Damon and DiCaprio sound off about The Departed

By Frank Visco
Collegian Editor
October 4, 2006

The Collegian had the opportunity to take part in a teleconference with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon concerning their new film The Departed on Sept 15. College reporters from all over the country called in with the hopes of asking the two jovial actors a question; however, since the interview was just 25 minutes, only several people were able to get a word in. Here’s what was discussed:

Interviewer: Mr. DiCaprio, you’ve worked with Martin Scorsese previously. Does he still find new ways to challenge you as an actor?
Leonardo DiCaprio: Certainly. This is our third film together now. I think anyone not just me, getting the opportunity to work with him really brings their “A” game. There’s such a respect level for him, the films that he’s done in the past and his knowledge of cinema and almost everyone that works with him really looks at him as a mentor, I believe.

Does he still surprise me? Constantly, constantly. We certainly, as we’ve done more and more films together, have gotten a much clearer plan of attack before the film actually starts. But with the actors that he usually hires, which are usually great actors that I’ve worked with in the past in his films, they keep you on your toes. That was certainly the case with Jack Nicholson, for example. I know Matt and I both felt extremely petrified as our characters, walking onto the set and not knowing what was going to happen next.

I: You both are pretty much veterans of the award season buzz. You’ve been in movies that have won a lot of Oscars and have been nominated yourselves. How do you feel about that, particularly in the context of The Departed?
Matt Damon: It always cracks me up when they talk about Oscar buzz and stuff like that. We have a joke that there’s Oscar buzz on this conversation that we’re having right now. There’s Oscar buzz over just about anything and generally, that’s the marketing machines behind all the movies just all talking to each other. It’s definitely, I can say, speaking for myself and at the risk of speaking for Leo, not something that we set out to do, ever. If you’re going for this kind of result-oriented approach, you’re in deep crap. We just try to make the right choices.... Trying to make decisions that keep you with great directors and in roles that are interesting and scripts and stories that are good, that in itself is enough of a challenge. The rest of it is pretty much b.s.

I: Both of you have kind of taken roles that challenge the idea of identity and reality and fiction. Like you, Mr. Damon, you had Lance Caldwell and Jason Bourne, and Mr. DiCaprio, you had Howard Hughes and Frank Abagnale. So how do you approach roles like that, which blend that line so well?
L.D.: It presents a challenge as an actor... Certainly for me in this movie, playing this police cadet from Boston that goes to try to expose this mob syndicate headed by Jack Nicholson, the challenge for me was exactly that. It was not having to reveal myself to these people that are around me that constantly want to shoot me in the head, but also trying to emote that tension to the audience and get them involved in that experience. And how do you do that? That was the most challenging thing for me in this particular role.
M.D.: I think also, just in terms of the storytelling, just from the place of having written some screenplays, it’s a good way in. You’re always going to have to come up with a character who experiences some type of conflict and either learns or doesn’t learn something about themselves and kind of moves on and is affected by the experience or by the story or by whatever happens to them… Thematically, that’s just a good way to tell the story, and I think that’s why you see a lot of those issues repeated in movies.

I: Have either of you seen the original movie from Hong Kong that this film was based on, and what were your impressions of that film if you did see it, and how did this film differ from the original?
M.D.: I actually asked Marty to cast the original actor in Leo’s role and have me play my role, but we found out that he couldn’t speak English, so that was going to be a problem. No, we both saw the original movie and it’s terrific. This is very different. I don’t know that Marty saw it, that would be a question that you’d have to ask him. But I think he wanted to make this movie very much his, and whether he saw the movie or not, he did.
L.D.: Yes, certainly the structure, I suppose, of the story is extremely similar. But I know for Scorsese, he’s done films in this genre before. He’s done, for lack of a better word, gangster films and he’s done them extremely, extremely well. But for him, I know that this was a departure. He’s dealing with the Irish mob underworld. He’s dealing with the police department moles information and disinformation. It was a much different sort of theme for him to do in that respect.

I: This movie has kind of been hailed as Jack Nicholson’s return to playing a villain, his return to drama after about a decade of comedies. Has a decade of comedy worn off of him? Did he pull any funny pranks on the set?
M.D. : Well, nothing that he didn’t do on screen. The first day I worked with him, Marty called me, I had been off for a week and Leo had been doing scenes with Jack. And Marty called me on a Sunday night and he goes, “Hello Matt, it’s Marty, your director. Listen, a little thing about tomorrow, Jack is going to do the movie theater scene and Jack had an idea and I think it’s good, and it’s his process and I think we should indulge it.” And I was like, “What Marty, what is it?”

“Jack is going to show up with a giant dildo, he’s going to show up with a giant dildo and that’s what we’re going to do. So okay?” And I went, “All right, yes, I’ll see you at seven in the morning.”

So I go to work and there was Nicholson in this trench coat and hat, with this giant dildo and he just looked at me and he’s like, “I just thought the whole thing would be better if I had the dildo on.” At that point I was kind of like, “All right, well, I guess I’m along for this great ride.” And the guy really did kind of infuse this character with this level of obscenity that wasn’t in the script. He was ruthless and brutal in the script, but there was this kind of extra level, this layer of obscenity that Jack put on it.

Because I think his point was, look, if I’m going to play this guy, I’m going to play him all the way. And if there’s going to be this teaming of these two huge icons of Marty and Jack, people are going to expect a certain something from the performance, and he really brought everything. I mean he unloaded the toolbox on this one.

Working next to him, it’s a bit of a high-wire act, because he’s massively unpredictable. And that’s ultimately why he’s been so great in so many movies for so many years. It’s because you never get the same thing from him. And I think this last 10 years, he’s been doing these certain movies and he’s had a lot of success doing them and they’ve been great movies, but this is more like how we want to see Jack.

viscof1@lasalle.edu