Do you remember the viral video “I’m f’ing Matt Damon” which Sarah Silverman created back in January, 2008 when she was dating Jimmy Kimmel? It stemmed out of the long-running gag on Jimmy Kimmel Live, in which Kimmel would say, at the end of each show “apologizes to Matt Damon we ran out of time.” In a new interview with People, Kimmel explains how that gag started (he didn’t even know Damon, but Damon’s people called him after that), how the “I’m f’ing Matt Damon” video was made (it was Silverman’s idea), and how the follow-up video, “I’m f’ing Ben Affleck” came to be. Apparently it was Jennifer Garner’s idea, she pitched it at a dinner and got Harrison Ford to make a cameo. Then a bunch of other celebrities joined in and it became a successful follow-up to “I’m f’ing Matt Damon.” That video came out about a month after the original Damon video and it got a lot of buzz. Here’s some of what Kimmel said in his People interview and you can watch the video on their site.
Before the Ben Affleck video was born, it began “early on” with the actor’s best friend Matt Damon, according to Kimmel.
“We had a really bad show. To call them D-list celebrities would have been an upgrade,” Kimmel said about the birth of the Damon joke. “I don’t remember who was on, but I was depressed and I was feeling pretty bad about myself and I just at the end of the show was like, ‘I want to apologize to Matt Damon. We ran out of time.’ It was just the first A-list star I could think of.”
Kimmel said that although he wasn’t friends with Damon at the time, the actor’s publicist called to tell the comic: “Hey, that’s funny. Don’t stop doing that.”
Sarah Silverman, who was dating Kimmel at the time, then created the “I’m F—ing Matt Damon” video – much to the surprise of Kimmel.
“She was a guest on the show and she was like, ‘I have a surprise for you.’ It was one of our anniversary shows and I hadn’t seen one second of it, which is kind of funny,” Kimmel said of the video. “The probably single most successful thing we’ve ever done on the show I had absolutely nothing to do with.”
When the idea came to mind for an Affleck video, the Argo star’s wife suggested the idea to Kimmel.
“Jennifer Garner came up with the idea. She kind of thought it would be funny and was talking to Harrison Ford about it at a dinner, and Harrison Ford was tickled by the idea and said, ‘Well, I’d like to be in that.’ And when Harrison Ford said he might want to be a part of it, we decided to make it more like ‘We Are the World’ and bring all these celebrities in,” Kimmel admitted.
“The rest is Internet history, I guess,” he said of the instant classic.
I heard Kimmel tell Terry Gross on NPR about how he started the Matt Damon gag, and I’m pretty sure I’ve also heard how the Matt Damon video was Sarah Silverman’s initiative, but this is the first time I’m learning the story about how Garner made the Ben Affleck video happen. This is what Affleck means when he credits Garner for his career turnaround. She was there for him, in his corner, and she saw an opportunity to get good PR and went for it. That doesn’t always turn out well for her but she’s shrewd. It makes me wonder how many other opportunities she orchestrated for her estranged husband, and how much he truly owes her.
Here’s I’m F’ing Ben Affleck. They all look so young! (Except Kimmel, he looks better now.) They do a “We Are The World” style singalong with cameos including Brad Pitt, Joan Jett, Christina Applegate, Macy Gray, Robin Williams (RIP), Don Cheadle, Dominick Monaghan, Cameron Diaz, Josh Groban, Huey Lewis, Meatloaf and of course Harrison Ford.
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