‘Good Will Hunting’ Live From Boston With Bill Simmons, Ryen Russillo, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Live from the House of Blues in Boston, The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Ryen Russillo, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey gotta see about a pod after rewatching the 1997 Boston classic, ‘Good Will Hunting’—starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver, and Robin Williams. Watch this video and much more on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel! Producer: Craig Horlbeck Video Producers: Ronak Nair, Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, everyone. It's Amy Poehler, and I'm launching a new podcast called Good Hang. In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice.

• 0:10Bill Simmons?

  Just be yourself, and the guests will come. Don't be the celebrity that this is their, like, sixth thing they're doing.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  I love true crime and cooking podcasts. Is there any way you could combine the two? Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast. So, join me for Good Hang. It's rough out there. We're just trying to lighten it up a little.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Day.

• 0:32Speaker 03

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 0:34Speaker 04

  Hey, Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 0:38Speaker 04

  Make them remember you.

• 0:41Speaker 03

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Weeping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 0:46Speaker 05

  Glimmer, the new eau de parfum by Estee Lauder. An amber floral fragrance with a gourmand twist with notes of macaron rose accord, amber embrace accord, and shimmering patchouli. A glimmer is a small, unexpected moment of joy that shifts your energy and how you feel. A scent to be felt, remembered, and shared. Discover more at estee lauder.com. What makes you glimmer?

• 1:38Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, that was awkward. I should have, I should have done like a fist pump point thing. Thank you to Loom by Atlassian for sponsoring this. Thank you to the Red Sox for winning today. It's like destiny.

• 1:52Bill Simmons?

  So, we've done a lot of these live rewatchable shows. We have never come to Boston, Massachusetts. I want to introduce to you, well, he's from Philly, but it's fine, Chris Ryan.

• 2:10Bill Simmons?

  Tortured Jets fan. Host of the big picture show on fantasy.

• 2:22Bill Simmons?

  For the first time ever, the four of us with this guy, Ryan Russillo.

• 2:33Bill Simmons?

  So, we were gonna do a live rewatchables about Good Will Hunting, but Russillo wanted to do two hours on Stephen A. and LeBron, so we're all going. Were those guys gonna work it out? What's happening?

• 2:46Speaker 06

  Feel like that's done.

• 2:47Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Now, we're doing Good Will Hunting, because we're in Boston. We got this Coolidge Corner movie theater. We're doing heist movies in Boston movies this weekend, including this one. We did this on the rewatchables first year. We didn't have a lot of the categories yet, so we're doing it again. And, for me, I'm gonna do Boston movie Mount Rushmore quickly. I don't know if there's a right answer, but for me, the verdict Good Will Hunting and The Town have to be in the three, and then I think the four spots are arguable. Is there any, is there anyone that has to be in there for you, Russillo?

• 3:21Speaker 06

  Well, everyone's gonna yell The Departed, but I don't, I like The Town so much better than The Departed, I'm glad you went that way.

• 3:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, how about you, Sean?

• 3:29Sean Fennessey?

  Celtic Pride and Fever pitch?

• 3:34Bill Simmons?

  Pick one. Chris?

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  I don't have anything cute, it's The Departed. Even though a lot of it is shot in New York, it's still The Departed, or Toronto.

• 3:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, when we did The Departed, we had a lot of thoughts about Nicholson's Boston accent, which was from the Bronx. What part of New York was that accent actually from? I know this is a big thing for me and Russillo.

• 3:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, Wahlberg, not a close friend, but.

• 4:03Speaker 06

  We were doing promotion for Patriots Day.

• 4:05Chris Ryan?

  You guys both love fitness, though. You have a lot in common.

• 4:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 4:09Speaker 06

  I do. He ended, I always love how like really big celebrities end interviews in a way that you're like, he's like, "Hey, man, maybe next time we'll just do it in person. We'll get a workout in." And I was like, "Awesome." And then he said, he closes the Zoom and Sarudy and I, I'm like, "That's never gonna happen." But he had a great rule, because access would be a big part of this discussion, is I said, "When you were casting for Patriots Day, what did you tell everybody?" And he was like, "You have one chance. And then if I don't like it, you're just gonna talk like a normal person." And I think it's a great rule.

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  It's a good rule.

• 4:41Speaker 06

  But nobody was gonna say that to Jack.

• 4:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the last 15 years, I feel like we've gotten better at it, especially like movies like Gone Baby Gone and The Town. They actually started using locals. So, we're doing better.

• 4:51Chris Ryan?

  Bill, wasn't it on the Departed pod that we talked about the Combat Zone?

• 4:56Bill Simmons?

  That's where we were all afternoon.

• 5:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Chris and Sean didn't believe me when I was telling them the Combat Zone stories. I had to send them pictures. Sometimes it'll be on Twitter. I'll be like, "Combat Zone photo." Different times. I mean, this place, we, it used to be Avalon and Axis. I was, I was more partial to Avalon, which I think you were too, CR, right? Axis was like a little bit of a different crowd, but, but yeah, now it's House of Blues. So, Good Will Hunting, Damon and Affleck, let's do the, let's do the backstory of this. This is Sean, one of the great Hollywood out of nowhere, although it wasn't really out of nowhere because they'd both been in some movies, but one of the great bet on yourself moments ever, correct? Probably the greatest since Rocky, right? Yeah. Anything else? Those are like the biggest two in the last 15 years.

• 5:48Bill Simmons?

  I was living in Boston when this was hap, were you, were you here then?

• 5:51Speaker 06

  No, I was still in Vermont.

• 5:52Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Cause I remember there was an improper Bostonian that came out with those guys on the cover and they were filming it. I'm gonna say it was 96 or whenever. And it was like, these guys, local kids, took them years to get this made and now they're making it. And they're so excited. I was like, oh, man, I hope it works out for those wacky kids. Matt Damon and I, I knew him from School Ties, knew Affleck from Dazed and Confused. Never thought it would work out for them, like it did like this. And now this became the thing, Chris, that I think, I don't remember a movie propelling two people at the same time like this.

• 6:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I think it's really cool that they still obviously have a place in their hearts for like, they're like, it's never gonna be like that again. And it's the most special movie I think either of them have ever made to, to themselves. When you read that oral history that was in Boston Magazine, you can tell, they still like, think about this experience so clearly.

• 6:45Bill Simmons?

  It's kinda like how we feel about Granland.

• 6:46Chris Ryan?

  Sure. That's right.

• 6:50Bill Simmons?

  Uh, yeah, they said there's, in that, in that oral history, the first day of shooting, they filmed some scene with, uh, Skarsgård and Robert Williams. And Damon and Affleck were watching it on the side and they were both bawling. But like, not like sad bawling, like just so happy, cause it was a five-year odyssey and the whole back, backwards of the story was that, there's like a year where they're in Davis Square, living there. They'd already spent their money from when they had sold it. It was in turnaround at Castle Rock. Um, they're trying to get it made by anybody and they're just kinda living in Somerville, doing these other part, parts of movies, not knowing if this movie was ever gonna make it. And the biggest fear they had was, was they were gonna age out of the characters. That they were gonna hit their late twenties. Now, as we know from Hollywood, it doesn't matter if you age out of the characters, you could,

• 7:33Bill Simmons?

  they could have probably been 45 and played this, but. Well, wasn't one of the other things with Castle Rock that they wanted to be DiCaprio and Pitt? There was a DiCaprio and Pitt thing, and then there was a big thing with the script that, the original script, this whole second part of it was a spy caper. Yeah. And like, the government's after them. And a couple people gave them the note, like, just lose the spy shit, man, just, do the first part, do the first part of the script of the therapist and then that became the movie. And then it's became, unqueer who, it seemed like Rob Reiner maybe had that note?

• 8:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Goldman had the note too, but I mean, it's still their script, but yeah, I think the, the NSA scene towards the end of the movie might be one of the like remnants of that spy caper.

• 8:15Bill Simmons?

  One of the funniest things with this movie was, as Castle Rock is basically just giving them the runaround, they get so pissed that these guys are doing that. They write this whole scene where, uh, I think Will Hunting gives Lambo a blowjob. And they just put it in there to see if anyone was reading it and nobody would mention the scene and they were like, "These fuck guys aren't reading it." And then finally, when Harvey Weinstein read it for Miramax, complicated character these days.

• 8:44Speaker 06

  He was like, "Leave that in."

• 8:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, yeah. He, Affleck said he gave two notes. "I don't like the chess thing," because they had a part where Will Hunting played chess. He's like, "Get that out."

• 8:57Speaker 06

  Dude, what else are you gonna be honest with?

• 8:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're like a smart guy. And then, uh, and he's like, "In the blowjobs, they gotta come out." And Damon Affleck, like, "We've got our guy. This is it." He read all the way and then it became, uh, the big thing was Damon got The Rainmaker, which was a John Grisham book, when those Grisham books made it and they told Harvey and he was like, "Oh, my God, those movies make a hundred billion." And then all of a sudden, they're making it. So, five-year odyssey for this. Do you wanna go through some of the elements of a Boston movie, Russillo? What are you looking for in a Boston movie? What are the essentials for you?

• 9:32Speaker 06

  Um, I think, I think it would've made more-

• 9:35Bill Simmons?

  Other than play clout.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, right. Although, with the newest information, uh-

• 9:42Chris Ryan?

  Stock up or stock down?

• 9:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, right, right. Does anyone have Mint Mobile? Like, what the fuck are you texting me from? I think for it to be, well, I don't know if we're fixing this movie, because I think it was pretty good and people liked it, but I think Damon needs to be hammered on that red line, like, towards the end. Sober, the brain tree. Doesn't, he's gonna wake up, like, North Station going, "What? What?"

• 10:13Bill Simmons?

  So he's slumped over against the metal-

• 10:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't think that's like a, you know, I know he didn't have a car until the end. I'm so lost right now. No, but I just, I really like that train shot, but I don't think, I don't think Will Hunting is sober for that one.

• 10:27Bill Simmons?

  CR, you lived there for five years. What do you need in a Boston movie? What are the essentials?

• 10:32Chris Ryan?

  I think this movie captures it. It's the, like, "You think you're better than me." It's, it's like, all over those four guys and, and they're constantly fighting against their, their lot in life and Will's their, Will's their, like, shining star who can break out of it.

• 10:45Bill Simmons?

  How about you, Fantasy?

• 10:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think I should've moved this to New York. I feel like then get, like, really a gritty story, a true story about living in a real city, you know?

• 10:57Bill Simmons?

  Oh my god. Fantasy lost the crowd. Jesus.

• 11:03Bill Simmons?

  I wrote a couple of things down that I think all the Boston movies have that worked. They use the city, like different parts of the city, it's always a staple. To get the accents right, you gotta bat at least 90% with the accents, right?

• 11:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, if we wanna be real difficult, I think in the Boston Common scene, which is an incredible scene, which I know we'll get to, but Williams has a couple.

• 11:27Bill Simmons?

  Williams stumbles with it.

• 11:28Chris Ryan?

  He loses the race.

• 11:29Bill Simmons?

  Wins the Oscar, unbelievable performance.

• 11:31Speaker 06

  I'm not saying we should, you know, take it away.

• 11:33Bill Simmons?

  The Rs kinda come and go. Hauser, I think, knew that he didn't have the accent, so he just kinda, he's more of a mystique charisma part, but I think for the most part, they nailed it. Another thing, you just have to involve the Red Sox or Fenway somehow. There's an overhead shot of Fenway in this movie for no reason at all.

• 11:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:51Bill Simmons?

  But you just have to do it.

• 11:52Speaker 06

  By the way, what about Casey wearing the "I hate LA" t-shirt?

• 11:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's another one, yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 06

  Right, but, like, that had to be a hand-me-down.

• 12:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, his older brother had it.

• 12:03Chris Ryan?

  I would love to be there the day they were like, "Gus, we have to have a drone shot of Fenway."

• 12:09Bill Simmons?

  And "I hate L.A." shot. I think the bars are crucial. All the best Boston movies, like The Town has that, they filmed in Old Solis, that was great. The bars in this movie, the L Street Tavern, like some of those, the Cambridge ones. And then, I think you have to capture, it just has to feel the essence of people that live here, and I don't even know how to quantify that, but you know what I mean? Like, there's people in this movie that just feel like Boston people, that you know that somebody from Boston made it. Does that make sense?

• 12:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, 'cause I think, you know, obviously, the thing that's really cool in the Affleck scene with Damon, where he's just like, you know, "I'd kill to have what you have." You know, depending on where you're at, especially when you're younger and you're kinda like accepting your fate a little bit, I think they did a really good job with not overdoing it. Like, those guys are about every day, getting up, completing their task, beers afterwards, rinse, repeat, and they'd already accepted it. And they didn't do it in a way that, like, you just kind of already knew who they were, without having to have, like, extra scenes of those guys doing the same stuff over and over again.

• 13:15Bill Simmons?

  Here's two things they miss, Sean. Well, these are things that happen in Boston movies but don't happen in real life. The weather is always awesome in a Boston movie. Nobody is ever cold. It is just early May all the time. And then, uh, there's no traffic ever. You just get anywhere you want. The tea is empty at all times. Doesn't matter what time of day, there's nobody else in there. Yeah. In the common, you just walk around, grab a bench. Nobody's gonna be there. Nobody's walking around. There's no ducks. Those are the four things that we have.

• 13:50Bill Simmons?

  Sean, let's talk about 97. One of the great movie years ever.

• 13:54Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 13:54Bill Simmons?

  Where we launched Affleck and Damon. We have Titanic. We launched Leo and Winslet. We have peak James Cameron. Jack Nicholson wins the Oscar. Robin Williams wins an Oscar. And it just feels like Boogie Nights is out there. It feels like something's shifting. What's shifting?

• 14:09Sean Fennessey?

  Um, that's a great question. I mean, I think it's like the simultaneous moment when movies are still the biggest thing in all of entertainment from the studio perspective, plus all the Sundance, kinda Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson era of guys are starting to get their chance to make big, expensive movies. So like Jackie Brown is this year. Chasing Amy is this year. There's also all that new class of generation combining with Titanic, the biggest fucking movie ever made, um, which is convenient. L.A. Confidential is this year. There's a bunch of movies. Um, I'm not really riding for that as good as it gets. Nicholson win? That's not, we don't acknowledge that one.

• 14:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we're gonna litigate that later.

• 14:44Chris Ryan?

  It's that one you re-watch a lot.

• 14:46Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 14:46Chris Ryan?

  There's also like, even in the credits for this movie, there's Kevin Smith, there's Lawrence Bender, so they're all like these names from that, that indie scene pop up behind the scenes in this one.

• 14:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's like, uh, it's like when, in the NBA, when we just have like a class. And you're like, oh, man.

• 15:02Chris Ryan?

  Like Scoot's class?

• 15:03Bill Simmons?

  Twenty, yeah. Like this year's class might be like that with all the guys in the 25 class. So you have like in football, you have like the quarterback class. You just look at the guys in 97 range, it's like, oh, man. We were loaded.

• 15:15Speaker 06

  I was listening to you guys, I think when you did the Pulp Fiction stuff and, you know, the story of this kind of indie film, but, you know, obviously like once people got involved and it, it just became this blockbuster, but you can kinda like lose sight of the origin part of it. But I still think like we're only a few years removed from that where... People all of a sudden wanted these, these movies that felt smaller scale. And like, the budget for this is nothing. But it's funny that it, it worked as kind of an indie movie, but at the same time, like you could, you could have seen it cast with all, like, the story just still works. So it, it doesn't feel like you're watching Slack or, or something where like, okay, did you guys shoot this on VHS? But there was just a demand for all of these years after that run of,

• 16:00Speaker 06

  I don't, I don't know how it falls in, but it's kind of like a hybrid of those two.

• 16:03Bill Simmons?

  Do you remember your Damon Affleck thoughts in 97 heading into this movie?

