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The Rewatchables ·

Good Will Hunting

year 1997decade 90sdirector Gus Van Santgenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Shea Serranohost Chris Ryanhost Sean Fennessey
All 14 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 20:51

The Red Sox Game Six story in Sean's office

The host could not narrow the categories to five or six because this is not just a great movie but the quintessential cable movie, on some channel for 20 years and constantly tested by people coming in partway; the nominees are the slow-motion playground fight, the battle with Ponytail Guy, the I Will End You scene, the park bench monologue, Pudge Fisk, the twelve-minute stretch from Will laying into Lambo through the baseball glove and the shepherd scene, the Chucky construction best-part-of-my-day scene, It's Not Your Fault, and Chucky realizing Will left.

Chris Ryan: The Red Sox story, the Pudge Fisk story, is the scene you stay for when you come in with five minutes: funny coming from a Philly fan, relatable, with a twist you know is coming; Damon cracking up and getting genuinely locked in shows the connection being made without talking about therapy, the physical acting Robin Williams does is great, and the filmmaking cuts in the game footage and the overhead shot of him reenacting the scene.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 1:19:28

"my boy's wicked smart"

Nominated lines: my boy's wicked smart, how about them apples, it's not your fault, I will end you, do you know how easy this is for me, it's a good engine, and son of a bitch you stole my line, which one host calls probably the last one and great; the double burger exchange, Chuck I had a double burger and give me your sandwich I bought it, is another host's favorite line of the whole movie, which he has done to his kids in the car with Sour Patch Kids, minus the curse word.

The film

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Directed by Gus Van Sant · Drama

126 minutes

Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Matt Damon Will Hunting
Robin Williams Dr. Sean Maguire
Ben Affleck Chuckie Sullivan
Stellan Skarsgård Professor Gerald Lambeau
Minnie Driver Skylar
Casey Affleck Morgan O'Mally
Cole Hauser Billy McBride
George Plimpton Henry Lipkin

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

20:51

Most Rewatchable Scene

The Red Sox Game Six story in Sean's office; the Harvard bar scene with Clark; the playground fight; Chucky's constru...

The Red Sox Game Six story in Sean's office; the Harvard bar scene with Clark; the playground fight; Chucky's construction-site speech

In the discussion (13)
Approx. transcript time · 00:20:51Read transcript
  • The host could not narrow the categories to five or six because this is not just a great movie but the quintessential cable movie, on some channel for 20 years and constantly tested by people coming in partway; the nominees are the slow-motion playground fight, the battle with Ponytail Guy, the I Will End You scene, the park bench monologue, Pudge Fisk, the twelve-minute stretch from Will laying into Lambo through the baseball glove and the shepherd scene, the Chucky construction best-part-of-my-day scene, It's Not Your Fault, and Chucky realizing Will left.
  • The Red Sox story, the Pudge Fisk story, is the scene you stay for when you come in with five minutes: funny coming from a Philly fan, relatable, with a twist you know is coming; Damon cracking up and getting genuinely locked in shows the connection being made without talking about therapy, the physical acting Robin Williams does is great, and the filmmaking cuts in the game footage and the overhead shot of him reenacting the scene. — Chris Ryan
  • In the overhead shot the furniture is set up like the bases; the filmmakers were not sure they would get the baseball footage, having licensed nothing at that point, and Harvey Weinstein had to make it happen, because the scene would not work as well without the baseball.
  • The issue with the scene is that nobody who loves the Red Sox gives up a Game Six ticket at Fenway after only two World Series in 28 years, in 67 and 46, however much he likes the girl; it is the same problem as Fever Pitch, where Jimmy Fallon gives up fourth-row tickets for Drew Barrymore; this host would have been the friend saying there is no way you skip this game, and concludes Sean was an artsy-fartsy smart guy whose friends were like Jerry Lambeau and not real Red Sox fans, which the others call a take and a half and compare to a limousine liberal quoting Leo from The Departed.
  • The ponytail scene with Clark sets the movie in motion and is the only nominee that gives a bit of what makes every character great: Ben Affleck charming and funny without being threatening, Minnie Driver making her little comment to Clark that makes Matt Damon smile, Damon flexing for the first real time how much smarter he is, not wanting to do it and being forced into it to save his friend, and the quick Casey Affleck shot, boy, he's wicked smart; there is no way to skip past that scene. — Shea Serrano
  • The nitpick with the Clark scene is that Affleck and Cole Hauser would throw down with Ponytail Guy immediately, before it ever gets to the Will Hunting part, since these are guys who randomly drive by a playground and fight five guys; the hosts also ask why it matters that Casey is bouncing at a bar in Cambridge, concluding the Southie guys wanted to try a new bar, mix it up and make fun of people, and that it is a totally realistic Boston scene of people drifting from neighborhood to neighborhood.
  • Why a local group from Southie would want a Harvard bar: a different type of girl than they are used to, and they cut the line because the bouncer lets them in; yet inside it is not populated and is basically a sports bar with Papa Shot (as transcribed) and Bud Light, though Harvard Square had popular holes in the wall like Charlie's; one host recalls the townies-versus-college-kids separation in Huntsville, Texas, and those guys looking for conflict is the point, with Cole Hauser punching that guy in the face immediately.
  • An honorable mention is the Retainer scene, Ben Affleck flexing in front of the three guys; this was way more Ben Affleck's movie than remembered, so funny, charming and weird that it is a shame he is not this actor all the time; the scene responded to most is the fight, though it is so short it may not draw you in on cable, and it is the weirdest thing ever, since why are they fighting these guys. — Sean Fennessey
  • Will fights the guy because he got picked on in kindergarten; Will Hunting should be in prison for life, and when the judge, who is not Vonnegut but an actor who was a member of Whitey Bulger's Winter Hill gang, reads the rap sheet of assault, grand theft auto, larceny and mayhem, this guy clearly cannot be let out to clean hallways; a Gus Van Sant fight scene is not something that crosses your mind, and Casey Affleck's face as he falls to the punch is phenomenal.
  • One host's single favorite is the Chucky construction scene, when Chucky gets mad at Will for still being there and says before he knows it he will be 50 and still doing this: a Massachusetts thing of living and dying in your parents' house, with Chucky the perfect character whose friends are the most important thing to him, down to the casual mention of still watching Patriots games, nuances William Goldman never could have written; Affleck had been ready to do that scene for years and nailed it in the first take, doing two more takes but the first was used.
  • The construction speech is mostly shot over Affleck's shoulder going in on Damon across the hood of the car, not the usual framing for a memorable scene, so you expect Damon to have a big rebuttal and he does not; the clip is played, from 'it'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years' through the best part of my day being the ten seconds hoping Will will not be there.
  • Part of the rewatch pleasure is the 20 years of history with Damon and Affleck, who are both obviously stars in this movie, like an NBA team with two future superstars; the script started with Damon at Harvard, based on his relationship with a woman named Skyler, before he brought it to Ben, and the movie forecasts the tension of what happens when one of them makes it and the other does not.
  • The last eight or nine minutes are as rewatchable as any movie's ending: Will saying goodbye to Sean, Sean and Lambeau getting a beer, Chucky going to pick him up and finding him gone, and the credits rolling over the car with Elliot Smith; the hosts cannot place the highway, which feels like the Mass Pike but was probably outside Toronto.
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38:01

