What You Can Learn from Matt Damon’s 4 Favorite Movies

The Odyssey star Matt Damon has had an incredibly varied career, with his Oscar-winning screenplay for Good Will Hunting (which he co-wrote with his co-star and frequent collaborator Ben Affleck) launching him into the stratosphere, allowing him to morph from being an action hero to an Oscar-nominated dramatic actor and everything in between. When he shared his four favorite movies with Letterboxd, he unveiled some of the titles that have helped inspire him and propelled his chameleonic career.

Let’s break down all four titles and what we can learn from them.

The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974)

Matt Damon kicked off his list by including both of Francis Ford Coppola’s original movies in the Godfather trilogy as one movie, “just to cheat.” This is hardly a surprise, as the movies are both Best Picture winners and are widely regarded as two of the best movies of all time. In fact, both of them landed spots in the Top 50 on the American Film Institute’s list of the best movies of all time.

The iconic gangster movies are particularly influential for aspiring actors and filmmakers of Matt Damon’s era, and the original The Godfather has landed on the Letterboxd Four Favorites lists of many of his contemporaries, including Guy Pearce, Edward Burns, Keanu Reeves, and Richard Linklater.

More tellingly, The Godfather Part II is one of two Robert De Niro movies that Damon included on his list, indicating that the Taxi Driver star looms large in Damon’s roster of cinematic influences.

Midnight Run (1988)

For his second movie, Damon said that “I want to put a comedy in there,” sharing that “Ben and I always loved” 1988’s Midnight Run. The movie, which was directed by Beverly Hills Cop’s Martin Brest, co-starred Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro as a mismatched accountant and bounty hunter who find themselves on the run.

It was one of the first major comedies to star De Niro, who was already a two-time Oscar winner at that point (having won Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather Part II and Best Actor for Raging Bull). Given Damon’s apparent fandom of De Niro, it is highly likely that he felt inspired by seeing the dramatic actor (who at that point was known for dramas and thrillers like the aforementioned Oscar-winning titles, Taxi Driver, The Untouchables, Once Upon a Time in America, and Mean Streets) pushing the envelope and showing off his range as a comedic performer.

This would certainly explain the more outwardly goofy turns that Matt Damon has had in major movies, including his winking cameos in Deadpool 2 and Taika Waititi’s Thor movies. While Damon remains best known for his dramas and action movies, he has never strayed far from the comedy genre, showing off his chops at a consistent drip in projects including Chasing Amy, Dogma, 30 Rock, and - more recently - Drive-Away Dolls and IF.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

The third movie that Matt Damon listed was Quentin Tarantino’s sophomore feature Pulp Fiction. The star revealed that “I was at Mann’s Chinese theater opening night” with Ben Affleck, and he described the experience as “a highlight in my moviegoing life,” reflecting that “It was like being at a rock ‘n roll concert… that got us so fired up about what movies can do.”

Tarantino’s 1992 debut Reservoir Dogs was already a sensation that had inspired Affleck and Damon. In fact, in 2011, Damon told Vanity Fair that the movie was a direct inspiration for the two of them to put in the work on the Good Will Hunting screenplay, which Damon had written an early draft of as an assignment for a playwriting class at Harvard. He said, “I mean, this guy worked in a f**king video store. It just made it doable, and it was shortly after seeing Reservoir Dogs that we started writing.”

However, Pulp Fiction was where Quentin Tarantino truly blew up as a filmmaker, cementing himself as one of the premier wunderkinds of 1990s independent cinema. This is a roster that Affleck and Damon would join just three years after its debut. While Reservoir Dogs lit the flame for the young filmmakers, it seems like Pulp Fiction doused that flame with gasoline, inspiring them to reach for new creative heights.

Affleck and Damon also followed Tarantino’s example by starring in their own movie. However, they changed the game for their careers by making their characters two of the three main leads rather than supporting characters (as Tarantino’s roles were in both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), establishing themselves as marquee-worthy actors as well as screenwriters in one fell swoop.

Jaws (1975)

Damon finished off his list by saying that “I have to put one of Steven [Spielberg]’s movies there,” and adding the seminal 1975 killer shark thriller Jaws to the roster. This was probably one of the more sentimental picks on Damon’s list, as he ended up getting to work with Spielberg 23 years after Jaws set the gold standard for the summer blockbuster when he played the title role in the director’s 1998 World War II movie Saving Private Ryan.

Saving Private Ryan was another watershed moment in Matt Damon’s career, becoming the third highest-grossing movie of 1998 at the domestic box office and going on to win five Oscars. Coming just a year after Good Will Hunting, it was the second part of a one-two punch that established Damon as a major star to watch.

It is telling that he is still eager to honor Spielberg in this way, even though he hasn’t acted in one of the director’s movies since Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg did executive produce the 2010 Matt Damon movies Hereafter and True Grit, but that is the extent of their cinematic involvement since the 1990s).

While he has worked with many iconic directors throughout his career, including Gus Van Sant, Kevin Smith, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, the Coen Brothers, and Steven Soderbergh, his picking Spielberg suggests that Damon still has a taste for the legendary director’s popcorn movie blockbuster sensibility. This would certainly make sense, as it is a realm that he has dabbled in throughout his career in everything from the Bourne Identity franchise to the Ocean’s Eleven movies to The Great Wall.

You can read plenty more about Matt Damon on No Film School, including a breakdown of a key line from Good Will Hunting, a reflection on his thoughts on how Netflix is changing screenwriting, and an explanation of the unique way that he, Ben Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener co-wrote Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel.