In 2011, Matt Damon was at the center of a moment that still circulates online, but it didn’t happen in a movie.
During the Save Our Schools march in Washington D.C., a reporter from Reason TV asked him whether job insecurity made actors work harder and questioned why teachers didn’t have the same incentive. Damon, whose mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, was an educator, rejected the comparison and argued that people who choose to teach do so because they truly want to.
Then, the cameraman stepped in to insist that “10% of teachers are bad”. When Damon’s mother asked him where he got that figure, he admitted he didn’t know. The actor’s response became the most memorable moment of the exchange: “Well, okay. But maybe you’re a terrible cameraman, I don’t know”.
The interview, conducted on July 30, 2011, went viral and resurfaced on social media years later. More than the phrase itself, the moment came to stand as an example of Damon’s defense of teachers and his rejection of reducing education to simple job incentives.