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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings

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Speaker 1: you the secret stories and little known details about your

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Speaker 1: favorite music, movies, tv shows, and more. We are your

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Speaker 1: Bostonians of behind the scenes drama, your Carlton Fisks of facts,

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Speaker 1: your Janitors of just really good anecdotes, here to explore

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Speaker 1: the little idiosyncrasies that make up our pop cultural landscape.

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Speaker 1: My name is Jordan Runtog, and I'm Gordon Wood. No, no,

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Speaker 1: I'm Alex Tagle. I'm Alex Tagle. And today we are

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Speaker 1: diving deep into Goodwill hunting, a movie near and dear

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Speaker 1: to my heart as a native Boston kid. But before

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Speaker 1: we go any further, I want to pause for a

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Speaker 1: moment to recognize a milestone and take care of a

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Speaker 1: little housekeeping. This is our one hundredth episode, which seems

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Speaker 1: simultaneously very hard to believe and also very easy to believe.

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Speaker 1: What do you think? I agree? Wild Time has lost

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Speaker 1: one in twenty twenty. But yeah, I mean, what is

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Speaker 1: what is time anymore between other than the periods of

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Speaker 1: wakefulness that are occasionally marked by dinner? But yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: duly honored. I mean here's a time stat I think

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Speaker 1: it would take because I haven't crunched the numbers exactly,

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Speaker 1: but I think it would take a week without sleep

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Speaker 1: to listen to all of the episodes we've done so

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Speaker 1: far without sleep. Is sort of a very common theme

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Speaker 1: in the TMI story. I have to say, yeah, especially

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Speaker 1: when we were doing three of these a week. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was that was That was not great. Um. In

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Speaker 1: any event, folks, we both want to thank you for

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Speaker 1: spending this time with us so far, and to everyone

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Speaker 1: who has reached out and said kind words to us

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Speaker 1: or left reviews. It touches us in a way that

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Speaker 1: I can hardly describe. We thank you from the bottom

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Speaker 1: of our hearts. I am just so grateful to all

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Speaker 1: these new friends, and just to all who have listened.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the gift of your time is so precious.

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Speaker 1: So I hope you continue doing joy, though slightly less frequently.

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Speaker 1: For the foreseeable future, we're gonna be moving to one

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Speaker 1: episode a week rather than two. You may have noticed

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Speaker 1: in the last couple of months the releases were a

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Speaker 1: little less consistent. To borrow a phrase from today's topic,

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Speaker 1: it's not your fault. The power don't do that not

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Speaker 1: you not. The powers that be at iHeart have some

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Speaker 1: other projects that they want us working on, and it

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Speaker 1: came to everyone's attention that we do better work when

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Speaker 1: we are able to sleep. So if I okay, let

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Speaker 1: me just level with everybody for a moment. The kind

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Speaker 1: folks at iHeart initially wanted this show to be about

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Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty minutes an episode, which is why we

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Speaker 1: were doing three of these a week. We were ever

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Speaker 1: so young, yeah never, I think the shortest we ever

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Speaker 1: got was maybe forty minutes. So very quickly, within the

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Speaker 1: first couple of months, they realize that these were gonna

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Speaker 1: run long, and so we cut it down the two

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Speaker 1: episodes a week to save our sanity. So now we're

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Speaker 1: gonna go to one. But hey, if you want more

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Speaker 1: tea am I. It really helps to do all the

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Speaker 1: usual things that podcast hosts are always telling you to do.

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Speaker 1: Leave a review or a star rating on Apple Podcasts

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Speaker 1: or Spotify, or just tell a friend about us. The

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Speaker 1: more listeners we have, the more friends we have, the

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Speaker 1: longer we can keep this going. But here's to one

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Speaker 1: hundred more episodes. Thank you all so much for all

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Speaker 1: the kind words and just being along with us for

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Speaker 1: this ride. It's been so much fun what he said, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, just have it. I didn't know you were

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Speaker 1: going to do this. I would have prepared remarks. Sorry,

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Speaker 1: this wasn't in the document when I looked at it earlier.

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Speaker 1: Son of a you're you're better better dog. Uh yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I hear from most people from on Twitter,

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Speaker 1: and it's it's such a delight to have people reach

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Speaker 1: out and and like kind of our mission statement where

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Speaker 1: we were talking about just getting people excited about stuff,

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Speaker 1: it's such a hearing people's anecdotes about like oh I

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Speaker 1: remember that, and like this is so cool and did

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Speaker 1: you know this? And just people engaging with us. This

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Speaker 1: is so It's been such a kind of welcome inversion

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Speaker 1: of my most of my career, which was to write

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Speaker 1: a lot and and things that did a lot of traffic,

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Speaker 1: but I rarely heard from people about them, like unless

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Speaker 1: you've got something wrong in which yeah, yeah, usually from

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Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein's rep. H yeah, on brand for today, Yeah, Harvey,

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Speaker 1: Harvey Sean Penn scientology Yeah, scientology, Um is my nda up?

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Speaker 1: Can I talk about any of that stuff yet? Anyway? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if everyone's been so so nice, on Twitter and and

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Speaker 1: it's it's great reading the reviews, and you know, honestly,

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Speaker 1: I just get to hang out with Jordan every week

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Speaker 1: and having people say nice things about it and all

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Speaker 1: of the bits, all my silly little bits and impressions.

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Speaker 1: It's really just the cherry on top. Uh So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: thank you everyone, one hundred episodes. Good lord. You know,

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Speaker 1: in a way, it's very fitting that we're doing good

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Speaker 1: Will Hunting today as a story about friendships. It's a

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Speaker 1: story that explores elements of male friendship that I think

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Speaker 1: often go unspoken, you know, fears, heartbreak, hopes, weaknesses, loss, ambition, dreams,

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Speaker 1: and family. So in a way, it's a perfect celebration. Well,

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Speaker 1: you and I share high and earlier this morning, we

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Speaker 1: had a conversation about a guy in a hardcore band

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Speaker 1: delivering a monologue about manually masturbating horses on stage. So

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Speaker 1: you can take that out of you. Remember when I

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Speaker 1: said it goes unspoken. That continues to go unspoken. Anyhow,

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Speaker 1: back to the topic at hand, good Will Hunting. If

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Speaker 1: you were born in the Boston metro area, there are

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Speaker 1: two things that you're hardwired to be intensely proud of.

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Speaker 1: The Red Sox and good Will Hunting, or specifically Matt

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Speaker 1: Damon and Ben Affleck. They are just the pinnacle of

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Speaker 1: the local boys made good and their personal story, at

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Speaker 1: least to me as a Boston kid, is better than

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Speaker 1: any Hollywood drama, and their real life story to me

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Speaker 1: is inextricably linked with the touching friendship at the heart

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Speaker 1: of their movie. It's just so good. It's romantic in

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Speaker 1: every sense of the word, and it's filled with this wonderful,

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Speaker 1: redemptive arc. And I personally was surrounded by a group

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Speaker 1: of very artistically minded, showbiz hopeful kids at my high school.

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Speaker 1: So the story of these two childhood friends making it

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Speaker 1: all the way to Hollywood and the Oscars gave us

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Speaker 1: something to shoot for, which is really special as a

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Speaker 1: you know, as a high school or so. But more

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Speaker 1: than just that, this movie has incredible performances by Robin

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Speaker 1: Williams and Mini Driver, gorgeous songs by Elliott Smith, and

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Speaker 1: wonderful understated direction by Gus Van Sant taking him from

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Speaker 1: the art house to the mainstream. You have stirring dramatic speeches,

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Speaker 1: endlessly quotable moments. I love it. H Go what do

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Speaker 1: you think of Good Will Hunting. I didn't come to

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Speaker 1: this movie until later, but the biggest thing I took

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Speaker 1: away from it was Elliott Smith. Yeah, not the act, don't.

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Speaker 1: Oh well yeah, the accents. But no, my Boston accent

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Speaker 1: didn't really crystallize until I saw The Departed. Um my

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Speaker 1: boy's wicked snat. I can't. I can't do a Boston

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Speaker 1: accent in my life. I it's funny. Yeah, it's funny

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Speaker 1: because despite watching a good number of movies set in

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Speaker 1: Boston with like really honking Boston accents, it's mostly just

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Speaker 1: the depoted Wait, what's the other one that Leo was in?

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Speaker 1: I'm a duly appointed Federal Marshall. Shutter Island? Is it? Oh?

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Speaker 1: It is Shutter Island? Okay, all I can think of

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Speaker 1: is it? I mean it's it's either it's either depoted

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Speaker 1: or it's uh um mayor Quimby from Yeah yeah yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: yeah yeah say chowdah. It's so, I mean, I guess

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Speaker 1: it's talking about this. Like, I grew up farther enough

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Speaker 1: West that it was unusual when I would hear that,

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Speaker 1: like Iah, it was not something that was ever like

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Speaker 1: normalized to me, and I would always privately be like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I never got there. I never got the

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Speaker 1: Pittsburgh or the Philly accent until I went to those places,

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Speaker 1: because it's spurg I know, Philly Dan Dan Tan Kinna

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Speaker 1: go dan Tan get some pop. It's almost Midwest. It's

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Speaker 1: like flat Midwest. If you go Dantan to the Crick,

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Speaker 1: it's like almost it's almost like Chicago Midwest with a

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Speaker 1: little bit of Philly. Yeah, okay, yeah, I can kind

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Speaker 1: of hear it now. Although I mean this movie does

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Speaker 1: have us like a number of hilarious like like all

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Speaker 1: the quotable stuff. Script is obviously great, but um yeah,

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Speaker 1: my buddies in college, I used to do the like

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Speaker 1: when they when they go to have like the fight,

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Speaker 1: and Casey Affleck is in like the back seat and

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Speaker 1: he just he he doesn't want to give. He just goes.

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Speaker 1: But we we are snacks. That just became like a

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Speaker 1: running bit with us. It was just at any time

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Speaker 1: anyone wanted to do something, food, food came first, but

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Speaker 1: we got snacks. Um yeah, I mean I I just

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Speaker 1: this movie introduced me Elliott Smith, who is one of

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Speaker 1: my favorite songwriters. Um spent a lot of Um, I

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Speaker 1: don't know if I want to say happy hours. Can

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Speaker 1: you have happy hours listening to Eliot Smith? But a

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Speaker 1: lot of certainly a lot of hours um with that

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Speaker 1: man's wonderful voice and incredible artistry and so if nothing else,

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Speaker 1: I mean, the first time I ever saw him was

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Speaker 1: in that awkward white suit on the at the Oscars.

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Speaker 1: And then when I finally saw the movie, I was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: these songs are incredible. What is this? And then a

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Speaker 1: long period of staring Moon eight out the window with yeah,

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Speaker 1: pining pining. Oh that was your pining music? Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: my my pining music was Ben Folds. The other good

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Speaker 1: thing about this movie is that, I mean, it has

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Speaker 1: the Robin Williams doing is It's not your Fault line,

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Speaker 1: which I mean, who doesn't want to have Robin Williams

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Speaker 1: wrapping his arms around you telling you that it's not

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Speaker 1: your fault like one of the most like affecting scenes.

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Speaker 1: I think of any movie that we've discussed. I mean,

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Speaker 1: Robin Williams is basically the patron saint of TMI. I

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Speaker 1: feel like we've talked about him in like five different movies. See,

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Speaker 1: he might be the Yeah, honestly, I'm trying to think

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Speaker 1: of there's any other someone else's come up with so

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Speaker 1: many great stories and just universal positivity. But yeah, we

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Speaker 1: should probably go easy on the Robin. But but no,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to know. Yeah, I mean a more

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Speaker 1: cynical view is this is this kind of where he's

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Speaker 1: like his maybe like a crinkly eyed sincerity, maybe started

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Speaker 1: to get into Patch Adams territory, like modeling, a little

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Speaker 1: more of the modeling side. But it is so good.

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Speaker 1: I would tell you my mom went to the Patch

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Speaker 1: Adams premiere and met Robin Williams there. No, no, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they got they talked for a bit and they got

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Speaker 1: a picture together, and he signed her her ticket to

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Speaker 1: the premiere. And uh, you know, I mean for all

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Speaker 1: of Robin Williams comedic genius and many gifts, anybody who

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Speaker 1: takes time to make your mom feel special, that's a

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Speaker 1: there is a special place in heaven for you, my dude.

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Speaker 1: So I will always extra Robin cred for me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: very cool guy. Did she like the movie anyhow? Without

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Speaker 1: further ado, you know, I didn't mind it. I didn't.

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Speaker 1: I thought it was okay. I thought, yeah, I didn't

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Speaker 1: mind Patch Adams. I saw it with a very forgiving

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Speaker 1: eye because I was like Oh my god, I feel

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Speaker 1: like connected to this. My mom wants the premiere. Sure,

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Speaker 1: I just remember Donner Party of fifty. Yeah, having to

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Speaker 1: have that joke explained to me. So I take it.

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Speaker 1: Doing Patch adams On here is not gonna fly no

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Speaker 1: anyhow without further ado, from the location scouting trip that

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Speaker 1: nearly got Robin Williams killed, to the early draft of

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Speaker 1: the script that was a spy thriller, to the time

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Speaker 1: Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad It nearly played the leads. Here

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Speaker 1: is everything you didn't know about good Will Hunting. The

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Speaker 1: tailor good Will Hunting kicks off with one of the

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Speaker 1: most adorable origin stories in Hollywood history. It all began

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Speaker 1: to my home city of Boston, Massachusetts, the state's name

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Speaker 1: being an old Aldgunquin word meaning very hard to spell.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck lives two blocks

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Speaker 1: from one another in the Boston neighborhood of Cambridge, so

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Speaker 1: close that Ben could see into Matt's bedroom from his own.

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Speaker 1: Their moms were friends and introduced them when Matt was

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Speaker 1: ten and Ben was eight years old, and they hit

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Speaker 1: it off right away. Matt Damon later recalled the moment

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Speaker 1: when he knew Ben was quote a good friend to

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Speaker 1: have during a twenty nineteen appearance on Conan O'Brien. Apparently,

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Speaker 1: Ben came to his rescue during a fight, and the

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Speaker 1: trouble began when Matt and a group of neighborhood kids

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Speaker 1: went to play football in the Cambridge Common during a

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Speaker 1: snow day at some point back in the mid eighties,

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Speaker 1: and Matt said, I'm off to a kid that I knew.

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Speaker 1: He was like six foot six. I might have been

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Speaker 1: five foot three at the time. I'd scored on him

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Speaker 1: or something. I don't know. I said something, but he

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Speaker 1: came for me, and it was right then that little

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Speaker 1: five ft two Ben Affleck tackled this dude off me,

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Speaker 1: like out of nowhere. I was a junior and he

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Speaker 1: was a freshman, and he tackled this kid off me,

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Speaker 1: literally at the risk of his own life. I remember

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Speaker 1: that was a big moment, like, this guy will put

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Speaker 1: himself in a really bad spot for me. That's a

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Speaker 1: good friend. I love that. Matt and Ben went to

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Speaker 1: the same school, the interestingly named Cambridge Ringe and Latin School,

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Speaker 1: where they bonded over a shared love of acting, which

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Speaker 1: was very unusual for their peer group. What is Ringe? Ringe?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Ringe is a town in New Hampshire,

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Speaker 1: but beyond that, I'm not sure what Ringe and Latin is.

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Speaker 1: You can't teach ringe, you gotta be born with it.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of a lot of the public schools

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Speaker 1: in Boston are the like Rock Spurry Lattin. There's always

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Speaker 1: Latin in the name. For some reason, they've really understood that. Matt,

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Speaker 1: Damon's brother later told People magazine that Matt and Ben

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Speaker 1: quote weren't heart throbs by any means. They weren't even

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Speaker 1: considered cool kids. They were drama geeks, and Ben later

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Speaker 1: told Parade magazine that before he met Matt, acting was

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Speaker 1: a solo activity where I just go off and do

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Speaker 1: something acting a little TV show or something, and no

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Speaker 1: one understood it. All of a sudden, I have this friend, Matt,

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Speaker 1: and he gets it, and he wants to do it,

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Speaker 1: and he thinks it's interesting and wants to talk about it.

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Speaker 1: So soon both of us are doing it, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: as teenagers. In nineteen eighty eight, they actually both appeared

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Speaker 1: as extras in the Fenway Park scene for the film

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Speaker 1: Field of Dreams, which is interesting, thus cementing their lifelong

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Speaker 1: association with the Boston Red Sox. And my favorite is

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Speaker 1: there a Ben Affleck Matt Damon like benefit equivalent Bat

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Speaker 1: call him bat Afflin men ment definitely doesn't really, I

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Speaker 1: guess you have to say Ben and Matt. Yeah, my

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Speaker 1: favorite Ben and Matt Red Sox story went down during

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Speaker 1: the filming of Gone Girl, which was delayed significantly after

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Speaker 1: director David Fincher wanted Ben Affleck's character to wear a

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Speaker 1: hat with New York Yankees logo, who are famously the

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Speaker 1: Red Sox rivals, and Ben refused. And Ben later explained

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Speaker 1: an interview with The New York Times, I said, David,

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Speaker 1: I love you. I would do anything for you, but

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Speaker 1: I will not wear a Yankees hat. I just can't.

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Speaker 1: I can't wear it because it's going to become a thing. David,

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Speaker 1: I will never hear the end of it. I just

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Speaker 1: can't do it, and I couldn't put it on my head.

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Speaker 1: And Ben would characterize this tiff as quote a legitimate

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Speaker 1: fight that resulted in a standoff between them that shut

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Speaker 1: down production on Gone Girl for four days. The matter

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Speaker 1: was solved ultimately with a Mets hat, which was deemed

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Speaker 1: an appropriate compromise because everyone from Boston knows that Mets

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Speaker 1: fans are secret Red Sox fans because they hate the

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Speaker 1: Yankees just as much. But back to Matt and Ben's

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Speaker 1: childhood friendship in the early eighties. At first, Ben, though younger,

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Speaker 1: was the veteran performer. He was a child actor who

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Speaker 1: had appeared in a nineteen seventy nine indie film called

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Speaker 1: Dark End of the Street, which was directed by a

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Speaker 1: family friend, and as a seven year old, he developed

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Speaker 1: a crush on the nineteen year old playing his older sister,

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Speaker 1: which I think has shades of the Brady Bunch in there.

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Speaker 1: And as a twelve year old, he appeared in a

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four PBS educational series, The Voyage of Mimi,

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Speaker 1: and also a Burger King commercial, along with a few

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Speaker 1: other odds and ends, and Ben introduced Matt to his agent,

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Speaker 1: who took Matt on as a client, and Matt made

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Speaker 1: his feature film debut in nineteen eighty eight's Mystic Pizza

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Speaker 1: with a single line of dialogue as the little brother

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Speaker 1: of the rich kid who's trying to date Julia Roberts.

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Speaker 1: And as students, Matt and Ben would have what they

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Speaker 1: referred to as quote business lunches in their high school cafeteria,

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Speaker 1: and I find this adorable. They salked away money in

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Speaker 1: a joint bank account to fund trips down to Manhattan

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Speaker 1: for auditions, and hilariously bended apparently sweet talk the teller

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Speaker 1: at his local bank in the withdrawing money from his

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Speaker 1: college savings account that his mother had been depositing into,

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Speaker 1: which is cute but also seems like kind of illegal. Yeah. Maybe. Well,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about Ben's upbringing for a second, because he

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Speaker 1: was sort of on a socioeconomic fault line, which is

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Speaker 1: a topic that gets explored in good will hunting. According

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Speaker 1: to Ben's father, the neighborhood but they grew up was

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Speaker 1: quote kind of rough. His dad was an aspiring playwright

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Speaker 1: who worked a series of odd jobs. He was a

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Speaker 1: janitor at Harvard, funnily enough, but spent much of his

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Speaker 1: free time backstage at the prestigious Theater Company of Boston.

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Speaker 1: His mother was a Radcliffe educated elementary school teacher who

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Speaker 1: worked in the Boston public school system. So they were

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Speaker 1: a very well educated, intellectual, artistic family living in a

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Speaker 1: neighborhood that didn't particularly encourage art. Harvard mit, they attract

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Speaker 1: people who were able to pay the enormous tuition costs

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Speaker 1: at those schools, but they are themselves located in the

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Speaker 1: more working class areas of Boston. M I kind of

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Speaker 1: gets hit with a brick for this for reading Jordan

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Speaker 1: wrote this, not me, No, I mean the neighborhoods. I mean,

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Speaker 1: like most neighborhoods in the Boston area and any urban

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Speaker 1: center have been like increasingly more gentrified in the last

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Speaker 1: you know, in the twenty five years since Goodwill Hunting

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Speaker 1: came out in it or forty years since the Afflex

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Speaker 1: and the Damons were grown up there. But yeah, at

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Speaker 1: the time, Cambridge was more of a working class place,

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Speaker 1: and I think Matt would later say it caused a

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Speaker 1: lot of friction with the kind of tweety rich kids

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Speaker 1: that would become an in from out of state to

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Speaker 1: go to these Ivy League schools. And these feelings intensified

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Speaker 1: and became even thornier in the late eighties when they

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Speaker 1: both went out off to college. Matt famously went to Harvard,

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Speaker 1: whereas Ben went to the University of Vermont, dropping out

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Speaker 1: after a single semester. And he has admitted feeling embarrassed

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Speaker 1: about that. I mean, he later told Rolling Stone I've

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Speaker 1: always been insecure because I only had a little bit

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Speaker 1: of college and knew a lot of people from fancy schools.

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Speaker 1: All that sort of resentment in goodwill hunting about people

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Speaker 1: who went to college came from me feeling on the fringe.