Casting What-Ifs

Castle Rock wanted Brad Pitt and Leo as Will and Chucky; Mel Gibson was attached to direct; Jeff Bridges or Dustin Ho...

Castle Rock wanted Brad Pitt and Leo as Will and Chucky; Mel Gibson was attached to direct; Jeff Bridges or Dustin Hoffman imagined as Sean; Michael Mann wanted to direct the pair as car thieves and replace Damon

In the discussion (4)
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:01Read transcript
  • Castle Rock wanted to replace Matt and Ben with Leo and Brad, and Mel Gibson producing and directing would have been weird.
  • Nobody else seems to have been seriously considered for Sean until the tail end; there is an argument that Williams is more replaceable than Damon and Affleck, yet the movie is completely different with Jeff Bridges or Dustin Hoffman, and nobody else gets the community college bit about Freud doing cocaine, which must have been freestyled from his 70s stand-up.
  • After Gibson dropped out, Michael Mann wanted to direct, making the two slightly different, as car thieves; he also wanted to replace Matt Damon, which is why it went no further; the hosts joke about James Caan or a Hemsworth and tell Mann to buy the rights and remake it.
  • Earlier context: at Castle Rock the roles were at one point meant for Brad Pitt and Leo in a twice-as-long script whose second half had Chucky and Will on the run from the CIA; Mel Gibson was attached and developing it after Braveheart, and the writers asked him to let them have it back because they needed to make it faster.
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39:58

What’s Aged the Best?

The friendship and the interpersonal relationships; Damon's performance; the two Elliot Smith songs; Casey Affleck's ...

The friendship and the interpersonal relationships; Damon's performance; the two Elliot Smith songs; Casey Affleck's I Hate LA shirt; the Boston accents other than Robin Williams's; the 'how about them apples' scene; the ending; Robin Williams's and Ben Affleck's clothes; the dialogue

