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.
Everyone’s giddy for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film Inception, including New York Magazine‘s culture blog “Vulture,” which has been looking over a bunch of newly released stills from the film. This one (above) in particular had them considering the canon of great chalkboards of film and television, which inevitably lead them to one Good Will Hunting (as well as I Heart Huckabees, School of Rock, and The Simpsons.)
Check out their analysis, in terms of awesome/confusing/obsessive, here.
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.
Blog Will Hunting welcomes guest contributor Rolando Garcia.
I once jokingly referred to Miramax as “the house Ben Affleck built.” That’s not true. Miramax has existed since at least 1980. (My friend recently showed me a poster for a stoner Star Wars parody Miramax released that year. Think about that. They’ve been pulling the whole “Disaster Movie” genre schtick for 30 years!) Ben Affleck didn’t show up until the later half of the mid-90′s, but he was integral in the Miramax my generation came to know. His Oscar win alongside best bud Matt Damon in 1998 gave him some “indie film street cred” that no doubt rubbed off on Shakespeare in Love. He was certainly in the thick of things when Miramax became the Oscar juggernaut it’s commonly known as today.
No matter how high his star rose, Ben always kept it real with Miramax. Which is why I was so surprised to see him stay with Miramax after the Weinsteins left.
A little background for non-movie-industry-news-nerds: Miramax was founded by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. They sold it to Disney in 1993 but stayed on board as presidents to run the ship, as they always had. So it was an accepted truth that anyone who worked with Miramax regularly did so because they wanted to work with the Weinstein brothers.
When they left and created the Weinstein Company in 2005, all the other Miramax filmmakers and go-to actors went with them. Disney was left with little more than the Miramax name, installing a new president and beginning the “New Miramax” era, with practically a whole new roster of executives and creatives. Yet Ben Affleck chose to make Gone Baby Gone at the New Miramax.
I think this was a clever PR move.
Photo by Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
The average guy on the street who doesn’t read way too many movie blogs has no idea who runs Miramax. As far as the general population goes, Miramax was still Miramax. And actors, being public faces, come to be associated with brands in the public’s mind. In this case, the association goes something like this: “Ben Affleck + Miramax = some pretty good movies like Good Will Hunting(!).”
Ben used this to his advantage by allying himself with the Miramax name and not the Weinstein brothers. On the mean, indie film streets “Miramax presents a Ben Affleck film” sounds way more impressive than “The Weinstein Company presents a Ben Affleck film.” One reminds me of Good Will Hunting, and that Ben Affleck was once more than a headliner for mindless blockbusters and tabloids. It makes me root for the guy and probably give his movie a chance.
In January 2010, despite major Oscar wins under the new regime, Disney closed the doors on Miramax. The fate of the label remains a mystery, with rumors swirling that the Weinsteins would like to buy it back. But with Miramax off the table for the foreseeable future, I can’t help but wonder: what will Ben Affleck do when he needs to remind people of his indie street cred?
Rolando has spent the eight years since college involved in all sorts of movie-related activities. His most relevant experience to Good Will Hunting was a three year tenure at the New Miramax in marketing. He spearheaded the design and distribution of a most awesome in-theater display for Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone. These days he moonlights as producer on To Them That’s Gone, a documentary about a group of young people who ran 4,000 miles across the USA in 2008. This spring he’s directing his first short film in many, many years.
