Central Square Theater's production of "Matt & Ben" with Philana Mia (Matt) & Marianna Bassham (Ben) Photo: A.R. Sinclair Photography

Interior. Ben’s apartment. A lazy Saturday in Somerville, Massachusetts. Stage right we see a desk, a computer, all untouched. Center stage we got a second hand couch. Pan left we see various junk food  . . .

Thus the stage is set—early on in the play Matt & Ben.

Cut to November 2011: the interweb is abuzz with the news that the house at 2327 Hill Drive is up for sale. We aren’t in schlubby, scrappy Somerville anymore.

Known as the ”Braasch House,” “Ma Castle,” and—by some—the “Good Will Hunting house,” this is the house in which Matt and Ben penned their Good Will Hunting, sometime in the mid-nineties.

I think it’s safe to say—the popular mythology of Matt and Ben’s rags-to-riches (or “Boston-to-Hollywood”) tale brings to mind something a little less grand than what we see here. (Certainly something a little less Viking-French Norman.) Despite being described in the realtor’s listing as “a fixer with great potential,” this is not the Boston-area apartment with pizza boxes and School Ties posters we were probably imagining. Much like Matt Damon’s Will Hunting (that twinkle in his eye! that beautiful shimmering hair! those wicked smart math skills!), the potential is quite obvious.

A duo of underemployed actors write starring roles for themselves and go on to great acclaim? In 2002 the play Matt & Ben was a hit at the International Fringe Festival and the next year Off Broadway. Playwrights Mindy Kaling (a Cambridge native, now on NBC’s The Office and author of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?) and Brenda Withers (actor/writer of the recent play The Ding Dongs, or What Is the Penalty in Portugal?) wrote Matt & Ben in their crummy, railroad-style Brooklyn apartment and went on to star in the play in Manhattan and then L.A.

Good Will Hunting was based on a story Matt wrote at Harvard [citation needed, I know, I know]. According to the version of the legend being pushed on the realty blogs—one stretches the facts even further to claim the house was built in the 19th century and that Matt and Ben themselves owned the place, rather than simply renting it once upon a time—the duo wrote the screenplay itself here:

My favorite part of the press release, by real estate site Zillow:

No, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon do not come with this house at 2327 Hill Drive. But as a result of the creative whirlwind the pair cooked up inside these funky walls, this Eagle Rock address has unofficially become known as the “Good Will Hunting” home.

So I just want to know… where exactly did they hang their School Ties poster? That fireplace eats up so much wall space!

From the Central Square Theater production of "Matt & Ben." (Yup, that's a School Ties poster on the wall behind Ben.)

Mindy Kaling is quick to point out in her recent book that they basically did no research on the real Matt and Ben’s journey. She and Brenda were essentially more interested in playing with the mythology of the duo’s celebrity.

So, why is it so disappointing to see how bitchin’ their pad was?

Next thing you know, we’ll find out they didn’t actually write Good Will Hunting. It just fell from ceiling, or something.

But writing alongside fancy chandeliers and palm trees? It does drain some of the Boston from the myth. And the Boston was our favorite part.

And Matt & Ben have finally announced a project that will bring them and Boston back together on screen.

And I had the pleasure of viewing a local production of the hilarious play Matt & Ben this summer in Cambridge.

And I have plenty of backed-up ruminations on how walking through Harvard Yard on quiet evenings recalls Good Will Hunting, and what it means to make a Boston Movie in this cinematic age.

But instead of blogging about any of that, I’m going to just post this and call it a day:

GWH was just name-checked at the Lakers-Celtics game, which came from a lengthy discussion of whether someone was natural at something or had to work at it, an analogy with piano-playing, and a “how d’ya like them apples,” at which point they cut to Damon in the stands.

I’m not sure if they were making an overt reference to the following scene, but here it is.

That said, immediately (now, go, go!) check out the oh-so-delightful slideshow The 9 Happiest Faces Matt Damon Made During the Lakers/Celtics Game over at Movieline.

I think it’s time to revisit our November 2009 post, Mr. Damon: What’s with the hair? I wonder how Matt Damon feels now about his lovingly gelled, yet floppy and mildly-tousled, blond-streaked hair in Good Will Hunting? Perhaps we’ll never know.

Etsy is a website that features handmade goods, crafts, and artwork; Alchemy is a “a space on Etsy where buyers can post requests for custom items.”

I don’t see why they don’t just hire the artists behind the Cartoon Doll Emporium Matt Damon Paper Doll. One outfit I suggest is “Matt, you’re all dressed up for the Oscars, but you forgot to wear pants!!”

Acting!

This year I come to you (from my parents’ home, having dug through my teenage bedroom) with my original ticket stub from the first time I saw Good Will Hunting — January 31, 1998. (As it turns out, I truly throw nothing away.)

