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.
Sorta!
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 died today, and how astounding is it that the Associated Press couldn’t get through the obituary of the legendary historian without mentioning Good Will Hunting?
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.”
When I first heard about Gerry, the 2002 film written by Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Gus Van Sant and starring two of our darling Bostonian golden boys—well, I was excited. Could this be a Good Will Hunting renaissance of some sort? Is this the film we’ve all been waiting for, after the promising start that was Good Will Hunting? After all, it was directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Matt Damon and, well… an Affleck! Not Ben, but pretty close. Maybe it would be almost like a sequel? Or would that be too much to ask?
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.
Matt Damon namedrops The People’s History of the United States by local academic Howard Zinn, in the Harvard bar scene of Good Will Hunting. Damon and Zinn have teamed up for an upcoming History Channel program.
Regarding the inclusion of the reference in the film, Damon has told The Boston Herald about his first exposure to Zinn’s work in fifth grade:
My mother had read me the passages about Columbus, that two years after Columbus discovered America, more than 100,000 Indians were dead. And I wondered, ‘How is this guy so celebrated that we take a day off from school to bask in his greatness?’
There was a whole other side to the story. What Columbus did, coming here, was a big achievement, but there was more to the story. And that was a great lesson to get at an early age.
In revisiting Good Will Hunting one of my reactions is always, dude, what’s with the hair?
Seemingly incongruent with Will’s character as a lower class, no-frills, anti-elitist, true-blue guy from Southie — his hair is always perfectly coiffed, gently gelled, and always bounces back into place. It’s like a Vidal Sassoon ad. Watch the fight scene. His hair whips back and around in slow motion, like that of the best of Loreal models.
Perhaps he just gives his hair a lot of attention. Is that why he always does math in the mirror?
Or maybe he’s just unshowered and his oily, voluminous hair is just a part of who he is? Like his inborn gift of mathematical skill, he didn’t choose this gift of beautiful bouncy hair either. He’s sitting on yet another winning lottery ticket, and owes it to us all to be in a shampoo commercial.
Or he just uses great shampoo? I don’t know. Regardless, his hair is always beautiful.
I of course don’t recall his hair being that distracting back in 1997, and so perhaps it is simply a product of the late nineties. Will is a tough guy, but he still wants to look cool. I suppose we can give him that.
I was trying to remember if I could think of any similar hairstyles from the era. I don’t think I need to explain the startling similarities I discovered.
Ladies and gentleman, the Will and the Rachel.
Following up on Mike’s post, here’s the ultimate Damon freak-out sequence. It plays after the credits in this season’s finale of Entourage.
Recent Good Will Twittering.
