Actors write screenplay to create roles they like

Published: Monday, December 1, 1997

Monday, December 1, 1997

FILM: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon hope new movie jump-starts their careers

By Stephanie Sheh

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

They were frustrated. They were broke. So two starving actors set out just to write their own little screenplay. No big deal. But things did not exactly work out that way.

"We had some hard times just trying to get work as actors, and so the natural step was to write something," explains Matt Damon, star of "Good Will Hunting." "We'll write it about Boston, and the very least we can do is go raise money on our own and shoot it, and cheaply like Kevin Smith did 'Clerks' and we'll just kind of direct it.

"It'll be down and dirty super 16 and we'll be shooting, like, 11 days and it'll be our movie," continues Damon energetically. Clad in a body-fitting white T-shirt and "Good Will Hunting" cap. "And at the end of the day we'll just have this video cassette that says, 'Good Will Hunting.' Even though nobody ever saw it, it'll be our contribution."

Instead, people did see the script. "Good Will Hunting," which Miramax will release Friday, attracted the likes of producer Lawrence Bender ("Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction"), director Gus Van Sant ("My Own Private Idaho" and "To Die For") and famed actor Robin Williams ("Dead Poet's Society," "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Flubber").

The story follows Will Hunting (Damon, also currently starring in "The Rainmaker") who spends his days getting into bar fights as well as solving impossibly difficult mathematical proofs. He is a troubled and defensive, yet charming and wildly brilliant, kid who just needs a little guidance. Enter Sean McGuire (Robin Williams).

Damon and childhood pal Ben Affleck ("Chasing Amy"), who also stars in the film, transferred their creative energies to the page after being disappointed with the way their acting careers were going.

"(I was) not getting the chance to play the kind of roles (I wanted)," Affleck says, leaning back in his chair and chewing on a piece of ice in a dimly lit suite at the Essex House. "Getting all these bad guy roles after doing 'Dazed and Confused,' not wanting to play another high school bully, I mean, my life depended on it. There's only so many times you can slam a kid against a locker before it gets old."

Although the two buddies co-wrote the screenplay, the original idea of the script came from a creative writing project Damon had written in college.

"I wrote, like, 40 pages of it in the screenwriting form and handed it in, and it didn't end," Damon recalls. "It didn't really do anything. The guy just said, 'Well, keep doing it. Keep working on it. I think this is promising. This might turn into something.'"

So with those words of encouragement, Damon showed what he had to Affleck, and the two agreed to write the project. Somehow it got forgotten though. But about a year later, when the two were up one night chatting, they dusted off the script, started writing, and things just started pouring out.

Affleck says that they improvised a lot and their collaboration had a kind of inborn filter system.

"So we're talking about it first. And then talking about it evolves into an idea for a scene which evolves into ideas for some lines," Affleck explains casually. "And then the lines start going. We're improvising them and it's like, 'Okay, write it down! Write it down!' It's really exciting, rather than just sitting there by yourself just hacking away. It's a dynamic activity with another person."

Because the two actors generally look at things in the same way, there wasn't much conflict of ideas when it came down to the actual writing. However, they feel that, when there was disagreement, being lifelong friends let them take criticism in a healthier way.

"He can tell me that a certain idea just sucks," Damon says. "He can just say, 'That sucks! That's lame! Why would you even do that?' Coming from anybody else, I'd probably be offended and defend a really lame idea just for the sake of defending it. And I'd look like an asshole.

"But with Ben, he can say, 'That's a lame idea!' And I can take that criticism. Then he can put forth an idea, and basically, we just work," Damon continues, smiling. "One guy would come up with an idea and the other guy would just rip on it. So in the end you would get this kind of collaboration that is well edited because both guys are being brutally honest the entire time. If you have that honesty and you can eliminate ego from the equation, then you'll really get the best out of what you can get."

Affleck, who also got to work with his brother Casey in the film, agrees that it is better to work with loved ones. He rationalizes, "It's better working with your friends than with your enemies."

Surrounded by friends and a casual set, Damon says that he didn't even feel like he was shooting a movie.

"Normally with movies it takes, like, three hours for them to set up," Damon explains. "You got, like, 93 lights on you, and they go, 'Action!' And you feel like, 'Well I better act. I better do something.' They set this whole thing up for me rather than just (have me) be normal and be very calm and very human. But when there's less of those technical considerations put on you, it's more liberating as an actor to just do whatever you want."

From the start, the entire experience of "Good Will Hunting" was just sort of dreamlike to the actors. The two were kind of astonished that they and their little script were suddenly caught up in a bidding war.

"The whole thing was just sort of ridiculous," Damon recalls. "Ben went from living on my couch to, like, us kind of being there while these people were just saying, 'Two hundred? No, no, no. Three hundred. No, no, no. Four hundred.' We're just sitting there like, 'Oh my God. Take it now! Yeah, 20 bucks, take it right there!' We would've worked for anything. Our only criteria was that we wanted to be in it. And so we got offered a lot of money not to be in it."

But the two hung in there. And now, in addition to their starring roles in upcoming movies, the actors have promised Miramax three more screenplays. Pretty good for two now not exactly starving actors.

FILM: "Good Will Hunting" opens on Friday.

Miramax

(Left to right) Minnie Driver, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck star in "Good Will Hunting," which opens Friday.

Miramax

Matt Damon (left) plays Will Hunting, a troubled genius, opposite Robin Williams' Sean McGuire.