Matt Damon on roughnecks, Wranglers, and his Stillwater Sonic order

Sorry, that's not Matt Damon's real Sonic order in his new movie

By Marah Eakin  |  July 29, 2021 | 3:00pm
Film Features Stillwater
Matt Damon on roughnecks, Wranglers, and his Stillwater Sonic order
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Sorry, cherry limeade fans: The Sonic order Matt Damon places in the new movie Stillwater sadly isn’t his. That’s not to say that he wouldn’t order a cherry limeade, per se. It’s just that he didn’t really put much thought into his own personal order. As he told The A.V. Club in a recent video chat, the order he places in the movie is actually the regular order of the film’s on-set roughneck authenticity advisor, Kenny Baker, who just really loves chili-cheese coneys. When they went to film the scene at the Sonic drive-in, Damon asked him what he’d order, and then used that as the dialogue in the scene.

That’s just one thing Damon did to get his Oklahoma-based roughneck character right, from spending time with guys in the field to picking the rough flame retardant jeans for his costume. As he tells us in the video below, he also tried to get in roughneck shape for Stillwater after spending some time with real life roughnecks. Damon says,

“I noticed the build of the guys—not the young guys. The young guys kind of know about cross fit. The young guys look maybe a little more like Chris Hemsworth. But the guys my age all have that kind of strong, like, you have to be so strong to do that job. So they’re really powerful. They’re beefy Oklahoma guys. It’s a thing. So the physicality of it was around watching them walk around, watching them move like they’re on their front foot. I started eating differently and and lifting heavy, heavy weight if I worked out just to try to bulk.

Interested parties can read The A.V. Club’s review of Stillwater here, in which our critic, Jesse Hassenger, gives the movie a B, noting that “The movie takes writer-director Tom McCarthy’s usual quiet character studies in a different, fascinating direction.”

Stillwater will be in theaters everywhere starting on July 30.

 
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