"Good Will Hunting" The fate of Robin, Matt, Ben, and Gus Van Sant

A scenario written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in their unknown era.

The film's script was originally written by Matt Damon while he was a student at Harvard University. There is a scene in the film where the main character, Will, is with his therapist and talks about the painting on the wall, and this scene seems to have been in the script from the beginning. Also, when Matt visited MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where the movie is set, his younger brother Kyle, who accompanied him, wrote a false equation with chalk on a blackboard in the hallway, and it was erased for months. There was no such thing, so I arranged this and included it in the script. Also, although the main character Will's girlfriend's name is Skyler, Matt himself was dating a medical student named Skylar at the time.

The episodes in this movie seem to incorporate various things that actually happened, although they are not true stories. At first, Matt was writing alone, but his childhood friend Ben Affleck joined in, and the two of them wrote the book together (incidentally, they first met when Matt was 10 years old and Ben was 8 years old). .

The first company to take the completed script was Castle Rock Entertainment, a film company headed by Rob Reiner, but they didn't agree with the direction the script was going, and Matt and his friends opposed playing the main characters. Therefore, the scenario was raised. So Ben approached Kevin Smith, who he had worked with on `` Chasing Amy '' (1997), to direct the film, but Ben didn't think the film was suitable for him. Smith introduced the script to Miramax's Weinstein, and he was convinced to bet on the talent of young Matt and Ben.

Mel Gibson was the first candidate to direct Miramax. Discussions have continued for several months, but there seems to be no progress. In the end, the story went to director Gus Van Sant. Ben's younger brother, Casey Affleck, who plays one of Will's companions, had previously worked with the director on The Temptation . I originally wanted to make a documentary about this movie, but at the director's request I ended up playing the role of a companion.

"Good Will Hunting" (c)Photofest / Getty Images

Minnie Driver, who has a unique acting style, was nominated for the role of Skyler, Will's lover. Matt, Ben, and the director all agreed, but the producer, Weinstein, was the only one who was against it. "It's not sexy, it's not pretty, because it's not Gwyneth Paltrow," she later commented.

As for the characters, there were several rewrites, and Van Sant considered having Chucky, played by Ben, die at a construction site, or having Will die in an accident while driving, but these ideas were rejected. became. Also, the idea for the ending of the movie actually came from director Terrence Malick. Ben has known him for some time, and when he consulted him while writing the script, he advised him, ``It's better for the woman to leave midway through and for the man to follow.''

Regarding the depiction of mathematics, he received advice from professors who actually teach at Harvard University and MIT to make it more accurate. Some say that the setting in which a young man who had not received a proper education until then shows amazing talent with mathematical formulas is far from reality, but in fact, in early 20th century India, Srinivasa・There actually existed a hidden child genius in mathematics named Ramanujan. In the film, there is a scene in which Professor Rimbaud (Stellan Skarsgård) discovers Will's talent and consults his friend Sean, who brings up the story of Ramanujan.

Preview of “The Mathematical Formula That Miracle Gave Us”

Although Ramanujan had no formal education, he discovered various theorems with his excellent intuition, and was discovered by Professor Godfrey Harold Hardy of Cambridge University, who sent him to England. In fact, this story was made into a movie called `` The Miraculous Formula '' (16) starring Jeremy Irons (Professor Hardy) and Dev Patel (Ramanujan). Based on Robert Kanigel's book `` Infinite Genius/Failed Mathematician Ramanujan '' (published in 1991). This British film has a more somber finish than ``Good Will Hunting,'' but the two leads' strong performances make it a drama worth watching.

After winning the Oscar, he became a major figure in Hollywood.