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and i will not think about the fact that the situation between holden, alyssa, and banky neatly parallels ben, jen lopez, and matt irl. i won't bc i would sound insane and chronically online and jobless.
FRANK DISCUSSION WITH BEN AFFLECK by Mike McCarthy
Estimated date: April 1997
Actor Ben Affleck recently held court (press day, that is) in Boston to promote Kevin Smith's new film Chasing Amy, in which he stars as Holden, the guy who falls for a lesbian. You may recall his performance as the guy who looked "like a date rapist" in Smith's last film Mallrats. Or maybe you recall seeing him in Dazed and Confused or School Ties? Truth be told, it doesn't matter. His performance in Chasing Amy is quite the antithesis of his work thus far. Certainly took me by surprise, though not as much as his passion for Boston, which, it turns out, is his hometown. Sort of. "Well, I wasn't actually born here, to be perfectly honest," he admits, "but I moved here when I was three. I grew up in Central Square in Cambridge. Went to the public schools there." And his family? "My brother now lives in New York City. He goes to Columbia. My mother is a teacher in Cambridge, teaches 6th grade. My father was an auto mechanic at Autotorium and a bartender and such. Now, he lives in California working at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center writing grant proposals and counseling people."
MM: Had you known Kevin Smith prior to working with him, being fellow New Englanders?
BA: No, I met him on Mallrats. One of the casting directors also cast Dazed and Confused. I didn't want to do any more bad guys because I started getting all those scripts. I'd go, well, I'd like to play this role, but [they'd respond with] we're really interested in you for Bart, the school bully. I thought it was so boring. But, I really liked Clerks and the screenplay of Mallrats, believe it or not, depending on what you think of the movie. It was actually uproariously funny. I really wanted to do it. I didn't want to play that part, but the Dazed guys were like, look, if you come in you can basically be in the movie if you'll play this part. So, I figured, all right, it'll be working with Kevin. At the time I was interested in finding out how to make movies cheap and I figured who better to talk to then the guy whose last movie cost 27 thousand dollars. So, I did it and ended up becoming friends with him. He called me up and said, hey, I'm writing this movie about a guy who falls in love with this woman who's gay and I want you to play the guy. I said, well, I'd love to. He sent it to me as he was writing it. It was really nice to be involved from the beginning, for somebody to put that much faith in me.
MM: Did it put a lot of extra pressure on you knowing that Kevin wrote the part for you?
BA: Yeah, in a certain sense. It's a personal story. He obviously cared about it quite a bit and you want to honor that. I wanted him to be really happy with my work so he wouldn't feel like he made a colossal mistake in asking me to do his movie.
Something that could be putting pressure on Ben right now, and could perhaps even make him feel as though he made a mistake in doing the film, is the sexuality of Chasing Amy, depending on how the public perceives it. "So far, I've done five or six screenings. They were skewed toward younger audiences, but they had some older folks there. They have gone better than I could have possibly imagined," he says. "It really surprised how much people seem to love the movie. The sexuality is . . . frightening. The frank discussion and unusual sexual situations take people by surprise and freak them out. I hope we can come down on the side of people who find the movie funny, and kind of moving in itself, but for whom there's the additional appeal of getting to see how people who live a different lifestyle live. Even if that's a voyeuristic kind of experience, I'll take it."
Still, you have to wonder, does he worry that some people won't take it? "It may alienate some people," he admits. "My mother's best friend said she felt generationally challenged. This is not a movie I would particularly want my grandparents to see. The irony is that nobody has sex on camera and nobody gets killed. You have a movie with people talking the entire time. Yet, there's definitely a segment of the population that will find it just . . . bothersome.
Are there really so many idiots out there who can't see a lesbian in a movie without having a hard on? [Laughs] I mean, Ellen Degeneres is gonna come out as a lesbian on a big prime time TV show. And anyone who didn't know she was a lesbian before had their head in the sand."
MM: I wonder how the average male Kevin Smith fan will react to the proposed resolution to the whole situation?
BA: I've noticed it makes people nervous to watch it. It challenges the notions these people previously had in their mind, who they were. I consider anyone who's seen Mallrats a rabid Kevin Smith fan [Laughs]--they really like it. While they're seized with a little bit of sickness, they're interested in following through, really paying close attention. Put it this way: I've been impressed by people's open-mindedness and willingness to take the movie for what it is, which is a pretty honest, interesting story that feels a lot like real life in its complexity, open ending, roughness and rawness.
