Via Wonder-Tonic, it’s “a useful simulator for all those times you wish you had Robin Williams there to counsel you.” Launch the simulator.

Browse through Wikipedia’s List of films that most frequently use the word “fuck,” and you’ll find that the film Good Will Hunting scores somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Good Will Hunting uses the word more than 150 times, but not more than 200 times — and certainly not more than 400 times; that honor goes to only a handful of films (including Scorcese’s Casino and a documentary that is, well, specifically about the word.)

This reminds me of a goofy tweet I came across back in January:

drunken_hopfrog

(Dale)

Would you let your child watch GOOD WILL HUNTING? 150 F-Words! Call the police!

On 18-1-2010 15:01:02 from TweetDeck

In the past I’ve gained a certain amount of entertainment from an odd source — there’s a site called Kids-in-Mind, which is one of several similar services that rate the inappropriateness of movie content for children, with very awkward and straightforward explanations of any explicit goings-on.

I’ve found myself seeking out their analysis of the least kid-friendly films I can think of, just to take in the stilted, uncomfortable prose.

So, in case you were wondering, Good Will Hunting gets a 3 out of 10 for SEX & NUDITY…

We briefly hear sounds of a man and woman having sex, and we learn that, off-screen, a man has been masturbating while watching a pornographic movie. We see a few cleavage-revealing outfits.

While it gets a paltry 2 out of 10 for VIOLENCE & GORE, it does indeed max out the PROFANITY scale at 10 out of 10…

Nearly 150 F-words, lots of anatomical and scatological references, many insults and several mild obscenities.

To digress from Good Will Hunting for a moment, among the most entertaining of these reviews has to be Kids-in-Mind’s hapless account of dismemberment, chaos, rape, and revenge that explicates Robert Rodriguez’s film Planet Terror.

Some highlights:

• A young woman performs oral sex on a young man, she reaches up toward his head and realizes that his head has been severed. Another scene shows the same young woman kissing a different young man and his head is cut off mid-kiss.
• A man holds a jar with human testicles floating in liquid and tells a man to cut his own off. A man later carries a plastic bag filled with human testicles. A man has a very bloody neck wound.
• A man looks at a woman, makes a remark suggesting that he is going to rape her, and another man makes a remark about her having only one leg; the first man then makes another crude remark about her, and another man makes a similar remark about him. A woman climbs on a motorcycle with another woman, she holds her around the waist and makes a suggestive remark to her. A husband confronts his wife about her having an affair with a woman. A man makes a sexually suggestive remark about another man’s wife. A woman talks about her boyfriend’s sexual interests and that he likes to watch her urinate.
• A woman appears desperate to urinate and holds her crotch. A man has a large scar on his face. A man eats sloppily using his hands.

I’ve recently come across yet another entertaining layer of mediation available to the intrepid web searcher: ESL companion guides to movies.

These guides take the frank, explanatory tone of a site like Kids-in-Mind, and remove any sense of judgment or disapproval from the discussion, providing passages like this, by Raymond Weschler on ESLnotes.com (the quote being parsed is from an early scene in Good Will Hunting; the woman speaking is addressing Ben Affleck’s character Chuckie):

“Like I’d waste my energy spreading my legs for that Tootsie Roll dick? Go home and give it a tug yourself!”

• Note the use of “like” at the beginning of sentences, used (and overused!) by many young people for “as if.”
• The rest of the sentence is a crude sexual insult, since a “tootise roll” is a small piece of well known candy, and a “dick” is very common for penis.
• “To tug” means to pull, and thus the last sentence implies “go home and masturbate.”

It’s something to realize how much foul, idiomatic language is in a film like Good Will Hunting, and the challenge it is for a non-native speaker to pick up on its subtleties.  Say what you want about the screenplay, but you can’t say the dialogue is bland.  Peruse Raymond Weschler’s complete commentary here.

I’ve learned from the best that a good blog isn’t afraid to bring you right into the conversation, into the formation of its ideas as they are being constructed and processed.

So I figured I would go ahead and share the following online conversation I recently had with a friend, former Bostonian Dave C.

I bring you a discussion of life, masculinity, and the conceptual underpinnings of Good Will Hunting.

In the summer of 2007 I went on a European adventure.  Late one evening, strolling the streets of Vienna, Austria, I encountered the above scene.  It was a grungy video store with a Good Will Hunting poster in the darkened window.  How odd it felt to encounter this very local-feeling film as a cheesy, sun-bleached cardboard display, four-thousand miles away from Boston.

There was also a slapdash tagline added to the poster — “Hol Dir Deinen Denk-Zettel an der Theke!” (Perhaps they simply swap in a language-appropriate tagline wherever in the world the display finds itself?)  Here in Austria the tagline was German — and translates to “Get Your Lesson in the Bar!”

