Rewatchables Reference

• Tom sings jazz with Dickie for the first time – 'Tu vuò fà l'americano.' Bill's wife's probably favorite movie scene of all time. All of the movie's themes condensed into two minutes of pure charm, with Damon doing just enough awkward 'I don't belong here but I'm so happy' energy.
• Freddy enters the movie in a cherry red Alfa Romeo – 'Don't you just want to fuck every woman you see, just once?' Hoffman gets the script, sees that's his first line, and creates an all-time five-second entrance.
• Freddy confronts Tom at Dickie's apartment – 'You're a quick study, aren't you? Last time you didn't know your ass from your elbow.' Hoffman's disdain in the record store scene, no dialogue, says everything with one look.
• Tom runs into Peter and Marge at the Opera – the panic of having just killed Dickie and now running into people who know he's not Dickie. Damon's performance is incredible as he slinks around corners.
• The boat murder – violent, weird, well-acted. Dickie calls Tom 'some third class mooch' and it gets super ugly. Jude Law broke a rib falling backward filming this scene.

• Jude Law – 'the most charismatic, concentrated example of charm in a movie I can think of, of all time.' He has chemistry with everybody, it's a force field around him. Peak hair icon status.
• Peak Paltrow – captured at the perfect time of her young career, before fame and Goop took over. She always carries herself with dignity as Marge, never desperate, even as her world falls apart.
• Peak Blanchett – in maybe five scenes but steals every one. Her part was expanded because the director loved her. She's the Philip Seymour Hoffman of actresses: she can pass through a movie for 15 minutes and own it.
• Italy – the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Naples, the Mediterranean. Amanda's honeymoon was literally themed around this movie. 'You can look at some old shit and then eat some pasta'.
• Scammer season – the movie's themes of surfaces versus reality, aspiring to wealth, projecting an image you can't back up. 'Instagram people trying to enter an elevated lifestyle – they're all doing the same thing as Ripley'.

• The last 45 minutes are a little slow – probably could cut 10 minutes. Once Dickie's gone, the movie loses its engine.
• Silvana's death scene – still confusing to everyone. How did she kill herself? Why did they think it was suicide? The whole sequence is overacted and poorly explained. 'That always puts a damper on a festival'.

• Leonardo DiCaprio declined the role of Ripley before Damon was cast – would not have been as good. Leo should have been Dickie instead. He eventually plays Gatsby, which is in the same conversation.
• Christian Bale was considered for Ripley – 'slightly too menacing.' Damon's boyish All-American looks let you watch the evil turn in his face; Bale doesn't have that. A year later, Bale does American Psycho, an interesting double feature.
• John Malkovich came very close to directing – he later played Ripley in Ripley's Game.

Philip Seymour Hoffman – in three scenes and blows everyone off the screen, including Matt Damon and Jude Law. 'The simultaneously funniest and most vulnerable actor ever.' His Freddy Miles is the all-time heat check. They debate renaming the award 'The Friend of Miles Award'.

Everyone in the Silvana death scene – 'some of the most overacting we've ever had in a movie.' The Italian mourners, the dramatics, all of it.

• James Rebhorn as Herbert Greenleaf – all-time 'that guy.' 'My Cousin Vinny', 'Basic Instinct', Carlito's Way, 'Scent of a Woman' back-to-back-to-back. He hates jazz, hates Europe, and 'give that guy a hundred dollars just to shut up.' 'If he's in the 70s, he's definitely playing Senator Geary'.
• Philip Baker Hall as Alvin MacCarron – could qualify but he's bigger than a 'that guy.' His 1997-2000 run (Air Force One, 'Boogie Nights', 'The Truman Show', Rush Hour, 'Enemy of the State', 'The Insider', 'Magnolia', Ripley) is eleven movies deep.

• Damon lost 30 pounds, learned piano, ran six miles a day, and was covered in makeup to look pasty and pale – this was his second extreme weight loss in the 90s after Courage Under Fire.
• Jude Law learned saxophone and gained weight so Dickie could seem more substantial.
• Tom kills Freddy with a bust of the Roman Emperor Hadrian – who had a gay lover who was killed. Amanda, the classics major, breaks this down.
• Tommy Wiseau saw this film and vowed to make something 'just as compelling' – four years later he made The Room. 'They're kind of similar movies about a sociopath in a bad relationship'.
• The production shot in sequence across Italy – Rome, Sicily, Naples, Positano – with locations sometimes hundreds of miles apart. Clint Eastwood would have shot all the Sicily stuff in one day.
• Minghella came off The English Patient with enormous capital and insisted on final say over casting Ripley: 'I'm not making the movie until I find Tom Ripley'.

• Gwyneth Paltrow the actress – just won the Oscar, in six commercial movies in two years, maximum juice. 'Gwyneth the businesswoman, it might be right now (Goop), but the actor, this is Apex Mountain forever'.
• Jude Law – 'coming out of this movie, people were like, this guy's gonna be the biggest star in the world.' He never really topped it. He'll probably win an Oscar at 71 for a mediocre movie.
• 1950s Italy – 'this movie is Apex Mountain for 1950s Italy in movies'.
• Anthony Minghella – after English Patient he had everything at his fingertips. Never got back to something this successful and beloved before his early death.

Jack Davenport as Peter Smith-Kingsley – the one weak link in the cast. Could have been Colin Firth for gravitas or a young Colin Farrell for star power. Having six future stars instead of five would have been the dream.

• Wouldn't someone at a newspaper have an actual photograph of Dickie Greenleaf? He's the son of a shipping heir, famous and handsome – there's a Princeton yearbook at minimum. The 1950s 'no way to double-check anything' only goes so far.
• The Amanda Knox connection – 'basically a remake of 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'.' Amanda Dobbins shares a first name and her Google results were screwed up for years.

• How does Ripley get off the boat at the end after killing Peter? He presumably pretends to be Peter when disembarking – 'my second friend who killed himself, where is he?'
• Did Dickie ever think about hooking up with Tom? He's a sensualist who wants to try everything. The bathtub chess scene has complicated power dynamics – 'I didn't really get what was going on' at age 16.
• Was 1999 the year the anti-hero was officially born? Tom Ripley, Tony Soprano, 'Fight Club' – 'those are the first three and then boom, we're off' through The Shield, The Wire, and Breaking Bad.

Jude Law – 'the movie's never the same after he leaves.' A little Sonny Corleone: he dies and it's like 'oh man, we don't get to hang out with him anymore.' Damon gives a career-defining performance but doesn't win. Kate Halliwell's lasting impression: 'Are you going to talk about just how incredibly hot Jude Law is in that movie?'