There’s a new Affleck trailer up, and while it’s not as exciting as the one for The Town, it’s certainly compelling. First of all, the cast for The Company Men includes Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Craig T. “Coach” Nelson, Rosemarie DeWitt (from Mad Men and Rachel Getting Married), Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, and Kingston’s own Chris Cooper. Hot damn!

This trailer has many highlights. Chief among them is this fact: the movie includes a scene in which Affleck, recently fired from a big corporation job, brings coffee for his colleagues on a construction site. Allow me to repeat that: In this movie, Ben Affleck’s character works on a construction site, and furthermore, in this movie, Ben Affleck brings coffee for others. Oh. My. God.

1997

2010

Another notable similarity to our Favorite Movie Of All Time: This movie has one egregiously terrible Boston accent. One might even go so far that, judging from the way he says “cahptenter” as if Katharine Hepburn on This Old House, Kevin Costner is the new Robin Williams. Congratulations, Costner; it looks like you’ve really out-Costnered yourself this time.

A one square mile neighborhood called… Charlestown!!

I incidentally did a quick Google search of Charlestown and “bank robberies” and came up with this article about a series of robberies in Charleston, Summerville, and Dorchester. Apparently there’s a parallel universe of Boston neighborhoods in South Carolina, slightly misspelled. I wonder if they each have a Boylston Street?

Read all about the filming of The Town in Harvard Square, right here in a Blog Will Hunting post from last winter.

The therapy scene from the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly comedy Step Brothers; it sounds a lot like Good Will Hunting.

Slate recently had an article on”10 wildly ambitious—or just wildly misguided—movie projects that were doomed by financial difficulties, casting issues, their very premise, or, commonly enough, all three,” including a version of The Lord of the Rings starring the Beatles.

Nestled in at number eight is the following, a film project I had not heard of until now. Hey, at least it wasn’t a musical.

Half Way House
After the triumph of Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck found plenty of further success in acting, producing, and, in Affleck’s case, directing, but they have yet to film another Damon-Affleck script. Just months after GWH‘s release, they already had a project set up with Castle Rock. Affleck described Half Way House as an ensemble piece set in a home for the mentally impaired. The pair was going to play workers in the facility, at least initially. “Damon now tells Affleck he wants to play one of the retarded residents,” Variety‘s Army Archerd wrote in March 1998. “We’ve got 150 pages,” Damon told Entertainment Weekly that year, “and about five are good.” Whether he was being falsely modest or not, the film has been quietly dropped from both men’s list of future projects.

Everyone’s giddy for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film Inception, including New York Magazine‘s culture blog “Vulture,” which has been looking over a bunch of newly released stills from the film.  This one (above) in particular had them considering the canon of great chalkboards of film and television, which inevitably lead them to one Good Will Hunting (as well as I Heart Huckabees, School of Rock, and The Simpsons.)

Check out their analysis, in terms of awesome/confusing/obsessive, here.

This evening I was walking into the Harvard Square T station, on my way to a Red Sox game, and a group of college kids were walking ahead of me.  They came to a stop — a couple of them were looking around — and as I walked by the group I heard one guy say to the others, “Hey, where’s Skylar?”

It was a valid question.

Wait, no it wasn’t.  She’s in med school in California.  Duh.

And as a part of our ongoing series THEY GOT A BOOK DEAL; WHY NOT ME, please enjoy a piece of birthday cake with us.

If a blog about ill-constructed cakes can get a book deal, why not a blog with brilliantly-constructed Good Will Hunting-themed cakes?

"How Do You Like Them Apples?" apple cake with brown sugar frosting and mini-cupcakes with red frosting

Many thanks to cake auteur Molly, who writes:

Well, it was supposed to be a “How Do You Like Them Apples?” Apple Cake, with Brown Sugar Frosting, with mini-cupcakes made to look like apples.  The cake recipe is from King Arthur Flour.  On the cake was a hand, holding a piece of paper with Skylar’s phone number. The background was decorated with cinnamon, and the paper made white with confectioner’s sugar, and the hand’s sleeve was green and black plaid. It was lovely.

But by the time it got to your house, it was a “Do you like apples? Well, I destroyed your cake on the 72 bus on the way over. How do you like THEM apples?” Apple Cake, with frosting mash. It was a literal cake wreck. I cried a little, just like I did the first time I saw Good Will Hunting.  Still tasted good, though.

Happy Birthday, Blog Will Hunting!

