So amid all the recent debt ceiling drama, Republicans reportedly used a scene from The Town to persuade fellow party members to back Speaker Boehner’s plan.

Director Ben Affleck’s reaction? He spoke to the Huffington Post and explained “I don’t know if this is a compliment or the ultimate repudiation — but if they’re going to be watching movies, I think [layoff drama] The Company Men is more appropriate.”

Vulture also felt that Ben’s other films might have some more appropriate scenes, offering Seven Other Ben Affleck Scenes That Republicans Can Watch for Inspiration.

Coming in at number 4 of 7, The “Retainer” Scene From Good Will Hunting.

Does it seem odd that President Obama has given the Republicans nearly everything they could ask for and yet they still threaten to drive the country into financial ruin? Maybe they’ve just learned from this classic scene in Good Will Hunting, where Affleck’s masquerading Southie is offered a generous salary with perks, but still demands a “retaaaaainer” and threatens to storm out of negotiations. Let me tell you something: The president is suspect.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency featured “Patriotic Songs Reworked For The Modern Age” today for the Fourth of July. Their final entry, “Yankee Doodle,” just goes to show what a profound and encompassing effect Good Will Hunting has had on America’s perception of therapy. Happy Fourth of July, everybody! It’s not your fault!

Yankee Doodle

Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony.
Mommy is at work tonight, so I made instant macaroni
For dinner. Why don’t they come to my baseball games anymore?
My therapist tells me it’s not my fault.

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.

The other day I heard a story on NPR about the meme-erific site xtranormal.com — you know, the one where you can type in a script and create a video with some computer-animated teddy bears or robots.

As NPR says:

Xtranormal’s computerized voices can give almost anything a touch of humor, even when it isn’t supposed to be funny… The most popular scripts have a formula: There’s a wise guy who is the voice of reason, and a tone-deaf, argumentative adversary.

So in lieu of an animated GIF this Friday, let’s kick it up a notch, into the world of video memes… Blog Will Hunting Presents: “It’s Not Your Fault, Xtranormalified”

There are brief references to Will’s biological and foster parents, Skylar’s wealthy father, Sean’s abusive dad, and Chuckie’s Ma (and her VCR…). Certainly, Sean and Lambeau become a type of hybrid father figure to Will, together tumultuously strengthening Will’s ability to form healthy emotional attachment. But there are no actual moms or dads written into the script and we never witness any authentic parenting in the movie.

As a mother to two young children I sometimes find myself thinking back to this film and wondering, what about the parents? What’s their deal? What parenting successes led to Chuckie’s unabashed confidence? What drove the horrific foster parents to utterly ignore Will’s obvious genius?

Despite the lack of parental presence in the film there is still a lot of child-rearing wisdom to be reaped. In fact, I’ve managed to successfully incorporate several brilliant GWH one-liners into my own mothering repertoire.

For example, the baby hates to don his snow suit. By the time I stuff all four extremities into the ball of down fluff he is sobbing as if I’ve submitted him to some kind of torture device. But then once he’s strapped in the backpack or the stroller and he’s outside in the fresh air he is hands-down the happiest kid in the world. At this point I get right up in his face and declare, “How do you like me NOW?!”

Next example: My 2.5 year-old decides to dump out every single Lego, block and puzzle piece we own about 35 seconds before we’re supposed to leave for preschool. My response? “Jane! No more shenanigans. No more tomfoolery. No more ballyhoo. Put. On. Your. Shoes.” If my request is subsequently ignored I have been known to take a deep breath and mutter, “Keep antagonizing me, watch what happens.”

And my personal favorite: as I break up a scrum between my son and daughter a sudden stench makes my eyes sting. I ask, “OK, who made a poop?” <They both look innocent.> I point to the guiltiest-looking child and announce, “Ya suspect!”

Thank you, Good Will Hunting, for allowing me to share these truly awesome parenting gems with my kids, especially the most graceful way to exit an awkward social encounter: “I swallowed a bug.”

The therapy scene from the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly comedy Step Brothers; it sounds a lot like Good Will Hunting.

NBC’s Community riffed on Good Will Hunting this week.

The following scenes make some interesting choices interpreting a moment between Will and Skylar.  These performances confirm that it may be impossible to deliver the line “on behalf of my wiener” with any actorly dignity.  I’m not sure how Damon did it.

Blog Will Hunting wishes you a good day, Valentine’s, or otherwise.  Have a bunch of caramels or something.

