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Good Will Hunting
original film poster
Directed by	Gus Van Sant
Produced by	Lawrence Bender
Written by	Matt Damon Ben Affleck
Starring	Robin Williams Matt Damon Ben Affleck Minnie Driver Stellan Skarsgård
Music by	Danny Elfman Elliott Smith
Cinematography	Jean-Yves Escoffier
Editing by	Pietro Scalia
Distributed by	Miramax (USA)
Release date(s)	December 5, 1997
Running time	126 min.
Language	English
Budget	$10,000,000
IMDb profile

Good Will Hunting is a 1997 film directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who both star in the film. Set in Boston, Massachusetts, it tells the story of Will Hunting (Damon), a troubled prodigy and autodidact who works as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, despite the fact that his knowledge of and facility with higher mathematics far outstrips that of anyone in the university. Will must learn to overcome his deep fear of abandonment in order to learn how to trust and love the people who care about him. Good Will Hunting is the story of a young man and his struggle with both himself and personal relationships, trying to work through his problems so that he can open up to others, and begin putting his immeasurable intellectual potential to work.

Contents 1 Production 2 Plot 3 Cast 4 Reception 4.1 Box office 5 Soundtrack 6 Awards 6.1 Wins 6.2 Nominations 7 References 8 External links

Affleck and Damon originally wrote the screenplay as a thriller: Young man in the rough-and-tumble streets of South Boston, who possesses a superior intelligence, is targeted by the FBI to become a G-Man. Castle Rock Entertainment president Rob Reiner later urged them to drop the thriller aspect of the story and to focus the relationship between Will Hunting (Damon) and his psychologist (Williams). At Reiner's request, noted screenwriter William Goldman read the script and further suggested that the film's climax ought to be Will's decision to follow his girlfriend Skylar (Driver) to California. Goldman has denied widely-spread rumors that he wrote Good Will Hunting or acted as a script doctor.^[1]

Be that as it may, there are passages in the film of startling insight and maturity for such then-youthful screenwriters as Affleck and Damon, and suspicion lingers over their true authorship. One such scene involves a park-bench chat between Sean and Will in which Sean waxes lyrical about what it means to be "totally vulnerable" within a relationship.

Castle Rock bought the script for $675,000 against $775,000, meaning that Affleck and Damon would stand to earn an additional $100,000 if the film was produced and they retained sole writing credit. However, studios balked at the idea of Affleck and Damon in the lead roles. While Damon and Affleck were meeting at Castle Rock, the latter was working with Kevin Smith on Mallrats and both of them in Chasing Amy ^[2]. Seeing that Affleck and Damon were having trouble with Castle Rock, Smith and his producer partner Scott Mosier brought the script to Miramax which eventually caused the two to receive co-executive producer credits for Hunting. The script was put into turnaround, and Miramax bought the rights from Castle Rock.

After buying the rights from Castle Rock, Miramax gave the green light to put the film into production. While several well-known filmmakers were originally considered to direct, including Kevin Smith, Mel Gibson, Michael Mann and Steven Soderbergh, Affleck and Damon's choice for the job was Gus Van Sant, whose work in previous films like Drugstore Cowboy (1989) had left a favorable impression on the fledgling screenwriters. Miramax was persuaded and hired Van Sant to direct the film.

Good Will Hunting was filmed on location in the Greater Boston area and Toronto over five months in 1996. Although the story is set in Boston, much of the film was shot at locations in Toronto, with the University of Toronto standing in for MIT and Harvard, and the classroom scenes filmed at McLennan Physical Laboratories and Central Technical School. The interior bar scenes set in South Boston ("Southie") were faithful re-creations that were also shot mostly in Toronto, although the exteriors were shot on location. The cast engaged in considerable improvisation in rehearsals; Robin Williams, Casey Affleck and Minnie Driver each made significant contributions to their characters. Robin Williams' last line in the film, as well as the therapy scene in which he talks about his character's wife's little idiosyncracies, were both ad-libbed. The therapy scene took everyone by surprise. According to Damon's voice-over narration in the dvd version of the movie this caused "Johnny" the cameraman to laugh so hard that the camera's POV can actually be seen moving up and down slightly as it shows Damon breaking character by also laughing so hard.

Director Gus Van Sant says in the dvd voice-over that, had he known just how successful the movie was going to be, he would have left at least a couple of edited scenes intact that were cut purely for considerations of length. One of these involves Skylar's visit to Chuckie in hopes of shedding light on some of Will's eccentricities that Will himself is unwilling to discuss.

