‘The Worst Snacks’ quip: ‘The Odyssey’ sound crew ribs Matt Damon’s VIP treatment
Matt Damon’s catching friendly fire from The Odyssey crew over his special treatment—and the decidedly meh snacks they were stuck with.
Onstage at the Hamilton Behind the Camera Awards, sound team member Willie Burton turned a running on-set joke into an awards-night bit about the pecking order behind The Odyssey . With Matt Damon leading Christopher Nolan ’s cast as Odysseus, Burton said even the snack table mirrored star power — and he playfully cast himself as the guy handing out the goodies.
“Matt and the major actors got the best snacks,” Burton said. “The crew on the ship, I gave them the worst snacks.”
Burton delivered the line at the ceremony presented by Variety, ribbing a production so sprawling that even its catering became a talking point. The gag landed because Nolan’s seafaring epic is anything but small — and its success means the snack budget jokes practically write themselves.
Big movie, bigger box office
The film ’s financial haul makes Burton’s quip even sharper. The Odyssey has racked up records while cruising past billion-dollar benchmarks.
- About $1.8 billion worldwide
- Now the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever
- Christopher Nolan’s biggest box-office hit
- Record-shattering IMAX run, including roughly $555 million in IMAX ticket sales
- Multiple milestones for Universal Pictures
A Homer expert isn’t sold
Emily Wilson, the University of Pennsylvania classics professor behind the widely praised 2017 English translation of Homer’s poem, has doubled down on her critique of Nolan’s take. In an op-ed for The Atlantic, she writes that the movie looks stunning but leaves the poem’s heart behind, with a script that talks up compassion and hospitality while the images lean harder on machinery and spectacle.
Wilson zeroes in on the film’s handling of the Trojan Horse and its repeated nods to Zeus’ law of welcoming strangers, arguing the story never fully engages the human cost of war or the choices driving it. She had previously questioned the screenplay’s emotional and ethical depth in a review for the London Review of Books.