Michael Winterbottom was approached to direct but declined.
Director Gus Van Sant at one point asked Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to rewrite the script so that Chuckie is killed in a construction accident. Damon and Affleck protested, but reluctantly wrote the scene in. After Van Sant read it, he agreed that it was a terrible idea.
Robin Williams's last line in the film, "That son of a bitch, he stole my line," was ad-libbed.
The job interview Will sends Chuckie on is for a company called Holden & McNeil. Ben Affleck's character in Chasing Amy (1997) was Holden McNeil.
The subway car Will rides in is a model that was retired in 1994; the MBTA took one out of mothballs and cleaned it up for the production.
Minnie Driver's character is named "Skyler", the name of Damon's girlfriend of the time. Skyler left Damon before filming began, during which Damon and Driver became romantically involved.
The mathematical equations seen in the opening credits are part of a math technique called "Fourier Analysis" which approximates functions by sines and cosines. It's used a lot in physics and engineering.
In the scene on the park bench, Robin Williams gives an example of love that Will hasn't experienced as "Going to hell and back for it." In his next movie, What Dreams May Come (1998), Williams does just that for Annabella Sciorra after she commits suicide.
The lecture hall in the movie is actually a lecture hall in McLennan Physical Laboratories (MP); a building at the University of Toronto (St. George Campus) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Roger Ebert asked in his "Movie Answer Man" column for suggestions as to who Will's brothers Marky, Ricky, Danny, Terry, Mikey, Davey, Timmy, Tommy, Joey, Robby, Johnny, and Brian were named after. Gina Dante of Minneapolis suggested that they were "directors whom Ben Affleck and Matt Damon would like to work with": Marc Rocco, Richard Attenborough, Danny Boyle, Terry Gilliam, Mikael Salomon, David Fincher, Tim Burton, Tom Hanks, Joel Schumacher, Robert Redford, John Woo, and Brian De Palma.
The scene where Sean and Will are in his office, and Sean starts talking about his dead wife and her farting antics. These lines were ad-libbed by Robin Williams, which is probably why Matt Damon is laughing so hard. If you watch the scene carefully you can notice the camera shaking, probably due to the cameraman laughing as well.
When Will (Matt Damon) and Sean ('Robin Williams' ) meet for the first time in Sean's office, Will recommends that Sean read Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States". As a boy, Matt Damon was Zinn's neighbor and provided the voice for the CD recording of that book.
At a WGA seminar in 2003, William Goldman denied the persistent rumor that he was the actual writer of Good Will Hunting: "I would love to say that I wrote it. Here is the truth. In my obit it will say that I wrote it. People don't want to think those two cute guys wrote it. What happened was, they had the script. It was their script. They gave it to Rob [Reiner] to read, and there was a great deal of stuff in the script dealing with the F.B.I. trying to use Matt Damon for spy work because he was so brilliant in math. Rob said, "Get rid of it." They then sent them in to see me for a day - I met with them in New York - and all I said to them was, "Rob's right. Get rid of the F.B.I. stuff. Go with the family, go with Boston, go with all that wonderful stuff." And they did. I think people refuse to admit it because their careers have been so far from writing, and I think it's too bad. I'll tell you who wrote a marvelous script once, Sylvester Stallone. Rocky's a marvelous script. God, read it, it's wonderful. It's just got marvelous stuff. And then he stopped suddenly because it's easier being a movie star and making all that money than going in your pit and writing a script. But I did not write [Good Will Hunting], alas. I would not have written the "It's not your fault" scene. I'm going to assume that 148 percent of the people in this room have seen a therapist. I certainly have, for a long time. Hollywood always has this idea that it's this shrink with only one patient. I mean, that scene with Robin Williams gushing and Matt Damon and they're hugging, "It's not your fault, it's not your fault." I thought, Oh God, Freud is so agonized over this scene. But Hollywood tends to do that with therapists."
The script was originally developed by Castle Rock, the production company of Rob Reiner. When they didn't know what to do with it, filmmaker 'Kevin Smith' took the script to Miramax. It became the highest grossing film in Miramax history until Chicago (2002) topped it.
Matt Damon, a former Harvard student, originally intended to make the title character a physics prodigy. He discussed his idea with Sheldon L. Glashow, a Nobel laureate in physics and at the time a Harvard professor. Glashow told him that the premise did not ring true to him and suggested that the main character be a math prodigy instead. He referred Damon to his brother-in-law, Daniel Kleitman, a professor of mathematics at MIT who provided advice on the story. Both Glashow and Kleitman are thanked in the credits.
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