Now, this isn’t an entirely accurate summing-up of the film’s themes.  American marketers used “Some people can never believe in themselves, until someone believes in them” and “Wildly charismatic. Impossibly brilliant. Totally rebellious. For the first 20 years of his life, Will Hunting has called the shots. Now he’s about to meet his match.”

“Hol Dir Deinen Denk-Zettel an der Theke” suggests a story of actualization through growing up on the street (and, well, yeah — in the bar.)  Sure, the bar part does describe Will and his crew, but Will Hunting would be content to sit around the bar not really changing at all.  He doesn’t really “learn his lesson” until confronted with his own potential, via Sean, Lambeau, and Skylar — none of whom are operating within his comfort zone.

So perhaps we should conclude that this is simply catering the film to a German market that likes to drink a lot (and likes its film protagonists to do the same)?

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.

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 suppose it should be no surprise that while home for the holidays last fall, in going through folders of old papers, I came across a receipt for a notable purchase from February 23, 1998.  It was from my local record store on College Avenue, and on that day I purchased the Good Will Hunting soundtrack.

I can pretty honestly say this would become one of the most significant music purchases I’d ever make.  I didn’t really listen to music until late in high school… or maybe I did, but it was just the Aladdin soundtrack over and over again.  In tenth grade, though, I discovered my dad’s Beatles collection.  I went from there, largely basing my new tastes on that of my peers: Dave Matthews Band, Counting Crows, Billy Joel (River of Dreams, man).  I can tell you I was definitely not someone who “listened to Dave Matthews before everyone listened to Dave Matthews.”

I can also tell you that on that February day I did not go into Manifest Records to buy the Good Will Hunting soundtrack.  More likely, I was going primarily to get my very own copy of Yourself or Someone Like You by Matchbox 20.  Also predetermined, I picked out the Counting Crows’ August and Everything After.  Somewhat less so, I snagged the soundtrack for the movie Swingers.

Near the cashier was a display of what were probably new(ish) releases.  It speaks to how hurting I was for music suggestions that I picked up the CD soundtrack to a movie I had seen, and loved, but had only vaguely recalled the music. “I think I remember liking it,” I said to myself.

While Matchbox 20 lit up my CD player, Good Will Hunting was more of a slow burn.  When I gave it a first listen I found it nice and mellow — but it kind of “all sounds the same,” I thought.  Matchbox 20, on the other hand… each song blazed like a smash-hit single.  (In fact, five of the twelve songs were released as singles.)  Good Will Hunting, at least, made good background music.

But it stayed with me.

I don’t really associate it with those early months of 1998, but in following years it became a staple.  I fondly remember Good Will Hunting keeping me company on late evenings in my dimly-lit college dorm room.  If it was raining outside, it was twice as wonderful.

If not for that impulse buy, who knows how long it would have taken for me to find Elliott Smith?  And I felt like I really discovered him, rather than co-opting his catalog along with whatever else my knowledgeable peers recommended.

Elliott Smith has never been far from my ears this past decade, while Rob Thomas and Company burned out and then they faded away.

Nevertheless, I look back twelve years later and wonder: what if Good Will Hunting‘s soundtrack was populated by the songs of Matchbox 20, rather than those of Elliott Smith?

Last night I put together a little video.  I think it would have looked and sounded a lot like this…

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Scenes from the movie The Social Network, the story of the creation of Facebook in a college dorm room, were filmed in various locations throughout Cambridge—although apparently the Harvard University campus won’t have a starring role in this film, as Johns Hopkins has been cast instead. And alas, Justin Timberlake did not grace the streets of our fair city: locals were disappointed to learn that his face would be inserted post-production via CGI in scenes recently filmed on the Charles River.

In other movie news, Ben Affleck recently returned to his native turf to star and direct in The Town, a thriller based on the novel Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan and adapted for the screen by Affleck himself (perhaps an argument against those who seek to discount his contributions to the Good Will Hunting screenplay?)

Ben Affleck and John Hamm on the set of The Town in Harvard Square.

Walking to work through the production crews, camera equipment and massive coils of cables during a recent filming brought to my mind a favorite scene in Good Will Hunting and a fixture that will be familiar to anyone who regularly passes through Harvard Square.

Spare Change News is a local alternative newspaper here in Cambridge that is produced and sold by homeless and formerly homeless volunteers. Locals will be familiar with the vendors who take up posts on the city streets to sell the paper to passersby.

One such post is located directly in front of the large Au Bon Pain situated in the middle of the Square. This just happens to be the location of a key scene from the movie in which we learn that, although he can’t paint, play music, or hit a homerun out of Fenway, when it came to math, Will could always “just play.”

Sure enough, in the background of this scene, you can see Spare Change News Guy.

