June, 2009

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Time to Re-Team?

Monday, June 29th, 2009

IMDb is predicting a 2011 release date for an Untitled Ben Affleck/Matt Damon Project. Good Will Hunting Devotees have been wondering — why so long, Matt and Ben, to follow up your roles as Oscar-winning screenwriters? Sophomore slump? According to People Magazine (you heard me):

In terms of professional projects, though they’ve costarred and shared cameos in various films and collaborated as producers on different projects, Affleck and Damon haven’t been paired together on screen for five years. Affleck says the timing now feels right to re-team once again. “Supposedly we’re doing this thing next year” once their busy schedules dovetail, Affleck said. For his part, Damon has to complete three films – including a fourth turn as Jason Bourne – while Affleck, who received warm reviews for his 2007 directorial effort Gone Baby Gone, will be directing and starring in The Town, which Variety reports is an adaptation of the Chuck Hogan novel The Prince of Thieves. “Matt is always pretty busy but claiming that he’s going to try and slow it down a little bit,” says his buddy. “He doesn’t mind taking a year to wait. I would love to, it’s great, and we’re both busy. Matt lives in Miami, so it’s hard to get a chance to see him. If we work together it’s an excuse to hang out.”

So they’ve been busy. Too busy to make a movie together, apparently. This begs the question, though… not too busy for best friend surfing safari?

Surf's up!

Posted in Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, The Post-GWH Era | No Responses »

Matt Damon: Blond Again

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Just saw this on boston.com (my source for hometown hero news) this morning:

Damon

Blond Matt Damon is back! Hooray!

To readers of this blog, a towheaded Matt Damon has many nostalgic associations. But when was the last time we saw Matt Damon with goldilocks? A quick browse through his filmography leads me to believe that it was probably 2000′s The Legend of Bagger Vance, not one of Damon’s more memorable roles.

Which leads me to a second thought: while Damon hasn’t had the identity problems of his friend Ben Affleck and has managed to maintain a degree of both professional respect and profitability, I think we can all agree that there has been a second act to his career. And you can track it through his follicles.

Matt Damon burst onto the national scene as a fresh-faced young man ready to make good on all his potential, and it was a character we grew to love, from Good Will Hunting, through Rounders, to Titan A.E. As his darker roots grew out, though, he began to take on more serious roles (his turn as sociopath Tom Ripley being an obvious exception). The real shift came with 2003′s The Bourne Identity. Matt Damon reinvented his career. I think Paul Rudd’s character in The 40 Year Old Virgin best summed up the feelings of many pleasantly surprised viewers, who previously had ignored Damon’s talents: “I always thought Matt Damon was kind of a Streisand, but he is rockin’ the shit in this one.”

Yes, he was.

It was this Matt Damon we watched in the Bourne sequels, in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, in The Good Shepherd, in Syriana: a Matt Damon with a past he wasn’t ready to deal with; a Matt Damon with secrets he would hide from everyone, including himself; a Matt Damon driven by something he couldn’t understand or even name.

What will Matt Damon’s return to his blond roots bring for his career? We’ll have to wait and see. I will say this, though: It’s good to have you back, Blond Matt Damon. We missed you.

Posted in Boston, Matt Damon | No Responses »

Two tickets torn in half, and nothing to do

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Hi. I’m Dave. I’m a friend of Alex’s from way back. One might say I’m the Chuckie to his Will. Or … one might not.

In any case, when Alex told me he was writing a Good Will Hunting blog, I was immediately excited. Not only because I, too, think of the movie more than anyone probably should, but because I am a bit obsessed with Elliott Smith, and this would be yet another venue to vent the effects of my insanity.

I wish I could say I was hip to Elliott Smith from the very beginning; that I was a Portland rock scenester who knew him from Heatmiser. Instead, I was like many others: I heard him in Good Will Hunting and thought to myself, this – this is for me. I want this.

I saw Good Will Hunting on TV recently, and, as watching movies on television often goes, it was a disjointed experience. Commercials interrupted important scenes, profanities became fuzzy and ineffective (all the Southie boys say “friggin’”, right?). I hadn’t watched the movie too carefully since picking up Elliott Smith’s XO in 2000 or so, and it was interesting seeing it through the eyes of a Smith fan. The songs fit perfectly in the background, but they also periodically sneak out in front.

