‘Good Will Hunting’ 25 Years Later: Why Ben Affleck Once Said Filming ‘Was Actually Kind of Scary’
Ben Affleck once said that filming Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon and Robin Williams was “actually kind of scary,” even though he co-wrote the script. Read on to find out how the iconic movie came to be, why Affleck was a little terrified while filming it, and why he compared winning his first Oscar for the movie to being in a car accident.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote ‘Good Will Hunting’ to impress casting directors
According to Affleck, the process of writing the movie’s script started with two childhood friends. He and Damon were hoping to create a way to prove their skills in Hollywood.
“The whole thing of Good Will Hunting was really just to make — at the time — a video cassette that was like an acting reel,” Affleck explained on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. They wrote the parts for themselves and were hoping to impress casting directors.
Damon said they drafted “thousands and thousands of pages” of screenplay because they “didn’t really know what [they] were doing” yet.
“I think we were shocked that it even got released,” Affleck added.
Ben Affleck thought filming ‘Good Will Hunting’ was ‘scary’
Affleck once said that the work he and Damon put into writing Good Will Hunting made filming it a little daunting. “It was actually kind of scary because you spend so much time developing the movie and kind of talking about it in theoretical abstract terms,” Affleck said (per E! News Rewind).
According to Affleck, that led to a moment where he realized, “… We’re actually going to play these parts now. This is actually gonna happen.” Once the longtime BFFs started shooting, he was having an “overwhelming” experience.
Damon added that he remembered crying as they started filming their movie. “By the time they said action, tears were just falling down my face,” he recalled.
Ben Affleck said ‘Good Will Hunting’ Oscar win was ‘hallucinatory’
Both Damon and Affleck won Oscars for the screenplay, and the film was nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1998. Affleck once called winning such high praise when he was so young “hallucinatory” and compared it to being in a traffic accident.
“There’s that moment where you go, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna crash into this wall here.’ You know, everything sort of slows down and you’re spinning around. That was how it kind of felt,” he said on The Graham Norton Show.
“We get up and people are clapping. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau presented it to us,” he recalled. “And Billy Crystal was hosting and he was going [in Crystal’s voice] ‘Ben, Ben, Ben Ben.’”
Affleck added he “barely knew anything at all” and shared, “I really didn’t have any perspective on it …”
In 2013, Affleck won the Academy Award for Best Picture and said it was “probably a much more healthy experience” by then. “I … knew what it meant and what it didn’t mean, he concluded, “what was important about it and what wasn’t.”