A conversation between Ben and another member of the press (an older woman):
Q: When [Silent Bob] is explaining Amy in the restaurant the gentleman beside him is eating sugar. That distracted me. BA: Yeah, he was eating spoonfuls of sugar. Q: That bothered me. Why is he upstaging? BA: He did upstage it. That's because the director was looking the other way. [Laughs] I don't know if he had singles on it or if it had coverage. Q: Was he really eating sugar? BA: Yeah, he was eating sugar. I was sitting right there. He's a weird cat. I don't really know what to tell you, besides that he eats spoonfuls of sugar. Gave him something to do in the scene, I guess. It is kind of nasty. I said, wow, that's a lot of refined sugar. Q: I'm distracted. During the important scene, he's explaining what Amy means to him, and this guy's eating sugar. I'm distracted. BA: Well, you're right to be so and I'm going to pass that on to Kevin and raise some cain.
MM: The only thing that distracted me was in the beginning, at the comic book convention, Jason Lee is yelling like he did throughout Mallrats. After a while, he tones it down and I can see him as Banky, but during the first 10 minutes he seemed more like Brodie with a beard.
BA: That's an interesting point. I think that, while the characters are different, that's an archetype that Kevin's used in all three of his films. The Dante/Randal dynamic. That straight guy/more outrageous guy thing seems to be a format that he's quite comfortable with. Jason Lee played that character in both those movies. So, certainly there's going to be some commonality. Though I think Jason showed a tremendous amount of nuance and range over the course of the movie. Kind of subtle stuff, you know? Obviously, a lot of the stuff he did was big, but there were a lot of subtle things in there that I noticed after watching it five or six times.
MM: Was that convention scene filmed first by any chance?
BA: It wasn't the first scene shot, but I think that scene called for a bigger performance because he was supposed to lose it about being a tracer. Initially, it wasn't supposed to be the first scene in the movie. There was another sequence that took place before that which got cut out.
At one point an openly gay critic points out that, "Some gay people will be like oh, no, another gay character getting together with a straight character."
Ben jokes, "Another? What was the other one?"
After the laughs pass, Ben adds, "I talked to a guy who writes for a gay magazine. He said what he personally liked about the movie was that it wasn't necessarily a gay positive movie. Often when you're making a movie about gay people it's like they have to be put on a pedestal. He said he felt this movie included gay characters at face value. In other words, they were who they were. It was an attempt to write honest characters, be they gay, straight, or, as Kevin seems to be suggesting, that their sexuality--their orientation--exists along a spectrum. If 10 is totally gay and one is totally straight, you have characters who are sprinkled along this gamut, which I thought was an interesting theory."
So, is Alyssa really a lesbian? "Whether or not she is clearly a lesbian or clearly bisexual, she doesn't fit easily into any label. She's just a person who has had relationships with a bunch of different people, who had made a choice in one point to live her lifestyle one way then kind of reconsiders and rationalizes. To me, from a purely objective point of view, someone who sleeps with both men and women is defined as bisexual. But, if a woman says I'm a lesbian, I'm gay, regardless of whether or not she has slept with men in the past, one has to respect that.
At one point I'm saying why are you with me and she's saying, I didn't want to halve my options. I'm looking for this one person who's my soulmate, who completes me, who I want to spend my life with. Her personal rational--not the rational of all lesbians or all people--is that by saying I can only take this person from one group of people is limiting. That's her theory. I think it's pretty clear that to say all a woman really needs is a good man is offensive and certainly silly. This movie articulates that sentiment and puts it in the mouth of its most buffoonish character, who's the brunt of all the jokes. Of course Kevin's not trying to suggest that.
I really like the character Dwight plays--Hooper. The really great thing is he's a character first, sexual orientation second. His orientation doesn't dictate his behavior. It simply exists and it doesn't upstage anything in the story. He's part of this group of people and they're all friends who hang out. It's not made to feel cutesy or waved around. Personally, I like that. And, ultimately, I think the medium of cinema is too small to ever try to speak for all people of any sexual orientation or anything else.
