Slashy Bits from Matt Damon by Kathleen Tracy
Disclaimer: I did not write any of this, Kathleen Tracy did in her biography of Matt Damon, appropriately titled Matt Damon. What you should do is go to your local bookstore or library (Davis library at UNC has a copy) and read the whole book.
Note: I changed two of the most glaring grammatical errors, but anything else that's wrong is the way she wrote it. I blame bad editing, myself. The numbers in parentheses are the pages where the quotes can be found.
"Growing up for me was like you'd get some blocks and then you'd have to make up a game. In our house, we only had blocks to play with. My brother and I hated these blocks. But Kyle would make these really amazing costumes which I'd wear and we'd act out these stories. And that was really cool." (4)
Matt Damon's life story is so intertwined with that of his childhood friend, Ben Affleck, that it would be impossible to separate the two. While most kids have a best who they are inseparable from for a period of time, Matt and Ben never grew apart; they simply grew closer the older they got. Their relationship was, and still is, as close as brothers without the familial rivalry. They were soul mates before they even knew what the word meant. And they might never have been friends if it weren't for the insistence of their mothers, who were both teachers, although Mrs. Affleck taught elementary school.
Matt was ten and Ben was eight, when they were first introduced and it wasn't exactly like at first sight.
"I was pretty much forced into hanging out with Ben," Matt laughs. "I remember exactly what Ben was like: gregarious and outgoing. Except when he used to ring my bell and then cower on the other side of the street because he was afraid of the little kids at the school next door to my house. But, believe me, it's no surprise that he grew up into the totally obnoxious guy he is now."
Although the two youngsters didn't think they had much in common at first, they soon discovered mutual ground: both were interested in acting, although they had been introduced to performing in quite different ways.
"I grew up just always making up stories and acting out plays," Matt comments. "That's just the way I was raised. But Ben came from a more prestigious background."
Affleck's father, who helped rehabilitate alcoholics and drug addicts in his day job, had worked in a theater company in Boston for a long time, so Ben had grown up with a access to a performing atmosphere, watching actors up close.
Damon's interest had initially developed out of the sheer joy he experienced in his playacting. (6-7)
Suddenly, Ben became the kid everyone looked up to. Somewhat surprisingly, since Matt aspired to the same goals, Affleck's success didn't arouse envy in Matt. Instead, it made him feel vindicated.
"Ben was the movie star of our block," says Damon. "Ben was like the biggest star in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he was my best friend. I was the theater kid and he was the television kid." (8)
Suddenly, even though Ben was two years younger, he became the resident expert on all things acting and Matt looked to him for guidance and information.
"Of course I thought he knew everything because he'd done the PBS show," Damon acknowledges. "And we had done a TJ Maxx commercial together and had gotten paid 200 bucks apiece which was the money I used to go to New York and back. So yeah, he was the guy."
Having found a captive audience in each other, Ben and Matt would play theater games and put on plays together, feeding off one another's ideas, oblivious to anyone else who might not appreciate their passion for performing.
"It was kind of nerdy, actually," admits Ben now of their interest in being actors. "People would look at us like, 'Why don't you want to be a fireman like a normal kid?'"
"I think we just look at the world in the same way," Damon notes. "Ben's the funniest guy I know and I just admire him greatly. You gotta admire a close friend of yours."
"It's like any friendship someone's had since they were little," adds Affleck. "It's not like we're the Wonder Twins or anything. We were just lucky enough to want to do the same thing."
"We did everything together," says Damon. "From Little League to chasing girls but from a very early age, what we focused on most was acting." (8-9)
Once their friendship was forged, Matt and Ben quickly became inseparable. Matt's house was only two blocks away from Ben and they attended the same grammar school so the boys often walked to school together, despite the two-year age difference.
"We grew up in the same neighborhood, playing the same games and experiencing the same things," Damon says. "If one of us had enough money for a candy bar, then the candy bar was bought and split in half. That's just the way it's always been." (10)
"Then when he was fourteen and I was sixteen, [Ben] in his infinite wisdom, he'd seen me act all through high school, and said, 'I can get you an audition,' with his agent in New York. So I announced to my mom and dad that I was ready to go pro, as if I were a baseball player. They were just baffled," Matt laughs.
Matt and Ben plotted the trip to New York down to the last detail.
