Edward R. Murrow had “good night, and good luck.”
Jimmy Kimmel has “apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time.”
It’s become the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host’s signature sign-off, the way he frequently ends episodes of his late-night show — it’s also the basis for a long-running fake feud between the pair, culminating in the “I’m F*ckin’ Matt Damon” music video (it’s no “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” but it’s still good) and subsequent “I’m F*ckin’ Ben Affleck” response.
But why Matt Damon?
“People started to call me and ask like, ‘Hey, what’s your connection to this guy?’ And I’d never met Jimmy,” Damon said on The Jess Cagle Show. “He literally pulled my name out of thin air one night. And the way he told me this story, he said he had like a, he said, ‘I had a ventriloquist and a guy in a gorilla suit as my guests. And I just said kind of as a throwaway, ‘My apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time,’ but he could have said Brad Pitt. He could have said, you know, George.” I want to be famous enough where I can say the first name “George,” and everyone knows exactly who I mean.
Anyway, Kimmel could have said literally anyone, “but he just, for some reason, maybe I had a movie out that week or something, but he just said my name. And it changed the course of both of our lives. We’ve kept this feud going for, you know, it’s gotta be 15 years now. I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.” You can relive the full history of the feud here.
(Via the Huffington Post)