Tired of hearing about the iPad?  Everyone loves it!  Everyone has a complaint about it!

Among the over-hyped complaints about the revolutionary new Apple device is that certain accents and regional pronunciations make the terms “iPod” and “iPad” indistinguishable.

Cult of Mac blogger John Brownlee writes:

I wanted to point out quickly why I think this is such a terrible product name. I’m from Boston originally. We have an interesting way of pronouncing our a’s.

Call up a friend with a Boston accent and ask them to say “iPad.” They might just pronounce it pretty similarly to “iPod.” We’re weird that way. Or as Jake von Slatt just said to me: “Here in Boston, we’d say ‘Do you haave the big iPohd or the little iPohd?’”

Even if the pronunciation is different for everyone, though, iPad still seems a bad choice. A one letter difference makes for a lot of possible confusion.

The following send-up of the product uses good ole Good Will Hunting to elucidate this point. (And at last, someone jokes about the iPad and steers clear of feminine hygiene.)

Enjoy.

Seeing Boston on film or tv is like watching the Red Sox play well — it’s not actually that unusual, but it’s always a pleasant surprise. So I was thrilled to see tv’s 30 Rock come to Boston last week.

Much has been made of guest star Julianne Moore’s “thick,” “terrible,” “atrocious,” “ridiculously broad,” “worst-attempt-ever” Boston accent, but I kind of love every minute of it. (As one commenter on Universal Hub states, at least she nails the attitude.)

I overheard someone at a conference last weekend small-talking about the 30 Rock episode with another conference-goer. “We don’t all talk like that, you know,” she said. I suppose she probably actually grew up in/around Boston, in which case maybe there’s a little more reason to take it personally… but 30 Rock historically hasn’t shied away from playing up broad stereotypes for laughs (in repeated parodies of gays, southerners, Canadians, i-bankers, etc). And while no Bostonian I know “talks like that,” the thrill of recognition is there.

When I moved from Michigan to a Boston suburb at age eight, kids really did use the modifier “wicked” all the time; it was totally weird. And I could never non-self-consciously say the word “aunt” in this new environment — I didn’t want to call attention to myself saying it the normal way (“ant”), but felt weird saying it the Massachusetts way (“ahnt”). So I would just refer to my “mom’s sister” a lot.

So I encountered some of the regionalisms as a kid, but honestly, I have heard much more of the “Boston accent” on screen than in any actual experience living around here.  Fortunately there’s more to the Julianne Moore’s Boston “authenticity” than the accent. She and Alec Baldwin wander into a tv news studio in this latest episode, and Moore’s character eagerly sits at the news desk, announcing “I feel like Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson!”

The duo (“Chet and Nat”) hosted ABC’s local news for 20-something years, including the period of my childhood in which I lived in Acton, Massachusetts. I remember their names well, above all other local news anchors to whom I’ve been an been audience (except for rival Channel 7′s R.D. Sahl, who visited my fifth grade class — I have his autograph.)

Probably unlike most who recall Curtis and Jacobson well, I hadn’t realized ”Chet and Nat” were also married for most of the time they ancored the news together, and their news partnership ended alongside their marriage, in a very public divorce. This detail adds a perhaps unintended layer to Moore’s character, who is in the midst of a pending divorce herself, which had also lasted 20-something years.

The second most satisfying Boston reference in the episode has to be Moore’s hysterical mention of Kelly’s Roast Beef.

Kelly’s is an historic (well, founded 1951) local roast beef chain outlet — but, more on Kelly’s next time.

Until then, enjoy this 30 Rock “web exclusive” of Grizz and Dotcom making their “own urban stories, just like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.”

A good reference is a wonderful thing, and somehow the Good Will Hunting guys have become the definitive urban Boston duo, even more so than Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson.

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.”

While browsing at my favorite local bookstore, I flipped through Barbara Lynch’s new cookbook Stir. Check out this choice bit of jacket copy:

Lynch’s cuisine is all the more remarkable because it is self-taught. In a story straight out of Good Will Hunting, she grew up in the turbulent projects of “Southie”, where petty crime was the only viable way to make a living…. Through a mix of hunger for knowledge, hard work, and raw smarts, she gradually created her own distinctive style of cooking….

The publisher has betrayed a fundamentally flawed—and, I think, commonly held—understanding of Good Will Hunting. True, Barbara Lynch and Will Hunting are both from Southie (notice the publisher’s timid quotation marks). But while Lynch’s rise to fame from unlikely roots as a result of her “hunger for knowledge, hard work, and raw smarts” is admirable, it is hardly the same as Will Hunting’s story.

