Hollywood has become unbearably hostile toward Middle America.
It only got worse during the Donald Trump era.
But Matt Damon met Trump supporters for one movie role and made a shocking discovery.
Academy Award-nominated actor Matt Damon has been a vocal supporter of the Democrat Party and left-wing politics.
Damon was once a neighbor of communist professor Howard Zinn—and shouted out Zinn in his Oscar-winning script for Good Will Hunting—and has taken aim at Republicans over the years.
But Damon gained empathy for Donald Trump supporters while doing research for his latest film Stillwater.
The film, directed and co-written by Tom McCarthy (Spotlight, Win Win), concerns an oil rig roughneck who travels to France to bring his daughter home after she’s accused of murder.
During a press junket for the film, Damon said:
“Being invited into their homes, into a backyard barbecue, and the guitar comes out and somebody starts singing church songs…It’s a culturally very specific place and very different from how [Tom] and I grew up. So it was really fascinating, and these people were wonderful to us and really helped us. I didn’t know when I first read this script how specific this culture was in Texas and Oklahoma, these roughnecks and what they do. And so it was really eye-opening for me.”
A lot of liberals have similar experiences when they leave their coastal bubbles and travel to the interior of the country.
Former president of NPR Ken Stern chronicled his journey from dyed-in-the-wool liberal to independent in the book “Republican Like Me” where he changed his mind about guns, church, and climate change after interacting with conservatives.
A reporter from Variety brought up the politics of Damon’s character, asking:
“I think one of the most interesting parts of the film, and oddly charming, is when Camille (actress Camille Cottin) asks Bill (Bill Baker, Damon’s character) if he’s voted for Trump. He has an interesting out, because he’s a felon. Do you think that character would have? And how did you work with Tom to sort of build his geo-political identity?”
Damon didn’t really shy away from the question and responded:
“Yeah, I mean, if Oklahoma, I think, was the reddest state in the last two elections, and you talk to those roughnecks, they’re always going to vote — I mean, they’re in the oil business…Their livelihood depends on that. And so I don’t even think it’s a question at all. And I think if we — we didn’t want to make it expressly political — and I think he is who he is and he’s from where he’s from, and the movie has a lot of empathy for him, and so do we.”
As Damon pointed out, Democrats like Joe Biden are openly hostile toward the oil and natural gas industry.
It would be a liberal whitewashing if his character weren’t a Republican.
Even heavily Latino districts in South Texas went for Trump in 2020, in large part due to his embrace of oil and natural gas production.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are promising pie-in-the-sky green jobs that either don’t exist because there’s no demand for them, or they’re less efficient and less eco-friendly in many regards.
More liberals would do well to venture outside their bubble and meet people who have a conservatives worldview.
