Half-Assed Internet Research
The Public Garden bench is now a Robin Williams memorial; a gay sex scene was written into the script to test whether anyone read it; Williams insisted on the L Street bar and ad-libbed the wife story and 'Son of a bitch, he stole my line'; Sean was based on Damon's mother and Affleck's father; Gus Van Sant painted the painting in Sean's office; Skylar was based on Damon's Harvard ex; Damon and Minnie Driver dated through the shoot and the Oscars; Terrence Malick suggested the ending
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 01:03:33Read transcript
- The Boston Public Garden park bench where 3,000 people watched the scene is now a memorial to Robin Williams, after people put flowers there when he died; one host lived for ten years a six-minute walk from Bunker Hill Community College, where Sean taught.
- For a while the screenplay contained a gay sex scene between Will and Sean in his office, written to see if anybody was actually reading the script during the year Castle Rock would not buy it and they feared it had become poison; nobody noticed until Harvey Weinstein, who told them to get rid of it.
- Robin Williams insisted on the L Street bar after being mobbed scouting it and loving the energy, though his scene was not filmed there; he ad-libbed the story about his wife farting, which is why Matt Damon laughed so hard, and son of a bitch, he stole my line, which was supposed to be him reading the note and nodding; Williams was a genius with a complicated reputation because of bad movies.
- Robin Williams's character was based on a mix of Damon's mom and Affleck's dad; Gus Van Sant painted the painting in Sean's office; Skyler is based on Damon's ex-girlfriend from Harvard; Damon and Minnie Driver dated from halfway through the movie through the Oscars and had a bad breakup two months later, he apparently dumping her; the hosts decline to discuss the two adjudicating each other on Twitter.
- One host's wife called Minnie Driver bad, the reason the movie has not aged as well, and did not believe the relationship; the hosts disagree and think she is really good, though she rightfully did not become the huge star people expected; another host's wife came in for the middle and said the two have no chemistry even after hearing they dated a year in real life.
- The hosts feel they are in love at that table; on a very small sample size women may see no chemistry where men do; the knick-knack store googly glasses moment, the Magic 8 ball scene with her NBA jokes, the organic chemistry scene and the piano speech all argue they are in love or amazing performers; she has not been in many movies, unlike a Gwyneth Paltrow with a 20-year history that would color it; one host claims she won the Oscar for this (she was in fact nominated), as evidence people felt that way at the time.
- One more research bit: in the original script Will and Skylar leave town together; through a friend of the Affleck family Ben and Matt met Terrence Malick, who had read it and said Will should chase her, she is gone and he has to go find her, so Malick is the reason for the ending, one of many lucky notes and ad-libs that pushed the movie up levels.
- Why did Rob Reiner, William Goldman and Terrence Malick want to help two unfamous guys when people struggle in Hollywood for 25 years, and this is the only movie Harvey Weinstein did not chop up as he saw fit; they had some success already, unlike Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn, though Vaughn was in Rudy as Jamie O'Hara; the only guess is that people sensed they were headed somewhere and wanted to be thanked.