• 16:07Chris Ryan?

  I don't. I mean, I think I remember seeing, Day, like, I remember seeing Affleck in Dazed, and be like, that guy's a prick. He seems like, like, that'll be like what he does in the movies.

• 16:19Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, Banyan.

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  But it wasn't like, I was like, these two guys are marked for superstardom for the next 30 years.

• 16:25Sean Fennessey?

  Damon was in Courage Under Fire, and it was like, who is that guy?

• 16:27Bill Simmons?

  Lost a bunch of weight.

• 16:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that was, I remember that very vividly. And then, that was a movie with Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, and people were like, who's that guy? So that, that was a good sign.

• 16:36Bill Simmons?

  I had, so he's in School Ties and plays like the most reprehensible, preppy NSM I probably ever captured in a boarding school movie. And it was, he was so reprehensible in that, that when you would see him after, you'd be like, oh, that guy from School Ties, he's a fucking prick. And the Will Hunting thing finally, and losing a million pounds for Courage Under Fire. Affleck, to me, was just the dazed and confused guy. And then he was in Chasing Amy, which I thought he was really good in, but, you know, it, it wasn't like there was a huge history, right? Do you have a history with them or still?

• 17:06Speaker 06

  No, the only thing that's really funny about the Affleck part of it is he went to UVM and dropped out. So I remember I had, everybody at this year had like left. I was like, hey, we're all staying here like five years, right?

• 17:22Speaker 06

  Literally, everybody was gone. And so then, you know, whatever. I hope everybody makes fun of me, because I know Bill's ready to. I think that's when I started buying the Sid Field books. And I was like, let me figure this screenwriting thing out. That might be a path. And then, in a classic Boston sense, like, there was a couple of guys from my group that are Massachusetts guys that made it as, as screenwriters, and then there was a bunch that wanted to be screenwriters that hated anybody else's success. So, when this first started making the rounds, you're like, "What happened?" And you're like, "Oh, this guy was a Harvard kid," and then, I guess Damon was there five years and dropped out, so credit to him for staying the course. But, it's like, he got together with this dude that was at UVM, but then he chased some girl to California, and they're both Boston guys, and I guess they're like, getting this movie made, and it's gonna be awesome.

• 18:07Speaker 06

  And then, classic, again, Massachusetts dude in our, our friend group was like, "They didn't even write it, though, dude." It's like, they didn't even, like, he already was ready, like, preemptively, to be like, "If this thing works out, fuck those guys." So, that actually kinda influenced, because these guys were way more into it, and I was just buying books, I wasn't even reading them, but I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna figure this deal out," and it just was such a classic New England, specific to this area, where it's like a couple of homegrown dudes about to make it great, and the immediate part of it was like, "Yeah, those guys actually suck, though."

• 18:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, what's funny is, uh, in Hollywood, that's happening, too. They're battling this, this story that started going around, that they didn't write it, and that William Goldman rewrote it, he was one of the great screenwriters.

• 18:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, one of my friends was so excited when he was, like, he heard this.

• 19:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Speaker 06

  He was, he just felt better about himself, that he hadn't done anything.

• 19:04Bill Simmons?

  I wonder if that's happened where, on both coasts, people are like, "Yeah, they didn't do it."

• 19:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 19:08Bill Simmons?

  "They didn't write it, fuck these guys."

• 19:10Chris Ryan?

  Well, also, before the internet, you could really just, like, let that one rip, and nobody really could check you, and be like, "Ah, I heard William Goldman wrote it." And it's always like, "All right."

• 19:17Speaker 06

  Well, I, I feel bad in a way that we're even doing this this early, because I don't think any of us actually believe it.

• 19:21Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 19:22Speaker 06

  But, if you go down the wormhole of this, because I remember, like, checking up on it, being like, "Is this real?" Like, "Okay, it's, they didn't write it, I'm doing great." Right, it's such a fucked up thing what you do when you're younger. And the whole argument was, so these guys just out of nowhere write this Oscar award-winning screenplay and then they don't write again, but I mean, the easy counter to that is, no, they just became two of the biggest movie stars in the world.

• 19:47Bill Simmons?

  Two of the ten biggest stars.

• 19:49Sean Fennessey?

  I love that what Goldman said when he finally fully addressed it, he was like, "You know why they didn't write another movie after this, the same reason that Sylvester Stallone didn't write another movie, because it sucks to sit in your writer's hole by yourself when you can get paid twenty million dollars to go act in a huge movie, it makes sense."

• 20:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I flexed out on the set of Armageddon going, "I really miss just being at Dunkin' Donuts, working on a scene."

• 20:11Sean Fennessey?

  I love Microsoft Word, you know?

• 20:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's so many touches that you can tell, like, two guys from here wrote it, but one of the things they talk about a lot is they wanted to write an awesome part for a famous actor. And that's the Sean character, the professor. So, they had Morgan Freeman or Robert De Niro, like, in their head as they're writing that character, and they wanted him to have a couple of big monologues, which he ends up having. And they end up getting Robin Williams, who, you know, starts out on Mork and Mindy, that's how I got to know him, which was a sitcom in the late seventies, but then has this whole movie career, he's in Garp and Birdcage, Good Morning Vietnam, Mrs. Doubtfire, Dead Poets Society, but then this is what he wins the Oscar for. And I, I still, like, I still feel like Dead Poets might have been, what was the right Oscar for him?

• 20:55Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'm re-watching this movie this time, like, Dave are throwing alley-oops to him. Like, he really has a lot of meaty scenes in this one.

• 21:04Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty good. What do you think, Sean?

• 21:06Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, the genie in Aladdin is elite, like, that's, that's high-level animated voice acting. Um, I, I, I think this is probably the right choice. I love this part, I love this performance.

• 21:18Bill Simmons?

  Like, fifty-five, forty-five for me between Dead Poets, I did some percentages for you, Rosal.

• 21:22Sean Fennessey?

  You can feel him when you're watching it, though, working so hard to not be super annoying talk show Robin Williams, you know? He's like, it's like, he's got like nine guys holding him back from not riffing and doing a voice, which I appreciate.

• 21:33Bill Simmons?

  It is possible, when you put on that, those cardigans that he's wearing, you just become immediately more sensitive and thoughtful. This has been my dad's trick for like fifty years, he's, he's got three cardigans on all the time.

• 21:46Chris Ryan?

  Where are you gonna start wearing cardigans then?

• 21:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, now that you mention your dad, it's like Robin Williams is a PED version of your dad.

• 21:52Bill Simmons?

  Right, yeah, totally. What do you have for the Oscar for Robin Williams?

• 21:57Speaker 06

  Well, I, like you, kinda grew up with him as Mork. And you're like, "How long's this gonna go?"

• 22:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 06

  But I don't know that I was like seven going, "I don't like this guy's runway dad," you know? Probably didn't look at the world that way back then. But I just, I just love when anybody breaks out of like the typecasting of what you are. And clearly like Garf was the first, I don't know if that's his first movie, but he's probably the first time.

• 22:20Bill Simmons?

  His first big part.

• 22:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we did a rewatch.

• 22:22Speaker 06

  So now you're starting to realize, but no, he, I don't know if it's gonna come up during the Dionne Waiters Award thing, but on the most recent rewatch, and again, I watched it today because of travel and how it worked out. I mean, I'm so I'm fresh off of it. I, I mean, every single scene with him.

• 22:38Bill Simmons?

  It's crushing it.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  Crushes and it works.

• 22:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 06

  There's not one piece of dialogue with him where it's not like setting up some other payoff. And I still think the Boston Common scene, like getting to write that and, and having like, hey, here's this whole explanation. And he's not gonna come at him, but then it all just ties in together. Like that's really, that might be the most impressive part of the entire movie.

• 22:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Minnie Driver got nominated as well. She's really good in this. She had a nice little run. Four or five, four or five movies in there that were great. Gus Van Zant, you wanna do a little, do a little thirty seconds on this, Sean?

• 23:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's incredibly important to this movie. And I don't think it would be nearly as good if it wasn't made by him because his whole thing is like the invisibility of the camera. Like you feel like you're watching real people. And every intimate conversation that probably would feel really overwritten by a bunch of 23-year-old guys from Boston, don't feel that way at all. It feels super real because of the way that, you know, they talk about it in that oral history. How he just like sits next to the camera and lets them figure out how they want the part to go. He let Robin Williams try to do it 10 different ways, but Ben Affleck only wanted to do it two ways. And he let them do whatever they thought was right. And you know, he was an independent filmmaker from Pacific Northwest who's made a ton of great movies over the years. This is probably the most mainstream thing he's ever done, but he's got like a little bit of, you know, realistic secret sauce that I think elevates it.

• 23:55Bill Simmons?

  Any relation of Van Zant from Heat?

• 23:57Chris Ryan?

  You know, it's funny you should say that because the other director up for this movie was Michael Mann. And he wanted to make the guys into car thieves. And when I found that out, this movie got 5% worse to me because I was like, "Shit! I need Good Will Car Thief."

• 24:15Bill Simmons?

  You know, I had this coming later, but let's talk about this now. So this is a what-if for this movie. He shoots a whole day of footage with them for a screen test, and then goes with this whole thing about how he wants Mexican car thieves to be in it. And they're explaining to him that that wouldn't really feel like Boston, and he's all fired up about it, but... So the title of that would have been Good Will Hunted?

• 24:37Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think he does that, though, for every movie he's up for? He's like, Shakespeare in Love, but they're car thieves. Titanic, they're stealing the Titanic.

• 24:45Bill Simmons?

  There's time, and they're running out of time.

• 24:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, but if you think about the pitch of what it really is, it's like it's a girlfriend in therapy. Like, I can't believe I saw it.

• 24:59Bill Simmons?

  Well, this movie won two Oscars. Robin Williams won for Best Supporting Actor, and the boys won for Screenplay. Damon, fourth person ever at this point to get nominated for acting and writing in the same year. Sean, can you name the other three?

• 25:13Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I can't accept that that's an erroneous fact. I saw this fact as well.

• 25:17Bill Simmons?

  What is it?

• 25:18Speaker 06

  Are you rattled?

• 25:19Bill Simmons?

  No, I said to this point.

• 25:22Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I could, off the top of my head, Rocky did it.

• 25:24Bill Simmons?

  Slash alone, Orson Welles, Charles Chaplin.

• 25:27Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, but also Woody Allen did it for Annie Hall, because he was nominated that year.

• 25:32Bill Simmons?

  You were hushed all over the crowd.

• 25:34Sean Fennessey?

  Also, there was...

• 25:35Speaker 06

  Whoa.

• 25:36Sean Fennessey?

  You may recall.

• 25:36Bill Simmons?

  Hey, listen, we're all friends here.

• 25:38Sean Fennessey?

  And then, I'm just correcting if you're erroneous.

• 25:41Speaker 06

  This is like the math scene.

• 25:44Bill Simmons?

  Sean's like, you know how easy this is for me?

• 25:49Bill Simmons?

  It's a fucking joke!

• 25:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Don't put a whiteboard in front of me, man. I got markers. Um, it happened again one year later with Life is Beautiful. Roberto Benigni did it.

• 26:02Bill Simmons?

  Wow, that's a tough one.

• 26:06Bill Simmons?

  And you know who produced that? Harvey Weinstein. Yeah. Well, we have, so we have two big Oscar debates that come out of this.

• 26:13Speaker 06

  Do we?

• 26:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we do. Buckle up, Rassila, that's coming up next. Jack Nicholson wins for As Good As It Gets. The other nominees were Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting, Robert Duvall and the Apostle, Peter Fonda and Uli's Gold. That was the other choice for tonight.

• 26:31Bill Simmons?

  And then Dustin Hoffman for Wag the Dog. And all these years later, I just think Damon should have won. Agree. And As Good As It Gets, which was really good when it came out, it was James L. Brooks, and it was a thing, Helen Hunt got nominated too. I just don't think it's aged well as a movie. And it makes me mad that Matt Damon didn't win. CR?

• 26:52Chris Ryan?

  Damon's unbelievable in this movie. Do you ever think about, like, him writing his own speeches, though? Like, do you ever, like, think that that, like, should be some sort of demerit? Because, like, if Jack Nicholson could always just write his own scenes, like-

• 27:05Sean Fennessey?

  Is this you justifying never having won an award?

• 27:07Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 27:08Sean Fennessey?

  Did you write all your own material?

• 27:09Chris Ryan?

  But I think Damon is like, even scenes that I thought of as Robin Williams scenes, like, Damon is unbelievable in them. So he is very deserving.

• 27:18Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was awesome. What do you think, Rassila?

• 27:21Speaker 06

  Uh, look.

• 27:22Bill Simmons?

  Uh-oh.

• 27:23Speaker 06

  Oh, boy. I never, I think, I don't think I've made it all the way through As Good As It Gets. So.

• 27:28Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 27:28Chris Ryan?

  What about Uli's Gold, though?

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  That might disqualify you.

• 27:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't even think I should have a vote. This is like, hey, have you watched the NBA this year? Do you want a Defensive Player of the Year award? Like, sure.

• 27:42Speaker 06

  I mean, somebody the other night said that Myles Turner's in the running, and I'm like, what the fuck?

• 27:48Speaker 06

  But...

• 27:51Speaker 06

  I guess Robin Williams is so good that I think it may have hurt Damon's case.

• 27:57Bill Simmons?

  He got outshone.

• 27:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's a good take.

• 28:00Bill Simmons?

  He should have won. Affleck did not get nominated. Robin Williams wins and he beats all of the people in Boogie Nights. Burt Reynolds got nominated, but everybody else who could have gotten nominated and then...

• 28:11Speaker 06

  Do you, wait, do you agree with that?

• 28:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, he beats Robert Forster and Jackie Brown, which Sean is like very partial to. I'm not as partial. Greg Kinnear is as good as it gets and Anthony Hopkins in Amistad.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  You voted for Anthony Hopkins.

• 28:24Bill Simmons?

  I did, yeah. Yeah.

• 28:27Sean Fennessey?

  It was John Quincy Adams, I think, in that film.

• 28:29Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, just bad, rough luck for Burt Reynolds.

• 28:32Speaker 06

  That's brutal.

• 28:33Bill Simmons?

  Because I think he wins in a lot of other years.

• 28:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's very similar to Stallone not winning for Creed, where that whole time, everybody thought Burt was gonna win and then he lost because everybody realized that nobody likes Burt Reynolds in Hollywood.

• 28:44Bill Simmons?

  Right. By the way, that's gonna happen to Draymond Green with Defensive Player of the Year this year. He's favored right now. That got Priscilla.

• 28:54Speaker 06

  No, but I mean, it's like, after the cat thing, he got destroyed.

• 28:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 06

  And then the odds changed. I'm like, have you not paid attention to all these media members?

• 29:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 06

  Basically saying, like, everybody is on the same page about him right now. So there's a little Sunday preview.

• 29:08Bill Simmons?

  And then Good Will Hunting, Good Will Hunting wins over Boogie Nights. What do we think, all these years later, for screenplay?

• 29:18Bill Simmons?

  It's a tough one. I don't know if I have an answer.

• 29:21Speaker 06

  What's your answer if we're not doing it in Land's Down Street?

• 29:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's, I'm not trying to not respond. I mean, Boogie Nights should have won everything.

• 29:29Speaker 06

  I also, I think Boogie Nights is a better movie.

• 29:31Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, Ryan.

• 29:32Chris Ryan?

  Who won? Who was the best director this year? James Cameron. Yeah, I think Paul Thomas Anderson should have won.

• 29:38Bill Simmons?

  Well, this got nominated for nine Oscars. Elliott Smith nominated for Best Original Song for Miss Misery. He's all over this movie and it's awesome. And Danny Elfman lost for Best Score to Titanic, because Titanic just obliterated everybody. $10 million budget made $225 billion.

• 29:55Bill Simmons?

