Minnie Driver, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in "Good Will Hunting," 1997.Ħ. Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex.
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"Luckily he backed down." Weinstein has since been accused of misogynistic behavior and sexual misconduct by dozens of women, and though Driver has said that she "never experienced any abuse" while working with him, she released a statement in support of his alleged victims. "Harvey Weinstein, who was one of the producers, did not want me at all: I wasn't sexy enough, I wasn't cute enough and I wasn't Gwyneth Paltrow enough," the actress told The Telegraph newspaper in 2012. Minnie Driver nearly lost out on the part of Hunting's girlfriend, Skylar: Although Ben Affleck, Damon and Van Sant thought Driver was perfect for the role of Hunting's love interest, producer Weinstein didn't agree. We had to go directly to him to persuade him.”ĥ. "He also didn’t have an agent, which was funny. "It was kind of up to us to beg him," the director told Variety last year. Gus Van Sant begged Casey Affleck to be in the film: According to Van Sant, Casey Affleck, who played Hunting's pal Morgan O'Mally in the film, simply wanted to make a documentary about the making of the film, rather than appearing in it. Is there any chance you’d just let it go?' And to Mel’s credit, he said, 'I totally understand what you’re saying.' That was a real stand-up thing to do." Ultimately, they went with director Gus Van Sant, who had worked previously with Affleck's brother, Casey Affleck, on "To Die For."Ĥ. If this keeps going by, Ben and I can’t play these parts. Matt at one point said directly to Gibson, 'Look, man. According to producer Chris Moore, "Mel Gibson developed it for a few months. After Miramax's acquisition, they met with other potential directors, including Mel Gibson. He did, however, tell his then-friend, now-disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, to read the script, and Weinstein's company Miramax ended up purchasing it from Castle Rock in 1995. Mel Gibson could have directed it: Damon told Boston Magazine that their first choice for director was Kevin Smith, who'd directed Affleck in "Chasing Amy." However, Damon said, Smith passed because he didn't feel he was right for the project. “But when I saw the movie, I said, ‘They didn’t screw it up!’ and I remember being very pleased.”ģ.
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“Before I saw the movie, I was worried that the math scenes in the movie would be foolish,” he continued. They took notes, but they didn’t really know what we were talking about.” We went down to the old math lounge in Bldg. “I felt silly mumbling random math so I found a postdoc, Tom Bohman. “When they asked me, ‘Can you speak math to us?’ my mouth froze,” he told MIT's website. Glashow's brother-in-law, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Daniel Kleitman, went on to work with Damon and Affleck to ensure that the dialogue would be authentic. Will Hunting was originally a physics genius: At the suggestion of Harvard professor and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sheldon Glashow, Damon's character, Will Hunting, became a mathematics genius instead. "It was a complete overhaul," Affleck said.īen Affleck and Matt Damon in "Good Will Hunting," 1997.Ģ. Ultimately, they dropped the NSA story after Rob Reiner, whose company Castle Rock originally bought the film, told Damon and Affleck that the film needed more focus.
It was kind of hopelessly naive and probably really embarrassing in that respect." Damon said that the only scene that survived from his initial draft was the one in which his character, a math genius, meets his psychologist, played by Williams. At the time we imagined the professor and the shrink would be Morgan Freeman and De Niro, so we’d do our imitations of Freeman and De Niro. "We would improvise and drink like six or 12 beers or whatever and record it with a tape recorder. And it had a very 'Beverly Hills Cop,' 'Midnight Run' sensibility, where the kids from Boston were giving the NSA the slip all the time," Affleck told the magazine. "We came up with this idea of the brilliant kid and his townie friends, where he was special and the government wanted to get their mitts on him. After the course ended, he asked his childhood friend Affleck to help him flesh out the story. The script began as a school project: Damon told Boston Magazine in 2013 that he began writing "Good Will Hunting" for a playwriting class he was taking at Harvard University. 'Good Will Hunting' fans find the perfect way to honor Robin Williamsġ.