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Speaker 1: One of the many articles you shared to me about

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Speaker 1: this particular topic is The Unbearable Sadness of Ben Affleck

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Speaker 1: at BuzzFeed by Anne Helen Peterson, and in that piece,

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Speaker 1: she talks about the word fratty, something that has dogged

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Speaker 1: Ben Affleck throughout his career, and she says that he

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Speaker 1: always hid that because it pointed to a class level

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Speaker 1: that he never achieved. Affleck later told the Talk the

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Speaker 1: idea that I'm this frat guy is odd because I

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Speaker 1: only went to college for one semester. I was never

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Speaker 1: in a fraternity. It speaks to a kind of upper

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Speaker 1: class upbringing that I didn't have. Matt Damon has also

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Speaker 1: had a lot to say about these complicated class dynamics,

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Speaker 1: which is illustrated in a pretty screenwriting one oh one

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Speaker 1: way when Will and his buds literally fight guys from

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Speaker 1: Harvard and Might. In an interview with the journalist and

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Speaker 1: critic Tom Shone, he said I think for us, coming

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Speaker 1: from Cambridge and living in a neighborhood that was very

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Speaker 1: much dwarfed by Harvard. At MIT, we would look at

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Speaker 1: these other people, these students who came in every September

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Speaker 1: and think it's our city, not yours. All of those

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Speaker 1: issues were very much part of our lives and all

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Speaker 1: the kids we knew and grew up with. And then

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Speaker 1: I went to Harvard and something I was friends with

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Speaker 1: all these people and not seeing them as some strongman antagonist,

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Speaker 1: perfectly wonderful people too. So what does that mean? All

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Speaker 1: that stuff bottled up in Goodwill Hunting. Ben's father was

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Speaker 1: a janitor at Harvard. In fact, his girlfriend at the

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Speaker 1: time was the janitor in my dorm in my freshman year,

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Speaker 1: which made it even more bizarre. So when on Friday

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Speaker 1: nights the kid would get too drunk and throw up

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Speaker 1: all over the place, I knew who was going to

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Speaker 1: clean it up, and it was someone I considered a friend.

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Speaker 1: That kind of shift came out I think in the

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Speaker 1: soup of Goodwill Hunting. Interesting, right, yeah it is. And

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Speaker 1: in two thousand both of them, Matt Ben and Matt

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Speaker 1: spoke at a rally in support of raising the Living

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Speaker 1: wage of campus employees. Affleck has also rated a two

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Speaker 1: thousand and two documentary called Occupation, which chronicled a sit

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Speaker 1: in organized by the Harvard Living Wage Campaign, and some

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Speaker 1: some film scholars have likened to the class conflicts in

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Speaker 1: Goodwill hunting to the tensions between Catholics and Protestants in

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Speaker 1: Boston and also Ireland. He's published in twenty twelve in

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Speaker 1: the Journal of Comparative Poetics claims that Will and his

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Speaker 1: South Boston friends play the role of Irish Catholics, while

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Speaker 1: the students at Harvard and Mit represent the English bread

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Speaker 1: upper class Protestants. How do you feel about that? Who

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Speaker 1: wrote that? Probably guys. I want the harbors, you know.

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Speaker 1: I always think it's funny that Avleck grew up in

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Speaker 1: or was born in Berkeley. But I don't know that

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Speaker 1: his let me move the Boston when he was like

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Speaker 1: three or something. He was very young. No, No, I

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Speaker 1: thought he had like rich, like Mayflower family. But it

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Speaker 1: was it was that show Finding Your Roots that he

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Speaker 1: was on that he tried to pressure them into hiding

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Speaker 1: the fact that his ancestors hit some wing of his

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Speaker 1: family were slave owners. Oh wow, where does it say

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Speaker 1: he pressured him? It was an email that came under

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Speaker 1: the Sony hack. WikiLeaks released them. Oh my god. The

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Speaker 1: host of the show, Henry Lewis Gates, was writing to

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Speaker 1: the head of Sony Pictures, Michael Linton. He said, for

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Speaker 1: the first time, one of our guests asked us to

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Speaker 1: edit out something about one of his ancestors, the fact

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Speaker 1: that he owned slaves. He literally said, what do we do?

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Speaker 1: And Michael Lynton was like, you take it out of

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Speaker 1: the segment. I mean, did you read any of the

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Speaker 1: BuzzFeed article I sent you. I think I read it

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Speaker 1: when I came out, Yeah, but no, I didn't read it.

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Speaker 1: It's a lot about how like Ben Affleck really had

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Speaker 1: an uncomfortable relationship with his kind of working class upbringing

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Speaker 1: and was sort of ashamed of it, and when he

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Speaker 1: was dating j Loo, it kind of came out because

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Speaker 1: he was trying to make her more, you know, in quotes, respectable,

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Speaker 1: and there were even rumors at the time that he

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Speaker 1: wanted to run for office. Yeah, it's a really interesting

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Speaker 1: piece that gets into a lot of like nuances about

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Speaker 1: his relationship to class and you know race. In the

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Speaker 1: case of j Love, it was interesting. Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: I just knew about a lot of his dad's stuff,

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Speaker 1: that his dad was like drank himself out of their

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Speaker 1: home essentially and was homeless. I didn't know it was homeless.

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Speaker 1: I knew he moved up to like Ohai or somewhere

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Speaker 1: in California. Yeah, yeah, I mean that was where he

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Speaker 1: he spent like twelve years getting sober. But that he

427
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 1: hit rock bottom on the actual streets at Cambridge. Oh Jesus,

428
00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:43,880
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Wow. Well, on the topic of

429
00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 1: high falutin concepts and over intellectualized papers like that weird

430
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:51,280
Speaker 1: good will hunting are the Catholics and Protestants thing we

431
00:23:51,400 --> 00:23:54,880
Speaker 1: just talked about, Let's talk about Harvard. Ben Affleck did

432
00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:57,399
Speaker 1: as one semester at the University of Vermont before dropping

433
00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:00,960
Speaker 1: out and chasing fam in La and Matt almost completed

434
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:03,000
Speaker 1: his course of study at Harvard, but he dropped out

435
00:24:03,080 --> 00:24:06,159
Speaker 1: in his last semester, just twelve credit shy of graduation,

436
00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:09,080
Speaker 1: in order to also pursue film work. I think he

437
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:10,960
Speaker 1: was there for a total of five years because he

438
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:14,040
Speaker 1: took a sabbatical to take an acting gig in the

439
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:17,879
Speaker 1: movie school Ties, which started Brendan Fraser and also featured

440
00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck. But in Matt's fifth and final year at Harvard,

441
00:24:22,040 --> 00:24:24,400
Speaker 1: he enrolled in a playwriting class, and, as he later

442
00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,480
Speaker 1: told Boston Magazine for the twenty thirteen oral History of

443
00:24:27,520 --> 00:24:30,760
Speaker 1: Goodwill Hunting, the culmination of this playwriting class was to

444
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 1: write a one act play. And I just started writing

445
00:24:33,280 --> 00:24:35,600
Speaker 1: a movie. So I handed the professor at the end

446
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:38,640
Speaker 1: of the semester a forty odd page document and said, look,

447
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:40,359
Speaker 1: I'm might have failed your class, but this is the

448
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:43,960
Speaker 1: first act of something longer, And upon accepting the assignment,

449
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:48,119
Speaker 1: Damon's professor, Anthony Kubiak, was very impressed, later saying that

450
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: the script was quote authentic and real. He added to

451
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:53,920
Speaker 1: Boston Magazine, the thing that they always say when you

452
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:55,920
Speaker 1: submit a script to an agent is that they read

453
00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:58,160
Speaker 1: the first page, and they read the middle, and they

454
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:00,720
Speaker 1: can tell if they want to continue. They can see

455
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:03,399
Speaker 1: whether you can capture the human voice and dialogue. And

456
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 1: that was all over this work. So Matt dropped out

457
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:08,639
Speaker 1: of Harvard after we got a role in the nineteen

458
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:13,160
Speaker 1: ninety three historical Western Geronimo, an American Legend, which, despite

459
00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:16,439
Speaker 1: featuring the likes of Robert Duval and our beloved Gene Hackman,

460
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: failed to make Matt Damon a Star, and upon arriving

461
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 1: in La, Matt did the time honored new to La

462
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:26,919
Speaker 1: actor Wanna Be trope of crashing on his friend's floor,

463
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:29,879
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck's floor. But the roles for Matt were not

464
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: exactly forthcoming. He got two bit parts in movies that

465
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 1: also featured Ben Affleck, who had much bigger roles parts

466
00:25:36,400 --> 00:25:39,679
Speaker 1: in Glory Days and also the Kevin Smith movie Chasing Amy.

467
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:44,119
Speaker 1: More on Kevin Smith later, but Ben was doing I

468
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:46,640
Speaker 1: think marginally better than Ben, because he had the lead

469
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,679
Speaker 1: role in Kevin Smith's nineteen ninety five movie Mall Rats,

470
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:53,639
Speaker 1: and also, of course Richard Linkletter's Dazed and Confused. I

471
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:55,639
Speaker 1: didn't know this, but I recently learned that Ben Affleck

472
00:25:55,680 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 1: beat out Vince Vaughan for his role as O'Banion the

473
00:25:58,840 --> 00:26:02,320
Speaker 1: school Bullying Days Confused. Yeah, I didn't really, I can

474
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:05,639
Speaker 1: see that though. Well Throughout these professional dry spells, the

475
00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 1: two friends continued to flesh out the script that Matt

476
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: had begun writing at Harvard, and they would later admit

477
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 1: that they did it mostly in an effort to provide

478
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 1: themselves with good material from audition reel, which is pretty clever.

479
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:18,880
Speaker 1: Matt Damion Landry admitted on The Today Show the script

480
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:22,160
Speaker 1: really was borne out of frustration with our unemployment. So

481
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: we just wrote it pretty much out of desperation and

482
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 1: been elaborated. The whole thing of Good Will Hunting was

483
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:29,800
Speaker 1: really just to make at the time, a video cassette

484
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 1: that was like an acting reel, like we can't get

485
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:34,199
Speaker 1: a job, to show that we can do interesting stuff.

486
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:36,159
Speaker 1: So the whole thing was to have a reel and

487
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:38,920
Speaker 1: show casting directors, and so the idea was we'd write

488
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:41,719
Speaker 1: these parts for ourselves. That was our ambition. I think

489
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:45,880
Speaker 1: we were shocked that the movie even got released. It

490
00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:47,320
Speaker 1: was like, no, we don't have to go to the

491
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:49,439
Speaker 1: big studios. We can do it cheaply and get a

492
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:51,879
Speaker 1: movie star and we'll make it for a million bucks,

493
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: which is not a lot of money in the scheme

494
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 1: of movies. So we wrote a movie that's just all

495
00:26:57,040 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 1: interiors and people talking in rooms because it was inexpensive,

496
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:02,359
Speaker 1: and a lot of the scenes came about as Matt

497
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: and Ben just improvising, and there were a lot of

498
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: scenes where they just switched on a tape recorder and

499
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:09,560
Speaker 1: started riffing. And in this early stage they thought that

500
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:12,359
Speaker 1: the professor character would be played by Morgan Freeman in

501
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 1: their fantasy casting, and the psychologists character would later be

502
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:18,159
Speaker 1: Robin Williams would be played by Robert de Niro, So

503
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 1: they would do their best Morgan Freeman and Robert De

504
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:23,360
Speaker 1: Niro impressions into this tape player, which Ben Affleck later

505
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:27,879
Speaker 1: reflected was probably really embarrassing in that respect. God, I

506
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: hope those tapes are out there. I know this is

507
00:27:29,880 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: some special feature if you were a loved one, Matt

508
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: Damn later told Film Scouts. Eventually we maybe came up

509
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 1: with a half hour improv out of which we would

510
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: have maybe fifteen seconds that was actually good, and we'd

511
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: play the tape back and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.

512
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:50,399
Speaker 1: That's the one. Write that down, and maybe a scene

513
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:52,880
Speaker 1: would come from that line. And then, on the rare

514
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:55,040
Speaker 1: occasion that one of them would actually have an acting gig,

515
00:27:55,080 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: they'd work out pages on the set and fax them

516
00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 1: back and forth to one another. But this was not

517
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:03,120
Speaker 1: the most efficient process. Remember when we talked about Mike

518
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:05,920
Speaker 1: Myers writing Awesome Powers in like three weeks, or John

519
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 1: Hughes writing Home Alone and something like ten days. It

520
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: wasn't like that for good Will hunting. Matt Damon later

521
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: told Entertainment Tonight, we didn't really understand structures, so we

522
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:19,159
Speaker 1: wrote thousands of pages. We'd be like, well, what have

523
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: this happened? And then we just write different scenes. So

524
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:23,920
Speaker 1: we had all these disparate scenes and then we kind

525
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 1: of try to jam them together into something that looked

526
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 1: like a movie. And that's part of the reason why

527
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:30,680
Speaker 1: this movie works so well as a collection of really

528
00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 1: memorable moments and scenes, you know, from the therapist remembering

529
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,800
Speaker 1: his late wife to the whole how about Them Apples

530
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:40,000
Speaker 1: scene to the scene where Chucky tells Will that he'll

531
00:28:40,040 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 1: kill him if he's still hanging around Southey. In twenty years,

532
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: these were two actors who were trying to write a

533
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: bunch of really dramatic scenes to show off their acting

534
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 1: chops for an audition reel. It makes a lot of

535
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: sense that that was the genesis. Matt would admit that

536
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 1: this very inefficient process put them off screenwriting for another

537
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 1: twenty years because quote, we never thought we'd have the time.

538
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:05,480
Speaker 1: But what I think is a really cute aside. Matt

539
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: described the script in the Boston magazine Oral History as quote,

540
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: the first thing we woke up thinking about and the

541
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 1: last thing we thought about before going to bed. The

542
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 1: script in this early stage wasn't even called Goodwill Hunting.

543
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: We don't have the working title for it on file. Yeah.

544
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:23,720
Speaker 1: I think that they have said in other interviews that

545
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: they just couldn't come up with the title. What would

546
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 1: what would you pitch it? What would you pitch the

547
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:32,959
Speaker 1: damn apples good? I can't come up with a better one.

548
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:38,560
Speaker 1: We're not riffing you, just you won. Ben Affleck told

549
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: Boston Magazine that they couldn't come up with the title.

550
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 1: They were still stuck when it came time to shop

551
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: the script around, and so instead they thought of a

552
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: title that was being used by a friend of theirs,

553
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:51,720
Speaker 1: a screenwriter named Derek Bridgeman. He was writing his own

554
00:29:51,720 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 1: script called Goodwill Hunting about an African American kid growing

555
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: up in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, and Matt and

556
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 1: Benn offered the guy ten grand and if they could

557
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 1: sell their script to a studio using his title, and

558
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:06,479
Speaker 1: he agreed, And one of the first things that they

559
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: did after selling their script was to write him a check.

560
00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: So they made good on it, and they also gave

561
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: him a bit part of the movie as an MIT

562
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 1: student who asks, uh, the professor Gerald Lambeau the question

563
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: in class scars Gard character. I get all of them confused.

564
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:27,760
Speaker 1: I do not guard the other he's not related at all.

565
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:30,600
Speaker 1: There's no hot one. And then the hot one is

566
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:36,560
Speaker 1: his alex Son, I think. And then the creepy one

567
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: is Bill. And then there's two others. Yeah, the guy

568
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:43,239
Speaker 1: who's Pennywise in the most recent Oh yeah. And then

569
00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 1: there's two others. Low and I were just talking about this.

570
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 1: I googled them. There's like other scars Guards, younger ones,

571
00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: not to be confused with sars Guard, which I did

572
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 1: for a long time. Yeah. Same, Okay, Yeah, this has

573
00:30:54,800 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: been your your Swedish actor corner. As you meditate on that,

574
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:04,480
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more too much information after

575
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 1: these messages. Somewhat famously, the original plot of the Goodwill

576
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: Hunting Draft, the first one completed in ninety four, was

577
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:25,240
Speaker 1: considerably different than the sensitive character study that we know today.

578
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:30,120
Speaker 1: It was a thriller about an errant math genius from

579
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 1: the mean streets of Southey who was on the run

580
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:35,440
Speaker 1: from government agents who were trying to force him to

581
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 1: work for them. Harness his incredible mathematical mind to do

582
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: evil government things, which is funny because it's sort of

583
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: born supremacy. And also seriously, Affleck said, it was this

584
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 1: idea of the brilliant kid in his towny friends, where

585
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:54,240
Speaker 1: he was special and the government wanted to get their

586
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 1: mits on him, and it had a very Beverly Hills

587
00:31:56,440 --> 00:31:59,640
Speaker 1: Cop midnight run sensibility where the kids from Boston were

588
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:06,480
Speaker 1: giving the NSA the slip all the time. That sounds terrible, Yeah,

589
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: I think the only scene from that entire plot that

590
00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: remained was the bit where he's interviewing with the NSA

591
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: and gives that whole monologue about how they're, you know,

592
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 1: a morally bankrupt organization. The script, though, sparked a four

593
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 1: day bidding war across multiple studios, and ultimately it was

594
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 1: acquired by Castle Rock Entertainment, which co founded by actor

595
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:34,480
Speaker 1: director Rob Reiner, who directed When Harry Met Sally, spinal Tap,

596
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:37,360
Speaker 1: Princess Bride, A Few Good Men. He'd also done Stephen

597
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,320
Speaker 1: King adaptations. He'd done Misery and stand By Me. Castle

598
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: Rock is in fact named after the one of the

599
00:32:43,360 --> 00:32:46,720
Speaker 1: prominent locations in the Stephen King universe, which itself I

600
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 1: think was borrowed from Load of the Flies, right, I

601
00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: didn't know that this is elevating the sucks tier, Asmark

602
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: count in this episode to one, and considering Matt and

603
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 1: Ben were then in their twenties, the six hundred and

604
00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand dollars script fee that they picked up

605
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 1: for it was quite the payday. Their credit was so

606
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: bad at the time that they had trouble getting an

607
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:14,960
Speaker 1: apartment rented, and eventually they were reduced to bringing along

608
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:18,320
Speaker 1: a Daily Variety article and telling their landlord, we don't

609
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 1: have credit, but these are this is us. We're these guys.

610
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:24,120
Speaker 1: We just got paid this. Look it's in the paper.

611
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: And it worked because it was la Ben later said,

612
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:32,320
Speaker 1: we thought it would take care of us for twenty years.

613
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: So we rented nicer apartments and each bought Jeep Cherokees

614
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 1: and we were completely broken a year. That'sf like thing

615
00:33:40,280 --> 00:33:46,320
Speaker 1: is blowing his Google hunting pay day Jeep Grant Cherokee. Well,

616
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 1: he had other vices that we now know about video

617
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: games and subway. That's we'll talk about. But no, he's

618
00:33:56,600 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 1: a gambling addict, right, I'm not making that up. Was he?

619
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 1: I know we got thrown up for counting cards. I mean, yeah, wow,

620
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:12,520
Speaker 1: I don't know sense Ben Affleck a lot. Well, I

621
00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 1: guess that's true. I guess that's true. We can't we

622
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 1: can't hurt Ben Affleck any more than he does. Um.

623
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:26,240
Speaker 1: Rob Reiner, who just from that short CV you could infer,

624
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:28,760
Speaker 1: clearly knows the thing or two about a movie that'll

625
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:30,480
Speaker 1: make a lot of money. And after reading an early

626
00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:32,399
Speaker 1: version of Goodwill Hunting, he got the sense that there

627
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 1: were two movies struggling for the soul of Will, a

628
00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 1: political spy thriller plot and a smaller, more intimate story

629
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 1: about a troubled young math genius his relationship with his therapist.

630
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:47,759
Speaker 1: He left it to Matt and Ben to decide which

631
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:50,520
Speaker 1: angled to go with, and that has made all the difference.

632
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:54,480
Speaker 1: I think he strongly encouraged them to go with like

633
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:58,520
Speaker 1: the psychologist angle. I love that there's an alternate universe

634
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:01,840
Speaker 1: somewhere where they've just been came like meathead action guys

635
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 1: because they pursued the lunkhead spy thriller movie. I mean,

636
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:12,120
Speaker 1: benefick kind of did for a while. I feel like Earl, Yeah, yeah,

637
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 1: it was really that Daredevil. Oh god, Pearl Harbor. Whatever

638
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 1: the hell the Batman thing is? Yeah, yeah, he makes

639
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:27,640
Speaker 1: weird choices. Man, Oh my god, that Daredevil movie. Daredevil

640
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:30,239
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites. I remember seeing just being like,

641
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: oh yeah, not that movie that comics, but just being like,

642
00:35:33,760 --> 00:35:41,360
Speaker 1: what possessed him to think he could do this alcohol anyway?

643
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:43,920
Speaker 1: So Matt and Bennon took Ryner's advice. They cut all

644
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:47,080
Speaker 1: the spy stuff. And this was scary for them because

645
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 1: it meant cutting about sixty pages or half of your

646
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:53,320
Speaker 1: your average screenplay and sent them right back to the

647
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 1: drawing board. And there have been persistent rumors suggesting that,

648
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:01,160
Speaker 1: based on this origin story in their age at the time,

649
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 1: that the depth and sensitivity off the good Will Hunting

650
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 1: screenplay indicated the hand of someone else more mature. The

651
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 1: name being floated would be William Goldman. Iconic screenwriter William Goldman,

652
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:18,880
Speaker 1: who won an Academy Award for Butchcassie, and The Sundance Kid,

653
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 1: All the President's Men. He also wrote Marathon Man, Stepford Wives, Chaplain.

654
00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: He wrote Princess Bride and the adaptation for Misery, both

655
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,239
Speaker 1: of which were directed by Rob Ryner. So that you

656
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,280
Speaker 1: see where we're going, with this, Reiner did ask Goldman

657
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 1: to take a look at the script back when it

658
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: had been a spy thriller, just to see what he

659
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 1: thought of it. And Goldman's advice was apparently the same

660
00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: as Ryners, which just ditched the spy angle. But for

661
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 1: many years people have speculated floated this rumor, and he

662
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:53,840
Speaker 1: came out against it in his memoir which is titled

663
00:36:53,920 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 1: Which Lie Did I Tell? Adventures in the Screen Trade?

664
00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 1: That was like a b When I was in screenwriting school,

665
00:37:00,080 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: that was like a bible. Practically, they were always recommending

666
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 1: that book to us. But yeah, for years there's rumors

667
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 1: persist to this day that he was quietly a script

668
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:11,479
Speaker 1: doctor and he punched up the script and these two

669
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:16,160
Speaker 1: kids from Boston mid in an early version of Google Hunting.

670
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:19,400
Speaker 1: Will's actually a physics genius and not a math genius.