  Roger Ebert. So every time we do rewatchables, we read Roger Ebert's review. Three stars.

• 30:04Bill Simmons?

  Maybe just like, maybe he had some like, bad Mexican before the movie and just wasn't in a great frame of mind.

• 30:10Sean Fennessey?

  Did you read Ebert's review?

• 30:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he said, "The film has a good ear for the way these characters might really talk."

• 30:15Speaker 06

  Might?

• 30:18Bill Simmons?

  "The outcome of this movie is fairly predictable, so is the whole story, really. It's the individual moments, not the payoff, that make it so effective." It's a borderline fuck you, Raj. I gotta be honest. I don't like his tone.

• 30:30Sean Fennessey?

  Also, in the body of the review, Ebert just gives away Chucky's monologue? He's just like, "Oh, and then Chucky says this." And I'm like, "This is the best part of the film."

• 30:37Bill Simmons?

  Right. Yeah. Well, alright, we're gonna do some categories.

• 30:41Speaker 06

  That's some, I'm still, I didn't know that.

• 30:43Bill Simmons?

  I'm sorry.

• 30:44Speaker 06

  I know you guys like, read these every week, so...

• 30:48Speaker 06

  I, there's so many bad versions of this movie, and this one made it feel authentic, and it was a good ending, it was a happy ending.

• 30:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 06

  And it didn't, you know, all these movies are like, "Oh, it's just gonna be happy at the end, cool." This one felt like, you actually felt really happy at the end.

• 31:05Bill Simmons?

  Three and a half stars seems fair.

• 31:07Sean Fennessey?

  I think he gave it three stars.

• 31:08Bill Simmons?

  No, but I'm saying, three and a half, I think, is about as low as you wanna go.

• 31:11Sean Fennessey?

  His take was kind of the consensus take, though, and I think that a lot of the critics who were not in Boston were like, "I don't know, is this authentic? I'm not sure." And it seems like everybody here feels like it was very authentic.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  Did you think Ebert saw the Michael Mann screen test footage?

• 31:28Sean Fennessey?

  Could be.

• 31:29Bill Simmons?

  Good Will Hunting.

• 31:30Speaker 06

  He was waiting for the cars to chase Damon?

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  Make them remember you.

• 31:45Speaker 03

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Weeping, November 20th, rated P, 13.

• 31:49Speaker 09

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the...

• 31:51Speaker 05

  Priceline Negotiator!

• 31:53Speaker 09

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget: the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 32:19Bill Simmons?

  We're doing the categories. I have a special category. I didn't tell you guys. The single most Boston thing about this movie. Our nominees. The overhead of Fenway Park. Morgans I Hate L.A. t-shirt. The old-school red line trolleys that they kind of brought out of retirement because those were done. A big scene on the beach in Boston Common. The L Street Tavern. Bunker Hill Community College, which by the way, looks literally... Literally exactly the same. Like, exactly, to a T. Eating at Kelly's in the Tasty. Very 90s. Very 90s. Sean has a really cool Red Sox jacket. I want to shout that out. Yeah. I thought Will's apartment looked very Boston. Dunkin' Donuts is just omnipresent, which I appreciated.

• 33:04Bill Simmons?

  But here's our winner. This is an Affleck story from New York history. And I'm just going to quote him. "One night, we took Robin to the L Street Tavern. Robin wanted to get a taste of Boston. I remember thinking, 'This is a fucking mistake.'"

• 33:19Bill Simmons?

  And then it just turns into a mob scene. Guys got really drunk and wanted to fight me because I had my hat on backwards.

• 33:27Bill Simmons?

  That's the most Boston thing about this movie. I'm going with that.

• 33:30Speaker 06

  So he's making the movie. He's from here.

• 33:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 06

  And his hat's on backwards. And somebody's like, "Yeah, exactly." I mean, it's the same thing as people hearing about them writing this amazing screenplay. It's like, so they're going to make a movie? Who... What, do they think they're cool?

• 33:45Bill Simmons?

  They think you're better than me?

• 33:46Speaker 06

  I don't want to jump it, but this is Apex Mountain for Bunker Hill.

• 33:52Speaker 06

  I mean, it's been all downhill since. And, um, no offense to any alums, but when your boy fucked up his first semester at UVM, and then I got a three-and-a-half-hour speech on the ride back up after fall semester by my father. We drove by Bunker Hill on 93, and he's like, "We could just stop here and drop you off." And so, I've never thought of Bunker Hill in my life without that moment of like, "It's a lot cheaper."

• 34:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 06

  "This is the effort you're gonna put in. I don't have to drive three and a half hours, three and a half hours back." He's like, "We can find you, you know, a place in Somerville, it's gonna be cheaper, and we can just wrap this up." If that's... And I was like, "All right, look, can we just, let's just get back to Vermont. I'll try harder." And so, every time I would drive past Bunker Hill, I'm like, "There's a Russillo path there, could've gone different."

• 34:47Bill Simmons?

  It's on my son's list for two years from now.

• 34:50Speaker 06

  Can you get in state?

• 34:52Bill Simmons?

  The 99's right there, I mean, it's...

• 34:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, 99.

• 35:01Bill Simmons?

  $10 chicken parmigiana.

• 35:04Bill Simmons?

  In 1998, it was great. Uh, we're gonna do the categories, most rewatchable scene, the playground fight scene.

• 35:11Chris Ryan?

  Got some notes.

• 35:12Bill Simmons?

  Hey, come on, remember me? Really good slow motion battle, we got a little Baker Street from Jerry Rafferty.

• 35:19Speaker 06

  What about the music choice for the fight scene?

• 35:21Bill Simmons?

  Do you, yes or no?

• 35:22Speaker 06

  I'm still confused.

• 35:24Bill Simmons?

  I think that was, he was zagging.

• 35:26Chris Ryan?

  We couldn't throw a little Ed O.G. or Tim Dog in there when they're fighting, like, I just didn't get that.

• 35:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 06

  Not the berry, but the fruit, y'all?

• 35:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Bill Simmons?

  Next rewatchable scene.

• 35:36Speaker 06

  No one got that Roxbury reference.

• 35:38Speaker 06

  Over.

• 35:40Bill Simmons?

  The Harvard bar scene at the Bow and Arrow, here's what I wrote in my notes. "Ponytail guy comes in talking market economy in the southern colonies," and then in all caps, "Russillo's dream encounter in 1997."

• 35:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know what, I'd be like, "You think Shea Hellenbrand has become more patient? Because he takes the first pitch now, which everyone in the league knows that he's going to do, which actually counteracts his patience because he's the most predictable at bat in fucking Major League Baseball?"

• 36:14Speaker 06

  That would happen, it wouldn't be markets, it wouldn't be capitalism.

• 36:20Bill Simmons?

  How many times did you and ponytail guys circle each other when you lived here?

• 36:26Speaker 06

  I was, I was a little bit, when I got here, how old was I? I was like 27, 28.

• 36:32Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 36:32Speaker 06

  So, it was, it was kinda out of me by then. The funny thing is, I actually got bigger when I needed it. And when I was more of a dickhead, I was smaller, so it didn't really match. It's actually probably better for everybody involved.

• 36:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, probably. The seesaw tilted correctly. Uh, CR, this is the Hall of Fame friend scene. We're using all four guys perfectly.

• 36:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think, uh, the thing I've always wondered is, was that guy named Clark? Is the Scott Winters character?

• 36:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Chris Ryan?

  Is the ponytail a tribute to Revolutionary War era hairstyles? But yeah, I mean, it's just incredible backgetting by the friend group.

• 37:10Sean Fennessey?

  He was a huge Amistad fan.

• 37:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's right. And Stellan Skarsgård in Amistad, if he had just been nicer, he might have met his hero.

• 37:16Bill Simmons?

  Some good shout outs to Thomas Zinn.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  Howard.

• 37:19Bill Simmons?

  Howard Zinn, no, and Thomas, who is the Thomas?

• 37:23Speaker 06

  Gordon Wood.

• 37:24Bill Simmons?

  Gordon Wood, wasn't there a Thomas too?

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, man.

• 37:28Bill Simmons?

  I have a big doc here.

• 37:30Sean Fennessey?

  Thinking of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent?

• 37:34Speaker 06

  I'll tell you what though, imagine if you were really in that field, and you're like, watching that movie? And you go, Damon actually just, I'm not a free thinker, I'm 43.

• 37:44Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 37:45Speaker 06

  Like, that's exactly, I believed all, like, that scene fucked up at least one person in a way that we'll never understand. And it also makes me like, like, did Damon just hate that course so much?

• 37:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, it was building inside him for 10 years.

• 38:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, 'cause that's not just normal dialogue.

• 38:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Bill Simmons?

  My boy's wicked smart, there's some really good quotes in here, and then it leads to the "do you like apples" scene, which we could tackle now or later.

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  Uh, up to you, man.

• 38:14Bill Simmons?

  Why is the answer yes?

• 38:16Chris Ryan?

  There's no good outcome by saying yes. If Clark just goes, "I'm not," and turns back around to the three girls at Dunkin' Donuts, the night's over, but he gets to throw Skylar's number up.

• 38:27Sean Fennessey?

  Can we just dissect it a little bit more, though?

• 38:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Speaker 06

  I'm glad you're doing this.

• 38:32Sean Fennessey?

  Let's go back to the bar. Clark's in the bar, he's there with his dorky friends. They're standing behind him when he's starting to go at Affleck. First of all, Affleck's got like eight inches on him. He's a giant. And he's a townie who'll break his fucking head open.

• 38:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:45Sean Fennessey?

  And Clark is not hitting on the girls. He knows them.

• 38:50Bill Simmons?

  He's just being a dick.

• 38:51Sean Fennessey?

  But they're not interested.

• 38:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Sean Fennessey?

  And so he's challenging a townie, which like, let's just say I'm Clark, for the sake of conversation, because I'm a skinny dork. I would never say shit to a guy like that.

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  You're right.

• 39:04Sean Fennessey?

  So then Damon's idea to counter that is rather than break his head open, he's just gonna explode his brain, right? So he embarrasses him. But then Clark's like, "All right, see you later, man." He doesn't try to hit on mini-drive or anything. So where does the, do you like apples even come from? Like, what does he even?

• 39:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what was the win?

• 39:19Sean Fennessey?

  He already won.

• 39:20Bill Simmons?

  Right. It was like a double win. He came back for more. See, I had this for nitpicks for later, but in real life, they beat the hell out of this guy at 2:00 in the morning. I mean, they just did.

• 39:32Chris Ryan?

  But I like that Clark walks it up to the edge twice, where they're just like, "Do you wanna go outside?" And he's just like, "No, I just wanna be pedantic about Gordon Wood."

• 39:41Sean Fennessey?

  But does that work in far-fetched scenarios?

• 39:43Chris Ryan?

  I've never fucking tried it.

• 39:44Sean Fennessey?

  To be like, "It's cool, man, it's cool, don't break my head open."

• 39:51Sean Fennessey?

  Ryan, you tell us. When you're ready to break a guy's head open.

• 39:54Speaker 06

  There's a couple things. I've never quite understood what it meant.

• 39:59Bill Simmons?

  Uh-oh. I don't have a counter.

• 40:02Sean Fennessey?

  This is the most iconic scene in this movie.

• 40:04Bill Simmons?

  I know, and everybody says it.

• 40:05Sean Fennessey?

  And every time I watch it, I love it. And then I start to think about it, and I'm like, "What really happened here?"

• 40:10Speaker 06

  Whatever, I mean, there had to be some, I guess, final moment, and so they came up with some... I've never heard, I've never heard anyone ever say that until the movie came out. And then it, obviously, a bunch of dudes said it for a really long time. But, your thing on, "Why would you even go at these guys?", I would disagree with that. Because I think when you're, the whole point of them being in Cambridge, and I remember even, you know, back when I was in school, like, this rossy crew would come out when they had leave. It was the worst. So we're all like 185 pounds with our game hats on, but there was, we were all just clones of each other, so no one was really afraid of anybody else. And then these rossy guys would come up and like hit on these girls from Greenwich, Connecticut, and they were like horrified. Like, "What are you, on student aid or something?", like, you know, "Get the fuck away from me",

• 40:55Speaker 06

  you know? "I'm, I'm from Riverside", like, "What the fuck?", you know? "You know, I'm from Newton or something", and they were just like, "Why are these commoners talking to us?". And then, they'd grab one of us, morons, and be like, "Hey dude", you know? And then it would be like, "What have you ever done for your country?", and we'd always get our ass kicked. But the point is, is that you would feel protective of your neighborhood, and I think in this case, Clark is just like, "Even if you guys would kill us, you're not supposed to be here". And look, Minnie's at Harvard. I don't know what it was like in 97, because I wasn't here, so maybe, but, you know, that's, they're not just gonna give her away to out-of-staters.

• 41:36Sean Fennessey?

  I, I really think we should test this theory tonight. Me and you go to a Harvard bar, and start talking to some girls, see what happens.

• 41:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, but they redid the can tab. I've had like two birthday parties there, and I recently stopped in again, and it's like nice now, so I was like, "Fuck".

• 41:51Speaker 06

  I think I played quarters there one night with a case, and then they were like, "Do you work here?".

• 42:00Bill Simmons?

  Next scene.

• 42:04Bill Simmons?

  Possible rewatchable candidate.

• 42:07Bill Simmons?

  Will's first meeting with Sean, when uh... He breaks down the painting and it's really awkward and then he says, "Maybe we're married the wrong woman." "Watch it there, chief."

• 42:17Speaker 06

  "I will end you."

• 42:19Bill Simmons?

  "I will fucking end you." Uh, trivia for this, Gus Van Sant painted the picture.

• 42:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 06

  I thought it was Pesci's mom in Goodfellas.

• 42:29Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 42:33Bill Simmons?

  Possible great Chuck Ordo in here, so you are for this? For the way they filmed Damon with the lace?

• 42:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  Also love Damon saying, "Let the healing begin."

• 42:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Bill Simmons?

  Will's second meeting is the next one because we get that incredible Robin Williams monologue we mentioned. We get Boston Common, great to see it. Build a statue! Well, that, there's a big thing about building a Robin Williams statue near that bench. Uh, this is another great Boston fact. When they filmed this scene in the Common, there were 3,000 people, like, just far enough away so they weren't on camera watching. And this was the heyday, and I was living here when this happened, of when they were filming stuff here, it was like the coolest... Like, they filmed Blown Away with Tommy Lee Jones.

• 43:17Speaker 06

  Great accents in that, yeah.

• 43:18Bill Simmons?

  And everybody was out of their minds that they were filming it here, and then the real world house was in the fire station in Beacon Hill. And I was like, "Oh, my god, the real world," but everybody, those kids were in trouble day after day. No, I was still here, but the kids were in trouble. Because they would go out and people would be like, "Ah, real world, huh?"

• 43:36Speaker 06

  No, that's 100% true. When they were here, everybody just fucked with them.

• 43:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it completely fucked up the show.

• 43:41Speaker 06

  Did you apply? They've never done it here again.

• 43:43Bill Simmons?

  Never.

• 43:43Sean Fennessey?

  Did you apply for Real World Boston?

• 43:45Bill Simmons?

  I didn't. I kinda wish I had.

• 43:48Sean Fennessey?

  Do you, is there any existing audition tape of you trying to get on a reality show?

• 43:51Bill Simmons?

  Uh, no. Thank god.

• 43:55Speaker 06

  One of my, two roommates of mine did it, and he, they, they didn't hit stop on the camcorder. So, one guy sat down, did his thing, and then got up, and then the next guy. And so, to this day, he's like, "I don't think they waited to see mine."

• 44:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. That was the problem.

• 44:18Speaker 06

  And you're like, "Do you think that's why you didn't get picked? Because of patience?"

• 44:24Bill Simmons?

  This monologue's great, and I'm not gonna read it to the crowd, but uh... I think this is Samuel Williams' best work ever.