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:39:58Read transcript
  • The friendship, since this is really a buddies movie about the bonds of friends; Damon is great and it is hard to believe he did not win the Oscar over Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, a two-person category that year with Duvall for The Apostle, Peter Fonda and Dustin Hoffman for Wag the Dog; As Good As It Gets won Best Actor and Best Actress for Helen Hunt while Titanic won Best Picture, and everybody was fine with it when Jim Brooks was still one of the ten most important writer-directors.
  • The two Elliot Smith songs, Between the Bars and Miss Misery, one still not available on iTunes; his life went into a tailspin after the famous Academy Awards performance in the white suit where he seemed delicate and out of place, and the anecdote that he told anyone trash-talking Celine Dion to shut their mouth because she chilled him out before he went on.
  • Casey Affleck's I Hate LA shirt in the baseball scene, which one host owned as a kid and whose son is a year from growing into; the Boston accents are spectacular except Robin Williams, and Cole Hauser's is a little iffy in spots but he seems and looks like he is from Boston and carries the fuck-you attitude of the character.
  • The how-about-them-apples scene has aged incredibly, with the great ending and the callback you always forget is coming; Robin Williams's cardigans and things that don't match make him look like a widower who shops at Goodwill but still has some authority, and Affleck's clothes seem a little more expensive than they were, trying to look classier.
  • The interpersonal relationships between Damon and Affleck and Damon and Williams could be put in a movie from 1940 or 2018 and would still play.
  • The friendships are the easiest answer, mainly because of everything that happened afterward, so they are always connected forever; a case could be made for the how-about-them-apples scene, which people still say today and laugh at every time. — Shea Serrano
  • The apples line was apparently taken from Chinatown, the line Jack Nicholson has in that movie, so maybe Robert Towne wrote Good Will Hunting; I Swallowed a Bug, which Casey Affleck ad-libbed, was taken from Apocalypse Now; the dialogue has aged best because every line was on the tip of the tongue on rewatch, 60 lines recited while watching, which is unique and a testament to them sticking to their guns about their script.
  • You can understand why people suspected a Goldman rewrite because the movie is so obviously the sum of their love of movies: the playground fight is Mean Streets watched a thousand times, with Ordinary People and early Scorsese elsewhere; that Damon and Affleck stayed friends adds to it, this being their proxy movie.
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45:13

What’s Aged the Worst?

Robin Williams's Boston accent; Matt Damon's frosted tips; the Miramax logo in the opening credits; Will's breakup wi...

Robin Williams's Boston accent; Matt Damon's frosted tips; the Miramax logo in the opening credits; Will's breakup with Skylar; the screenplay Oscar win over Boogie Nights; the length, especially the two long jokes when Skylar meets Will's friends

In the discussion (12)
Approx. transcript time · 00:45:13Read transcript
  • Robin Williams's Boston accent is not great and gets a little New York, though some hosts have no ear for it and thought they were all fine; one host says his own accent is gone and only comes out when drunk.
  • Asked who has the best on-screen Boston accent, the answer is Matt Damon's Will Hunting, the gold standard in the history of movies, better than Wahlberg in The Departed, because the attitude, being ready to fight at all times, is half of it and Damon figured that out more than anyone.
  • Matt Damon's hair has not aged well; he has talked about regretting the frosted tips and would probably spend money to CGI it away; one host had the same haircut without the tips and thinks it belongs to the mid nineties.
  • The Miramax logo in the opening credits; Will's breakup with Skylar, I don't love you, has not so much aged badly as remained a rough, physical three minutes that is hard to watch.
  • Good Will Hunting winning Best Screenplay over Boogie Nights: both are Oscar-worthy with a hundred memorable lines and great characterization, something has to win, and one host prefers Boogie Nights as a movie but calls it close and says this movie holds up.
  • Asked to choose for the Oscar between Robin Williams and Robert Forster in Jackie Brown, the answer is that the Forster performance is amazing, Jackie Brown is really great, and this is not even the number one movie to have given Robin Williams an Oscar for. — Sean Fennessey
  • Films Williams should have won for are then thrown out, apparently by more than one voice: Dead Poets, Fisher King, Garp, Good Morning Vietnam, all those movies.
  • Asked Boogie Nights screenplay or Good Will Hunting screenplay, the answer is Good Will Hunting. — Shea Serrano
  • Looking up the 1989 Oscars, Williams was nominated for Best Actor for Dead Poets against Kenneth Branagh, Morgan Freeman and Tom Cruise, with Daniel Day Lewis winning for My Left Foot; in supporting he would have faced Martin Landau, Marlon Brando, Dan Aykroyd, Danny Aiello and Denzel in Glory, so he was not winning an Oscar either way.
  • It is long: from a rewatchable standpoint, when Skylar meets Will's buddies and the two long jokes come, you know the jokes after 50 viewings and it drags.
  • That is a great Skylar scene and there is not enough of her; the great part is not the joke but watching everybody else, the awkwardness, realizing this is the woman he is going to marry, the see-about-a-girl scene playing out in real time with the friends. — Shea Serrano
  • Others agree it is a necessary scene that only gets a little slow in a movie of about 2:05; Casey Affleck needling Ben back and forth is loved, as are scenes of people talking in bars and diners, and bombed out of his tree has been quoted for 20 years; the alternate jokes on YouTube were all funny; Damon's long barn story in Saving Private Ryan is called the worst part of that movie, though it is supposed to be bad because the guy is a dipshit.
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50:30

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Casey Affleck; Stellan Skarsgård; Cole Hauser