If I ever start a blog about Courage Under Fire, Saving Private Ryan, Jerry Maguire, or The Mighty Ducks 2, I also have those ticket stubs.

Which reminds me — remember how the unexpected success of Good Will Hunting sort of threw a wrench in marketing for Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan in 1998? Spielberg cast Matt Damon based on his impressive performance in Courage Under Fire, when he was still relatively unknown.

But when this previously little-known actor, who happens to be the title character of your film, becomes an Oscar-winning superstar, it becomes necessary to promote his forthcoming role. As I recall, there was supposed to be some dramatic tension as to whether Private Ryan was even alive and around to be saved. Damon doesn’t appear until the last act of the film, and at one point along the way Tom Hanks thinks he has found Ryan, when of course he hasn’t — because that guy was not Matt Damon.

That said, Matt did have a starring role in The Rainmaker, a big John Grisham film, which came out before Good Will Hunting (a couple months before). (According to the book Down and Dirty Pictures, it was this big break that ensured Miramax would give Good Will Hunting the final green light, despite a couple of kids insisting on director approval and leading roles.)

Still, when I saw Saving Private Ryan in the summer of 1998, I wasn’t worried at all about whether Tom Hanks would find Ryan — I knew he was going to show up, and was going to be played by Matt Damon (and not the-star-of-The-Rainmaker Matt Damon). Without Good Will Hunting‘s success he would have been just another emerging actor in an ensemble war film, and not someone who needed to be promoted on the poster as the-Matt-Damon-starring-as-Private-Ryan.

Think about it — what if Rosebed had won the Best Supporting Sled Oscar four months before Citizen Kane had been released? Orson Welles would have been pissed.

Boston.com has a slide show today on Matt Damon’s career, including this 1987 photograph of Damon playing Humpty Dumpty in a school production of “Bravo Cappuccio.” He looks more like a large tooth with a bow-tie, though, don’t you think?

Check out the rest of the slide show here.

Slate recently had an article on”10 wildly ambitious—or just wildly misguided—movie projects that were doomed by financial difficulties, casting issues, their very premise, or, commonly enough, all three,” including a version of The Lord of the Rings starring the Beatles.

Nestled in at number eight is the following, a film project I had not heard of until now. Hey, at least it wasn’t a musical.

Half Way House
After the triumph of Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck found plenty of further success in acting, producing, and, in Affleck’s case, directing, but they have yet to film another Damon-Affleck script. Just months after GWH‘s release, they already had a project set up with Castle Rock. Affleck described Half Way House as an ensemble piece set in a home for the mentally impaired. The pair was going to play workers in the facility, at least initially. “Damon now tells Affleck he wants to play one of the retarded residents,” Variety‘s Army Archerd wrote in March 1998. “We’ve got 150 pages,” Damon told Entertainment Weekly that year, “and about five are good.” Whether he was being falsely modest or not, the film has been quietly dropped from both men’s list of future projects.

But let’s rewind for a second (this was still the era of VHS after all)… I was 17 and desperate for the perfect prom date.

I begged my best-guy-friend to come with me, but he didn’t want to go, period. He didn’t like to dance, it was too expensive, and anyway, he was thinking of asking the cute freshman he had a crush on. I thought maybe I could go with the guy I went with last year, a blind date arranged so that my friend and her boyfriend would have company, but he had a soccer tournament that weekend. And another acquaintance was too busy fending off previous unwanted requests to seriously consider mine.

I could only think of one other option: Matt Damon.

I did a “peoplesearch” on yahoo.com to find his email address—the Internet was still young. There were several entries for people named Matt Damon, but one of these cited residence in Hollywood, California. Mattdamon@yahoo.com, in fact. So I noted this and considered how I might convince a celebrity to travel to southern Indiana to attend my senior prom.

The email I wrote was long, and in my attempt to sound sincere, to convince Matt that I wasn’t some crazed fan, I guess, it ended up a painfully detailed self-advertisement.

I began by giving him my name, telling him I was 17 years old, where I went to school, and insisting that what I was writing wasn’t “just some ordinary piece of fan mail,” that I wasn’t the “groupie-fan-mail-type.” I told him I had tried, “in one way or another, to get five or six guys to go to the prom with me,” but that “nevertheless, I remain dateless.”

“Please consider visiting Terre Haute on April 25,” I closed. “I believe you would have a great time, and I would be thrilled to have you join me. You could even come incognito, if you wish.” I said I would understand if he was too busy, but that I would like a response either way, and if he couldn’t come, maybe he could get one of his friends—Ben, maybe—to attend the prom with me. I signed it: “Sincerely, Elizabeth Marie Erickson” and attached a senior photo I had scanned, a picture of me in a white T-shirt and overalls with an American flag backdrop.

