A Petition To Remove Matt Damon From “Ocean’s 8” Has 18,000 Signatures
A recent Onion headline joked, “Man Wondering When ‘Ocean’s 8’ Trailer Going to Show the Film’s Protagonist.” It’s a sharp jab at some men’s seeming discomfort with a movie dominated by women. One man who definitely does have a role in the forthcoming Ocean’s 8 is Matt Damon–but if 18,000 people get their way, he might not remain in the movie.
You see, Matt Damon appears to be going through something lately. He is suffering through a rare verbal disorder in which he is apparently unable to stop saying the wrong thing about Hollywood sexual harassment all the time. He’s out there on the promotional circuit for his new film, Downsizing, probably conducting 95% normal interviews. However, when the question inevitably turns to the scourge of sexual predators in Hollywood, that’s when things go haywire. At this point, Damon is always good for a damning quote about the “spectrum of sexual violence”, about how he knew some of the worst about Harvey Weinstein but is not to blame for not saying anything, about how he may or may not work with sexual predators again, and how we need to talk more about the men who are not sexual predators.
If the mood online, and the op-eds written by the likes of Alyssa Milano and Minnie Driver are any indication, the time has come for Matt Damon to stop talking. Going a step further, 18,000 people have signed an online petition that would get him to stop talking in Ocean’s 8, specifically, and also stop him from appearing in that film at all. After listening to Damon continually botch each opportunity to stand up for women, a lot of people do not want to see the actor appear in a film with a rare abundance of women.
“This behavior is beyond enabling—it’s just gross. Matt Damon should not be in this movie,” states the campaign from PetitionSite.
Expect the effort to mimic the trajectory of a recent online petition to bar Casey Affleck from presenting at the 2018 Oscars by gaining steam for a few days . . . and ultimately not forcing any real action.
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