"Marky, Ricky, Danny, Terry, Mikey, Davey, Timmy, Tommy, Joey, Robby, Johnny, and Brian" yellow birthday cake with chocolate frosting and cupcakes

Thanks to cake creator Katherine, who ran into some cake-making issues, primarily fitting all Will’s fictional brothers onto one cake, explaining “I had to resort to cupcakes. Also, there was a giant sinkhole in ‘Danny’ that I could not, for the life of me, fix… no matter how much frosting i filled it with, it kept sinking in.”

"It's Not Your Fault" yellow cake with vanilla frosting and red roses icing

Happy Birthday, Blog Will Hunting!

Via Wonder-Tonic, it’s “a useful simulator for all those times you wish you had Robin Williams there to counsel you.” Launch the simulator.

As a part of our occasional series THEY GOT A BOOK DEAL WHY NOT ME, Blog Will Hunting is putting out our first call for work.

To celebrate our upcoming first birthday, we want your best/worst Good Will Hunting themed cake or dessert item, à la Cake Wrecks.

Send photos to contact@blogwillhunting.com by June 13.

Let’s be honest: I was a complete disaster my senior year of high school, in the spring of 1998. My best friend was going to the prom with my ex-boyfriend and I was going a little crazy. And, remember 1998? Matt Damon and Ben Affleck had just skyrocketed to fame, but they weren’t the superstars they are now. This was pre-Bennifer, pre-Bourne Identity and pre-Ocean’s 11.

But let’s rewind for a second (this was still the era of VHS after all)… I was 17 and desperate for the perfect prom date.

I begged my best-guy-friend to come with me, but he didn’t want to go, period. He didn’t like to dance, it was too expensive, and anyway, he was thinking of asking the cute freshman he had a crush on. I thought maybe I could go with the guy I went with last year, a blind date arranged so that my friend and her boyfriend would have company, but he had a soccer tournament that weekend. And another acquaintance was too busy fending off previous unwanted requests to seriously consider mine.

I could only think of one other option: Matt Damon.

I did a “peoplesearch” on yahoo.com to find his email address—the Internet was still young. There were several entries for people named Matt Damon, but one of these cited residence in Hollywood, California. Mattdamon@yahoo.com, in fact. So I noted this and considered how I might convince a celebrity to travel to southern Indiana to attend my senior prom.

The email I wrote was long, and in my attempt to sound sincere, to convince Matt that I wasn’t some crazed fan, I guess, it ended up a painfully detailed self-advertisement.

I began by giving him my name, telling him I was 17 years old, where I went to school, and insisting that what I was writing wasn’t “just some ordinary piece of fan mail,” that I wasn’t the “groupie-fan-mail-type.” I told him I had tried, “in one way or another, to get five or six guys to go to the prom with me,” but that “nevertheless, I remain dateless.”

“Please consider visiting Terre Haute on April 25,” I closed. “I believe you would have a great time, and I would be thrilled to have you join me. You could even come incognito, if you wish.” I said I would understand if he was too busy, but that I would like a response either way, and if he couldn’t come, maybe he could get one of his friends—Ben, maybe—to attend the prom with me. I signed it: “Sincerely, Elizabeth Marie Erickson” and attached a senior photo I had scanned, a picture of me in a white T-shirt and overalls with an American flag backdrop.

I didn’t feel any more danger of rejection than I did when I asked the guys at school. He’s the type who’d be up for an adventure, I thought, who might get a kick out of doing something as unexpected as going to the prom with some lonely girl in Indiana.

I tell this story every once in a while and people usually assume this is the end.

But he wrote back.

That is, someone wrote back.

The subject line read: “Elizabeth, you are beautiful!” He said he was impressed I had sent him my school picture, that I looked like the front of a Wheaties box, “All American youth and healthy!”

“I’m sorry sweetheart,” he wrote, “but I must decline your prom invitation. I will be busy shooting on location that night. But I know a girl as beautiful and smart and interesting (you must be the prettiest girl in your school!) as you will have guys lined up waiting! Just choose one!”

I’ve never met Matt Damon, and I can’t be sure who answered my email. Honestly though, I’m just as grateful to the schmo who probably impersonated him as I would be to the potentially real Matt Damon, for taking the time to make a 17-year-old in Indiana feel a little less alone.

Editor’s Note: By the way, “Elizabeth” is a pseudonym… so Matt Damon, if you’re out there, don’t bother people-searching her.

NBC’s Community riffed on Good Will Hunting this week.

Browse through Wikipedia’s List of films that most frequently use the word “fuck,” and you’ll find that the film Good Will Hunting scores somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Good Will Hunting uses the word more than 150 times, but not more than 200 times — and certainly not more than 400 times; that honor goes to only a handful of films (including Scorcese’s Casino and a documentary that is, well, specifically about the word.)

