Thank Goodness, It’s Graphics Interchange Format Friday!

In a draft of the screenplay of Good Will Hunting, Carmine was instead a character named Bobby Champa, but the film is otherwise pretty true to the scene as written — Champa/Scarpaglia gets sucker-punched, it is “messy, ugly and chaotic,” and all because this guy used to beat up Will in kindergarten.

In the special edition re-release, don’t worry, I’m sure Carmine will punch first.

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.

I once watched Good Will Hunting with a math student, and she scoffed at the so-called impossibility of the problems on the hallway blackboard.

Her skepticism is validated by Professor Robin Wilson of Gresham College:

That’s right, homeomorphically irreducible trees of degree ten have nothing to do with function analysis.  And this particular problem isn’t that hard.

However, when the film was released, some were simply impressed that they actually used real math.

On NPR’s Weekend Edition back on April 4, 1998, host Scott Simon spoke with mathematician Keith Devlin about the plausibility of the math in the film.  Devlin’s opinion is that “they got the math right,” and describes the blackboard problem:

What they did that was very smart was… they had to make sure that it was a problem that someone like Will Hunting, who was innately a genius but had no mathematical training, someone like him had to have been able to solve the problem… and graph theory is one of the few areas of mathematics where that can happen. Someone could literally come out of the streets — or come along the corridor at night with a mop and a bucket, which is what the Will Hunting character does — and if they’ve got the ability, they don’t need the training, and they can just solve it. They have just got to be smart.

The Weekend Edition clip is definitely worth a listen in its entirety; they go on to discuss the real life story of self-taught mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, part of the inspiration for the Will Hunting character, as well as what the filmmakers get not-so-right.

"It looks right," says Tom.

But which Kelly’s shall we go to?

A while back the Blog Will Hunting crew payed a visit to the Christopher Lee Playground, the South Boston location in which the GWH boys watch some little league before picking up some burgers (and then getting into some street fights).

The screenplay, as written, is a little different from the scene in the film:

The next scene shows them in Chuckie’s car — with Kelly’s Roast Beef bags, of course.  As you will recall, in the film the exchange doesn’t have Chuckie dissing Kelly’s this way… it’s a bit of a surprise to see such anti-Kelly’s sentiment on the page, as the local chain is regarded as something of an institution.  (As we noted a couple weeks ago, guest star Julianne Moore namechecks Kelly’s in a recent episode of 30 Rock — “Let’s go to Kelly’s! Let’s get some roast beef!”).

Founded in 1951, Kelly’s lays claim to the invention of the Original Roast Beef Sandwich — “before 1951, no one had ever heard of eating such a creation!“  Their original location is their beachfront outpost in Revere, and over the years four other locations have sprung up around Boston.  One is inside a Jordan’s Furniture.  (Also in that Jordan’s Furniture: an IMAX theater.  I’m pretty sure I saw The Dark Knight there.  At that furniture store.  It’s weird, I know.)

Celebrating six decades of quality, customer service, and value, Kelly’s is still a family owned and operated business that continues the original philosophy of our founders. Many of Kelly’s hourly employees and managers have been with the company over thirty years! Kelly’s is open 363 days a year, providing our valued customers with the quality and consistent standards they have come to expect over the years. Now when people ask, “Why is Kelly’s So Famous Anyhow?” Our answer remains: because of our loyal customers.

They of course also mention Good Will Hunting as one of their many claims to fame.

Their marketing plays up their sense of tradition and customer service, and though Chuckie would have found some allies in his discontent on the Yelp customer review message boards, most Yelpers have positive things to say about the staff, and especially the food, often using the word “fried” as an adjective of deeply satisfied approval.  The reviews tend to prefer the flagship restaurant at Revere Beach, despite the seagulls’ attempts at food theft, and perhaps indicative of nothing, at least one reviewer at another location admits to being drunk during his visit.

So on the day of our visit to Southie, we left the Christopher Lee playground wondering, which Kelly’s did they go to?

It essentially comes down to the flagship Revere location and the one in Medford.

We know that is that it is 15 minutes out of their way… according to Google maps (assuming they were coming back to Southie afterwards) it would take 37 minutes to drive to Revere Beach and back, but only 25 to get to Medford.  Also, the Medford location has a drive-thru, and Chuckie’s comment as they squabble in the car on the return trip — “I know what you ordered, I was there” — suggests they did the drive-thru and Chuck did the ordering (and the paying).

So we drove by the Medford location, and… well… it looked pretty boring….

Despite the fact that is probably the one they went to (CORRECTION: This has been disproved, thanks to Patrick and Josh. Check out the comments) … we wanted to go to the beach.

So on that summer day we had a wonderful meal — open air seating, a sea breeze, seagulls, Bostonians, and more than once, someone would sing out, “Chuck I had a double burger!”

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.

A few years back, I declared I would have a Good Will Hunting Renaissance. It was on my list for the summer. Friends talked it up for weeks. We had not seen the film for years, and in particular, we had not seen it since working in Harvard Square every day.

I can’t say we weren’t disappointed. The chummy therapy, the romance, the arc of self-forgiveness — it’s forced and clumsily stitched together. In the scene that immediately proceeds the birthday scene, Will meets with Sean for his final therapy session — “You’re a free man” he says to Will. And we are to believe he is…

Since it’s “not your fault,” you just have to get a job, a car, a girl, and follow your dreams.

But when Will and his friends gather, the film is understated, charming even when distasteful, and focuses on characters that seem to actually inhabit the world — all this plus blow job jokes.

Will’s pals surprise him with a gift that will complete his process of self-actualization — it’s a clunker of a car but it will get him on the road to see about a girl; he’s no longer restrained to the T or to carpooling (though admittedly, as Chuckie points out, “Morgan wanted to get you a T-pass.”) The exchange is typical of the four guys’ loving and pervasively insulting relationship.

“This is the ugliest fucking car I’ve ever seen in my life,” Will jokes with genuine gratitude.

The character Bill, whose role as fourth-friend is generally “guy passing out drunk in the corner” delivers the oddly heartfelt, half-mumbled, “It’s a good car. The engine’s good.” Compared to “you’re a free man” or “I had to see about a girl,” I much prefer this line as a summary for what Will has learned over the course of the film. It’s a good engine — it’ll get you places — and that’s what matters.

It’s a good birthday.

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!!

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?

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?)