More than the theme song “Miss Misery”, “Between The Bars” is the perfect song for Good Will Hunting, with the dark humor of that punned title and the story of someone stuck in an alcohol-aided (or fueled?) rut. No, the boys in Good Will Hunting aren’t alcoholics (yet), but they are addicted to vices that keep them stagnant, a hole Will digs himself out of at the end of the movie, at which point Smith is replaced with “Afternoon Delight”, just as Either/Or, of which “Between The Bars” is the centerpiece, closes mercifully with the hopeful “Say Yes”.

I’m a musician, and there is no avoiding the fact that I rip off Smith at every turn. Not in terms of melody, but in feel and tone, and I try in vain to capture how his songs are each universes unto themselves. His melodies wind around a fixed point, always moving, but never so far you lose your bearings.

The day Elliott Smith died, I was surprised at how upset I was. I didn’t know him, after all. I think it was because the songs, despite a couple of decent posthumous releases, were gone, along with that sense of discovery. Discovery that so many people felt watching Good Will Hunting, and again seeing the poor bastard, eternally uncomfortable with success, playing at the 1997 Oscars.

That’s what I think of when I think of Good Will Hunting.

Guest Contributor David Brusie is a musician and writer living in Boston. Check him out at davidbrusie.com.

Posted in Elliot Smith, Soundtrack, The Film, The Makers | No Responses »

Fame, fortune, and their name printed in the auspicious MIT Tech!

Friday, June 26th, 2009

The problem Professor Lambeau puts on the hallway chalkboard sets off such excitement as to the identity of the mystery mathematician that his next class is overfilled with students eager to learn who the “silent rogue” could be. When I first saw the film, I thought that the joke — “Is it just my imagination or has my class grown considerably?” — was that everyone enrolled in the massive lecture course actually showed up, which never happens in large lectures. Instead, I think the implication is simply that nearly everyone who heard about the Hard Math Problem being solved was eagerly attending in awe; in short, this is a really big deal.

So big a deal in fact, that people are running as fast as they can to get to the lecture hall.

Someone solved the theorem on the hallway chalkboard!!

Someone solved the theorem on the hallway chalkboard!!

Only in repeated viewings did I realize, this quick scene is not of running students late for class, but instead, it depicts the electric excitement on campus that disrupts the normal pedestrian flow, pulling academics into a sprint toward the lecture hall, books and briefcases in hand, to behold who solved the theorem.

Addendum: In this curious eagerness they find companionship.  Could this be the result of “goodwill hunting”?  They look for math but find companionship, but maybe it was companionship they were looking for all along?  Because nerds don’t have friends?

Posted in Math, Plot Points, The Academy, The Film, Ya Suspect!! | No Responses »

What’s so good about him?

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

An addendum to previous post, Good Will Hunting II: It’s Hunting Season

Okay, I would be remiss not to praise the GWH2 moment wherein Mr. Ponytail intones the film’s somewhat obtuse before-and-after title.  Really, is anyone in the film really hunting for “good will” — “an attitude of kindness or friendliness; benevolence”?

Will Hunting is actually surrounded by this sort of unobtrusive support; what he ultimately needs is “to meet his match” (according to the trailer) — the kind of challenges he receives from Minnie Driver, Robin Williams, and Math. I would argue he’s “It’s Not Your Fault” Hunting.  But that is not the same as good will.  Will needs tough love, not merriness and good will towards men. (Though I guess he claims to need no one but the dead academics he so relishes…)

The other understanding of the play on words is that Will is just plain Good, as in Good [at Math] Will Hunting.  Good [at Burying it Deep Inside] Will Hunting.  But that’s stupid, right? But I digress — the film’s title is a compelling discussion to come.  Let’s just cut back to the punchline… “Applesauce, bitch.”  (And who doesn’t like applesauce?)

Posted in Blogging, Concepts & Criticism, Plot Points, The Film, Ya Suspect!! | No Responses »

Good Will Hunting II: It’s Hunting Season

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

I always forget that Matt & Ben really got their break from Kevin Smith (Good Will Hunting co-executive producer, creator/writer/director of Chasing Amy and, as seen above, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back) .  I haven’t seen Jay & Silent Bob, but have to admit, this scene is masterful.

Were Ben-Affleck-self-mocking a film genre onto its own, he’d be buried in Oscars.

Posted in Parody, Recommended Viewing, References, The Makers, The Post-GWH Era | No Responses »

Ben Affleck, Pink Hats, and the Perceived Loss of Authenticity

Friday, June 19th, 2009

How strange it was to glance up at the television screen during Tuesday’s Red Sox game to see NESN repeatedly zoomed in on none other than Good Will Hunting’s and Cambridge, MA’s own Ben Affleck. This is nothing new, I suppose. His presence has been documented in his sweet dugout-hugging seats before.

