Extended interview: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon on their friendship, collaborating on "Air" and more

[Music] thank you welcome I'm Lee Cowan and this is Here Comes the Sun a closer look at some of the people places and things we bring you every weekend on Sunday morning Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have been pursuing their Hollywood dreams together since they were just kids and now in their 50s they're still at it like he knows a lot they're working together again and to hear them describe it they've never had a better time do you guys have an unspoken language yeah 40 something years of hanging out together it's like a common frame of reference right I find the most wonderful thing about it was I loved coming to work every day I love seeing that I loved first of all he's a genius and having him in your is the anchor of your movie no I I didn't used to think this but that it just makes it so easy and it was so much fun later in the show Ben Affleck and Matt Damon on forging their own paths so talk about working together because is it fair to say that early on you made a conscious decision to separate yourselves you didn't want the Laurel and Hardy syndrome I think when we started out we were trying to be we had a thing when we were really before anybody knew who we were we were trying to be in as many movies together as we possibly could and then we got so well known for the one for Goodwill Hunting that I think we probably went like well we got a individually yes and also a function of the fact that we really wanted to be actors and just work then 17th century Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer is the subject of a sold out exhibit Seth Dome takes us on a tour 28 of vermeer's paintings have been assembled at the reichs Museum in Amsterdam the majority of his life's work Gregor Weber is co-curator of what he calls once in a lifetime oh this exhibition was your idea I dreamed of this exhibition but as this dream came true it is yeah exciting that's all coming up right here on Here Comes the Sun they were mere 20-somethings when Good Will Hunting won an Academy Award for best screenplay back in 1998 and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have been stars ever since but their friendship started long before that as two kids with one Hollywood dream Tracy Smith caught up with them so is it a bonus making this film being able to spend more time with each other yeah absolutely I mean that's for sure it was one of the things that we kind of uh wanted to do is the idea of like why aren't we hanging out and spending more time together since we managed to stay friends this whole time plus we hit our 50s so I mean we got not much time left I mean you can see the end of the tunnel from from the sound of it Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are in a good place these days they're working together again and to hear them describe it they've never had a better time do you guys have an unspoken language yeah 40 something years of hanging out together it's like a common frame of reference right I find the most wonderful thing about it was I loved coming to work every day I love seeing that I loved first of all he's a genius having him in your is the anchor of your movie no I I didn't used to think this but that it just makes it so easy and it was just so much fun I don't know it's kind of felt like just us and getting to do the thing that we wanted to do I did I loved it I loved it I miss it every day since it was the the best like uh work experience of my life without a question and that experience is air the movie is about Nike and how back in 1984 they built an entire shoe brand around one NBA rookie player they thought would become Mama household name I need the greatest basketball shoe that's ever been made who's the player Michael Jordan Michael Jordan I'm willing to bet my career on Michael Jordan come on man Affleck who's also the film's director plays Nike founder Phil Knight and Damon is sunny Vaquero the Nike exec who tries to sell him on the idea I mean if you look at him if you really look at Jordan like I did you're gonna see exactly what I see which is what the most competitive guy I have ever seen he is a killer is it the shoes we now know it turned out to be a killer deal for everyone involved you sure it's not the shoes the Jordan brand is still flying off the shelves the movie is not a biopic but Affleck made sure everyone looked as close to real as possible especially Damon did you notice that he's um he lost the weight yeah so let's talk about that my favorite thing about it is that he put me in a fat suit when I finally get to work with him I actually my wife saw the movie and I said what did you think and she goes the movie is great you look like and according to Affleck Michael Jordan himself had a few suggestions what did he tell you was important to him a number of things and I'm not sure that I'm at Liberty like share every single one but what I will tell you is he said bottle Davis is going to be my mother which is kind of like choosing Michael Jordan for your basketball team my name is Sonny Vaccaro I'm with Nike dude typically make it a habit of showing up at people's front doors unannounced I don't like to take