ITALY: Matt Damon talks about the American Dream and the financial crisis for his new film, "The Informant!"

Record ID: 741937

  • Title: ITALY: Matt Damon talks about the American Dream and the financial crisis for his new film, "The Informant!"
  • Date: 21st October 2009
  • Summary: VENICE LIDO, ITALY (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) MATT DAMON, SAYING: "I mean the script was so good. I went to Harvard so I met my fair share of smart, stupid people. But the school you go to doesn't determine how smart you are. Certainly, look at the financial meltdown, there were a lot of smart people and having those conversations and everybody was equally blind to the reality that something like that could happen. But I don't put too much faith in anything anybody says."
  • Embargoed: 5th November 2009 12:00
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  • Location: Italy
  • Country: Italy
  • Reuters ID: LVADICLMBD34O12U339W2LJIPRR5
  • Story Text: Matt Damon stars as a whistleblower at a big U.S. agri-business company in "The Informant!," a black comedy based on a true story.
    Damon had to put on 30 pounds, wear a mustache and look unusually unglamorous to play Mark Whitacre, who turns from corporate golden boy at Archer Daniels Midland to FBI informant to uncover price-fixing practices in the industry.
    The movie had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and has also been shown at the Toronto Film Festival. Soderbergh was expected to show the film in London on Monday (October 19).
    Dreaming of becoming a national hero and moving up the company ladder, Whitacre agrees to wear a wire and carry a hidden tape recorder to give the FBI the evidence it needs to incriminate his bosses.
    But nothing is straightforward in Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh's film, which takes a farcical twist as it quickly becomes clear that Whitacre is not as well-meaning and reliable as he may seem.
    Damon says he was hesitant to meet the real-life Whitacre for his research into the film because of the films humorous take on a dramatic situation.
    "I didn't want to meet him (Mark Whitacre) because when we took on this comic tone, this is the most serious thing that happened in the lives of these people that ever happened so we couldn't go up to him and say 'Hey, we're making a comedy', you know? But there were enough clues in the book and in the screenplay to create the character. I had an adequate enough of things to research," the star told Reuters Television.
    But, he added, Whitacre, who has seen the film says it was "accurate".
    "I think today he looks back and says today 'wow'. He was diagnosed with bipolar and now he's been treated for that and it's made a big difference in his life. He was under so much pressure. I play him the movie so I'm sympathetic to what he was going through. It's an inordinary amount of pressure to put on anybody let alone somebody who wasn't trained to take on that kind of pressure so I think it excuses a lot of his behaviour."
    Soderbergh, who already worked with Damon in his "Ocean's" trilogy, is not new to exposing corruption and corporate greed.
    "Erin Brockovich," also based on a true story, was about a single mother taking on a water-polluting Californian company, while "Traffic" -- which won four Oscars -- looked at the drugs trade.
    But in The Informant!, set in America's Midwest in the 1990s takes a distinctly lighter approach.
    The film, on which Soderbergh started working in 2001, could be seen as making not-so-veiled references to recent U.S. corporate scandals, but he said that what really drew him to the story was Whitacre's bizarre personality -- and the reactions of those around him.
    The film's take on big business is timely with the current global economic crisis, said Damon, who said: "I went to Harvard so I met my fair share of smart, stupid people. But the school you go to doesn't determine how smart you are. Certainly, look at the financial meltdown, there were a lot of smart people and having those conversations and everybody was equally blind to the reality that something like that could happen. But I don't put too much faith in anything anybody says."
    Unlike for previous films, Soderbergh did not want to meet the real Whitacre nor any of those involved in the story before shooting The Informant!, which is based on a book by Kurt Eichenwald.
    The Informant! will open across British cinemas on November 20 and is currently playing in theatres in the United States.
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