Why Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote ‘Good Will Hunting’
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Matt Damon explains why they don’t make movies like they used to
A multifaceted Hollywood talent, the screenwriter and actor Matt Damon is one of the most beloved celebrities in the modern industry, known for his iconic performances in such movies as Saving Private Ryan, Good Will Hunting and The Bourne Ultimatum. Flourishing in the business for over 30 years, Damon has been lucky enough to collaborate with the likes of Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers, among many others.
Even after decades in the industry, the actor’s most beloved role may well be one of his earliest, appearing in the 1997 Gus Van Sant drama Good Will Hunting, for which he also co-wrote the screenplay with Ben Affleck. Remembered as one of the most iconic movies of the 1990s, Good Will Hunting represents the kind of movie that Hollywood was known for, with the industry having considerably changed since this time.
Damon recognises this shift, too, revealing his thoughts about the changing shape of the industry on the popular Hot Ones series on YouTube, in which celebrities are interviewed whilst consuming chicken wings that steadily increase in Scoville units.
Around the halfway mark of their heated conversation, the presenter, Sean Evans, asks Damon to explain how the production of movies has changed since the ‘90s, explaining that many viewers think to themselves, “They’re not making movies for me anymore”.
Damon’s response is remarkably candid, revealing some fascinating truths about how the industry has changed since the turn of the new millennium. “So what happened was the DVD was a huge part of our business, of our revenue stream,” Damon stated, adding, “Technology has just made that obsolete, and so the movies that we used to make you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theatre because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release”.
In effect, the loss of DVD sales has therefore dramatically reduced the maximum amount of profit any given film can make, making box-office profits the be-all and end-all of a movie’s success. As Damon further explained, “It would be like reopening the movie almost, and when that went away, that changed the type of movies that we could make”.
The actor contextualises this within one of his own movies, namely the 2013 Steven Soderbergh release, Behind the Candelabra, a small biographical drama following the life of megastar singer Liberace (Michael Douglas) and his young lover Scott Thorson (Damon).
“I talked to a studio executive who explained it was a 25 million dollar movie,” Damon said of the 2013 release, adding: “I would have to put that much into print and advertising (P&A) to market it… so I’d have to put that in P&A, so now I’m in 50 million dollars. I have to split everything I get with the exhibitor right the people who own the movie theatres, so I would have to make a hundred million dollars before I got into profit, and the idea of making a hundred million dollars on a story about this love affair between these two people…that’s suddenly a massive gamble”.
Such explains why smaller dramas are not made in Hollywood with the same confidence as they were in the ‘90s, with a lot at risk for producers and movie studios. In recent years, as streaming services have looked to back original talent, such films have returned to the small screen, but we’re still a far way off from the creativity and ingenuity that blossomed in the movie industry before the 2000s.
