When Matt Damon and Ben Affleck pitched the screenplay for Good Will Hunting, they were essentially unknowns in the movie business. Both had been acting for several years, but neither was getting tapped for the big roles they dreamed of doing.
Affleck and Damon grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, together, and they decided to write their own project to star in. It became a hit and changed their lives.
Good Will Hunting premiered in Los Angeles, California, on December 5, 1997, and soon made waves nationwide.
The movie starred Damon as Will Hunting, a South Boston school janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was a quiet math genius. Affleck played Chuckie Sullivan, Hunting’s loyal best friend.
Hunting ends up in legal trouble, and a professor arranges for a deal that keeps him out of jail as long as he sees a therapist. The therapist is Sean Maguire, played by Robin Williams, in a role that was a significant departure for him.
Williams had been acting for years before signing on to Good Will Hunting. While he had a mix of roles, at the time, he was probably best known for his goofy, comedic character on Mork & Mindy. Playing the therapist in Good Will Hunting allowed Williams to tackle a meatier role, and he knocked it out of the park.
As Boston Magazine shared in 2013, Good Will Hunting grossed $226 million worldwide. It earned nine Academy Award nominations and won two. Damon and Affleck won for Best Screenplay, and Williams won for Best Supporting Actor.
Damon began the script for Good Will Hunting as part of an elective class at Harvard. He was in his fifth year, and the professor tasked the students with writing a one-act play. Damon went a different direction.
When he handed in his project, he told his professor, “Look, I might have failed your class, but it is the first act of something longer.” Of course, he was right.
Damon landed a role in Geronimo: An American Legend and slept on Affleck’s floor in Los Angeles. He took his script for Good Will Hunting with him and asked Affleck to help him develop it. The finished product looked a lot different than what Damon first turned in for his class.
While they worked on writing the screenplay, Damon said, “It was the first thing we woke up thinking about and the last thing we thought about before going to bed.”
Producer Chris Moore had gotten to know Damon and Affleck, and he read the script. “I read it and was like, ‘This is one of the best scripts I have ever read, and I would love to produce it.'”
Affleck and Damon were so green in the industry that they had no idea that they likely wouldn’t be taken seriously regarding their script. However, ultimately, their experience was different because the script was just that good.
All these years later, Good Will Hunting is still considered a stellar movie. It sits at number 133 on the Rotten Tomatoes list of the 300 highest-rated movies of all time, ranking higher than other iconic movies such as Goodfellas and The Silence of the Lambs.