• 44:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Bill Simmons?

  It's really great, and I hope they give him the statue. Uh, next one, the game six story. We get Carlton fist footage, which, I dunno, it's been... Does the fist combers still matter to the younger people out there? Oh, that's great, cuz it was one of the most important things of the 70's for, if you're a kid growing up here. But, he doesn't go to the game, and he tells the story about how he had to go see about a girl, and it's, it's, it still bugs me that he didn't go to the game, or so...

• 45:01Chris Ryan?

  To be fair, I think it would bug you-

• 45:03Bill Simmons?

  It's my biggest nitpick.

• 45:04Chris Ryan?

  If he was skipping like, a Hornets Blazers game, you'd be like, "What?"

• 45:08Bill Simmons?

  Nah, this is a tough one, though. They're down 3-2 in the World Series. They'd only been in 67 and in 46. Everybody loved the 75 Red Sox team, including me. And it was the Lennon Rice team, and Yaz was still there, and he's just like, "Yeah, I'll have to take my ticket, I'm not gonna go." I, I really feel like the, his friends would've like, fucking fought him. Right?

• 45:30Speaker 06

  Or, or they would've just given it to somebody who wanted it really bad.

• 45:34Bill Simmons?

  I dunno if I'd come back from it.

• 45:35Speaker 06

  He's a fictional character, Bill.

• 45:40Bill Simmons?

  It's a good point. I always forget that.

• 45:42Chris Ryan?

  And this story serves as the emotional metaphor for the entire movie.

• 45:48Speaker 06

  I kinda agree with Bill, I don't think that guy doesn't go to game six.

• 45:51Bill Simmons?

  I just, I'm trying to think like, what? How great would the girl have been? Yeah, she would understand, too, if it was the right girl.

• 45:59Speaker 06

  If she's from here? That's a good take. Actually, should she marry him if he didn't go?

• 46:05Bill Simmons?

  Say, he would sell out the thing he loves the most right away, yeah, I wouldn't trust him.

• 46:10Bill Simmons?

  This is a short one, but, next one is the, "Do you know how easy this is for me? Do you have an idea?" It's a fucking joke. I just love when he lays in a Lambo, that loser.

• 46:21Bill Simmons?

  And then, I gotta say, the last like thirty minutes of this movie is out of control, Sierra.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Bill Simmons?

  Like, from a rewatchability standpoint, we get, Skyler leaves to LA, looking back, seeing if he's in the, nope, he's not in the airport. We go right to the construction site, Affleck gets his big moment. Then we go to Lambo versus Sean. Then we go to the, "It's not your fault, it's not your fault." Then we go to the last scene, and then all of a sudden, "See About a Girl," and we're good. And it's just like, every scene is a homerun.

• 46:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's funny, it's one of those runtime movies where you're like, "Wait a second, they haven't done like X, Y, and Z," and they're just hit after hit after hit at the end of the album.

• 46:59Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness, a word for it.

• 47:01Chris Ryan?

  We didn't pick the rewatchable scene.

• 47:02Bill Simmons?

  No, no, I'm putting it in here, I think, because that Elliott Smith Angeles, I think, when she's waiting to see if he's gonna show up at the airport or not, I think that's the winner. Uh, the Affleck monologue, you've been known to write some screenplay stuff from time to time, Rosello. "In twenty years, if you're still living here, coming over to my house, watching the Patriots work in construction, I'll fucking kill you."

• 47:25Speaker 06

  If you're still making that joke in twenty years.

• 47:31Speaker 06

  You know what I think it did, and it's funny because, like, when you start to really see the stuff that that works, like, it can be really, really predictable, you know, and then if it becomes, like, too predictable, it kinda loses it. And the funniest thing about this movie for me, and why I appreciate it so much, is that it's actually very predictable. But it never feels forced. It's not that you have to be surprised here, it's just the flow of the storytelling. And so for something as innocuous as Affleck to be like, "I just hope, you know, the best part of my day is that moment where I'm hoping you're not there."

• 48:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:04Speaker 06

  So then you kinda know, like, that moment's going to happen, that closes it, "See About a Girl." There's like, three different things that close it. The car, because they have to give him a car, because he didn't have one to drive across country. Um, there's just these things that you guys were talking about, just the heat zone that you're in at the end of this movie. I don't know that, it's not that there's some twist, it's not that there's something that shocks you. It doesn't have any of those things. And there's so many movies that fuck this up.

• 48:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 06

  And they're, they're just perfect with it towards the end.

• 48:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's some bad versions of this where he shows up at the airport. Or there's some version of it where...

• 48:40Bill Simmons?

  Or he shows up right after the plane leaves.

• 48:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Bill Simmons?

  He's running toward the gate and doesn't, she's not there.

• 48:45Chris Ryan?

  That's like the 1995 indie movie version where it's like, ah shit.

• 48:49Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 48:49Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but yeah, I mean like the, the getting into like what his trauma was, also giving the therapist as much time and, and space to like have his own story usually doesn't happen. It would be, it's just such a great character study.

• 49:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Ryan was alluding to it. I mean, nothing really happens in this movie. You know, he meets a girl, they go on a few dates, and he goes to therapy.

• 49:11Bill Simmons?

  He kicks Carmine's ass.

• 49:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  Don't forget about Carmine, takes a beating.

• 49:15Speaker 06

  No, but Sean, you're, you're right. There's not really this, like when we were thinking about the rewatchable scenes when I was even prepping for this pod. I was like, there's a couple of good lines, but there's no like, I'm, you know, do you want to be emotionally drained and watch It's Not Your Fault? Couple of times a week, like, of course.

• 49:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 06

  You know?

• 49:32Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't his fault.

• 49:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's just, it's a, it's a really heavy drama. And you've mentioned the part about how Castle Rock bought the script at the start of it. And that they were renowned for their ability to develop material and that everybody wanted to work with them.

• 49:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Sean Fennessey?

  And they give that big note to be like, this is a thriller and an ordinary people's style drama. And they were like, do the drama, which is like the least commercial aspect of the story. And yet, their instincts are totally right. And the movie is like weirdly propulsive, even though there's no chasing her down at the airport scene. There's no scene where like, you know, Chucky and Will like have a falling out and then they have to get back together. Like it doesn't have any of that conventional stuff. So it's kind of miraculous in that way.

• 50:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there were, in the research, they said Van Zandt wanted them to write an extra scene where Chucky gets killed in a construction action. Like for real. And they actually wrote the scene and they're like, this does not work. America does not want Chucky to get hit by a crane.

• 50:28Speaker 06

  But you know what I mean? Like in, in a, you're right. In a two hour movie, you're like, okay. There's something bad and then it has to get even worse.

• 50:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 06

  And I'm pretty sure, because they made it, they're gonna figure out how to make it better. Um, I mean, really for this, if you're going by that simple formula, which is basically almost every form of storytelling. What's the, what's the thing, like it's the breakthrough, you know?

• 50:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:54Speaker 06

  The breakthrough, but normally that wouldn't be allowed even have, have it happen that late. Like I bet you if you try to make it now, the note would be have the breakthrough at like an hour.

• 51:03Bill Simmons?

  It's like when we do the movie about how we never stopped believing in Scoot Henderson. That one game that night when we were texting each other, that was the breakthrough, the same thing.

• 51:13Speaker 06

  Is that better as a Netflix series?

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, eight, eight episodes. One thing with the Affleck scene, I thought this was great in the research. They, I mean, they worked on this movie for five years. And this was his big moment, right? Damon has the better part in the movie, they're together and he's the sidekick. But the construction scene is his big scene. And he's building up and then finally the day is the day and it's like, alright, I might do my scene. He does the take and he nails it. And they were like, that was great. You wanna do it again? And he's, and, and he just, he, he didn't know what to do. It was like he had just hit like a game winning homer and they were like, alright, you wanna do this the other side? With the, now we'll shoot it behind Damon and, and he was just like, I just felt like I climbed Mount Everest, basically.

• 51:54Bill Simmons?

  But it was, it's cool when you watch that, cause that, that's the scene that kinda sets up the next 30 years for him, I think.

• 52:00Chris Ryan?

  It's also fun to imagine Gus Van Sant being like, can we have some rebar fall and hit Chuckie right here?

• 52:07Bill Simmons?

  Right as he finishes it.

• 52:08Speaker 06

  No, but it's a great point because he doesn't get to show off.

• 52:10Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 52:11Speaker 06

  Until that moment.

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's why when I did that.

• 52:14Speaker 06

  I mean, it's pretty crazy if you wrote the screenplay, it's like you didn't hook yourself up.

• 52:18Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 52:18Speaker 06

  A little bit earlier.

• 52:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's why those guys, Damon's so protective of Affleck, but when I did a pod with them a couple of years ago, and he was so mad about how Affleck was treated after the movie, even now. When he was like, SNL did a sketch and they made Damon seem like the star and Affleck was like his loser, Boston sidekick. And, um, he was like, Affleck sacrificed, like I had the much better part in that movie and Affleck didn't really have one. A couple of other parts near the end here. The farewell therapy scene right into when Will gets his car, Cole Hauser's best moment?

• 52:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 52:50Bill Simmons?

  Yes. It's a good car.

• 52:51Speaker 06

  Good car.

• 52:52Bill Simmons?

  The engine's good. The engine's good. You can see the seeds of someday this guy's gonna lead a tail or share to the show, right here. It's, it's a good car. Um, and then, uh, the ending. Affleck goes to see him, he's not there anymore. And we get the first of many Ben Affleck faces. When he does the.

• 53:17Bill Simmons?

  And he does the whole sequence, we see it many times over the future, then Morgan jumps in the front seat. And then tell him, "I'm sorry, I went to go see Bad at Girl," and then Robin Williams ad-libbed, "Son of a bitch, you stole my life."

• 53:28Sean Fennessey?

  Can I ask you a question? Is that the next day after he tells him, "I'll fucking kill you"? Because it takes him a long time to realize what's happened.

• 53:38Speaker 06

  It wasn't gonna take a long time to pack, I don't think.

• 53:40Sean Fennessey?

  Good point. Not a lot of stuff. But Affleck is really laying it on thick there at the end.

• 53:45Bill Simmons?

  Do you think he propelled him to drive cross-country? It's possible.

• 53:49Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like it, right?

• 53:50Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for most rewatchable scenes here?

• 53:53Chris Ryan?

  I think it's, uh... I think it's probably the first therapy scene, actually. I really love that one. And I love, like, the analysis of the art. It's just such a great setup for those two characters.

• 54:08Bill Simmons?

  Sean?

• 54:09Sean Fennessey?

  I have two that you did not list that are my favorites. The first one is retainer...

• 54:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Sean Fennessey?

  When Affleck goes in to do the job interview at McNeil, which is so funny, which might be the funniest full scene in the movie. And then the second one is the two jokes. Is Affleck telling the joke about Uncle Marty and stealing the cruiser, followed by Mini Driver delivering a great joke about an old Irish couple. I just think those are two great scenes that feel like, they feel like things that actually happened that they put into the movie.

• 54:41Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, so, most rewatchable?

• 54:42Speaker 06

  By the way, the Staytruper story, I heard that in college from a guy from, like, Hingham, and then thought it was real. So, is that like the Life cereal kid died eating Pop Rocks meme?

• 54:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 06

  Like, every single one of us has heard that story, and then when it happened in the movie, I'm like, "Holy shit, that happened to him too?" And I'm like, "Oh, maybe no one's ever had that story." But it was just a urban legend thing. Rewatchable, we haven't given, um... We haven't given Mini enough love here, okay?

• 55:17Bill Simmons?

  It's coming. We can do it now, though.

• 55:19Speaker 06

  The first kiss scene is like one of the most natural, cool, non-forced, these people from completely different walks of life, and having that moment where you're immediately comfortable with somebody in a way that just seems impossible when you barely know them, that is the most brilliant part of the movie. I mean, the Robin Williams stuff is tough to compete with, but she's so believable and their relationship is so believable. I mean, other than he's just like, "I can know how to do everything," when they have coffee that day. I just, I don't know, it hit me today. I was like, "Man, all of these scenes with her are just fantastic," and you never, it's not like I wanted the whole movie to be about her, but I just thought that luncheon burger kiss was really cool.

• 56:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's get the kiss out of the way.

• 56:05Speaker 06

  They were trying to make it like the opposite of this dramatic moment, which it would normally be in every other movie.

• 56:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I wouldn't have put this as most rewatchable, but she's so awesome in the breakup scene. Like, it really feels like he's actually breaking up with her. Like, she's immediately devastated and just crushed by it. I have the construction scene as my most rewatchable. What's the most 1997 thing about this movie? I was gonna say just young Damon and Affleck with their whole careers in front of them. It's like, as we get older, it's kind of amazing this thing exists. What do you have, C.R.?

• 56:38Sean Fennessey?

  I have the fact that there is no internet, so Will Hunting doesn't spend all his time on Red Sox Reddit shit-talking Mo Von.

• 56:48Sean Fennessey?

  This guy can't fucking hit with guys on, running, running some face!

• 56:52Bill Simmons?

  We were saying that.

• 56:56Sean Fennessey?

  Payphones and the convenience that payphones afforded you when you could say, "I forgot somebody's number," and go back into the car like a coward.

• 57:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:04Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, that's just great. If it was now, Skylar would just bang that number into his phone.

• 57:08Bill Simmons?

  That's true. There's multiple payphone scenes in this movie. Good point. What do you got, Russell?

• 57:12Speaker 06

  Uh, it's a pretty diverse film.

• 57:22Speaker 06

  I don't know, in 2025.

• 57:25Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean, there's Irish and Italian guys in this movie?

• 57:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:30Bill Simmons?

  Carmine.

• 57:31Sean Fennessey?

  Carmine.

• 57:32Speaker 06

  I don't know, Michael Mann might have been on to something.

• 57:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:37Bill Simmons?

  What's age the best? I have a bunch of them, I'll turn it over to you guys, but I want to start here. Giving someone a Dunkin' Donuts coffee after you picked them up from jail.

• 57:48Bill Simmons?

  So what's age the best for me? What do you have, CR?

• 57:51Chris Ryan?

  I got a couple. I got, uh, Will explaining how jokes work to a character played by Robin Williams.

• 58:01Chris Ryan?

  And, uh,

• 58:04Chris Ryan?

  Will's art criticism, I think you one step away from cutting your fucking ear off. Kind of like lost that Sharp Elbow style critique of popular culture, I'm gonna bring that back. And just like the, the formation of the group, the smart one, quiet one, loud one, dumb one, like,

• 58:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:21Chris Ryan?

  Perfect, the Beatles right there.

• 58:24Bill Simmons?

  Sean?

• 58:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, definitely Matt and Ben Industries, you know, the idea of them being these iconic, this iconic duo now for 30 years running, which is amazing that it lasted this long and usually doesn't work out that way.

• 58:38Sean Fennessey?

  And then I think this is the, the conversion of Robin Williams's legacy from comedy person to iconic actor. And if he doesn't have this movie, even though he did plenty of dramatic parts, he's really thought of more as a performer and not Mork, you know? Even if he had done Dead Poets and he had done What Dreams May Come or whatever.

• 58:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cuz he had, he was struggling a little bit from an IMDb standpoint. He made that movie Jack. He made that movie What Dreams May Come with Cuba Gooding that you just mentioned that, uh, these, he was a little bit of a slump.

• 59:10Sean Fennessey?

  Although, if not for Jack, he might not have done this movie.

• 59:14Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 59:14Sean Fennessey?

  Because he asked Francis Ford Coppola, who the fuck are these guys? Because he had just made Jack with Francis Ford Coppola. And Francis Ford Coppola cast Damon as the Rainmaker, so that was a critical, even though Jack sucks.

