November, 2009

As previously discussed on Blog Will Hunting, Scott Winters (Clark, the Harvard bar jerkface) is currently appearing in commercials for Goldline.com. 

Watch the videos on YouTube, particularly the one on Market Stability, where Winters fondles gold lovingly.  Apparently gold looks like an ipod!

Not long after Gus Van Sant’s Finding Forrester was released, I was discussing the director with my friend Brendan, at a rooftop party in Brooklyn. (I included that last detail so you’d know that I am — or at least have been — or at least think I may have been — cool.)

With Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester under his directorial belt, we envisioned Van Sant’s next film…. We suggested it be an autobiographical bio-pic in which a brilliant young filmmaker overcomes adversity to find his own voice (with the help of a mentor character who doesn’t quite follow the rules). The experienced and uninspired Van Sant, as mentor, must confront the commercialization of his recent films and the accompanying loss of passion for his work… together, mentor and student, they learn to reject the Hollywood system and find their own way.

The name of the film: Running Out of Gerunds.

Now, no one ever thinks this is nearly as brilliant and funny as we did.  (And I realize now that “finding” in this instance is probably not actually a gerund, but a present tense verb.  The hubris of youth!)  Nevertheless, I love the joke dearly.

To be fair, it is certainly notable that Van Sant took the clout he earned with the success of Good Will Hunting and went ahead and made a big fat failed experiment of a movie that is probably only successful as commentary on the intersection of the low-budget-and-scrappy and the movie-star-laden-and-over-marketed.

Only because of Good Will Hunting did anyone let Van Sant make Psycho.

A few years later he returns to commercial filmmaking.  In a way Finding Forrester is simply a sequel to Good Will Hunting, and as Van Sant explains in an interview with The Believer, “The most interesting films that studios want to be making are sequels. They would rather make sequels than make the originals, which is always a kind of a funny Catch-22.”

Scott William Winters — you know him as Clark (the pony-tailed participant in the “how do you like them apples” exchange in GWH) — is back! 

Turns out he often plays jerks like Clark, and has a jerk family.  His brother, Dean Winters, plays Liz Lemon’s ex-boyfriend (and jerkwad) Dennis Duffy on 30 Rock.  And just yesterday I saw the last of four episodes of 24 in which Scott William Winters plays a jerk from the FBI who doesn’t respect civil liberties. 

Well it seems Scott has also just become a spokesman for Goldline International, “a leading gold and precious metals trading company.” 

Scott says:

It’s a pleasure to represent such a reliable and trustworthy source for investing in gold and silver. As a long-time client of Goldline, I have first-hand experience with their superior customer care, quality products, and how easy they make it to buy gold. I look forward to encouraging other investors looking to diversify their portfolios with gold to work with Goldline.

Whoa. 

The new Goldline commercials starring Winters have yet to hit the YouTubes, but we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out.