Some actors like to have an ensemble cast included in any given movie first before agreeing to sign on it, but not "The Martian" star Matt Damon. In fact, the actor felt perfectly comfortable being a one-man show in Ridley Scott's sci-fi film, which has already been receiving some pretty fantastic reviews.
When asked by Entertainment Weekly if it was okay being by himself for most of the movie, Damon answered: "It was one of the reasons why I wanted to do it - I had never tried to do anything by myself in that way. That was a fun challenge. There were all these monologues where Mark (his character) realizes he's stranded on Mars - like, two-page speeches. We'd do it one take. We could just go. Ridley would come blasting on set and go, 'You and me could do two movies at once!'"
The first time Damon and Scott met, they actually discussed how they would maintain the "sense of terror" throughout the film, especially after Mark gets left behind in Mars by his crew.
"The idea of being hundreds and millions of mile away from anyone else and this guy has this incredible optimism and solves practical problems. We tried to lace that with the real dread," said Damon. "Ridley said in our very first meeting that it could just be a shot of the vastness of Mars's landscape - that alone is so horrifying. But at the end of the day, it's a really entertaining story."
Damon is very impressed by Scott's work ethic and vision, and even compared the director to another filmmaking legend - Clint Eastwood. "He's incredible. Just infatiguable. Those dudes will make anyone feel lazy," he jokingly said.
Damon also shared that Scott decided to shoot with four cameras at a time just to nail the perfect scenes in "The Martian."
"I've always been very snooty about that - like, there's only one place to put a camera at any given time," he said.
But Scott would disagree and insist on the four cameras. "I walked into his tent at one point and he's got four screens up and I told him, 'Ridley every one of these shots is perfect.' He goes, 'They've been perfect for a long time,'" Damon laughingly recalled. "It was so much fun. I had a ball working with him. It was just fun. Even if I wasn't working I'd want to make movies with Ridley."
