Fake Adult Film Scene in the ‘Good Will Hunting’ Script, and Why Boston’s Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Put It There
Editor's note: This article was written by a Townsquare Media Northern New England contributor and may contain the individual's views, opinions, or personal experiences.
Here we are in the 25th anniversary of Good Will Hunting, which is arguably one of the best movies of all time. Before best friends and Boston boys Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were two of the biggest names in the world, they were struggling rookie screenwriters with zero connections, trying to break into Hollywood.
According to Mental Floss, Ben and Matt eventually decided they would sell to Castle Rock after a bidding war, but quickly realized that no one from the studio was actually reading the script that the put their heart and soul into.
Ben shared with Boston Magazine that the two were so frustrated that they decided to develop a test to see if their instincts were correct before they finalized the sale of their script. After all, once a script was considered hot, studios often bid on then even though they knew nothing about them. That's definitely something that could possibly harm the production later.
On page 60 of the Good Will Hunting script, they wrote in a scene that made zero sense. The Digital Fix says that the main character of Will, played by Matt, comes into Sean’s office. Sean was played by Robin Williams, and Sean initiates sex with Will, which continues for a few lines. No one noticed the unexpected scene, and that's when Ben and Matt realized that those working on the movie weren't reading the script closely at all anymore.
As a matter of fact, Ben and Matt told Boston Magazine that only one studio actually called out the scene, asking "What the hell is that?"
That's when they decided that Good Will Hunting, a 1997 film about a gifted janitor working at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would go with the then-small studio, Miramax Films, instead of the big boys.
What's so funny about this is that my own sister did something similar to this.
In high school, my sister, who was in the Honor Society, inserted a nonsensical paragraph into a paper for one of her classes to see if the instructor was actually reading it. There had been discussion amongst classmates about whether he read the papers, mainly because they were returned so quickly. Sure enough, her paper was returned with an A+.