671
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 1: And this change occurred because Matt Damon apparently showed the

672
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:26,040
Speaker 1: script to one of his Harvard professors, the Nobel Prize

673
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 1: winning American theoretical physicist Sheldon Glashow, and this guy persuaded

674
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:33,319
Speaker 1: Matt to make the change because he thought it would

675
00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 1: make sense for a lone wolf like Will Hunting to

676
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: be a math guy and another physicist, a guy named

677
00:37:38,719 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: Brian Greene from Columbia University, later observed having some deep

678
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: insight about the universe. Typically is a group project in

679
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: the modern era, whereas doing some mathematical theorem as a

680
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:51,840
Speaker 1: singular undertaking very often. And Will's whole thing in the

681
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,040
Speaker 1: movies that he pushes people away. He's not really a

682
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: group kind of guy. So this all makes sense, Professor

683
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:00,319
Speaker 1: green continued in his interview with Business Insider. It does

684
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:02,359
Speaker 1: work better in the sense of if he got this guy,

685
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:04,239
Speaker 1: he sees a problem on the board and he goes

686
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: ahead and solves it. It's unlikely that someone could look

687
00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 1: at data by themselves and could come up with a

688
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:11,480
Speaker 1: theory of the origins of the universe on their own,

689
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:14,400
Speaker 1: so that's less believable. Yes, it's a much easier plot

690
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: point as a problem on the board, take a pencil,

691
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: and you solve it. Interestingly, this professor says that the

692
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 1: first math problem that Will solves on the blackboard is

693
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: quote not a particularly difficult problem. Rude. I know that

694
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:32,319
Speaker 1: scene is actually where there's the math problem left up

695
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:34,880
Speaker 1: on the board is apparently based on a real life

696
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:39,240
Speaker 1: incident that happened to Matt Damon's non math genius brother, Kyle.

697
00:38:40,000 --> 00:38:42,919
Speaker 1: Matt later said that Kyle was visiting a physicist friend

698
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:45,439
Speaker 1: that he knew at MIT, and he was walking down

699
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: what was known as the Infinite Corridor, which is this

700
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 1: long corridor that had a bunch of blackboards on the

701
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:51,840
Speaker 1: other side, and he says, so, my brother, who was

702
00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:55,759
Speaker 1: an artist, picked up some chalk and wrote an incredibly elaborate,

703
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:59,120
Speaker 1: totally fake version of an equation, and it was so

704
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 1: cool and completely insane that no one erased it for months.

705
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:06,879
Speaker 1: Gets all the math walks at MT try to take

706
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 1: a shot at trying to solve it. And there's a

707
00:39:11,239 --> 00:39:14,320
Speaker 1: great piece in the Ringer called Remembering the Wonderful Little

708
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 1: Idiosyncrasies of good Will Hunting on its twentieth anniversary by

709
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:20,239
Speaker 1: a writer named Shay Sarro, and it makes fun of

710
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:24,040
Speaker 1: the way that Will solves the math problems. In this movie,

711
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:27,120
Speaker 1: they write, you can always tell how smart someone is

712
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: by where they write their math equations. If a guy

713
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 1: writes a math equation on a mirror or a window

714
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:34,719
Speaker 1: or any other place, who wouldn't expect to find one,

715
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:37,840
Speaker 1: You know he's a genius. Remember when Eduardo wrote the

716
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,359
Speaker 1: formula on the window and the Social Network, or when

717
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 1: John wrote the formulas on the window in A Beautiful Mind,

718
00:39:43,480 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: or when Christian wrote down the formulas on the windows

719
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 1: in The Accountant. Conversely, if a guy writes a math

720
00:39:48,640 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 1: equation on a piece of paper, then that's how you

721
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 1: know you're dealing with a math simpleton. And speaking of

722
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:58,920
Speaker 1: Will's superhuman intelligence, his rapid reading rate in the movie

723
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: seems ridiculous until you learn that the guy who holds

724
00:40:02,040 --> 00:40:04,920
Speaker 1: the world record for speed reading, a man named Howard Berg,

725
00:40:05,520 --> 00:40:10,800
Speaker 1: can read eighty pages a minute. What page in less

726
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:17,280
Speaker 1: than a second? What is the standard for that? Yeah,

727
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:21,040
Speaker 1: I guess I know I've got that man. No, so

728
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 1: this makes Will's two seconds of page pace seem pathetic

729
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:28,440
Speaker 1: by comparison. Yeah, I don't know, it's nuts. That's a grift.

730
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 1: That's a live figs. Sorry now, yeah, I mean, I

731
00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: just want to reiterate that both Matt and Ben come

732
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:42,800
Speaker 1: from an incredibly intellectual background. Will Hunting in the movie

733
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 1: talks about being a big fan of the People's History

734
00:40:45,120 --> 00:40:48,160
Speaker 1: of the United States by the legendary historian Howard Zinn,

735
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 1: and even recommends that book to his therapist Sean played

736
00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:55,279
Speaker 1: by Robert Williams. In real life, Howard Zinn was Matt

737
00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 1: and Ben's family friend and neighbor. Again, these guys come

738
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:05,480
Speaker 1: from an incredibly intellectual background, and speaking of family friends,

739
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck's godfather was close with the director Terrence Malick,

740
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 1: who directed bad Lands and Days of Heaven and a

741
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 1: little later after Good Hunting came out The Thin Red

742
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:18,879
Speaker 1: Line and very good at networking. At this point, Matt

743
00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:21,200
Speaker 1: and Benn arranged a meeting with Terrence Malick to see

744
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:23,720
Speaker 1: what he thought of their movie script, and they discussed

745
00:41:23,719 --> 00:41:26,279
Speaker 1: the plot over dinner, and they talked about the ending

746
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 1: of the movie, or the original ending. I should say,

747
00:41:28,239 --> 00:41:31,800
Speaker 1: we're will Hunting drives off with Mini Driver's character Skylar,

748
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:34,800
Speaker 1: and Matt Damon later recalled in the middle of the dinner,

749
00:41:35,080 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 1: Terrence Malick said, I think it would be better if

750
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:39,840
Speaker 1: she left and he went after her, and Ben and

751
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:41,439
Speaker 1: I looked at each other. It was one of those

752
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: things where you go, of course, that's better, and Terrence

753
00:41:45,239 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: Malick started talking about the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni said,

754
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: in Italian movies, a guy just leaves town at the

755
00:41:51,680 --> 00:41:54,800
Speaker 1: end and that's enough. And he said, Oh, of course

756
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,400
Speaker 1: that's enough. A bunch of face palms. That's how they

757
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 1: changed their ending. Another interesting element of an early version

758
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,920
Speaker 1: of Good Will Hunting was that Will was supposed to die.

759
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, you'll remember that. Near the start of this film,

760
00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: Will and his crew of a fight with carminees Garpaglia,

761
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:14,399
Speaker 1: and in this early draft, Carmine and his gang come

762
00:42:14,400 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 1: back at the end of the movie and kill Will

763
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:19,400
Speaker 1: the baseball bat as he's leaving for San Francisco with

764
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 1: Skuyler and Matt Damn later explained, Will deep down actually

765
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:25,880
Speaker 1: wanted to be killed. It was his way of getting out,

766
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:31,960
Speaker 1: and thankfully they jettisoned this uncut Jem's esque bummer ending spoilers.

767
00:42:32,840 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 1: But when Gus Van Sant signed on as director for

768
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:38,920
Speaker 1: Good Will Hunting, he initially requested a death of his own.

769
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 1: He wanted Ben Affleck's character Chucky to get killed in

770
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 1: an accident in the construction site where he works, and

771
00:42:45,040 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 1: that was going to be the climax of the movie

772
00:42:46,680 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 1: second act. Crushed like a bug, Matt Damon recalled him,

773
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 1: asking Matt and Ben very reluctantly went away and wrote it,

774
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:56,480
Speaker 1: and then Gus van Sant read it and said this

775
00:42:56,560 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: is a terrible idea, and it was removed. Kudos to Gus. Yeah,

776
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:05,399
Speaker 1: all right, say idea. It was bad. Sorry, And there

777
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:09,720
Speaker 1: is also a long lost sex scene between Will Hunting

778
00:43:10,160 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 1: and his psychologists Sean McGuire. I should explain Matt and

779
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 1: Ben were becoming very disillusioned with Castle Rock Entertainment or

780
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 1: with the production company that bought their script, and the

781
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:25,879
Speaker 1: production company were requesting endless rewrites, and Matt and Ben

782
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 1: were convinced that they weren't actually reading these new drafts

783
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 1: because they no longer cared about the script and they

784
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: were just going to let it die on the vine.

785
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 1: So to test the executives, Matt and Ben added a

786
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: love scene between Matt Damon's character and Rob Williams character,

787
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: just to see if anyone was paying attention. The example

788
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:45,840
Speaker 1: I read was something like Sean talks to Will and

789
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:48,600
Speaker 1: then loads his conscience. Will takes a moment and then

790
00:43:48,640 --> 00:43:51,360
Speaker 1: gives Sean a soulful look and leans in and starts

791
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:55,320
Speaker 1: blowing him. As it turns out, no one at Castle

792
00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:58,919
Speaker 1: Rock said anything, and this made Matt and Ben even

793
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:02,600
Speaker 1: more depressed. Matt later said they weren't reading the script

794
00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 1: closely anymore. It was literally probably a full paragraph about

795
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 1: what these two characters were doing to each other, and

796
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:12,480
Speaker 1: Ben picks up the story. We would turn that in

797
00:44:12,520 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't even mention all those scenes were Shaun

798
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:19,120
Speaker 1: and will wearre jerking each other off. And then later

799
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 1: when they were searching for a new production company to

800
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:23,720
Speaker 1: buy the script, they decided to go with Mirramax because

801
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:26,759
Speaker 1: when they met with Harvey Weinstein, he was like, a, yeah,

802
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 1: my only real note is that on page sixty the

803
00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 1: two leads, both straight men, have a sex scene. Why

804
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: is that there? And they were like, it's a sword

805
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: of the stone. Oh, you actually read the thing? All right,

806
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,200
Speaker 1: you're the guy, You're the one. And that's when they

807
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:45,239
Speaker 1: knew they found a new home because he was the

808
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:48,560
Speaker 1: first executive to say anything about it. Boy the bar

809
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:54,480
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, huh you read good lord. But before they

810
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: had even taken the script to Mirramax, there was one

811
00:44:56,760 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 1: major battle that they fought over at Castle Rock, and

812
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 1: that was over casting. Matt and Ben wrote Good Will

813
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,400
Speaker 1: Hunting as a starting vehicle for themselves. The studio was

814
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,680
Speaker 1: not thrilled about this because they were obviously not big

815
00:45:08,800 --> 00:45:13,040
Speaker 1: enough stars it was a cliche then, and now that

816
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:15,320
Speaker 1: every actor has a screenplay that they were just trying

817
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: to get made to showcase their own talents, and the cliches,

818
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:21,279
Speaker 1: they're all terrible. One of the only exceptions to this

819
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:25,600
Speaker 1: rules is Sylvester Stallone with Rocky, who turned down that

820
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:29,919
Speaker 1: movie getting made with other people for years. And so

821
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:32,880
Speaker 1: Matt and Ben were told that Castle Rock wanted Brad

822
00:45:32,960 --> 00:45:38,160
Speaker 1: Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead roles instead. Leo,

823
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:40,320
Speaker 1: for context, would have just started The Basketball Diaries in

824
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:42,439
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five and Brad would have been coming off

825
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: of seven that same year. Can you imagine who would

826
00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:52,439
Speaker 1: have been pretty good except for the terrible accents? Who's who? Oh,

827
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:54,640
Speaker 1: Leo's guy, Leo's got the I mean Leo's hair, and

828
00:45:54,719 --> 00:45:57,800
Speaker 1: Titanic is Matt Damon's hair? And good Will hunting? That's true?

829
00:45:57,880 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 1: That's true? Yeah, and then Brad pitts at older I

830
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:04,080
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah. Has Brad Pitt ever done a Boston accent? Oh? God,

831
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:07,879
Speaker 1: I hope not. No, not that I can think of.

832
00:46:08,600 --> 00:46:11,240
Speaker 1: Matt and Ben were extremely unhappy about this, in addition

833
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 1: to the other creative disagreements they had with Castle Rock,

834
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 1: which also included who was going to direct the movie.

835
00:46:16,880 --> 00:46:19,840
Speaker 1: They had also wanted to do it themselves, which was

836
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:22,880
Speaker 1: also never going to happen. The studio thought it was

837
00:46:22,960 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: risky enough buying a script that had been written by

838
00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:31,800
Speaker 1: actors to get them auditions. Affleck later said when the

839
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:34,360
Speaker 1: question came up, we would say we'll direct it, and

840
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:36,560
Speaker 1: there would be silence in the room. It was a

841
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 1: polite silence, like are you high. But it was the

842
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:43,439
Speaker 1: beginning of my own directorial ambition, and Affleck would later

843
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: you know, notch some directing successes, Gone Baby, Gone, That

844
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 1: the Town. Probably the most successful one is Argo. I

845
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:55,479
Speaker 1: don't really do people like Gone Baby Gone in the Town.

846
00:46:56,320 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 1: M Yeah, has it's fans Argo on Best Picture? Yeah,

847
00:47:01,640 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that seems that'll do it. Yeah. Ultimately, though,

848
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: Castle Rock got tired of it before they did and

849
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:13,040
Speaker 1: issued them an ultimatum, you have thirty days to find

850
00:47:13,080 --> 00:47:15,080
Speaker 1: someone else to buy your script and give us our

851
00:47:15,080 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 1: money back, or else you guys are out and we're

852
00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:19,840
Speaker 1: moving ahead without your involvement. There would just stick a

853
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 1: deal with them, like all right, you guys are paying

854
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 1: the ass. According to Affleck, they said that someone else

855
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:26,400
Speaker 1: would direct it, rewrite it, act in it, and that

856
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:29,400
Speaker 1: we'd be lucky to get invited to a premiere. But

857
00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:32,279
Speaker 1: instead of scaring us, it kind of emboldened us because

858
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: then we really thought this, We're gonna go out there

859
00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:38,120
Speaker 1: and do it. Even so, this obviously had them freaked

860
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:41,160
Speaker 1: out because they saw their big break slowly circling the drain.

861
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:44,520
Speaker 1: And according to Damon, over the following weeks, we went

862
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:46,120
Speaker 1: back to meet with all of the studios who had

863
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 1: been on the script, who we hadn't gone with, and

864
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:50,279
Speaker 1: basically everybody took the meeting just to tell us to

865
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:54,400
Speaker 1: go for ourselves hollywoods Affleck tells the story of them

866
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 1: going back to Interscope, who would initially offered them a

867
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 1: million dollars more than Castle Rock, and the head of

868
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:01,720
Speaker 1: the company said, I'll tell you why I took this meeting,

869
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:04,320
Speaker 1: because I'm going to tell you I'm going to pass.

870
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:08,200
Speaker 1: And Affleck would later use that scene as an inspiration

871
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:10,680
Speaker 1: for a scene in Argo. So desperate to find a

872
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:13,080
Speaker 1: buyer and with time running out, they took the script

873
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:16,479
Speaker 1: to their friend Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith had broken through

874
00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:19,960
Speaker 1: with his debut film and Clerks in nineteen ninety four,

875
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:25,280
Speaker 1: which is like along with pulp fiction and probably Slackers too,

876
00:48:25,480 --> 00:48:30,040
Speaker 1: as like the sort of the trifecta of indie movies

877
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:37,359
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, Right, would you consider reality bites? Yes?

878
00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:40,760
Speaker 1: Maybe was that an indie or just like an indie aesthetic?

879
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: Maybe you're right, maybe it was the indie aesthetic anyway, Smith,

880
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:47,040
Speaker 1: after making Clerks in nineteen eighty four, had gotten close

881
00:48:47,080 --> 00:48:50,440
Speaker 1: with Ben Affleck and cast him in Mallrats and Chasing Amy.

882
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,239
Speaker 1: As we mentioned earlier, those movies had been distributed by

883
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:56,759
Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein's company Mirramax, and so Smith read the good

884
00:48:56,760 --> 00:48:58,840
Speaker 1: Will Hunting script with the intention of bringing it to

885
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:02,120
Speaker 1: the Weinsteins. He apparently really liked the script. He later

886
00:49:02,160 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: told Entertainment Weekly, I started it on the shore and

887
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: I stayed on the whole time, with characteristic Kevin Smith's charm.

888
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:11,879
Speaker 1: Sure Enough, he took the script to the Weinsteins and said,

889
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:14,920
Speaker 1: drop everything you're doing right now and read this. They

890
00:49:15,000 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: did just that and shout out a million dollars to

891
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:21,880
Speaker 1: buy the script from Castle Rock. Merimax allowed Matt and

892
00:49:21,920 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 1: Ben to start in the movie, but they still insisted

893
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:25,880
Speaker 1: on getting someone else to direct, and the two of

894
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:28,280
Speaker 1: them approached Kevin Smith to do it, and he promptly

895
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:33,359
Speaker 1: responded by telling them, no, you need someone good. It's fair.

896
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: He elaborated later saying I did not have enough talent

897
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:40,120
Speaker 1: to pull it off then even now I don't think

898
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:43,880
Speaker 1: I do fair. Despite this, both Ben and Matt are

899
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:46,319
Speaker 1: an agreement that without Kevin Smith the movie would never

900
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:49,799
Speaker 1: have happened. Kevin saved Goodwill Hunting. Matt Damon later said

901
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 1: this is not a small side note. He is the

902
00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 1: reason Goodwill Hunting got made. We were dead in the water,

903
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:59,000
Speaker 1: all the offers had evaporated. Ben Affleck's take on this

904
00:49:59,120 --> 00:50:02,520
Speaker 1: is steeped in a little bit of shame because he said,

905
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:05,040
Speaker 1: I promised Kevin I would thank him if we ever

906
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: got an oscar and promptly forgot. And then I told

907
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: him if I ever win again, I swear to God,

908
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:12,399
Speaker 1: I'm going to thank you. And then when he when

909
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:18,240
Speaker 1: argo one for Best Picture, he forgot again. But obviously

910
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:20,120
Speaker 1: there were no hard feelings. Matt and Ben went on

911
00:50:20,160 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 1: to appear in Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,

912
00:50:24,239 --> 00:50:27,880
Speaker 1: which features a memorable scene where they're shooting Goodwill Hunting.

913
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:33,839
Speaker 1: Two Hunting Season, which is a great joke, and so

914
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 1: in a sense, Kevin Smith got to direct a Goodwill

915
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:40,799
Speaker 1: Hunting after all, and that that film also features gus

916
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:45,960
Speaker 1: Van's aunt as himself. I think it was himself. Yeah, yes,

917
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 1: gus Van was ultimately the guy who got the director's chair,

918
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:51,040
Speaker 1: but there are a few other big names up for

919
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:54,959
Speaker 1: the job before he got the gig. Contend to Number

920
00:50:55,000 --> 00:51:03,080
Speaker 1: one was Mel Gibson. You imagine Gibson fresh off A Braveheart. Directly,

921
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:05,719
Speaker 1: We've had people Hunting say well, I think we've had

922
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 1: a lot of nice things to say about Boston, but

923
00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 1: you put Mel Gibson in Boston. I'm surprised that the

924
00:51:12,680 --> 00:51:22,879
Speaker 1: air didn't Kurdel in Cambridge. I know after Miramax bought

925
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:25,200
Speaker 1: the script from Castle Rock, they set up meetings with

926
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 1: a number of potential directors, including Mel Gibson, who had

927
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:31,399
Speaker 1: a lot of heat admittedly coming off a Brave Heart.

928
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:34,360
Speaker 1: And I guess when they met with Mel, Harvey Weinstein

929
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:36,360
Speaker 1: wanted Matt and Ben to butter him up, so he

930
00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:38,400
Speaker 1: was like, you know, tell him about you liked Braveheart.

931
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:41,000
Speaker 1: Problem wasn't either of them had seen Brave Heart yet,

932
00:51:41,080 --> 00:51:46,000
Speaker 1: and Harvey hit the roof just just lie. So sure enough,

933
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:47,799
Speaker 1: the first words out of their mouth to Mel were,

934
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:49,840
Speaker 1: we just want to tell you how much we loved Braveheart,

935
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 1: and we also hate black people Hollywood. Mel took the

936
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:58,200
Speaker 1: project on and actually spent a few months developing it,

937
00:51:58,320 --> 00:52:02,120
Speaker 1: but he was going really slowly, which led Matt and

938
00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:04,239
Speaker 1: Ben to get the impression that he wasn't really all

939
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:07,399
Speaker 1: that interested, and they were also worried about aging out

940
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 1: of the roles due to the lengthy preproduction that they'd

941
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 1: already have. I mean, Will's supposed to be twenty in

942
00:52:13,160 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 1: the movie, I think he turns twenty one during it,

943
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:17,560
Speaker 1: and Matt was already twenty five, twenty six, so they

944
00:52:17,600 --> 00:52:19,760
Speaker 1: were starting to get a little lancy, so they ultimately

945
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:22,440
Speaker 1: asked Mel Gibson if he'd stepped down from the director

946
00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:25,239
Speaker 1: role in favor of someone who actually seemed to give it.

947
00:52:25,360 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: Damn and shockingly, considering his cloud at the time, he

948
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:34,000
Speaker 1: did the huts by these guys have didn't like Bravehearts,

949
00:52:34,040 --> 00:52:36,160
Speaker 1: just win the Oscar like the year before. Good Lord,

950
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:39,160
Speaker 1: it's really it's it's verges On Hubris, It's really yeah,

951
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:43,440
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really impressive. Yeah. Marry Max also briefly

952
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:47,000
Speaker 1: considered Steven Soderberg as a director before they approached Michael Mann,

953
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:50,040
Speaker 1: and Michael Mann wanted to make a couple really drastic changes.

954
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: He wanted Will and his friends to be car thieves,

955
00:52:56,920 --> 00:53:02,800
Speaker 1: and he was Michael Man note of all time they go,

956
00:53:03,160 --> 00:53:06,839
Speaker 1: they're gonna be carthy. Yeah, And he didn't like Matt

957
00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:10,759
Speaker 1: Damon at all, and the producers were like, it's kind

958
00:53:10,760 --> 00:53:13,399
Speaker 1: of a package deal. Coneely screen test him and he did,

959
00:53:13,520 --> 00:53:18,000
Speaker 1: and he still hated Matt Damon. Producers ultimately sided with Matt,

960
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. So they told Michael Mann to

961
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:25,440
Speaker 1: take a hike. And this is really bizarre. It came

962
00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 1: out last year that Ben Stiller was also considered to

963
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 1: direct good Will Hunting. And he made his entorial debut

964
00:53:32,200 --> 00:53:34,200
Speaker 1: with Reality Bites in nineteen ninety four, and he was

965
00:53:34,239 --> 00:53:36,440
Speaker 1: looking for something to follow it up. And that's when

966
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:38,480
Speaker 1: the script for good Will Hunting landed on his desk

967
00:53:38,760 --> 00:53:40,520
Speaker 1: and he said, I got sent it by my agent.

968
00:53:40,560 --> 00:53:43,160
Speaker 1: At the time, he's talking to Howard Stern. The first

969
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:45,239
Speaker 1: turn off was that these two guys who wrote it

970
00:53:45,320 --> 00:53:47,800
Speaker 1: were attached to act in it. I was like, what

971
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:51,240
Speaker 1: come on? I cast my own projects. Who are these guys?