(True Cantabrigians may also notice the incongruity between the coffee cups from Peet’s coffee, and the location, Au Bon Pain.)

It’s a great tribute to the city of Cambridge that so much of it is still recognizable and intact. It’s one of the things I love most about this movie.

I was reminded of this lately as I passed crews from The Town filming in almost the same location. Spare Change News Guy was nearby, as always. I couldn’t help but wonder whether he will be making what promises to be (as far as I know, anyway) his second major film role. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Update: I was mortified to learn that there was a mistake in my inaugural Blog Will Hunting post!

Peet’s Coffee was served at Au Bon Pain locations between 1995-1998, so there were actually no incongruities in that scene. Obviously, I’m not a true Cantabrigian (full disclosure: I’m actually from Rhode Island.)

I stand corrected.

Katherine once gave a high school film studies class presentation on GWH and showed a scene from the movie on a VHS cassette tape from the library. However, instead of the scene in the NSA office, she inadvertently showed the end of the masturbation scene.

This is Katherine’s inaugural Blog Will Hunting contribution.

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….

Last weekend I gathered with friends for some holiday-time viewing that included Die Hard (yeah, it’s a Christmas movie), A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Office Christmas Special (BBC, duh), and the Chrismukkah episode of The O.C.  I bring it up because this holiday O.C. is also the episode where Marissa attends her first therapy session (and befriends in the waiting area an obsessive sociopath, so, that’s not great for her)

We were struck by Marissa’s vehement opposition to seeing a therapist.  It recalls Will Hunting’s persistent refusal — he mocks one alternative-y, hypnosis-y therapist, ”Look into my eyes. I don’t need therapy.” 

Marissa is allowed to move in with her cheery and lovable father (and out from under the roof of her shrewish mother), but her part of the deal is she has to go to therapy — because she overdosed in Tijuana, the latest in a series of drug/alcohol abuses.  Will is allowed to stay out of prison (and do math), but his part of the deal is that he has to go to therapy — because he beat the crap out of a guy who picked on him in kindergarten, the latest in a series of violent encounters.

It seems weird, kind of… why such refusal?  It’s odd to realize how strong the stigma is for many, though if Tony Soprano can go to therapy, so can Marissa.  (Though I suppose Tony didn’t go extremely willingly either.)  Is it sexist/classist to assert that it makes more sense for Will to react this way than Marissa?  Ryan is a very Will-like character, and his encouragement is what gets her to go — as if the out-of-control woman needs to be in therapy but the out-of-control men do not.

That two such different characters should react in this same way, against their best interests, speaks to the varied perception of the value of therapy and the necessity for a dramatic protagonist to be (unrealistically?) resistant to positive change.  It is only an ultimatum that gets them to that session, and to the next turn in their stories.

Towards the end of the film, Will Hunting grows tired of his role as math genius.  He walks out of Professor Lambeau’s office, casually setting fire to a proof that only a “handful of people in the world” could have completed.  What follows is, to me, one of the most memorable moments of the film, though it comes off somewhat comically in its incongruity.  Lambeau, crumpled on the floor, having beat out the fire with his bare hands, says to Will:

Most days I wish I never met you. Because then I could sleep at night, and I didn’t have to walk around with the knowledge that there was someone like you out there…

Stellan Skarsgard’s performance is solid, and the line heartbreaking, but I can’t help thinking it more appropriate to a story of love lost.  It’s a better line than “I have to see about a girl,” that’s for sure.  (I wish at the film’s conclusion Will had stolen Lambeau’s line instead of his weepy therapist’s.)

Throughout the film there is an unspoken love Professor Lambeau feels for Will — his admiration of Will’s genius instills in him a vicarious sense of success, perhaps one he hasn’t felt since winning the Fields Medal (an award specifically bestowed upon young men, mathematicians under 40).  Lambeau tries to take on the role of Will’s father, which isn’t such a good idea — based on what we learn Will’s real father used to do to him.  Lambeau playfully tussles Will’s hair in one scene as they finish off a math problem, and we are to read Tom the bland T.A. as the jealous but undeserving son.  Will Hunting is the prodigal son, but he refuses this mantle. 

“Most days I wish I never met you.”  It doesn’t quite work in the scene because until now, Lambeau’s affection and Tom’s jealousy is mostly played for laughs.  Lambeau has been kind of a villain (in Will’s world the educated and non-Southie-accented are elite, effeminate, and inauthentic) but here he gets his moment.  He’s a vulnerable and defeated old man.  But ultimately I’m not sure the character is developed enough for this moment to come off as sincere as Skarsgard performs it, which is a shame. 

I think of the “someone like you out there” line a lot; it is broad in its stroke, elegant in its desperation. And for many of us it is difficult to sleep, knowing some one person is out there, without us.