Until last weekend the only time I had been to the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade was in 2005 with a friend from high school, a friend of my friend, and a my friend’s friend’s 8 to 12 teenage English-as-a-second-language students.  I really only remember three things.

1. It was crowded.
2. Some guy was selling a green long-sleeved t-shirt that said “What happens in Southie stays in Southie” and I’ve always regretted not getting one.
3. There were Storm Troopers marching in the parade, and they were wearing leprechaun hats.

This, Boston’s official St. Patrick’s Day parade, has been held in Southie since 1901 — and unofficially since 1737.  It is such a distinct part of South Boston history and tradition that Team Affleck/Damon intended their Good Will Hunting would open with it.  The opening credits were to take place over scenes from the St. Paddy’s marching and motorcading, and the subsequent opening scene would take place at the crowded Southie bar as Chuckie regales the boys with a story.

Gus Van Sant actually shot and cut together a sequence, which is available for viewing as a deleted scene on the Good Will Hunting DVD.  They shot it at the real parade, months before the film began principle photography.  This is notable for a couple reasons: shooting at a live event with a small crew, the footage actually looks like a Gus Van Sant movie.  You know — “gritty,” “intimate,” etc.  Second, according to Van Sant on the DVD commentary, since the hairstyles of the characters hadn’t yet been determined, they are all wearing ridiculous hats as they goof around at curbside. This combined with the actors’ odd clothing in these scenes points to how much those decisions about costume and makeup (and maintaining their consistency) matters in creating a set of authentic characters.

As someone who blogs regularly about Good Will Hunting, I was determined to make it to this year’s parade, rain or shine.

And rain it did.

Still, I’d say it was worth it.  I shook hands with the staff of multiple candidates for Auditor, received some green bead necklaces and 2010 Census chapstick, and saw unicycling floutists, an old-timey canon, and the coldest, wettest bagpipers I’ll probably ever see.

As far as the subsequent scene of the boys in the bar, it’s not the most eloquent introduction to the characters and themes of the film. (Otherwise, the film’s strongest moments lie in the relationships amongst Will and his friends.  Compare Will’s climactic scenes with Sean, his therapist, and with Chuckie, his best friend.  Both communicate to Will that he must let go of his fear, but the “it’s not your fault” sequence with Robin Williams is as forced and melodramatic as the later construction site scene with Will and Chuckie is frank and stirring — “you’re sitting on a winning lottery ticket.”)

Besides making it completely unclear who the main character of the film is, the St. Paddy’s Day bar scene is territory essentially retread by Chuckie, et al,  when Will introduces them to Skylar at the bar later in the film.

So, let’s be thankful Gus Van Sant served up a kaleidoscopic meditation on Will’s solitude, stuck inside his brain, instead of a story of a cat getting beaten to death, in those early moments of Good Will Hunting.

Join us at twitter/blogwillhunting.com.  Is it still a live tweet if we’re not actually there?  I mean it will be live.  But with tape-delay.  Fine its a tape-delay-tweet.

Matt Damon recognizes the vicious heat/buzz/smear-machine warming up this time of year.  The New York Times spoke with him (and describes him as “among the most charming and down-to-earth of all the Hollywood deities”) and reports:

“My first experience with that was ‘Good Will Hunting,’” Mr. Damon said. “The week of the voting there was a story that came out in Variety that Ted Tally had written ‘Good Will Hunting.”

Mr. Tally, a screenwriter who won an Oscar for “Silence of the Lambs,” and Mr. Damon eventually worked together on “All the Pretty Horses,” but at this point they hadn’t met.

“And Ted Tally, to his credit, he called up Variety and said, ‘I want to go on the record and just say I didn’t write that movie, I wish I did but if I had written it I’d take credit for it,’” Mr. Damon said. “It kind of put the thing to bed but I remember getting called for a quote and I said I’m not gonna” – charming colloquialism – “comment. Are they calling Woody Allen and asking him if he wrote the script? They want to come look at my hard drive? I’ve been working on this script for, like, years. And then it was explained to me, that no, it’s not actually about that. It’s about just putting enough doubt in voters’ mind that they would go, ‘oh, I heard something about that movie, I’m not sure if those guys actually wrote it. What’s that – Oh, I liked ‘As Good As It Gets.’”

So, Mr. Damon’s people explained to him, “it’s the ‘As Good As It Gets’ camp,” he said. “And I was like, come on, you must be kidding me. You’re telling me it’s Jim Brooks,” the director of that movie? “’No, Jim Brooks would never do that. It’s the camp!’ Like, what does that mean? It was so stupid. I was just flabbergasted.”