If you're gonna make movies that are predictable and about things you could expect, why make the movie? The whole point of making a movie is that things happen that you wouldn't necessarily imagine. People say things that take you by surprise. People do things that create situations where there's a lot of conflict."
On the flipside of surprises and conflicts would have to be predictability and resolutions. That said, what are Ben's thoughts on the film's open ending? Where does he think the characters end up? "I like that it's left to your interpretation. My interpretation is that when you have a friend you're that close to and you have something really traumatic break that it leaves a rip," he explains. "After the course of a year, Holden is left with a lot of warm feelings toward Banky and picks up his comic, which I think is a sweet moment. Especially since they were partners in their art and they'd both gone on to pursue separate projects artistically, which is a pretty significant kind of break up. I think after a ripped break like that it's almost more uncomfortable to try to be friends again because you're very aware of what's not there in a relationship.
This ties into one of the things Kevin's talking about, which is rather than saying that Banky is gay, or that anybody is gay, the idea is that often close male relationships operate quite a bit like love relationships in a lot of ways. You care about one another very deeply. You're loyal to one another. You spend a lot of time together. You can be jealous if some woman comes in and takes your friend away. Ultimately, it's about how you care about other people in your life, not necessarily who you sleep with. I don't really see Holden spending a tremendous amount of time with either Banky or Alyssa in the future. I think of him spending some time with himself, writing his Chasing Amy comic and living by himself. That's why I like that shot in the end where he goes out the door. He's gonna see what it's like to be a little more independent in the world. Grow up a little bit, I think."
It's clear that Ben has put a great deal of thought into Chasing Amy, not just in terms of his own performance, but in regards to the film as a whole. No doubt he's given it the sort of thought only writers and directors generally give their films. That said, it isn't surprising that he recently co-wrote a film with fellow actor Matt Damon (who has a cameo in Chasing Amy). The two will star in the film, entitled Good Will Hunting, along with Robin Williams under the direction of Gus Van Sant.
Should we expect something of the, well, offbeat variety? "There are parts of it that are a little offbeat. It's not as edgy, and certainly less profane, than Chasing Amy," Ben states, adding, "It's a different movie, yet it's also a coming of age story with a very classic structure in that sense. What's different and unusual about it is that it's geographically specific to the environment of Boston and the culture here. Everything from the dialect to the particular way that people live their lives that's different from other cities in the country. We want that to come through to the audience because we grew up here, Matt and I. He and I grew up two blocks apart, right out of Central Square. Right down Pearl Street. And we've never felt as though the city has been done well. It wasn't the way we perceived it growing up here. It always rang false. Everything down to some kind of weird, bastardized Kennedy accent. It's not a city of leprechauns, you know what I mean?"
Indeed I do, but does Gus Van Sant? After all, he certainly has a unique signature. Is Ben afraid Good Will Hunting will come out looking more like Gus Van Sant's world as opposed to true life Boston? "I hope that Gus' signature and sensibility will be on this movie because I think he's an excellent filmmaker," he says. "I also know Gus is really invested in making a movie about Boston. It was Gus' idea to hold a huge audition for non-actors, people who are really from Boston. He definitely wants an authentic sense of the city, not a false, glossed over sort of version of what it's like here. That would be a real underachievement. So, in that sense, hopefully we get the best of both worlds. We get Boston and we also get Gus, who lends a more mature, seasoned eye to the whole thing than either Matt or I could offer."
Were Robin Williams not in the cast one might just assume Good Will Hunting will be made on a low budget. However, as Ben points out, "It's hard to make a low budget movie when you have Robin Williams and Gus Van Sant. Those guys definitely took substantial pay cuts. But, then your production costs all of a sudden go up, ironically. People say, who are you trying to fool, I'm not gonna give you a deal, you've got Robin Williams in your movie! It's hard to go in and say can you cut your rate to the boom guy or the caterer. They say, cut my rate? If I can't make my rate on a Robin Williams movie where can I make my rate? Those costs add up. So, while it certainly isn't a low budget movie, it's certainly low by big studio budget movie standards."
MM: Did you consult with Kevin Smith when you were writing the script?
