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Before Matt Damon was walking across a stage with an Oscar in hand, he was just a Harvard student procrastinating his way into cinematic history. His fans, especially the ones who thought they knew everything about him, were recently left wide-eyed when they stumbled upon the unexpected backstory behind Good Will Hunting, a film that didn’t just launch his career but made him a household name.
Matt Damon’s Journey: From Mystic Pizza to Movie Stardom
Damon’s screen debut came in Mystic Pizza back in 1988, where he had a small role in the romantic dramedy, mostly remembered today for being a nostalgic artifact. But it would take nearly a decade, and a script that came out of a college assignment gone rogue, for him to truly make waves. By 1997, he was no longer just that kid from Massachusetts with acting dreams, but he was Will Hunting, a troubled genius brought to life on-screen and on paper by Damon himself, with the help of his lifelong friend, Ben Affleck.
The pair weren’t just co-writers, they were practically brothers in arms, having grown up together in Cambridge after being introduced by their moms. From childhood auditions to teenage bonding over theater, it all became part of the tapestry that led to their breakout moment.
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A Harvard Assignment That Changed Everything
Harvard might not have gotten Damon’s diploma, but it certainly got a major footnote in film history. While speaking to Boston Magazine in 2013, he revealed, “I was in my fifth year at Harvard, and I had a few electives left. There was this playwriting class and the culmination of it was to write a one-act play, and I just started writing a movie. So I handed the professor at the end of the semester a 40-some-odd-page document, and said, ‘Look, I might have failed your class, but it is the first act of something longer.’”
After leaving Harvard just 12 credits short of a degree, Damon found himself crashing in Affleck’s LA apartment. That’s where the real work began.
Together, they shaped the screenplay, scene by scene, driven by passion and maybe a bit of the hunger that only two broke actors in their twenties can truly understand. By 1994, the script was complete and when it landed in the hands of agent Patrick Whitesell, he knew immediately it was something special.
Reddit Discovers What 90s Kids Always Knew
The origin story behind the now iconic movie was recently discussed on social media. On Reddit, one person shared, “TIL [today I learned] Matt Damon wrote the first draft of Good Will Hunting’s first act as an assignment in a playwriting class during his fifth year at Harvard. The only scene that survived verbatim from that ‘40-some-odd-page document’ was the scene where Damon’s character & Robin Williams’ character first meet.”
TIL Matt Damon wrote the first draft of Good Will Hunting’s first act as an assignment in a playwriting class during his fifth year at Harvard. The only scene that survived verbatim from that “40-some-odd-page document” was the scene where Damon’s character & Robin Williams’ character first meet.
byu/tyrion2024 intodayilearned
People shared their thoughts in the comments section as well. One wrote, “TIL [today I learned] Matt Damon went to Harvard”. Another shared, “God, I feel so f***ing old now that people are just learning these things that were super common knowledge nearly 30 years ago after the movie exploded the careers of Damon and Affleck.”
For more such stories, check out Hollywood News
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