I didn’t feel any more danger of rejection than I did when I asked the guys at school. He’s the type who’d be up for an adventure, I thought, who might get a kick out of doing something as unexpected as going to the prom with some lonely girl in Indiana.

I tell this story every once in a while and people usually assume this is the end.

But he wrote back.

That is, someone wrote back.

The subject line read: “Elizabeth, you are beautiful!” He said he was impressed I had sent him my school picture, that I looked like the front of a Wheaties box, “All American youth and healthy!”

“I’m sorry sweetheart,” he wrote, “but I must decline your prom invitation. I will be busy shooting on location that night. But I know a girl as beautiful and smart and interesting (you must be the prettiest girl in your school!) as you will have guys lined up waiting! Just choose one!”

I’ve never met Matt Damon, and I can’t be sure who answered my email. Honestly though, I’m just as grateful to the schmo who probably impersonated him as I would be to the potentially real Matt Damon, for taking the time to make a 17-year-old in Indiana feel a little less alone.

New York Magazine‘s entertainment blog Vulture has delivered some delightful Damon/Affleck material over the past few days.

At the end of March, it reports, the American Cinematheque will be honoring Matt Damon in a televised event called Hollywood Salutes Matt Damon: An American Cinematheque Tribute. On hand to salute Mr. Damon: Ben Affleck, Greg Kinnear… and Bill Clinton.

Says Vulture:

Are we crazy that this sounds totally randomly awesome? Matt Damon! Three hours (or whatever) of Hollywood saluting Matt Damon. Humble, work ethic-y Matt Damon. We can’t wait to run around asking people what they’re “doing for Matt Damon night” and if they’re going to “a Matt Damon watching party” to “play Matt Damon drinking games” (drink every time someone says “Matt Damon”!). It’s going to be so hard to get a cab on Matt Damon night, so try to leave your friend’s Matt Damon party early and just find out whether Matt Damon cried at the end later when you get home. The only thing that would make this better is if it were a surprise for Matt Damon. Or if there were an interpretive-dance number about the life and career of Matt Damon. Matt Damon!

In a separate post, Vulture unearths the following video, described as “an exciting scene from the little-known 1994 special Body to Die For: The Aaron Henry Story. Acting!”

Also: Roid rage!

So bricklaying is in their blood.  This raises the question, though: which relative is the shepherd?

The Boston Herald (Media Center) made you a handy family tree graphic — cut it out and put on your refrigerator, or tuck away in your wallet for quick and easy reference.  Also, the NEHGS put out a press release [pdf] on the matter; read the relevant excerpt below:

October 9, 2009 (Boston, MA) – Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) recently uncovered family lines that link the Hollywood duo. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are 10th cousins, once removed. Both are decendents of William Knowlton, Jr. (1615-1655) of Ipswich, MA.

William Knowlton Jr. was born in England and arrived with his parents to the U.S. in the early 1630s. He was bricklayer by trade. William Jr.’s two children that Affleck and Damon descend from are Thomas and Mary Knowlton, born in the 1640s.

The Hollywood duo each descends from Knowlton’s two children; Affleck from Knowlton’s son Thomas, and Damon from daughter Mary. Working on the research were NEHGS staff genealogists Chris Child, who specializes in early New England and Presidential research, and Rhonda McClure, who has done genealogical research for many celebrities. Longtime NEHGS genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts also contributed to the research.

Affleck, who was born in California but grew up in Boston, is also related to 16 U.S Presidents including Barack Obama, as well as the late Princess Diana.

A couple of things to note:

1) The award is presented by the original odd couple. (I’m gonna have to say Matt Damon is the Felix to Affleck’s Oscar. Ben Affleck — so rough around the edges!!)

2) They’re with their moms!

3) Ben Affleck’s voice cracks like that of a thirteen-year-old.

4) Their competition for the award included Woody Allen, P.T. Anderson, and James L. Brooks.

5) It really reminds me of the end of the Sports Night episode “The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee” in which Casey and Dan very enthusiastically thank all of the show’s crew members.

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.”

Turns out the upcoming Damon-Affleck project will likely be The Trade, the story of two New York Yankees in the seventies who swapped wives.  The blogosphere is all atwitter with the notion that we may soon see the Boston duo in pinstripes.

You can thank the crackerjack photoshop staff at the MTV Movie Blog for the image above.

Thanks to Adam, for the heads up on this one.

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.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose book “A People’s History of the United States” became a million-selling leftist alternative to mainstream texts, died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Auburndale, Mass.

… “A People’s History” had some famous admirers, including the actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The two grew up near Professor Zinn, were family friends and gave the book a plug in their Academy Award-winning screenplay for “Good Will Hunting.”

As a math genius once said about Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, that book “will knock you on your ass.”

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.