Good Will Hunting

It’s hard to believe that Good Will Hunting will be celebrating its 30th anniversary next year, yet here it is. It is one of those movies that came along seemingly out of nowhere and launched the careers of the co-writers/stars, two boys from Boston who made it big. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon became household names after this and have managed to stay in the limelight ever since. There was even talk soon afterwards that they would collaborate again on a screenplay, but the sheer grueling effort of penning this film was enough to keep a follow-up from happening for more than two decades.

The film began life as an assignment Matt Damon turned in during his fifth year at Harvard. The assignment was for a one-act play, but what he turned in was around 40 pages, the beginnings of an idea that would eventually become Good Will Hunting. When his friend from childhood, Ben Affleck, moved out to Los Angeles to pursue acting work, Matt soon followed, bringing his script with him. The two would collaborate on the writing while taking small roles in commercials and films just to pay the rent. They took inspiration and motivation from the recent success of writer/director Quentin Tarantino, who had been a store clerk and got a script developed anyway based on good word of mouth and the inclusion of a known actor, Harvey Keitel, to help secure the funding. Reservoir Dogs became a big hit and helped motivate Affleck and Damon to keep trying with their own script.

They drew on their own experiences and those of family and friends, including Affleck’s father and girlfriend, who were both janitors at Harvard. They wrote their script thinking it needed an action subplot and sent it to their agent, who felt it was good but unsellable, citing how rare it was for a script tied to unknown actors to get picked up. Rocky had done it with Sylvester Stallone, but outside of that, it was basically unheard of. Still, word got around about this script, and it opened up a bidding war, eventually going to Castle Rock Entertainment. The action part of the story was jettisoned, and the script had to be rewritten almost entirely to focus on the interpersonal relationships of the main characters. 

More delays occurred in which Affleck and Damon became convinced the Castle Rock executives were no longer actively reading the script revisions. After an ultimatum designed to oust the two from the project, a new deal, this time from Miramax, was struck, buying the script away from Castle Rock. The decision to hire director Gus Van Sant was Damon and Affleck’s, something Miramax executive Harvey Weinstein disagreed with. This made for tensions on the set over salary, final cut privileges, and other creative differences. This caused some delays, but eventually, the film got made, utilizing many Boston landmarks, including Harvard, to give the film a Boston authenticity. 

Of course, the big story is how this film, through all the headaches and delays, went on to critical acclaim and made a huge impact at the following year’s Academy Awards. Watching it now, it seems like the kind of film that could have easily won Best Picture; it has all the characteristics of a Best Picture. But there was no stopping Titanic that year, and anyone thinking any of the other films competing against it were going to win was just kidding themselves. That year’s award ceremony was considered the most anticlimactic to the point that Sean Connery, who was given the honor of handing out the Best Picture Oscar, did a comical double take when he looked inside the envelope, feigning surprise over who got the Oscar. Good Will Hunting didn’t win, but it was lauded all throughout the night, including Damon and Affleck being singled out several times for this tremendous achievement. They won for their screenplay, an Oscar Titanic wasn’t even nominated for, and Robin Williams, cast in a pivotal role in the film, won for supporting actor. Good Will Hunting may not have been crowned that night, but it made its mark anyway.

And all of it is about a troubled young man who isn’t living up to his potential. Matt Damon is playing Will Hunting, a parolee working as a janitor at MIT. A native of South Boston, he spends his days at work and his evenings drinking with his friends Chuckie Sullivan (Ben Affleck), Morgan (Casey Affleck), and Billy (Cole Hauser). Will is a self-taught mathematics genius, but he hides behind his insecurities and his social class. He has anger issues and has been arrested several times for assault and theft. His job at MIT was arranged by his parole officer, which puts him in the halls of MIT, a place where he is surrounded by the wealthy and the privileged. 

On the chalkboard outside an advanced mathematics classroom is a handwritten and very difficult mathematical problem posed by Professor Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård). Will, taking advantage of the empty hallway, answers the question, leaving behind the solution to a problem that took Lambeau, himself, a long time to solve. News of this gets around the campus, and Lambeau attempts to ferret out who the culprit is. A new problem, one even more difficult to solve, is posed. But when Lambeau catches Will writing on the board, he assumes at first that this janitor is vandalizing his chalkboard. Will flees, and Lambeau is astonished to discover that what was being written is correct. 

