Matt Damon is promoting a new documentary he helped create for the History Channel called “The People Speak.” The film uses celebrities, including Damon, Josh Brolin, Marisa Tomei, Viggo Mortensen and Kerry Washington, to voice some of the powerful first person accounts in historian Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of The United States. Zinn is a Harvard professor and a good friend of Matt Damon’s family. (He’s 86 years old now and still going strong. I had the pleasure of seeing him speak at an event in New York about six years ago.) People’s History is both inspiring and heartbreaking as it recounts efforts to change history by those who were most oppressed by it, often minorities and indigenous people who lost families, homes, and cultures to invading armies and dominant groups. Many fought long, hard battles to earn basic rights. I’m excited for this film because it’s been about 10 years since I read People’s History and I’d love to see what Damon does with it.

In a press conference yesterday, Damon was inevitably asked about his sort-of prescient criticism of ex Alaskan governor and Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin last year when she first emerged on the scene. He called Palin “absurd” and “like a bad Disney movie” im September, for which he drew a lot of ire at the time. As the campaign went on, more people shared Damon’s impression. He kind of skirted the question, though, and sort-of said he was surprised by how much play his comments received.

How does Matt Damon make reciting the Declaration of Independence exciting?

“You just read it,” says the actor-writer-producer. “Seriously. It is an incredible document. I think people either forget about it or have been taught it too early in their lives. It’s a document worth reading and rereading every single year because it’s the principles in that document that we should be loyal to and fight for and struggle for, rather than whichever government is in power.”

“The Bourne Ultimatum” star reads the declaration in “The People Speak,” an upcoming History Channel movie co-executive produced by Damon and based on Howard Zinn’s book, “A People’s History of the United States.” Joining Damon in reading letters, speeches and text from famous and not-so famous Americans are such stars as Josh Brolin, Viggo Mortensen, Morgan Freeman and Marisa Tomei.

“The material is inherently dramatic,” says Tomei, who recited the words of factory worker Harriet Hanson Robinson at a 2003 celebration of the millionth copy of Zinn’s book sold and in the documentary. “You don’t have to wonder, ‘How am I going to rephrase that?’ or ‘How am I going to make it through this scene?’ It’s all right there for you in the words of these impassioned people.”

One political topic Damon is avoiding is Sarah Palin. Damon drew headlines last September when he told The Associated Press during an interview that the Republican vice presidential candidacy was like “a bad Disney movie.” He said he had “no idea” what Palin would do now that she has stepped down as Alaska’s governor. He joked that he’s still in shock about the attention his remarks received.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Damon. “Certainly, that whole campaign was a next-generation campaign in the sense that YouTube and all these different things existed that weren’t really around in 2004. Campaigning is different now than it was a couple of cycles ago. I think that little interview was a small part of that.”

[From AP via The Huffington Post]

The film also features music performances by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pink and Lupe Fiasco. Damon has tried to get it made for over ten years, and helped finance the project. Marisa Tomei explained that the readings were filmed on stage in front of a live audience, and people were so moved by the passages that they often stood up at the end to applaud. It’s nice to hear that Damon isn’t focusing on the negative at this point and is moving forward with his charity work and a project that’s incredibly meaningful for him. I’ve been a fan since I first saw Good Will Hunting 13 years ago, and this guy keeps getting better with age.