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List Price: $11.95 | | Publisher: Miramax
Salesrank: 246426
Released: January 2, 1998 |
| Our Price: $1.48 |
| Used Price: $1.40 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
As director Gus Van Sant observes in the introduction to Matt Damon's and Ben Affleck's screenplay Good Will Hunting, the two young actors somewhat resemble the characters they play in the film: they're best friends, and Affleck (who plays Chuckie) habitually chauffeurs Damon (Will), who doesn't drive. Van Sant says we can see how badly Damon drives by watching the film's last scene, in which he is actually driving the car with the camera mounted on it. But Damon and company write better than he drives; this script contains some of the boldest, best monologues since Pulp Fiction.Van Sant and cast member Robin Williams helped the young actors tame the tigers in their cranial tanks, trimming the script into a precision instrument. Though the stills from the film are not perfectly matched to their places in the script, this story remains as much a joy to read as it is towatch on the big screen.
Description of Good Will Hunting: A Screenplay:
As director Gus Van Sant observes in the introduction to Matt Damon's and Ben Affleck's screenplay Good Will Hunting, the two young actors somewhat resemble the characters they play in the film: they're best friends, and Affleck (who plays Chuckie) habitually chauffeurs Damon (Will), who doesn't drive. Van Sant says we can see how badly Damon drives by watching the film's last scene, in which he is actually driving the car with the camera mounted on it. But Damon and company write better than he drives; this script contains some of the boldest, best monologues since Pulp Fiction.
Van Sant and cast member Robin Williams helped the young actors tame the tigers in their cranial tanks, trimming the script into a precision instrument. Though the stills from the film are not perfectly matched to their places in the script, this story remains as much a joy to read as it is towatch on the big screen.
Good Will Hunting: A Screenplay Reviews:
Brilliant in its simplicity 
2007-06-08 - This script is sheer perfection, brilliant in its simplicity. My goal is to learn to write like that!
Great Screenplay of a Great Movie 
2007-02-23 - This is a great story--a tale about guys in their early twenties living in working-class Boston. One of them, Will, just happens to be a genius, with a photographic memory. He is also an abused orphan who doesn't trust anyone but his friends and seems content to do construction and janitorial work. When an M.I.T. professor of mathematics catches him solving a nearly impossible proof one evening after all of the students have left, he is intrigued.
After Will gets into trouble with the law, which is a fairly common occurrence for him, the professor steps in and agrees to work with him and get him counseling if the judge will agree not to send him to jail. Will reluctantly agrees, not really willing to see a therapist. It proves to be difficult to find a therapist who can handle Will; he has read their books and mocks them during therapy sessions. Finally an old college friend of the professor's has a breakthrough and becomes someone that Will can trust.
This is a story about a person learning to take risks in relationships and with his future. The movie was excellent, and the screenplay is very interesting. I hadn't realized that a screenplay has so little direction; it gives me new respect for a film's director as well as the actors and actresses who create three-dimensional characters out of the words ont he page.
Great script of a great movie
2004-10-27 - The lines such as "How do you like them apples" are classics already. The movie was brilliant and I own the screenplay. A terrific insight into the anatomy of the film.
Trite, rehashed and recycled mishmash 
2003-09-26 - Having seen the movie and read the screenplay, I can never fail to understand how something like this was ever taken seriously. There is absolutely nothing original here; the writing is shallow, tedious and unbelievably hackneyed and I marvel that such mediocre talent could be so hyped, so gushed over and can only wonder how such 'writing' could ever have been made into a movie let alone win an Academy Award! It baffles me completely.
Incidentally, there is much whispering in industry circles that Affleck and Damon didn't really even write this screenplay. Instead it was the result of a collaboration between Gus Van Zant, Robin Williams, William Goldman and Rob Reiner. As a matter of fact much of William's comedic dialogue was actually improvised, yet authorship was, strangely, still credited to Affleck and Damon - probably for unknown publicity and marketing reasons.
The fact that these two have not produced any screenplays worthwhile since tends to verify suspicions about their real and minimal contributions to Good Will Hunting.
OK Script 
2002-10-11 - I didn't think this was that great. I read this in one night and I was not impressed at all.