By the time he catches up to Will again, Will has been arrested again and sentenced to jail time. Lambeau gets him released but only on the condition that Will attends therapy sessions, a condition Will considers a waste of time. Eventually, though, a therapist, a former roommate of Lambeau’s from Harvard, Dr. Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), begins to get through to Will, and the two bond over shared loss and feelings of inadequacy. Meanwhile, Will has started dating Skylar (Minnie Driver), a wealthy British student at Harvard, but his social status gets in the way when he feels he is beneath her and refuses to accept that she has fallen in love with him. They are good together, but he pushes her away when things turn serious. 

Class separation is one of the main themes of Good Will Hunting. It is a factor in the cultural geography of Boston. The upper-class Protestants associated with Harvard and MIT are in conflict with the Irish Catholic middle and lower working class of South Boston. This form of stunted social mobility plagues many urban environments that have such a clear divide in the rich and the working class. In this case, we are seeing someone from one side being afraid to step over that line despite having a gift that could easily make that so. He fears leaving behind his friends and joining what he considers to be the enemy. He’s also battling some personal demons stemming from abuse in his childhood, a thing he has in common with Sean. The scene towards the end when Sean forces him to confront that and admit to himself that it is “not your fault” has become a bit of a mocked moment, but its heart is in the right place. 

This is a powerful movie that really struck a nerve in 1997 when it was first released. In more recent years, many have dismissed it for its connection with Harvey Weinstein and Miramax, but to do so would be unfair to the film. For all intents and purposes, Harvey Weinstein may have financed the production, but he was not otherwise intimately involved in the final product, and the film shouldn’t be made a pariah over this. Instead, we need to look at this film for what it is, evidence of some real talent behind and in front of the screen, talent that has led to both Affleck and Damon having successful careers for the next three decades. Matt is a talented writer, and the rawness of this script attests to that. Affleck has proven again and again that he is more than just the meathead characters he was playing at this time and has gone on to be a great director in his own right. The two together made some magic and really should collaborate more.

There are a lot of hard scenes in this picture, but none are as hard as the breakup scene between Will and Skylar. We see it coming for a while before it finally happens, and still, it catches you off guard just how brutal it is. Part of the story is Will getting past his perceived class divide with her, but despite his grand gesture in the end, it’s hard to believe he can mend the rift that he caused. This could have been resolved in a follow-up movie, but no such film is forthcoming despite offers being made. 

Good Will Hunting is an amazingly well-written film, but it is not perfect. The scene where Sean is telling Will that it is not his fault is silly and oversimplifies real traumas. But another scene, one much better written, sells this whole film. Chuckie pulls Will aside and tells him that he is wasting his talents working hard labor and spending his evenings with the boys at the bar. He says the best part of the day is when he goes to pick Will up and hopes Will will not be there, having packed up and left, gone where his talents can make a better life for him and leave all the rest of them behind. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it gets the message across. This moment sums up this picture pretty well. This scene is not the final one in the film, but it leads into the ending and is a key element in how this will all wrap up. 

While things do wrap up a bit too neatly for reality, this film does leave one element up in the air: the status between Will and Skylar. It’s a brave choice to end it the way that it does, but it is the right choice. If we had all the answers, it would be unsatisfying, so leaving it ambiguous works in its favor. Will has gone on an emotional and personal journey. The film ends with him going on a physical one, too. He was pushed heavily by Lambeau, too much so according to Sean, and Lambeau resents just how easy the math comes to Will. In the end, though, Will needed to be pushed a little, and the fact that we don’t see how it all ends up feels right here. It brings to a close a narrative that just feels honest being open-ended. It’s script decisions like this that separate good films from great ones. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Lawrence Bender

Best Director: Gus Van Sant

Best Actor: Matt Damon

Best Supporting Actor: Robin Williams (won)

Best Supporting Actress: Minnie Driver

Best Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (won)

Best Film Editing: Pietro Scalia 

Best Original Dramatic Score: Danny Elfman 

Best Original Song: “Miss Misery” Music and Lyrics by Elliott Smith

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Release Date: December 5, 1997

Running Time: 126 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Stellan Skarsgård, and Minnie Driver

Directed by: Gus Van Sant