Casey Affleck; Stellan Skarsgård; Cole Hauser

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:50:30Read transcript
  • Nominees are Casey Affleck, Minnie Driver, Cole Hauser, Professor Lambeau and Lambeau's TA, who seemed in love with Lambeau and became immediately threatened by Will Hunting; Robin Williams is not made eligible; honorable mention to George Plimpton as the psychiatrist Will psychs out by calling him gay.
  • Casey Affleck is proposed as a great heat check performance, and later a host says they have Casey for this: a nothing part he made fun and really interesting, impossible to describe, with the joke that Affleck is the Dion Waiters whose brother Rion gets enough field goal attempts.
  • Stellan Skarsgård is called high level: doing a lot of crazy stuff, and on rewatch a huge creep, the classic professor hitting on students, asking for a drink and calling Skylar too; he sells the tortured genius who realizes there is someone more genius than he is; no casting what-if was found for his role; Casey has nine of the movie's 20 best lines.
  • It is between Casey and Skarsgård, but the pick is Cole Hauser, because there was not enough of him; the best Cole Hauser part is the back of the car, when Cole is messing with Casey, Casey says he is going to fight him now, and the smile drops off Cole's face as he is ready to go. — Shea Serrano
  • Hauser should have only ever played that character and been an action guy, in some movie where somebody kidnapped his daughter, or Paparazzi; he is good whenever unhinged, including as the bad guy in Too Fast, Too Furious despite the dyed hair; he is the darkest, scariest guy in the crew, who has absolutely killed somebody: even Matt Damon warns Clark and Ben Affleck tells Casey to get out of the car, but Cole never says anything and is just in the action.
  • A tangent on dangerous but fun bars in Philly and Boston, where neighborhood drifting has faded with gentrification; one host lived in Charlestown two minutes from the original Sully's, townies only, where he would have gotten the shit kicked out of him, and Cole's stare at the table when Casey Affleck pisses him off is deep Boston.
  • Honorable mention heat check to the screenwriters for naming a guy Carmine Scarpaglia, a heat-check move to show there are Irish guys and Italian guys, like Italian movie name bingo.
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1:03:33

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...

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.
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1:09:29

Is This Movie Better With…?

No; the one fit floated is Trejo as Lambeau bragging about his Fields Medal

No; the one fit floated is Trejo as Lambeau bragging about his Fields Medal

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:09:29Read transcript
  • A joke asks whether this would be better if Michael Mann had made it before the last category, would this movie have been better with Danny Trejo, whose default answer is almost always yes; nobody can place him: as Cole Hauser's role the hosts would rather have Hauser, maybe a bouncer at the Cambridge bar for a split second, Carmine's adopted brother back for vengeance, or in Carmine's group in the fight, but nobody wants to see Danny Trejo get his ass kicked.
  • A version where Carmine comes back with his friends and Trejo kills them is floated; the judge is rejected; he does not make sense in South Boston, South Texas he fits, making this the first time the hosts have had a no for Danny Trejo making a movie better, before the quip that Trejo as Lambeau bragging about his Fields Medal works.
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1:11:06

The Ruffalo / Hanna / Rubinek / Partridge Overacting Award

Clark, the ponytail guy in the Harvard bar

Clark, the ponytail guy in the Harvard bar

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 01:11:06Read transcript
  • A new category suggested by a reader, whose name the host cannot remember: the Mark Ruffalo They Knew overacting moment of the movie; watching for the first recipient, there is no overacting in this movie, and the only case, which the host does not agree with, is Chucky going in to do the job interview for Will, a comic relief scene everyone likes.
  • Devil's advocate: does Damon broadcast the cracking in it's not your fault, or is it just familiarity after 25 years; it is one of the only times Robin Williams blows Damon off the screen, and if you look closely the crinkled-up face when he starts to cry is kind of bad until the hug hides him, which is why people have picked on the scene over the years; the rebuttal asks how else he should play a man melting down and trying not to.
  • Given the final say, the answer is that Damon does a good job in that scene; also, Mark Ruffalo's they knew line is the best part of Spotlight. — Shea Serrano
  • The others love the Spotlight moment too, having waited Ruffalo's whole career for him to raise his voice in a movie of people reading phone books for two hours; the category is tweaked to the overacting scene they also love to death, achievement in overacting, and given to Clark with the ponytail, exactly over the top perfect, even his ponytail a little frazzled.
  • Agreement that Clark is the pick, given his look. — Chris Ryan
  • Shout-out: the Clark actor became more famous in Oz as Ryan O'Reilly's brain-damaged brother, and is Dean Winters's real-life brother; Ryan O'Reilly is a forgotten all-time great TV character, and Winters is now the beeper guy from 30 Rock and the insurance ads.
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1:14:29

Unintentional Comedy Award

Matt Damon's frosted tips; super-skinny Ben Affleck; the slow-motion playground fight; the guys knowing the kid's nam...