"This trip was a big deal. We figured out my wardrobe. I had my Syracuse Orangemen sweatshirt on, and I knew everything. So Ben and I took the train to New York and he introduced me to his agent.
"So I walked into the office with all this confidence, and here we were the two chumpiest kids in the world. It was like this Mom and Pop agency and they didn't even know who Ben was. But Ben thought he was the biggest star in the world and he's going, 'This is Matt. He's an actor too.'
"And I'm kind of too cool to talk. They looked at me and said, 'Yeah, we'll represent Matt too.' And I never got a phone call from them."(13-14)
Despite his popularity with the young ladies Matt spent most of his free time with Ben. They would go hang out at the local video arcade called One Thousand and One Plays and afterward usually go buy a slice of pizza as a late night snack on their way home.
When he was old enough, Ben followed Matt to Cambridge Rindge and Latin. (14)
But whereas Mat was a solid overall student, Ben was less apt to apply himself to subjects he was less interested in. He was the classic example of a student who doesn't live up to his potential.
"Matt was an ambitious student in a mediocre program," Affleck explains. "I was an unambitious student in a difficult program--excuse me, pilot program."
Ben goes on to chide Matt about his tendency to go out of his way to charm his instructors.
"Matt was the kind of guy who brought in a lot of apples to his teachers, if you see what I'm getting at. I was a little more contentious, with a habit of challenging my teachers." (15-16)
But Matt and Ben's disparate personalities complemented one another and their friendship continued to strengthen through their teen years and they continued to spend the majority of their time together. Naturally, once he got his driver's license, Affleck would pick Damon up for school in his very uncool Toyota Corona. It should be noted that Damon is often the butt of jokes about his less-than-sure driving skills, which is why Affleck was the one behind the wheel.
Hardly a day went by that Matt and Ben didn't fortify their dreams by reaffirming their commitment to "making it." As teenagers, it became a tradition for the friends to meet in the smaller of the school's two cafeterias, ironically called the Media Cafeteria.
"Ben and I used to have what we called business lunches, which meant we met at a different cafeteria from everyone else. We would take our cheeseburgers and sit down at a table in the Media caf and we would talk business. Even though there was nothing to talk about!"
Mostly they would talk about their plans to conquer Hollywood when they were older.
"We'd sit there with our little crappy fifty-cent chicken sandwiches and say things like, 'We're going to be big actors. We're going to take the town by storm!'" Affleck says.
Damon laughs at the memory. "Yeah, we'd say things like, 'We're going to be huge. We're going to be the biggest actors. Okay, so how was Spanish class today?'"
"We were really nerdy," Ben says, shaking his head. (16-17)
Matt's date for what was supposed to be the most romantic of high school nights was named Tammy Jones. Tall and gorgeous, Tammy was on the school basketball team and towered over the diminutive Damon by almost six inches. Even so, he was absolutely smitten with her.
"I thought she was really pretty and I was hopelessly in love with her--and it turned into the worst date I ever had," Damon admits. "Tammy hooked up with another guy, while I was in the room. I mean I was heartbroken, crestfallen, and cried myself to sleep." (19-20)
Even though Cambridge was his home, Matt lived in a dorm in college, and during his free time, he and his newfound buddies could often be found hanging out at Harvard Square's Bow and Arrow Pub.
He also kept in constant contact with his family and with Ben, who was still attending high school. (24)
But the best casting news for Matt was that Ben had also been cast for a role. By this time, Affleck had graduated from high school. He had attended Occidental College but dropped out in 1991 to pursue acting full-time.
"I realized there were other things I'd rather do with $20,000 a year," Ben quips.
So School Ties gave the two buddies a chance to work together and rekindle their long-held dreams. (29)
So School Ties represented one big step toward his future. But for now, Matt just wanted to enjoy the moment. He and Ben went to see the movie in a theater and sat there pinching themselves. There they were, up on the screen, together. Just the way they had planned it all those years ago. At the time, they couldn't imagine how it could get any better. (31)
"I'd take college over going to a spa. It's a lot more interesting. It's basically what I would do if I were at a spa--read all those books." (36)
At the time, Matt was taking a theater directing class with David Wheeler. When Ben came back from Los Angeles, where he was now living, to spend Christmas with his family, Matt showed him the one-act he had written.