Actor Ben Affleck leans in to speak to players and coaches in the Boston Red Sox dugout during their baseball game against the Florida Marlins at Fenway Park in Boston Tuesday, June 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Actor Ben Affleck leans in to speak to players and coaches in the Boston Red Sox dugout during their baseball game against the Florida Marlins at Fenway Park in Boston Tuesday, June 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

But let’s step back a minute and observe how far we’ve come from Southie (and Cambridge Rindge & Latin)….

Brown-bagging spectators at Little League.

Brown-bagging it at Little League.

One of the many safe and stable realms of male bonding that Good Will Hunting establishes is baseball. This is of course a recognized Bostonian phenomenon: the Sox, the Curse, the brotherhood of “Red Sox Nation.” There is a key sequence in the film that invokes this (occasionally) unspoken bond among Bostonians — Will and his therapist’s nostalgic recollection of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. Director Gus Van Sant intercuts archival footage, so soaked in nostalgia it has gone grainy and soiled, with the boys’ energetic reenactment of the game’s climax.

"Thirty-five thousand people went crazy. And I wasn't one of them." -- Sean (Robin Williams)

I can’t help connecting the dots from Good Will Hunting‘s grimy nostalgia for 1975 into the future to the Red Sox “Dirt Dogs,” mucked-up helmets, bunch-of-idiots, dirty-water sensibility. This aura clung to the authenticity of the true fans, sitting in the stands in rain or sleet or heartbreaking loss for decades.

That said, recent years have lent the franchise a slew of other connotations, many not in keeping with the underdog mentality so many have cheered for.

So here we are, back from 1975 and 1997, on June 16, 2009…

(AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Affleck and Kevin Youkilis (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

How weird and false and inappropriate it is to see a dashing, cleft-chinned version of Chuckie Sullivan on Boston’s plasma screens, in Fenway’s front-row, coyly sporting a Celtics t-shirt like an expatriate with something to prove.

How strange it is to see Kevin Youkilis (his shaved head distinctive though out-of-focus) and Affleck in the same AP photograph, their worlds-colliding romantic-histories seeming so much more Hollywood than Boston. (Youk is married to former Affleck beau Ezna Sambataro. Just please, don’t call them Kevezna).

(And Ben and Youk, encountering on this public stage…. Awkward!)

There is a real cognitive dissonance in seeing Morgan in the Little League stands and then Ben at Fenway. Affleck is such Glossy Movie Star these days (but hardly even in movies people sees anymore) and it invalidates that grainy authenticity of Southie, the unrefined Morgan Sullivan, and good ole Will Hunting’s modest dream to grow up taking their kids to little league together.

Affleck’s post-GWH transformation into Tabloid Cover Boy is paralleled by the Fenway Faithful’s transformation into “Pink Hats” (as lamented by tried-and-true Sox fans).  Are we mourning the loss of authenticity?  Has the Dirty Boston in Affleck been reduced to a crisp Pink Hat? Is the Matt & Ben we-won-Oscars-for-a-middling-screenplay-but-we’re-best-friends-so-it’s-adorable fairy tale just marketing hooey?

I don’t know, but I do know that the photographer at Tuesday’s Red Sox game should have been focusing on Youk (the first-baseman! leading the team in on base percentage and helping kids and awesomeness!); not on some Supertramp fan in the front row.

Posted in Ben Affleck, Boston, The Zeitgeist | No Responses »

Blogging about Good Will Hunting

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Good Will Hunting is more than just the sum of its parts.

For an “indie” film, it is widely recognized, and generally — I think — thought of with fondness. For a film that admittedly flirts with mediocrity, it resonates for those of us who were young adults in the late nineties.  References to the film, over a decade after its release, pepper my peer group’s daily interactions, almost unconsciously.

So.  Just what is it that makes Good Will Hunting so different, so appealing?

Welcome to BlogWillHunting, wherein a collective of Bostonian and Canterbridgian twenty-somethings embark, today, on a discussion of Matt and Ben’s great dissertation.  It is the story of a young man in Boston — a man among friends — knocking back some beers, sitting on a winning lottery ticket, and seeing about a girl.

Join us, won’t you?

Posted in Blogging, The Film | No Responses »