972
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:55,279
Speaker 1: And Howard Stern countered by saying, but it was good

973
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:57,839
Speaker 1: Will Hunting. It's one of the greatest movies ever made,

974
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:01,840
Speaker 1: right Ben Stiller Dead Bands, Well, I haven't seen it

975
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:05,439
Speaker 1: in a while. And then he made The Cable Guy.

976
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:10,360
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. I forgot he directed that. I don't realize.

977
00:54:10,400 --> 00:54:13,360
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew the Ben Stiller like was a director,

978
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:17,239
Speaker 1: but I didn't realize that he directed like Zoolander, and

979
00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:19,600
Speaker 1: I guess I knew he did Tropic Thunder, but he

980
00:54:19,680 --> 00:54:23,359
Speaker 1: did a lot of directorial stuff that I totally forgot about.

981
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 1: What else did he do? Well, I guess those were

982
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:30,840
Speaker 1: the only Tropic Thunder, zoo Lander, and Reality Bites for

983
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 1: I guess the only three good ones. So that's interesting.

984
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:37,160
Speaker 1: But the job ultimately went to Gus van z At.

985
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:39,319
Speaker 1: Matt and Ben were big fans of his movie drug

986
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:42,279
Speaker 1: Store Cowboy with Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch, and Matt

987
00:54:42,360 --> 00:54:45,080
Speaker 1: David had actually auditioned for his movie To Die For,

988
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 1: ultimately losing after Joaquin Phoenix, but Casey Affleck, Ben's brother

989
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:50,839
Speaker 1: had been cast in that movie. He was just kind

990
00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:53,360
Speaker 1: of what gave them an inn with Gus and it

991
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:55,400
Speaker 1: was actually during the production of The Die For that

992
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:58,440
Speaker 1: Gus van z Aunt first discovered the music of Elliott Smith.

993
00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:00,920
Speaker 1: He later said he didn't use it because, quote, I

994
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:03,200
Speaker 1: was looking for something that was really raw, but we

995
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:05,319
Speaker 1: were thinking more in terms of heavy metals. So that's

996
00:55:05,360 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 1: how we didn't use Elliott in that movie. Yeah, it's

997
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: kind of the anti medal Elliot Smith. Ben sat was

998
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:13,960
Speaker 1: more used to making art house movies and Google Hunting

999
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 1: is I think, to this day by far his most

1000
00:55:16,560 --> 00:55:21,000
Speaker 1: commercially successful film ever. In fact, it made just nine

1001
00:55:21,080 --> 00:55:25,279
Speaker 1: million dollars, less than all sixteen of his other films combined.

1002
00:55:26,760 --> 00:55:31,239
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think his passion project after this was

1003
00:55:32,239 --> 00:55:35,320
Speaker 1: the shot for shot remake of sychake of Psycho starting

1004
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:39,560
Speaker 1: Vince Vaughn, Yes and Ash. Yeah. Yeah, what a bizarre,

1005
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: super bizarre that was in the era when I was

1006
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:46,680
Speaker 1: going out to Los Angeles a lot and would go

1007
00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:50,440
Speaker 1: around the Universal backlot and the Bates Motel and the

1008
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:53,920
Speaker 1: Psycho House are still kept there, and so I remember

1009
00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:59,760
Speaker 1: walking around these they weren't even facades. The Bates Motel

1010
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:01,799
Speaker 1: had rooms you could go into and going in there

1011
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:04,080
Speaker 1: and one of them, one of them had a shower

1012
00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: in it with like fake blood splattered around in At

1013
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,040
Speaker 1: least help was fake. I don't know how much of

1014
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:12,719
Speaker 1: that was just for like taurusts and stuff like. I mean,

1015
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:14,759
Speaker 1: you weren't really supposed to be walking around back there

1016
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: unless you were like authorized, so I don't know who

1017
00:56:16,920 --> 00:56:19,120
Speaker 1: that would have been for. But yeah, no, it was

1018
00:56:19,160 --> 00:56:21,400
Speaker 1: really weird. I remember like being around there right around

1019
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:23,399
Speaker 1: one the time when Gus van Zant and Vince Vaughn

1020
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:26,759
Speaker 1: and and Hayes for making that. Yeah, I mean it's

1021
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:30,440
Speaker 1: his arc is hilarious. I mean he did Goodwill Hunting,

1022
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:36,040
Speaker 1: Psycho Finding Forrester or something called Jerry written by Damon

1023
00:56:36,120 --> 00:56:40,920
Speaker 1: and Casey Affleck. I have no memory of this movie.

1024
00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:45,840
Speaker 1: And then he did that school shooter movie Elephant, and

1025
00:56:46,000 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 1: then he did the weird Kurt Cobain thing. What's the

1026
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 1: weird Kurt Cobain thing Last Days? I have no idea

1027
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:56,240
Speaker 1: what that is. Oh, really, that's funny. That's the movie

1028
00:56:56,280 --> 00:57:02,320
Speaker 1: where Michael Pitt basically just plays thinly veil Kurt Cobain

1029
00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:07,600
Speaker 1: and just like wanders around his house. That's really weird. Well,

1030
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:11,600
Speaker 1: how are we? Oh mat be so cute? They were

1031
00:57:11,680 --> 00:57:14,560
Speaker 1: so green that when they took Gus van Zan out

1032
00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:18,400
Speaker 1: for early preliminary meetings try to get them on board.

1033
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:23,000
Speaker 1: They took him to Denny's. Ben Affleck said Denny's was

1034
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 1: sort of normal for us, or else would we go.

1035
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:27,440
Speaker 1: We didn't even have any frame of reference of what

1036
00:57:27,560 --> 00:57:32,600
Speaker 1: famous people were supposed to do well. But what really

1037
00:57:32,680 --> 00:57:34,959
Speaker 1: kicked the production into high gear was when Matt Damon

1038
00:57:35,040 --> 00:57:37,800
Speaker 1: got cast in the film adaptation of John Grisham's best

1039
00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:40,960
Speaker 1: seller The Rainmaker. And at that time, adaptations of John

1040
00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:44,960
Speaker 1: Grisham's legal thrillers were huge. You had the firm, the pelican,

1041
00:57:45,040 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 1: brief the client, the chamber and bucking the trend a

1042
00:57:48,720 --> 00:57:51,880
Speaker 1: time to kill. So getting a role in The Rainmaker

1043
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:54,600
Speaker 1: was big news from Matt, and he excitedly facts the

1044
00:57:54,680 --> 00:57:59,520
Speaker 1: message to Harvey Weinstein. I am the Rainmaker, no further explanation,

1045
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:03,160
Speaker 1: And according to the story, Harvey had no idea what

1046
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:05,440
Speaker 1: this meant and thought this was Matt Damon's way of

1047
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:08,200
Speaker 1: threatening him with legal action. He's like, are you into

1048
00:58:08,240 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 1: water sports too? Wait? This is probably the best segue

1049
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:16,960
Speaker 1: I could possibly ever have. Did I tell you this?

1050
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:19,520
Speaker 1: I think I texted you this. The Harvey Weinstein story

1051
00:58:19,600 --> 00:58:22,080
Speaker 1: over the weekend, did I text you, Oh yeah, yeah,

1052
00:58:23,200 --> 00:58:26,760
Speaker 1: I a friend of a friend I just learned worked

1053
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:29,480
Speaker 1: at the Weinstein's company, and I guess it was like

1054
00:58:29,560 --> 00:58:31,200
Speaker 1: a thing around the I mean, I'm sure there are

1055
00:58:31,240 --> 00:58:33,440
Speaker 1: many things around the office, but one of them was

1056
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 1: don't have bowls of candy on your desk because her

1057
00:58:37,640 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 1: when Harvey comes by, he has no self control and

1058
00:58:40,880 --> 00:58:43,240
Speaker 1: he will he will drain them, he will eat them all.

1059
00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:49,000
Speaker 1: And it became a not infrequent occurrence that Harvey would

1060
00:58:49,040 --> 00:58:51,680
Speaker 1: just eat an entire bowl of candy on someone's desk

1061
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:55,280
Speaker 1: at once and then go back into his office and vomit.

1062
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:58,080
Speaker 1: And it was like somebody's assigned job in the office

1063
00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 1: to clean up Harvey Weinstein vomit when he ate too

1064
00:59:01,160 --> 00:59:10,920
Speaker 1: much candy off of somebody else's desk. So yeah, anyway,

1065
00:59:10,960 --> 00:59:14,400
Speaker 1: that was by We're kind of soft on Harvey in

1066
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:16,240
Speaker 1: this episode, so I'm glad I got that in there.

1067
00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:19,160
Speaker 1: But anyway, what Matt was trying to say was that

1068
00:59:19,920 --> 00:59:21,480
Speaker 1: he knew he was about to have some heat on

1069
00:59:21,600 --> 00:59:24,160
Speaker 1: him and wanted to fast track goodwill Hunting and The

1070
00:59:24,280 --> 00:59:27,200
Speaker 1: Rainmaker was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who had just

1071
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:31,680
Speaker 1: worked on the notorious box office bomb Jack with Robin Williams,

1072
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:33,920
Speaker 1: which is how Robin got ahold of the script and

1073
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:36,320
Speaker 1: signed on to the production, which we'll talk more about

1074
00:59:36,360 --> 00:59:39,960
Speaker 1: in the bit. Shooting for Goodwill Hunting started on April fourteenth,

1075
00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:43,000
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. It was completed in just nine weeks.

1076
00:59:43,160 --> 00:59:45,120
Speaker 1: Because I remember this was a ten million dollar movie,

1077
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:47,640
Speaker 1: it was very cheap and supposedly the first thing that

1078
00:59:47,680 --> 00:59:50,160
Speaker 1: they shot was the bar scene with Robin Williams and

1079
00:59:50,240 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 1: Stellen scars Guard who plays the Erican professor, and Matt

1080
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:56,360
Speaker 1: later talked about how powerful it was to watch their

1081
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,280
Speaker 1: words come to life. He said, quote when Gus call

1082
00:59:59,360 --> 01:00:02,120
Speaker 1: action and we watch these guys do our scene verbatim.

1083
01:00:02,440 --> 01:00:04,960
Speaker 1: We'd waited so long for this to happen. I remember

1084
01:00:05,080 --> 01:00:07,000
Speaker 1: just sitting next to Bend and then I had tears

1085
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:09,320
Speaker 1: rolling down my cheeks because I was just so happy

1086
01:00:09,440 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 1: that it was really happening. It was a mixture of

1087
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:15,680
Speaker 1: joy and disbelief and relief and gratitude. That was a

1088
01:00:15,760 --> 01:00:18,440
Speaker 1: really nice moment. Not ashamed to say it, and Ben

1089
01:00:18,480 --> 01:00:21,480
Speaker 1: Affleck added, it was all we thought about this movie.

1090
01:00:21,600 --> 01:00:24,040
Speaker 1: It was all we focused on, and we never really

1091
01:00:24,080 --> 01:00:26,720
Speaker 1: believed it would happen, and I sort of represented the

1092
01:00:26,760 --> 01:00:29,520
Speaker 1: sum total of what we tried to do. You know,

1093
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:31,840
Speaker 1: we might have cried for other reasons, have we been

1094
01:00:31,880 --> 01:00:34,560
Speaker 1: able to see the whole future and understand the complexity

1095
01:00:34,560 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: of what we've gotten ourselves into. But the time, we

1096
01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:39,880
Speaker 1: had the sort of surety and naive te of being

1097
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:42,800
Speaker 1: just guys in our mid twenties who weren't thinking about

1098
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:45,760
Speaker 1: anything except what was happening just right there in the moment,

1099
01:00:46,040 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 1: and feeling a tremendous amount of belief and satisfaction that

1100
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:52,920
Speaker 1: it actually happened, that we'd actually accomplish something. We just

1101
01:00:53,040 --> 01:00:57,320
Speaker 1: felt relieved that we hadn't totally failed Ben Affleck with

1102
01:00:57,400 --> 01:01:02,120
Speaker 1: this trademark downurism. One thing Matt Damon was not especially

1103
01:01:02,200 --> 01:01:05,840
Speaker 1: grateful for was his hair in this movie. He told

1104
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:08,440
Speaker 1: an interviewer in twenty twelve that the shaggy mushroom cut

1105
01:01:08,520 --> 01:01:11,920
Speaker 1: deal was quote so my fault for whatever reason at

1106
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:14,560
Speaker 1: that age, I love that hair cut. And Gus van

1107
01:01:14,680 --> 01:01:18,200
Speaker 1: Zandt was like really, and Ben was like, really, if

1108
01:01:18,200 --> 01:01:20,280
Speaker 1: you look at Ben's hair in that movie, it's totally

1109
01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:23,840
Speaker 1: acceptable by today's standards. But no, I wanted the frosted hair.

1110
01:01:24,320 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 1: I don't know what my problem was. I look like

1111
01:01:26,440 --> 01:01:32,720
Speaker 1: I should be singing back up for colored me bad accurate.

1112
01:01:32,880 --> 01:01:35,120
Speaker 1: Yeah it's not good. I mean it's no worse than

1113
01:01:35,240 --> 01:01:38,480
Speaker 1: Leonardo DiCaprio's hair and Titanic though, which, yeah it's true.

1114
01:01:38,560 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 1: See that that tweet that was going around, It's like, yeah, wow,

1115
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:45,440
Speaker 1: Like James Cameron got the original carpet makers to replicate

1116
01:01:45,520 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 1: the carpet from the Titanic, and we every no expense

1117
01:01:49,360 --> 01:01:52,920
Speaker 1: was spared on getting all the details exact, having the

1118
01:01:53,160 --> 01:01:56,960
Speaker 1: correct insignia stamped on the cutlery and I he re

1119
01:01:57,120 --> 01:02:00,920
Speaker 1: rebuilt the Titanic, and yet they left Leonardo dicaprios hair.

1120
01:02:01,600 --> 01:02:04,200
Speaker 1: He's probably in his contract. Oh yeah, you don't touch

1121
01:02:04,240 --> 01:02:07,360
Speaker 1: the hair. Much more stylish. In Goodwill Hunting is the

1122
01:02:07,440 --> 01:02:11,200
Speaker 1: character of Skylar. Skylar like the official gen X dream

1123
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:15,640
Speaker 1: girl name. I feel like that's just like the most Yeah, yeah, okay,

1124
01:02:15,880 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 1: thank you. She's played, of course by Mini Driver and

1125
01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:22,720
Speaker 1: in our prerequisite Harvey Weinstein is a scumbag anecdote for

1126
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:25,160
Speaker 1: this episode. He initially didn't want her in the movie

1127
01:02:25,240 --> 01:02:28,440
Speaker 1: because he thought she wasn't attractive enough, but he eventually

1128
01:02:28,520 --> 01:02:31,120
Speaker 1: backed down after being persuaded by Matt and Ben and

1129
01:02:31,200 --> 01:02:34,280
Speaker 1: Gus van Zant. The character of Skyler was based on

1130
01:02:34,360 --> 01:02:38,880
Speaker 1: Matt's girlfriends who was also named Skylar, woman named Skylar Satinstein,

1131
01:02:39,280 --> 01:02:41,320
Speaker 1: who was a medical student at Harvard when Matt was

1132
01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:44,880
Speaker 1: enrolled there, and just before filming started on Goodwill Hunting,

1133
01:02:45,000 --> 01:02:50,240
Speaker 1: she left him from Metallico drummer laws Ulrich, whom she

1134
01:02:50,440 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 1: later married the year Goodwill Hunting was released, so the

1135
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:57,720
Speaker 1: universe was kept in check for Matt Damon there. He

1136
01:02:57,920 --> 01:02:59,760
Speaker 1: later said that he lost the love of his life,

1137
01:02:59,800 --> 01:03:02,520
Speaker 1: to quote, a firing rock star who's got eighty million

1138
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:05,480
Speaker 1: dollars in his own jet. And he's a bad rock

1139
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:11,439
Speaker 1: star too. I mean, Lars is high on the list

1140
01:03:11,520 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 1: of the most hated rock stars, I'd say in the world, right,

1141
01:03:14,800 --> 01:03:17,760
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, very high on that list. The real

1142
01:03:17,800 --> 01:03:20,400
Speaker 1: life Skylar and Lars later divorced in two thousand and four,

1143
01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:22,520
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of little personal moments in

1144
01:03:22,640 --> 01:03:25,280
Speaker 1: the movie. The character of Skyler talks about her dad

1145
01:03:25,400 --> 01:03:28,080
Speaker 1: dying years earlier, and the real life Skyler coped with

1146
01:03:28,160 --> 01:03:30,320
Speaker 1: the loss of her dad years before she and Matt

1147
01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:34,640
Speaker 1: met at Harvard. Her father was a TV director, Frank Satinstein,

1148
01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:38,280
Speaker 1: who directed episodes of The Jackie Gleason Show, The Honeymooners,

1149
01:03:38,360 --> 01:03:41,840
Speaker 1: and What's My Line? The Pioneering Early Game Show. So

1150
01:03:41,960 --> 01:03:44,880
Speaker 1: that's weird, but yeah, I love all these little touches

1151
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:47,720
Speaker 1: of real life that Matt and Ben put into this movie.

1152
01:03:48,240 --> 01:03:52,400
Speaker 1: The number of the construction company where Will and Chucky work.

1153
01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:55,480
Speaker 1: That phone number was the actual number for the Massachusetts

1154
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:58,280
Speaker 1: construction company that Matt Damon worked for in high school.

1155
01:03:59,120 --> 01:04:02,000
Speaker 1: I love that he's a little moments. Matt David Mini

1156
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:04,640
Speaker 1: Driver actually dated for a time when this movie was

1157
01:04:04,720 --> 01:04:07,680
Speaker 1: being filmed, before breaking up just after it was released,

1158
01:04:08,360 --> 01:04:10,760
Speaker 1: and I guess Matt went on the Oprah Whipfree Show

1159
01:04:10,840 --> 01:04:13,080
Speaker 1: and announced that he was single, and that was how

1160
01:04:13,160 --> 01:04:16,600
Speaker 1: Mini found out that they were done, which is, I know,

1161
01:04:16,880 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 1: he seems like such a nice guy. That's a very

1162
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:22,520
Speaker 1: like scumbagy thing to do. Yeah. She later told The

1163
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:25,680
Speaker 1: Telegraph we split up very publicly that April in nineteen

1164
01:04:25,800 --> 01:04:28,240
Speaker 1: ninety eight, which was grim and it turned from this

1165
01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:31,720
Speaker 1: beautiful thing into something so dark. I always was really

1166
01:04:31,800 --> 01:04:34,320
Speaker 1: sad that we didn't stay friends because it was absolutely

1167
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:39,800
Speaker 1: incandescent making that film. So that's not cute. But we

1168
01:04:39,920 --> 01:04:42,560
Speaker 1: do in fact, have a cute anecdote that occurred between

1169
01:04:42,600 --> 01:04:44,640
Speaker 1: Minie and Matt during the filming of Good Will Hunting

1170
01:04:45,360 --> 01:04:47,400
Speaker 1: in the scene where they're in bed together and Will's

1171
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:51,120
Speaker 1: just sort of mumbling half asleep. That is real. Matt

1172
01:04:51,200 --> 01:04:54,640
Speaker 1: David had fallen asleep, presumably because he was exhausted from

1173
01:04:54,680 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 1: writing and starring in this thing, so he just crawled

1174
01:04:57,240 --> 01:04:59,400
Speaker 1: into the bed on set during a lunch break and

1175
01:04:59,520 --> 01:05:03,120
Speaker 1: passed out. And Minnie later recalled, we had this scene

1176
01:05:03,160 --> 01:05:05,240
Speaker 1: after lunch that took place in the bed, So I

1177
01:05:05,320 --> 01:05:06,520
Speaker 1: think he thought he was just going to get a

1178
01:05:06,560 --> 01:05:10,400
Speaker 1: head start on the whole thing. I remember the cinematographer saying,

1179
01:05:10,520 --> 01:05:12,840
Speaker 1: let him sleep. We'll just shoot it from above, and

1180
01:05:12,920 --> 01:05:15,400
Speaker 1: they built the structure so you're above the bed, and

1181
01:05:15,560 --> 01:05:17,360
Speaker 1: Gus was like, well, I'm just going get in the

1182
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:19,160
Speaker 1: bed with him. And I got in the bed and

1183
01:05:19,320 --> 01:05:21,560
Speaker 1: was like, babe, you know, we got we gotta do

1184
01:05:21,640 --> 01:05:24,720
Speaker 1: this thing. And he just kind of mumbles and it

1185
01:05:24,840 --> 01:05:26,880
Speaker 1: was so quiet and he was so sleepy, and we

1186
01:05:26,960 --> 01:05:29,920
Speaker 1: did the scene based around him like really being asleep,

1187
01:05:30,320 --> 01:05:32,640
Speaker 1: and I love that everything worked around that. It's such

1188
01:05:32,680 --> 01:05:37,040
Speaker 1: a beautiful scene. One of my very favorites this sleepy

1189
01:05:37,200 --> 01:05:43,080
Speaker 1: boy weird decide that I assume is not a coincidence.

1190
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:46,680
Speaker 1: Scholar's room number is two h six and that is

1191
01:05:46,760 --> 01:05:49,120
Speaker 1: I believe the number of bones in the human body,

1192
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:51,640
Speaker 1: which is cute because she's supposed to be majoring in

1193
01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:55,320
Speaker 1: pre med I know that from a Terminator two judgment day,

1194
01:05:56,000 --> 01:06:00,920
Speaker 1: Linda Hamilton breaks the guy's hand with a with a

1195
01:06:01,160 --> 01:06:04,040
Speaker 1: night stick and he's like, you broke my head. She's like,

1196
01:06:04,680 --> 01:06:07,040
Speaker 1: there are two hundred and six bones in the human body.