• 59:25Speaker 06

  Sorry, Jack. Sorry, Jack. Look, that's the right answer because I was watching the Oscar acceptance speech this morning. It's great. That's a good one. They are, I mean, it looks like a bit. Yeah. Like, security's supposed to come over and be like, "Who are you guys?" Yeah. I remember Dennis Miller, when he had his HBO show, he played the clip and he goes, "What we didn't hear when they went to commercial was, 'We're gonna get so late.'" Right. This sheer euphoria, which also in that clip, you can see Minnie Driver miserable because Damon dumped her in real life. Yeah. Um, and he's like, "Dude, I'm about to win a fucking Oscar." Yeah. Like, you know, "I'm not staying. Like, I just see what's in the mix." But, um...

• 1:00:10Speaker 06

  Boston accents, I think, age the best because I had guys, as we know, it skips generations. It skips geographical areas. Like, you can be separated by five miles and you're like, "I know what you're saying and you're never gonna pronounce the word drawer in your entire life." Yeah. And so, we had guys come back that summer. Like, I had a buddy and we were out at a bar and the girls were like, "Where are you guys from?" And he's like, "Oh, I'm from Lubin." I'm like, "Who the fuck are you?" Because he never had it. He never had it. I go, "What?" I go, "What are you, what are you doing?" He's like, "Dude, you know, when I'm coming home, you know, like, I just pick it up." I'm like, "Yeah, except you've never had it the whole time I've known you."

• 1:00:55Speaker 06

  Like, this is our fifth year of knowing each other and you've never, you've never picked it up. Like, you, come on. Like, what are you doing? And Good Will Hunting is responsible for that. And Good Will Hunting, Boston guys became like a novelty in LA. Like, they were like, "Hey, we've got this really dumb kid from Framingham who's gonna talk like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in real life." So, like, you guys wanna go- Let's hire him as a PA. Yeah, right. Like, you guys wanna watch him talk and get some drinks? So... I mean, the accent's kinda still, this movie changed it, man.

• 1:01:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Now Rhode Island is the state that that happens to. This P A's from Rhode Island, you gotta hear him. I have a couple more, the friendship aspect which we mentioned. The clothes? The cardigans for Sean, but really Chucky's outfits.

• 1:01:49Chris Ryan?

  His tracksuits.

• 1:01:50Bill Simmons?

  These tracksuits and they're both, it's cheap and fancy at the same time, but it's perfect.

• 1:01:56Chris Ryan?

  There's a great bit in the oral history about, like, the costume designer wanted to dress them almost like, in like homeless rags and like they had to like call somebody from Reebok to rush tracksuits to Chucky.

• 1:02:08Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:02:11Bill Simmons?

  The top four guys in this movie. So it ends up Casey wins an Oscar and then Cole Hauser is the star of the biggest audience wise TV show we've had the last 10 years and then Damon Affleck, Damon Affleck, but you rarely go four for four. It's like when you have a family that has four siblings or more. Probably not going four for four with the siblings.

• 1:02:33Sean Fennessey?

  I'm one of four.

• 1:02:34Bill Simmons?

  Maybe go three and a half for four? You have four?

• 1:02:36Sean Fennessey?

  I'm one of four.

• 1:02:37Bill Simmons?

  You go four for four?

• 1:02:38Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, yes. So imagine if I was like, ah, there's a one rotten one, you know? Sorry, Kyle.

• 1:02:44Bill Simmons?

  I always just make fun of Hauser because he had two brothers and it was like, which one's the black sheep? I still can't figure it out.

• 1:02:51Bill Simmons?

  Affleck has a late 90s director's DVD commentary before the era that we knew social media and the internet was really coming the way it did and he's just on one the entire time.

• 1:03:03Chris Ryan?

  He's the best director.

• 1:03:04Bill Simmons?

  He's the best.

• 1:03:04Speaker 06

  He's the best. No one's better. I mean, the Armageddon one, I'll randomly remind myself to watch those clips.

• 1:03:10Bill Simmons?

  He's unbelievable in these.

• 1:03:13Bill Simmons?

  The therapist scenes are just really good. Wanted to shout those out. George Plimpton, I don't care if you puff from the rough, I don't know where they came up with that.

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  Phenomenal. And then, uh...

• 1:03:25Sean Fennessey?

  That whole scene is insanely funny. Damon doing the club stuff is...

• 1:03:29Bill Simmons?

  Just fucking with George Plimpton. By the way, George Plimpton. And then my last one is the girl in the bar at the beginning who starts making fun of Chucky's dick and calls it Irish curse and a Tootsie Roll. Just on brand.

• 1:03:44Sean Fennessey?

  Toot, toot, yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 06

  There's two that are lost here.

• 1:03:48Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:03:49Speaker 06

  Because you could argue this movie's really about math culture.

• 1:03:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 06

  Which I don't see brought up a lot.

• 1:03:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, not.

• 1:03:56Speaker 06

  But when the professor is at the reunion and the undergrad is like, "Hey," and he's like, "It's Saturday, unless you wanna have a drink tonight." You're like, "What the fuck?"

• 1:04:08Bill Simmons?

  See, I had that in one stage the worst, but I'm happy to flip it.

• 1:04:12Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:04:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 06

  Jerry's boundaries.

• 1:04:14Bill Simmons?

  You want it going best, that's great.

• 1:04:15Speaker 06

  Cause then...

• 1:04:16Bill Simmons?

  Russell's like, "College professors hitting on their students."

• 1:04:19Speaker 06

  The second one is better, because right when we're, it's the, is it the post-Plynton session? Yeah. Right, so Plimpton yells, "Ballyhoo." Plimpton kills it. I mean, it's probably, you know, we'll see how he's, the award shake out, but... We just come into the scene and he's turned to some other undergrad, he's like, "Math is erotic."

• 1:04:39Speaker 06

  And like, they don't, you kinda wonder, like, is there gonna be... I don't know that you would be allowed to just throw that in there without somebody giving you the note of like, "Where the hell does that go?" Yeah.

• 1:04:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:51Bill Simmons?

  DeShawn Penn, "I brought my own pack award for excellence in on-screen smoking." Damon, 10 out of 10.

• 1:04:58Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god, but Bill, we have a moment here. Cole Hauser's last cigarette in this movie is the smoking equivalent of Daniel Day-Lewis building an oil derrick in the beginning of "There Will Be Blood." He comes into the bar when they give him the car, last puff, smokes it down to the butt, grinds it out, and then goes like this to be like, "I got the car for him," and gets beers with one gesture.

• 1:05:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Chris Ryan?

  It's just like, a fucking triple axle lands it. And then the next thing you know, he's outside, he's just like,

• 1:05:33Chris Ryan?

  "It's a good engine."

• 1:05:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Bill Simmons?

  Hauser.

• 1:05:37Chris Ryan?

  King.

• 1:05:40Bill Simmons?

  Sierra, what'd you end up with for "Great Shaq Ordo"?

• 1:05:43Chris Ryan?

  I love that when Chucky's monologue starts, that they stay on Damon. And so the first half of Chucky's monologue is like Damon with the construction, the bulldozer behind him, and it's like, "This is this guy's future if he doesn't listen to his friend right now." But it takes a lot, like you guys were talking about with Affleck's humility in this movie. It's like, that's his Oscar reel, that's his highlight tape, that's the one.

• 1:06:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, spend half of it... On my best friend. That's incredible.

• 1:06:11Sean Fennessey?

  Can I give you one other great shot, Gordo?

• 1:06:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  There's like a one-second overhead shot when Robin Williams is pushing Damon out of the way when he's telling the Carlton Fisk story, and he's matching it with the overhead of Fenway during this.

• 1:06:24Bill Simmons?

  Good call.

• 1:06:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's like, very tiny little move, but you love just seeing, watching Williams push him out of the way.

• 1:06:29Bill Simmons?

  Good call. Dennis Thieves Benihana Award for scene stealing location. It's gotta be the Boston Common, right?

• 1:06:36Chris Ryan?

  I always loved Oban Pim, personally.

• 1:06:38Bill Simmons?

  So, Oban Pim at outdoors?

• 1:06:40Chris Ryan?

  Great turkey sandwich.

• 1:06:44Bill Simmons?

  Shaun, what'd you... Oh, the racetrack, the dog track.

• 1:06:49Bill Simmons?

  The Chess Rockwell and Brocklanders Award for best character name.

• 1:06:53Speaker 06

  Chuckie Sullivan.

• 1:06:54Bill Simmons?

  Chuckie's... Chuckie wins.

• 1:06:55Sean Fennessey?

  Professor Gerald Lambeau is pretty fucking good.

• 1:06:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, that is pretty good.

• 1:07:01Chris Ryan?

  His full character name is Morgan O'Malley. Are you sure we're not...

• 1:07:05Sean Fennessey?

  He's good, that's good, too.

• 1:07:06Speaker 06

  I just wondered, like, if they would go, "We can't do Sullivan." And then maybe they argued about it forever, and they were like, "Let's just make it Sullivan." Because they felt like they had to pick a more obscure one.

• 1:07:16Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:07:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, Lambeau, that leads to the Vincent Chase Award, named after Vincent Chase from Montreux. Are we sure this character was actually good at his job?

• 1:07:27Speaker 06

  He's a professor at MIT. He probably knows... I mean, just because he couldn't hold up to Damon, dude.

• 1:07:32Bill Simmons?

  Counter, are we sure he deserved the Fields Medal?

• 1:07:37Chris Ryan?

  Do you know what drives me crazy?

• 1:07:38Bill Simmons?

  Guys getting blown out of the water by the janitor.

• 1:07:41Chris Ryan?

  We were...

• 1:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Like, come on.

• 1:07:43Chris Ryan?

  We were talking about this backstage, is math podcasts are starting Fields Medal conversations way too early. Every four seasons.

• 1:07:52Bill Simmons?

  Thirty games into the season.

• 1:07:53Speaker 06

  If you don't have one.

• 1:07:55Sean Fennessey?

  Can I zag on this?

• 1:07:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Sean Fennessey?

  Are we sure Dr. Sean McGuire is a good therapist?

• 1:08:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:08:00Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:08:01Bill Simmons?

  Okay. You're gonna lose the crowd again, let's go.

• 1:08:06Sean Fennessey?

  Let's just start here. Committs physical violence during a therapy session.

• 1:08:11Bill Simmons?

  Right, that's true.

• 1:08:12Sean Fennessey?

  Not good.

• 1:08:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Sean Fennessey?

  Has no considerable scientific, psychological point of view whatsoever. Neither Jungian nor Freudian. We have no idea where... His whole bit is just like, "So, what do you like?"

• 1:08:25Chris Ryan?

  He's just borrowing, he's remixing. That's not a...

• 1:08:28Bill Simmons?

  Just trying to grab information.

• 1:08:30Sean Fennessey?

  I have more. He's clearly a shitty college professor. Nobody in that class is paying attention.

• 1:08:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:08:37Speaker 06

  It is Bunker Hill.

• 1:08:41Sean Fennessey?

  Here's one thing I'm confused about with that character. Was he a math guy?

• 1:08:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I never got this.

• 1:08:47Sean Fennessey?

  Who pivoted to-

• 1:08:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, what did he teach?

• 1:08:48Sean Fennessey?

  To therapy?

• 1:08:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What did he teach at Bunker Hill?

• 1:08:52Sean Fennessey?

  He was teaching therapy. He was teaching psychology. But he was best friends with Gerald Lambeau and they were competing for a Fields Medal?

• 1:08:59Bill Simmons?

  Sean, it's a great case. He made me reconsider him.

• 1:09:00Speaker 06

  I gotta tell ya, if he had a math background, he didn't wanna talk about it with me.

• 1:09:04Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:09:05Speaker 06

  Like, he's sitting there with one of, like, apparently the three best mathematicians on the planet. And he was like, "My wife farts a lot."

• 1:09:20Bill Simmons?

  Butch's Girlfriend Award, weak link of the film. I already talked about giving up the game six ticket and my issues. What do you have, C.R.?

• 1:09:25Chris Ryan?

  I got this. It's Tom, the graduate assistant.

• 1:09:31Chris Ryan?

  Fucking... He gives absolutely nothing in this movie, like-

• 1:09:35Bill Simmons?

  Nothing.

• 1:09:36Chris Ryan?

  No emotion. Like, there's a really good plot line here where he could get really jealous of Will and he's just like, a complete Hannibal Lecter the entire time. I know he's an actual mathematician and was like, there for Verisimo too, but Jesus Christ, he's just like, so straight-faced the entire time.

• 1:09:54Bill Simmons?

  Pretty good one. What do you got, Ryan?

• 1:09:57Speaker 06

  So you're talking about the actual character or a question?

• 1:10:02Bill Simmons?

  Weak link, whatever you want it to be.

• 1:10:04Speaker 06

  That car doesn't make it past Springfield.

• 1:10:07Chris Ryan?

  I got this later. Absolutely not.

• 1:10:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Sean Fennessey?

  What was Will's plan here?

• 1:10:12Speaker 06

  Now, Chucky's picking him up later that night.

• 1:10:17Speaker 06

  They get into a fight in Springfield. They get their asses handed to them.

• 1:10:20Bill Simmons?

  He's in the breakdown lane. Yeah. He's right before Sturbridge.

• 1:10:24Speaker 06

  Right. Then the hour's another movie where they go back with a bigger crew.

• 1:10:27Bill Simmons?

  It's like, right after the I-90 exit, but before Sturbridge.

• 1:10:31Chris Ryan?

  This was actually my Z-Want Neo Award for what happens the next day is, is that the car breaks down somewhere in the Midwest. Will goes to a bar while the transmission's getting fixed, gets in a fight, gets regarding Henry. Becomes dumb, forgets everybody else in his life, and is destined to work as a janitor in a community college.

• 1:10:52Bill Simmons?

  Amazing regarding Will Hunting.

• 1:10:54Chris Ryan?

  And he doesn't have Skylar's number, so nobody knows, you know?

• 1:10:57Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's great. It's a great point about the car, because, you know, they patched some parts together so it could get him from South Peter, Cambridge.

• 1:11:05Speaker 06

  Another part, why are those three guys chipping in to buy a car for the only guy that's about to make eighty grand a year?

• 1:11:12Bill Simmons?

  It's a great point.

• 1:11:13Speaker 06

  Like, those guys would be like, fuck him, like, I'm not.

• 1:11:16Bill Simmons?

  I think Cole Hauser was like, wait a second, he's driving that car across country? I put a lawnmower engine in it.

• 1:11:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, right, they thought he was just going to Cambridge.

• 1:11:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What do you, you have a weak link, Sean?

• 1:11:27Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think it would have been more fun if Marky, Ricky, Danny, Terry, Mikey, Davy, Timmy, Tommy, Joey, Robbie, Johnny, and Brian actually existed.

• 1:11:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we had a scene with them. Alright. What's age the worst? Uh, Harvey Weinstein being the hero of the movie? Tough one. Awkward. See, you could feel this, even the little silence, right there.

• 1:11:47Sean Fennessey?

  There's, there's one other one that is, you know, related, which is that Mel Gibson was going to direct this movie until he ultimately agreed not to. So the two heroes of this movie getting made are Mel Gibson and Harvey Weinstein.

• 1:12:05Bill Simmons?

  We lost the crowd, they're done.

• 1:12:08Sean Fennessey?

  I'm sorry, these are facts.

• 1:12:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Speaker 06

  I feel like Mel's had a slightly better re-entry.

• 1:12:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, absolutely. Uh, you and Chris should debate that.

• 1:12:23Bill Simmons?

  Damon's hair with the frosted tips. A nineteen ninety-seven made sense, or it just looks horrible now?

• 1:12:30Chris Ryan?

  You'd have to tell us, man, I didn't see a lot of that in Boston.

• 1:12:32Bill Simmons?

  Don't remember that look.

• 1:12:34Speaker 06

  Right, in sync.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't remember that look that much.

• 1:12:36Speaker 06

  Backstreet Boys.

• 1:12:38Bill Simmons?