BA: Not really, although it's because of Kevin we're at Miramax, which is why he has a co-executive producer credit. We were running into trouble with another studio because they wanted to shoot it in Toronto, among other things. We said, this is the most geographically specific movie that's ever been made. Shooting this is Toronto would be ruinous. And they talked about the rates. Boston has an extremely bad reputation in LA, because of the Teamsters and some things that happened in the 70s. I'm not bashing the unions by any means, but it's not about people showing up and you get to charge them what you want. It's about you having to bring your rate to a point where you can attract people, where you're competitive. I think the perspective is, these people have money and they just don't want to pay us. Well, yeah, they have money and, yeah, they don't want to pay you, but if you ask for too much money they're not gonna give it to you--they'll go to somebody else who doesn't ask for as much. And those people are the Canadians. And there's no reason why Toronto should have 20 or 30 films in production at any given time. Boston is an infinitely more interesting city with a tremendous amount of character. I worked on School Ties for four months and it went well. And I know a lot of the Teamsters here. That's not the problem. It's just a matter of perception. And, in all fairness, the fact that the Canadians have the exchange rate in their favor, which is about 25 cents on the dollar. Also, Canada gives a very significant tax break to movie studios that go up there. On a federal level, they pursue actively the business of attracting filmmakers.
MM: What percentage of Good Will Hunting will be filmed in Boston?
BA: We're getting all the exteriors here. What Matt and I want to do, because we have this deal with Miramax, is demonstrate that you can make a movie in Boston and it doesn't cost you a lot of money.
MM: It will help if Brass Ring (which recently shot in Boston) does well.
BA: Yeah, they just wrapped. They had a low budget agreement, which is good, that they'll make low budget agreements with those movies. I think they were very helpful with those guys. A couple of my friends were in that movie. They came in under budget and such. And if you can spend a million and a half I don't see what the problem is with shooting in Boston. I'm sure that's cheaper than Canada. But, anyway, I'm just stuck on this idea. I'd like to convince the studios to come back here for larger budget stuff. I find it interesting. It's also my home, where I grew up. I certainly know this city better than any other city. So, it makes sense for me to want to make movies here. That's why it's so disheartening to find so much resistance. Let me tell you, if it weren't for Matt and I basically getting to the point where we said, we will quit if you guys don't agree to shoot in Boston, as opposed to Toronto, it wouldn't be here. At all. That's why we left Castle Rock. We said, forget it, we'd rather just not do the movie. That's what it takes. Miramax fought it, but then they, to their credit, understood that and why we cared about it. And, even so, we only get to do half of it here.
Further thoughts on Miramax and the Weinstein brothers? "I think the Weinstein brothers demonstrated to the market that independent, low budget movies were profitable, potentially. That if you could keep your costs down you could make money producing them as well as acquiring and distributing them. The first thing they did was acquire and distribute these movies and demonstrate that people would pay some money. They paid small money to acquire the movies and they'd spend advertising money, but in local market places. People came to the movies and they made money. Slowly, the larger machinery of Hollywood has begun to recognize that, which is why you see Sony Pictures Classics, Fine Line and Fox Searchlight, these indy shingles on the hat of the Warner Brothers kind of castle. Harvey and Bob have demonstrated that if Adam Smith were around today he'd be financing low budget, interesting independent movies. It's simply good venture capitalism, really. In addition, I really do believe those guys care about movies and making good movies, which is not necessarily the rule in Hollywood."
That's for sure. In fact, it has reached a point that some feel there's a deliberate, consolidated movement of young actors, producers, directors and writers in the independent film world. Would Ben agree? "Yeah, I do. To a certain extent," he says, explaining, "It looks a little more like that from the outside. It's still acting and getting your movie made. It's still very much about opportunity and trying to get the opportunity. Actors who do independent movies are still auditioning. You still have to scrap to get your movie made. But, there's definitely a group of people who have in common the fact that they essentially came out of the independent film market. People who became successful via that route, rather than the studio."
Any further thoughts on the independent route? "In a way, the independent route is more director driven than studio movies," he point out. "Usually when you hit studio movies people don't talk about directors as much. The independent movies seem to be more about filmmakers. In a way, less about actors, actually. There are a lot of good actors in independent films, but it takes people three or four movies to catch up and go, yeah, he was good in that, too."