Matt Damon's frosted tips; super-skinny Ben Affleck; the slow-motion playground fight; the guys knowing the kid's name at the Little League game; Will remembering being beaten up in kindergarten; Ben Affleck scratching his head while Clark quizzes Will

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:14:29Read transcript
  • Matt Damon's hair with the frosted tips, because it bothers him and is the one thing he would take back; super duper skinny Ben Affleck is funny now that he is Batman. Sosa's 1988 Texas Rangers baseball card is the comparison, with Affleck at about 138 pounds in this movie; the slow-motion punches in the fight are definitely in.
  • Two quick scenes: at the little league game the guys know the kid's name although none of them are related to him, just bored and telling him to dig; and Matt Damon remembering getting beat up in kindergarten, when nobody remembers kindergarten; the favorite accidentally funny bit is the bar scene where Clark quizzes Damon and Ben Affleck reaches up and scratches his head like a chimp, trying to calculate everything.
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1:16:19

Picking Nits

The NSA courting a felon; cuttable scenes; Chucky and Cole Hauser would have beaten up Ponytail Guy before Will spoke...

The NSA courting a felon; cuttable scenes; Chucky and Cole Hauser would have beaten up Ponytail Guy before Will spoke; nobody in the MIT class could solve either equation; Chucky's earlier pick-ups when Will was simply out; Chucky enabling Will's fights while wishing he would leave; the Danny Elfman score; Sean as a fake Red Sox fan; Chucky bringing the coffee out of the car

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 01:16:19Read transcript
  • The NSA soliloquy is a favorite scene, great filmmaking that flashes back into Sean's office and is delivered phenomenally, but why would the NSA bend over backwards to convince a felon arrested 15 times in two years to break codes; it is a vestige of the original script, incredibly illogical, feels like a different movie, and should have been pivoted to a private weapons firm.
  • There are three scenes you could cut and have the same movie, even the Chucky job-interview scene as comic relief; the biggest nitpick is that Chucky and Cole Hauser would immediately beat the shit out of Ponytail Guy, Damon has no dialogue in that scene, and in real life the guy ends with a broken jaw and a concussion; nobody in the MIT class could figure out either equation though these are the best people we have, with Lambeau asking Jack, was it you, Ganesh.
  • Were there other times Chucky came by for Will and he was not home, thought this was it, and he was just sleeping at somebody's house or getting coffee; this time he looks in and there is no furniture; it is also strange that Chucky enables all of Will's bad behavior while secretly wishing he would leave Boston with his lottery-ticket mind, so why drive around Southie getting into random gang fights with him.
  • The Elliot Smith music is good but the Danny Elfman score sucks and happens in a completely different movie. Pee-wee's Big Adventure is the comparison, the Castle Rock movie, all crane shots down on the campus and very 90s; Sean is a fake Red Sox fan who did not care about the team; and when Affleck arrives to collect Damon he brings the coffee to him instead of leaving it in the car, which is not happening.
  • Earlier nits during the scene discussion: nobody who loves the Red Sox gives up a Game Six ticket, the Fever Pitch comparison, and Affleck and Cole Hauser throwing down with Ponytail Guy before Will ever gets involved.
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1:19:28

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie

"my boy's wicked smart"; "how about them apples"; "it's not your fault"; "I will end you"; "do you know how easy this...

"my boy's wicked smart"; "how about them apples"; "it's not your fault"; "I will end you"; "do you know how easy this is for me"; "it's a good engine"; "son of a bitch you stole my line"; "Chuck I had a double burger"; "Give me your sandwich I bought it"

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:19:28Read transcript
  • Nominated lines: my boy's wicked smart, how about them apples, it's not your fault, I will end you, do you know how easy this is for me, it's a good engine, and son of a bitch you stole my line, which one host calls probably the last one and great; the double burger exchange, Chuck I had a double burger and give me your sandwich I bought it, is another host's favorite line of the whole movie, which he has done to his kids in the car with Sour Patch Kids, minus the curse word.
  • Cole Hauser telling Will Hunting it's a good engine, it's a good car: under the radar but secretly proud of all the time he spent redoing the engine, he nailed it and probably worked on that car for real; the host loves Cole Hauser in this movie and is upset he did not have a better career.
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1:20:25

Sequel, Prequel, Limited Series, or All-Black Remake

A 10-episode Netflix series including the CIA half, cast with Elgort as Chucky, Chalamet as Will, Jon Hamm as the the...

A 10-episode Netflix series including the CIA half, cast with Elgort as Chucky, Chalamet as Will, Jon Hamm as the therapist and Tessa Thompson as Skylar; a Black Good Will Hunting is Stomp the Yard

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 01:20:25Read transcript
  • Asked whether he would watch a 10-episode Netflix series remake with the second half of the script and the CIA wrinkle, the answer is 100%, having watched the Limitless series. — Shea Serrano
  • Anyone smarter than everyone else figuring things out is loved; although remaking rewatchable movies is usually avoided, the obvious casting is staring them in the face: Elgort as Affleck and Chalamet as Damon, who went to the same high school, love the Knicks and are playing this out on Instagram, Elgort the empty-headed pretty boy and Chalamet the nervy energy; the first three episodes are the movie before the CIA stuff.
  • For the therapist, Ruffalo, Jeff Bridges, Russell Crowe and Jon Hamm are floated, Hamm with a beard, older, available, with Affleck ties and ready to go back to Boston; Tessa Thompson as Minnie; Ringer Films is jokingly producing the 10-episode adaptation.
  • Asked what Black Good Will Hunting looks like, the answer is Stomp the Yard. — Shea Serrano
  • Gus Van Sant did a version of this with Finding Forrester, a movie with issues that should have been good and was a missed opportunity, though it invented the modern internet with you're the man now, dog.
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1:20:25

Probably Unanswerable Questions

What actress plays Sean's wife in a flashback? How long did Will stay with Skylar, and what became of Will, Chucky, C...

