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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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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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1:09:29

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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1:20:25

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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1:37:32

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.
Podcast choices
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Robin Williams
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Matt Damon
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