1197
01:06:07,240 --> 01:06:12,320
Speaker 1: That's one that's great lovely to Hamilton. You know who

1198
01:06:12,360 --> 01:06:19,440
Speaker 1: wrote that line, William Goldman James Camera. Oh, yeah, we're

1199
01:06:19,480 --> 01:06:21,720
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back

1200
01:06:21,800 --> 01:06:36,280
Speaker 1: with more too much information in just a moment. Now

1201
01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:38,720
Speaker 1: we have arrived at the part of the show where

1202
01:06:38,760 --> 01:06:41,760
Speaker 1: we talk about Ben Affleck as Chucky his best some

1203
01:06:41,880 --> 01:06:44,080
Speaker 1: of his best, but yeah, it's kind of it's kind

1204
01:06:44,080 --> 01:06:50,880
Speaker 1: of sad he he peaked. Argo. I don't think he's

1205
01:06:50,920 --> 01:06:54,720
Speaker 1: good and Argo Dogma, I don't think he's good and

1206
01:06:54,800 --> 01:07:03,720
Speaker 1: Dogma either, Armageddon keep going as you got gone girl,

1207
01:07:04,760 --> 01:07:07,600
Speaker 1: Oh he's good and gone? Yeah, because it weaponizes his

1208
01:07:08,520 --> 01:07:13,320
Speaker 1: crippling kability. Yeah, anyway, yeah, probably the best acting of

1209
01:07:13,680 --> 01:07:15,600
Speaker 1: his career is in the scene where you know, he

1210
01:07:15,680 --> 01:07:18,280
Speaker 1: tells Will he's gonna stop being afraid of success and

1211
01:07:18,440 --> 01:07:21,640
Speaker 1: leave town. You know, if not for him, then for

1212
01:07:21,680 --> 01:07:23,600
Speaker 1: all of his friends who don't have what he had

1213
01:07:23,720 --> 01:07:26,040
Speaker 1: his brain, and they believe in him and they want

1214
01:07:26,080 --> 01:07:28,120
Speaker 1: the best for him. And that was a speech that

1215
01:07:28,440 --> 01:07:31,200
Speaker 1: Affleck and Damon had had drafted over and over and

1216
01:07:31,360 --> 01:07:33,960
Speaker 1: over again, and they spent months and working on it,

1217
01:07:34,120 --> 01:07:37,560
Speaker 1: and Gus van Zant said that he knew that Ben

1218
01:07:37,720 --> 01:07:40,480
Speaker 1: nailed it in the first take, but after having written

1219
01:07:40,520 --> 01:07:42,480
Speaker 1: it for so long, Ben had a hard time believing

1220
01:07:42,520 --> 01:07:45,439
Speaker 1: that it was just over in five minutes. He told

1221
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:48,080
Speaker 1: Boston Magazine. I had been thinking about the scene and

1222
01:07:48,160 --> 01:07:49,880
Speaker 1: how it was going to play out, then reading it

1223
01:07:49,920 --> 01:07:52,600
Speaker 1: out loud, and writing it and rewriting it and rehearsing

1224
01:07:52,640 --> 01:07:54,760
Speaker 1: it in my mind over years and years. It was

1225
01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:57,880
Speaker 1: just kind of like, is it over. It's just hard

1226
01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:00,560
Speaker 1: to almost internalize the fact that, Okay, we're gonna wait

1227
01:08:00,640 --> 01:08:02,560
Speaker 1: four years and it's gonna be over in five seconds,

1228
01:08:02,960 --> 01:08:07,560
Speaker 1: kind of like losing my virginity. Ah, he does have

1229
01:08:07,600 --> 01:08:10,400
Speaker 1: a way with words. They ultimately did two more takes,

1230
01:08:10,440 --> 01:08:12,600
Speaker 1: but they used the first one, and it remains one

1231
01:08:12,640 --> 01:08:17,000
Speaker 1: of the best moments in a career with not that

1232
01:08:17,160 --> 01:08:22,880
Speaker 1: many of them, surely others. Oh, I like this brings

1233
01:08:23,000 --> 01:08:25,280
Speaker 1: us to a segment of the show that we like

1234
01:08:25,400 --> 01:08:29,560
Speaker 1: to call the unbearable sadness of Ben Affleck. Oh I

1235
01:08:29,680 --> 01:08:34,160
Speaker 1: like him in Chasing Amy. Actually, well again, gone girl.

1236
01:08:34,800 --> 01:08:40,519
Speaker 1: He's a befuddled idiot, but again that's his reputation, and

1237
01:08:40,640 --> 01:08:43,559
Speaker 1: as we'll get to now, he actually is so much

1238
01:08:43,680 --> 01:08:46,280
Speaker 1: more than that, and the fact that he only succeeds

1239
01:08:46,760 --> 01:08:51,200
Speaker 1: at being this befuddled idiot is very depressing to him. Yeah,

1240
01:08:51,320 --> 01:08:53,400
Speaker 1: and it's and this is the thing that I love

1241
01:08:53,439 --> 01:08:58,240
Speaker 1: about Ben Affleck is his his um apparently unbreakable core

1242
01:08:58,400 --> 01:09:02,519
Speaker 1: of sadness. Um, have you seen that. I'm we've all

1243
01:09:02,560 --> 01:09:04,160
Speaker 1: seen the thing of him standing on the beach, but

1244
01:09:04,240 --> 01:09:07,080
Speaker 1: have you seen them the red carpet thing when he's

1245
01:09:07,240 --> 01:09:11,080
Speaker 1: when he's with just falls just deflates, and it's just

1246
01:09:11,960 --> 01:09:13,720
Speaker 1: somebody comes up and he's talking to him and he's like,

1247
01:09:13,800 --> 01:09:17,800
Speaker 1: you know, Chipper, Yeah, he turns it all, he turns

1248
01:09:17,840 --> 01:09:19,800
Speaker 1: it all, he grinds, he's like, hey, you can see

1249
01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:22,559
Speaker 1: him doing the thing. And then just in a second,

1250
01:09:22,760 --> 01:09:25,240
Speaker 1: it falls away, and it's just the look of a

1251
01:09:25,320 --> 01:09:30,639
Speaker 1: man haunted by years. I'm so fascinated by him. It's

1252
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:32,519
Speaker 1: just it. I mean, it's it's kind of like um

1253
01:09:33,880 --> 01:09:36,400
Speaker 1: talking about I was, yes, exactly. It's like we're just

1254
01:09:36,439 --> 01:09:39,520
Speaker 1: talking about Billy. Joel is just like someone who succeeded

1255
01:09:39,680 --> 01:09:44,360
Speaker 1: at their chosen medium and by every other other conceivable

1256
01:09:44,760 --> 01:09:50,600
Speaker 1: possible measure of human success, spiritual, creative, financial, and is

1257
01:09:50,640 --> 01:09:53,360
Speaker 1: still just like Nope, you know what it is. I

1258
01:09:53,439 --> 01:09:58,960
Speaker 1: think he's successful, but he doesn't have the validation from

1259
01:09:59,280 --> 01:10:02,000
Speaker 1: I think what he deem the intellectual elite like Billy

1260
01:10:02,120 --> 01:10:05,360
Speaker 1: Joel never was a critical favorite ever, sure, and I

1261
01:10:05,439 --> 01:10:09,360
Speaker 1: think that Affleck feels that he's Matt Damon's dumb friend

1262
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:11,800
Speaker 1: in the in the public perception, I think that this

1263
01:10:12,000 --> 01:10:14,880
Speaker 1: movie was simultaneously the best and worst thing that ever

1264
01:10:15,000 --> 01:10:18,040
Speaker 1: happened to Ben Affleck Good Hunting, because I think the

1265
01:10:18,200 --> 01:10:22,360
Speaker 1: public viewed him as his character in that movie. I mean, yeah,

1266
01:10:22,640 --> 01:10:24,880
Speaker 1: Matt's older, He's the one who went to Harvard, He's

1267
01:10:24,920 --> 01:10:26,800
Speaker 1: the one who started writing the script to begin with.

1268
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:28,479
Speaker 1: He was the one who played the lead role. He

1269
01:10:28,600 --> 01:10:32,840
Speaker 1: was the one who dated the lead actress, and Ben

1270
01:10:33,680 --> 01:10:37,479
Speaker 1: had a PlayStation or something, you know, like, yeah, there's

1271
01:10:37,520 --> 01:10:41,800
Speaker 1: that Family Guy joke about It's like a cutaway joke

1272
01:10:41,840 --> 01:10:45,559
Speaker 1: where it's like then writing the script to Good Hunting

1273
01:10:45,680 --> 01:10:48,760
Speaker 1: and he's like, Oh, I can't believe we wrote with

1274
01:10:49,160 --> 01:10:52,599
Speaker 1: the Affleck is avatars. I can't believe we finished the script.

1275
01:10:52,680 --> 01:10:55,160
Speaker 1: He's like, we I've been writing this for the past

1276
01:10:55,280 --> 01:10:56,560
Speaker 1: ten years and all you've done is so in the

1277
01:10:56,600 --> 01:10:58,920
Speaker 1: couch and smoke pot and eat briars. And there's like

1278
01:10:58,960 --> 01:11:00,960
Speaker 1: a beat in the like I goes, is there any

1279
01:11:01,000 --> 01:11:05,680
Speaker 1: more pot? So yes, that's that's that that joke, And

1280
01:11:05,800 --> 01:11:08,800
Speaker 1: that was in Family Guy in like two thousand and

1281
01:11:09,120 --> 01:11:13,760
Speaker 1: two or three, so that reputation persisted. Uh. Affleck would

1282
01:11:13,880 --> 01:11:16,400
Speaker 1: later say, I've had people say, wow, you're pretty smart,

1283
01:11:16,520 --> 01:11:18,880
Speaker 1: as if they expected this real sort of dummy, a

1284
01:11:18,960 --> 01:11:22,680
Speaker 1: guy who is even less intelligent than Chucky. Uh. I

1285
01:11:22,720 --> 01:11:25,599
Speaker 1: always forget too that he's bilingual, but yeah, when he's

1286
01:11:25,640 --> 01:11:28,320
Speaker 1: flute in Spanish. When he was aiding dating anat armist,

1287
01:11:28,360 --> 01:11:30,960
Speaker 1: they would speak in Spanish back and forth to each other,

1288
01:11:33,880 --> 01:11:38,080
Speaker 1: just age or like he learned he learned with his

1289
01:11:38,320 --> 01:11:42,680
Speaker 1: mom traveling around Mexico apparently for like an extended amount

1290
01:11:42,720 --> 01:11:44,920
Speaker 1: of time cool a year or something. He was like,

1291
01:11:45,200 --> 01:11:50,400
Speaker 1: he's a smart dude. Yeah, you know, we and I mean, yeah,

1292
01:11:50,600 --> 01:11:54,120
Speaker 1: it's just to me, it's the sadness more than the dumbness.

1293
01:11:54,240 --> 01:11:56,400
Speaker 1: Like I mean, there's that that image of him just

1294
01:11:56,600 --> 01:12:00,439
Speaker 1: disassociating in the middle of a junket next to uh

1295
01:12:01,720 --> 01:12:05,559
Speaker 1: uh is it he's doing it next to Superman Henry

1296
01:12:05,600 --> 01:12:08,920
Speaker 1: Cavill for Batman v. Superman The Sound of Sadness one

1297
01:12:09,000 --> 01:12:11,960
Speaker 1: where he just clearly goes away. It just stares off

1298
01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:14,840
Speaker 1: and nothing is There's the one of him smoking a

1299
01:12:14,960 --> 01:12:18,519
Speaker 1: cigarette like up against the wall, just like staring into

1300
01:12:18,600 --> 01:12:22,920
Speaker 1: enough like just eyes clothes. Yeah. I got a friend

1301
01:12:22,960 --> 01:12:25,360
Speaker 1: who got that put Actually I think it's my girlfriend's

1302
01:12:25,400 --> 01:12:32,240
Speaker 1: sister painted onto a canvas and it's framed. Yeah, oh good,

1303
01:12:32,360 --> 01:12:34,720
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah yeah that in the duncan thing man,

1304
01:12:34,960 --> 01:12:37,759
Speaker 1: just like the you know, dropping the handful of duncan

1305
01:12:37,880 --> 01:12:42,240
Speaker 1: in the in his doorway. It's just it's it's so great.

1306
01:12:42,360 --> 01:12:45,240
Speaker 1: I mean, he is such a Yeah, it's it's sad

1307
01:12:45,320 --> 01:12:49,600
Speaker 1: because it is such a uh it's the striver. He

1308
01:12:49,800 --> 01:12:52,280
Speaker 1: just wants to be so much more than the than

1309
01:12:52,360 --> 01:12:54,639
Speaker 1: the guy with the chisel jaw. On the little baby

1310
01:12:54,680 --> 01:12:59,040
Speaker 1: teeth that Michael Bay made get fixed. Uh, we have

1311
01:12:59,120 --> 01:13:01,840
Speaker 1: the aforementioned as as as arrows. In this quiver, we

1312
01:13:01,920 --> 01:13:07,559
Speaker 1: have the aforementioned BuzzFeed article. The famous New Yorker piece

1313
01:13:07,880 --> 01:13:12,679
Speaker 1: called the Great Sadness of Ben Affleck is basically kind

1314
01:13:12,760 --> 01:13:15,080
Speaker 1: of mean to him. Isn't that the one where he

1315
01:13:15,240 --> 01:13:19,439
Speaker 1: tweeted about it. I don't remember that he said something

1316
01:13:19,479 --> 01:13:23,120
Speaker 1: about how because they commented on his phoenix tattoo, his

1317
01:13:23,280 --> 01:13:34,559
Speaker 1: back is the most Boston thing ever. Yeah, back phoenix tattoo. Um. Yeah,

1318
01:13:34,680 --> 01:13:37,479
Speaker 1: the picture, if I'm remembering correctly, that the New Yorker

1319
01:13:37,600 --> 01:13:41,280
Speaker 1: article uses as him standing on the beach um in

1320
01:13:41,400 --> 01:13:45,799
Speaker 1: a towel, and he's not he's not in fighting shape,

1321
01:13:47,160 --> 01:13:49,519
Speaker 1: let's say. And he has a towel sort of up

1322
01:13:49,560 --> 01:13:54,559
Speaker 1: around his his middriff. And um, you know, I don't

1323
01:13:54,840 --> 01:13:59,000
Speaker 1: I'm not a I'm not a tattoo artist. Um, but

1324
01:13:59,160 --> 01:14:03,680
Speaker 1: your wife is. My wife is. And I don't know,

1325
01:14:03,840 --> 01:14:06,240
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's like an omerta about like being

1326
01:14:06,360 --> 01:14:08,960
Speaker 1: on tattoo artists in public. But so I don't actually

1327
01:14:09,040 --> 01:14:13,720
Speaker 1: know who did that. But man, I'm sure it's technically good,

1328
01:14:13,840 --> 01:14:17,280
Speaker 1: but it is just this. It's it's every color of

1329
01:14:17,360 --> 01:14:21,360
Speaker 1: the rainbow. Yeah, it's it's um it has it has

1330
01:14:21,560 --> 01:14:24,760
Speaker 1: peake what are clearly peacock tails. Has there a clear

1331
01:14:24,880 --> 01:14:27,519
Speaker 1: image of it ever? Yeah, I'm looking at it, rope buddy,

1332
01:14:27,520 --> 01:14:30,679
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it right now, a very clear image. Yeah.

1333
01:14:30,840 --> 01:14:34,240
Speaker 1: I mean it's weird because the fire seems to terminate

1334
01:14:34,360 --> 01:14:37,360
Speaker 1: on his butt, his left butt cheek, so it may

1335
01:14:37,439 --> 01:14:41,200
Speaker 1: actually go down further than his back. There's a tiny

1336
01:14:41,360 --> 01:14:45,439
Speaker 1: moon up in the upper right corner. And like, dude,

1337
01:14:45,520 --> 01:14:48,640
Speaker 1: I screaming into a towel as in the picture that

1338
01:14:48,720 --> 01:14:51,760
Speaker 1: I'm saying, I had my back down, and it's like

1339
01:14:52,240 --> 01:14:56,080
Speaker 1: that was like seven seven sessions, and they're discreet pieces

1340
01:14:56,200 --> 01:14:58,560
Speaker 1: that are all kind of all over. But you do

1341
01:14:58,720 --> 01:15:02,200
Speaker 1: this in several sessions. So he committed to this. I mean,

1342
01:15:02,320 --> 01:15:05,120
Speaker 1: you do outline, then you do phil and then you

1343
01:15:05,240 --> 01:15:07,200
Speaker 1: do color, and then you come back for a touch up.

1344
01:15:07,320 --> 01:15:11,920
Speaker 1: We're talking like several four to six hour sessions. Anyway,

1345
01:15:12,040 --> 01:15:14,679
Speaker 1: the writer in The New Yorker made reference Naomi Fry

1346
01:15:14,840 --> 01:15:17,360
Speaker 1: was the writer, and she made reference to his tattoo.

1347
01:15:17,400 --> 01:15:23,360
Speaker 1: I believe she used the phrase or word garish to

1348
01:15:23,520 --> 01:15:27,479
Speaker 1: describe it. He tweeted in response to it, he said,

1349
01:15:27,600 --> 01:15:34,679
Speaker 1: I have thick skin bolstered by Garish tattoos. He's aware

1350
01:15:34,720 --> 01:15:36,720
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, you know they he saw the

1351
01:15:37,280 --> 01:15:40,200
Speaker 1: Henry Cavill thing, he says. When he was asked by

1352
01:15:40,240 --> 01:15:44,360
Speaker 1: the BBC nonetheless asked him what he learned from doing

1353
01:15:44,479 --> 01:15:48,360
Speaker 1: a Batman and V Superman, he said, it taught me

1354
01:15:48,439 --> 01:15:50,360
Speaker 1: not to do interviews with Henry Cavill where I don't

1355
01:15:50,360 --> 01:15:52,800
Speaker 1: say anything and they can lay Simon and Garfuncle tracks

1356
01:15:52,840 --> 01:15:57,960
Speaker 1: over it. So anyway, all of this is to say

1357
01:15:58,000 --> 01:16:04,080
Speaker 1: that you know, his head hangs heavy. Anyway. Ben Affleck

1358
01:16:04,120 --> 01:16:06,599
Speaker 1: talked about the public misconception of his role in Goodwill

1359
01:16:06,720 --> 01:16:10,560
Speaker 1: Hunting in a two thousand interview with Talk magazine. I

1360
01:16:10,680 --> 01:16:14,040
Speaker 1: took the whole writer thing very seriously in retrospect. If

1361
01:16:14,040 --> 01:16:15,720
Speaker 1: I'd known them what I know now, I would have

1362
01:16:15,800 --> 01:16:18,160
Speaker 1: expanded the part that I played. Matt had a bigger

1363
01:16:18,200 --> 01:16:20,160
Speaker 1: part in School Ties, and he had been the lead

1364
01:16:20,240 --> 01:16:23,120
Speaker 1: in Geronimo. Both movies totally bombed and no one was

1365
01:16:23,160 --> 01:16:25,040
Speaker 1: offering him any parts. But you could make the case

1366
01:16:25,120 --> 01:16:27,759
Speaker 1: that he was the actor. I'd only had supporting roles

1367
01:16:27,840 --> 01:16:29,679
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a lot of room in the script

1368
01:16:29,920 --> 01:16:32,200
Speaker 1: for us both to star, especially because we needed to

1369
01:16:32,240 --> 01:16:34,320
Speaker 1: have a big name like Robin Williams in order to

1370
01:16:34,400 --> 01:16:37,240
Speaker 1: get it made. So I felt like, well, okay, we'll

1371
01:16:37,280 --> 01:16:40,880
Speaker 1: cut my scenes out. And this put them on the

1372
01:16:41,240 --> 01:16:44,120
Speaker 1: differing roads that they made. You know, Damon got the

1373
01:16:44,840 --> 01:16:48,320
Speaker 1: sort of tag as this serious dramatic actor with talented

1374
01:16:48,360 --> 01:16:52,559
Speaker 1: mister Ripley, and you know his role in Oceans eleven,

1375
01:16:52,720 --> 01:16:57,960
Speaker 1: and then Affleck's career had stuff like Pearl Harbor and Bounce,

1376
01:16:58,080 --> 01:17:02,679
Speaker 1: which is a pretty massive flop. Joe, well, yeah, even

1377
01:17:02,800 --> 01:17:07,280
Speaker 1: Damon's acting action movies were are largely better than Afflex,

1378
01:17:07,320 --> 01:17:11,080
Speaker 1: which is sad. He couldn't even let him have the

1379
01:17:11,160 --> 01:17:13,519
Speaker 1: meathead action stuff. He was like, I'm gonna do this

1380
01:17:13,600 --> 01:17:16,400
Speaker 1: thing called burn identity where I kick a lot of ass.

1381
01:17:18,320 --> 01:17:24,160
Speaker 1: You can do Daredevil. In the BuzzFeed piece, Anne Helen

1382
01:17:24,240 --> 01:17:28,080
Speaker 1: Peterson makes the memorable comparison if Damon's career choices were

1383
01:17:28,120 --> 01:17:32,519
Speaker 1: whole foods, Afflecks were increasingly costco. He was making a

1384
01:17:32,600 --> 01:17:35,439
Speaker 1: lot of money but had no critical cachet or success,

1385
01:17:36,360 --> 01:17:39,800
Speaker 1: which we've already compared to Billy Joel and in Ben's case,

1386
01:17:39,880 --> 01:17:42,720
Speaker 1: he's found him trapped in he found himself trapped in

1387
01:17:42,880 --> 01:17:47,360
Speaker 1: action star land and uh yeah, you know he's he's

1388
01:17:47,520 --> 01:17:51,799
Speaker 1: really an intellect son of Bay Area intellectuals and drama

1389
01:17:51,960 --> 01:17:55,439
Speaker 1: kid at heart. There's a story from pre production phase

1390
01:17:55,479 --> 01:17:58,040
Speaker 1: of Armageddon where Ben left the first meeting with director

1391
01:17:58,080 --> 01:18:01,280
Speaker 1: Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and Michael Bay turns

1392
01:18:01,320 --> 01:18:06,160
Speaker 1: to Bruckheimer says, Jerry, he's a geek. Baby remembers thinking, Okay,

1393
01:18:06,200 --> 01:18:09,200
Speaker 1: so he's this kind of pale Boston guy. We can

1394
01:18:09,280 --> 01:18:11,120
Speaker 1: work him out, give him a tan, do everything to

1395
01:18:11,160 --> 01:18:14,400
Speaker 1: make him a star. But liv Tyler, his co star

1396
01:18:14,439 --> 01:18:17,639
Speaker 1: of that movie, saw through it. She told People magazine.

1397
01:18:17,720 --> 01:18:20,439
Speaker 1: Ben has this nerdy, smart guy side to him. He's

1398
01:18:20,479 --> 01:18:23,040
Speaker 1: obsessed with the New York Times crossword puzzle. He reads

1399
01:18:23,080 --> 01:18:25,599
Speaker 1: a lot. He's really interested knowing more about the world.

1400
01:18:26,600 --> 01:18:29,600
Speaker 1: And yet another friend of his described Ben's idea of

1401
01:18:29,680 --> 01:18:32,920
Speaker 1: the good life as eating its subway and playing video games.