Will Hunting does not work hard. Will’s remarkable gifts are unearned; as he puts it, he could “always just play.” At the beginning of the movie, Will is an under-employed genius with little more than (presumably) a high school diploma. At the end of the movie, he is an unemployed genius who has turned down multiple job offers and rejected academia to “see about a girl.”

Good Will Hunting is not the story of an underdog going up against the establishment and, against all odds, making good. That’s Finding Forrester, a much less satisfying film. Good Will Hunting is the story of a lonely orphan boy who learns to love and be loved. Will’s remarkable abilities are nothing more than a plot device.

But I don’t think that story will help sell cookbooks.

A “non-essential mnemonic,” from McSweeney’s

Rachel Maddow and MSNBC covered the much ballyhooed election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts on Tuesday night, and as seems to be true of all news segments regarding Massachusetts these days, did so from a bar.  (Governor Deval Patrick appeared from a bar a few days prior to discuss the upcoming election.)  Jon Stewart had something to say about it on Wednesday night’s Daily Show.

Have a listen via the audio clip above, or watch it here.

One of the most-referenced sequences in Good Will Hunting is, of course, the “apples scene.”

As the boys stumble from the bar, crossing Bow Street, Morgan sees the ponytail jerk sitting in Dunkin Donuts.  Will goes over and initiates a little confrontational wordplay through the glass.  (In the screenplay it’s not a Dunkin Donuts, but another bar.  We also learn that the original “Harvard bar” was intended to be the now-nonexistent Bow & Arrow Pub.)

I was recently informed that in the new word game Appletters, from the makers of Bananagrams,  a player going out must yell “HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES.”  And so I’ve been wondering, beyond its popularization in Good Will Hunting, where does this idiomatic expression of smugness come from?

The Internet (Wikipedia) dates the phrase back to World War I.

It is likely that the phrase originated during the First World War, when allied soldiers used mortar shells known as toffee apples, because of their resemblance to the confectionery. After using them to successfully take out an enemy, soldiers may have yelled in a sort of victory cry, “How do you like them apples?”

Beyond its use in a John Wayne film and Polanski’s Chinatown, there’s not much of a pop cultural record of the phrase, though it has apparently been listed in idiom dictionaries since the 1920s.

It also seems that every newspaper or magazine article that discusses apples or Apple computers is required to use the phrase as its headline.  (Though it is best used by respected news sources who possess a photograph of a squirrel eating an apple.)

Interestingly, a peek into Google Trends indicates that the phrase “them apples” has received a large percentage of traffic from the fair city of Boston (data has only been kept since 2007).  In fact, our Commonwealth’s proud capital googles “them apples” more than any other city in the world. (Dublin, Ireland, comes in second.)

Yo Ireland, so, how do you like… oh — nevermind.

You should probably watch this episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia — “The Gang Reignites the Rivalry” — particularly for its choice Good Will Hunting references. Charlie “pulls a Good Will Hunting” on some guys at a frat party they are crashing.  At this frat party they have had their bodies painted by hot girls.

Listen to part of what you can look forward to.

I wanna be a shepherd.  I wanna move up to Nashua, get a nice little spread, get some sheep and tend to them. — Will Hunting, Good Will Hunting

… I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. — Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

While Will’s response to Sean’s “what do you wanna do?” question is laced with bullshit, I always thought there was real sentiment in the ache for simplicity his statement suggests.  “I wanna be a shepherd.”  It always reminded me of Holden Caulfield.

Years ago, on an emotionally complicated evening, I found myself full of longing for the sort fantasy space Will and Holden speak of. 

I wrote to a friend, in an email:

… [A]fter going on a nice long walk down to the Store 24 in JP at 3 in the morning to get a coke, in the strangely warm, windy, rainy evening… there I was, sitting on my balcony at 4am….  It was a very Catcher in the Rye feeling evening, with the walking, wandering, feeling of isolation, and as I looked down at the street the wind was blowing everyone’s discarded Christmas trees (as it was trash day the next morning) around, some rolling into the street, and I thought of how nice it would be to just save the Christmas trees and keep rolling them back into the sidewalk, staying up all night and directing traffic around the trees, just like the Catcher in the Rye would catch those [kids].

I’ll never forget the response I received:

If I were home, I would give you my biggest hugs, and we would probably fall off your balcony and then someone like Holden would have to catch us….