  But that feels early for Backstreet Boys, though.

• 1:12:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that the guys from Southie were really modeling their hair off Backstreet Boys at the time?

• 1:12:45Bill Simmons?

  Damon said, even in oral history, he said, maybe I would have done that one differently, the hair.

• 1:12:50Speaker 06

  Herb Street had frosted tips.

• 1:12:52Bill Simmons?

  What else do you have for the what's age the worst, Sean?

• 1:12:54Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Jerry Lambo not having heard of Ted Kaczynski in nineteen ninety-six after he had been arrested and was like one of the most famous criminals in the country.

• 1:13:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's tough.

• 1:13:06Chris Ryan?

  Will attacking the drywall over Skylar's head, probably, probably want to dial that down.

• 1:13:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:11Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, the last one was...

• 1:13:16Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, pre-Jason Bourne fighting, from Matt Damon.

• 1:13:19Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I like what you did there.

• 1:13:21Chris Ryan?

  I think he took it up a notch, but like, the slow-mo, like, is not, is not it.

• 1:13:27Speaker 06

  Little badass over here.

• 1:13:32Bill Simmons?

  What do you got for What's Age the Worst?

• 1:13:33Speaker 06

  Probably math is erotic, again.

• 1:13:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Speaker 06

  Also, probably the 10-plus years of any conversation with my buddies, if there was a dramatic pause, and then they would look at you, and they would go,

• 1:13:52Bill Simmons?

  It's not your fault.

• 1:13:53Speaker 06

  It's not your fault.

• 1:13:55Speaker 06

  That got old, after a little while.

• 1:13:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a What's Age the Best and the Age the Worst for this movie, the "It's not your fault" joke was one of the better pull-it-out-of-a-movie, but certain real-life jokes.

• 1:14:06Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't even bring that up when I was destroying Dr. Sean Maguire's resume, but I mean, that's your, that's your final boss move? It's not your fault? Like, you're my father telling you that when you're nine years old. What are we, what are we doing?

• 1:14:18Speaker 06

  What would you have done?

• 1:14:19Sean Fennessey?

  It worked, it's a movie, dork! Name-calling.

• 1:14:25Bill Simmons?

  Uh, it's Sean vs. Sean violence.

• 1:14:29Bill Simmons?

  Going to Kelly's for Takeout, just 'cause Kelly doesn't exist, and Kelly's doesn't exist anymore. Uh, we got a Gerald Lambo hitting on college students in multiple scenes, and then calls Minnie Driver's character, and she's like, "Is this Professor Lambo?" Hangs up on him.

• 1:14:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:14:45Bill Simmons?

  So, they made him super creepy as a way to like, "Oh, we gotta give him some color and some depth, let's make him a really horny, early 50s guy."

• 1:14:54Speaker 06

  I'm glad there wasn't any, like, reveal on where that was going, but it is funny that they just kept throwing it in. So she answers and says, "Is this Lambo again?"

• 1:15:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Speaker 06

  And then hangs up and says, "Freak."

• 1:15:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 06

  Although, the day scarf, all the time?

• 1:15:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:08Speaker 06

  Shucks out.

• 1:15:14Bill Simmons?

  See, our smoking indoors at bars. I don't know if it's a what's aged the worst, it's a what...

• 1:15:18Chris Ryan?

  It's what's aged the most fondly for me, yeah.

• 1:15:23Bill Simmons?

  Was there a better title for this movie?

• 1:15:26Chris Ryan?

  I don't think so. Good Will Hunted is really creeping into my brain, though.

• 1:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  Wicked Smart?

• 1:15:34Bill Simmons?

  Wicked Sm-?

• 1:15:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's a double entendre.

• 1:15:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, I was thinking The Janitor. If we go like The Accountant.

• 1:15:39Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:40Sean Fennessey?

  Just starring Jason Statham.

• 1:15:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The Janitor.

• 1:15:43Speaker 06

  Has to be a little slower.

• 1:15:46Bill Simmons?

  All right, the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest Take Award. Named after the time CR thought Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford.

• 1:15:57Chris Ryan?

  We still have a lot of years left to go to see whether they think that out.

• 1:16:00Bill Simmons?

  You're not done yet.

• 1:16:01Chris Ryan?

  You know? I have, Will is actually the guy who he is making fun of at the Harvard Bar. Because when he goes into Robin Williams's office and starts kicking all the Howard Zin shit to him, he is talking to a guy who actually went to Vietnam and has had all the experiences, but he's just regurgitating what he read in Chomsky, which is exactly what Clark is doing in that bar. So, Will, no better than Clark.

• 1:16:25Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 1:16:29Bill Simmons?

  Landed the point on that. What do you got, Sean?

• 1:16:34Sean Fennessey?

  Is it possible that the Midnight Run-esque NSA thriller that they wanted this movie to be could have actually been better than the real Good Will Hunting that we got?

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  You know, I thought about that.

• 1:16:43Sean Fennessey?

  Like, it's not as possible.

• 1:16:44Bill Simmons?

  I still want to see it. Yeah, I would have wanted to see the movie.

• 1:16:47Sean Fennessey?

  Damon did star in The Bourne Identity, and it was awesome. Like, he could do it. No?

• 1:16:53Bill Simmons?

  No, they described it as like Midnight Run crossed with like a spy movie. And it's like, that sounds awesome. I would have seen that in the theater. What do you got, what do you got, Russell?

• 1:17:03Speaker 06

  Uh, there's no way it works when he gets to LA, because he's not gonna fit in in LA. He's gonna hit everybody. His smart powers, nobody's gonna give a shit about. He doesn't even use them for good.

• 1:17:12Chris Ryan?

  How do you know all this?

• 1:17:25Speaker 06

  I can't really follow that up now.

• 1:17:30Speaker 06

  Ninety-seven, that guy?

• 1:17:33Bill Simmons?

  Mine's not even that hot, but I just think this is the best Boston accent ever by Damon in a movie. Like, by a star.

• 1:17:41Bill Simmons?

  Wahlberg's got close. Is there anybody else where you're just like, wow? I just think everything Damon does is the right level of anger to it.

• 1:17:50Speaker 06

  Blake Lively, I do appreciate somebody yelling that.

• 1:17:52Speaker 06

  I think Alec Baldwin, the Departed, The Driving Range is... I mean, it's not the volume, but the wind shares per forty-eight are...

• 1:18:03Bill Simmons?

  World needs plenty of bartenders!

• 1:18:06Bill Simmons?

  I know Gibson thing. So Gibson, so casting what-ifs, we did most of them, but, uh... So Gibson develops it for a few months, and he's also working on some other stuff. And then Matt goes to him and says, "Look, man, we're getting too old. If this keeps going, and we can't play these parts, is there any chance you'd let it go and give back to us?" And Gibson said, "Yeah, I'll do that." And then he probably drove to Moon Shadows and said something offensive to a cop on the way home, but, um, but that was a great moment for him. And then, uh, Kevin Smith declined, and then Ben Stiller also declined. The Ben Stiller Good Will Hunting movie, that kind of broke my brain. Kevin Smith was basically like, "I'm not good enough to make this," right? Right. Best that guy. Yeah, he was like, "I'm not a visually gifted up guy."

• 1:18:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Kevin Smith's like, "I would ruin your movie. Don't have me do it." Yeah, he said, "I wouldn't dare direct this movie."

• 1:18:55Speaker 06

  Honestly, I mean, is he wrong?

• 1:18:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:18:59Speaker 06

  But then he got him in Dogma, which is very similar.

• 1:19:03Bill Simmons?

  That's true. Best that guy word, it has to be the, uh, ponytail guy, Scott Williams, who ends up in Oz as the Geico guy's brother. It's his real brother. Ryan O'Reilly's brother. Ryan and Cyril. Yeah. Yeah, Killian Dhuo. Yeah, yeah. Just an all-time that guy. Two of the great Irishmen of all time.

• 1:19:45Speaker 09

  Stop it. This is about vacation inflation and how Priceline negotiates amazing deals on hotels, flights, and rental cars.

• 1:19:54Speaker 09

  Yeah, but I didn't mention that you can save up to 60% off hotels in the Priceline app.

• 1:20:00Speaker 09

  Fine. No one deals more deals than... Please stop. Touche.

• 1:20:07Speaker 09

  Priceline.

• 1:20:07Bill Simmons?

  Dion Waiters a word. I'll give you the following possibilities. Carmine? Herve? You might remember him from juvie.

• 1:20:15Sean Fennessey?

  It's... It's Army Kareem.

• 1:20:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The boss, the girl who made fun of Chuck E.'s Tootsie Roll? George Plimpton? Or the one I think is the winner. I think Cole Hauser is eligible because he doesn't have a lot of lines. I think Cole Hauser...

• 1:20:29Sean Fennessey?

  Can I nominate one more person?

• 1:20:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 1:20:31Sean Fennessey?

  Jimmy Flynn? Yes. The judge. You hit a cough! You're going to jail. He's just doing JFK also as a judge.

• 1:20:44Bill Simmons?

  What do you got for so long?

• 1:20:45Speaker 06

  You know the Jimmy Flynn stuff, right?

• 1:20:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Speaker 06

  So he was like a real dude.

• 1:20:48Bill Simmons?

  I'm fine with Jimmy Flynn doing that.

• 1:20:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't know. I feel like Cole knew he was dealing with three local guys and he deserves it because he didn't try to keep up with him. Like, he just knew and he's like, "And then I'll make the most out of these things." And then he was named Sexiest Man Alive 25 years later.

• 1:21:09Bill Simmons?

  Is that true?

• 1:21:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. Because I interviewed him and I was like, "Do you regret getting married so soon?"

• 1:21:17Sean Fennessey?

  He's just gonna hung on for two days.

• 1:21:19Speaker 06

  Yeah. You just rode this out until you were ripped. Who knows? But he didn't want to answer that.

• 1:21:28Speaker 06

  Did you look at Rip? Did you give the second Fast and Furious a chance? Because you were like, "All right, cool."

• 1:21:34Bill Simmons?

  Who are you talking to?

• 1:21:37Bill Simmons?

  Of course, I saw it in the theater.

• 1:21:39Speaker 06

  Right, but was there an extra moment of like? Awesome.

• 1:21:42Bill Simmons?

  I never gave up on Cole Hauser. Yeah, I just never did.

• 1:21:45Speaker 06

  Never?

• 1:21:45Bill Simmons?

  I always liked him. Yeah, I always liked him. I always, I always would seem like, oh, Cole Hauser. And then Yellowstone happens and that's that. Recasting couch director of City. I'd like to combine this with what role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? And volunteer him for Harvard ponytail guy? Playing him as Freddy from Talented Mr. Ripley?

• 1:22:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:06Bill Simmons?

  I just think the movie's better.

• 1:22:07Chris Ryan?

  Or his character from Sentimental Woman?

• 1:22:09Bill Simmons?

  Whatever.

• 1:22:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  You guys down with that?

• 1:22:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm down with that, yeah.

• 1:22:14Bill Simmons?

  Did this movie have a porn parody? What do you guys think? Oh, it did?

• 1:22:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Bill Simmons?

  And it was called Good Will Humping?

• 1:22:23Sean Fennessey?

  Can I suggest a better title?

• 1:22:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, that was the title. Good Will?

• 1:22:27Sean Fennessey?

  Good MILF Hunting.

• 1:22:29Bill Simmons?

  Good MILF Hunting? Oh, interesting.

• 1:22:32Chris Ryan?

  I looked up Good Will Humping.

• 1:22:33Speaker 06

  That's almost too creative for porn, though.

• 1:22:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I looked up Good Will Humping on my Spotify computer today, so it's just stuff like that.

• 1:22:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Jesus, alright. I'll, I'll, I'll work it out later with them. Half faster note research. Will's address, you can briefly see when, uh, when they go to see the, uh, the other custodians. It was 357 Q Street, 3D and Southie. There you go.

• 1:23:00Bill Simmons?

  Damon started writing this movie in a playwriting class in Harvard. It was a 40-page script, and then eventually Affleck developed it with him. And, uh, and the rest is history. Cambridge scenes, bow and arrow, the tasty and Aubameyang. Those are the three. And a lot of this was sadly filmed in Toronto, the interior shots. Mini driver's character Skylar?

• 1:23:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:23:24Bill Simmons?

  Named after Damon's college girlfriend, who left Damon for Lars Ulrich.

• 1:23:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:23:32Bill Simmons?

  Metallica drummer. He's not as old as Lars or Rick. Before filming began.

• 1:23:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Bill Simmons?

  That's tough trade for her. Borderline Luka Doncic level type of trade. She could have bought in on Damon going up. Instead, ends up with the drummer from Metallica, one of the most dysfunctional bands of the late 90s.

• 1:23:50Chris Ryan?

  I did spend quite a lot of time on metal websites today from 2000, like 1998 to 2000, trying to track that relationship. It was rocky. Yeah.

• 1:24:00Speaker 06

  Imagine hitting on her post Lars and Matt Damon. Like just being a regular guy. Like, "Who does your auto insurance?"

• 1:24:13Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain. CR, you want to tell the audience what Apex Mountain is?

• 1:24:17Chris Ryan?

  Uh, sure. It is the best something has ever been in a movie. Let's say that. Or in real life.

• 1:24:22Bill Simmons?

  That's not what it is. 375 movies. It's when something had the most juice in its career it ever would have had.

• 1:24:30Chris Ryan?

  Why don't we call it Juice Mountain?

• 1:24:33Speaker 06

  That's disgusting.

• 1:24:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that sounds terrible. So Damon and Affleck know. Would you go Redline Trolleys? Has it ever been used better in a movie?

• 1:24:42Speaker 06

  Buckle Hill's my answer for like four of the categories.

• 1:24:43Bill Simmons?

  Buckle Hill?

• 1:24:46Speaker 06

  It's also like a haunting image, so.

• 1:24:49Bill Simmons?

  Would you go with Gus for this one?

• 1:24:50Speaker 06

  I have Gus Vanzan at Apex Mountain.

• 1:24:52Bill Simmons?

  L Street Tavern?

• 1:24:53Speaker 06

  Math?

• 1:24:56Bill Simmons?

  Math?

• 1:24:57Speaker 06

  This or Pi?

• 1:25:00Chris Ryan?

  Or Beautiful Minds.

• 1:25:00Bill Simmons?

  Beautiful Minds?

• 1:25:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 06

  Well, like. Is that math or is that yarn? For the history of math? Like not the theory of relativity?

• 1:25:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, all math.

• 1:25:10Speaker 06

  No, we're not like including real formulas. I'm just talking about. Which are ironic as we know.

• 1:25:15Bill Simmons?

  Math in a movie?

• 1:25:16Speaker 06

  Yeah. I don't know. I feel like we haven't really done it. He's apparently the smartest math person in the world.

• 1:25:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we have this coming up. They're picking nits.

• 1:25:25Speaker 06

  All right.

• 1:25:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we have some nits.

• 1:25:28Speaker 06

  No one had found out prior to this?

• 1:25:30Bill Simmons?

  No. No special. He never advanced in a class, nothing. Nobody noticed. Mini Driver?

• 1:25:40Speaker 06

  I think so.

• 1:25:40Bill Simmons?

  Yes, Oscar nominated.

• 1:25:42Speaker 06

  Uh, let me just offer up gross point blank.

• 1:25:45Chris Ryan?

  I mean, she's dynamite.

• 1:25:46Speaker 06

  As a part of the conversation, I'm not. She's amazing, but not as much Juice Mountain. By the way. Again, maybe apex for accents, not just because the Boston part of it, but in this one we get, she's from London, right?

• 1:26:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:02Speaker 06

  She, again, we've lost, I mean, I don't want to get into immigration right now, but we've, we've lost so many

• 1:26:11Speaker 06

  roles to the English.

• 1:26:13Bill Simmons?

  Right, it's true.