What actress plays Sean's wife in a flashback? How long did Will stay with Skylar, and what became of Will, Chucky, Casey Affleck's and Cole Hauser's characters? Why have Damon and Affleck not made another movie together, and why was Affleck not in Ocean's Eleven? Is this the best Boston movie of all time?

In the discussion (16)
Approx. transcript time · 01:20:25Read transcript
  • The block opens with the remake-as-series question, recorded separately.
  • If there were a flashback with Robin Williams and his wife, what actress plays her: Deborah Winger (as transcribed) is offered; she has to look like a lifelong Boston lady; Amy Ryan from The Wire, Bonnie Bedelia, not Boston-y enough, and jokes of Conan O'Brien and Mark Wahlberg.
  • How long did Will stay with Skylar, presuming he makes it to Stanford and finds her, which as a genius on early internet message boards he would: a semester, or three or four good weeks before it falls apart when they get drunk and she says you told me you didn't love me; Lambeau would have to be Will's reference since nobody else knows about him.
  • What happens to these people: Will becomes an asshole hedge fund manager and Chucky becomes Matt Patricia, Sharpie in his hat, crunching tape for Belichick; or Will shows up, she is happy, they go to a Stanford party where a kid makes fun of his accent, Will beats the shit out of him and goes to jail, she bails him out and within three weeks they have broken up; twisted further, it becomes a prison movie, a shot caller situation where he joins a gang and, being a genius, figures out how to break out, Good Will Hunting 2 in jail in Palo Alto.
  • Or he obviously becomes a tech billionaire, a Steve Jobs-ian figure in late-90s Northern California with a doctor wife-to-be and a difficult childhood; or he becomes Sean, a therapist, which one host refuses; or they realize it will not last, he goes back to Boston, Sean has died of a heart attack and he works construction, that friend; or 15 years later stories of his crimes and anger come out; or Chucky fulfills his promise to kill him and it becomes Face Off across Boston, Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Will.
  • What if Good Will Hunting 2 had been The Town, with Damon's life having failed; whether Affleck tried to convince Damon to take the Renner part is debated, and whether Damon can play that kind of crazy at all, since Talented Mr. Ripley was reactionary crazy, with the hosts directly challenging his acting.
  • Why have these two not made another movie together: they went separate ways professionally, have a Showtime show coming that is basically a Wire for Boston, and the Fritz Peterson Yankees wife-swap movie fell through; Affleck has proven a great director and there is a great writer in Damon who should try again instead of The Great Wall; a theory that Affleck does not want to because Damon does not look cool anymore, or is mad he was cut out of Ocean's Eleven; whether Ben would have improved those movies in Casey's place or as the Andy Garcia role, though he needed to be older.
  • Zach Mack (as transcribed) is asked which of the five sequels he liked most, picking Chris's; the prison pitch and Hunting Will are recalled, plus Will Hunting with a shotgun and a beard in 2018; if Skyler tells him to get lost in Palo Alto, does he spin out, become a custodian at Stanford waiting for her, which is creepy, or go Zuckerberg and create Facebook, you'll see, Erica Albright.
  • The biggest criticism of the movie has been that it's not your fault is treated like a cure for abuse the film takes pains to establish, a guy putting cigarettes out on him, so that he hops in a car knowing how to love; if he is cured he is wealthy and with Skylar, if it moved too fast they break up after three weeks and he becomes a shot caller, still damaged and violent.
  • Chucky now is 42 and leading or assistant foreman of his uncle's construction crew; Southie is much nicer and his crap house is worth five times as much, so he stayed or sold; maybe he took over the bar with Cole; Cole Hauser owns an auto shop and got murdered by an IRA customer, or was the muscle in a different Boston crew; Casey Affleck moved to LA to see Will, stayed, became a comedian and lives in the pool house; Will's friends came out within a year and it went badly.
  • Asked how badly the visit went: Cole killed the guy, and they buried the body. — Shea Serrano
  • The alternative is that the guys get arrested by TSA getting off the plane at LAX, too tanked, and are put on a jail plane back to Boston without seeing Will.
  • Last question, probably answerable: is this the best Boston movie of all time; The Friends of Eddie Coyle is one host's favorite; another does not really care about Boston, having been three times without knowing Cambridge from Boston, and would rather watch The Departed; the qualifications for a city's signature movie are that it is awesome, uses the city, is authentic and could only have taken place there, like Rocky and Creed for Philly; the final three are The Departed, Good Will Hunting and The Verdict, with The Town fourth.
  • Friends of Eddie Coyle is liked here too, with a sense one is being forgotten; the first hour of Social Network is a really good Boston movie. — Chris Ryan
  • The Departed did not shoot much in Boston and Good Will Hunting shot a lot in Toronto, like Den of Thieves, set across LA but shot in Atlanta; the answer given is The Verdict, which uses the city best and has the authenticity, with Good Will Hunting very close, a 1A and 1B.
  • Earlier, the film is called possibly the best Boston movie ever, on the short list, a discussion saved for later.
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1:37:32

Who Won the Movie?