"We actually ended up taking it and workshopping it at some acting classes at Harvard with David Wheeler," Damon says. "That's where we first started working it out. Because Ben knows David, he came into the class and we acted it out.
"Then when I was on spring break, in March of 1993, I went to Los Angeles for an audition and while there, showed it to Ben again, and he had the same reaction. He liked it but he didn't know where to go with it either," Matt laughs. "But it was then that we made a pact that we would work on it together.
"I had asked a number of people to help, all of them declined, and I was forced to ask Ben," Damon adds, kidding.
"Last guy on the list," Ben says, pretending to have hurt feelings. Then laughs: "I didn't have a job and things weren't looking too good for me so why not?"
"Seriously, though," Damon continues, "Ben, I think, is one of the brightest guys that I know and we have similar sensibilities."
The idea was to work on the play as a sort of long term project. At the time, Matt was looking at it as more of an intellectual exercise, to see if indeed he and Ben could create a full-length play. Besides, it would be fun to have a project to do with Ben. Not that they needed a reason to stay in touch, but it reinforced their bond by having something to work on together.
Even though Ben and Matt had in some respects gone their separate ways after high school, with Matt staying in college in between jobs while Ben chose to ultimately forego higher education and move to Los Angeles, the bond between them had remained intact.
"Matt and I had identical interests, so whether we ended up successful or selling hot dogs at Dodger games, we knew we'd end up doing the same sort of thing," explains Ben. "The remaining friends part was pretty consistent. We saw each other all the time and we talked on the phone all the time."
But having something specific to talk about was special. Suddenly, it felt like they were back in high school in the Media Cafeteria, plotting ways to take Hollywood by storm. They fantasized about writing their own movie that they would get to star in, laughing at the improbability of it. But it sure was fun to dream about. (36-38)
Once in Los Angeles, he moved into an apartment with Ben and his younger brother Casey, who was also pursuing an acting career.
Over the next two years, Ben and Matt would live like the stereotypical struggling actors they were, moving from one cheap apartment to another, adding and dropping other roommates, and generally trying to keep each other's spirits up with each passing day that they didn't get an acting job.
Damon and Ben lived all over, including the Eagle Rock area, which is on the eastern side of the city, a somewhat desolate community probably best known as one of the murderous stomping grounds of the infamous Night Stalker serial killer and maimer. Later, they lived in a small two-bedroom apartment on Curson Avenue, which was more central and near bustling Melrose Avenue, which by then had already adopted its too-hip-for-thou attitude.
But no matter where they lived, they were still struggling actors with very few prospects. Despite their straggling careers, Ben and Matt were compatible roommates, which is not to say they didn't have their disagreements.
"Ben and I lived together in probably ten different apartments at different times in our lives with ten other people who we grew up with and the arguments are always the same," Damon explains. "I'm a slob and I get yelled at for not cleaning up when the house is a mess."
But they were comfortable with each other and most of all, enjoyed facing Hollywood together.
"We've had rises and falls that weren't necessarily meteoric, but the word was us," Damon explains. "If one of us was working and we had enough money for both of us to go through life, great. They money was there basically to be shared. Ben would be in a series, like eight episodes, he made a little money, great. I did something, I made a little money, great. We were always looking out for each other."
And although money was tight and they would frequently only be able to afford Spam for dinner, Matt says he was never too worried about it.
"There were times when I would worry about the rent, but I never felt I was going to be out on the street," he says. "Our bank accounts would sometimes get down to the point where we needed another job, but another job would always come along, although it wasn't always a lot of money."
Matt and Ben's shared background reflected itself in a number of ways. Besides having similar outlooks about acting and sharing a common work ethic, neither young man was into the trendy, Hollywood club scene, and occasionally, they caught flack for it from some of their more socially-minded friends.
"Ben and I are constantly accused by people who come in and out of our circle, of being most boring people ever," laughs Damon. "There are people who go, 'I got tickets to see so-and-so, why don't you guys come?' We're like, 'Yeah, whatever.' They end up at the same bar every night with the same people telling the same jokes. We've always been that way."
Although many struggling actors can become extremely competitive, Matt and Ben never experienced any tension between them, even though they often got called in to read for the same characters. In fact, if Matt were going to lose out on a role to anyone, he would have preferred it be Ben.
