Yes, that really is Michael Douglas and Matt Damon under the prosthetic makeup, wigs, and crystal-trimmed suits — all part of their costumes for Behind the Candelabra, the new Steven Soderbergh-directed HBO movie (airing May 26) about the stranger-than-fiction romance between Liberace (Douglas) and his young lover, Scott Thorson (Damon) from 1978 to 1982. In this week’s issue, Damon and Douglas give a frank, funny interview about filming one of the weirdest, glitziest gay love stories ever put on film, one that required both actors to do things they’d never done before onscreen. Like, say, wearing a metallic thong — and nothing else. “Every Sunday night, this girl would come to my house and I would stand in my garage and I would hike my boxer briefs up into the crack of my a– and she would give me a spray tan,” explains Damon, who spends plenty of the movie in tiny swimsuits, and wasn’t too excited about his real-life wife seeing his bronzed backside. “We’ve been through three childbirths, we’ve been in the trenches, there are no secrets. But I really wish she didn’t see that. That’s too much.”
Behind the Candelabra is based on Thorson’s 1988 memoir about Liberace’s over-the-top world of palatial houses, extravagant clothes, and secret affairs. (Liberace never publicly came out as gay before dying of AIDS in 1987.) It’s a world that Douglas actually witnessed first-hand, since his father, actor Kirk Douglas, was once Liberace’s neighbor in Palm Springs. “I remember meeting him just in passing, in his convertible with the top down — his hair not moving,” says the actor, who also got advice from one of Liberace’s close friends, Debbie Reynolds, who plays his mother in the film. “She just told me, ‘[Your voice] can never be too nasal.’” The movie is also Douglas’ first role since his cancer diagnosis in 2010, and the actor tells EW that beating the disease and returning to acting has been therapeutic for him. “It was great to get back,” he says. “It gave me a new appreciation for what I do, taking advantage of it.”

As for their sex scenes together (and trust us, the movie has plenty), Damon and Douglas both say that shooting a moment of passion is always awkward, no matter who’s involved. “The scene where I’m behind him and going at him, we did that in one take,” recalls Damon, laughing. “We do it. Cut. There’s a long pause. And then you just hear Steven go, “Well… I have no notes.”

For more from Matt Damon and Michael Douglas on Behind the Candelabra, plus exclusive photos of the movie’s costumes, sets, and supporting cast — you won’t believe what Rob Lowe looks like! — pick up a copy of this week’s Entertainment Weekly, on stands Friday, March 8.

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Matt Damon still curses his poor fortune after he had to turn down a leading role in the most successful film of all time, “Avatar.” The movie star was James Cameron’s first choice to play Jake Sully in the 2009 blockbuster, but he had to walk away from the role because he had other commitments.

Damon tells Playboy, “I particularly wanted to work with James Cameron, and still do. … He knew he was the star of that movie and that everyone was going to see it anyway. When he said, ‘Look, I’m offering it to you, but if you say no, the movie doesn’t need you,’ I remember thinking, ‘Oh God, not only do I have to say no because of scheduling, but he’s going to make a star out of some guy who’s going to start taking jobs from me later.’” Australian actor Sam Worthington landed the role of Sully.

The “Bourne Ultimatum” star says he also regrets having to turn down Josh Brolin’s role in “Milk.” ”I would have had the chance to do scenes with Sean Penn,” he said.

And the actor reveals he was also in the early running to land a leading role in “Brokeback Mountain,” opposite Joaquin Phoenix. He explains, “I had just done ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ and ‘All the Pretty Horses.’ I said … ‘I just did a gay movie and a cowboy movie. I can’t do a gay cowboy movie now.’

“The right actor got the part. Heath Ledger was magnificent.” And the role Phoenix was considered for went to Jake Gyllenhaal.

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The “Bourne” star is in talks to join the cast of “Monuments Men,” a WWII drama based on Robert M. Edsel’s book of the same name that was adapted by Clooney as a starring and directing vehicle, according to Deadline. The plot centers on the efforts of a group of Allied art historians and museum personnel who are tasked with salvaging works of art and other items of cultural importance from the Nazis in Europe during the latter days of WWII.