Robin Williams

Robin Williams

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 01:37:32Read transcript
  • Three candidates, Damon, Affleck and Robin Williams; the first vote goes Robin Williams because it is his best performance and he is not alive, so a posthumous Oscar montage will center on It's Not Your Fault, which the hosts reenact.
  • Robin Williams. — Shea Serrano
  • The case for Robin: there was no point where he got beat in any scene, always the best guy in a movie full of great actors and actresses.
  • The dissent goes Damon: the Williams performance is irreplaceable, but Damon has to do dumb, smart, physical, romantic lead, tough guy and genius, convincing in the memorized history lesson in the bar and the Bobby Chucky Tommy Ricky bit, crying and being a boyfriend, and other people could have played the Williams part well while nobody else in 30 years of actors makes the Damon part work.
  • If Leo were in it, as in the Departed scene-swap debate, it would be missing five percent of the authenticity and Boston DNA, more like Catch Me If You Can; Damon seems tough, like he could kick the shit out of you; Brad Pitt is good at playing dumber than he is, in True Romance and Seven, but not smarter, so he could not do the revolutionary America economic speech, though he could have done Chucky, except he is too short.
  • The argument for Williams over Damon comes down to the it's not your fault scene, where Williams overpowered him a little, but Damon holds his own in their first big scene with the painting; a Robin Williams and Minnie Driver scene is wished for and is probably deleted somewhere.
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More from the conversation

