And now for another in our occasional series, What We Tweet About When We Tweet About Good Will Hunting.
I think I wear scarfs now. Snoopy/good will hunting style so its ok right?
Twitter round-up: All of Ben Affleck’s lines from Good Will Hunting tattooed on my forearms.
Written by Alex on February 18th, 2011
When it came to stuff like that, I could always just play
Written by Alex on February 1st, 2011Thanks to reader LEK for letting us know:
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.
Will: Beethoven, okay. He looked at a piano, and it just made sense to him. He could just play.
Skylar: So what are you saying? You play the piano?
Will: No, not a lick. I mean, I look at a piano, I see a bunch of keys, three pedals, and a box of wood. But Beethoven, Mozart, they saw it, they could just play. I couldn’t paint you a picture, I probably can’t hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can’t play the piano.
Skylar: But you can do my o-chem paper in under an hour.
Will: Right. Well, I mean when it came to stuff like that… I could always just play.
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.
I think it was the ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen.
Written by Alex on January 25th, 2011The blogs are abuzz with the news that in a recent interview Jennifer Aniston confessed that she had always hated “The Rachel” — the Friends-era hairstyle that she made famous. “How do I say this? I think it was the ugliest haircut I’ve ever seen,” she told Allure.
I think it’s time to revisit our November 2009 post, Mr. Damon: What’s with the hair? I wonder how Matt Damon feels now about his lovingly gelled, yet floppy and mildly-tousled, blond-streaked hair in Good Will Hunting? Perhaps we’ll never know.
White people really like Good Will Hunting: An interview with blogger Christian Lander
Written by Alex on January 18th, 2011Bostonians really, really like Good Will Hunting. We recently spoke via email with author Christian Lander of the famed blog — and subsequent book — Stuff White People Like. He has a new book called Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, from Seattle’s Sweaters to Maine’s Microbrews. We asked him a few questions about his new book, Boston, and of course, Good Will Hunting.
BLOG WILL HUNTING: Did your travels as a published author, perhaps on your first book tour, affect the way you see the (white) world? I was struck by the similarities — looking from your book tour dates to the cities you profile in the new book.
CHRISTIAN LANDER: Absolutely. Like most people I fell into a bubble of only visiting cities where I had close friends or were absolute must stops for white people (New York, San Francisco). I had a rough idea about the makeup and attitudes of these other cities but it wasn’t until I actually visited them that I realized that they were as predictable as me. Which is to say, very predictable.
BWH: I suspect there are particular questions that authors get asked all the time. What is the quintessential question people ask of you at author talks?
CL: “Is there anyone who doesn’t get it?” And the answer is always yes. You can’t write about race, or you can’t write anything even close to satire without an drawing an audience that doesn’t get it.
BWH: Following up on that, I’d imagine you’ve been pitched some pretty esoteric blogs. Any that were particularly memorable?
CL: Not sure I’d call them esoteric. Most people won’t tell me their idea for a tumblr blog, they’ll just do it, and before you know it we have a site of “Cats that look look like this lesbian I know.” Boom. What I find are people who have done brilliant spin off sites: Stuff Educated Black People Like, Stuff Black People Hate, White Stuff People Like, etc.
BWH: I’m of course particularly interested in your Boston section. Why did you choose to kick off the book with Boston?
CL: I wish I could say I had a burning desire because I had my heart broken by a girl from Brookline or a particularly harsh rejection from Harvard. But the truth is when we were arranging the book we tried to do a rough geographical tour, and we figured we should start in the Northeast. After all, that’s exactly where white people started.
BWH: I feel like you sum up the Good Will Hunting phenomenon perfectly in your comment about Bostonians being “proud of their blue-collar roots” but “two generations is as close as they will ever get to a job requiring manual labor.” Matt and Ben made this film that was so intensely proud of its grittiness, and much is made of their true-blue Boston backgrounds, but they were Cambridge brats who were teachers’ kids and went to Cambridge Rindge and Latin. Assuming it wasn’t actually Damon and Affleck, what was your inspiration for this astute observation?
CL: The “Boston” movies help (Good Will Hunting, The Town, The Departed) and since I have a lot of friends from Boston (mostly classmates who I met at McGill), they all sort of take on this pride that Boston is somehow still a place where you can be white and tough and I guess sort of smart. It was fun to see people taking pride in these roots and then finding out that their parents were lawyers. It’s like when they call professional sports teams “blue collar.”
BWH: So… does Good Will Hunting fit? Is it something White People Like?
CL: Absolutely, because we all like to think we were smart enough to go to Harvard but chose not to.
Christian Lander will be signing books and speaking here in town, at Cambridge’s own Harvard Book Store, on Saturday, January 22.
Oh, and incidentally, here on Blog Will Hunting we’ve been known to whine “They got a book deal; why not me?” Check out our takes on LOLCats and Cake Wrecks.
Sonuvabitch stole Pee-Wee’s line
Written by Alex on January 17th, 2011What an unexpected context for a subtle Good Will Hunting reference — Saturday night’s SNL brought us a digital short with Pee-wee Herman, Anderson Cooper, and the memorable final line from Good Will Hunting.
If you can type, you can make movies. (If you can’t, it’s not your fault.)
Written by Alex on January 14th, 2011
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”
TGIGIFF: Punching Carmine Scarpaglia
Written by Alex on January 7th, 2011“Hey, Carmine! It’s me, Will! Remember — we went to kindah-gahden together!” And then, PUNCH!
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 end, it’s our guys who are left standing, while Bobby’s friends stagger off. Chuckie and Morgan turn to see Will, standing over the unconscious Bobby Champa, still POUNDING him.
ANGLE ON WILL: SAVAGE, UGLY, VICIOUS, AND VIOLENT
Whatever demons must be raging inside Will, he is taking them out on Bobby Champa. He pummels the helpless, unconscious Champa, fury in his eyes. Chuckie and Billy pull Will away.
In the special edition re-release, don’t worry, I’m sure Carmine will punch first.
Read our introduction to TGIGIFF here, and check out all the GIFs in one place here. This will be the last in the series for a while, but we’ll be back, one magic Friday.
Windin’ your way down on Baker Street
Written by Alex on January 6th, 2011
"Baker Street," 1978
Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty died this week, and I’ve been hearing his hit song “Baker Street” play on the radio with an extra twinge of nostalgia.
The song accompanied the big fight scene in Good Will Hunting that sends Will to jail, therapy, and onto his personal journey — and I played it pretty much every other week on my college radio show.
The song’s Wikipedia entry describes:
Rafferty wrote the song during a period when he was trying to extricate himself from his Stealers Wheel contracts, and was regularly travelling between his family home near Glasgow and London, where he often stayed at a friend’s flat in Baker Street. The resolution of his legal and financial frustrations accounted for the exhilaration of the song’s last verse: “When you wake up it’s a new morning/ The sun is shining, it’s a new morning/ You’re going, you’re going home.”
According to the original screenplay for Good Will Hunting, Matt and Ben originally intended “Let’s Get it On” to accompany the fight scene.
“Baker Street” kicks ass though; it was a much better choice.
Windin’ your way down on Baker Street
Light in your head and dead on your feet
Well another crazy day
You’ll drink the night away
And forget about everything.…
You used to think that it was so easy
You used to say that it was so easy
But you’re tryin’
You’re tryin’ now.
Another year and then you’ll be happy
Just one more year and then you’ll be happy
But you’re cryin’
You’re cryin’ now.
Though it’s the most heartbreaking ass-kicking fight song you’ll ever hear.
