Matt Damon knows the power of the media. If you want proof, just check out the cover story of this month’s GQ. The star of the Bourne series steers the conversation to topical themes while being so downright reticent about his personal life that author Lisa DePaulo admits to wanting to stab him – and even tells him to his face. He refuses to talk about as basic a subject as how he met his wife. “The only way I can get hurt is if I talk to much,” the magazine quotes Damon as saying. “Like, if the tape recorder weren’t here? If you turned that thing off? I’d be very open about my life and who I am.”
In the article, Damon communicates that he feels uncomfortable talking about his relationship because doing so will somehow cheapen it, reducing it to a form of leverage to sell movie tickets. “In my experience,” he tells DePaulo, “the more you say, the dirtier you feel later when you look at it, because it’s personal.”
Damon’s saying: Respect the sanctity of my relationship. He’s saying: I don’t want to tell too much and have my relationship trashed in the media because it will hurt my family and me.
How surprised I was, then, to read his quotes about the time following his big pay-off from Good Will Hunting. He and co-star Ben Affleck had been talking about buying black Jeep Cherokees, but hadn’t had the cash until their breakthrough film. “So when we suddenly had the money, we each instantly started trying to convince each other to get a different car,” Damon tells GQ. “We’d say, ‘Hey, have you seen the Explorer? The Ford Explorer is really cool.’ Because we knew it would just be so gay to get the same car. And our friends were making fun of us. Like, ‘You fags, what are you doing, you’re gonna drive around in the same car? Are they gonna say His and His on them?’”
Now, I’ve been a fan of Damon’s for a while, and have appreciated his work, including his guest appearance on NBC’s Will & Grace, which lent a star name to the popular gay-themed TV show. So why would a successful movie actor, savvy enough to measure his every word in the presence of a reporter’s tape recorder, mindful of protecting the sanctity of his own marriage, go off and use such derogatory language toward gay people? Wasn’t Damon mindful of the embarrassment some stars face for their anti-gay comments, like Isaiah Washington, who was ultimately fired from Grey’s Anatomy for his choice of words?
Some may argue that Damon was just kidding around, and that may be true. But his word choices were unfortunate – and they matter. Damon is a popular movie star, and that role carries a responsibility. His words influence others, who may read the article and think it’s okay to refer to gay people as fags. It’s not.
The LGBT community has worked hard over the course of decades to correct the media’s misperceptions about – or downright hostility toward – us, and with great success. Today the news media does an overwhelmingly good job of representing us fairly and respectfully. It seems, however, that some in Hollywood are behind the times.
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