1402
01:18:33,960 --> 01:18:37,679
Speaker 1: He has vintage Miss pac Man and Millipede arcade cabinets

1403
01:18:37,720 --> 01:18:41,880
Speaker 1: in his Manhattan loft, which is an adorable detail. And

1404
01:18:42,320 --> 01:18:45,040
Speaker 1: while Matt Damon was pulling off the big con as

1405
01:18:45,080 --> 01:18:50,280
Speaker 1: the pickpocket Linus in Oceans eleven, Ben Affleck is getting

1406
01:18:50,320 --> 01:18:54,679
Speaker 1: banned from cowd carting at blackjack in the Hard Rock

1407
01:18:55,400 --> 01:19:01,240
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. That just sums up like they can't catch

1408
01:19:01,320 --> 01:19:04,839
Speaker 1: a breakness of being Ben Affleck. It's like Matt Damn.

1409
01:19:05,080 --> 01:19:07,360
Speaker 1: It's pulling off a big con in Vegas and this

1410
01:19:07,520 --> 01:19:11,519
Speaker 1: great movie franchise. Ben Affleck is getting legitimately good at

1411
01:19:11,560 --> 01:19:16,360
Speaker 1: this game. He's getting so good that he's getting tossed

1412
01:19:16,400 --> 01:19:20,560
Speaker 1: out of the casino. He commented on all this in

1413
01:19:20,600 --> 01:19:23,880
Speaker 1: October of twenty fourteen to Details magazine, said, I took

1414
01:19:23,920 --> 01:19:25,599
Speaker 1: some time to learn the game and became a decent

1415
01:19:25,680 --> 01:19:28,760
Speaker 1: blackjack player. Once I became decent, the casino has asked

1416
01:19:28,800 --> 01:19:30,960
Speaker 1: me not to play blackjack. I mean, the fact that

1417
01:19:31,040 --> 01:19:32,640
Speaker 1: being good at a game is against the rules at

1418
01:19:32,680 --> 01:19:35,559
Speaker 1: a casino should tell you something about a casino. It's

1419
01:19:35,600 --> 01:19:39,160
Speaker 1: not illegal, it's just frowned upon. Yeah. I don't know

1420
01:19:39,240 --> 01:19:41,880
Speaker 1: if Argo filled that hole for him. I think I

1421
01:19:42,040 --> 01:19:46,280
Speaker 1: know that the one The Tender Bar, that new movie

1422
01:19:46,479 --> 01:19:49,320
Speaker 1: he's one of his most recent ones, was. I think

1423
01:19:49,360 --> 01:19:52,080
Speaker 1: of a lot of his reckoning with his own personal

1424
01:19:52,120 --> 01:19:54,960
Speaker 1: demons with alcoholism and his sort of the specter of

1425
01:19:55,040 --> 01:19:58,360
Speaker 1: his father. But I don't know he's he's in Uh.

1426
01:19:58,760 --> 01:20:00,559
Speaker 1: I think the last thing he's been the news four

1427
01:20:00,640 --> 01:20:03,200
Speaker 1: recently is just getting back with Jennifer Lopez. A decent

1428
01:20:03,240 --> 01:20:05,839
Speaker 1: thing to get back on the news for us with ourselves.

1429
01:20:06,520 --> 01:20:08,720
Speaker 1: He was in Klerks three. Oh, he was in that bar.

1430
01:20:09,000 --> 01:20:11,040
Speaker 1: I mean he was in he was in the last Duel,

1431
01:20:11,080 --> 01:20:12,960
Speaker 1: which a lot of people said really good things about.

1432
01:20:13,280 --> 01:20:15,160
Speaker 1: This is the first time that he and met Damon

1433
01:20:15,200 --> 01:20:18,960
Speaker 1: collaborated on a screenplay since good Will Hunting. And but

1434
01:20:19,120 --> 01:20:22,479
Speaker 1: then he was in Deep Water with Anadarmas and that

1435
01:20:22,680 --> 01:20:27,080
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty well ripped ripped apart. Anyway, back to

1436
01:20:27,120 --> 01:20:32,280
Speaker 1: good Will Hunting. Another star of this film is the

1437
01:20:32,360 --> 01:20:38,439
Speaker 1: word mirror. Max toyed with the idea of making the

1438
01:20:38,479 --> 01:20:41,720
Speaker 1: movie PG. Thirteen, which meant that it couldn't contain no

1439
01:20:41,840 --> 01:20:46,200
Speaker 1: more than three facts. I've always heard that that was one. Yeah,

1440
01:20:46,240 --> 01:20:48,120
Speaker 1: I was gonna say three. Maybe. In the nineteen ninety

1441
01:20:48,120 --> 01:20:50,880
Speaker 1: seven the three sounds high. Matt said, Okay, so how

1442
01:20:50,920 --> 01:20:53,720
Speaker 1: many are we over and the Mirrormax executive checked his

1443
01:20:53,840 --> 01:20:57,880
Speaker 1: notes and responded one hundred and forty five. Yeah. The

1444
01:20:58,000 --> 01:20:59,960
Speaker 1: movie is RATEDAR for those week keeping track at home,

1445
01:21:01,920 --> 01:21:05,360
Speaker 1: And of course, you know dozens of quotables like aside

1446
01:21:05,400 --> 01:21:09,559
Speaker 1: from it's not your fault because him that's why. Yeah,

1447
01:21:09,720 --> 01:21:13,519
Speaker 1: I say that a lot. I like the apples, which

1448
01:21:13,640 --> 01:21:17,000
Speaker 1: is I guess also in Chinatown. Yeah. I had never

1449
01:21:17,160 --> 01:21:19,320
Speaker 1: heard that phrase until this movie, but I guess it

1450
01:21:19,439 --> 01:21:21,400
Speaker 1: was just a phrase that Matt and Ben heard around

1451
01:21:21,439 --> 01:21:24,760
Speaker 1: Boston growing up. It's like an old time I will

1452
01:21:24,920 --> 01:21:27,080
Speaker 1: end you I did. Is that the first place that

1453
01:21:27,200 --> 01:21:30,240
Speaker 1: I heard that from. I think Robin Williams said that

1454
01:21:30,640 --> 01:21:34,960
Speaker 1: he heard that at a bar when some big guy

1455
01:21:35,160 --> 01:21:38,320
Speaker 1: was picking on a little guy and the little guy

1456
01:21:38,439 --> 01:21:41,120
Speaker 1: all of a sudden just summoned, like you know, stood

1457
01:21:41,160 --> 01:21:43,479
Speaker 1: at his full height of like five foot three or

1458
01:21:43,520 --> 01:21:47,600
Speaker 1: whatever and just growl back, I will end you. And

1459
01:21:47,880 --> 01:21:50,400
Speaker 1: it just stuck in Robin's mind because he just thought

1460
01:21:50,439 --> 01:21:52,400
Speaker 1: it was just I mean, the whole scene was so

1461
01:21:52,680 --> 01:21:54,519
Speaker 1: vivid to him, but he just thought it was such

1462
01:21:54,560 --> 01:21:58,880
Speaker 1: a great line. I believe that was Robin Williams improv

1463
01:21:58,960 --> 01:22:08,120
Speaker 1: in this movie. Yeah, my Boy's wicked smot Well, all right, yeah,

1464
01:22:08,160 --> 01:22:12,919
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about Casey Affleck's character Morgan. He apparently

1465
01:22:13,000 --> 01:22:15,479
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to be in this movie at all. Casey

1466
01:22:15,560 --> 01:22:17,560
Speaker 1: Affleck was just hanging around the set in order to

1467
01:22:17,600 --> 01:22:20,200
Speaker 1: make a behind the scenes documentary of the filming of

1468
01:22:20,240 --> 01:22:23,200
Speaker 1: good Will hunting for his older brother Ben, very proud

1469
01:22:23,320 --> 01:22:26,320
Speaker 1: younger brother, and for whatever reason, Gus Van Sant just

1470
01:22:26,400 --> 01:22:28,439
Speaker 1: loved him and kept pestering him to be in the movie,

1471
01:22:28,560 --> 01:22:31,120
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he didn't have a manager or

1472
01:22:31,200 --> 01:22:34,439
Speaker 1: even an agent, and eventually Casey Affleck said yes and

1473
01:22:34,600 --> 01:22:38,160
Speaker 1: eventually made his character up basically on the spot, improvising

1474
01:22:38,240 --> 01:22:41,200
Speaker 1: most of his dialogue, and he most memorably made up

1475
01:22:41,240 --> 01:22:43,320
Speaker 1: the line I saw at the Bug, which is his

1476
01:22:43,439 --> 01:22:45,840
Speaker 1: exit line when Skyler comes over to talk to Will

1477
01:22:45,920 --> 01:22:49,000
Speaker 1: at the bar. And it just seems like a random

1478
01:22:49,360 --> 01:22:52,639
Speaker 1: throwaway joke, just something goofy that this goofy guy says,

1479
01:22:53,120 --> 01:22:57,160
Speaker 1: But it's actually a reference, a really obscure cinematic reference

1480
01:22:57,479 --> 01:23:00,519
Speaker 1: to a behind the scenes documentary called Heart of Darkness,

1481
01:23:00,640 --> 01:23:04,200
Speaker 1: which is about the chaotic production of Apocalypse Now, directed

1482
01:23:04,240 --> 01:23:08,320
Speaker 1: by Francis Ford Coppola, who's in the mix of all

1483
01:23:08,400 --> 01:23:11,400
Speaker 1: this Google hunting stuff. In this documentary, there's a moment

1484
01:23:11,479 --> 01:23:14,280
Speaker 1: when Marlon Brando stops mid take when he's in the

1485
01:23:14,320 --> 01:23:16,800
Speaker 1: middle of one of the Colonel Kurtz monologues and says

1486
01:23:17,240 --> 01:23:21,040
Speaker 1: swallowed a bug. And I'm guessing Casey Affleck watched this

1487
01:23:21,240 --> 01:23:24,280
Speaker 1: making of documentary as inspiration when he was gearing up

1488
01:23:24,320 --> 01:23:27,000
Speaker 1: to film The Goodggle Hunting shoot, and then that line

1489
01:23:27,080 --> 01:23:29,640
Speaker 1: popped into his head on the set. But there was

1490
01:23:29,680 --> 01:23:32,000
Speaker 1: a lot of improv in this movie, so much so

1491
01:23:32,439 --> 01:23:34,559
Speaker 1: that Matt and Ben did but I think it's kind

1492
01:23:34,600 --> 01:23:37,240
Speaker 1: of a cool thing. When it came time for OSCAR campaigning,

1493
01:23:37,720 --> 01:23:40,400
Speaker 1: they sent copies of the script along with a print

1494
01:23:40,439 --> 01:23:42,040
Speaker 1: of the movie to all of the members of the

1495
01:23:42,080 --> 01:23:44,880
Speaker 1: Academy who were voting, so that anyone watching could follow

1496
01:23:44,920 --> 01:23:47,960
Speaker 1: along the script and see where it deviated from you know,

1497
01:23:48,400 --> 01:23:50,280
Speaker 1: what was on the screen. And that was a cool

1498
01:23:50,320 --> 01:23:52,400
Speaker 1: way to both give credit to the actors who'd ad

1499
01:23:52,520 --> 01:23:55,080
Speaker 1: lib their lines, which you know, Robert Williams was a

1500
01:23:55,240 --> 01:23:59,320
Speaker 1: huge factor in that, and also it showed that there

1501
01:23:59,360 --> 01:24:01,400
Speaker 1: were a lot of scene is that we're done completely

1502
01:24:01,439 --> 01:24:04,200
Speaker 1: as written and proving that Matt and Band were very

1503
01:24:04,280 --> 01:24:07,120
Speaker 1: good at their job as screenwriters. We'll get into this

1504
01:24:07,200 --> 01:24:09,000
Speaker 1: more at the end of the episode, but the only

1505
01:24:09,160 --> 01:24:11,920
Speaker 1: three people that had ever been nominated for writing and

1506
01:24:12,200 --> 01:24:14,720
Speaker 1: acting in the same year up to this point was

1507
01:24:14,880 --> 01:24:19,400
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin for The Great Dictator, Orson Welles for Citizen Cane,

1508
01:24:20,000 --> 01:24:24,320
Speaker 1: and Sylvester Stallone for Rocky, and then Matt Damon became

1509
01:24:24,439 --> 01:24:29,679
Speaker 1: the fourth through Goodwill Hunting Impressive company. Good for him. Well,

1510
01:24:30,240 --> 01:24:32,880
Speaker 1: we can't get into ad libbing without talking about the

1511
01:24:32,960 --> 01:24:36,800
Speaker 1: American treasure that he is. Robin Williams. You recall from

1512
01:24:36,840 --> 01:24:39,600
Speaker 1: earlier in this episode once it gets edited into coherence

1513
01:24:40,080 --> 01:24:43,320
Speaker 1: that Matt Damon was in The Rainmaker, directed by Francis

1514
01:24:43,360 --> 01:24:45,720
Speaker 1: Ford Coppola, who had just made the movie Jack with

1515
01:24:45,840 --> 01:24:50,040
Speaker 1: Robin Williams. Do you want to talk about Jack Jordan? Yeah?

1516
01:24:51,760 --> 01:24:53,519
Speaker 1: Is anyone remember that? Like it's almost one of those

1517
01:24:53,560 --> 01:24:55,600
Speaker 1: movies that I feel like I just made up in

1518
01:24:55,640 --> 01:24:59,280
Speaker 1: a fever dream. Robin Williams plays a kid who ages

1519
01:24:59,520 --> 01:25:02,759
Speaker 1: at like five or ten times the rate that normal

1520
01:25:02,840 --> 01:25:07,960
Speaker 1: kids do. So it's basically like big. Really, if you

1521
01:25:08,040 --> 01:25:10,679
Speaker 1: think about it, it's big. It's like big, but sad

1522
01:25:11,200 --> 01:25:14,720
Speaker 1: because then he obviously will die a lot sooner. And

1523
01:25:14,920 --> 01:25:18,080
Speaker 1: like the end of the movie, he's like graduating high

1524
01:25:18,120 --> 01:25:20,960
Speaker 1: school or middle school or something, and he like looks

1525
01:25:21,000 --> 01:25:22,680
Speaker 1: like an old man, and all of his friends look

1526
01:25:22,760 --> 01:25:25,439
Speaker 1: exactly the same and their kids and yeah it's a

1527
01:25:25,520 --> 01:25:32,320
Speaker 1: real bummer. Yeah, yeah, weird film anyway. Presumably at this point,

1528
01:25:32,800 --> 01:25:34,840
Speaker 1: Matt Damon asked Francis to pass the script to good

1529
01:25:34,840 --> 01:25:37,400
Speaker 1: Will Hunting along to Robin, who was very impressed. First

1530
01:25:37,439 --> 01:25:40,120
Speaker 1: thing he said after reading it, reportedly was who are

1531
01:25:40,200 --> 01:25:43,840
Speaker 1: these guys? He described the film as extraordinary and was

1532
01:25:44,000 --> 01:25:46,400
Speaker 1: shocked to discover that the screenwriters were two guys in

1533
01:25:46,479 --> 01:25:49,120
Speaker 1: their early twenties. He agreed to take on the role

1534
01:25:49,160 --> 01:25:51,439
Speaker 1: of a therapist, Sean McGuire, which gave the movie it's

1535
01:25:51,640 --> 01:25:54,479
Speaker 1: needed dose of star power and ensure that the film

1536
01:25:54,520 --> 01:25:58,880
Speaker 1: would basically get made. Robin told Boston Magazine in twenty thirteen.

1537
01:25:59,120 --> 01:26:00,680
Speaker 1: Would drew me to the was the idea of a

1538
01:26:00,680 --> 01:26:03,080
Speaker 1: guy trying to give back who hasn't been practicing in

1539
01:26:03,120 --> 01:26:05,439
Speaker 1: a while. Here he is a vet with a history,

1540
01:26:05,560 --> 01:26:07,840
Speaker 1: with a life, an intelligent guy who admits he's not

1541
01:26:07,880 --> 01:26:10,559
Speaker 1: as brilliant as the kid, but who's saying you're brilliant,

1542
01:26:10,640 --> 01:26:13,160
Speaker 1: but you don't know about certain things. That appealed to

1543
01:26:13,240 --> 01:26:16,240
Speaker 1: me deeply. The character of Sean is basically a fusion

1544
01:26:16,280 --> 01:26:19,200
Speaker 1: of Ben Affleck's father and Matt Damon's mother, who is

1545
01:26:19,240 --> 01:26:24,080
Speaker 1: an early childhood education professor at Leslie University. There's a

1546
01:26:24,120 --> 01:26:26,600
Speaker 1: lot to unpack there. The painting of the boat that

1547
01:26:26,720 --> 01:26:29,160
Speaker 1: will mox in Sean's office was actually painted by Gus

1548
01:26:29,320 --> 01:26:34,240
Speaker 1: Van Sant and bears the suspicious similarity to the opening

1549
01:26:34,320 --> 01:26:39,200
Speaker 1: scene of nineteen eighties Popeye, Robin williams film debut, and

1550
01:26:39,280 --> 01:26:41,160
Speaker 1: in the scene where we meet Sean first in the

1551
01:26:41,240 --> 01:26:44,679
Speaker 1: lecture hall, the words Susser nineteen sixty nine are written

1552
01:26:44,720 --> 01:26:48,000
Speaker 1: on the backboard behind him. In nineteen sixty nine, Robin

1553
01:26:48,040 --> 01:26:50,120
Speaker 1: Williams performed in a production of The Taming of the

1554
01:26:50,240 --> 01:26:54,640
Speaker 1: Shrew at Marine College, directed by one Harvey Susser, his

1555
01:26:54,800 --> 01:26:57,080
Speaker 1: first stage director, so this is thought to be a

1556
01:26:57,160 --> 01:27:00,559
Speaker 1: nod to him. Sean becomes kind of a set father.

1557
01:27:00,760 --> 01:27:03,439
Speaker 1: He understands will because they both went through similar things

1558
01:27:03,880 --> 01:27:06,519
Speaker 1: parental abuse at a young age and tragic loss later

1559
01:27:06,600 --> 01:27:09,400
Speaker 1: in life, and Sean is a crucial character in the

1560
01:27:09,439 --> 01:27:12,040
Speaker 1: first versions of the script. The only scene from the

1561
01:27:12,120 --> 01:27:13,720
Speaker 1: first draft to the film that made it into the

1562
01:27:13,760 --> 01:27:16,080
Speaker 1: movie verbatim is the scene where wille and Sean meet

1563
01:27:16,120 --> 01:27:18,800
Speaker 1: for the first time, and that's where the Eye will

1564
01:27:18,880 --> 01:27:21,840
Speaker 1: end you line comes in. I think, right, yeah, if

1565
01:27:21,840 --> 01:27:25,759
Speaker 1: you disrespect my wife again. As you might expect, Robin

1566
01:27:25,840 --> 01:27:27,600
Speaker 1: joked around with pretty much everyone on the set in

1567
01:27:27,680 --> 01:27:32,439
Speaker 1: between takes, doing his litany of impressions, including Janet Reno

1568
01:27:32,760 --> 01:27:36,560
Speaker 1: and Frankenstein, and then Matt Damon would see these and

1569
01:27:36,720 --> 01:27:40,800
Speaker 1: raise him, Richard Nixon and Daffy Duck. In the scene

1570
01:27:40,840 --> 01:27:43,679
Speaker 1: where he has his big fight with Stellen, scars guard

1571
01:27:43,880 --> 01:27:46,240
Speaker 1: calls him a prick. When they were doing close up

1572
01:27:46,280 --> 01:27:49,839
Speaker 1: with Stellen, Robin would do his lines as various characters.

1573
01:27:51,240 --> 01:27:53,880
Speaker 1: Stellen said later, I came in and it wasn't Robin.

1574
01:27:54,120 --> 01:27:56,960
Speaker 1: It was Jack Nicholson there, and he talked like Jack Nichelson.

1575
01:27:57,120 --> 01:27:59,640
Speaker 1: He behaved like Jack Nicholson. I tried to play the

1576
01:27:59,680 --> 01:28:02,040
Speaker 1: scene with him because I'm really bad at improvising, so

1577
01:28:02,160 --> 01:28:05,200
Speaker 1: it became very strange, and then everybody laughed. We had

1578
01:28:05,200 --> 01:28:06,680
Speaker 1: to do it again, and I came in. It was

1579
01:28:06,800 --> 01:28:09,719
Speaker 1: James Cagny. I think it was five or six takes

1580
01:28:09,720 --> 01:28:11,880
Speaker 1: with a different person I met in that part every time,

1581
01:28:12,320 --> 01:28:14,280
Speaker 1: and then gradually he did something more and more like

1582
01:28:14,320 --> 01:28:18,559
Speaker 1: the character in the film. Scar's Garb was not alone

1583
01:28:19,360 --> 01:28:22,280
Speaker 1: in finding it difficult to Matt Robin's energy. Gus Van

1584
01:28:22,360 --> 01:28:25,360
Speaker 1: Sant remembered it was really entertaining. And a day after that,

1585
01:28:25,479 --> 01:28:27,479
Speaker 1: I was like, isn't that great? Isn't that fun that

1586
01:28:27,520 --> 01:28:30,600
Speaker 1: you guys are improving that? And Matt said, no, it's exhausting.

1587
01:28:31,760 --> 01:28:36,240
Speaker 1: He couldn't keep up with Robin. The farting wife scene

1588
01:28:37,040 --> 01:28:39,760
Speaker 1: in the line in Therapy was unscripted, and you can

1589
01:28:39,840 --> 01:28:43,160
Speaker 1: see Robin and Matt both cracking up with real laughter.