This reminds me of a goofy tweet I came across back in January:

drunken_hopfrog

(Dale)

Would you let your child watch GOOD WILL HUNTING? 150 F-Words! Call the police!

On 18-1-2010 15:01:02 from TweetDeck

In the past I’ve gained a certain amount of entertainment from an odd source — there’s a site called Kids-in-Mind, which is one of several similar services that rate the inappropriateness of movie content for children, with very awkward and straightforward explanations of any explicit goings-on.

I’ve found myself seeking out their analysis of the least kid-friendly films I can think of, just to take in the stilted, uncomfortable prose.

So, in case you were wondering, Good Will Hunting gets a 3 out of 10 for SEX & NUDITY…

We briefly hear sounds of a man and woman having sex, and we learn that, off-screen, a man has been masturbating while watching a pornographic movie. We see a few cleavage-revealing outfits.

While it gets a paltry 2 out of 10 for VIOLENCE & GORE, it does indeed max out the PROFANITY scale at 10 out of 10…

Nearly 150 F-words, lots of anatomical and scatological references, many insults and several mild obscenities.

To digress from Good Will Hunting for a moment, among the most entertaining of these reviews has to be Kids-in-Mind’s hapless account of dismemberment, chaos, rape, and revenge that explicates Robert Rodriguez’s film Planet Terror.

Some highlights:

• A young woman performs oral sex on a young man, she reaches up toward his head and realizes that his head has been severed. Another scene shows the same young woman kissing a different young man and his head is cut off mid-kiss.
• A man holds a jar with human testicles floating in liquid and tells a man to cut his own off. A man later carries a plastic bag filled with human testicles. A man has a very bloody neck wound.
• A man looks at a woman, makes a remark suggesting that he is going to rape her, and another man makes a remark about her having only one leg; the first man then makes another crude remark about her, and another man makes a similar remark about him. A woman climbs on a motorcycle with another woman, she holds her around the waist and makes a suggestive remark to her. A husband confronts his wife about her having an affair with a woman. A man makes a sexually suggestive remark about another man’s wife. A woman talks about her boyfriend’s sexual interests and that he likes to watch her urinate.
• A woman appears desperate to urinate and holds her crotch. A man has a large scar on his face. A man eats sloppily using his hands.

I’ve recently come across yet another entertaining layer of mediation available to the intrepid web searcher: ESL companion guides to movies.

These guides take the frank, explanatory tone of a site like Kids-in-Mind, and remove any sense of judgment or disapproval from the discussion, providing passages like this, by Raymond Weschler on ESLnotes.com (the quote being parsed is from an early scene in Good Will Hunting; the woman speaking is addressing Ben Affleck’s character Chuckie):

“Like I’d waste my energy spreading my legs for that Tootsie Roll dick? Go home and give it a tug yourself!”

• Note the use of “like” at the beginning of sentences, used (and overused!) by many young people for “as if.”
• The rest of the sentence is a crude sexual insult, since a “tootise roll” is a small piece of well known candy, and a “dick” is very common for penis.
• “To tug” means to pull, and thus the last sentence implies “go home and masturbate.”

It’s something to realize how much foul, idiomatic language is in a film like Good Will Hunting, and the challenge it is for a non-native speaker to pick up on its subtleties.  Say what you want about the screenplay, but you can’t say the dialogue is bland.  Peruse Raymond Weschler’s complete commentary here.

I’ve learned from the best that a good blog isn’t afraid to bring you right into the conversation, into the formation of its ideas as they are being constructed and processed.

So I figured I would go ahead and share the following online conversation I recently had with a friend, former Bostonian Dave C.

I bring you a discussion of life, masculinity, and the conceptual underpinnings of Good Will Hunting.

Perhaps the publishing deluge has slowed down in recent months, but for a while there it seemed that every blog that tipped into the pop cultural consciousness would proceed to fall into a big bucket of book deals.

These days, blogging advice sites are full of tips on how to get your own book deal (discover yourself! get an agent!), and the excellent blog Look At This Fucking Idea For a Blog-to-Book Deal is thriving.

Ben Huh wrote the book “I Can Has Cheezburger?” based on a blog of the same name. It has sold more than 100,000 copies. | Photo by Kevin P. Casey for The New York Times

Not to be left behind, this particular blog, which happens to be about the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, is embarking on an exploration of some of these interweb memes that have made the transition from Twitter tiny url’s to your local bookstore’s new paperback section.  After all, if they got a book deal, WHY NOT ME??

Check back soon for MORE LOLMatts!! (In the mean time, there’s always more LOLCats at the original I Can Has Cheezburger.)

GET IT??  Bananas!