Throwback Thursday: Revisit "Good Will Hunting" 18 Years Later

On Wednesday night, the Tribeca Film Festival hosted a screening of " Good Will Hunting," the now-classic 1997 film for which Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won a screenplay Oscar. The movie holds up 18 years later, judging by the number of people in the audience dabbing their eyes as the lights came up. Director Gus Van Sant and stars Minnie Driver and Stellan Skarsgård joined a post-screening discussion. And although Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were not present, their spirit is channeled here in the photos from original NYC premiere, which drew the adorable twenty-something cast, plus Gwyneth Paltrow (who was dating Affleck at the time), Mariah Carey, and then lovebirds Liv Tyler and Joaquin Phoenix. Read on for insider tidbits on the much-adored film and check out the slideshow to experience a ’90s fashion flashback.

Robin Williams did impressions while shooting scenes.
Stellan Skarsgård: He was constantly improvising. One time, it was the beginning of a rather big scene that ends with him calling me an arrogant prick or something like that. And every time, on the first take, I’d come in, and it wasn’t him. It was Jack Nicholson standing there, and he talked like Jack Nicholson, and he behaved like Jack Nicholson, and I tried to play the scene with him, because I'm really bad at improvising. So it became very strange, and then everybody laughed. And we had to do it again, and I came in, and then it was James Cagney. That went on - I think it was, like, five or six takes with different persons I met in that bar every time. And then gradually he did something more and more like the character in the film.

Matt Damon was exhausted trying to go head to head with Robin Williams’s improvisational skills.
Gus Van Sant: It was [shot] in film, so we didn’t have, like, modern conveniences, like focus was harder, and we would have to measure everything so that the camera would work its way around the room, and the characters were working their way around the room, and they would have to freeze while we focused. And you do the lines to make sure that you knew where you were going to be in the room, and everybody would freeze, and measuring tapes would go out. And we had a bad focus problem.

It was a tragedy that I didn’t roll the cameras, especially in Sean’s [Robin Williams’ character] office. Robin would do his part as, you know, Jack Nicholson, and Matt would do his part as Daffy Duck. And the next time around - we would have to do it multiple times - you know, Robin would choose a different character, Frankenstein, and Matt would be Nixon. And it was really entertaining, and I was having a good time, but the day after, I was, like, “Isn’t that great? Isn’t that fun when you guys are improvising that way?” We never recorded it, but Matt said, ‘No, it’s exhausting!’ And he would keep trying to keep up with Robin; Robin’s imagination.

In fact, Matt Damon was so exhausted, he slept through a scene. Literally.
Minnie Driver: Matt was producing the film, and he was writing it, and he was starring in it, and it was a big deal, and he was exhausted. And he had fallen asleep in the college set, in my college bedroom, in the bed. And we had this scene after lunch that took place on the bed, so I think he just thought he was going to get a head start on the whole thing. But, you know, it was this whole scene, and I remember Jean-Yves [Escoffier], who is the amazing cinematographer saying, ‘Well, let’s just let him sleep, and we’ll just shoot it from above.’ And the guys just worked really quietly, and Matt didn’t wake up, they built this structure so you were above the bed. And then Gus was, like, ‘Just go and get into the bed.’ So I got in bed, and I was, like [whispering], ‘Babe, you know we’ve got to do this thing.’ And he’s like [makes groaning noise.] So it was so quiet, and it was so sleepy, and we did that scene based around him really being asleep. He knew he just had to get to the place where he has to wake up, and reach out and stop her from calling Chuckie. But it was, like, just saying stuff to try and get him to respond, and he really didn’t, because he really was asleep. [Laughs] But I loved that everything worked around that. We didn’t wake him, we worked around that, and it is such a beautiful scene. It’s one of my very favorites.

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