"We would go out for the same parts all the time, but it never really came down to the director saying, 'It's either you or Ben,'" Damon says. "It was more like, 'It's Brad Pitt or you.' But in any event you always root for your own guy." (44-46)
"Yeah, I didn't want to do a movie for myself unless Ben was in it too. So I came up with a character for him that I described as Mercutio," Damon says, referring to Romeo's best friend. "Except in our movie, he wouldn't die. Ben thought that was cool."
Damon says it never crossed his mind to try and write the script on his own without Ben's help.
"No, co-writing was the only option because I didn't have the discipline to sit in front of the computer and wait for something to happen." (49)
"Writing the script was very easy with him. Ben and I just had this reservoir of common knowledge we could draw on. But I definitely only wrote it out of frustration and desperation--Ben and I simply wanted to create work for ourselves because we couldn't get hired as actors."
Because they were not trained writers, Matt and Ben didn't approach their script in the same way a film school screenwriting graduate would have. Structure and form wasn't their primary concern--simply getting it made so they could finally work in a good project was. (49-50)
For them, writing wasn't a solitary exercise but an extended acting exercise. They largely developed the script by acting out the various roles in their living room.
"We didn't have a formula," Matt admits. "Because we roomed together, we didn't really have any hard, fast writing schedule. We never forced ourselves to write. We would just sit down haphazardly, and a lot of times we wouldn't even be at a computer. Sometimes we'd just be sitting there and strike up a conversation over lunch and we'd come up with a scene that way. Then we'd go home and write it down. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to it.
"There were a lot of times when Ben and I just improv'd. We'd take a tape recorder, put it down, and just start improvising. We'd stand up and act out whatever scene we were working on. There was a lot of throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what stuck. We really go moment to moment as actors and that's what made the process interesting to me. It came down to, what would be fun to act?
"Eventually, we might come up with a half-hour improv out of which we might have fifteen seconds that would be good. We'd be looking through the tape and suddenly go, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah! That's it. That one. Write it down.' And maybe a scene would start from that line."
Affleck has admitted that on occasion, they were just as busy partying as they were writing.
"Mostly, we'd just get drunk," he laughed. "And as the night went on, the writing got better and better. Then the next day, we're like, 'Hey, I don't remember this scene but it's really good!'"
For the most part, Affleck was responsible for the manual labor of putting their work into script form.
"Ben's a faster typist than I am, so a lot of times what would end up happening was he'd sit in the chair for the actual typing segment, but we pretty much would both sit by the computer."
Once they were reworking the one-act into a movie script, their Good Will Hunting project became a priority. Even so, it was a slow process.
"Altogether, I bet we have got a thousand pages of Will Hunting on the computer," Damon laughs. "We have Will going to the zoo, we have Will being chased by government agents, we even have Will being killed. Ben and I just tried to see what would work--and most of it didn't. (50-52)
For Matt, it was just another out-of-the-way location. Even so, he still managed to find a way to work with Ben on their script.
"There was one fax machine in the entire town run by this Iranian guy named Rajou," he recalls. "I used to go to him and he would send my fax away for me. He drove a Lexus and it was the only Lexus in West Texas. And his license plate read RAJOU. Anyway, Rajou was our middleman for our scripts for a few months."
Instead of acting out the prospective scenes together in their living room, Matt and Ben were forced to put their ideas down in writing.
"Ben would fax me scenes, which I'd look at and then make notes. It would give me ideas and I'd send that back to Ben. Then we'd call each other on the phone and talk about what worked and what didn't. 'All right, now I see from this scene we need this other scene . . . Okay, I'll work on that. Tomorrow they're shooting a scene I'm not in so I'll have a couple of hours to do that and I'll fax it to you at the end of the day.' That's how it went." (54-55)
Once back home, Matt and Ben put even more energy into the script. Not only were they out-of-work actors, they were also single, unattached guys again. (58)
"We definitely had to pick each other up at certain points," Matt acknowledges. "Though it seemed like just when one of us was about to give up, that's when the other one was getting his second wind."
By the time they had a screenplay that was ready for others to see, their financial situation was looking particularly bleak. Even though Matt had recently signed on for a small part in an upcoming movie starring Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, they pay would be minimal.
