Damon is really good in the movie: Peter

Peter Morgan, the writer of The Queen and Frost/Nixon talks to PT about his new film Hereafter, a multi-stranded story about life and death.
Hereafter hits theatres this week as one of the more emotionally wrenching films Morgan has ever written— as he puts it, ‘It’s the weirdest experience I've ever had.’ Hereafter opens in limited release on Friday, with a wider release starting on the March 22.
When you’re writing something on spec, especially something like this that deals so frankly with spirituality, it’s a really bold move.
I wrote it and put it in a drawer, thinking ‘Maybe it shouldn’t be all three (stories), it should just be one,’ or whatever. And then a couple of years later a friend of mine died— completely unexpected, a skiing accident. When I went to his funeral, I was like, ‘This just makes no sense, I saw him three days ago, it’s mad. Where has he gone?’ In that funeral I thought, ‘I’m going to dig up Hereafter again.’ I sent it to my agents and said ‘What do you think?’ They sent it to Kathy Kennedy. I kept waiting for the phone call, ‘Let’s do some work.’ And she sent it to Steven Spielberg and he sent it to Clint, and the next thing I know Clint wants to do it. And I think, ‘Ok, great!’ And it sort of touches something different in everybody. I’m as much of a curious bystander on this whole experience as anybody else.
How did you decide to include the tsunami in the film, and did you write it as the large action scene that it is in the movie?
When I wrote it I didn’t give it any thought whatsoever, in terms of the practicalities. I just wrote it as one of the three or four trigger events that made me think, ‘God, that came out of nowhere.’ You’re sitting there at 9 am on a Sunday, it’s Boxing Day, two days after Christmas, and that happens. It’s the same with terrorist attacks. These are completely unforeseen events. That’s really what got me thinking.
Was it something you were personally grappling with and wanted to incorporate into this story?
No, it just came to me! Because I was writing on spec, there was no commercial imperative. I really just wrote it. It was so un-schematic, so un-pre-conceived. I just thought, this feels right. I personally thought the tsunami sequence would be a little smaller, and the London sequence would be a little bit bigger.
Having Matt Damon playing this low-key, kind of beaten down character. How did you envision the character and how was he changed by Matt Damon?
I think he’s really good in the movie. For me the twins are pivotal. There was a moment where I thought to myself, I could just chuck out the French part and the American part, and make a very cheap movie in England for a million dollars just about the boy. I think had this not happened that’s what I would have done.
I’m interested in the Dickens connection, because it’s never made very literal what’s the connection between Dickens and the story.
I don’t know why I did that, except for the fact that I love it. And I thought it indicates great loneliness, and it indicates great vulnerability. The soothing tones of a Dickens story, if that is your friend and that’s what you take to bed with you. I thought that says so much about the character, without saying it about the character. There’s a lovely moment where we see Derek Jacobi reading at the end of the movie, and it cuts to Matt’s face wreathed in smiles. And I thought, oh, that’s so sweet. What a surprise. I love the Dickens part. I don’t know why, it just says so much about the character.
And did you write in Derek Jacobi?
No, I wrote ‘a very well-known English knight of the stage.’ So there’s only about three or four of them.