StudioLA's Jim Ferguson interviews Matt Damon Star of The Bourne Identity

StudioLA's Jim Ferguson chats with Matt Damon who plays Jason Bourne in "The Bourne Identity."

Fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, Bourne awakens from a coma-like state, only to discover he has been shot several times, and has microfilm implanted in his body.

But he has no idea who he is. Soon he becomes the target of international terrorists, and the only person who may hold the answers to his true identity is a woman who knows his past, played by Franka Potente.

StudioLA's Jim Ferguson chats with Matt Damon who plays Jason Bourne in "The Bourne Identity."

Fished out of the Mediterranean Sea, Bourne awakens from a coma-like state, only to discover he has been shot several times, and has microfilm implanted in his body. But he has no idea who he is.

Soon he becomes the target of international terrorists, and the only person who may hold the answers to his true identity is a woman who knows his past, played by Franka Potente.

Jim: Im talking to Matt Damon about The Bourne Identity. My favorite espionage movie, maybe of all time. It surpassed one that you are maybe too young to remember, called The Day of the Jackal.

Matt: Oh yeah! Sure.

Jim: You remember that? James Fox?

Matt: Yeah.

Jim: Outstanding actor. This, Matt, has the same feeling. Agreed?

Matt: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And that was one of the things, going into it, that really attracted me to it, talking to Doug about the feel of the movie.

Jim: That, and the sensitivity of [director/producer] Doug Liman.

Matt: Right. Yeah, definitely. That kind of marriage of a great script and a director who I thought, just from looking at his other movies and then from talking to him at length about this film, has a tendency to think outside the box a little bit and was going to make them.

I mean at the end of the day its a genre movie, so its gotta be entertaining, its gotta be fun and its gotta build tension and suspense, and people have to be with it. So there are these kinds of banks of a river that are kind of established, but here is a lot of leeway within that river to do things that are a little more unique and different.

I find a lot of these movies, my gripe with all these movies is that they seem to be derivative, and they seem that, youve seen it before, or somethings going to blow up because something always blows up every four minutes.

Jim: In this you dont know whats going to happen.

Matt: Right.

Jim: And, like Foxs character, an assassin, in The Day of the Jackal, he had a mission: to assassinate DeGaulle. Your character, Jason Bourne, I think thats his frustration, theres no mission here.

Matt: Yes. Right. Until his memory comes back.

Jim: We dont want this is difficult, not to give too much away!

Matt: Oh I know, I know! Yeah, no, he doesnt not only does he not have a mission, doesnt even have

Jim: A name!

Matt: He has nothing! Yeah, he has nothing at the beginning of the movie, but this, little bank account number.

Jim: You look in great shape in the film.

Matt: Im not that athletic!

Jim: You had to be for this character! And theres a little bit of, like a wall climbing thing that you have to do, and Im sure it was physically demanding.

Matt: Yeah, and that whole fight sequence. Yeah, there was a whole lot of stuff that I did. And its funny, because these other movies, like The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ive been saying, I got stuck in a room playing piano for a couple months.

And this one, I got, you know, boxing training, martial arts training, weapons training, driving training, it was like a dream come true. It was great. So certainly nothing to complain about. The by product of that was that I got in very good shape, because Doug wanted the guy to look very efficient.

Jim: To be believable. And as I said in the start of the interview, that the joy of this film, is the believability of the whole thing. Also, what they didnt have in the novel so much, Robert Ludlums novel, is the friend that you make along the way, played by Franka Potente. I like that relationship, and I think the film needed that.

Matt: Yeah, I agree. And they had the character Marie in the novel, but as you said, theyre so different. The character that Franka is. And I guess Im very different from the Bourne character in the novel. Were both probably younger than these characters in the book.

But I thought again, going back to Doug Liman, and his tendency to think outside the box a little bit, rather than cast somebody you would expect to see in a movie like this, he cast Franka, who American audiences arent really familiar with yet, but, whos a great, I mean everyone in the industry knows her.

I mean, you rumble around, and so, I thought that was a good move, a nifty piece of casting.

Jim: There's a nifty piece of stunt work in a classic car chase that rivals that of another old movie, Bullet.

Matt: Well, thats a tall order, rivaling Bullet. But I did like the car chase a lot, I thought it was

Jim: Oh? That little mini?

Matt: Yeah. It was a lot of fun! I should lie and say that I did all of it, but I think youd probably know that I didnt.

Jim: The only disappointment was that you didnt run into Jack Ryan at the agency, played by your buddy Ben Affleck.

Matt: I know! I could have gotten my memory back if he just called me and just said, Hey, heres the deal, heres whats going on. But they never cross paths.

Jim: Hey, good job.

Matt: Thanks.

Jim: Dont miss The Bourne Identity, youre going to have the time of your life.

Matt: Excellent. Thank you.