Good Will Hunting

Development

Actors and screenwriters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon met in their hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts, becoming friends at the age of eight and ten, respectively.^[9] Years later, Damon started writing Good Will Hunting as a final assignment for a playwriting class that he attended in his fifth year at Harvard, turning in a script of around 40 pages instead of the one-act play requested by his professor.^[10] Damon said that only the scene of Will and Sean's first meeting survived verbatim from the first script.^[10] He left Harvard after getting a role in the 1993 film Geronimo: An American Legend and joined Affleck in Los Angeles, bringing with him the script.^[10] Damon asked for Affleck's input, leading to the beginning of their long-standing creative collaboration with Good Will Hunting.^[9][10] In Los Angeles, the duo secured small roles in films and commercials while writing the script, sharing their earnings to sustain themselves.^[11]

Affleck and Damon were inspired by the resentful feelings that they experienced in their childhood toward students who came to Cambridge to attend Harvard and MIT, taking over the city uncaring of respecting its residents.^[12] However, Damon became conflicted after attending Harvard himself, seeing that the students were good-willed and witnessing first-hand the dichotomy between local and college life in Cambridge.^[12] In particular, the duo took inspiration from Affleck's father and his then-girlfriend, who both worked as janitors at Harvard.^[12] Initially, the script dealt with the life of a young self-taught physics genius from South Boston sought after by the NSA for his extraordinary abilities.^[10][13] In scenes inspired by Martin Brest's Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Midnight Run (1988), the young man and his friends lead the NSA agents in chases around the city,^[10] as Affleck and Damon felt they had to include an action subplot to make the film commercially appealing.^[12][14] The duo improvised some of the scenes and recorded them on tape while imitating Morgan Freeman and Robert De Niro, who they originally envisioned playing the roles of the professor and the therapist.^[10] Affleck and Damon shared the script with film producer Chris Moore, whom they both knew: Affleck had been working with him on the 1995 film Glory Daze, while Damon had met him in Cambridge.^[10] Moore liked Good Will Hunting and decided to help them find a studio to produce it.^[10]

The duo completed the script in 1994 and brought it to their talent agent, Patrick Whitesell, who recalled: "I read it over the weekend and I was blown away."^[10] However, Whitesell knew it would be "almost an impossible thing" to find a studio who would produce a movie written by and starring two unknown actors, with the only precedent known to him being the 1976 film Rocky, in which previously unknown actor Sylvester Stallone wrote the script and starred in the lead role.^[10] Affleck and Damon had not yet agreed neither on the title nor on the main character's name, which Damon thought should be Nate.^[15] The duo read a script named Good Will Hunting written by their high school friend Derrick Bridgeman, to whom they promised to give $10,000 in exchange for using the title if they managed to sell the script.^[15] Bridgeman later appeared in the film as a student in one of Lambeau's classes.^[15] Whitesell brought Good Will Hunting to the attention of several studio executives and information about the script spread to other Hollywood creative executives in the span of four days, initiating a bidding war.^[10] Castle Rock Entertainment ended up buying the script for $600,000,^[10] which Affleck and Damon split evenly, with $30,000 each going to their respective agents.^[11] Both Affleck and Damon spent all of the money in six months, after paying $160,000 in taxes, buying a Jeep Cherokee for $55,000 and renting a party house by the Hollywood Bowl for $5,000 a month.^[11]

Ben Affleck in 2008 (left) and Matt Damon (right) in 2007

Film director and Castle Rock founder Rob Reiner urged Affleck and Damon to focus on either the thriller aspect or the relationship between Will and Sean.^[10] In one meeting set up by Castle Rock, screenwriter William Goldman read the script and agreed with Reiner, telling Affleck and Damon to focus on Will and Sean.^[16][14] The duo picked the interpersonal relationship and removed 60 pages of the NSA storyline from the 120-to-130-page script, ending up rewriting it.^[10] Affleck and Damon wanted to direct and star in the film, but Castle Rock disagreed.^[10] The studio gave them limited time to find another company that would produce their version of Good Will Hunting and reimburse them the $600,000; if they failed, Castle Rock would oust Affleck and Damon from the production, going ahead to make the film with another creative team.^[10] Meanwhile, Castle Rock had them rewrite the script several times, but Affleck and Damon suspected studio executives had stopped reading it attentively; to test them, Affleck and Damon began inserting scenes of Will and Sean having oral sex incongruous to the script, which executives never mentioned in meetings.^[10]

