Nothing Will Ever Beat Matt Damon’s ‘EuroTrip’ Cameo

The Big Picture

• Matt Damon’s cameo in EuroTrip was the result of his friendship with the writers and directors from their college days.
• The iconic scene with the song “Scotty Doesn’t Know” was filmed in Prague, despite its American setting.
• Damon fully embraced his role, allowing his head to be completely shaved and adopting a punk rocker appearance.

If you grew up in the 2000s, you definitely remember EuroTrip. This raunchy comedy dominated the teenage scene back then with a dirty premise and even dirtier jokes, playing with typical coming-of-age themes and motifs, but with a twist making everything quickly turn sexual. It also has a very catchy theme song that is played almost all the time, and you’ll probably start singing in your head as soon as you read its name: “Scotty Doesn’t Know.” At the beginning of the movie, we’re surprised by seeing none other than Matt Damon grace the stage at a house party scene to sing the jam dressed as a typical pop-punk band singer. The story of how the actor ended up on that stage is almost as cool as the movie itself.

Matt Damon Knew the Writers and Directors of ‘EuroTrip’ From Their College Days

In a Reddit AMA a few years ago, a user asked Matt Damon about his cameo on EuroTrip and how it came to be. The scene where he appears takes place at the beginning of the first act, as protagonist Scotty (Scott Mechlowitz) has just been dumped by his high school girlfriend Fiona (Kristin Kreuk) shortly after graduation. At a house party a while later, Scotty ends up ditched by his friend Cooper (Jacob Pitts) and is left alone to watch as a band performs “Scotty Doesn’t Know” with Fiona on stage dancing with the singer. To every viewers’ surprise, the singer is played by Matt Damon — who’s bald, dressed as a punk rocker, and engaging in a rather suggestive dance with Fiona.

As American as the whole setting of the scene may appear, it wasn’t recorded in the U.S. at all. All of EuroTrip was actually filmed in the Czech capital of Prague, and it just so happened that Matt Damon was also in town recording Terry Gilliam‘s The Brothers Grimm, which he starred in with Heath Ledger. Damon explains in the AMA that he knew the writers and directors of EuroTrip — Jeff Schaffer, Alec Berg, and David Mandel — as they all went to college together at Harvard. The three of them got in touch with Damon while recording their movie and the actor was game to do a cameo. His part was described to him as a “[Henry] Rollins kind of insane, bad version of a suburban, punk band guy.”

And Matt Damon was all in on the role, too. To achieve the manic looks of his EuroTrip character, he even allowed the team to completely shave his head. It helped that he was wearing a wig for his part in The Brothers Grimm, so there would be no issues if he showed up to that set bald all of a sudden. “I’m wearing a wig, just shave my head, let’s just go for it,” he says. Schaffer later recalled that Damon had also just stopped smoking by then, and that, in the actor’s words, he had “swelled up just like a tick,” so it made him look bigger. All that, along with tens of piercings and tattoos all over, made him look exactly the opposite of what we usually picture when thinking about him.

Another big challenge was the date when the house party scene was filmed. According to Schaffer, Matt Damon specified the dates he would be available to film, and it ended up that the chosen day was June 21, that year’s summer solstice. For those who aren’t aware, that means an extremely reduced amount of nighttime in most European countries. “And, of course, we are shooting a night scene, in Prague, with five hours of darkness.” Fortunately, they managed to film the whole scene without any issues. They just weren’t aware that “Scotty Doesn’t Know” would go on to haunt them the rest of their lives — including Matt Damon.

“Scotty Doesn’t Know” Was “A Family Affair,” According to Matt Damon

As Scotty travels to Europe with his friends on his quest to meet his German pen-pal Mieke (Jessica Boehrs) in person, the gang — comprised of him, Cooper, Jenny (Michelle Trachtenberg), and her brother Jamie (Travis Wester) — discovers that “Scotty Doesn’t Know” became a sort of global phenomenon. It follows Scotty everywhere, even in suspicious nightclubs in Bratislava, to the point it becomes a running gag, like the “Save Ferris” campaign in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Cooper even makes it into his ringtone (remember those?) just to piss Scotty off.

The lyrics were written by Schaffer, Berg, and Mandel for EuroTrip, but the band Lustra were also involved in the process. They had to overcome the competition of Matt Mahaffey and his band sElf, who wrote a completely different version of the song, but, in the end, the directors felt Lustra’s version was catchier. The song had to tell exactly the story of that affair and how it culminates in that party scene, and, in the end, it worked out for the best with Lustra being selected. In fact, their guitarist, Jason Adams, is even the brother of Matt Damon’s Harvard roommate, so everything became a sort of “family affair,” as the actor puts it. They recorded the official version of the song, and it was sent to Damon, who learned the lyrics to perform a perfect lip sync.

When the scene was recorded in Prague, the band was present and can be seen performing in the background with Matt Damon. Nick Cloutman, Lustra’s original singer, even lent Damon a T-shirt his father had designed for that scene, and Damon ended up walking off the set while still wearing it. “I’m not going to be like, ‘Hey, Matt Damon, can I have my shirt back?'” says Cloutman, and that’s how he got a running joke of Matt Damon having stolen his T-shirt. Not everyone can say that.

And, of course, the song still follows everyone involved with it to this day. Matt Damon himself can’t figure out why, of all his iconic roles, people still come to him and yell “Scotty doesn’t know!” When the actor climbs on stage to sing “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” the whole thing seems kind of absurd at first. Back when the movie came out, many people wondered whether it was Damon himself or just someone who looked an awful lot like him because a big-caliber actor doing a scene like that just seemed unlikely. But it does reinforce the whole absurdity of the situation. A guy is dumped by his girlfriend and finds out she’d been cheating on him for years with a punk band singer at a concert at their graduation party? Might as well get an Oscar-nominated actor to do it, then.

EuroTrip is available to rent on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.

Rent on Amazon