"We were absolutely flat broke and we were looking for cash. I mean, it couldn't have gotten any worse. We were planning to break the lease on the house where we were living because the place was a little expensive for us," admits Damon. "And in relative terms, it wasn't a very expensive house. We had a tiny little place in West Hollywood and here's Ben at six-foot-four sleeping on my couch and not fitting in it. It was a pathetic sight." (59-60)
Matt admits it took a while for the full impact of the money to sink in. "They had given us so much [frigging] money, we didn't even know what to do. One of my actor friends came over and read about us on the front page of Variety and he goes, 'We're going to Sizzler.' That was it. We just got in the car and went to Sizzler for an all-you-can-eat dinner for about $6.99.
"I mean, we sold the script for a little over a half million and we go from eating Ramen Pride to eating real spaghetti. It was amazing. But the first thing we did when we go the money was get out of that house. We moved into another house that had four bedrooms. We had two other roommates and they were there the year we leased the house--and didn't pay a nickel of rent. One was an actor, who has since quit to go into the world of sports broadcasting."
Even though they would soon have bulging bank accounts, Matt and Ben were still their old, non-Hollywood, non-slick selves. Their manner was so laid-back that they caught a few of the Castle Rock executives by surprise.
"When we first walked in for our first meeting, the executives took one look at us and said, 'Do you guys want an advance?'" Damon laughs. (64-65)
"An actors life is one based on rejection, even at its highest level; you're never the first choice so I think it helps to have friends who understand the business. You can talk to them and they understand where you're coming from. I can call Cole or Ben anytime and just rap. We do monologues together. We critique each other's work. We're acting-mates. It's what keeps us up at night. Late night phone calls. When Ben was filming Armageddon, saving the world from an asteroid, he was calling me late at night going, 'There's this scene. What would I say if this happened?'"
Besides Ben, Damon's clique included Cole Hauser, Rory Cochran, Joaquin Phoenix, and Matthew McConaughey, who was the first to make the jump from supporting player to leading man. (81)
In December, 1995, Ben and Matt were driving near Needles, California . Matt was still recovering from his weight loss for Courage Under Fire, and the two friends were just hanging out and spending some time together. As they were tooling along the deserted highway, they got a call, which Ben took.
The message:
"You're meeting with Mel Gibson in New York in two days about him directing Good Will Hunting."
Ben has a pronounced fear of flying and frequently drives crosscountry. So armed with coffee and adrenaline, they drove almost straight through for the next forty-eight hours to get to Manhattan, keeping each other awake by reciting dialogue from Gibson's breakthrough film, Mad Max. Damon remembers the day vividly.
"We got to Miramax's office just before lunch and Harvey tells us, 'Mel Gibson is a great director. You can see that from Braveheart.' And I said, 'Harvey, Ben and I have been working. We haven't seen it yet.' So without missing a beat he told us the whole story." (84-85)
And neither Damon nor Affleck will ever forget the first day on the set. Even though they weren't scheduled to act that initial day, Matt and Ben were among the first to arrive.
"We showed up like, 'Hey, we wrote this,'" laughs Matt.
"Yeah," adds Ben, "which in Hollywood is like, 'You're the writer? Good. Now you just want to stand back from the action.'" (114-115)
But on the first day of filming, their professional detachment dissolved as they watched Robin Williams and Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, who played the professor, in the movie's first take.
"It was amazing. Ben and I went down there just to see Robin say our words," Matt recalls. "We were sitting there and they said, 'Let's roll camera. Sound. Speed. Scene forty-one, take one. Marker. Action.'
"And by the time they got to action tears were just running down my face. I just couldn't believe it. Then Robin started to talk and I looked up at Ben and he's crying too. It was really a profound moment for me. I mean, it represented five years of our lives. And it would not have happened if Robin didn't do it." (115-116)
"There's an emotional core to Good Will Hunting that came from Ben and Matt. They have this unspoken twins thing. They care for each other, yet they bust on each other. And that was a great base line to work with. I'm very proud of this movie. It has resonance." --Robin Williams (117)
Despite his familiarity with the subject matter, Damon says the screenplay isn't exactly autobiographical, although: "Well, I am a genius," he laughs.
Affleck corrects him. "All of us put together aren't a genius. But it is drawn from our own experiences. The characters are amalgams of people we knew. I don't think we were good enough to totally invent things."