Filming locations

• The location of the footage during the closing credits is along the Massachusetts Turnpike in West Stockbridge, heading west towards the New York border, and, eventually, California. When the car passes under a bridge, the sign on the bridge shows that it is Pittsfield Road in West Stockbridge, which is also Route 41, and the scene is filmed in the westbound lanes because a sign announces the coming of a "Toll Plaza" east of the New York state border.

--> The film is dedicated to the memory of poet Allen Ginsberg and writer William S. Burroughs, who both died in 1997.

Though Will Hunting (Damon) has genius-level intelligence (such as a talent for memorizing facts and an intuitive ability to prove sophisticated mathematical theorems), he works as a janitor at MIT and lives alone in a sparsely furnished apartment in an impoverished South Boston neighborhood. An abused foster child, he subconsciously blames himself for his unhappy upbringing and turns this self-loathing into a form of self-sabotage in both his professional and emotional lives. Hence he is unable to maintain either a steady job or a steady romantic relationship.

One day, Will solves a difficult graduate-level math problem that Professor Gerald Lambeau (Skaarsgard), a Fields Medalist and combinatorialist, left on a chalkboard as a challenge to his students, hoping someone might solve the problem by the semester's end. Everyone at MIT wonders who solved it, and Lambeau puts another problem on the board -- one that took him and his colleagues two years to prove. Will is discovered in the act of solving the problem, and Lambeau initially thinks that Will is vandalizing the board and chases him away. When Will turns out to have solved it correctly, Lambeau tries to track Will down. Meanwhile, Will attacks a youth who had bullied him 15 years ago in kindergarten, and he now faces imprisonment after kneeing a police officer in the groin who was responding to the fracas. Realizing Will might have the potential to be as great a mathematician as the legendary Srinivasa Ramanujan, Lambeau goes to Will's trial and intervenes on his behalf, offering him a choice: either Will can go to jail, or he can be released into Lambeau's personal supervision, where he must study mathematics and see a therapist as well. Will chooses the latter even though he seems to believe that he does not need therapy.

Five psychologists fail to connect with Will. Lambeau calls on psychologist Sean Maguire (Williams), an old friend of his who grew up in the same neighborhood as Will. Sean is able to connect with Will and get past his hostile, sarcastic defense mechanisms. Will is particularly struck when Sean tells him how he gave up his ticket to see the Red Sox in the 1975 World Series (thus missing Carlton Fisk's famous home run in Game 6) to meet and spend time with a stranger in a bar who would later become his wife. This encourages Will to try to establish a relationship with Skylar (Driver), a young woman he met at a Harvard bar.

Meanwhile, Lambeau pushes Will so hard to excel that Will eventually refuses to go to the job interviews that Lambeau arranged for him for positions that might prove challenging even to his immense talents. Lambeau and Sean also squabble about Will's future. Will's accidental witnessing of this furious argument somehow acts as a catalyst for his decision to enter a deeper level of trust and sharing with Sean. He has apparently realized from this event that the situation is a little more complex than Will vs. The World. He sees that these mentors and big brother/father figures, rather than twirling their moustaches while secretly hatching conspiracies together to turn him into their little dancing puppet, are every bit as human and fallible and conflicted as he is.

Skylar asks Will to move to California with her, where she will begin medical school at Stanford University. Will panics at the thought of so much change and commitment. Skylar's expression of support is further perceived as patronizing and triggers a tantrum in which Will storms out of the dorm while still in a state of undress. He shrugs off the work he's doing for Lambeau as "a joke", even though Lambeau is incapable of solving some of these theorems and admittedly envies Will. Lambeau begs Will not to throw it all away, but Will walks out on him.

Sean points out that Will is so adept at anticipating failure in his romantic relationships that he either allows them to fizzle out or deliberately bails in order to avoid the risk of future emotional pain. When Will then provides a whimsical reply to Sean's very serious query of what he wants to do with his life Sean simply shows him the door. When Will further tells his best friend Chuckie that he wants to work as a laborer in Boston for the rest of his life, Chuckie (Ben Affleck) takes it as an "insult" and tells Will that he's wasting his potential and that Chuckie's own recurring wish is to knock on Will's door early one morning on the way to work and find that he just isn't there.

Will goes to another therapy session, where he and Sean share that they were both victims of child abuse. At first Will is defensive and resentful at Sean's repeated reassurances that "It's not your fault", but he eventually breaks down in tearful acknowledgement. Finally, after much self-reflection, Will decides to cease being a victim of his own inner demons and to take charge of his life. When his buddies present him with a rebuilt car for his 21st birthday he decides to go to California to live with Skylar, setting aside his lucrative corporate and government job offers. He leaves a brief note for Sean explaining what he's doing, using one of Sean's own quips, "I had to go see about a girl." Sean also leaves to travel the world, though not before reconciling with Lambeau. The movie ends as Chuckie poignantly discovers, in fulfillment of his own long-standing wish, that Will's apartment has been vacated. Will is then shown beginning his life-affirming drive to California for a new beginning with Skylar and a leap into the Great Unknown.

