Funny That Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Never Wrote Another Screenplay...

No but their Oscar acceptance speech is my favorite.

I don't doubt they did the original script. How much it was doctored we'll never know. But I think its easy enough to understand why they've never written another script - they wrote it to give themselves jobs as actors. They are actors, not writers. While both have shown interest in the process, its only Affleck who wanted to direct. So, what would they write about now? I think they know how privileged they are after a couple of decades in this business.

R1 post it please.

R3 I can't right now but it's on you tube.

They wrote Ridley Scott's next picture, The Last Duel, along with Nicole Holofcener. It's an adaptation though.

R3, here's their Oscar acceptance speech.

The whole idea of a gifted janitor who solves an impossible math problem left on the blackboard is an old urban legend. Fucking hacky as hell. Their treatment of black producer, Effie, made me hate them. I keep waiting for that to come up and cancel them. If they have any self awareness they are too.

I love it when they thank me! They knew where their bread was buttered.

[quote]Their treatment of black producer, Effie, made me hate them.

She should have understood that Deena had the better look and sound. Nobody was going to buy the records of a sweaty fat girl who screamed every note.

I also heard that they only got a B- on the screenplay in the class for which they wrote it (which seems about right to me), but that may be an urban legend too.

That was adorable r5 thank you. Boo to you r1

William Goldman altered their original script substantially , is what they say

[quote]William Goldman altered their original script substantially , is what they say

First thing the old fart did was delete all their sex scenes. It was a pretty intense "bro" movie until Goldman got his inky fingers on it.

Matt co-wrote two other Gus Van Sant movies — Promised Land, with John Krasinski, and Gerry, with Van Sant and Casey Affleck. Though for the latter movie I imagine they just got credit for improvising out in the desert.

Affleck, meanwhile, has screenplay credits on three of the four films he’s directed: Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Live by Night (he was the sole credited writer on the last).

Uh, because they didn't write the script you saw shot for Good Will Hunting. They stupidly admitted it in an interview in, either Vanity Fair or Interview magazine, before they were nominated for the Academy Award.

I remember reading in the interview how they were laughing and gloating about how great it was that they didn't even have to do the real work in writing the script. They stated that they were given heavy, "notes," from William Goldwyn and all they had to do was do exactly what he told them to.

Live By Night was great.

That Oscar speech was when they were so pure, so innocent. Not like the jaded washed up drunks they are now.

They wrote something they wanted to also act in and leverage the script to make sure of casting. I don't think either ever intended to be a writer. Actors have to write and produce all the time now because corporate Hollywood would be happy to just use animated Marvel "actors" and do away with the creative human element completely.

Did Ben write Gigli??

Ghost writer? Ridiculous, OP.

Consider the evidence from an early interview:

BEN: Me write it. Me an' him.

MATT: Right. I and he. (Blows kiss at Ben.)

" Nobody knows anything."

R.I.P., William Goldman

Life takes it's toll, like with the rest of us.

it wasn't ghostwritten as much as they benefitted from enormous direction in the writing.

The difference between some dude at a laptop working outside the industry and guys like that (young, attractive, up and coming actors with lots of industry relationships) is that they got tons and tons and tons of notes, suggestions, etc. From friends AND the production company, executives, etc. It's not that complicated of a movie. Notes taken the wrong way can destroy a script. But with the right filter, and it could have been one of them or a good producer/executive, you just keep adding good stuff.

R23 that makes a lot of sense. They basically had their hands held through rewrites.

Boston Irish trash porn, and neither are really Irish.

The rumpled, savior-therapist was right out of Ordinary People.

Did they write the one about the zoo?

I've always wondered how much of GWH they wrote. I think it's a great film nevertheless. Ben cannot act for shit and still can't. Matt is a good actor though. Robin stole the show in the movie.

Neither Ben or Matt are convincing as white trash Bostonites. They are rich preppy Protestant boys and neither from Boston.

Matt Damon probably did all the actual work and wasn’t interested in doing that again. Ben Affleck seems pretty stupid to me.

R28 They both grew up in Cambridge across the Charles River from Boston. It would be part of Boston in any other city in America. Both went to the Cambridge public schools - in a city with about a dozen private schools - and both graduated from Rindge and Latin, the city's only public high school.

Matt even picked his teeth with his finger (or is he biting his nails?) as a senior at Rindge and Latin. His parents were divorced and hardly wealthy. Affleck's mother was an elementary school teacher and his father Timothy was an aspiring playwright who was "mostly unemployed." He worked sporadically as a carpenter, auto mechanic, bookie, electrician, bartender, and janitor at Harvard. In the mid-1960s, he had been an actor and stage manager with the Theater Company of Boston. During Affleck's childhood, his father had a self-described "severe, chronic problem with alcoholism." The apple didn't fall far from the tree as Ben seems to have inherited both his father's writing and drinking skills.

There are plenty of rich Protestant preppies in Cambridge. Affleck and Damon were hardly two more of them.

Neither of them were rich, R28. Matt's mother was a single parent who was a teacher. Affleck was middle class, not upper middle, I believe.

Damon's mother was not a "teacher", she was a professor at Lesley College (now Lesley University), which is next door to Harvard, in Cambridge. She's the author of several books. Probably not rich, but not working-class. Cambridge Ringe and Latin is one of the highest rated public schools in Massachusetts, it gets an A+ overall rating.

[quote]They both grew up in Cambridge across the Charles River from Boston. It would be part of Boston in any other city in America.

I don't know what this means. There are a lot of cities across rivers or next to each other, that are different cities -- Oakland and San Fransciso.

It was probably kind of like Penny Sycamore in "You Can't Take It With You". One day a typewriter was delivered to the house by mistake, so she decided to take up playwrighting.

The premise of that movie is so stupid I have no idea what is so great about it

[quote] I don't know what this means. There are a lot of cities across rivers or next to each other, that are different cities -- Oakland and San Fransciso.

Umm... there's a difference between a river and a bay. Most cities with a different city across the river are on the edge of their state lines. DC, and Arlington for example. (Though Arlington was originally supposed to be part of DC.) New York and Jersey City and Bayonne, Philadelphia and Camden, NJ, St. Louis and East St. Louis, Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Etc.

Minneapolis and St. Paul would like to tell you R35, that it’s not that uncommon.

🙄

[quote] DC, and Arlington for example. (Though Arlington was originally supposed to be part of DC.) New York and Jersey City and Bayonne, Philadelphia and Camden, NJ, St. Louis and East St. Louis, Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Etc.

Camden is nothing like Philly. Detroit is nothing like any part of Canada. The only similar Jersey City has to NYC is a lot of NYers moved there in recent generations. I get what you're trying to say about major metropolitan areas but a lot of cities themselves are insular. If you are from Westchester County or North Jersey, you still aren't considered a true New Yorker. I don't see why it should be different with Boston. And usually you can tell a broad Massachusetts accent from a thick Boston accent.

However distinct Cambridge is or isn’t from Boston... surely it’s close enough for them to have grown up familiar with the culture, the accent etc. It’s not like they were from Miami or Seattle and had only heard Boston accents on TV.

Ben Affleck got really lucky. He was in a lot of critical failures in the 2000s (Daredevil, Gigli, Pearl Harbor, et. cetera). He has no charisma nor acting talent. Yet he still gets cast and even got a big role playing Batman. Now he's a director. Casey, his brother, is a douchebag with a grating voice but is a much better actor than Ben. Ben's longevity must have been due to his friendship with Matt Damon and also Kevin Smith, Harvey Weinstein, Gus Van Sant and Richard Linklater because it wasn't his talent or his bland looks.