Matt Damon talked politics, war, facial hair and baseball during a recent press conference to promote The Green Zone, his new political thriller/action film coming out in two weeks. Matt is a lifelong Democrat, campaigned for Obama in 2008, and has been active in many liberal causes for years. He also was a prominent celebrity critic of Sarah Palin, dismissing her and her politics and beliefs as “absurd” and “like a bad Disney movie.” So what does liberal Matt think of Obama now that he’s president. Turns out, Matt’s a little “disappointed” but he also says “real change comes from everyday people. You can’t wait for a leader.” Good save. Oh, Matt also talks about that sketchy junk on his lip, saying “it’s either for a Western or a porno movie.” Gross, on both counts.

It’s hard to think of a movie that’d play better in the Obama White House screening room than Matt Damon’s new Iraq War thriller, “Green Zone,” in which the Oscar-winner adroitly portrays a soldier fighting to expose the Bush administration’s weapons of mass destruction deception. Yet for all the ammo his movie may give Democrats, Damon admits he’s “disappointed” in the man who replaced George W. Bush.

“Politics is compromise,” says the actor, who campaigned hard for Barack Obama. But Damon feels his candidate has compromised too much. “I’m disappointed in the health care plan and in the troop buildup in Afghanistan. Everyone feels a little let down because, on some level, people expected all their problems to go away. But real change comes from everyday people. You can’t wait for a leader.”

Damon, who still thinks Obama deserves time, vouches that “the people who worked on ‘Green Zone’ come from all across the political spectrum.”

His character, Roy Miller, is based on real-life Army chief warrant officer, Richard (Monty) Gonzales, whose Mobile Exploitation Team was charged with finding the WMDs during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“Monty was a Republican – he’d voted for Bush,” Damon told us at Nobu 57 after the movie’s Cinema Society premiere. “He went to Iraq with the absolute conviction he was going to find the WMDs.”

In the movie, Amy Ryan plays a reporter obviously modeled after Bush water-carrier Judy Miller. Greg Kinnear plays the oily Bush operative who leads her to believe an Iraqi general has confirmed the existence of WMDs. A chase commences to find the general.
Paul Greengrass, who directed Damon in the “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” packs the tale with enough explosives and car chases to rev up any fan of Damon’s superspy, Jason Bourne.

And will there be another “Bourne”?

“I think the way is to extend the franchise is to create a ‘Bourne identity’ that different actors can take on,” said Damon.”I could pass the identity to Russell Crowe or Denzel Washington or Ryan Gosling.”

But is Damon willing be “Bourne” again?

“If Paul Greengrass does it and we have something to say, definitely,” said Damon. (Greengrass sounded less willing: “I’m out of it. I’m going to try other things.”)

Next up for Damon is a remake of “True Grit.” (His current mustache works “either for a Western or a porno movie,” he jokes.) He may also play Robert F. Kennedy. (“He was a complex man. He wasn’t just a pitbull or a saint.”). And then there’s “The Trade,” in which he and Ben Affleck would play real-life Yankees Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, who in 1973 swapped wives. Coming after “The Other Guys,” in which fellow Red Sox cultist Mark Wahlberg shoots Derek Jeter in the leg, can “The Trade” be anything but a blatant Boston plot to ridicule the Bombers?

“I know it looks that way,” laughed Damon. “But, really, there’s no mischief. It’s just a great story.”

[From The New York Daily News]

I’ve said before that I want to see The Green Zone, and I’m getting even more excited about it that more I read. Initially, the film was supposed to be loosely based on the Washington Post’s former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s memoir of the first year and a half of the occupation of Iraq, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. I thought they pretty much threw out that source material, but it does seem like they’ve kept in some stuff. Generally, I think most of the war movies that have made about the war during the war have been mawkish or too sentimental, too yearning. But I saw The Hurt Locker over the weekend, and it’s a great example of a war film that works. Many critics are already pointing out comparisons to The Green Zone and The Hurt Locker, so we’ll see. My guess is that many people will go see the film just because they think it’s going to be like a Jason Bourne film. Which it very well might be.

These photos are from 2008. Credit: WENN