Actor	Role
Matt Damon	Will Hunting
Robin Williams	Sean Maguire
Ben Affleck	Chuckie Sullivan
Stellan Skarsgård	Gerald Lambeau
Minnie Driver	Skylar
Casey Affleck	Morgan O'Mally
Cole Hauser	Billy McBride
John Mighton	Tom

Good Will Hunting received many positive reviews from film critics: It has a 96% "Fresh" rating according to film review compilation website Rotten Tomatoes.^[3], and was nominated for many awards (see below).

According to the box office reports, Good Will Hunting grossed $225 million internationally (twenty-two times the film's budget). Although the film's limited release at the end of 1997 (traditional for likely Oscar candidates) merely hinted at its future success, the film caught on thanks to good reviews and a strong reception by the American public. The film received international praise, in part due to the acting of Robin Williams and Matt Damon, both of whom were nominated for Academy Awards for the film, with Williams winning.

Released in US: December 5, 1997 (limited), January 9, 1998 (wide)
Opening Weekend: $272,912 (limited), $10,261,471 (wide)
Studio: Miramax
Total US Gross: $138,433,435
Production Budget: $10,000,000
Rentals: $53,988,000
Worldwide Gross: $225,900,000

The film soundtrack was released on December 2, 1997.

1. "Between the Bars" (Orchestral) - by Elliott Smith
2. "As the Rain" - by Jeb Loy Nichols
3. "Angeles" - by Elliott Smith
4. "No Name #3" - by Elliott Smith
5. "Fisherman's Blues" - by The Waterboys
6. "Why Do I Lie?" - by Luscious Jackson
7. "Will Hunting (Main Titles)" - by Danny Elfman & Steve Bartek
8. "Between the Bars" - by Elliott Smith
9. "Say Yes" - by Elliott Smith
10. "Baker Street" - by Gerry Rafferty
11. "Somebody's Baby" - by Andru Donalds
12. "Boys Better" - by The Dandy Warhols
13. "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" - by Al Green
14. "Miss Misery" - by Elliott Smith
15. "Weepy Donuts" - by Danny Elfman & Steve Bartek

"Miss Misery" was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but lost to "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic.

While Danny Elfman's score was nominated for an Oscar, only two cues appear on the film's soundtrack release. Elfman's "Weepy Donuts" was used on NBC's Today Show on September 11, 2006, while Matt Lauer spoke during the opening credits.

Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" is also featured in the closing credits after "Miss Misery" but does not appear on the soundtrack.

• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor – Robin Williams
• Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay - Matt Damon & Ben Affleck
• Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture - Matt Damon & Ben Affleck

• Academy Award for Best Picture
• Academy Award for Best Actor - Matt Damon
• Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress - Minnie Driver
• Academy Award for Directing - Gus Van Sant
• Academy Award for Best Song – Elliott Smith (song "Miss Misery")
• Academy Award for Original Music Score - Danny Elfman
• Academy Award for Film Editing - Pietro Scalia
• Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama
• Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actor - Drama - Matt Damon
• Golden Globe Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture - Robin Williams
• Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures - Gus Van Sant
• Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen - Matt Damon & Ben Affleck

• Good Will Hunting. at the Internet Movie Database
• Good Will Hunting at Rotten Tomatoes
• Screen it.com
• Early script by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (This script differs slightly from the movie.)
• Box Office Mojo site about movie's theactrical release
• Mathematics in the movie "Good Will Hunting" (This site has a Maple worksheet that is accessible after registration.)
• The Mathematics in the Cinema Movie "Good Will Hunting" (This site uses Maple to solve several of the problems seen in the movie.)

v • d • e Films by Gus Van Sant

Mala Noche • Drugstore Cowboy • My Own Private Idaho • Even Cowgirls Get the Blues • To Die For • Good Will Hunting • Psycho • Finding Forrester • Gerry • Elephant • Last Days • Paranoid Park Shorts: The Discipline Of D.E. • Ken Death Gets Out Of Jail • My New Friend • Five Ways To Kill Yourself • Thanksgiving Prayer • Four Boys In A Volvo • Ballad Of The Skeletons • Paris, je t'aime (segment "Le Marais") • Chacun Son Cinéma