Affleck and Hauser were cast over Vince Vaughn, the runner-up for both parts: he lost to Affleck first and was going to get the Hauser part until Linklater worried he looked too much like Affleck and the two would be confused.
Renee Zellweger auditioned for Parker Posey's part and did not get it; Claire Danes did not get Sabrina because she looked too young, though she is a better actor than the woman who got the role; Ashley Judd did not get Jodie and two years later played Val Kilmer's wife in Heat.
Mitch Kramer's performance; his pitching, which needed a cutaway; Wooderson's interest in high school girls; the hazing and bullying; the lack of accent work beyond McConaughey
Number one is Mitch Kramer, the biggest flaw in the movie: a bad, miscast performance, which leads to his pitching, where a cutaway was needed and makes Freddie Prinze in Summer Catch look like 1999 Pedro Martinez; even in the cutaway he releases the ball beside his neck as if he had a herniated disc.
Texas baseball could not have him as its innings eater; Everybody Wants Some (transcribed as Everybody Wants Him) is read as Linklater's reaction to botching the Mitch Kramer casting, since its players looked like real ballplayers, maybe the most credible baseball movie ever, including the mustached one, Tyler Hetchling (as transcribed) from Teen Wolf, who looks like Mike Trout.
A counterpoint: 70s and 80s ballplayers were not athletes like Bryce Harper or Mike Trout, and Houston pitcher Mike Scott, a Cy Young winner, looked like a science teacher; the reply is that Scott was a cheater who tried to cheat the Mets out of the 1986 World Series.
The counter to the counterpoint: Criterion making-of footage of Wiley Wiggins having a catch with Richard Linklater is one of the saddest things, since he cannot catch from three feet away; research says he claimed he had played baseball, could not, and they edited around it, which raises what Mitch Kramer brought to the movie versus a 12- or 13-year-old River Phoenix or another good child actor of 1993.
The defense: even as a bad actor he has something, since eighth grade is awkward and his lack of confidence and signature nose-and-face touching read as nervousness, so the bad acting works in his favor; the rebuttal is that River Phoenix could have done that, and the what-if game is mocked with James Dean and the Doors Val Kilmer as Mitch Kramer.
Kristen Hinojosa (as transcribed), who plays Sabrina, the other eighth-grade girl, is liked for playing it low-key in a movie full of big performances; Mitch needed to be cooler and to be seen pitching, since he is set up as the Randy Pink Floyd of four years later, and Pink at least carried himself like a quarterback.
A tangent assigns football positions: Don a defensive end, linebacker or maybe safety, Cole Hauser clearly the best player and a left tackle or defensive end captain, Mel on defense, O'Banion the best player on the defense and a good blocker, Wooderson a tailback or, given his key-catching skills, a Jerry Rice wideout in a pre-West Coast ground-and-pound offense, and Pink a scrambling quarterback like Manziel, a young Jim Zorin (as transcribed) or Tarkenton rather than Stabler.
The disagreement over Mitch Kramer is left standing: one side calls the defense the wrong opinion, the other says it is okay that he is a bad actor, something they would say in almost no other case.
Wooderson's interest in high school girls, including the implied statutory issue, has not aged well and he may be a predator; the clip of him asking a freshman about this year's crop of girls and his line about getting older while they stay the same age is played.
The hazing and bullying have also not aged well.
Not a lot has aged badly: in the version of the country we live in now none of this is acceptable and society has changed, but as a period piece the costumes, music and performances hold up, it is full of stars and not riddled with problems. — Sean Fennessey
When Mitch Kramer is raised again, Kramer's pitching is conceded as bad, and the Wiggins catch footage is now wanted; a side trip into the 1986 World Series box set, which includes the Astros-Mets NLCS games six and seven and Scott's chicanery, follows.
Cole Hauser is not a convincing Texan, few in the cast were and it did not matter, but there is little accent work besides McConaughey, which may be what has aged worst.
The whole movie is a rewatchable scene and is hard to separate into candidates, since it is never clear what time it is until daylight arrives at the very end; the five picks are scenes you could identify from a single picture, knowing the music and exactly what happens.
Wooderson going to the pool hall in slow motion to Bob Dylan's Hurricane is a great four minutes, a great 70s hang, the entire movie cracked into one thing, and may already be the answer.
The mailbox-smashing drive, with Don Dawson laughing in the front seat and the angry hillbilly pulling a 9mm on them, recalls a host's own college Halloween runs smashing pumpkins in a rich part of Worcester; people were idiotic in the 70s and 80s.
The paint dumped on O'Banion is a sting operation in which the ninth-grade girls get a little retribution; it is one of Affleck's most committed performances, he gets in his car and is never seen again, and together with Mallrats it suggested he would play a dipshit in every movie before Batman and Armageddon.
Adam Goldberg's character getting beaten up is enjoyed as a very realistic fight: he put thought into it and out-thought himself, and the other guy just gets him; Cole Hauser's character shoves people back to let it go on until Pink comes in with McConaughey and stops it.
The ending is probably the best two minutes of the movie: four people who would not have been together eight hours earlier end up in one car listening to Slow Ride as the road rolls toward nowhere over an imaginary hill, after the wind-down of everyone going home, Wiley Wiggins's character caught by his mom, Sabrina getting a kiss from Anthony Rapp's character, and Pink admitting to Don that football is not for him.
The entrance to the Emporium is settled on as the pick.
Asked first which song would soundtrack a slow-motion walk into a high school bar or party, picks Can I Live by Black Rob. — Sean Fennessey
The other answer is Cash Rules Everything Around Me by Wu Tang, so both picks are hip-hop songs from kids of the 90s, obsessed with rap, though rock options like Whole Lotta Rosie and Houses of the Holy are floated; a middle school class spent two years reciting Wu Tang skits; one host's own pick would have been L.A. Woman by The Doors, which plays in the room, and a Doors Rewatchables is dangled to one host, who is accused of begging for it and told to name the day and time.
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?
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.
"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"
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
