Matt Damon - Matt Damon's Promised Land A Quest To Create 'Something We'd Never Done Before'

Matt Damon's Promised Land A Quest To Create 'Something We'd Never Done Before'

Matt Damon’s Promised Land sees Damon and John Krasinski both star as actors and co-screenwriters for the film, and the pair took time out to chat to Crave Online about the experience of working together.

Promised Land is directed by Gus Van Sant and focuses on the tale of a natural gas company salesman – played by Damon – attempt to purchase land in a small town, with environmental activist (Krasinski) standing in his way. Talking about their aims for the project, Damon commented: “The temptation is to make something that you’ve never done before, for both of us.” He added, “John had never had a chance to play the kind of role he has in his movie and we were both able to use the baggage we both brought into the project to kind of try to confound expectations a little bit.”

It’s Krasinski’s first script, and he said he took inspiration from his dad, who grew up in a town outside of Pittsburgh that had fallen on hard times. “I remember being a very ignorant kid and saying ‘does that mean your childhood was awful?’ and he said ‘no it was phenomenal we had a strong sense of community and we were there for each other” the writer said. “I wanted to tell a story about a community like that.” And how about disagreements between the two writers? Did Damon just whack out his Oscar? “I wasn’t that obvious, I just wore it as a necklace” he cracked.