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Marty's the man: Actors are doing it for Scorsese
WHAT: Tuesday's after-bash for Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" at Gustavino's.
MARTY'S THE MAN: Matt Damon said it was Scorsese, not the script, that first drew him to the project. "I think I probably committed before I even read the script," Damon said. "So I was pleasantly surprised that the script was fantastic, because I would have done the phone book."
However, Damon and co-star Leonardo DiCaprio did have one difficulty when it came to the project --determining which character each would play.
"It is so rare to find a great role, so when you see two of them in a movie it kind of wrong-foots you a little bit," Damon added. "Ultimately, we just left it up to Marty."
Janet Jackson gave Ludacris, Natalie Cole, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Beth Ostrosky, Marilyn Crawford and other pals a listen to her new CD, "20 Y.O.," at the Ciroc-sponsored Room Service party Tuesday. Jackson and boyfriend Jermaine Dupri then headed to Marquee, where they did shots of Patron and got hugs from Matt Damon, who showed up with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg and the rest of the "Departed" crew. Mick Jagger spent the evening dancing in the center of his female posse.
Q: What kind of preparation did you guys do for your roles?
Damon: Well, Leo was at a distinct disadvantage from me and Mark (Wahlberg), because we're both from Boston, and we already had the accent down, which I think is the hardest accent to do and the most often screwed up by great actors. So in terms of preparation, Leo had this whole amount of work to do that me and Mark got to skip. But Leo did a great job with the accent and he is one of the very few actors to make it on the short list.
DiCaprio: Thank you, sir.
Bill Simmons: Jimmy will get mad at me for this, but screw it - Damon was supposed to be the last act of the show, and they screwed up the time and only gave him like 45 seconds, he didn't even get a chance to show a clip from his movie. So Damon totally flipped out, it was like the scene from Good Will Hunting when he flips out on the math professor. I can't believe nobody made a bigger deal about it. Everyone thought it was a setup but it actually happened, Jimmy was pretty shaken afterwards.
Blake (Denver): Since you haven't mentioned it yet, I'll do it for you...have you bought the Windy City Heat DVD yet and if so, are there any notable extras?
Bill Simmons: Jimmy gave me a copy - there's actually a ton of extras and footage of Perry watching the movie for the first time. They did a great job with it. Just came out yesterday. And by the way, I always get e-mails from people wondering if Perry was in on the joke - I was kidding about the Matt Damon thing before, that was really a joke.