Director Kevin Smith worked with Matt and Ben in Chasing Amy, preceding Good Will Hunting, and also directed each of the films in which they’ve appeared together since.  The story goes: Matt and Ben wanted Smith to direct GWH, but he declined, saying they needed to get someone better.

I once jokingly referred to Miramax as “the house Ben Affleck built.” That’s not true. Miramax has existed since at least 1980. (My friend recently showed me a poster for a stoner Star Wars parody Miramax released that year. Think about that. They’ve been pulling the whole “Disaster Movie” genre schtick for 30 years!) Ben Affleck didn’t show up until the later half of the mid-90′s, but he was integral in the Miramax my generation came to know. His Oscar win alongside best bud Matt Damon in 1998 gave him some “indie film street cred” that no doubt rubbed off on Shakespeare in Love. He was certainly in the thick of things when Miramax became the Oscar juggernaut it’s commonly known as today.

No matter how high his star rose, Ben always kept it real with Miramax. Which is why I was so surprised to see him stay with Miramax after the Weinsteins left.

A little background for non-movie-industry-news-nerds: Miramax was founded by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. They sold it to Disney in 1993 but stayed on board as presidents to run the ship, as they always had. So it was an accepted truth that anyone who worked with Miramax regularly did so because they wanted to work with the Weinstein brothers.

When they left and created the Weinstein Company in 2005, all the other Miramax filmmakers and go-to actors went with them. Disney was left with little more than the Miramax name, installing a new president and beginning the “New Miramax” era, with practically a whole new roster of executives and creatives. Yet Ben Affleck chose to make Gone Baby Gone at the New Miramax.

I think this was a clever PR move.

Photo by Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

The average guy on the street who doesn’t read way too many movie blogs has no idea who runs Miramax. As far as the general population goes, Miramax was still Miramax. And actors, being public faces, come to be associated with brands in the public’s mind. In this case, the association goes something like this: “Ben Affleck + Miramax = some pretty good movies like Good Will Hunting(!).”

Ben used this to his advantage by allying himself with the Miramax name and not the Weinstein brothers. On the mean, indie film streets “Miramax presents a Ben Affleck film” sounds way more impressive than “The Weinstein Company presents a Ben Affleck film.” One reminds me of Good Will Hunting, and that Ben Affleck was once more than a headliner for mindless blockbusters and tabloids. It makes me root for the guy and probably give his movie a chance.

In January 2010, despite major Oscar wins under the new regime, Disney closed the doors on Miramax. The fate of the label remains a mystery, with rumors swirling that the Weinsteins would like to buy it back. But with Miramax off the table for the foreseeable future, I can’t help but wonder: what will Ben Affleck do when he needs to remind people of his indie street cred?

Google image search: "Matt Ben shiny joy"

Matt ‘n’ Ben are re-forming their production company for a “first look” deal at Warner Bros. In movie lingo, “first look” refers to this exchange: “First, look – Ben, I wish you hadn’t sold my Oscar on eBay to fund Gone Baby Gone. But what the hell, let’s re-form our production company!”

Of course, I’m being unfair (and hilarious!). Affleck has become a well-respected director after Gone Baby Gone, and his next film, the highly anticipated The Town, is due in September. With his newfound clout and Damon’s ongoing credibility as an actor and a box-office draw, the timing for this thing seems right. Ready those Gerry 2 pitches …. now.

And, I suppose, one could regard it as something like a sequel. It’s as if Morgan accompanied Will on his cross-country road trip and we find them somewhere in the southwest. And they’ve lost their accents. And Will got a haircut. And they don’t talk much. And–OK, in spite of the superficial similarities, I guess there’s not actually much of a connection between the two movies, despite how badly I was hoping to find one.

The beginning of the film, however, does almost seem like an oblique, teasing reference to the final scene in Good Will Hunting where we watch Will’s car disappear down the highway while Afternoon Delight plays and the credits roll. Gerry opens in much the same way—a car traveling down a road, through a dry desert-scape.

It’s like we’ve picked up right where we left off! It’s Good Will Hunting, but without the Afternoon Delight!

Alas, nearly immediately it became obvious that these were not Will and Morgan that we were dealing with. Gerry aspires to be a serious, high-art film: lots of long, unbroken takes; awkwardly long close-ups; long stretches where the only soundtrack is the sound of Damon and Affleck’s feet crunching against the gravelly desert ground for whole minutes at a time; grandiose, sweeping shots of the (admittedly stunning) scenery; and a deliberate vagueness as to who exactly our characters are and what they are doing.