When asked how they wrote some of the film's more moving speeches, which smacked of maturity far beyond their ages, Damon and Affleck confessed they had borrowed from the wisdom of others.
"Some of the speeches were a combination of things, not the least of which were speeches which had been thrown our way by our parents.
"'Don't think you understand everything already because you don't.'
"And even if we don't understand those things, we understand them enough to repeat them," Matt laughs. (121-122)
"Ben and I were pinching ourselves everyday," Damon acknowledges. "This had been such a long road for us and to look over and see your best buddy on the set every day is just an amazing feeling. We hang out when we're not working, so to look over and see Ben on the set was great.
"Also to watch his work. There was a scene that got cut out of the movie that was he and Minnie. To walk alongside the camera with headphones on and listen to his work, he's just a tremendous actor. He's the best young actor in the world, I think, for my money. Without a doubt. To watch him do his thing was a learning experience for me. And pretty fun."
Damon admits one of the biggest lessons he learned having his script filmed was to better respect a screenwriter's words.
"It taught me a lot about writing, in terms of not wanting to step on another writer's words," Matt admits. "I can now imagine what it feels like for a writer when you start improvising like a madman on the set. Like Ben.
"Kevin Smith always called him 'King of the Mad Libs" because on Chasing Amy Ben would just go into these whole tangents of dialogue and Kevin would have to go, 'Just stick to the f---ing script!'" (123-124)
Anyone looking for a downside would be hard-pressed to find one, although in some later press conferences and interviews, some critics wondered aloud if Ben didn't feel as if he was somewhat playing second fiddle to Matt.
"When you see the movie from the outside you think, 'This is the main guy and this is the supporting guy.' But it was such a collaborative effort that it doesn't bother me. I just wanted to do interesting stuff and stop spending movies slamming high school kids up against lockers."
The reality was, there was nothing that could detract from the enormous sense of accomplishment both Matt and Ben felt once the movie was a wrap.
"This film was many, many years of work," Affleck says. "Whether it's successful or fails, I want to take the victory lap now, just to say, 'Hey, at least we did it: we wrote it, we set it up, we did what we wanted to.' It's a movie I'm proud of."
Damon was a slightly more sentimental in his assessment.
"There's a little sadness there," he said, referring to the film's completion. "I'll never have a job that was that much fun, ever, and I realize I'm not going to get up and go to work with Gus and Robin and Ben and Minnie." (125-126)
Even for someone as grounded as Damon, being in the eye of the storm is a dizzying experience. For once, it was a situation that Ben couldn't really help him with because he was going through a similar adventure, although to a much less intense degree. So Damon turned to someone who would know because he had been there himself and asked Matthew McConaughey for advice.
"He's an extraordinarily positive guy with an amazing take on the world. He was a good person to talk to about it, because he won't get affected by any of the nonsense."
McConaughey's advice? Enjoy the ride. (135)
"I haven't had much of a life this year because I've been on the road working," he says. "I haven't lived anywhere since Ben and I got rid of our New York apartment. He was there for two weeks last year and I was there for five days and we paid rent for the whole year. It was crazy.
"Ben's now living with his girlfriend in L.A. and I just finished working on Saving Private Ryan so I'm going to say with my friend Cole Hauser. I'm homeless in the best sense of the word. I've got three bags that I've been carrying around with me for over a year, since last August when I got The Rainmaker."
Other than what he could stuff in those three bags, the rest of his belongings were in a Jersey City, New Jersey, storage facility. (138)
Because so much of the publicity generated between October and December, 1997, focused on Matt, there were some who wondered if this wasn't the beginning of the end for Matt and Ben's inseparable friendship. Could Damon's friendship with Affleck remain unaffected by Matt being cast as the Next Big Thing with Ben put in the role of sidekick? The two most unconcerned people seemed to be Matt and Ben. Can his long friendship with Affleck remain unaffected as well?
"We're not competitive," said Affleck. "We've always rooted for each other and I think that's the key to a successful friendship. You can't be too competitive. If there's a part out there and I'm not going to get it, I'd rather it be Matt than anyone else."
Although Ben wasn't above needling his friend about being the new It boy and teen idol.
