Matt and Ben - interview with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the writers and actors of 'Good Will Hunting' - Interview

Interview, Dec, 1997 by Ingrid Sischy

The Sands are Shifting, the names are changing, and these two are bounding to big screens and big places in hearts everywhere: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck

With flagrant disregard for the way things get done in the movie business, lifelong friends and fellow actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck decided to write a movie they could act in. Now that movie - Good Will Hunting, directed by Gus Van Sant and costarring Robin Williams and Ben's kid brother, Casey - is about to hit the theaters and, lo and behold, it's an experience not to be missed.

The film is about the dilemmas of choice and responsibility, and he burdens of belonging. It's the story of a damaged young working-class Bostonian (played by Damon) who works as a janitor at MIT and is discovered solving math problems that defeat even the most gifted students. As he is plunged into he competitive world of academia he has to decide whether to follow his heart - which his best friend (Ben Affleck) urges him to do - or the self-destructive impulses that are the legacy of his upbringing.

These boys haven't arrived out of the blue. Damon, who first grabbed audiences' attention in Geronimo (1993) and then gave a fine performance in last year's Courage Under Fire, plays the embattled lawyer in Francis Ford Coppola's recently released The Rainmaker. Emerging from jock roles in films like Dazed and Confused (1993), Ben Affleck was outstanding this year in beth Chasing Amy and Going All the Way. With Good Will Hunting, they're finally going solo together.

INGRID SISCHY: I want to start at the beginning of your friendship. Did you both grow up in the same neighborhood?

BEN AFFLECK: Yes. Two blocks away from each other in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

MATT DAMON: Cambridge is not that big of a town. It's like the People's Republic of Cambridge.

SA: And people of similar political persuasions tend to flock together. Most lefties in "Cambridge County" know each other.

MD: And we were basically best friends since I was ten and he was eight.

IS: How did you meet?

MD: My mother is a professor of early childhood development, and she knew of Ben's mother - who's a teacher of little kids and sought her out after we moved back to Cambridge. So I was pretty much forced into hanging out with Ben. BA: And Matt was a break-dancer at the time.

IS: Can you remember, Matt, what Ben was like in those days?

MD: Absolutely. I remember exactly what he was like: gregarious, outgoing. It was no surprise that he grew up into the totally obnoxious guy he is now. Number one, he claims that I never struck him out in Little League. Which is total bullshit - I was the best pitcher in the league.

BA: That achievement in Little League grows exponentially with each passing year.

IS: I see.

BA: We're the warrior and the clown.

IS: And how does that relate to your childhoods?

MD: Our childhoods were pretty normal.

IS: But also informed by the worldview of your parents, I assume.

MD: Yes. My mother had written some books on war play and those cartoons that are like commercials for action figures. What worded my mother about those shows was not only that they encouraged violent play, but also that they hampered creativity. So growing up for me was like you'd get some blocks and then you'd have to go make up a game. I was always making up stories and acting out plays; that's just the way I was raised. Ben came from a more prestigious acting background.

BA: My dad was in a theater company in Boston for a long time, so I was always around that stuff.

IS: Did you do theater In high school?

MD: A lot. I knew since I was twelve that I was going to be an actor. I was originally going to be a basketball player. Tiny Archibald was my favorite player - he's called Tiny because he's only six foot one. My father sat me down and said, "I'm the tallest Damon ever to evolve and I'm five eleven. But I'm never going to play in the NBA." I gave up basketball at that moment and took up acting.

Whatever I did, I wanted to be the best at it. I remember that moment in The Natural when Robert Redford says, "I just want to walk down the street and have people say, 'There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was.'" So I was talking to my mother one day - this was when I was sixteen or seventeen - and she goes, "Matt, why are you so obsessed with acting?" And I said, "Because someday I want to walk down the street and have people say, 'There goes Matt Damon, the best there ever was.'" And she said, "Did I raise you? That's just an egomaniacal pipe dream. How does it help other people?" Of course I hadn't given much thought to that.

BA: In fact, in high school I can remember trying to convince Matt's mother that not everybody in Hollywood was a total liar and scum. I was saying that there are people in Hollywood who have a social conscience, too. I only repeat this years later now that I realize it was a complete lie. [laughs]

IS: Do you think that wanting to become actors in an academic town like Boston was a kind of rebellion for both of you?

MD: We weren't too rebellious. But every time we sat down to dinner, Chris [Ben's mother] would say, "Why don't you guys become doctors?"