1590
01:28:43,800 --> 01:28:46,160
Speaker 1: And one of the other tells that it's unscripted is

1591
01:28:46,200 --> 01:28:48,280
Speaker 1: because Matt leans forward to laugh and he goes out

1592
01:28:48,320 --> 01:28:50,920
Speaker 1: of focus in the frame and then the camera starts

1593
01:28:50,960 --> 01:28:52,920
Speaker 1: to shake up and down because the camera guy couldn't

1594
01:28:52,920 --> 01:28:56,280
Speaker 1: stop from laughing either. It's great seeing. Yeah, Robin's still

1595
01:28:56,320 --> 01:28:58,639
Speaker 1: after going off on this crazy tangent about his wife,

1596
01:28:59,000 --> 01:29:02,240
Speaker 1: takes it back to the talking about the little idiosyncrasies

1597
01:29:02,280 --> 01:29:04,679
Speaker 1: that only I knew about that's what made her my wife,

1598
01:29:04,800 --> 01:29:07,120
Speaker 1: which I always thought was a beautiful line. Yeah, but

1599
01:29:07,640 --> 01:29:09,800
Speaker 1: you know, the crowning achievement of his ad libbing on

1600
01:29:09,840 --> 01:29:14,040
Speaker 1: the film was probably his final line. The final line

1601
01:29:14,040 --> 01:29:15,920
Speaker 1: of the film when Sean read the letter that Will

1602
01:29:16,120 --> 01:29:18,920
Speaker 1: left him, which says that he has to leave town

1603
01:29:19,000 --> 01:29:20,880
Speaker 1: because he has to go and see about a girl,

1604
01:29:21,680 --> 01:29:25,200
Speaker 1: and Robin would add lib a different reaction line every time,

1605
01:29:25,400 --> 01:29:27,960
Speaker 1: and when he dropped son of a bitch stole my line,

1606
01:29:28,400 --> 01:29:30,280
Speaker 1: it was obvious to all that they had a keeper.

1607
01:29:31,400 --> 01:29:34,280
Speaker 1: Matt Damon later called it Robin's best addition to the film.

1608
01:29:34,720 --> 01:29:36,840
Speaker 1: He said, there was nothing scripted there. He opens the

1609
01:29:36,920 --> 01:29:39,240
Speaker 1: mailbox and reads the note that I'd written him. Gus

1610
01:29:39,280 --> 01:29:41,240
Speaker 1: and I were right next to the camera because every

1611
01:29:41,280 --> 01:29:42,840
Speaker 1: time he came out for a new take, I would

1612
01:29:42,840 --> 01:29:45,080
Speaker 1: read the letter to him. Because it's a voiceover, he

1613
01:29:45,200 --> 01:29:48,000
Speaker 1: came out saying different lines every single time. When he

1614
01:29:48,080 --> 01:29:50,599
Speaker 1: said son of a bitch stole my line, I grabbed Gus.

1615
01:29:50,920 --> 01:29:52,760
Speaker 1: It was like a bolt. It was just one of

1616
01:29:52,800 --> 01:29:58,120
Speaker 1: those holy moments where like that's it. Robin also took

1617
01:29:58,160 --> 01:30:01,000
Speaker 1: a very active role in locations outing for the movie.

1618
01:30:01,760 --> 01:30:03,800
Speaker 1: After signing on, he was very excited to get a

1619
01:30:03,880 --> 01:30:06,599
Speaker 1: taste of South Boston, which, for anyone who didn't grow

1620
01:30:06,680 --> 01:30:09,840
Speaker 1: up near Boston in the nineties was a very risky preposition.

1621
01:30:11,000 --> 01:30:13,920
Speaker 1: Man and Ben took Robin rounds, and I guess ended

1622
01:30:14,000 --> 01:30:16,639
Speaker 1: up at a dive bar called the L Street Tavern,

1623
01:30:16,880 --> 01:30:19,719
Speaker 1: and Ben would later refer to this as a mistake

1624
01:30:21,080 --> 01:30:23,200
Speaker 1: You would think that Robert Williams would make friends wherever

1625
01:30:23,320 --> 01:30:27,080
Speaker 1: he went, but not in South Boston. The whole crew

1626
01:30:27,120 --> 01:30:30,280
Speaker 1: were mobbed by rowdy locals who apparently resented the fact

1627
01:30:30,320 --> 01:30:33,200
Speaker 1: that there were stars in their midst. One drunk guy

1628
01:30:33,240 --> 01:30:36,160
Speaker 1: asked Robin Williams where he parked his private jet or

1629
01:30:36,320 --> 01:30:39,280
Speaker 1: yacht accounts ferry, and another guy tried to fight Ben

1630
01:30:39,360 --> 01:30:43,560
Speaker 1: Affleck for wearing his hat backwards. I guess apparently the

1631
01:30:43,640 --> 01:30:46,320
Speaker 1: bar had been purchased a few weeks earlier before shooting,

1632
01:30:46,360 --> 01:30:48,479
Speaker 1: and the new owners had plans to renovate it to

1633
01:30:48,600 --> 01:30:51,880
Speaker 1: keep up with the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. So it's maybe

1634
01:30:51,960 --> 01:30:55,599
Speaker 1: understandable that the sight of actual superstar millionaires in their

1635
01:30:55,640 --> 01:30:59,439
Speaker 1: midst in their endangered dive bar would piss off the locals,

1636
01:30:59,560 --> 01:31:03,360
Speaker 1: so I get it. But despite this tricky encounter, Robin

1637
01:31:03,560 --> 01:31:06,160
Speaker 1: loved the place and told Harvey Weinstein that they had

1638
01:31:06,280 --> 01:31:09,800
Speaker 1: to shoot at the Eld Street tavern. Harvey agreed, but

1639
01:31:09,920 --> 01:31:12,880
Speaker 1: then sent a frantic all caps facts message to Matt

1640
01:31:12,920 --> 01:31:16,040
Speaker 1: and Ben do not take Robin to any more locations

1641
01:31:16,680 --> 01:31:20,800
Speaker 1: because he feared for his safety. And this El Street

1642
01:31:20,800 --> 01:31:23,200
Speaker 1: tavern it's still there. It's just north of El Street Beach,

1643
01:31:23,240 --> 01:31:25,960
Speaker 1: and it attracts fans of the movie and also fans

1644
01:31:26,040 --> 01:31:29,920
Speaker 1: of cheap booze. They had a black tie oscar party

1645
01:31:30,320 --> 01:31:32,639
Speaker 1: at this dive bar on the night of the Oscars

1646
01:31:32,680 --> 01:31:35,120
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, which is cute, although it did

1647
01:31:35,200 --> 01:31:39,679
Speaker 1: get a semi upscale renovation in the early two thousands,

1648
01:31:39,680 --> 01:31:42,280
Speaker 1: so it's not quite as divey as as one might like.

1649
01:31:42,720 --> 01:31:44,679
Speaker 1: There's a sign up front of the Ell Street tavern

1650
01:31:44,800 --> 01:31:48,040
Speaker 1: proclaiming the home of Google Hunting, which is cute but

1651
01:31:48,160 --> 01:31:52,280
Speaker 1: not strictly true. Will's home was actually the exterior shots

1652
01:31:52,320 --> 01:31:54,439
Speaker 1: of it, at least. The triple decker where he lived

1653
01:31:54,520 --> 01:31:57,680
Speaker 1: is on West sixth Street in South Boston, and the

1654
01:31:57,760 --> 01:31:59,400
Speaker 1: guy who lived in that place at the time the

1655
01:31:59,439 --> 01:32:03,200
Speaker 1: movie was filmed very proudly self identified for years as

1656
01:32:03,320 --> 01:32:05,400
Speaker 1: quote the only guy in Southey who had never seen

1657
01:32:05,520 --> 01:32:09,120
Speaker 1: Google Hunting. He told the Boston Globe, I got two

1658
01:32:09,200 --> 01:32:11,639
Speaker 1: new windows out of the deal, and I met Matt Damon.

1659
01:32:12,040 --> 01:32:13,640
Speaker 1: He said do you know me? And I said no,

1660
01:32:14,040 --> 01:32:18,479
Speaker 1: He was just some blonde boy. But the neighborhood has

1661
01:32:18,520 --> 01:32:21,160
Speaker 1: certainly changed in the twenty five years since Google Hunting

1662
01:32:21,240 --> 01:32:24,880
Speaker 1: was filmed after a renovation. The ground floor apartment where

1663
01:32:24,920 --> 01:32:29,280
Speaker 1: Will supposedly lived sold in twenty seventeen for seven hundred

1664
01:32:29,280 --> 01:32:32,240
Speaker 1: and twenty nine thousand dollars, so it's probably worth over

1665
01:32:32,280 --> 01:32:35,519
Speaker 1: a million dollars now, and the two bedroom, two bathroom

1666
01:32:35,640 --> 01:32:38,519
Speaker 1: unit upstairs from Will in that same building is on

1667
01:32:38,600 --> 01:32:41,120
Speaker 1: the market now available to rent for four thousand, five

1668
01:32:41,240 --> 01:32:44,479
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a month. I think they have Washington dryer.

1669
01:32:44,560 --> 01:32:50,120
Speaker 1: Though much of this movie was shot around Harvard Square

1670
01:32:50,160 --> 01:32:52,760
Speaker 1: in Cambridge, not far from where Matt and Ben grew up,

1671
01:32:53,280 --> 01:32:55,360
Speaker 1: and they would later say their school was a quarter

1672
01:32:55,439 --> 01:32:58,080
Speaker 1: mile down the road. So this was just super cool

1673
01:32:58,160 --> 01:33:00,760
Speaker 1: for them to bring the whole movie circus to their

1674
01:33:00,800 --> 01:33:04,200
Speaker 1: own doorstep and the bar Will Will meet Skyler and

1675
01:33:04,280 --> 01:33:07,200
Speaker 1: the Basket and Robins, Duncan Donuts combo next door, or

1676
01:33:07,280 --> 01:33:09,840
Speaker 1: he does the whole I got a number bit. Both

1677
01:33:09,920 --> 01:33:12,680
Speaker 1: closed soon after the movie was shot. I think they

1678
01:33:12,680 --> 01:33:15,080
Speaker 1: actually even renovated the facade of the building so that

1679
01:33:15,320 --> 01:33:18,280
Speaker 1: you can What I'm saying now is you can't replicate

1680
01:33:18,320 --> 01:33:20,639
Speaker 1: that scene on the original window where Matt Damon does

1681
01:33:20,720 --> 01:33:25,120
Speaker 1: that which no, yeah, I know it belongs to the

1682
01:33:25,200 --> 01:33:29,439
Speaker 1: museum now Loyal TMI listeners will know that shooting on

1683
01:33:29,479 --> 01:33:31,639
Speaker 1: the Harvard campus is a difficult thing to pull off

1684
01:33:31,720 --> 01:33:35,000
Speaker 1: because Harvard is famously very reluctant to allow film crews

1685
01:33:35,040 --> 01:33:37,400
Speaker 1: into their hollowed halls of learning. We talked about this

1686
01:33:37,439 --> 01:33:41,000
Speaker 1: in the Legally Blonde episode. Even The Social Network directly

1687
01:33:41,120 --> 01:33:44,720
Speaker 1: by David Fincher, was denied shooting privileges at Harvard. But

1688
01:33:44,800 --> 01:33:47,000
Speaker 1: the Good Will Hunting production got a helping hand from

1689
01:33:47,160 --> 01:33:51,160
Speaker 1: John Lithgow, who's a Harvard grad and presumably held some

1690
01:33:51,280 --> 01:33:54,120
Speaker 1: sway in the alumni department because he's a big actor.

1691
01:33:54,800 --> 01:33:57,920
Speaker 1: He put a call and before long production team for

1692
01:33:58,000 --> 01:34:01,080
Speaker 1: Good Will Hunting had access. But the lecture hall in

1693
01:34:01,120 --> 01:34:06,320
Speaker 1: the movie is actually a lecture hall in McLennan Physical Laboratories,

1694
01:34:06,479 --> 01:34:08,880
Speaker 1: which is a building at the University of Toronto where

1695
01:34:08,960 --> 01:34:11,120
Speaker 1: a lot of the interior shots were filmed on a

1696
01:34:11,160 --> 01:34:14,720
Speaker 1: sound stage there. But no spot in Boston is more

1697
01:34:14,760 --> 01:34:17,679
Speaker 1: synonymous with Goodwill Hunting than the bench in the Boston

1698
01:34:17,760 --> 01:34:20,920
Speaker 1: Public Gardens and Robert Williams character clues will and the

1699
01:34:21,160 --> 01:34:24,360
Speaker 1: difference that is a big difference between book knowledge and

1700
01:34:24,439 --> 01:34:27,719
Speaker 1: life experience. And despite the really intimate nature of that scene,

1701
01:34:27,760 --> 01:34:30,679
Speaker 1: there was apparently a crowd of an estimated three thousand

1702
01:34:30,800 --> 01:34:33,960
Speaker 1: people watching as it was shot. Apparently word got out

1703
01:34:33,960 --> 01:34:36,840
Speaker 1: about the location, and Gus van Zant's big word of

1704
01:34:36,920 --> 01:34:41,720
Speaker 1: directorial advice to Robin was just keep talking. So I

1705
01:34:41,800 --> 01:34:44,320
Speaker 1: imagine at least a decent amount of that scene is improvised.

1706
01:34:45,240 --> 01:34:48,640
Speaker 1: In classic fashion, Robin Williams performed an impromptu stand up

1707
01:34:48,680 --> 01:34:51,400
Speaker 1: set for the onlookers that were watching the scene being

1708
01:34:51,479 --> 01:34:54,200
Speaker 1: shot and just random attendees who were in the park

1709
01:34:54,280 --> 01:34:57,439
Speaker 1: eating their sandwiches that day. And following his death in

1710
01:34:57,479 --> 01:35:00,599
Speaker 1: August twenty fourteen, the bench became a make of shrine

1711
01:35:00,640 --> 01:35:03,639
Speaker 1: for fans. Wow, that's crazy. He's been gone for almost

1712
01:35:03,680 --> 01:35:07,400
Speaker 1: ten years. I don't like thinking about that. I still

1713
01:35:07,400 --> 01:35:10,439
Speaker 1: remember where I was. Oh me too. Yeah, that was

1714
01:35:10,520 --> 01:35:13,720
Speaker 1: almost like a JFK level, like oh my God, or

1715
01:35:13,800 --> 01:35:16,360
Speaker 1: like I mean, I wasn't alive when John Lennon was shot,

1716
01:35:16,439 --> 01:35:20,680
Speaker 1: but like that level, like Jesus oh um. Yeah. We

1717
01:35:20,720 --> 01:35:22,360
Speaker 1: don't really have a good segue for this next part.

1718
01:35:22,880 --> 01:35:25,519
Speaker 1: It's especially personal for me, as I mentioned, this movie

1719
01:35:25,560 --> 01:35:27,760
Speaker 1: introduced me to Elliott Smith, as I'm sure it did

1720
01:35:27,800 --> 01:35:30,800
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, because he was not so

1721
01:35:30,920 --> 01:35:32,680
Speaker 1: much of a known quality. Before this, he was kind

1722
01:35:32,720 --> 01:35:35,880
Speaker 1: of a heat miser, wasn't huge, and I don't think

1723
01:35:35,920 --> 01:35:40,599
Speaker 1: he had really kind of escaped the indie circles. But yeah,

1724
01:35:40,800 --> 01:35:44,360
Speaker 1: I mean this and not even ten years later, the

1725
01:35:44,439 --> 01:35:47,479
Speaker 1: soundtrack to good Will Hunting scored by Danny Elfman. How

1726
01:35:47,520 --> 01:35:51,600
Speaker 1: do you feel about that? Very uncharacteristic, very weird, But

1727
01:35:51,720 --> 01:35:53,679
Speaker 1: I like it's funny that it's not like it's funny

1728
01:35:53,720 --> 01:35:57,000
Speaker 1: that it's not like full of his like obnoxious stuff

1729
01:35:57,040 --> 01:36:00,880
Speaker 1: and yeah, augmented diminished harmonies and like his Yet do

1730
01:36:05,720 --> 01:36:09,120
Speaker 1: somebody got their head bashed in in Southy like like

1731
01:36:09,400 --> 01:36:24,559
Speaker 1: a pipe organ. It's not my fault. Oh yeah, Danny,

1732
01:36:24,920 --> 01:36:29,200
Speaker 1: what a weirdo. He's like really written, like slamming the

1733
01:36:30,160 --> 01:36:33,800
Speaker 1: phone number on the window like that. We're not I

1734
01:36:33,920 --> 01:36:41,240
Speaker 1: mean oo Boingo songs gus band sand was like I

1735
01:36:41,360 --> 01:36:44,360
Speaker 1: really wanted. He's talking to the editor. He's like, have

1736
01:36:44,439 --> 01:36:53,559
Speaker 1: you heard of this band? Oiingo Boingo? Uh? The soundtrack anyway, Um,

1737
01:36:54,280 --> 01:36:58,120
Speaker 1: Gusta and sand knew Elliott Smith's stuff from Portland. Um.

1738
01:36:58,760 --> 01:37:00,519
Speaker 1: As we mentioned earlier, he won his music in the

1739
01:37:00,560 --> 01:37:02,560
Speaker 1: film that he shot before this, was called To Die For,

1740
01:37:03,080 --> 01:37:06,759
Speaker 1: but ultimately decided to go for a heavy metal score,

1741
01:37:07,200 --> 01:37:10,439
Speaker 1: but was so taken with Elliot's work that he told

1742
01:37:10,479 --> 01:37:14,439
Speaker 1: Goodwill Hunting's editor to which songs he wanted to use

1743
01:37:14,600 --> 01:37:17,439
Speaker 1: before they even started production, and before they'd even cleared

1744
01:37:17,520 --> 01:37:21,840
Speaker 1: the songs. He said, I think even before we started shooting,

1745
01:37:21,880 --> 01:37:23,880
Speaker 1: I was thinking in terms of Elliot's music, but I

1746
01:37:23,920 --> 01:37:25,680
Speaker 1: didn't know until finally we were able to put it

1747
01:37:25,720 --> 01:37:27,880
Speaker 1: together whether it was going to work. That was the plan,

1748
01:37:28,400 --> 01:37:31,120
Speaker 1: and I told Petro Scalia, the film's editor, to use

1749
01:37:31,160 --> 01:37:33,800
Speaker 1: Elliot's music. In the script, it had mentioned that there

1750
01:37:33,920 --> 01:37:36,759
Speaker 1: was world music and he was trying to make that happen,

1751
01:37:37,160 --> 01:37:39,799
Speaker 1: but we just went ahead and used Elliot's music instead.

1752
01:37:40,120 --> 01:37:44,200
Speaker 1: What do you think that means? Like rusted Root? Oh

1753
01:37:44,320 --> 01:37:46,519
Speaker 1: my god? Well, I mean it was a Matilda like

1754
01:37:46,600 --> 01:37:49,240
Speaker 1: a year. I was gonna say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1755
01:37:49,920 --> 01:37:57,320
Speaker 1: Son of a bitch stole my line bing boom almost

1756
01:37:57,400 --> 01:38:06,879
Speaker 1: works car driving off in the misty. I'm very impressed

1757
01:38:06,960 --> 01:38:16,960
Speaker 1: with that. Can you give me okay, give me? Um?

1758
01:38:17,360 --> 01:38:19,720
Speaker 1: Is that her? Dave Matthews man? Can you imagine that

1759
01:38:20,360 --> 01:38:32,640
Speaker 1: it's marching anyway? Sorry? God? We um. We rigged up

1760
01:38:32,680 --> 01:38:36,559
Speaker 1: our phones once to have them go off every twenty

1761
01:38:36,600 --> 01:38:39,439
Speaker 1: minutes from four in the morning until like six in

1762
01:38:39,479 --> 01:38:41,920
Speaker 1: the morning with this guy that we knew, and they

1763
01:38:41,960 --> 01:38:44,799
Speaker 1: would all and they would go off playing It's marching.

1764
01:38:50,360 --> 01:38:57,679
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, oh man. Anyway, Danny Open told tapeop

1765
01:38:57,840 --> 01:39:01,160
Speaker 1: last year in twenty twenty two, sitting Elliott and Gus

1766
01:39:01,320 --> 01:39:03,800
Speaker 1: Van Sand in the basement of Gus's house is still

1767
01:39:03,880 --> 01:39:07,439
Speaker 1: one of the greatest treats I've had. I remember heading

1768
01:39:07,479 --> 01:39:09,840
Speaker 1: out to see Gus in Boston and he goes, look,

1769
01:39:09,920 --> 01:39:11,360
Speaker 1: I know this seems odd, but I'm going to give

1770
01:39:11,360 --> 01:39:13,360
Speaker 1: you a tape. Do you know who Elliot Smith is?

1771
01:39:13,840 --> 01:39:16,000
Speaker 1: At that point, I hadn't been aware of him. He goes,

1772
01:39:16,200 --> 01:39:18,000
Speaker 1: I think this will be the only artist in the

1773
01:39:18,080 --> 01:39:19,880
Speaker 1: score for the songs, and I like to get your

1774
01:39:19,880 --> 01:39:22,759
Speaker 1: opinion and soak that up. I listened and it totally

1775
01:39:22,840 --> 01:39:26,040
Speaker 1: made sense. It was such a rare treat. Usually songs

1776
01:39:26,080 --> 01:39:28,360
Speaker 1: are dropped in at the end when I'm scoring, I

1777
01:39:28,400 --> 01:39:29,760
Speaker 1: don't even know what they are until I go to

1778
01:39:29,840 --> 01:39:32,840
Speaker 1: the premiere because they've changed ten times. Here, I was

1779
01:39:32,880 --> 01:39:34,680
Speaker 1: able to take the score and make it go rather

1780
01:39:34,760 --> 01:39:37,400
Speaker 1: seamlessly into the song and back into the score. Van

1781
01:39:37,479 --> 01:39:39,960
Speaker 1: Sand took a copy of Goodwill hunting to his house

1782
01:39:40,040 --> 01:39:43,320
Speaker 1: to watch it with Smith, who loved it instantly and

1783
01:39:43,800 --> 01:39:45,560
Speaker 1: not only gave his permission to use all of the

1784
01:39:46,000 --> 01:39:49,200
Speaker 1: previously released songs for it, but wanted to write an original,

1785
01:39:49,240 --> 01:39:51,600
Speaker 1: which ended up being Miss Misery, and that song was

1786
01:39:51,680 --> 01:39:56,000
Speaker 1: nominated for on Oscar nomination, and as I mentioned earlier,

1787
01:39:56,040 --> 01:40:00,600
Speaker 1: one of the more indelible nineties Oscar maries is a

1788
01:40:01,080 --> 01:40:04,080
Speaker 1: pretty uncomfortable looking Elliott Smith in a what is a

1789
01:40:04,160 --> 01:40:09,400
Speaker 1: beautiful white suit performing Miss Misery um with an orchestra

1790
01:40:10,120 --> 01:40:15,519
Speaker 1: and then subsequently losing, as many did that year, to

1791
01:40:16,400 --> 01:40:20,640
Speaker 1: your beloved Large Boat Um specifically my Heart Will Go

1792
01:40:20,720 --> 01:40:25,400
Speaker 1: on the love theme from Large Boat. Smith later called

1793
01:40:25,439 --> 01:40:29,040
Speaker 1: his Oscar nomination shocking and essentially had to be strong

1794
01:40:29,240 --> 01:40:32,240
Speaker 1: armed into performing an abridged version of the song as

1795
01:40:32,280 --> 01:40:34,400
Speaker 1: part of the ceremony after the producers more or less

1796
01:40:34,439 --> 01:40:37,240
Speaker 1: told him, we're going to do it, and if you

1797
01:40:37,360 --> 01:40:39,840
Speaker 1: don't want to, we'll find somebody else. God, who would

1798
01:40:39,840 --> 01:40:45,559
Speaker 1: they have gotten in ninety six, sorry, February ninety eight,

1799
01:40:45,640 --> 01:40:53,480
Speaker 1: who would they have gotten? Let's see Darius Rucker, Dave Matthews,

1800
01:40:54,360 --> 01:41:03,120
Speaker 1: Savage Garden Usher, Will Smith. Will Smith was hit number

1801
01:41:03,160 --> 01:41:07,400
Speaker 1: one after my heart will go on. Really, I'll fake

1802
01:41:07,479 --> 01:41:10,720
Speaker 1: it through the day with some help from Johnny walker Red.