"I'm still just standing out there going, 'Hi, I'm Ben. Nice to meet you.' And they just walk on by. But Matt, he's on fire, let me tell you." (141)
In keeping with the movie's South Boston setting, the after-premiere party served clam chowder and Boston cream pie but neither Matt nor Ben ate very much. They were higher than any illicit drug could ever possibly send them.
"People just seem to like the movie and we just feel like we kind of won the lottery," Ben said, trying to explain the feelings he and Matt were experiencing. "We're really happy we got great people like Robin Williams and Gus Van Sant because how can you go wrong?"
Watching the crowd respond to the movie with laughter and tears was like an out-of-body experience for the two friends.
"It feels like stepping into someone else's life," Affleck said. (149-150)
What made his current situation that much more satisfying was that it included Ben.
"I can't even wrap my brain around the idea that not only is it happening, but it's happening for me and Ben both. It's great. It's so much better that celebrity happened to both of us at the same time. It makes it more special. To look over and see it happening to your best friend is pretty cool.
"It's so much better than doing it alone. And it's easier to get perspective on what's happening to me because I take a look at what's happening to Ben. I'm able to see it as an outsider." (159)
Affleck was also struck by how quickly fortunes can change in Hollywood.
"You know, it wasn't all that long ago that Matt and I would be sitting home and we'd be watching Oprah, going like, 'These guys aren't that good. We're better than these guys.' And then all of a sudden, you're kind of out there and it's like, a very surreal, weird sort of transition when you're the one sitting in front of the audience. (161)
If there was a blip on Matt's happiness screen at all, it involved Ben. While basking in the warmth of glory generated by Good Will Hunting, Damon couldn't help but feel a sense of regret that Affleck wasn't receiving the same amount of attention he was. Without Ben, there would have been no Good Will Hunting.
"The biggest sadness that I have is that I look at my role in Good Will Hunting and I think that Ben could have easily have played it. I think he let me do it because literally, he's my best friend in the world and he's that selfless," Matt once said in an interview, his voice briefly choking up.
But he quickly regained his composure and joked: "But, hey, don't feel bad for Ben. He's saving the world. Didn't anyone tell you that there's and asteroid the size of Texas headed toward the earth? And if it weren't for Ben and Bruce Willis, God knows what would happen." (162-163)
Because the Golden Globes also honor television, it sometimes seems as if every star in Hollywood attends the event, and 1998 was no exception. Matt and Ben arrived looking wide- and glassy-eyed. Their exuberance was a refreshing change from the often-staid countenances of more established stars. It was obvious they were truly just happy to have been invited to the party.
When their names were announced as winners of the Best Screenplay award, their delight was contagious. Backstage, they met an applauding press corps and tried to put their feelings into coherent words. But even through their happiness, they remained humble.
"We're trying to let it soak in," said Affleck, who tends to often talk more than Matt when the two are together, with Damon happily deferring to his friend. "We know so many writers whose work we admire and whose work we respect, it's hard not to feel like an impostor--to feel like the Milli Vanilli of screenwriting." (167)
Ben got into the act by climbing on a stage and pretending to be Weinstein at the contract signing. Matt had the crowd, which included Madonna, laughing hysterically when he appeared in drag during a skit with Ben parodying the British costume drama, Mrs. Brown.
Returning the joke, Dame Judy Dench and Helena Bonham Carter appeared as hard hats from Good Will Hunting while Lawrence Bender played the Pam Grier role from Jackie Brown. (173)
The mood on the set was light, with Smith frequently exchanging banter with his two stars. Once during an online interview with an Australian magazine, Damon cracked, "I work for a slave-driving, no-compliment giving, line-reading motherf---er."
To which Smith replied, "Yeah? Well, I work with gay poster boys."
The last jab may have been a reference to an unsubstantiated rumor swirling on the Internet that Damon was a closet homosexual. It's almost a coming-of-career rite of passage for any young, handsome actor to face rumors that he's gay. And in some cases, it's true. In most others, it's not. Some of the speculation may have started after Interview magazine published pictures of Matt and Ben looking as if they were about to passionately embrace. (179)
And the next collaboration between Matt and Ben, one that will no doubt undergo tremendous scrutiny, is tentatively titled, Halfway House, and is about the relationship between two characters in a halfway house, with Damon repeatedly playing a patient and Ben a worker. (181)