Baz: Matt Damon stars in tragi-comedy about US's Iraqi farce

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The actor and director have been doing final post-production work on The Bourne Ultimatum and they clearly enjoy working together.

Greengrass, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his extraordinary work on United 93, will begin shooting a picture based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran's non-fiction book Imperial Life In The Emerald City, which explored the Americans' calamitous efforts to set up a provisional government in Baghdad, with people being hired more for their loyalty to President Bush than their qualifications.

"It was a disaster," said Matt. "They hired people who couldn't speak Arabic. They hired people to run the accounting system who couldn't add two and two, and people with no expertise in post-conflict reconstruction.

"It was a farce, and I think the film's approach will be to look at it like a tragic black comedy of incompetence.

"Paul's still working on The Bourne Ultimatum and the script for Emerald City isn't complete - but I think the idea is for a farcical tragedy," the actor said when we met at the Hotel du Cap.

Although the film will be based on Chandrasekaran's real-life accounts, Matt told me the character he would play would be fictional.

"They're creating someone for me to play based on several people - a sort of composite," he explained.

Filming on the movie, being produced by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner from London's Working Title studio, begins in February.