Was there any debate whether or not to keep the ending a bit more ambiguous rather than to show Bourne swimming away? Was there ever a moment where you felt you should leave it hanging just a little bit?

Not really to be honest. Not at all in fact to be absolutely honest.  I’m always a very, very strong proponent myself of Bourne standing clear and unbroken at the end. I think it’s …but that’s because Bourne is a very moral character at heart.  He never expresses any moralizing but he’s essentially a character—that’s why we love him because he’s got a dark past and he’s renounced it and he’s trying to make like a new chapter for himself.  He’s seeking the light, always.  Also he’s an outlaw.  He’s us against them and they’re never going to catch him, so I never want Bourne to be caught. That’s something I always want to believe that he’s out there, because he’s the person who says I won’t get fooled again.  Where’s the answers?  You’re lying to me. I just love that about the character. 

Paul, how has Matt Damon changed working with him over the course, he’s said it’s been 7 years. 5 years worth of movies doing this kind of incredible adventure—this trilogy and secondly I couldn’t help but think as I watched David Strathairn through the movie I kept chanting Cheney, Cheney, Cheney.  He seems to epitomize the government guy who is convinced that he’s right and does everything wrong and only has a belief in himself.  How conscious were you of making that kind of political statement in this movie?

Which particular question—do you want to ask the last one first or the first one?  The last one first.  Honestly and truly I’m not ducking it not at all.  I mean it’s like…I don’t think he actually looks like Dick Cheney does he?  No, it never occurred…better hair right.  No, I mean it’s a Bourne movie it’s not a private political soap box for me or anybody else.  I’m not ducking it; it’s honestly how I feel. But as a franchise it’s aggressively contemporary and that’s part of its appeal.  It’s not topical though, and there is a difference between contemporary which is good in a Bourne movie and topical which would be Dick Cheney which would not be good because I wouldn’t want to go out on a Saturday night and see Dick Cheney in a movie.  That’s the truth of it you know.

Last night’s audience was cheering when the CIA gets its ass kicked repeatedly.  Were they cheering because they knew they were the bad guys or because it was the CIA?

We’re all engaged in the world.  That’s why the Bourne franchise works because you go on a Saturday night or whenever you go but it’s an action adventure but the character has real heart and soul and a real moral component existing in the real world.  He makes choices about the world.  When he says I’m no longer Jason Bourne and renounces all the black ops that have scarred his life effectively for 7 years of course that has power, but I think it feels earned by the film.  I think it feels earned in particular by the franchise, by the 3 films which goes to your 1^st question which is how Matt’s changed.  I think one of the things that’s most interesting to me and I really look forward and this is a funny thing to say but the last time I watched this film is when it comes out on DVD I’m going to sit and watch Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum back to back and that will be it—done for it.  I know what I’ll see.  I’ll see he’s my friend, Matt, and I love him but I’ll see a wonderful, wonderful actor going through 7 years of his life.  Bourne aging and being tempered by his journey through the dark paranoid conspiratorial Bourne world and that I think is part of what I think why Ultimatum seems to work.  It’s very hard when you make a film and you hope it works and you dream it works and you work your butt off to try to make it work but you never know.  You’d have a much better sense of the film than I would at this point but I think one of the things that always did feel very powerful to me making it was this sense of Matt tempered. He’s 7 years older than he was when he was in Bourne and the character of Bourne knows so much more now than Jason Bourne did when he was fished out of the water at the start of Identity who knew nothing.  He didn’t even know what his name was.  He didn’t even know he’d been in the CIA, now he’s gone through 2 movies and the character you find in Ultimatum is still in the …he still has the full range of his skills.  He’s down the road towards finding the answers to his quest but he knows he faces formidable adversaries who will probably never be beaten.  Somewhere Matt manages to convey that and it crackles with contemporariness there.  I think we all…and that goes to the Cheney thing, I don’t think it’s about Cheney or any one government or anything like that.  I think there’s something about a character facing the huge problems and challenges of the contemporary world and meeting them with head on with courage, allowing for darkness and mistake, but ultimately always moral.  That’s incredibly, incredibly inspiring and that’s honestly what I think.  That to me is what it’s about and I think that’s why you enjoy the ride and that’s why I think people love the character because it speaks to them but not in a partisan way.  It just speaks to the way the world is. It’s full of difficulty and challenge and violence and ultimately if you can keep struggling toward the light you find the road.

How much authorship do you feel for these films? You didn’t do the 1^st one but your style is so identified with the whole series just from the last one. 

How much sense of authorship?  Well, I’m not ducking it but the truth is I’ll duck it.  No, franchise filmmaking is a group activity.  It really is.  The scale of the activity is huge; both logistical, financial, budgetary, resource wise it’s just you operate 360 degrees in a cruel time frame to make these things happen.  No one person is the author of a Bourne film.  The truth is it’s a coalition of people who share the same vision for Bourne and his world and we…its remarkably collaborative and collective.  Oh listen we disagree and we have tremendous old cat fights about can’t go this way, we should go this way and from time to time and somebody will have to judicate, whether it’s me or whatever. But that’s why they’re so great because I’ve never had an argument in a Bourne film—ever. Like an argument, a bad…we’ve had you know, but never once. It’s a fantastic…that’s one of the reasons they work—a brilliant team effort.

Paul, what did your Oscar nomination mean to you?

It was very nice.  I was actually on the set of Bourne Ultimatum at that time and everybody was very nice.  It meant a lot to me most of all because of the journey we took with all those families. They were so incredibly supportive of us and it meant the world to them and of course on a personal level it was a great honor, but it meant most because they felt acknowledged in this city, by Hollywood. And I think that was fantastic.