( NYDaily News ) Matt Damon had been looking for a film to direct — and thought he’d found it in “Promised Land,“ a script he co-wrote with actor John Krasinski.
But even as the start of production on “Promised Land” approached, Damon had to give up the reins at the last minute because of scheduling for “Elysium,” a thriller in which he was set to star.
“I like to say that my biggest contribution to this film as producer was firing myself as director,” Damon jokes.
While he handed directing duties over to longtime collaborator Gus Van Sant, Damon is still the star of “Promised Land,” opening Friday — and its co-writer.
But, as Krasinski observes, the movie seemed to be doomed: When Damon had to bow out as director, Warner Bros., which was going to finance the film, put it into turnaround.
“I thought the movie was dead,” Krasinski recalls. “But when Matt bailed, Gus signed on. Focus Features stepped up when Gus stepped in and we got it all back within 12 hours.”
Van Sant says he jumped aboard because “Matt helped write it. I read it quickly and I liked it a lot, because it had his style and he was going to play the lead. It happened really fast.”
Krasinski met Damon when Damon was making “The Adjustment Bureau” with Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blunt. When Damon mentioned his urge to direct, Krasinski told him about his idea, and the two started collaborating after Krasinski developed the story with writer Dave Eggers.
Damon, of course, has a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for co-writing 1997’s “Good Will Hunting” with his childhood pal Ben Affleck.
“Writing with John was a lot like working with Ben,” Damon says. “The process was similar, with us acting things out as the characters as we wrote. It brought back a lot of memories.”
In “Promised Land,” Damon plays a small-town guy who now works for a major natural-gas company. He arrives in a rural Pennsylvania town on a mission to buy mineral rights to area farms, with an eye toward using the land to extract natural gas through the controversial drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
Then Krasinski’s character shows up in town, a representative of an anti-fracking environmental group who begins lobbying the local farmers against a practice that has the potential to pollute, and even poison, local water sources.
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