Damon, who previously starred with Clooney in the “Ocean’s” trilogy as well as the Iraq War drama “Syriana,” is just the latest big name to board the project, which already boasts the likes of Daniel Craig, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin (“The Artist”) and John Goodman.

“Monuments Men” is scheduled to begin shooting in Europe this January.

Damon will next be seen in “Promised Land,” the upcoming Gus Van Sant drama that was co-written by Damon and co-star John Krasinski. That film is slated for an Oscar-qualifying run beginning December 28, before moving into wider release after the first of the year.

Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/news/matt-damon-in-talks-to-join-george-clooney-and-bill-murray-in-monuments-men#iM2VJ10bkIjRU2HD.99

Matt Damon has shot down suggestions he will be returning to the Bourne film franchise, insisting writers would have to come up with an unbelievable plot to reintroduce his character Jason Bourne.

Damon stepped aside after starring in three movies when studio executives and director Paul Greengrass fell out over the proposed story line for a fourth film, and Jeremy Renner and director Tony Gilroy replaced the pair in summer hit The Bourne Legacy.

Renner has often hinted at the possibility of teaming his character, Aaron Cross, up with Damon’s Bourne in a future film, but the original franchise star insists the plot of Legacy has ended his involvement in the films for good.

Despite previously stating he would be interested in another Bourne film as long as Greengrass is onboard to direct, Damon now tells Movieline.com, “Because they (writers and Tony Gilroy) use our actors and characters… whatever they said (in Legacy) is true and so we’d have to acknowledge it in any Bourne movie that we’d do.

“That makes it really tough. I don’t think we can do the Dallas (TV drama) it-was-all-a-dream scenario. I don’t think the audience would go for that after they paid money to see a movie.”

Patrick Duffy’s Dallas character, Bobby Ewing, was re-introduced to viewers in 1986 – after leaving the show the previous year – when he stepped out of the shower. His character’s wife, played by Victoria Principal, realised Ewing’s death and everything that had come after it during the previous season had been a dream.

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One of our favorite filmmaking teams has a new project in the works, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck will reportedly produce a new movie called “Race to the South Pole,” which has Affleck’s brother Casey attached to star.

The film centers on the true life efforts of Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen to reach the South Pole in the early 1900s. With Scott hailing from England and Amundsen from Norway, the two explorers were, as the title suggests, in a race to see who would reach the mysterious terrain first.

According to THR, Casey’s attached to portray Scott, and Peter Glanz is on board to write the script.

In addition to “Race to the South Pole,” moviemaking pair Damon and Affleck also have a film about Boston gangster Whitey Bulger in the works, which would star Damon and be directed by Affleck.

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Ben Affleck is “tempted” to take on an acting role in the new movie he is making with best friend Matt Damon, but fears playing a corrupt federal agent will make him unpopular in his hometown.

The “Good Will Hunting” collaborators have signed up to work together on the new film, about Boston-based crime lord Whitey Bulger, with Affleck directing the project and Damon taking on the lead role. Affleck admits he would like to step in front of the camera too, to play corrupt FBI agent John Connolly, but he is worried the role will make him unpopular in his native Boston.

He tells the Boston Herald, “If there was a movie that me and Matt were meant to do together, this has gotta be the one. It’s where my heart is, but there’s a lot of stuff, and we’re trying to cull it and we’re probably twice as careful about this one because we know the degree of scrutiny that people are going to have — particularly in his native of Boston.

“Connolly’s such a great part, but he just makes me sick. With Whitey, at least you know he’s a gangster, he’s a criminal, he got people killed … it was no secret. But the FBI and Connolly in particular were the ones making sure he didn’t get arrested and allowing more people to get killed and exploited and abused. “I’m tempted to do Connolly. But I don’t know … I feel like I could never show my face again in Boston.”