• 1:26:14Speaker 06

  I thought we sorted out in the backyard over here a couple hundred years ago.

• 1:26:19Speaker 06

  But

• 1:26:21Bill Simmons?

  Right over there.

• 1:26:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:24Speaker 06

  She, uh, she's from London, so I didn't know that at first. I was like, God, she's nailing that. Makes sense. But then she gives us a little Irish, right?

• 1:26:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:33Speaker 06

  She gives us a little Russian in a James Bond deal.

• 1:26:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:36Speaker 06

  And then, even in gross point blank, she throws a few Jamaican phrases at you. So, you know, five tool.

• 1:26:46Bill Simmons?

  Her, her Juice Mountain's right around here. Juice Mountain sounds like it would be opening on Newbury Street. Don't make fun of me because I am just trying to explain it. Juice. Yeah. Like the most Juice doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Uh, Juice Mountain closed.

• 1:26:57Sean Fennessey?

  Please, please stop saying Juice Mountain, please.

• 1:27:00Bill Simmons?

  Um, Stellan Skarsgård?

• 1:27:03Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  He's made a lot of stuff. Andor, yes.

• 1:27:07Sean Fennessey?

  What about Lars von Trier's breaking the waves?

• 1:27:13Speaker 06

  Ronan.

• 1:27:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Ronan.

• 1:27:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Dune Part Two?

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  Dune Part Two is great. Hey, what would you say for Miramax for apex mountain? It's probably next year's Shakespeare.

• 1:27:22Sean Fennessey?

  We don't, let's not, I don't.

• 1:27:24Bill Simmons?

  No, for, for when they had the most power in the movie.

• 1:27:26Sean Fennessey?

  They won Shakespeare in Love, they won Best Picture.

• 1:27:28Bill Simmons?

  Don't get all pissy with me.

• 1:27:29Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I just, we got, we've already done a lot of Harvey, I feel like, on this pod.

• 1:27:33Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying that Shakespeare in Love's probably the most juice they have.

• 1:27:36Sean Fennessey?

  They beat Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture.

• 1:27:38Bill Simmons?

  How about Howard Zinn?

• 1:27:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't, uh, isn't Sheldon's character in Lady Bird, reading A People's History of the United States, like on a car?

• 1:27:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:27:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, which I think would be maybe higher.

• 1:27:54Bill Simmons?

  Cheap tracksuits?

• 1:27:56Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:27:57Bill Simmons?

  Pretty good. Okay.

• 1:27:59Sean Fennessey?

  Sopranos.

• 1:28:00Bill Simmons?

  Um,

• 1:28:02Bill Simmons?

  The Masked Pike?

• 1:28:05Bill Simmons?

  We get the Masked Pike, the entire end credits with Elliot Smith for like four minutes. Now, it's the Tulane part, but...

• 1:28:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, but what, what was that shot? Like, was that the hardest shot in the entire movie? And then somebody was like, "Yeah, we're gonna do it in the part where everybody leaves."

• 1:28:20Bill Simmons?

  Right. Yeah, was it like a helicopter flying low?

• 1:28:23Speaker 06

  I don't, yeah.

• 1:28:24Chris Ryan?

  It was probably a truck driving behind him, right? And then like...

• 1:28:26Speaker 06

  Maybe, but I mean, if you think about the budget for this film and how simple most of it was to shoot, I had to think somebody would be like, "Why are we actually making the most difficult shot of the entire movie on something that no one is gonna watch?"

• 1:28:39Bill Simmons?

  My last question is for the audience. Would you go Boston Common, Apex Mountain for a movie? Or would you go... I call it the Common. I call it the Common.

• 1:28:50Speaker 06

  Did somebody just try to correct you?

• 1:28:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, they know what I mean. But would you say the Common? I'm sorry, guys, that's the end of the show. Thanks for coming out. Thank you, Philadelphia!

• 1:29:02Bill Simmons?

  But would you say, or would you go something else?

• 1:29:05Speaker 06

  Uh, I think the TV show Boston Common is Apex Boston Common, which I still can't believe wasn't picked up.

• 1:29:14Bill Simmons?

  Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:29:17Chris Ryan?

  Cruise.

• 1:29:18Sean Fennessey?

  Cruise.

• 1:29:19Chris Ryan?

  I think Hanks would've done a good McGuire, but I think young Cruise would be a perfect... Cruise, I'm sure Cruise was kicking himself. He's like, "I've never thought to be a janitor who's also a genius."

• 1:29:35Speaker 06

  Where do I run? Am I fast?

• 1:29:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they would've put a... He would've run home from Cambridge.

• 1:29:43Speaker 06

  You know what? Cause I think it's really funny they went with a choice where Damon's still putting his clothes on on the green in Harvard.

• 1:29:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:52Speaker 06

  Like, his shirt is off. And he couldn't put his fucking boots on. He was in such a hurry, like, I get to walk ashamed. It's like, dude, lengthen him up first.

• 1:29:59Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 1:29:59Speaker 06

  And I know you look pretty good with your shirt on.

• 1:30:01Bill Simmons?

  It's a violation.

• 1:30:02Speaker 06

  Um, Cruise would've been running.

• 1:30:04Bill Simmons?

  I think Hank, I think young Hanks could've pulled off Chucky, potentially. But I think it's Cruise. Uh, all right, the Sean Fantasy Award for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. What do you got, Sean?

• 1:30:18Sean Fennessey?

  I have two runners up. The first one is the job interview that Will sends Chucky on is for a company called Holden and McNeil, which is the name of the character that Ben Affleck plays, Holden McNeil, in Chasing Amy, which was released in the same year.

• 1:30:33Bill Simmons?

  I got some applause.

• 1:30:35Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 1:30:36Bill Simmons?

  The crowd's back on shots, yeah.

• 1:30:38Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you. The "How do you like them apples?" line is actually a very subtle homage to the phrase that Jake Giddy says in Chinatown when he says that after a joke.

• 1:30:49Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:30:49Sean Fennessey?

  And then the best one is when Morgan says, "I swallowed a bug," in the Harvard bar scene. It's a reference to something that happens in Hearts of Darkness, the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, where during a scene Francis Ford Coppola is shooting Marlon Brando and he has to stop because he swallows a bug while he's performing and says to Francis Ford Coppola, "I swallowed a bug."

• 1:31:16Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:31:18Bill Simmons?

  And we should have mentioned, apparently Affleck ad-libbed like half of his lines in this movie. Like, they would just write, in the script, it would be like, Morgan comes downstairs, and then he would come down and just have a baseball glove and make it seem like he was just jerking off in the baseball glove.

• 1:31:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Bill Simmons?

  They would never have any idea what he was doing.

• 1:31:37Speaker 06

  Seeing that scene again, I was like, does that move the story?

• 1:31:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Speaker 06

  At all?

• 1:31:43Chris Ryan?

  If you're Cole Hauser, are you like, so this guy just gets like all these lines? Like...

• 1:31:49Speaker 06

  I have a nerd one for you.

• 1:31:51Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:51Speaker 06

  The dedication of the movie at the end, like, there's no way anyone, like, it's such a young guy thing to do, like, this goes out to Ginsberg and Burroughs.

• 1:32:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's like the last thing at the end of the...

• 1:32:03Speaker 06

  It's the last thing, a dedication to those guys. Yeah. And I wouldn't have noticed it because today I was like, how long does this shot go again? And then I saw that dedication, and I was like, that's something we're, like, we're gonna show everybody.

• 1:32:16Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're gonna pick some nits. So, nobody else in this MIT class could solve the math problem.

• 1:32:23Speaker 06

  It was very hard.

• 1:32:24Chris Ryan?

  You're not asking a bunch of math whizzes up here, so, yeah.

• 1:32:28Bill Simmons?

  So Lambo's like, "I'm gonna create this problem, I'm gonna put it on chalkboard and make you guys all feel like shit, and then try to fuck you later." That's his plan as a math teacher.

• 1:32:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's a great point.

• 1:32:37Bill Simmons?

  Like, that's it? This is the guy inspiring me at MIT?

• 1:32:45Bill Simmons?

  The second meeting-

• 1:32:46Speaker 06

  Do you think anybody's checked the actual math?

• 1:32:49Sean Fennessey?

  There, yes, you can look-

• 1:32:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, there's some deep nerd stuff-

• 1:32:53Chris Ryan?

  There's interesting Reddit threads that are like, "It's not that hard," or like-

• 1:32:56Speaker 06

  I love that.

• 1:32:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. I could do this easily.

• 1:33:00Speaker 06

  Can we use that one?

• 1:33:02Bill Simmons?

  Second meeting, they go, he's like, instead of the Will and Sean, he's like, "Let's go, let's go for a walk." And then they go from Bunker Hill Community College all the way to the Common. That's like a 10-minute cab ride if there's traffic, maybe like 15? So how did they get there? What did they talk about on the way? I just have a lot of questions. I know they're doing movie devices with that, but it's a lot of silence on the way there. What do you have, CR?

• 1:33:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, picking it's, I, why is Will pitching at the batting cages? And if this is Boston, aren't there a bunch of guys like, "Get the fuck out of the way, I'm trying to hit!" Like, "What are you doing over there?" You know, like, uh...

• 1:33:44Chris Ryan?

  I also feel kind of in the same vein-

• 1:33:46Speaker 06

  I've never seen anyone allowed to actually just start pitching to his buddy.

• 1:33:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:50Chris Ryan?

  And they're not even like working on Chucky's swing, they're like doing all this jerking around like-

• 1:33:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, but see, I think they, I think once we saw Affleck shoot and on the way back, it was like, "Uh-oh." That's why they had Damon throwing.

• 1:34:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Speaker 06

  And then they never let Affleck take a cut.

• 1:34:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Uh, the only other one I had was when Skylar is talking about like, "I'm a basketball player, I should be in the NBA." I feel like a guy with Will's temper would have been like, "You don't know what MLK has to do to get those guys ready every night." Antoine Walker and Dana Barrows.

• 1:34:23Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of personalities in that locker room, you couldn't do that.

• 1:34:29Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, Sean?

• 1:34:31Sean Fennessey?

  By 1997, wouldn't Will Hunting just be a hacker? And wouldn't he be making millions of dollars hacking if he's the smartest guy in the world?

• 1:34:37Bill Simmons?

  Cause it's like year three of when the modern internet's in shape-

• 1:34:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we got MS-DOS-

• 1:34:42Bill Simmons?

  Vote versus like being a spy guy?

• 1:34:45Sean Fennessey?

  Like, he's fucking broke.

• 1:34:47Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:34:47Sean Fennessey?

  He's living in that building, the first shot of the movie's like that old lady in the rocking chair, you know?

• 1:34:51Bill Simmons?

  It's a good point.

• 1:34:52Sean Fennessey?

  You don't want to live there.

• 1:34:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, when they start writing the script, the internet's not even the internet yet, so maybe they didn't, they could have zagged.

• 1:34:57Sean Fennessey?

  He could have gone to the library, you know, gotten on one of those computers.

• 1:35:00Bill Simmons?

  What do you got, Russell?

• 1:35:01Speaker 06

  Would Casey or Cole Hauser call ICE on Minnie?

• 1:35:08Speaker 06

  Like dude, she's fucking weird. Like where she talks funny.

• 1:35:16Bill Simmons?

  Um.

• 1:35:18Speaker 06

  Maybe if they did it now.

• 1:35:22Bill Simmons?

  Small nitpick.

• 1:35:25Bill Simmons?

  Cole Hauser's character is named Bill. Could we have done better? So could we have gone with like a Murph?

• 1:35:32Speaker 06

  Murph is perfect.

• 1:35:33Bill Simmons?

  Like a Fitzy?

• 1:35:34Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:35:35Bill Simmons?

  Patrick?

• 1:35:36Chris Ryan?

  His last name's McBride, right? Like as terms of like, that's what it's credited as.

• 1:35:40Bill Simmons?

  Would you call him Billy?

• 1:35:41Sean Fennessey?

  Would you call him Mickey then?

• 1:35:42Bill Simmons?

  Uh, yeah, something. Uh, here's my big one. So, the end of the movie when Affuck has this big scene and Will Hunting's not there. The guys are going to pick him up to drive him to work. They just got, gave him a fucking car. Why are they picking him up? He has a car.

• 1:35:57Speaker 06

  There's also another car there too, which begs the other question, was Will Hunting a hoarder?

• 1:36:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, also he has a car and they pull up and then Chuckie's amazed that he's not there. His car's not there.

• 1:36:11Bill Simmons?

  You just gave him the car.

• 1:36:12Speaker 06

  That's really good.

• 1:36:15Sean Fennessey?

  This is, this is why you're you.

• 1:36:16Bill Simmons?

  Is there? Any other nitpicks?

• 1:36:19Speaker 06

  Cause I wonder when they wrote the script, they're like, okay, the end is, we're building to the end where he chases the girl he drives to California, right?

• 1:36:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Speaker 06

  And it's like, well, he doesn't have a car, you know, so maybe that was like a last minute thing. Like, hey, we have to have some moment.

• 1:36:31Bill Simmons?

  Oh, add it in there.

• 1:36:33Speaker 06

  But you're right, that doesn't make sense. Can I raise one more?

• 1:36:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:37Sean Fennessey?

  Why doesn't Will just call Skylar and be like, hey babe, like I really want to come out to California, but I got this job. I'm making eighty-four thousand dollars a year working for McNeil. Let me just like get one paycheck and I'll fly out and meet you. Like, why does he have to drive? Like just work for two weeks and then go see her.

• 1:36:54Bill Simmons?

  He really likes the car.

• 1:36:56Chris Ryan?

  But as we know, he's gonna get picked up by Chuckie when it breaks down.

• 1:36:59Speaker 06

  I think other than the fighting, morally, they're pretty good. Cause Chuckie should be dealing drugs.

• 1:37:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:04Speaker 06

  You mentioned the hacking part of it, so maybe because he's like, I at least gotta give him my two weeks.

• 1:37:11Chris Ryan?

  Will's like six weeks away from starting a serious Holden poker obsession anyways.

• 1:37:16Sean Fennessey?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:37:17Bill Simmons?

  Uh, sequel, prequel, Prestige TV, All Black Cast are Untouchable. So.

• 1:37:23Sean Fennessey?

  Applesauce bitch.

• 1:37:24Bill Simmons?

  All Black Cast would be interesting. Um, the, uh, the before, what was the last Before Sunrise movie called?

• 1:37:31Chris Ryan?

  Before Midnight.

• 1:37:33Bill Simmons?

  Thirty years later, would you be interested in any of these characters catching up with Will Hunting in his mid-fifties?

• 1:37:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

• 1:37:41Bill Simmons?

  So what's he doing?

• 1:37:43Chris Ryan?

  Uh, well, I mean, he's, in my version, he's still a janitor in the Midwest and they're all looking for him.

• 1:37:49Sean Fennessey?

  Based on what we saw from him inside that bounce castle, I feel like Bill is in UFC right now. Choking guys out.

• 1:37:58Bill Simmons?

  Would you want to catch up with these guys in 2025?

• 1:38:01Speaker 06

  I know what's already happened to the other three, so that's not a mystery. But I just cannot express how much Will is gonna hate going out.

• 1:38:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:13Speaker 06

  In Santa Monica.

• 1:38:15Bill Simmons?

  Right, he's at Barney's Beanery.

• 1:38:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's just, he's gonna be like, dude, what? You know, it's just not.

• 1:38:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, tries that Sonny McLean's once, hates it.

• 1:38:24Sean Fennessey?

  Well, what do you think of Manhattan Beach, though?

• 1:38:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh, um, he'd probably like it.

• 1:38:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think he'd, I think he'd be alright there.

• 1:38:30Bill Simmons?

  He'd find his people, hang out with some kings.

• 1:38:33Speaker 06

  I mean, granted, he's not gonna have the down payment, so.

• 1:38:39Speaker 06

  Maybe he can get some sort of government loan, lower rate.

