Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the duo known for their work together and individually, are two best friends who stood by each other in Hollywood through thick or thin. It is through their strong bond and support for each other that the two have managed to make a name for themselves and stay relevant for decades in a cutthroat world like Hollywood.
But initially, their journey was a hard one. The two did not have a big name backing them up; they faced a lot of rejections and only managed to bag a few small roles. So, they decided to work together and prepare a screenplay, which they would only sell to the studios if they agreed to cast them in the leading role. And that is how Good Will Hunting came into being.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wanted a big name attached to Good Will Hunting
The duo did set the condition that they would lead the movie but they were aware that they weren’t famous and would need a big name attached to the project to make it successful. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck revealed that they got the idea to bring an a-lister onboard because of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. It was Tarantino’s first project but it gained immense recognition not just because of its plot and direction but also because a name like Harvey Keitel was attached to it.
Damon explained in an interview,
“…At the time there was a really popular movie that we all loved called Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino’s first movie. And the story we had all heard was that because Harvey Keitel signed up for the movie Quentin got, I think it was half a million dollars. That was his budget and he could make the movie.”
This gave them the idea to write the character of Sean Maguire with an A-lister like Denzel Washington in mind. They were even ready to change the script if they could sign Meryl Streep. Damon further shared,
“So we wrote that part that Robin [Williams] eventually took, and we called it the Harvey Keitel part. We were looking for an actor that could get us money because Ben and I wanted to star in the movie and we knew we were worth nothing. So we needed to get [a big name involved].”
“We wrote [the role] really open-ended… We knew we could adjust it if Morgan Freeman or Denzel Washington wanted to come and play it… if Meryl Streep took the part instead of a father-son relationship it could be a mother-son relationship. So we really left it open because we wanted to cast as wide a net as possible because we were just trying to get the movie made.”
But as fate would have it, in a strange twist of events, Matt Damon was cast in a major Francis Ford Coppola production, who suggested Robin Williams for the role of Sean.
Francis Ford Coppola suggested the duo to cast Robin Williams
While the hunt for the right Sean Maguire was still underway, Matt Damon was cast in The Rainmaker. It added to Damon’s star power and more people were interested in reading the script. But it was The Rainmaker‘s director, the genius Francis Ford Coppola who suggested the Oppenheimer actor to cast Robin Willaims.
In an interview, Damon also shared how Williams came on board,
“I sent [Harvey Weinstein] a fax that literally said, ‘Dear Harvey, I am the Rainmaker.’ He called me and he was like, ‘What does that mean?’ He thought I was getting a lawyer or something. I was like, ‘No man, I got the Coppola movie. They cast me as the lead.’ And Harvey goes, ‘THE GRISHAM MOVIE? THOSE THINGS MAKE $100 MILLION!'”
Ben Affleck also pointed out, “Robin really was the rainmaker.”
Matt Damon further added,
“Robin had just done Jack with Francis Ford Coppola. When he read the script and really liked it, his one question for Coppola was, ‘Who are these guys?'”
When Robin Williams read the script he knew he could not say no to the role. And eventually, it all worked out in their favor as the two won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the movie, which shot them to fame which they enjoy now. The movie also made $225 million dollars at the box office against a budget of $10 million.
Source: GQ
