Matt Damon's best story idea led to his worst decision as an actor.
Damon has received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actor (one for "Good Will Hunting" and the other for "The Martian") and another for Best Supporting Actor (in "Invictus"), and was never seriously in the running to win any of them (though, if I were an AMPAS voter, he would've been my pick in 2016 for "The Martian" over his "The Departed" foil Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Revenant"). Damon has it in him to win an acting Oscar,
and may one day find the role that pulls together all of the peculiar, yet photogenic qualities that make him such a watchable actor (I once wrote a book about George Clooney, a fine man and terrific performer, and dearly wish my employer had asked me to make sense of the far more unpredictable Damon).
Damon does have an Oscar, however, and it's for co-writing "Good Will Hunting" with Ben Affleck. He could've won a second Original Screenplay Oscar years later for "Manchester by the Sea," but he made two artistically astute decisions that ensured he'd have only one shot at taking home an Academy Award for this particular project. In doing so, he took a producing credit for a film that should've won Best Picture, but cost himself a Screenplay and Actor nomination because he doesn't have an out-of-control movie star ego.
Read more: 15 Best Movie Plot Twists Of All Time, Ranked
Matt Damon Won Casey Affleck An Oscar By Dropping Out Of Manchester By The Sea
"Manchester by the Sea" is the most unassuming tragedy that I've ever seen. Damon hatched the idea for this project with his "Promised Land" collaborator John Krasinski, but it was only a vague character sketch about an alcoholic handyman working through some kind of emotional trauma. Kenneth Lonergan, one of the greatest scenarists on the planet, who was robbed of a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for "You Can Count on Me" because people loved the sexual consent fantasy of Cameron Crowe's entertaining showbiz lie "Almost Famous," and wound up in a litigious mess (by doing business with the deeply unprincipled producer Gary Gilbert) via his masterful 2011 drama "Margaret" (which co-starred Damon as a high school teacher who engages in sexual misconduct that would've been viewed as a cultural rite of passage in "Almost Famous"), spent several years turning Damon and Krasinski's idea into a masterpiece. By the time he had a finished screenplay, Damon wanted to star as the traumatized protagonist under Lonergan's direction.
"Manchester By the Sea" would be Lonergan's third film, and he was working under considerable pressure, given the financial failure of "Margaret." Damon's involvement was crucial to getting the film off the blocks, but when Damon's availability placed a year-plus delay on the production of the film, he ceded the lead role to Casey Affleck, a longtime friend and, to his mind, the only actor capable of doing justice to the character of Lee Chandler.
Lonergan's gifts as a dramatist — tragedian, humorist, and straight-up humanitarian — make "Manchester by the Sea" a singularly devastating experience (which is why it owns a 96% Fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes). The film gives its protagonist a hopeful finale, but it's not one you can trust all that much. You want to believe he'll remain in his nephew's life, but the drain is calling. Hopefully, the dreaded reconnection with his ex-wife (Michelle Williams) will shake him free of his self-destructive tendencies, but he'll likely end up somewhere in the middle. When Lee says, "I can't beat it," you hope it's just about getting clear of the city. But he has no real prospects beyond his nephew, which is a source of shame for Lee. Maybe things get better. Maybe they get worse. Affleck played this part beautifully, but Damon would've made a meal of this role.
If you're looking for the easiest way to keep up with all the major movie and TV news, why not sign up to our free newsletter?
Read the original article on SlashFilm.