Affleck and Damon went back to the studios that they had previously refused.^[10] Several executives set up meetings just to tell them that they would not buy the film.^[10] Affleck said that one such meeting with Interscope Communications founder Ted Field inspired him to write a scene of his 2012 film Argo.^[10] He asked Kevin Smith if he would direct the film, as Affleck, Damon and Smith had already been working together on the 1997 film Chasing Amy.^[10] Smith said he "wouldn't dare direct" it given its beauty, but brought the script to the attention of Miramax Films founder Harvey Weinstein.^[10] Weinstein liked it but asked them to remove scenes in which Will played chess and had sex with Sean.^[10] In 1995, he bought Good Will Hunting from Castle Rock for $1,000,000, sending the film into production with Affleck and Damon set to star.^[10][17]

Pre-production

After buying the rights from Castle Rock Entertainment, Miramax Films put the film into production. Several well-known filmmakers were originally considered to direct, including Mel Gibson and Michael Mann.^[18] Damon and Affleck chose Gus Van Sant, whose work on previous films, like Drugstore Cowboy, had left a favorable impression on the fledgling screenwriters. Miramax Films was persuaded and hired Van Sant to direct the film.^[19][20][21] Terrence Malick told Affleck and Damon over dinner that the film ought to end with Will's decision to follow his girlfriend Skylar to California, not them leaving together.^[22]

Filming

Filming took place between April and June 1997. Although the story is set in Boston, and many of the scenes were shot on location in the Greater Boston area, many of the interior shots were filmed at locations in Toronto, with the University of Toronto's St. George campus standing in for MIT and Harvard University. The classroom scenes were filmed at McLennan Physical Laboratories (of the University of Toronto) and Central Technical School. Harvard normally disallows filming on its property, but permitted limited filming by the project after intervention by Harvard alumnus John Lithgow.^[23] Likewise, only the exterior shots of Bunker Hill Community College were filmed in Boston; however, Sean's office was built in Toronto as an exact replica of one at the college.^[24]

The interior bar scenes set in "Southie" were shot on location at Woody's L Street Tavern.^[25] Meanwhile, the homes of Will (190 West 6th Street) and Sean (259 E Street), although portrayed as some distance apart in the film, are actually next door to each other on Bowen Street, the narrow street that Chuckie drives on to walk up to Will's back door.^[26][27]

The Bow and Arrow Pub, which was located at the corner of Bow Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, doubled as the exterior of the Harvard bar in which Will meets Skylar for the first time.^[28] The Baskin-Robbins/Dunkin' Donuts featured in the "How do you like them apples?" scene was next door to the pub at the time of the film's release.^[27] The Harvard Bar interior scenes were filmed at the Upfront Bar and Grill on Front St. E. in Toronto.^[29]

The Tasty, at the corner of JFK and Brattle Streets, was the scene of Will and Skylar's first kiss.^[30] The Au Bon Pain, where Will and Skylar discuss the former's photographic memory, was at the corner of Dunster Street and Mass Ave.^[31]

The Boston Public Garden bench on which Will and Sean sat for a scene in the film became a temporary shrine after Williams' death in 2014.^[32]

The film's end-credits roll over a continuous shot of the car Hunting is driving to California, with the songs "Miss Misery" and "Afternoon Delight" playing on the soundtrack. It was shot on a stretch of the Massachusetts Turnpike. The car eventually disappears down the road after passing under the bridge carrying the West Stockbridge Road.^[33]

The first blackboard problem

Near the start of the film, Will sets aside his mop to study a difficult problem posed by Lambeau on the blackboard.^[44] The problem has to do with intermediate-level graph theory, but Lambeau describes it as an advanced "Fourier system".