Other than his own podcast this is the host's favorite to do; he cannot imagine having seen any movie in 20 years more than Good Will Hunting, except maybe Boogie Nights; seven or eight movies have been hoarded and this is the first of them, expected to run at least an hour and a half.
Approx. transcript time · 00:01:01Read transcript
There is a Weinstein shadow over the film now: the Miramax credit, the story that the movie was dead until Weinstein, brought it by Kevin Smith, got it done after Damon called him as the Rainmaker lead; Affleck has said it feels tainted, though the host never felt it was a Harvey Weinstein movie; it shows how much of a hold he had, taking over a hot Castle Rock script with Rob Reiner, but it does not change how the hosts feel about the movie.
Approx. transcript time · 00:02:22Read transcript
Rob Reiner and William Goldman deserve credit for helping the writers figure out the movie; Harvey came in at the last stage and let them hire Gus Van Sant, a facilitator rather than a Shakespeare in Love hands-on producer, and since he is not an artist it is easier to separate; a rewatch the night before was moving and funny.
Approx. transcript time · 00:03:56Read transcript
Somewhere in between: it does not affect the movie when watching, but it has to be mentioned and does make it a little worse, as Affleck said; this was peak Miramax, the moment he discovered these two guys and saved their movie.
Approx. transcript time · 00:04:27Read transcript
Production history recited: Castle Rock bought it in a bidding war and buried it for a year while Damon and Affleck lived large in LA; studios they had dissed declined to buy it back; they moved back to Boston, knew Kevin Smith, and the process took about four years; per the Boston Magazine oral history Damon had a year left before being too old, since Will is 20 and he was 27; Mel Gibson was attached after Braveheart and asked to give it back; agent Patrick Whitesell's parallel is Stallone insisting on starring in Rocky, a deal breaker; a theory that Affleck did The Accountant because it is the genius-in-a-CIA-conspiracy second half he never got to make.
Approx. transcript time · 00:05:04Read transcript
After nine nominations, a smear rumor said William Goldman rewrote the script; the host, friends with Goldman, cornered him at lunch and Goldman swore he only told them to drop the CIA stuff, as Rob Reiner also did, and said he would not have written the it's not your fault scene, which he criticized as Hollywood's one-patient shrink; the hosts think the script feels like first-timers who waited years to tell nine stories, the Patty and Mary joke and Carmine Scarpaglia, not a writer of 50 movies.
Approx. transcript time · 00:07:59Read transcript
They definitely wrote it: there is so much inside Boston stuff, about 40 wrinkles only people who lived in Boston would get, that William Goldman could not have known.
Approx. transcript time · 00:09:55Read transcript
They were the youngest Oscar winners, for screenplay, and became overnight stars the same year as Leo; 1997, with Titanic, Boogie Nights and Good Will Hunting, launched massive careers within five months on original stories, when a small company could make a hit and studios made big original movies; Weinstein's reaction that a Rainmaker-type movie makes a hundred million is now a failure for most films, like Den of Thieves, with the joke that Chucky grows up to be Big Nick.
Approx. transcript time · 00:10:27Read transcript
Robin Williams was the star needed to get the movie made, still A-plus list after Mrs. Doubtfire though slipping; he won the Oscar, arguably deserved for Dead Poets Society; nine nominations including Minnie Driver and Gus Van Sant; Damon lost Best Actor to Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, which has not aged well, and Damon probably got robbed since nobody else could play Will; Affleck was not nominated; the supporting field was Greg Kinnear, Robert Forster, Burt Reynolds and Anthony Hopkins; Williams's next six movies ran from What Dreams May Come to Death to Smoochy, with an objection that four of them are good.
Approx. transcript time · 00:11:58Read transcript
Living in Boston then, the host remembers an Improper Bostonian cover story on Damon and Affleck finally making their movie in late 96 or early 97, read at Sorelli's bakery in Charlestown; shooting was mostly in Southie, 3,000 people watched the Public Garden bench scene until police quieted them, and Blown Away had been the first big Boston shoot; he saw the movie that winter while dating the long-distance Chicago girlfriend he called the sports gal, asked himself whether he would go see about a girl, decided he would not leave Boston, and they broke up within a week; a Princess Bride dread pirate joke about how many sports gals there have been.
Approx. transcript time · 00:14:03Read transcript
Asked whether he has had to go see about a girl: yes, but it did not work out, since going does not mean you wind up with that person.
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:09Read transcript
Asked the same: no, never, with the joke that he would not say so anyway given his wife Laramie.
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:25Read transcript
The problem with go see about a girl is that it is less romantic than it seems: damaged Will wrecked a nice relationship with a smart woman and then has to drive across the country; debate whether Skylar takes him back after he looked her in the face and said I don't love you; one side says she knew he was lashing out, the drive is punishment enough and he could run NASA; the other says he demolished her, she holds the grudge, is probably still unmarried and does not trust men; this feels like a Before Sunrise, Before Sunset movie ripe for a 20-years-later sequel, saved for later.
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:41Read transcript
Zach, transcribed as Zach Beck and Zach Mack, is asked to play the rest of the construction-scene clip and later which sequel pitch he liked most; his role is never stated.
Approx. transcript time · 00:31:54Read transcript
Damon and Affleck's careers before this: they met Cole Hauser on School Ties; Geronimo was meant as Damon's on-ramp to leading man but Chris O'Donnell kept beating him to parts, School Ties and Scent of a Woman; Courage Under Fire, with the weight loss, convinced people he was a real actor; Affleck had Chasing Amy, Dazed and Confused as the meathead O'Bannion and Mallrats; an SNL sketch cast Affleck as the meathead and Damon as the smart one, which may explain Affleck grabbing paychecks, including Paycheck, debated as a great bad movie, while Damon did Rounders and Talented Mr. Ripley with great directors.
Approx. transcript time · 00:32:10Read transcript
Affleck.
Approx. transcript time · 00:36:19Read transcript
Others would have bet on Affleck too: after Armageddon and Shakespeare in Love he was the biggest movie star in the world, and it might not have been the wrong bet.
Approx. transcript time · 00:36:19Read transcript
Both reset their careers every few years in different ways: Damon goes for The Martian or The Great Wall and puts himself onto Jason Bourne, while Affleck is not afraid to say I'm Batman, a chutzpah Damon lacks.
Approx. transcript time · 00:36:34Read transcript
The director's commentary made a couple of years after the DVD is recommended for fans: Affleck is completely over the top calling everybody genius, the king of late 90s commentaries alongside Pearl Harbor, the Kevin Smith movies, including a Sean Connery imitation on the Chasing Amy commentary, and Armageddon, where he roasts training oil drillers as astronauts; he says Casey ad-libbed the baseball glove scene; the host claims that of the five people at the joke table the two acting Oscar winners are Casey Affleck and Minnie Driver, not Damon and Affleck (Driver was in fact only nominated); Cole Hauser is also remembered from School Ties and Higher Learning.
Approx. transcript time · 00:55:57Read transcript
Sponsored segment for A Feudal and Stupid Gesture (as transcribed), the Netflix film about National Lampoon and Doug Kenny dropping January 26: the show broke its post-1990 rule once for 48 Hours and might do more 80s movies; Caddyshack is the favorite and watched yearly, Animal House was the most influential college movie with toga parties lasting 15 years, Belushi had the movie, TV and album triple crown, Kenny was a mythical, troubled behind-the-scenes figure of the 76-to-86 drug era, and National Lampoon, SNL and the Groundlings account for most 70s comedy.
Approx. transcript time · 00:57:53Read transcript
Running jokes: it's not your fault has been a joke between one host and his wife since they started dating that year, so seeing about a girl led to a new girl; another does Rounders' I knew it, I fucking knew it with Laramie; a joke about reciting the Saving Private Ryan soliloquy nightly; Good Will Hunting has a shitload of quotes, and the host never used it for his old Page 2 movie-quote awards gimmick, always saving it.
Approx. transcript time · 01:32:51Read transcript
Sign-off: thanks to the three guests and the sponsors; Varsity Blues, taped at Largo, runs next week.
Approx. transcript time · 01:39:26Read transcript

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