Hmm. Could this mean people are about to catch up and start taking note of Ben's talent with Chasing Amy? Indeed.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon: Faces of the Oscars
They successfully turned a high-tech thriller into a tearjerker, and struck a box office heart of gold — but the real payoff may come on Oscar night
By Rebecca Ascher-Walsh for Entertainment Weekly (13 February 1998)
[NOTE: The full transcript of the article, as retrieved from the Entertainment Weekly website, is under the cut. It does seem surprisingly short to me, so I don't know if it is in its complete form as presented in the original issue. If anyone has any information on this, it would be most welcome!]
Full Article!
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon: Faces of the Oscars
They successfully turned a high-tech thriller into a tearjerker, and struck a box office heart of gold--but the real payoff may come on Oscar night
By Rebecca Ascher-Walsh for Entertainment Weekly (13 February 1998)
MATH PRODIGY WILL HUNTING, ON A JOB interview with NASA, is given a test code to crack. He quickly spots an evil scheme: NASA and the FBI have set him up with a real code, which, once solved, could cause mass destruction. Hunting recruits his best friends and understanding shrink to hatch a plan, beat the government, and save the day.
This is not, most certainly, the subtle, warm-the-cockles-of-your-heart Good Will Hunting that has propelled cowriters, actors, and childhood best friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck onto Hollywood's most-wanted list, into the hearts of American audiences, and toward the Oscar podium. And the tortuous path Affleck and Damon were forced to navigate in order to transform the movie from a high-tech conspiracy thriller to an intimate character study is one of the most dramatic stories of the Oscar season.
After five years of knocking, Damon, 27, and Affleck, 25, have been admitted to the Movie Hall of Fame so suddenly that it's a little disconcerting. A few weeks ago, an 80-year-old woman walked past the Manhattan set of Miramax's Rounders, in which Damon plays a card shark, and--upon learning who the star was--exclaimed in wonder, "Matt Damon, the sex symbol?!" And when Affleck--in L.A. to film the summer blockbuster-in-waiting Armageddon with Bruce Willis--went to the Disney cafeteria and signed for his lunch because he'd forgotten his wallet, he learned the next day on a television gossip show that he had, in fact, pitched a fit and demanded a free meal. "It worried me," Affleck says. "I haven't trashed a hotel room yet, but yesterday I leaned back in my chair at the Four Seasons and it kind of snapped. What will they think?"
What they'll think is that Good Will Hunting's odyssey is a classic Hollywood-in-the-'90s Cinderella story, the kind that ends with the prospect of Academy Awards and surprisingly good box office. Which isn't far from the truth, if the evil stepmother becomes a studio, and Prince Charming is redrawn to look like (gulp) Harvey Weinstein.
Affleck--who refers to his partner and himself as "the Milli Vanilli of screenwriters"--and Damon began to work on Good Will Hunting in 1993, basing the story on a one-act play Damon had written at Harvard (he left before completing his studies). They drew from their own life growing up in Boston, where they were introduced by their mothers, both teachers, 17 years ago. "We're pretty inseparable, in terms of our experiences," Damon says. "We look at things in exactly the same way." While they wrote, Damon says, "it wasn't like someone was good at structure and someone at dialogue. The only difference between us is Ben can type."
Neither, however, can edit. "We must have written 1,500 pages," Damon says. "We had Will Goes to the Zoo episodes." Within months, they settled on a script combining a friendship adventure with a "banana in the tailpipe" plot, as Affleck described the then-thrill-a-minute NASA caper. The characters of Will (Damon), a down-and-out boy genius, and his best friend Chuckie (Affleck), a construction worker, were already in place. But instead of the mentor/professor eventually played by Stellan Skarsgård, imagine a nefarious FBI agent attempting to corrupt Will, and instead of boy-meets-therapist bonding, picture a climax with world peace at stake.
That may have been a tall order for what Damon and Affleck envisioned as an independently financed $2 million project--and in November 1994, when Castle Rock won a bidding war for the script, director Rob Reiner, a partner in the studio, told them to drop the adventure angle and focus on the relationships. "It was a scary moment," says coproducer Chris Moore. "We started [all over again] with 63 pages and made it a character story."
