The person Ben Affleck forgot to thank both times he won an Oscar: “Forgot again”
It’s really easy to fumble on the smallest and most insignificant of stages. We mutter, we stammer, we garble lines. Our jokes bomb. It happens to those afflicted with stage fright and it happens to consummate performers who spend most of their lives with a camera in front of their face, their every move and misstep rigorously recorded. Not even an A-Lister like Ben Affleck is immune to this.
In a chat with Entertainment Weekly, Ben Affleck spins an elegiac yarn about forgetting his friend, Kevin Smith. Not once, but twice. His friend, Kevin Smith, who he claims ‘saved’ the Academy Award-winning movie Good Will Hunting.
It was nominated for nine and won two–one for ‘Best Screenplay’ and another for dearly departed Robin Williams as ‘Best Supporting Actor’. The film is about a troubled genius failing to live up to his potential and resistant to help or support of any kind. Robin Williams plays a therapist who helps him overcome his resistance to living the life that he was born to have. Matt Damon does a silly Boston accent and Minnie Driver has a meltdown.
“Kevin also saved Good Will Hunting,” Affleck explained. “This is not a small side note. He is the reason Good Will Hunting got made. We were dead in the water, all the offers had evaporated. I promised him I would thank him if we ever got an Oscar and promptly forgot. And then I told him, ‘If I ever win again I swear to God I’m going to thank you.’ Forgot again.”
It’s a convoluted story behind Kevin Smith’s involvement with the production of Good Will Hunting. Affleck had starred in Smith’s Mallrats and Chasing Amy and they were old friends. Affleck wrote the screenplay that would become Good Will Hunting with his heterosexual life partner, Matt Damon, but they couldn’t find a home for it and the rights were about to revert to Castle Rock Entertainment.
A studio which had purchased it, but didn’t want to make it. Smith intervened and gave it to Harvey Weinstein. The less said about that the better, but the film got made in the end. Weinstein and his friends with gardening shears took out some scenes, but it remained more or less intact and went into production.
This isn’t the first time an actor has embarrassed themselves at an awards ceremony. Halle Berry talked for too long. Al Pacino announced the winner before reading the nominees. You may be aware that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, if you caught that news story. And you did.
At the end of the day, Affleck remains close friends with Damon and Smith. And Ben Affleck did write a nice introduction to the trade paperback of Kevin Smith’s run on Marvel Comics’ Daredevil, though. Maybe that softened the blow a little.
