannes Film Festival, Damon said he spent an “absolutely critical” amount of time with MAGA folk.
Trending:
Arrest Made at Art Gallery Set to Display Hunter Biden Pieces, Money Found on Floor His conclusion? They “don’t apologize for who they are,” but they were still “wonderful to us.” Sure, they had goatees and sunglasses and sang strange “church songs,” but they were somehow human beings.
“Being invited into their homes, into a backyard barbecue, a guitar comes out and they start singing church songs. It’s a very specific place. And very different to where I grew up,” Damon said at a news conference after the Thursday red carpet premiere of “Stillwater,” according to Reuters.
“It was really eye-opening for me.”
This, in other words, is an obscenely rich thespian who’s one of the most influential entertainers on planet Earth and he comes across as a guy who just discovered a cohort of his fellow countrymen, 74 million of whom voted for the incumbent president during the 2020 election, actually exist.
Not only that, he treats them as if neon green hominids with goatees and Oakley shades were living in his backyard for 20 years and crawled up on his porch one day to have a beer, strum a guitar and sing “How Great is Our God.”
Damon’s character is an oil-rig worker who has to travel to Marseille, France where his estranged daughter is locked up for killing her roommate.
“One of the biggest laughs at the movie’s Thursday night premiere came when Damon’s character is asked by a French woman if he voted for Donald Trump. He did not, he responds, but only because a prior felony kept him from voting at all,” Variety reported.
Variety’s description of Damon’s preparation seems to indicate the immersion was wholly unnecessary. The Hollywood trade magazine said he “came to appreciate the smallest details — from wearing a specific kind of blue jeans treated with fire retardant, which ‘changes the way these guys walk.’”
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PBS Condemned Over Playing ‘Black National Anthem’ for Fourth of July “They all have goatees, the sunglasses,” Damon said. “They’re not six-pack ab guys, but they’re strong. You go to their barbecues and a guitar comes out and they start singing church songs.”
The “church songs” really had an impression on Damon. This is a 50-year-old man — one of the most influential and respected members of our celebrity caste — standing in amazement that these guys were singing religious tunes and not Springsteen, the Strokes, Ed Sheeran or Pearl Jam. In his half-century on earth, he hasn’t encountered organized religion. Maybe he assumed the worship part of church service was done in mime.
Another thing Damon wants you to know? They’re not bending the knee to Hollywood.
“These guys don’t apologize for who they are,” Damon said
Why would they have to?
Furthermore, Damon said he and “Stillwater” director Tom McCarthy “were invited into the break rooms and backyard barbecues of the real men who inspired the character” Damon played.
“They’re in the oil business. Of course he voted for Trump,” Damon said of his goateed character. “These people were wonderful to us, they really helped us. It was eye-opening for me.”
And how does this film treat said Trump supporters? Consider the fact it got a five-minute standing ovation at Cannes, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That’s not exactly MAGA territory.
Hollywood is so beyond out of touch that Matt Damon spends time assuring reporters at a news conference that oil-industry Trump supporters aren’t that bad.
Is Hollywood out of touch?
Sure, they might have goatees and the church songs are a little grating, but they’re not terrible or anything. And they’re not apologizing — although it’s bizarre that the topic of an apology would even come up.
If there’s anyone who needs to apologize here, it’s Matt Damon. Don’t expect it to be coming any time soon, though.
If you wanted to understand this all better, read the excellent and still on point book by Andrew Breitbart.
Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!
Where he spells out the sheltered liberal world of LA and how he broke with the left and went to war with the liberal main stream media.
https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Indignation-Excuse-While-World/dp/0446572829
Matt could have just walked next door to Medford and met talked to real Americans. To say he never met conservatives in his life is bull. We are everywhere. The streets in Cambridge aren’t paved by liberals.
Matt should have “worked like a roughneck” for a few weeks on the drill floor and also as a derrickman. He would have then understood.
At a “backyard barbecue, a guitar comes out and they start singing church songs.”
Never seen this happen.
My statement from elsewhere:
“I didn’t know ... how specific this culture was in Texas and Oklahoma, these roughnecks and what they do. And so it was really eye-opening for me.”
This is the most remarkable statement he made... he’s admitting that he is THAT out of touch with America, all its parts...all its many groups, its many shades of Americanism, its broad, beautiful and YES.... inclusive social and economic fabric !
America is incredibly beautiful and if he finally wants to allow that fact, ... GREAT and welcome!
THEN, try W. Va, Ga., Ok., Tenn. etc... just get the hell OUT of LA! Check out some steelworkers, ironworkers, farmers, nurses, secretaries, retail workers, barbers... .it’s all here and ‘roughnecks’ are JUST the tip of the mountain of great, hard working and sincere people who are positively GA GA about the United States of America!!
I never have either. That depiction is ridiculous.
The life of a Hollywood elitist sounds terribly boring. How do they live in such ignorance of the real world?
“How do they live in such ignorance of the real world?”
They are rich, live in gated mansions and have armed security all the time. Not to mention I doubt they do simple things like do their own grocery shopping or pump their own gas.
Never wanting for anything makes ‘em spoiled.
This country made ‘ em rich and they spit in its face.....disgusting
Me niether, I’ve been to a few cookouts where guitars come out, and it’s usually a very awkward situation, but church songs were not on the play list. My policy is, if it’s a lone guy with any “ironic” articles of clothing, or grooming, and appears to have been raised on a purely soy diet, I’m out. If it’s a band, and they are playing just for fun then it’s usually worth hanging around.
You think he made that part up? Probably.
You’ve probably never been to a tent revival, either, but many of us have been to both.
If you’re going to bbqs where a “priest” says a blessing, then of course you haven’t had this experience. It’s an “evangelical” thing, and country.
Whenever some pinhead goes on about what some worse pinhead from Hollywood had to say about anything not “right on the stage” I mention that actors are paid liars. You know that, right. Every character they portray is, at best, a slight version of a real person. Their words are from a script and they read them for $$. They are paid to lie. Why would you then automatically believe anything they say about anything?
How do you make a Conservative angry? Lie to him
How do you make a Progressive angry? Tell him the truth.
That statement alone shows that he hasn't learned a thing and is still the same hard-core indoctrinated leftoid who really understands conservatives
about as well as he understands the physics of intergalactic dynamics.
But now he will be able to tell tales at Hollywood A-List parties of the time be bravely travelled among the scary tribes of the non-left and lived to tell about it.
“The streets in Cambridge aren’t paved by liberals.”
I didn’t assume they are.
Given that his mother is a “child education expert” and he later attended Hahvahd I doubt Matt had a chance at doing any thinking of his own. You know how liberal parents can be.
Despite selling themselves as smart and well informed liberals are narrow and ignorant.
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