"It was a very passionate debate," says Affleck, "and we left a little deflated. But after listening to [Reiner], we had to concede." The partners locked themselves in a room, where, says Affleck, "we went on to write scenes that were so absurd." In one draft, Will's therapist, Sean, became Will's construction foreman; Will and Sean bonded when Will tagged along to Sean's book club meeting. In another version, "Chuckie died, squashed by a steel beam," Affleck says. "No idea seemed too bad to pursue. We would have done Boogie Nights if we'd thought of it: Sean is a pornographer!"
After a year of rewrites, Damon and Affleck settled on the script that would eventually become Good Will Hunting. But when they returned to Castle Rock in October 1995, they hit an impasse: The studio demanded that another of its partners, Andrew Scheinman (whose only directorial experience was the flop Little Big League), helm the film. "It was certainly a big issue," admits Castle Rock partner Martin Shafer, "but there were a couple of other creative issues as well." Shafer says Castle Rock generously gave Hunting back to the filmmakers, something "we didn't have to do."
Affleck says, however, that he and Damon were given 30 days to sell Hunting to another studio and reimburse Castle Rock's development costs. (He charges that the studio "significantly bloated" the tab, which Shafer denies.) If they failed, the film would return to Castle Rock. "I was told [by Castle Rock reps] if we couldn't get another offer for the script, we'd be lucky to get tickets to the premiere," Affleck adds.
Whatever suspense they'd dropped from their script seemed to be coming back at them, because the studios that initially expressed enthusiasm for Hunting now passed. "It was twice as expensive as when it first went out," says Affleck. "It had the curse of being in turnaround, and [we] now had a reputation for being difficult." After going to meetings that Affleck felt were held "just so people could say no to us after we passed on them a year earlier," Damon headed off to film Courage Under Fire, and Affleck to make Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy. With three days left before Castle Rock's deadline, a despairing Affleck persuaded director Smith to take a look at the script. After reading it overnight--"He said it made him cry on the toilet," Affleck remembers--Smith showed it to Miramax cochairman Harvey Weinstein, who immediately bought the project for nearly $1 million. "The reader at Miramax had passed," says Damon. "I don't think he works there anymore."
By the time the more-talk, less-action Good Will was ready to roll last spring, Damon and Affleck had given Will a Harvard premed-student girlfriend named Skylar (based on Damon's similarly named premed girlfriend at Harvard and played by Minnie Driver) and a gifted therapist (Robin Williams, whose agreement to play the part was crucial to Miramax's greenlight). The signing of Williams also made it easier for the studio to okay Affleck and Damon's directorial choice, Gus Van Sant, better known for edgy material like Drugstore Cowboy. Williams, for his part, had great confidence in the script--until his first meeting with Damon and Affleck. "I walked in and thought, 'When are your fathers getting here?' "
DAMON AND AFFLECK NO LONGER WANT FOR WORK, but they've had little time to savor being, as Affleck says, "on top of the pyramid." Damon has filmed three movies back-to-back (he went from Hunting to Steven Spielberg's World War II epic Saving Private Ryan, due in June, to Rounders), and hasn't "had any downtime to process what's going on, and where I am." Or to enjoy it: His sole treat to himself, he says sheepishly, was purchasing a $10 scarf during a stroll through Manhattan's Greenwich Village. "It was a big purchase," he says. "I mean it. I always bought a winter jacket for myself after each movie, but now people give me clothes, so it would be wasteful to buy myself one."
These days, Damon and Affleck's snazzier public images are largely thanks to the free designer tuxedos they received to pick up their Golden Globes for best screenplay, and the beautiful women on their arms. (Affleck is dating Gwyneth Paltrow, and in a too-cute-for-words twist, Damon--who recently parted company with Hunting costar Driver--has been seen with Paltrow's close friend Winona Ryder.)
In March, he and Affleck begin filming Kevin Smith's Dogma in Pittsburgh; then they'll head to Europe, Damon to play a cultured killer in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Affleck to costar with Paltrow in the romance Shakespeare in Love. Along the way, they say, they'll cowrite (via fax) their next film, Halfway House, about a pair of Boston drug-abuse counselors; Castle Rock, which retained rights to their next effort, will produce. "It's sort of a low-concept stepchild of Good Will Hunting," Damon says. "We've got 150 pages, and about 5 are good." In addition, they have a two-picture Miramax deal that includes writing and starring in a buddy comedy.
