Good Matt Wanting

Okay, I did my homework. I watched Good Will Hunting again ‘cause I didn’t love it the first time and I kept hearing (and reading) such fabulous things about it I had to see if I was misremembering it. In a way, I was. I remember not really understanding the ending – thinking he was just going off on some tear because everyone seemed to think he should. But how could I have missed the line he wrote to Robin Williams’ character about going off to “see about a girl?”

Isn’t that sweet that he’s going to drive cross-country in his brand-new beat-up car to find Minnie Driver after he was so harsh with her (She: I love you; He: You take care now)? What if she never wants to see him again? What if she has a new frat guy boyfriend who kicks Matt’s ass after he’s learned to be all sensitive to how other people feel? What if he breaks up with her on the Oprah Winfrey show? Whoops, that last one was a mistake. That was a rumor started by none other than Minnie Driver herself. And she took it back years later, after she discovered she did absolutely no damage whatsoever to Matt’s career and hers was flailing like a surfer trying to outswim a shark in a whirlpool.

This movie (1997) is basically Little Man Tate (1991) all grown up, but I’ll bet Matt was hoping we wouldn’t notice that. Poor Matt is a genius without direction, just as Adam Hann-Byrd was a budding genius without direction as Fred Tate. Fred loved his working-class mom (Jodie Foster), but was seduced (intellectually speaking) by Dianne Wiest, who knew all about how to treat a budding temperamental genius (“Fred you come right back here and eat your vegetables! You may not watch the Rachmaninoff concert on PBS until you eat all of your asparagus!”).

In Good Will Hunting, Matt loves his working-class friend (Ben Affleck), but gets seduced (literally) by Minnie Driver, who has no clue how to treat a temperamental genius. But Matt finally gets what he needs from Robin Williams, here resurrecting John Keating from Dead Poets Society so he can tell Matt to “seize the day!” After Robin assures Matt repeatedly in a mantra-like fashion “It’s not your fault...It's not your fault...It's not your fault...”
Matt wonders if their tight clinch celebrating his psychological breakthrough might be breaking the patient/therapist rules. Robin answers “Only if you grab my ass.” Of course, this scene left me wondering if I might get the same reaction out of Matt if I should meet him some day and just repeat over and over “It’s not your fault.” Because, you know, Matt, it really isn’t. You can’t be blamed for writing yourself this cheesy little script after you failed to get the attention you deserved for your role as Edgar Pudwhacker in Glory Daze. And you really should have garnered much more attention from your sensitive portrayal of Ilario in Courage Under Fire (another cheesy little script, but alas, not written by you).

So what is good Matt wanting in this film? My guess is an Oscar, and the great news is he got it!
But he got it for writing instead of looking beautiful with his legs spread wide open while he works his way through the after-effects of an unassisted puberty (we all need somebody to lean on, n’est-çe pas?). Poor Will was an orphan, and an abused one at that. But in this movie the one who’s abused is Ben Affleck. He helped write the darn script and he gets maybe 16 lines in the whole thing! Maybe he just wanted a break after Going All the Way with Rose McGowan? Nonetheless, Matt is clearly the star of this film, with Robin Williams supporting him (so to speak), but not by grabbing his ass.

Speaking of grabbing asses, I saw Matt on David Letterman the other night and he did an impression of Matthew McConaughey. When I later told my friend Joe "I saw Matt doing Matthew," I suddenly realized that’s the film I’d really like to see! They could both be wrestling instructors in high school (like Robin Williams was in The World According to Garp) and they could call it Taking it to the Matts. There could be that healthy little competition thing between sexy men, er, um, educators, and it could costar Justin Timberlake as the star wrestler of the school who’s bringing sexy back to all the cheerleaders. Can someone greenlight this project for me?