no for an answer oh man here we go Viola Davis was in fact cast as Michael's mom Dolores Jordan best day of my life and Chris Tucker plays and helped write the part of someone he knows personally Nike VP Howard white all that matters is how much do you believe I believe in you I called Chris Tucker and he was like who I've always thought I was a genius and wanted to work with and he was like I know Howard White like you know how it turns out later Chris Tucker knows everybody literally everybody one person we see very little of is an actor who plays Jordan why do we not see Michael Jordan in this movie we don't see Michael Jordan for the very what was obvious reason to me which is that this is a movie about an icon about somebody who's so meaningful that the minute you know I show you somebody and tell you like hey that's Michael Jordan just go no it isn't I know what Michael Jordan is I know it is and not only that the only actor who could play Michael Jordan was a little old to play this part and we probably couldn't afford him but the idea was like if I show you something that you know that's not Michael Jordan and now everything else is fake so the final result feels real and as always it was a team effort Ben Affleck and Matt Damon met his kids in Cambridge Massachusetts and clicked from the start chasing the same Hollywood dream might not have caught them in 1989's Field of Dreams as extras somewhere in the crowd in Boston's Fenway Park but you might have seen them in this man you don't know what to do so you owe it to me it's tomorrow I'm going to wake up and I'll be 50. and I'll still be doing it for Goodwill Hunting both won the Oscar for original screenplay and it launched them ready or not into the Hollywood Stratosphere what did it do to you guys to win it that young I remember it didn't settle in for it was like a couple years I think it was so it was just completely surreal March of 98 I was 25 years old I look at myself now and think I still have quite a bit to learn you know that's the curse of being 25 is you think you have it all figured out put your hands up course they have figured it out individually they've earned everything from box office respect here's your director you teach somebody to be a director on a day you teach a Recess Monkey to be a director in a day and more Oscar gold I stood out here in front of you all right really just a kid and I went out you know and I never thought that I would be back here frankly one of the lessons of growing older is it's not all about money it's not the most important thing spend your life chasing money you'll end up you might end up with a lot of money but you probably miss out on a lot of things I haven't found that money changed any happiness that I had in fact that's the beautiful thing about this is the happiness was being able to be here every day in Los Angeles where my children are and see them every day and then come visit the set work with my best friend my whole life there's nothing more that I want in my life I thought well this this is it this is what I've always wanted you know and then I thought that might mean I'm about to die yeah I literally had the same thought I was like this is this is we've actually reached the mountains and now together they formed a new production company called artist Equity that'll give people on the film crew a bigger slice of the financial pie that's why it's called artist equity and the idea is that we're pulling a bunch of people above the line who traditionally aren't and they and they stand to do a lot better financially than they've ever done on movies before I believe in your son I believe he's the future and his story is going to make us want to fly but the shoe is just a shoe until my son steps into it you got a name for it Air Jordan Air is their company's first offering with more to come soon seriously maybe it'll grow on me we're just getting rolling working again with with Amazon to do the story of a wrestler named Anthony Robles who was born with one leg and won a national championship for Arizona State and who's starring in that movie I know where you're going with this but I'm going to tell you who the lead actor is and is there another actor in there we always hire the very best performers and in this case I can say every single person that's been cast so far I think is the very absolute best choice you're dancing around that Jennifer Lopez I believe yes I believe uh Jennifer Lopez may be doing that you're gonna make it look like she's just doing as a favor to me but actually she is it seems fitting that Affleck and Damon's new movie is a story about collaboration that's what got them here and what keeps them going what fun and what a joy to do something or see her be great go to work with your wife go to work with your best friend because ultimately like your work becomes what the Lions share of what defines your life in terms of the time you spend that's who it is and if you don't like who you're working with and if you have difficulty or trouble at work I think it's one of the things that can really cause depression anxiety and pain for people and and conversely you love the people at work you probably have a pretty good life you know up next an exclusive excerpt from Ben and Matt's chat something