Also tentatively on the schedule is a quick March 23 jaunt to L.A., where, say oddsmakers, Damon has a good shot at a Best Actor nomination, Affleck a small one for Best Supporting Actor, and both an extremely strong one for Best Original Screenplay. "I can't even...I mean..." Damon stutters. "Ben and I haven't talked about it all. Truly. I think it's because in some deep place we really want to find out we got nominated." For what? "That's a hard one," he says. "Neither of us really long to be screenwriters, but at the same time, that would be a category in which we'd be nominated together. I don't care if we were nominated for Best Morons, because I'd think, Well, I got nominated with Ben, and that's pretty cool.... If you put us together, you might actually make a whole, creative, interesting individual. We're a lot like the Wonder Twins.
"I'll never forget the first time we saw the movie at the premiere," Damon continues, "looking at the faces of the people who were behind this movie. I'm very aware of who was there when I needed them, when I was completely powerless and begging. Believe me, we know every single person who was behind this movie, and every single person who wasn't."
i thought damn. i wish there were more mattfleck + text posts out there. then i realized i could just do it myself.
Damn just saw a video of Matt Damon move close and take a drag of Ben Afflecks cigarette and that old man yaoi really does hit different
Damn just saw a video of Matt Damon move close and take a drag of Ben Afflecks cigarette and that old man yaoi really does hit different
Full pages of Matt & Ben's interview for Empire Magazine
via damonlibrary on twt, all credit to gofckapineapple for providing the full scans :)
i will never ever get tired of hearing this
my god why do fucking matt damon and ben affleck have a better slow burn than most fics i’ve read
are they hiding their love, brokeback mountain style? or are silently yearning???
For some reson i've been watching a lot of the instegeters press stuff that Matt and Casey did.
And let me tell you, the AMOUNT of times Matt would mention Ben out of nowhere!! 😖🤭
he would just bring him up so randomly, all his Ben and i's, "your brother" "his brother" "your brothers Spanish is really good" ... and Casey is like, this again😑
And i just love it!!
Like sorry Casey but you'll always be his best friends little brother... that's in character, Ben firs anybody else second...
But one of my favorite moments is this:
He just absolutely exposed him😁
And of course he's like "...and I'd call Ben..."
Like i just know they just sit there sometimes and be like "what is wrong with this kid...😅"
But one thing that i find interesting,is that Matt and Casey do have this little brother, big brother vibe, like matt would look kinda done with him some times too (in a good way😅)
But i find that interesting because, that's in complete contrast with his relationship with Ben - who is two years younger than Matt - but i don't get that vibe with them at all? actually i think Matt gets quite childish around him, and as they've said befor, they bring the kid version out of each other.
I've tried to piece together a timeline of Matt and Ben's childhoods from various interviews, but some of the event timelines might not be accurate. Also, since English isn't my native language, there could be some errors in expression—and I hate English.
MattFleck
Childhood Timeline
1973
Matt's parents divorced. His mother took him and his older brother Kyle and moved from Newton back to the Cambridge neighborhood. They lived in a six-family communal house.
1979
Ben’s mother, who had a college friend working as a casting director in the Cambridge area, arranged a small cameo for seven-year-old Ben. It was his first acting experience.
1980
Thanks to their mothers’ introduction, Matt and Ben met for the first time. Casey was also there that day. Matt remembers little Casey, but Casey has no memory of it at all.
1981
The film The Dark End of the Street, in which Ben had a small role, was released this year.
1983
When Ben was 11, his parents divorced. His mother began renting out the second floor of their house.
From Ben’s window, he could see Matt’s room in a nearby building.
Every time Ben came to Matt’s door, he would knock and then hide across the street, scared of the older kids from the neighboring school who smoked and looked intimidating.
1984
Ben starred in the PBS educational TV series Voyage of the Mimi, which aired this year.
1985
Ben’s mother worked as a child actor coach at PBS and took Ben and Casey to Mexico for a year, traveling across Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula with the show’s crew. This is when Ben learned Spanish.
Meanwhile, Matt entered Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, beginning his high school years.
