Original title Shoeless Joe, book working title Dreamfield, changed after test audiences; the voice's identity unknown, rumored Ed Harris; Damon and Affleck as Fenway extras; filming sped up for Costner's Revenge; the corn outgrew Costner; the Lansing and Ameskamp farms, 65,000 annual visitors, sold in 2011 for about $5.4 million; 1,500 volunteers' headlights in the final shot; Moonlight Graham's real game was June 1905; the line-drive reaction was genuine; James Earl Jones hates baseball; deleted scenes; George W. Bush's favorite film; AFI quote number 39; W.P. Kinsella bored on set; Ray Kinsella named for Salinger characters; Don Buford and USC coaches as advisers
Behind on time, the research is zipped through: the original title was Shoeless Joe, the book's working title Dreamfield, and test audiences thought Shoeless Joe was about a homeless person; nobody knows who the voice was, the rumor is Ed Harris, one host is in the Liotta camp, but Liotta hasn't even seen the movie.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were legendarily extras at Fenway; filming began in 88 and was sped up because Costner had to shoot Revenge; the corn grew taller than Costner so they put boxes out for him to stand on.
Scenes were shot on Don Lansing's property and the baseball scenes on neighbor Al Amiskamp (as transcribed), who replanted corn while Lansing kept the field as a tourist destination without charging admission, only souvenirs; 65,000 visitors a year by the 20th anniversary; sold in 2011 for a believed $5.4 million, so Don Lansing's checkbook won.
The final shot used 1,500 volunteers flashing high beams; the real Moonlight Graham played one game in June 1905, not 1922; Shoeless Joe and Ty Cobb really were friends; the line drive knocking over the bag of balls was real and unplanned, Costner's reaction genuine and in character; James Earl Jones hates baseball yet did this and The Sandlot; deleted scenes include Ray's hearing test, buying equipment, getting lost on the way to Fenway, and watching batting practice with Terrence.
George W. Bush named it his favorite film; if you build it, he will come was voted the number 39 movie quote by AFI; W.P. Kinsella was on set a lot and found it incredibly boring, though his daughter had a romance with Ray Liotta.
Ray Kinsella is not named for the author but for two Salinger characters, Richard Kinsella in Catcher in the Rye and a Ray Kinsella in a 1941 story; Don Buford, the Oriole and father of Damon, coached the actors, and USC coaches were brought in to advise.
The Mark Ruffalo category is now the Saul Rubinick (as transcribed), renamed on the True Romance podcast, and Zach, absent last time, hears the new name live for the first time.
Delivers the renamed award's line, 'I treated you like a son and you stabbed me in the heart.' — Chris Ryan
Affleck is the guess and then one host's vote: he turns it up nine notches when the paint goes on him, and his furious screaming clip is played; another view is that it is a bit in the movie that O'Banion takes this stuff so seriously, he played it correctly and should not be blamed.
Ben Affleck squealing like a pig is one of the most disturbing sounds in modern times and very committed; squeal-like-a-pig, the Deliverance reference to Ned Beatty's assault, was a big 80s and 90s joke that nobody under 30 in the Ringer office would recognize now, an example of a movie humor bit dying with time.
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.
Opening nominations are McConaughey, the 70s music, the cars, the cast and the high school hierarchy, with others invited to add their own.
The limited temporal narrative structure, with everything taking place over one day, never gets old and feels like a full day, recalling how the social part of a school day started after the last class, ran through practice or a game and then seven to ten hours of hanging out; the action is the juice.
It is hard not to say the cast: McConaughey's first movie, Affleck, a golden generation, plus indelible characters for people who went on to have no careers; even though there was no tape on McConaughey in 1993, like drafting a player with no tape, he reads as a movie star, having done only one Miller Lite commercial.
Around 1996, with Lone Star and A Time to Kill, McConaughey was pushed as a star on Premier and Vanity Fair covers, and that is when the film's cult-classic status grew because people saw him as Wooderson; in a making-of documentary he recounts being nobody on the Friday and famous, stopped on the street, by the Monday after A Time to Kill opened.
A Time to Kill is far less remembered than Dazed and Confused, which is a more generationally beloved movie, though it is defended as good; Grisham was the MCU of the era, with real excitement for The Firm and The Client.
The answer offered is the combination of McConaughey and the cast, with the pleasure of seeing McConaughey at that point of his career.
Late additions: count how many times Don gets into a car, about 15, since apart from two school scenes he is in a car the whole time; Tim Lincecum looking like an adult Mitch Kramer became a running joke through the 2000s; and the nerds' theory in the car that President Ford's football concussions were affecting the economy now reads as a CTE subplot, which Chevy Chase's portrayal would support.
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.
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
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.
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.
In ten or eleven Rewatchables the show has never had two stars pitted against each other, literally and figuratively, since Heat, where Pacino was named the winner; in the spirit of overacting one host goes Nick Cage.
Picks John Woo, since this was really the last time he got to make a heat-rock Hollywood movie before going off the rails. — Jason Concepcion
A tangent on Woo's later Paycheck with Ben Affleck, which nobody can quite summarize, filed with Reindeer Games among the Affleck films of six years that had the title first and the script later.
After the tangent someone says they also think Cage won the movie, which may be the first Cage voter restating rather than a new vote; the audience is asked and answers Cage in what is called a unanimous decision; it was a tough podcast for Travolta, who got beat up and lost in a lot of ways, plus the love handles in the movie.
