Matt Damon Says ‘Argo’ Couldn’t Afford Him & The Script For ‘The Town’ Was “Terrible” Before The Ben Affleck Rewrite

Yes, we are making a meal out of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s recent appearance on Bill Simmons’s The Ringer podcast recently to promote Affleck’s new directorial effort “Air” which co-stars Damon (read our review), about Nike and its relationship with Michael Jordan and we fully admit it. Look, it’s just chalked full of good stories, and look; sometimes this is (infinitely) more interesting than the regular news grist mill.

They discussed potentially working with Steven Soderbergh again—possibly just financing one of his projects via their Artists Equity—and Affleck revealed that they’re trying to “investigate” the complicated rights to making the poker sequel “Rounders 2.

READ MORE: Matt Damon & Ben Affleck Say They Are “Investigating” Whether ‘Rounders 2’ Is Possible

But there’s much more. Simmons asked the duo—a fairly common question—why it took them so long to work together, and while they mentioned in passing a few projects, Damon jokingly, but seemingly genuinely made a few jabs at being overlooked for Jeremy Renner’s part in “The Town,” Affleck’s second directorial effort, and a favorite of Simmons’.

Simmons asked Damon: Affleck’s directed four movies before this one, and you weren’t in any of them; what’s up with that?

“First of all, he didn’t ask me to be in ‘The Town,’ he gave that part to Renner,” he said. Somewhat more jokingly, Damon added, “He didn’t ask me to do ‘Argo,’ and I could have crushed the lead in that, but he took it for himself.”

“[You] could have [crushed] it, but I would have made less money,” Affleck joked, but seemingly also with some authenticity to the comment. “I guess they didn’t really pay you to direct it,” Damon quipped back. “That was the way I was subsidizing that part of my life.”

So they’re clearly teasing here, but there’s some truth to all of it. “I’ll tell you what happened,” Damon said, about to explain, but then Affleck jumped in. “Let me tell you the truth; we couldn’t afford Matt Damon. Matt Damon cost what the movie cost.”

Is that true, Matt, Simmons asked? “Back then? Yeah,” he laughed. “I was in the middle of the ‘[Jason] Bourne’ run, and I was doing really well.” So, it sounds like some initial conversations were had, but Damon’s quote was way too high at the time.

Damon then launched into a story about “The Town,” the short version of which is he read the original script, thought it was terrible, and was horrified to hear that Affleck was going to direct it.

“The thing about ‘The Town’ was, I remember getting that script, it had a different director, I read the script, and I thought it was terrible,” he admitted. Damon recalled being on the phone with Patrick Whitesell, Affleck, and Damon’s longtime agent and asking what Affleck was up to because he had been away for months in Europe shooting the ‘Bourne’ movies and had been out of touch. “What’s Ben up to?,’ Damon remembered asking his agent, and Whitesell said, “Oh, he’s going to do that movie ‘The Town,’” and the actor said he was like, “What the f-ck? No, he can’t; what are you talking about?!” To which the agent reassured him Affleck would be rewriting it.

“He’s not going to do it with…,” Damon trailed off, not mentioning the original director attached to the crime movie.

“No, he’s going to direct it, and he’s going to rewrite the entire thing,” Damon said, recollecting what his agent explained. Then he was reassured. “Oh, ok, alright, but my gut reaction was, ‘this is a disaster,’ and don’t let him do it because the script that I had read was so bad. But [Ben] did a comprehensive, page one rewrite on the thing.”

[not to be that guy, lol, but the original director was Adrian Lyne—who would ironically eventually direct Affleck in “Deep Water”— and the screenwriter was Sheldon Turner (“Up in the Air”)]

This might be old territory, but why did Affleck make the switch to directing there for a few years, Simmons asked? He really thought his acting career was over after the JLO/Bennifer days when the actor was constantly on the cover of US Weekly and had become something of a national joke.

“I wasn’t going to get any more jobs as an actor, and this was really it,” Affleck said, transitioning from acting to starting with “Gone Baby Gone.” And Simmons, in disbelief, said, did you really think your slump period was that bad?

“It would be hard to overstate the extent to which you’re already conditioned already to see your career as an actor as tenuous and subject to the whims of what hits and what doesn’t… Look, it’s harder to make it as an unknown in this business, but it’s harder to make it as a known that they don’t like,” he said.

“We know your work, and we don’t want you,” Affleck continued, explaining the whims of the industry. “I wasn’t cool, I wasn’t cool at all,” he said of his down period. “I had made movies that hadn’t worked… I was probably much more likely to have a career as a director… [than an actor].”

Fortunately for Affleck, he became an Academy Award-winning director (ok, he didn’t win the Best Directing prize, but “Argo” won Best Picture), and his acting career came back on track, so everything worked out in the end. Listen to the entire podcast conversation below.