Warner Bros.
The most famous line in 'The Town' was inspired by Matt Damon
Matt Damon is on Ben Affleck’s mind even when they aren’t working together. The Town writer, star, and director revealed he came up with arguably the film’s most iconic line by imagining what Damon would say.
While out promoting his new film Animals, which is now streaming on Netflix, Ben Affleck recalled how he came up with the lines he says to Jeremy Renner’s character when recruiting him to exact some revenge on the set the day of filming.
“I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we’re gonna hurt some people,” Affleck’s Doug McCray says as he storms into Jem’s, played by Renner, apartment.
“Whose car are we gonna take?” Jem quickly replies.
Ben Affleck said he wrote the “I need your help” line in The Town because he was aiming for what he called a “Matt [Damon] kind of line”
According to Affleck, he wanted something with the feel of a line Damon would write, so he sat outside the set and wrote one, although he wasn’t sure it would work.
“Maybe it’s too much. Maybe it won’t, you know, it’s like pushing it a little bit,” he said.
Affleck said Renner liked it, so they shot a few different takes, and he ended up liking how it played, with the scene ultimately becoming one of the most memorable scenes in the movie.
Ben Affleck says he wrote The Town’s iconic “we’re going to hurt some people” line outside the set right before filming
“I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later, and we’re going to hurt some people”
“I remember we were shooting that scene. I was just supposed to go in and get Jeremy, and we were going to get in the car. And I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I need one of the kind of Matt kind of lines.’ So I just wrote it outside the set”
“I remember Jeremy was like, ‘Yeah, and then you just say, what car we going to take?’ Because all the rest of the stuff goes without saying. And he liked it. So I tried it, did a couple takes, and then it ended up like, yeah, it worked”
— Yonan (@yonann) October 7, 2026
The Town, which Affleck directed and starred in, came out in 2010, and Renner earned an Academy Award nomination for playing Jem. Despite his 2014 film Argo winning Best Picture a few years later, The Town is largely the most appreciated directorial effort of Affleck’s career.