Ben Affleck names the director who changed cinema: “Who is this guy, who made this?”
After the release of Good Will Hunting, many people were left wondering how two fresh-faced writers managed to win their first Oscar at the age of just 25 years old. With Gus Van Sant directing the project and Robin Williams starring, the dynamic duo managed to pull off a remarkable feat with barely any experience under their belt, with the film being their first foray into the world of screenwriting and launching them to dizzying new heights in Hollywood.
Damon initially wrote it for his final playwriting assignment at Harvard University, first coming in at just 40 pages before turning it into a full-length feature screenplay with Affleck. Its emotional power continues to resonate with audiences today, and it remains one of the most influential independent films of the ’90s. While the script was undoubtedly key to the film’s success, Affleck credited one director in particular as a major influence on their vision, inspired by their low-budget approach.
Good Will Hunting was made on a modest budget of $10million dollars, which in the grand scheme of things is relatively high compared to other low-budget projects from this decade. The film was one of the definitive success stories for Miramax, the production company headed by the Weinstein brothers, whose philosophy was founded on the idea of creating films in the middle ground between independent and blockbuster films, attempting to create more of a middle ground in Hollywood.
Despite the fact that Affleck and Damon had limited experience in the industry and even less within the world of screenwriting, the actors found themselves spurred on by the success story of Quentin Tarantino and his 1992 film Reservoir Dogs.
When discussing this, Affleck said, “Reservoir Dogs showed what you could do with very little—dialogue, acting, tension. You never saw much of the robbery itself. And it was just incredible writing. You realized you didn’t need to see guys with explosives and shaped charges, hanging from wires, to feel the tension and to feel the way that the heist was really about man’s primal nature. And obviously it was the movie that made everybody go, ‘Who is this guy, who made this movie?; Quentin Tarantino changed movies. He made it for a million dollars”.
Affleck added: “In fact, Matt Damon and I talked about Reservoir Dogs a lot when we were writing Goodwill Hunting, because we thought, ‘OK, we’ll write the movie really small and contained, and find somebody like Harvey Keitel, and get it financed’ the way we had heard Quentin had done”.
Tarantino was a crucial figure in the rise of independent filmmaking in the ‘90’s, with many people attributing the success of Pulp Fiction to the beginning of a new era in Hollywood in which more daring and creative projects began to find traction and work their way into mainstream consciousness. Good Will Hunting managed to achieve a similar feat, with the film earning nearly $250m at the box office and showing studio executives that these types of stories could be both artistically and commercially successful.