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The first time Matt Damon teamed up with a fellow actor (Ben Affleck) on a feature screenplay (Good Will Hunting), Gus Van Sant directed it, Damon and his writing partner starred in it, and Damon and said partner walked away with an Academy Award. Fifteen years later, could the same thing happen again this Oscar season?
That appears to be the hope of Focus Features, which announced today it will release Van Sant’s newest film Promised Land — written by and starring Damon and John Krasinski — for an Oscar qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 28, expanding in a platform release through Jan., 2013. The film, based on a story by novelist Dave Eggers, follows Damon and Frances McDormand as corporate suits who hope to convince a small town hit hard by the economy to sign over the drilling rights to their property. Krasinski and Hal Halbrook play the men standing in their way of a deal.
Damon was initially planning on making the film his directorial debut, but Van Sant stepped in when the actor couldn’t squeeze the necessary pre-production time into his packed schedule.
Even with its limited release, Promised Land is entering a crowded end-of-year field. Although The Great Gatsby recently decamped for the summer, this December is still jam packed with big releases — The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Les Misérables, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained — hoping to win over both holiday moviegoers and Academy Award voters.

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Actor MATT DAMON is the latest star to sign on for the upcoming remake of classic Western movie THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, according to reports.

Tom Cruise is said to have agreed to appear as one of the gang of gunslingers in the adaptation of John Sturges’ 1960 film, and Damon is set to star alongside him as Vin, the character Steve McQueen played in the original.

A source tells The Sun, “MGM are throwing big money at the film and wanted some top names to fill the main parts. You can’t get much bigger than Cruise and Damon.”

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Environmentalists are giddy over the news that Matt Damon is starring in an anti-fracking film.

Damon’s agency confirmed to Politico that the actor is slated to star in “The Promised Land,” an “anti-fracking movie” that he co-wrote with actor John Krasinski (“The Office”), based on a draft by Dave Eggers (“Where The Wild Things Are”).

According to Variety, Damon and Krasinski will star “as rival corporate executives, with the former thesp playing a character whose life is thrown into disarray after he arrives in a small town.”

The film will also feature Frances McDormand “who prefers to follow the rules as opposed to breaking protocol,” Rosemarie DeWitt as “a schoolteacher caught between Damon’s and Krasinski’s character” and possibly Hal Holbrook who “will play an engineer who lives in the town and opposes a corporate takeover being led by Damon.” The movie will be directed by Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”).
A casting agency posted a call for extras on their Facebook page this past Monday, specifically searching for “great, character faces, farmer looks, senior citizens, and kids” in the Pittsburgh, Penn. area where the film is shooting “from late April through early June, 2012.”

This isn’t the first film to tackle the hydraulic fracturing debate. In 2010, the film “Gasland” documented the health concerns of citizens affected by the fracking industry, and featured a flammable water scene which caused quite the stir.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a drilling process for extracting natural gas from shale rock. The procedure has caused concern due in part to the chemicals injected into the wells for drilling, which may taint nearby drinking water. President Obama touted “safe” natural gas drilling in his State of the Union address, but also said, “I’m requiring all companies that drill for gas on public lands to disclose the chemicals they use. Because America will develop this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.”

The feasibility of protecting the health of Americans while conducting hydraulic fracturing operations is debatable. Dimock, Pennsylvania has been at the heart of this discussion. The small town’s wells were tainted by fracking operations, and the drilling company and the EPA have (at times) delivered clean water to the residents.

According to ProPublica, recent EPA tests of Dimock’s water reveal “dangerous quantities of methane gas” and “dozens of other contaminants, including low levels of chemicals known to cause cancer and heavy metals that exceed the agency’s “trigger level” and could lead to illness if consumed over an extended period of time. The EPA’s assurances suggest that the substances detected do not violate specific drinking water standards, but no such standards exist for some of the contaminants and some experts said the agency should have acknowledged that they were detected at all.”
Not everyone is concerned about fracking, nor are all groups excited about the film, including the creators of pro-fracking film “FrackNation.” The film’s co-producer Phelim McAleer is known for attacking Al Gore about climate change and recently told HuffPost’s Lucia Graves, “when you strip away the emotions and the hyperbole, the answer seems to be that we need to investigate further.”
As Politico pointed out, FrackNation posted on their KickStarter site: “It will not be easy getting the message out with a sequel to Gasland in the works and now a big budget Hollywood movie concentrating on scare stories rather than true stories. Now, we recognize Hollywood movies don’t have to be truthful – they just have to be entertaining, but it’s likely that PROMISED LAND will increase unfounded concerns about fracking.”
Many would argue that concerns about fracking are not “unfounded,” including Damon himself — In 2010, the actor posted a short video promoting the Working Family’s Party “working to prevent risky natural gas drilling” and keep water clean in New York.

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