you can only see right here on CBS News stream stay with us as promised here's more from Tracy Smith's conversation with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck growing up as teens in the 80s what'd you think of Nike well couldn't afford them I can remember when when the when the really cool this was interesting because this sort of came back to me like a movie like I sort of vaguely remember the time where it was all about Shell Toes and Adidas and that was the BR I mean there were multiple brands that were kind of floating around in the level of cool but in fact I went back and found a picture from it would either be 19 late 85 or early 86 of my brother wearing the Air Jordan the first Air Jordans and I can remember how all of a sudden Nike just became ascendant and it really does correlate right with with Michael Jordan and those shoes and changing the way the young people saw like what was cool it's like the beginning of sneaker culture really because leading up to that it was Shell Toes and jumbo laces and all that that was kind of the world that we were in in junior high school and and going into high school and then suddenly it changed it changed completely and then you know then it was the Jordans were the only shoes to have and then that translated of course into like a Nike t-shirt and the Nike tracksuits and stuff was sort of like talk about in the movie you know it has this uh halo effect so talk about working together because is it fair to say that early on you made a conscious decision to separate yourselves you didn't want the Laurel and Hardy syndrome I think when we started out we were trying to be we had a thing when we were really before anybody knew who we were we were trying to be in as many movies together as we possibly could and then we got so well known for the one for Goodwill Hunting that I think we probably went like well we got a individually yes and also a function of the fact that we really wanted to be actors and just work and as an actor you get so it's ingrained in you that like it could go away at any time and just having the opportunity to do it is so rare and exceptional that once you start getting the opportunities to do that it's almost like impossible to sort of go well no or I'm going to do something with me you know just go get he's been and and man in particular you know um just throughout his entire career has had offers from some of the great oh the I think pretty much with you know all the great directors out there it's a very hard thing to be like no Martin Scorsese no Stephen what's you know I mean he's he's really one of the great gifts things I envy about Matt and there's not many um is the experiences he's had to learn from some of these incredible directors of the Coen Brothers I mean Don McCarthy oh I I could rattle off your your resume but there if you go look at IMDb you'll see it's a a really beautiful list it's very hard to say no when you because when we became famous first of all that's a very weird experience and and it's so surreal that suddenly you're having these conversations where these great directors are offering you a movie and it's like it's unconscionable to say no right I mean I think probably for 10 years we didn't even look up we were just like yep the next one yep and it was like of course I'm gonna you know and before we kind of took a breath and went wait a minute I don't have to do every movie I can kind of take a break and and uh but still to this it's like somebody calls and they say you know so and so offered you a movie it's like well that actor that struggling actor in you is is always there did the Friendship help over the years yes uh it helped enormously I think because what was happening was so surreal um the the experience of becoming famous what's very odd about it is that you know intellectually like overnight your world changes completely but the world doesn't change at all so intellectually everything's the same you know there's still the crisis in the Middle East there's still you know all the things that matter in the world still matter but your experience your subjective experience is forever changed so when you walk into a room it's not the same experience as it used to be when you walked into a room suddenly people turn and they look at you it it kind of wrongfoots you for for what I mean it took a couple years to kind of for me to get my bearings and so to have you know the your best friend who you grew up with going through the exact same thing um you know and everybody sees the positive everybody goes oh my God it's like you know and I used to say it was like winning the lottery and my best friend winning the lottery too um that was the upside you know that we were suddenly working and and kind of fulfilling this kind of dream that we'd had but the friendship that Matt has been invaluable and and actually other even more meaningful ways and I love the guy if you're lucky enough you know we we had a lot of friends we were in high school and we had a lot of people that we grew up with and I still love all of those people life you know uh Narrows our circles with family and that sort of thing and you don't need a lot of friends but you're really blessed if you have you know even one as who you love and Trust as much