It starts out with a long drive, as mentioned, and then our two heroes—both named Gerry—set out on a wilderness trail. They are headed for “the thing,” but after about 45 seconds they decide to “fuck the thing” and turn back. Unfortunately, within moments they manage to become spectacularly lost amidst an ever-changing backdrop of mountains, ravines, and desert scrub. No spoilers here, but you can probably imagine how this will end.

As for the script, I imagine it’s probably about 3 pages long—there isn’t much dialogue, and I got the impression that most of it was improvised.

Certainly, this is no Good Will Hunting, but it isn’t bad. I guess you could say my taste in film veers more towards the popular than the high-art, but in the end I still appreciated this film and its intentions. It’s earnest and thoughtful and interesting, and visually very beautiful.

And I bet Will Hunting would have loved it.

According to Wikipedia (famous last words, I know — the source of this information has not been cited but Williams Goldman corroborated the details in a WGA seminar in 2003), Matt and Ben’s original story for Good Will Hunting was that of an FBI thriller.  If this is true, it likely stokes the flames of rumors that Matt and Ben weren’t the “real” screenwriters.  (But really, isn’t this sort of questioning of authorship innate in all collaborative, commercial works?)

Affleck and Damon originally wrote the screenplay as a thriller: Young man in the rough-and-tumble streets of South Boston, who possesses a superior intelligence, is targeted by the FBI to become a G-Man. Castle Rock Entertainment president Rob Reiner later urged them to drop the thriller aspect of the story and to focus the relationship between Will Hunting (Damon) and his psychologist (Williams). At Reiner’s request, noted screenwriter William Goldman read the script and further suggested that the film’s climax ought to be Will’s decision to follow his girlfriend Skylar (Driver) to California. Goldman has denied widely spread rumors that he wrote Good Will Hunting or acted as a script doctor.^[1]

Everyone loves a good Brokeback to the Future-esque mashup, so here’s one for Good Will Hunted — a peek into what Good Will Hunting perhaps could have been.

Everyone knows who wrote Good Will Hunting.

In fact, it’s a big part of the appeal of the movie and the mystique surrounding it: the story of two relative-unknowns who, through hard work and talent, would make it big and go on to achieve lasting fame and cinematic glory—the story of two guys sitting on a winning lottery ticket.

But who really wrote Good Will Hunting?

According to the credits, of course, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote the screenplay for Good Will Hunting. They would go on to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1997.

So who wrote what? Popular belief holds that Damon did the lion’s share of the work, with Affleck making only token contributions and then taking credit from his pal in the end—the screenplay was, after all, supposedly based on one of Damon’s collegiate short stories. (This Family Guy clip parodies the idea of Affleck’s meager contribution.)

And then there are those who dismiss the idea that it written by either young man, suggesting instead that their names were simply shrewdly tacked on to the script for marketing purposes by publicity-savvy producers. It was even the subject of an off-Broadway play called Matt & Ben, in which the two young protagonists mysteriously stumble across the unmarked script and go on to claim it as their own. William Goldman and Kevin Smith have both been put forward as the “real” screenwriters at various points.

Admittedly, if it was a publicity stunt, it wasn’t a bad idea. It makes a good story, after all: two hardworking, handsome young men working their way to fame and glory and positing themselves on the brink of superstardom through a story that stemmed from their working-class beginnings.

For those who think it’s unlikely that two pretty-boy amateurs could have written such a polished and successful script on their first try, perhaps their biggest argument is the mysterious absence of further collaborations from this seemingly very promising start.

To be fair, both Damon and Affleck have amassed additional writing credits under their belts since Good Will Hunting—Ben Affleck for two screenplays he adapted from novels, Gone, Baby, Gone in 2007 and The Town, currently in production. And Matt Damon, interestingly, would go on to collaborate with another Affleck—this time Ben’s brother, Casey Affleck, in the 2002 drama Gerry.

But in spite of these further accomplishments, there was a decided lack of another Good Will Hunting—certainly never another screenplay that was as beloved and universally celebrated, and never anything that brought them the acclaim (or the Oscars) that the Good Will Hunting screenplay garnered them.

So why is that? Perhaps it was the collaboration between them that created the spark, something that they couldn’t recreate on their own or with other collaborators. Or perhaps Good Will Hunting simply exhausted their creative resources. Perhaps it was the product of a time and a place that couldn’t be recreated: two optimistic and ambitious young men who had set out to accomplish their dreams and see the prize within their grasp, who create a story extracted from their collective backgrounds and experiences, and present it to a world that eagerly receives it. Maybe once they’d already achieved everything they could have possibly hoped for, there was no need for another Good Will Hunting. Why would you need to? And how could anything else live up to it?

Perhaps, sometimes, we simply only have one Good Will Hunting in us.

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.

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.