Great Scene: “Good Will Hunting”

The bar scene. Will’s classic putdown. And a spin on the ‘meet cute’.

In 1997, two young actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, co-starred in the movie Good Will Hunting. They also co-wrote the screenplay, which ended up winning an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, Written Directly for the Screen. There are a lot of great scenes in the movie, but my favorite is this one: Where Will (Damon) backs up his buddy Chuckie (Affleck) and utterly puts down a stuffy Harvard grad student.

Here is the movie version of the scene:

One amazing thing about the project is the screenplay didn’t start off as a drama. Per Wikipedia:

Affleck and Damon originally wrote the screenplay as a thriller: Young man in the rough-and-tumble streets of South Boston, who possesses a superior intelligence, is targeted by the FBI to become a G-Man. Castle Rock Entertainment president Rob Reiner later urged them to drop the thriller aspect of the story and to focus the relationship between Will Hunting (Damon) and his psychologist (Williams).

The scene is not only hugely entertaining, it also — like all great scenes — services the plot: (A) It indicates for the first time just how smart Will is. (B) It intersects he and Skylar (Minnie Driver), Will’s love interest / Attractor character.

How about you? What are your favorite scenes from Good Will Hunting?

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For more posts in the Great Scene series, go here.