To answer the first part of the question, Will chalks up an adjacency matrix:

${\displaystyle A={\begin{pmatrix}0&1&0&1\\1&0&2&1\\0&2&0&0\\1&1&0&0\end{pmatrix}}.}$

To answer the second part, he determines the number of 3-step walks in the graph, and finds the third power matrix:

${\displaystyle A^{3}={\begin{pmatrix}2&7&2&3\\7&2&12&7\\2&12&0&2\\3&7&2&2\end{pmatrix}}.}$

The third and fourth parts of the question concern generating functions. The other characters are astounded that a janitor shows such facility with matrices.

The second blackboard problem

Lambeau subsequently poses a new challenge on the blackboard: state Cayley's formula and "draw all the homeomorphically irreducible trees with ${\displaystyle n=10}$". Will writes eight of the ten trees correctly before Lambeau interrupts.^{[45][unreliable source?]}

Box office

In the film's opening weekend in limited release, it grossed $272,912. When it opened nationwide in January 1998, it grossed $10,261,471 for the weekend. It went on to gross $138,433,435 in the United States and Canada, surpassing Pulp Fiction as Miramax's highest grossing film in that market at the time.^[46] It grossed $225,933,435 worldwide.^[3]

Critical response

Good Will Hunting received widespread acclaim from critics. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97%, based on 91 reviews, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "It follows a predictable narrative arc, but Good Will Hunting adds enough quirks to the journey – and is loaded with enough powerful performances – that it remains an entertaining, emotionally rich drama."^[47] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[48] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on a scale of A+ to F.^[49]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, writing that while the story is "predictable", it is "the individual moments, not the payoff, that make it so effective".^[50]

Duane Byrge of The Hollywood Reporter praised the performances of the cast, writing, "The acting is brilliant overall, with special praise to Matt Damon for his ragingly tender portrayal of the boy cursed with genius."^[51]

Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle was equally positive, writing, "The glow goes well beyond a radiant performance by Matt Damon ... Intimate, heartfelt and wickedly funny, it's a movie whose impact lingers."^[52]

Owen Gleiberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a "B", stating, "Good Will Hunting is stuffed – indeed, overstuffed – with heart, soul, audacity, and blarney. You may not believe a minute of it, but you don't necessarily want to stop watching." He also noted Damon's and Williams' chemistry, describing it as "a quicksilver intercepting each other's thoughts".^[53]

Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the screenplay "smart and touching", and praised Van Sant for directing with "style, shrewdness and clarity". She also complimented the production design and cinematography, which were able to effortlessly move the viewer from "classroom to dorm room to neighborhood bar", in a small setting.^[54]

Quentin Curtis of The Daily Telegraph opined that Williams' performance brought "sharpness and tenderness", calling the film a "crowd-pleaser, with bags of charm to spare. It doesn't bear thinking too much about its message ... Damon and Affleck's writing has real wit and vigour, and some depth."^[55]

Andrew O'Hehir of Salon stated that despite the "enjoyable characters", he thought that the film was somewhat superficial, writing, "there isn't a whole lot of movie to take home with you ... many will wake the next morning wondering why, with all that talent on hand, it amounts to so little in the end."^[56]

Writing for the BBC, Nev Pierce gave the film four stars out of five, describing it as "touching, without being sentimental", although he felt that some scenes were "odd lapses into self-help speak".^[57]

Emanuel Levy of Variety called the film a "beautifully realized tale ... engaging and often quite touching". He felt that the film's visual style showcased Van Sant's talent, but the plot was "quite predictable".^[58]

Academic response

Several scholars have examined the role of class, religion and the cultural geography of Boston in the film. Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera observed that the residual Catholic–Protestant tensions in Boston are an important backdrop in the film, as Irish Catholics from Southie are aligned against ostensibly Protestant characters who are affiliated with Harvard and MIT.^[59] Emmett Winn has argued that character interactions show class conflict and stunted social mobility,^[60] while, similarly, David Lipset commented that class inequality is a driving subtext.^[61]