as I've met and I can't even count the number of things that I'm grateful for about this friendship and it's really not all that different probably from anybody sitting at home watching this thinking about their own best friend honestly and whatever capacity they're meaningful to you or social animals that want to have these relationships and that's really the lottery you know yeah up next the master of light [Music] welcome back Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer is often celebrated for his depiction of light a sold-out exhibit now celebrates his Mastery and mystery here's Seth Doane as an artist he's hailed as a master for his use of light Rich pigments and the serenity of his interior scenes as a man however Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer is very much still a mystery his body of work just about three dozen paintings hold some of the only Clues to this once virtually forgotten 17th century artist today even one of his masterpieces can be a museum centerpiece which makes this exhibition extraordinary have there ever been this many vermeers together at any point no I think also family I never saw himself such an amount of his own paintings together 20 28 of vermeer's paintings have been assembled at the reichs Museum in Amsterdam the majority of his life's work Gregor Weber is co-curator of what he calls once in a lifetime show this exhibition was your idea I dreamed of this exhibition but as this dream came true it is uh yeah exciting you heard that the frick in New York was going to be closed for remodeling and you thought they've got some Vermeer paintings let's start putting something together yeah and if you get them then you of course you can continue collecting all the other ones the reichs museum already had four others are on loan from New York Washington Paris and this one from the Hague Deborah Likens Girl With a Pearl Earring to the Mona Lisa for her captivating gays she inspired a book which became a movie to peace but her celebrity came late the painting was forgotten forgotten forgotten forgotten and he turned up at the end of the 19th century a man living in The Hague bought the painting for a little bit more than two gilders this is nothing that would be about forty dollars today how Vermeer was nearly lost to history is a story which traces back to his hometown of delft in the Netherlands depicted in one of his most famous paintings this is where Vermeer would have stood probably with his Sketchbook making sketches in preparation of his painting art historian David DeHaan notes that during vermeer's lifetime neither the artist nor his art ever really left delft his main Patron was here yeah that that didn't do much good to his Fame the fact that he had just a small body of work and that most of the painting stayed in delved and then they moved into different private collections Vermeer painted slowly just about two pieces a year this one is called the little Street This Woman's sweeping yeah would have been down this little alley exactly to find this location a researcher used Tax records marriage and death records are on display at The Prince and Hof Museum where Dahan is curator from that we have to sort of piece together a little bit of insights into how his life was it's a bit of a puzzle there are no known self-portraits though some suggest this could be the enigmatic painter who fathered 15 children and died in 1675 at just 43. his widow wrote that Vermeer was unable to sell any of his art lapsed into such Decay and decadence and as if he'd fallen into a frenzy suddenly died documents revealed she traded vermeer's art to pay for bread so the local Baker had these what would wind up being Priceless artworks yeah it's sort of weird that you imagine now having a baker owning three paintings by Vermeer but that was actually the case view of delft may have saved Vermeer from obscurity nearly two centuries after his death a French art critic came across the painting describing it as superb and most unusual he became obsessed with the then obscure artist and helped establish Vermeer as a master of the Dutch Golden Age how is it to work on something like this it's amazing is one of the researchers using new technologies to analyze vermeer's paintings Vermeer is doing some things that we don't see with others empty century painters so the very unusual buildup of paint layers unusual use of certain pigments so he's really experimenting in his paintings and that's what really amazes me with such precious few works and never so many in one place this show sold out in two days where does Vermeer sit in the pantheon of great painters this depends on your artistic feeling for me at the top [Music] finally Cowan thanks for joining us we'll see you here next time on Here Comes the Sun foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

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Keywords: ben affleck, matt damon, here comes the sun, johannes vermeer, ben affleck interview, ben afflect air, ben affleck and matt damon, good will hunting, matt damon ben affleck, matt damon interview, ben affleck adn matt damon, ben affleck and matt damon interview, ben affleck and matt damon good will hunting

Id: K4euM_rVPIs

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023