Ever since its premiere at Sundance this January, “Manchester By The Sea” has been consistently hailed as one of this year’s greatest films, and that buzz has not died down the least bit since its theatrical premiere earlier this month. Starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, and Lucas Hedges and set in the chilly, snowy town of Manchester, Massachusetts, Affleck plays Lee, a man forced to become the legal guardian of his 16-year-old nephew after his older brother suddenly passes away. Lee returns to his hometown where he’s confronted by his estranged ex-wife and the entire community of Manchester-by-the-Sea.
As previously stated, the film has received rave reviews across the board, with Noel Murray calling it “magnificently messy, painfully real.” And while Casey Affleck has been getting significant attention for his powerful performance, did you know he was not the first choice for this role, and that Matt Damon was originally supposed to direct the film? In fact, “Manchester By The Sea” came very close to not being made at all — as Matt Damon recently explained during a post-screening Q&A for the film. Damon is one of the film’s producers, and earlier in November, he stopped by The Landmark theater in Los Angeles to talk about how the film came to be.
READ MORE: Kenneth Lonergan Talks ‘Manchester By The Sea,’ ‘Margaret’ & More At MOMI Retrospective
You can read highlights of the Q&A just below or listen to the audio at the very bottom of the article. And if you haven’t seen “Manchester By The Sea,” don’t worry — Damon doesn’t reveal any spoilers.
How Matt Damon Almost Directed The Film
John Krasinski had this idea and he knew I wanted to direct something. So he pitched me this idea, not the entire thing, but elements that wound up being this. And so originally it was intended for John to star and me to direct and we decided Kenny [Lonergan] would be the best person to write because he’s our favorite writer. So we went to him and gave him the idea and he liked it. But he was also dealing with the fallout from “Margaret,” his last film. And he was locked in this whole lawsuit so it was put on the backburner. And John and I got impatient and we went and wrote “Promised Land,” which we then made and it came out. About as many people in this room saw “Promised Land” I think. [laughs]
Then Kenny came back with this script a couple years later. It was about 150 pages and a normal screenplay’s 120. So it was this long and meandering thing, but it was brilliant. We just basically gave it back to him and said “keep going.” The characters were alive, [they] were now speaking to him clearly and so you just get out of somebody’s way when they’re locked in like that. But the first realization I had, and probably the smartest thing that I did on this movie as a producer, was firing myself as the director.
How Matt Damon Almost Starred
Casey [Affleck] and I had done one of Kenny’s plays in London in 2002, so that’s how we knew him [editor’s note: Damon also co-starred in Lonergan’s “Margaret”]. He’s a brilliant director, guy, and writer. And this clearly was a Kenny Lonergan movie. “Like, this is a great movie and it’s yours and you should really direct it and I’ll be in it.” That was kind of our plan and we got it set up. [But] my schedule — because of “The Martian” — our pre-production time kept collapsing until we got down to about five weeks of pre-production in the version when I was going to [star] in it. We realized that was gonna put Kenny in a bad spot, so [producer] Chris [Moore] and I and Kenny decided to pull the plug. And I didn’t have another opening in my schedule until this February, which is a good problem to have as an actor. But suddenly the movie was ready to go and the one person I always said I’d cede the role to was Casey because we’re really close with Kenny, and we’d done his play together, and I loved this thing so much, and Casey’s just the best actor I know. I knew he was gonna crush it.
Movies Like “Manchester By The Sea” Hardly Get Made Anymore
It was really the best role that I read, especially nowadays with what’s happening in movies. Everything that comes across my way — you gotta have a cape on [laughs]. When I started, around “Good Will Hunting,” these movies about people were pretty common. [But] that mid-range budget movie [has] evaporated. A lot of [those stories have] migrated to television and great work is being done on TV, but movies … were kind of our bread and butter. Hollywood is very reactive and when people show up for movies like this, they’ll make more of them.
Why Financing Was Almost Impossible Even With Matt Damon’s Name Attached
Well, my name as a producer doesn’t carry a lot of weight, it doesn’t sell any tickets necessarily. Also, with Kenny coming off of “Margaret” and Casey being really underappreciated, we were told we weren’t gonna be able to raise any money to get this thing made. [But then] we had this really miraculous thing happen: A wonderful woman named Kimberly Steward — our lead producer on this movie — just materialized. It was like a miracle. Basically, she completely just had the taste and the courage to finance the movie completely. She financed it and produced it. Without her, this movie just never would’ve been made.