1986
(Exact date inferred to be January 26, 1987)
While playing football in a snow-covered park in Cambridge, Matt got into a conflict with a kid nearly two meters tall. As he was knocked down and thought he was done for, the 5'3" Ben suddenly dashed out of nowhere and tackled the big guy, risking his own safety to protect Matt. At that moment, Matt realized Ben was someone who would risk himself for a friend—someone worth being bonded with for life.
That same year, Ben starred in the TV movie Wanted: A Perfect Man.
Ben's father became homeless due to alcoholism, spending two years living on the streets of Cambridge. During a school-organized visit to the court, his classmates even happened to encounter his father being arraigned there.
1987
Ben enrolled at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public school famous for its drama department. Matt was already a senior. That year, Voyage of the Mimi: Season 2 aired, and Ben entered school as a “big star.”
However, Matt was unimpressed, as he was the senior leader in the drama department. He told Ben “Listen, man! All right? This is the theater. It's not about your looks, okay? It's about the work.”
Ben's mother had saved all his acting earnings in a college trust fund. However, Ben secretly withdrew $200 a month to buy alcohol and pizza. His secret was exposed when his mom changed his bedsheets and found bank statements. She sent him to a recovery center, where Ben spent three weeks, even rafting down the Colorado River with troubled teens.
That same year, Ben starred in the TV movie Hands of a Stranger.
1988
Matt graduated high school and got accepted to Harvard University.
Matt’s mother began learning Spanish and traveled through Central America to better understand the region’s conflicts. She took Kyle and Matt on three relatively mild trips where they stayed with local families, attended language classes, or traveled the country by public bus.
One summer in Guatemala, a war was underway. Matt witnessed children his own age joining the fighting.
That year, both Matt and Ben auditioned for Dead Poets Society but were rejected.
They opened a joint bank account to fund travel for auditions, depositing their savings together. The password was "riverp", inspired by their shared admiration for actor River Phoenix.
That same year, Ben’s father entered a rehabilitation center in Indio California, to treat his alcoholism.
1989
Matt was a freshman at Harvard. When Dead Poets Society premiered in June, both he and Ben worked part-time as ticket takers at the local movie theater.
Field of Dreams was filmed in Boston. Matt and Ben knew a local casting agency called College Pickman, which allowed them to be among the hundreds of crew members of the film. They got a chance to appear on screen as extras in a fleeting moment, and this was also their first time co-starring in a movie.
1990
Ben followed his then-girlfriend to the University of Vermont, studying Spanish. However, he dropped out a few months later after injuring his tailbone while playing basketball.
He then moved to Los Angeles and enrolled at Occidental College, majoring in Middle Eastern Affairs.
Ben in Daddy (1991)
1992
Ben dropped out after a year and a half at Occidental College.
Right before Matt graduated, he chose to take a leave of absence from Harvard due to scheduling conflicts with a film shoot.
the way I think about this literally all the time
going through old Matt Damon interviews i have bookmarked (as one normal and sane person does) and this little clip is the reason i went looking for this article in the first place —
Damon has said that in adolescence he “felt such pain in wanting to belong somewhere and not belonging.” I asked if this feeling had to do with his becoming an actor. “Maybe it was a desire for love,” he replied. “Isn’t that what we all want? I think originally it was just a basic need for attention. I enjoyed people hearing that I was an actor and asking, ‘Oh, who are you?’ It was an identity of my own. “Loneliness, the need to belong —some of that drove me too. And somewhere along the line I fell in love, as most teens do, but with acting itself.”
Not sure how to articulate why this stuck out to me. Or why it feels like a lightning bolt to my chest. It definitely adds something to the lens that I use to look at him and Ben's relationship. Maybe it just fits well into the fic im writing (or trying to write)
no because when Ben said
"I couldn't imagine doing this without you"
and when Matt said,
"-what are we doing, man? Both of us, this is what we love to do more than anything. The only thing better is doing it together, in any capacity – How much life do we have left and what are we going to do with it?"
like why would they say those things about each other and expect me to be normal about it?
no because when Ben said
"I couldn't imagine doing this without you"
and when Matt said,
"-what are we doing, man? Both of us, this is what we love to do more than anything. The only thing better is doing it together, in any capacity – How much life do we have left and what are we going to do with it?"
like why would they say those things about each other and expect me to be normal about it?