Matt & Ben Waste Money Just Like Us

The death of Robin Williams has bubbled up lots of old stories and slideshows and videos of him communing with non-human primates, but this oral history of the making of Good Will Hunting printed in Boston Magazine in 2013, is SO GREAT (for reasons unrelated to Robin Williams).

Whitesell: In Hollywood, there’s a network of creative executives, and when they hear something is good it catches fire. My phone started ringing like crazy. Everyone wanted to sit down with Matt and Ben. It started getting hot. There was a bidding war.

Damon: Patrick Whitesell, in the span of just four days, kind of whipped the town into this frenzy. We sold it to Castle Rock, which was our very first choice. They had a great reputation.

Affleck: I remember it was printed in Daily Variety that we were going to get $600,000 on it. We had no credit, so we went to rent this house that was $3,000 a month, and we used a copy of the Daily Variety to get the place. I was like, “I don’t have credit, but this is who we are.” And the landlord was like, “All right, sure.” We thought $600,000 would take care of us for 20 years, so we rented nicer apartments and each bought Jeep Cherokees. And we were completely broke in a year.

$600,000, divided by two. Take out taxes and agent fees you are probably down to $150,000 each. Shoulda’ bought those Cherokees used.

Emily, you are not alone.

Also I love this:

Damon: 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!”

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