Good Will Hunting
A working-class prodigy faces jail until a professor and a therapist offer a way out, but only if he opens up.
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About the film
Some people can never believe in themselves, until someone believes in them.
What it’s about
Will Hunting, a twenty-year-old from Boston, keeps getting into fights and is arrested again. A mathematics professor takes him under his wing on one condition: Will must attend psychotherapy. The sessions begin with mutual distrust.
What hooks you
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote the screenplay, which won an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Robin Williams won an Oscar and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his supporting role as the therapist, and the film also won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Gus Van Sant directed.
Who it’s for
It will appeal to those who like character-driven drama about class, intellect, and friendship, and who appreciate films where emotional breakthroughs are earned slowly through conversation.
- Country
- United States
- Year
- 1997
- Running time
- 2h 6min
- Age rating
- 17+
- MPAA
- R
- World premiere
- Dec 2, 1997
×22.6box office to budget
Ratings
MOVIE․ONE · 923 votesCreative team
All 10
Trivia
All facts 8
- At the very beginning of the film, Professor Lambeau writes on the blackboard and lowers it; a few frames later the blackboard is raised, and then in a close-up we see it lowered again.
- At the construction site, when Will and Chuckie are talking, at the end of the conversation Chuckie is holding a beer in his right hand, and in the next shot in his left.
- Here is how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck went looking for a film company: on page 60 of the script they inserted an erotic scene involving Will and Chuckie, and this scene was clearly out of place there, and they began offering the script to major studios. None of the people they spoke with at those studios even mentioned this scene. Only Harvey Weinstein from Miramax mentioned it and asked what this completely out-of-place scene was doing there. Damon and Affleck explained that this was how they determined which studio had read the script and which had not.
- In his fifth year at Harvard, Matt Damon studied playwriting. One of the assignments was to write a one-act play; with Ben Affleck's help, it later turned into this film.
- A significant portion of Casey's lines were improvised. Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and director Gus Van Sant later admitted that those lines were much funnier than the ones they had prepared for Casey.
- In the scene with Robin Williams (1951-2014) and Matt Damon on the park bench, it seems as if there is no one else nearby. However, Williams was an extremely popular actor, and at one point more than 3,000 people were watching the filming.
Awards and nominations
5 wins · 18 nominations
- 2 wins Academy Awards
- 1 win Golden Globe Awards
- 1 win Screen Actors Guild Awards
- 1 win Berlin International Film Festival
- Best Supporting Actor Robin Williams Academy Awards · 1998
- Best Screenplay Matt Damon, Ben Affleck Academy Awards · 1998
- Best Screenplay Matt Damon, Ben Affleck Golden Globe Awards · 1998
- Best Supporting Actor Robin Williams Screen Actors Guild Awards · 1998
- Silver Bear for Outstanding Personal Achievement Matt Damon Berlin International Film Festival · 1998
Also nominated MTV Movie & TV Awards4
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Good Will Hunting (1997)
Good Will Hunting
1997
Good Will Hunting
1997
Good Will Hunting
1997