1803
01:41:11,080 --> 01:41:14,120
Speaker 1: Send the poison, brain down the drain to put bad

1804
01:41:14,200 --> 01:41:17,680
Speaker 1: thoughts in my head. It's different that you hate this much.

1805
01:41:17,760 --> 01:41:21,040
Speaker 1: I'm surprised how many lyrics you know of his No

1806
01:41:21,240 --> 01:41:25,040
Speaker 1: that was that was the line. That was from Waltz

1807
01:41:25,120 --> 01:41:29,040
Speaker 1: number two. I think I was just listening to this

1808
01:41:29,120 --> 01:41:32,920
Speaker 1: earlier today. No, it is miss misery. I'll fake it

1809
01:41:33,400 --> 01:41:40,240
Speaker 1: who the day with some help from Johnny Walko. Send

1810
01:41:40,320 --> 01:41:46,519
Speaker 1: the poss and brain down the jane to put bad

1811
01:41:46,640 --> 01:41:53,360
Speaker 1: thoughts in my barn narn narew nare now Elliot Smith rules.

1812
01:41:53,640 --> 01:41:55,760
Speaker 1: He's another one. I remember like where I was when

1813
01:41:55,800 --> 01:41:58,519
Speaker 1: I heard he died, and I wasn't really all unaware

1814
01:41:58,600 --> 01:42:01,439
Speaker 1: of like pop culture stuff at that. I have to

1815
01:42:01,520 --> 01:42:04,400
Speaker 1: imagine you liked him a lot because he's basically the Beatles.

1816
01:42:05,640 --> 01:42:11,720
Speaker 1: It's basically Garat like DIY depressive and I really liked Yeah,

1817
01:42:11,720 --> 01:42:13,280
Speaker 1: I liked all the stuff. I like when he played

1818
01:42:13,320 --> 01:42:17,559
Speaker 1: piano or electric guitar player. Man, I still can't play

1819
01:42:18,320 --> 01:42:20,880
Speaker 1: like Angelis did a great cover of Care of Cell

1820
01:42:21,000 --> 01:42:25,920
Speaker 1: forty four by The Zombies, because oh yeah, was that

1821
01:42:26,200 --> 01:42:29,240
Speaker 1: I am sam soundtrack. It must have been he would

1822
01:42:29,280 --> 01:42:33,320
Speaker 1: do it live too. Who I just? I mean? Yeah, man,

1823
01:42:33,479 --> 01:42:40,120
Speaker 1: that fingerpicking and Angelie's is amazing. M what's the that like?

1824
01:42:40,400 --> 01:42:45,360
Speaker 1: Great electric guitar? Oh also slow, that's a great track.

1825
01:42:46,080 --> 01:42:49,360
Speaker 1: So much funning among the other Among the objections that

1826
01:42:49,400 --> 01:42:54,479
Speaker 1: the Oscars had were two smith sitting down to play, which,

1827
01:42:54,520 --> 01:42:58,479
Speaker 1: as everyone knows, is God's preferred method of playing. They

1828
01:42:58,560 --> 01:43:05,839
Speaker 1: wanted him to stand um and this depressive, drug addicted

1829
01:43:06,040 --> 01:43:09,360
Speaker 1: ex punk from Portland was sandwiched on the Oscars between

1830
01:43:09,479 --> 01:43:13,639
Speaker 1: Celine Dion and Michael Bolton. He later described the experience

1831
01:43:13,680 --> 01:43:16,599
Speaker 1: as surreal and ridiculous, but he said at a certain point,

1832
01:43:16,600 --> 01:43:18,479
Speaker 1: I threw myself into it because it seemed to make

1833
01:43:18,520 --> 01:43:21,559
Speaker 1: my friends happy. I walked out. Jack Nicholson was sitting

1834
01:43:21,560 --> 01:43:24,040
Speaker 1: about six feet away, so I avoided that area and

1835
01:43:24,120 --> 01:43:25,880
Speaker 1: looked up at the balcony in the back and sang

1836
01:43:25,960 --> 01:43:28,960
Speaker 1: the song can you imagine you're Elliott Smith? You probably

1837
01:43:29,240 --> 01:43:31,920
Speaker 1: probably started at Jones at this point. Just look up,

1838
01:43:32,000 --> 01:43:36,639
Speaker 1: you see it, not amused Jack Nicholson and just staring

1839
01:43:36,760 --> 01:43:40,240
Speaker 1: at you. Probably they He always just has a permanent smile,

1840
01:43:40,400 --> 01:43:43,920
Speaker 1: just like on his face. Yeah, well, Jack Nicholson was

1841
01:43:43,920 --> 01:43:47,920
Speaker 1: probably also stoned. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He probably thought he

1842
01:43:48,000 --> 01:43:50,120
Speaker 1: was like courtside at the Lakers at that very moment.

1843
01:43:51,400 --> 01:43:54,839
Speaker 1: This was a really good movie, Elliott Smith don't Entertainment

1844
01:43:54,880 --> 01:43:57,240
Speaker 1: Weekly in nineteen ninety eight, before adding I don't have

1845
01:43:57,360 --> 01:43:59,920
Speaker 1: much interest in branching out into soundtracks in general, though

1846
01:44:01,120 --> 01:44:03,280
Speaker 1: he did mention that he enjoyed working with Danny Elfman

1847
01:44:03,400 --> 01:44:08,519
Speaker 1: and the Adpiece orchestra Riley, commenting I was surrounded by

1848
01:44:08,600 --> 01:44:14,120
Speaker 1: perfectly tuned notes instead of my normally untuned guitar. Danny

1849
01:44:14,120 --> 01:44:16,720
Speaker 1: Elfman told Tapeop he had actually a really funny anecdote

1850
01:44:16,760 --> 01:44:20,080
Speaker 1: about the Oscars thing. He said that Elliott called him

1851
01:44:20,120 --> 01:44:22,599
Speaker 1: and said, Danny, I'm at rehearsal and it's not going well.

1852
01:44:23,200 --> 01:44:26,160
Speaker 1: Bill CONTI does that name Rainny Bells for you, Jordan?

1853
01:44:26,400 --> 01:44:29,599
Speaker 1: That sounds familiar, But he's the guy who wrote Gonna

1854
01:44:29,680 --> 01:44:34,080
Speaker 1: Fly Now, the theme from Rocky, and also the karate

1855
01:44:34,280 --> 01:44:38,560
Speaker 1: kid cool That was who the Academy Awards tapped to

1856
01:44:38,640 --> 01:44:44,880
Speaker 1: do an arrangement of Miss Misery. Oh my God, if

1857
01:44:44,920 --> 01:44:47,080
Speaker 1: you need a I can't think of a more perfect

1858
01:44:47,280 --> 01:44:51,519
Speaker 1: image of Oscar's cluelessness than being like hmm yes, finally

1859
01:44:51,600 --> 01:44:55,400
Speaker 1: wrought deeply emotional melodic singer songwriter who can we get

1860
01:44:55,439 --> 01:44:58,880
Speaker 1: to orchestrate his Big Oscar nominated original song Rocky Guy,

1861
01:45:00,080 --> 01:45:03,120
Speaker 1: Rocky Guy. So Bill County of Gunna Fly Now Fame

1862
01:45:03,160 --> 01:45:05,320
Speaker 1: did the arrangement, and Elliot Smith called it Danny Elfman

1863
01:45:05,360 --> 01:45:09,920
Speaker 1: in a panic, and Danny Elfman says, he said, oh,

1864
01:45:10,000 --> 01:45:12,799
Speaker 1: so when do you need something by? And Eliot goes tomorrow.

1865
01:45:14,360 --> 01:45:17,040
Speaker 1: So Danny Elfman, God love him, banged out in arrangement

1866
01:45:17,120 --> 01:45:19,880
Speaker 1: in a day and sent him the music anyway. Matt

1867
01:45:19,920 --> 01:45:22,880
Speaker 1: Demon told Cinema Blend in twenty seventeen that he hasn't

1868
01:45:22,920 --> 01:45:28,200
Speaker 1: rewatched Goodwill Hunting since the deaths of Elliot Smith and

1869
01:45:28,920 --> 01:45:31,679
Speaker 1: Robin Williams. And then the other thing that he added

1870
01:45:31,760 --> 01:45:36,720
Speaker 1: was the publicizing and subsequent trial of Harvey Weinstein for

1871
01:45:36,880 --> 01:45:46,240
Speaker 1: his years of sexual assault. So sorry, Matt also a

1872
01:45:46,479 --> 01:45:51,200
Speaker 1: slightly less publicized detail Harvey Rnstein was also a jerk

1873
01:45:51,280 --> 01:45:55,800
Speaker 1: to Robin Williams. As a result of Goodwill Hunting, Goodle

1874
01:45:55,880 --> 01:45:59,559
Speaker 1: Hunting was released nationwide on December fifth, nineteen ninety seven,

1875
01:46:00,360 --> 01:46:03,200
Speaker 1: costing just a poultry ten million. It brought in a

1876
01:46:03,479 --> 01:46:07,000
Speaker 1: truly astounding two hundred and twenty five point nine million

1877
01:46:07,080 --> 01:46:11,599
Speaker 1: dollars worldwide, which is like Marvel DCUs stats these days.

1878
01:46:11,640 --> 01:46:14,439
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It could have made more of the box

1879
01:46:14,560 --> 01:46:18,200
Speaker 1: office were it not for some underhanded maneuvering from Harvey Weinstein.

1880
01:46:18,840 --> 01:46:21,759
Speaker 1: Numerous people, including Kevin Smith, have said that Robin Williams

1881
01:46:21,800 --> 01:46:24,639
Speaker 1: had a back end deal or if this movie made

1882
01:46:24,720 --> 01:46:26,200
Speaker 1: more than a certain amount, I think it was one

1883
01:46:26,280 --> 01:46:29,160
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million domestically, that Robin would get a

1884
01:46:29,240 --> 01:46:32,920
Speaker 1: higher percentage of the gross. So Harvey yanked it out

1885
01:46:32,960 --> 01:46:35,040
Speaker 1: of theaters when it was at one hundred and thirty

1886
01:46:35,080 --> 01:46:39,080
Speaker 1: eight million to screw Robin out of his higher percentage.

1887
01:46:40,720 --> 01:46:43,360
Speaker 1: Kevin Smith later said, I remember when Goodwill Hunting was

1888
01:46:43,439 --> 01:46:45,880
Speaker 1: leaving theaters and it felt weird because it was like, wait,

1889
01:46:45,960 --> 01:46:48,160
Speaker 1: there's all this oscar buzz, so why would you pull

1890
01:46:48,200 --> 01:46:50,680
Speaker 1: it if it was just making money? And they did

1891
01:46:50,760 --> 01:46:52,800
Speaker 1: it because keeping it in theaters meant that more of

1892
01:46:52,840 --> 01:46:55,080
Speaker 1: the money would go to Robin, whereas the moment it

1893
01:46:55,120 --> 01:46:58,080
Speaker 1: went to video, the split wasn't Robin heavy. It was

1894
01:46:58,200 --> 01:47:03,160
Speaker 1: hamstrung because of greed awesome. In addition to making lots

1895
01:47:03,200 --> 01:47:05,759
Speaker 1: of money, Good Will Hunting also wrapped up a truly

1896
01:47:05,840 --> 01:47:10,439
Speaker 1: impressive nine Oscar nominations, including ones for Best Picture, Best Director,

1897
01:47:10,800 --> 01:47:13,840
Speaker 1: Best Actor for Matt Damon, and Best Actress for Mini Driver,

1898
01:47:13,920 --> 01:47:18,080
Speaker 1: among several others. Most of the awards, unfortunately, well fortunately

1899
01:47:18,160 --> 01:47:21,120
Speaker 1: for me, were snatched up by my beloved Large Boat Movie.

1900
01:47:21,520 --> 01:47:25,040
Speaker 1: But Robin Williams won his one and only Oscar, which

1901
01:47:25,120 --> 01:47:29,160
Speaker 1: is criminal for Best Supporting Actor, and he kicked off

1902
01:47:29,240 --> 01:47:31,960
Speaker 1: his speech with an amazing opener. For the first time

1903
01:47:32,000 --> 01:47:35,840
Speaker 1: of my life, I think I may be speechless for

1904
01:47:35,960 --> 01:47:39,000
Speaker 1: some reason. I like rewatched that speech like I don't know,

1905
01:47:39,120 --> 01:47:42,080
Speaker 1: like once a year for some reason. Then it's so great,

1906
01:47:42,840 --> 01:47:49,560
Speaker 1: very touching speech. He thanks everyone from Harvey Weinstein to

1907
01:47:49,800 --> 01:47:53,240
Speaker 1: Matt and Ben, to his late father, but he forgot

1908
01:47:53,280 --> 01:47:55,760
Speaker 1: to thank his mother, who was sitting next to him

1909
01:47:55,760 --> 01:47:59,280
Speaker 1: in the auditorium that night at oversight that haunted him

1910
01:47:59,280 --> 01:48:02,200
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. Life And I guess

1911
01:48:02,240 --> 01:48:05,320
Speaker 1: when Robin won his Oscar for the supporting Role, he

1912
01:48:05,520 --> 01:48:08,360
Speaker 1: sent the guy who dubbed his voice in good Will

1913
01:48:08,439 --> 01:48:12,599
Speaker 1: Hunting in German named Pierre august Dasinki a small replica

1914
01:48:12,640 --> 01:48:15,280
Speaker 1: of the Oscar statue with a note saying thank you

1915
01:48:15,360 --> 01:48:21,680
Speaker 1: for making me famous. In Germany. Most famously, Matt and

1916
01:48:21,720 --> 01:48:24,920
Speaker 1: Ben won Best Screenplay, which led a whole Hollywood style

1917
01:48:25,120 --> 01:48:27,799
Speaker 1: ending to the whole affair, you know, two childhood friends

1918
01:48:27,880 --> 01:48:31,960
Speaker 1: wearing gifted tuxedos bringing their moms to the Oscars, you know,

1919
01:48:32,160 --> 01:48:35,960
Speaker 1: making their scrappy friends back home proud. Played very well

1920
01:48:36,040 --> 01:48:38,400
Speaker 1: on the press, and the award was presented to them

1921
01:48:38,479 --> 01:48:42,040
Speaker 1: by another famous cinematic duo, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon,

1922
01:48:42,120 --> 01:48:45,280
Speaker 1: the odd couple, which I think is very cute. Ben

1923
01:48:45,520 --> 01:48:48,760
Speaker 1: was twenty five, Matt was twenty seven, and Matt would

1924
01:48:48,840 --> 01:48:51,840
Speaker 1: later grumble Ben still the youngest writer to ever win

1925
01:48:51,880 --> 01:48:55,080
Speaker 1: an Oscar for screenwriting. I'd be the youngest. It wasn't

1926
01:48:55,080 --> 01:49:02,479
Speaker 1: for Ben being asked. And you know what, that display

1927
01:49:02,560 --> 01:49:05,200
Speaker 1: of ballbusting male friendship, I think it is the perfect

1928
01:49:05,240 --> 01:49:08,240
Speaker 1: place to leave it for today. Both Matt and Ben

1929
01:49:08,640 --> 01:49:11,760
Speaker 1: went on to fulfill the respective destinies in Hollywood, Ben

1930
01:49:11,880 --> 01:49:15,559
Speaker 1: with Armageddon and Matt in Steven Spielberg saving Private Ryan,

1931
01:49:16,120 --> 01:49:18,800
Speaker 1: and actually the Oscars had the added bonus of pissing

1932
01:49:18,840 --> 01:49:21,640
Speaker 1: off Steven Spielberg, who because he wanted Matt Damon to

1933
01:49:21,800 --> 01:49:24,920
Speaker 1: retain his all American everyman on ominimity for the movie.

1934
01:49:25,320 --> 01:49:28,080
Speaker 1: Spielberg later admitted, who knew he was going to go

1935
01:49:28,160 --> 01:49:30,040
Speaker 1: off and become a movie star overnight and win the

1936
01:49:30,080 --> 01:49:33,440
Speaker 1: Academy Award for Best Screenplay and not be the anonymous

1937
01:49:33,479 --> 01:49:39,360
Speaker 1: actor I had in mind. So sorry, Spielberg. But Matt

1938
01:49:39,439 --> 01:49:41,479
Speaker 1: Damon always seem to keep a pretty good head despite

1939
01:49:41,479 --> 01:49:43,439
Speaker 1: his stardom. He frequently would say that one of the

1940
01:49:43,520 --> 01:49:45,720
Speaker 1: upsides of winning the Oscars so young was that it

1941
01:49:45,800 --> 01:49:48,880
Speaker 1: tattle very early, that that didn't fill any sort of

1942
01:49:49,040 --> 01:49:52,680
Speaker 1: inner void, and that accolades really weren't the answer, and

1943
01:49:52,800 --> 01:49:56,000
Speaker 1: he remained self deprecating about his creative partnership with Ben Affleck,

1944
01:49:56,120 --> 01:49:58,639
Speaker 1: later saying, if you put us together, you might actually

1945
01:49:58,720 --> 01:50:03,120
Speaker 1: make a whole creative interes individual. They did Dog Mom

1946
01:50:03,240 --> 01:50:05,800
Speaker 1: with Kevin Smith soon after the success of Good Will Hunting,

1947
01:50:05,880 --> 01:50:08,320
Speaker 1: but they wouldn't write together until the twenty twenty one

1948
01:50:08,479 --> 01:50:12,479
Speaker 1: historical drama The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott, which

1949
01:50:12,520 --> 01:50:16,519
Speaker 1: focuses on the last legally sanctioned duel in France's history.

1950
01:50:17,640 --> 01:50:19,639
Speaker 1: And I guess an early version of that script had

1951
01:50:19,680 --> 01:50:22,640
Speaker 1: Matt and Ben's character kiss, because in those ceremonies you

1952
01:50:22,880 --> 01:50:26,000
Speaker 1: kiss everyone on the mouth. For a duel, but Ridley

1953
01:50:26,000 --> 01:50:28,240
Speaker 1: Scott cut the scene because he thought it would distract

1954
01:50:28,280 --> 01:50:32,320
Speaker 1: from the rest of the movie. Coward. Yeah, I know, seriously,

1955
01:50:33,320 --> 01:50:35,920
Speaker 1: I honestly have no memory of the last Duel and

1956
01:50:36,240 --> 01:50:39,960
Speaker 1: truthfully didn't know that it existed until researching this episode. Oh,

1957
01:50:40,040 --> 01:50:42,080
Speaker 1: people liked it. I think. I think it has a

1958
01:50:42,160 --> 01:50:46,519
Speaker 1: good good reputation these days. But clearly it did not

1959
01:50:46,640 --> 01:50:49,320
Speaker 1: have the impact of good will hunting, which is honestly

1960
01:50:49,360 --> 01:50:53,280
Speaker 1: probably an unrealistic expectation. And Matt Damnon agreed. He said

1961
01:50:53,320 --> 01:50:55,320
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, I don't think there could ever be

1962
01:50:55,360 --> 01:50:58,120
Speaker 1: another movie that I felt that way about because of

1963
01:50:58,200 --> 01:51:00,200
Speaker 1: what it meant in our lives, because of that time

1964
01:51:00,240 --> 01:51:03,040
Speaker 1: in our life. Another movie couldn't occupy that much of

1965
01:51:03,080 --> 01:51:05,120
Speaker 1: my heart and soul at this point in my life.

1966
01:51:05,479 --> 01:51:07,799
Speaker 1: A movie could never change my life like that again.

1967
01:51:09,000 --> 01:51:11,840
Speaker 1: And most importantly, much like you and I, Matt and

1968
01:51:11,880 --> 01:51:15,360
Speaker 1: Ben remained dear friends. Matt Apfleck said, not too long ago,

1969
01:51:15,840 --> 01:51:17,720
Speaker 1: for a while we thought maybe we should chill and

1970
01:51:17,840 --> 01:51:19,639
Speaker 1: just do other stuff and not be Matt and Ben.

1971
01:51:19,760 --> 01:51:22,240
Speaker 1: Matt and Ben. But we have our company together and

1972
01:51:22,320 --> 01:51:24,880
Speaker 1: we're developing together. Matt lives down the street from me,

1973
01:51:25,000 --> 01:51:27,800
Speaker 1: just like he used to the only difference is that

1974
01:51:27,880 --> 01:51:33,599
Speaker 1: we have pools. Not bad for two kids from Boston.

1975
01:51:35,439 --> 01:51:37,439
Speaker 1: In the end, the real apples were the friends we

1976
01:51:37,560 --> 01:51:42,679
Speaker 1: made along the way. Will folks thank you for listening

1977
01:51:42,800 --> 01:51:47,000
Speaker 1: to the one hundredth episode of Too Much Information. I'm

1978
01:51:47,040 --> 01:51:50,720
Speaker 1: Alex Hegel and I'm still Jordan. Run Tug. We'll catch

1979
01:51:50,760 --> 01:51:58,960
Speaker 1: you next time. Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

1980
01:51:59,200 --> 01:52:02,479
Speaker 1: The show's execut producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtok.

1981
01:52:02,640 --> 01:52:06,080
Speaker 1: The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show

1982
01:52:06,240 --> 01:52:09,719
Speaker 1: was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel,

1983
01:52:09,840 --> 01:52:13,080
Speaker 1: with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.

1984
01:52:13,400 --> 01:52:15,439
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave

1985
01:52:15,520 --> 01:52:18,439
Speaker 1: us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the

1986
01:52:18,520 --> 01:52:21,760
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

1987
01:52:21,800 --> 01:52:22,519
Speaker 1: favorite shows.