I think it’s time to take a look back at Matt and Ben’s acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay at the 70th Annual Academy Awards back in 1998. (Watch it here.)
A couple of things to note:
1) The award is presented by the original odd couple. (I’m gonna have to say Matt Damon is the Felix to Affleck’s Oscar. Ben Affleck — so rough around the edges!!)
2) They’re with their moms!
3) Ben Affleck’s voice cracks like that of a thirteen-year-old.
4) Their competition for the award included Woody Allen, P.T. Anderson, and James L. Brooks.
5) It really reminds me of the end of the Sports Night episode “The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee” in which Casey and Dan very enthusiastically thank all of the show’s crew members.
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 quicktime video. I think it would have looked and sounded a lot like this…
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.
But it stayed with me.
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.