• 1:38:42Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Roma, Harley Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs? Or Wilfred Brimley in The Firm? What do you have, CR?

• 1:38:57Chris Ryan?

  I do like the idea of as, uh, Will and Skylar are breaking up and Chris Collinsworth's just like, oh, Mike! He's only breaking up with Skylar because of the generational trauma. It's led to self-loathing. John Chulo always told me, you gotta love yourself before you love somebody else. And then as Skylar's crying, the Fox NFL Injury Jazz plays.

• 1:39:22Chris Ryan?

  Or, we could do... "Goddamn, Will!" "How you know I was working with super brain?" "You out here solving intermediate graph theory with an adjacency matrix?" "And closing on Skylar?" "You better stop getting in fights with Carmon Skarpaglia in public, "or you're going away a long fucking time, big boy."

• 1:39:54Bill Simmons?

  You not following that, Sean?

• 1:39:56Sean Fennessey?

  Um, what if, what if Daniel Plainview is Sean McGuire?

• 1:40:01Bill Simmons?

  Was who?

• 1:40:01Sean Fennessey?

  Dr. Sean McGuire.

• 1:40:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:40:03Sean Fennessey?

  "So if I asked you about art, "you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. "Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. "Life's work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, "sexual orientations, the whole works, right?"

• 1:40:20Bill Simmons?

  Nice.

• 1:40:26Speaker 06

  I don't have one of those.

• 1:40:27Bill Simmons?

  Okay. I, I'm gonna bring you in, though, for mine.

• 1:40:31Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:40:32Bill Simmons?

  I did wanna mention Tony Romo, watching the ending going, "He's gonna say about her, girl, Jim! "He's gonna say about her!"

• 1:40:41Bill Simmons?

  Since we're in Boston, I think we have to add Felger and Maz to this.

• 1:40:49Bill Simmons?

  Do you wanna be Felger or Maz?

• 1:40:51Speaker 06

  No, I think you know what you wanna do, so I'll be Maz.

• 1:40:56Bill Simmons?

  I think Maz goes, "I don't know why we consider him a genius for solving one math problem, Mike."

• 1:41:03Speaker 06

  Wait, are you Maz?

• 1:41:04Bill Simmons?

  No, and then Felger goes, "You can jump..." Yeah, I'm, I guess I'm doing both.

• 1:41:09Speaker 06

  Alright.

• 1:41:09Bill Simmons?

  You wanna?

• 1:41:10Speaker 06

  Cause I was like, "Man, that's a high pitched Felger, you're gonna have to go even higher."

• 1:41:13Bill Simmons?

  Do you wanna?

• 1:41:14Speaker 06

  No, I really don't wanna do anything. Just watch.

• 1:41:18Bill Simmons?

  I think Felger says, "I mean, he got lucky, had a chalkboard in the hallway with nobody looking. "Can you do it every time, Tony? "We have no idea if Will Hunting can do that. "We don't know if he's an alpha dog. "He can't do it, Tony." Nah, Felger.

• 1:41:36Bill Simmons?

  I just feel like they would disparage his credentials in math somehow.

• 1:41:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, look, you know, hard markers in this town. So, I just, I still think there's, like, what is he capable of?

• 1:41:49Bill Simmons?

  Will Hunting?

• 1:41:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:41:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. We don't know. He hasn't won any playoff games.

• 1:41:57Bill Simmons?

  He didn't get the Eastern Conference Finals or the M-Finals.

• 1:41:59Speaker 06

  Are you saying this is regular season math?

• 1:42:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's regular season math only. CR, just one Oscar, who gets it?

• 1:42:07Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'm, I'm pretty fine with Robin Williams getting the Oscar.

• 1:42:10Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:42:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:11Bill Simmons?

  No Damon?

• 1:42:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, we're just doing one Oscar, so I'm good for Robin Williams.

• 1:42:15Bill Simmons?

  Alright, fantasy?

• 1:42:15Sean Fennessey?

  I said Damon.

• 1:42:18Speaker 06

  Elliot Smith?

• 1:42:19Chris Ryan?

  Great.

• 1:42:20Bill Simmons?

  Ah.

• 1:42:20Chris Ryan?

  Great shot.

• 1:42:21Bill Simmons?

  I got Damon. Probably an answerable questions. Russillo, Chucky or Jim, better Boston buddy sidekick? If you had to pick?

• 1:42:30Speaker 06

  Oh, no, Chucky. You can't, I mean, look, Jim's more fun.

• 1:42:34Chris Ryan?

  Jim's more fun.

• 1:42:35Speaker 06

  Jim, Jim's like...

• 1:42:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, right, bullshit. If you had to rent a house in the Cape, would you rent it with Chucky or Jim?

• 1:42:47Speaker 06

  Chucky.

• 1:42:48Bill Simmons?

  Okay, I agree.

• 1:42:51Bill Simmons?

  Um, CR, what happens if Affleck and Damon switch parts?

• 1:42:56Chris Ryan?

  I think it would be good, but it would be nowhere near what we get. I think Damon probably has access to like, a little bit more of that Golden Boy vulnerability, and Affleck is the perfect, like, I'm kinda happy-go-lucky, like, here for a good time guy.

• 1:43:12Bill Simmons?

  Sean?

• 1:43:14Sean Fennessey?

  Damon is surprisingly good at playing dumb. So, maybe he could have pulled that part off? I wouldn't have thought that, but then he made it.

• 1:43:22Chris Ryan?

  But can you see Affleck solving math problems on a chalkboard?

• 1:43:25Bill Simmons?

  He does it in The Accountant.

• 1:43:26Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:43:27Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he's basically...

• 1:43:28Chris Ryan?

  We've learned, yeah.

• 1:43:28Bill Simmons?

  He's a genius in that movie.

• 1:43:30Sean Fennessey?

  I can, I can see it.

• 1:43:30Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it's as good of a movie, but it's an interesting thought experience.

• 1:43:33Speaker 06

  Just feels weird the bigger guy's good at math.

• 1:43:38Bill Simmons?

  Fair. Any other answerables? We did a lot of them.

• 1:43:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no, I just, what happens if this movie's set after, set after oh four? And after the Red Sox win this series, like, or is everybody just taking their temperature down?

• 1:43:51Bill Simmons?

  Game five LCS, maybe?

• 1:43:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, because I think, I think there's like a nitpicking thing. If he turns 21 in this movie, it's 97, whatever. So that means he is born in 76 and he's freaking out about game six. But the thing is, is we know here, like, I was zero, or I was a couple of months old when that game happened, and I knew about that game. Like, I knew about that game in a way that I don't think people would understand, how you could be conscious of this game that happened before you were born. Because, you know, at the time, it was pretty much considered as the greatest game in the history of baseball. So I think there have been people that have given that whole part, like, it doesn't match up, the time doesn't match up, and it's like, well, no, you don't understand. Because if you don't grow up with that, you don't understand that every kid that grew up a Red Sox fan knew about that game, even if it happened years before he was born.

• 1:44:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's a weird one, because we lost the series.

• 1:44:42Bill Simmons?

  And yet it felt like we won because of the fist comb, but they lost the next game.

• 1:44:47Speaker 06

  I think I actually, when I was really little, I was like, it was, it blew my mind when I was seven. It was like, they, they lost that?

• 1:44:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:44:55Bill Simmons?

  Tough times. Uh, the Zouané Award would happen the next day. I have Chucky Marys, the girl who made fun of his tootsie roll. I think they end up together. I think Morgan gets banned from the Fleet Center for five years. For something happening in a preseason game against Toronto. And then, so, CR, I had Will spends three weeks in California, punches out a Lakers fan who made a Patino joke, drives back to Boston, car breaks down in Cleveland, never seen again.

• 1:45:26Chris Ryan?

  It's basically what I had, yeah.

• 1:45:27Bill Simmons?

  So we're basically great minds.

• 1:45:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:28Bill Simmons?

  Uh, what do you have for Zouané, or anything? What happens the next day?

• 1:45:32Speaker 06

  Well, no, I mean, I kind of already hit on it, that I, I think he ends up in Springfield, and Chucky comes to get him, and then, you know, Springfield, I think, is actually late 90s scarier than Southie would ever be.

• 1:45:43Speaker 06

  And those guys would overestimate their Southie upbringing.

• 1:45:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:46Speaker 06

  And you're like, well, we got this. It's like Springfield's a whole...

• 1:45:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they think it's like a 12 seed against a five or something. They don't realize.

• 1:45:52Speaker 06

  Like, I know you think you're gonna win.

• 1:45:54Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:45:56Bill Simmons?

  Sean, Zouané, or anything?

• 1:45:58Sean Fennessey?

  Skylar dumps him for Steve Jobs.

• 1:46:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I like it.

• 1:46:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Bill Simmons?

  Comes the first lady apple.

• 1:46:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:04Bill Simmons?

  What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie?

• 1:46:09Speaker 06

  Not the glove.

• 1:46:12Bill Simmons?

  It's a not the glove.

• 1:46:13Speaker 06

  Not, as you said, yeah.

• 1:46:15Bill Simmons?

  The painting would be interesting.

• 1:46:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I like Robin Williams' socks jacket is great.

• 1:46:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had that too. Coach Finstock Award, we're almost done. Best life lesson.

• 1:46:25Bill Simmons?

  It's not your fault.

• 1:46:27Speaker 06

  But sometimes it is.

• 1:46:30Sean Fennessey?

  This is my whole thing.

• 1:46:31Speaker 06

  I actually think there's a lot of people walking around thinking it isn't their fault.

• 1:46:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:35Sean Fennessey?

  Matt Damon picked a fight with Carmine. I mean, that was his fault.

• 1:46:38Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:46:40Sean Fennessey?

  He didn't have to pick that fight.

• 1:46:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's never run into him since he was five. Like, that was the day?

• 1:46:44Bill Simmons?

  I have, uh, you could be one of the smartest people alive and still not know a damn thing about life is the message of the movie. I think Bet on Yourself with Damon and Affleck is kind of the bigger lesson from the movie, right? These guys were like, they were like, "We're starring in this, we're making it, it has to be, we have to be in it," and they do it. And then, don't answer yes or no if somebody asks if you'd like apples, I think would be another life lesson. Just, just say, "I'm out."

• 1:47:10Chris Ryan?

  Eh, Granny Smith's, but not McIntosh or anything like that.

• 1:47:12Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for best double feature choice?

• 1:47:14Chris Ryan?

  I have Air, just to bookend it, and plus, after you get to the end of Good Will Hunting, I don't know if you want to get, like, super serious and watch Ordinary People or something, so, I, I have Air.

• 1:47:23Bill Simmons?

  Fantasy?

• 1:47:24Sean Fennessey?

  I picked The Martian, just for the Matt Damon being a genius canon.

• 1:47:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:30Bill Simmons?

  Russillo?

• 1:47:31Speaker 06

  Armageddon.

• 1:47:34Speaker 06

  To give Ben a little bit more chance to shine.

• 1:47:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:37Bill Simmons?

  I had The Town. I mean, it's, it's, then Affleck's the star, we're, we're in Boston, we get to be in Charlestown again. Who won the movie?

• 1:47:44Chris Ryan?

  I have Damon, even though he doesn't get the Oscar, but Damon is the star of the movie and the writer of the movie, so, Damon.

• 1:47:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's a rare case where it has to be two people, because Matt and Ben both win.

• 1:47:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we have a rule for this is the last category, who won the movie. We always say it can't be two people. I don't know how this can be not the two of them. I think it has to be, right? Especially like when you go watch the Oscars speech. Like this is like, they fucking did it. Took them five years to make the movie, they made it happen.

• 1:48:14Speaker 06

  They did it and they stayed.

• 1:48:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:16Speaker 06

  Cause you would have shorted them as a stock after that speech. You'd be like, okay, well, this isn't gonna work. And it works. And they've done, I mean, it's just the way people always think. And probably in a weird way, it's like, okay, cool, you got this thing, but now go away. Like, I don't want you to really have this work. They're, look, I don't know, they're not complete outsiders, cause they had roles and other stuff. So normally, if we were just talking about a character or whatever, Robin Williams nails every single scene. But I just can't imagine what that feeling would be like to be in your twenties, have this idea, pursue this thing. Everybody's telling you it's not gonna work. All the moments where you're like convinced it's never going to work. And then you're sitting there, holding an award for Best Original Screenplay, and then back it up with three decades of work. Um, I don't know how you split it up.

• 1:48:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Affleck was the youngest person ever to win the Screenwriting Oscar. I got that right, right, Sean?

• 1:49:03Sean Fennessey?

  You got that right.

• 1:49:03Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 1:49:06Bill Simmons?

  How many games are the Red Sox gonna win this year?

• 1:49:10Speaker 06

  Ninety-one.

• 1:49:14Chris Ryan?

  How many do they have to win before you pot about them?

• 1:49:17Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:49:22Bill Simmons?

  Gambling's legal in Massachusetts.

• 1:49:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:26Bill Simmons?

  I have multiple Red Sox bets. I think they're gonna be good. Including the ninety-plus win bets, which was like plus one thirty-six. I also, the NFL Over-Underers came out today, which I covered on my podcast. Pat's seven and a half, fucking over. I did that.

• 1:49:41Bill Simmons?

  We're not gonna be four wins better? I mean, what the fuck? Going like at least eight and nine. They're saying Diggs' ACL is untorn now?

• 1:49:51Chris Ryan?

  Who's they?

• 1:49:51Sean Fennessey?

  Who is they?

• 1:49:52Bill Simmons?

  His ACL is solid?

• 1:49:54Speaker 06

  His dad.

• 1:49:55Sean Fennessey?

  Was it Dr. Sean McGuire who told you that?

• 1:49:58Chris Ryan?

  It's not your fault.

• 1:50:03Speaker 06

  I know, I think it's great when a receiver who's already been on like two teams in the last 12 months and is still available, and you give him 26 million guaranteed in the first year, who he seems to get along with everybody. Yeah. Can you do it any better than that? Yeah. He's 32, turning 33.

• 1:50:19Bill Simmons?

  Producer Craig Roebuck who's here, his counter, because I was saying, I wasn't totally happy with the Dick signing, and he's like, "You don't have a receiver," was his counter. I'm like, "I had no counter to that counter." So I don't know, I'm super excited for the Pats. Oh, so Tatum, Drake May, who's number one right now? In Buck?

• 1:50:43Speaker 06

  Boston.

• 1:50:44Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:50:44Speaker 06

  Hey, Pritchard!

• 1:50:46Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Pritch, please!

• 1:50:48Speaker 06

  That's in episode 8 of The Celtics Doc.

• 1:50:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, episode 10. Thank you to Loon by Atlassian for having us. Thanks to House of Blues, it's really cool to be here. I mean, I was here when it was called Avalon, but they did a good job of this. We almost did it across the street at MGM, I kind of wish we had, but I thought it was awesome. Because we had a lot of people that wanted tickets, so I felt bad.

• 1:51:16Speaker 06

  But thanks for having us.

• 1:51:17Bill Simmons?

  No, this was perfect. I like seeing the people up there. I just wish we had more people.

• 1:51:25Bill Simmons?

  CR?

• 1:51:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:26Bill Simmons?

  What's next for you?

• 1:51:28Chris Ryan?

  Well, we're gonna be at Coolidge all weekend, hanging out. Goodfellas.

• 1:51:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so come down.

• 1:51:33Chris Ryan?

  And Heat tomorrow.

• 1:51:34Bill Simmons?

  TheRinger.com/events if you want tickets. We're probably gonna talk after a couple of the movies, but we're doing Heat, Goodfellas. Good Will Hunting is actually Saturday night at the town.

• 1:51:44Chris Ryan?

  Sean's gonna be doing therapy for people for free on the street.

• 1:51:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've been studying the McGuire method. Yeah. That would be quite the meet and greet, sit down.

• 1:51:53Bill Simmons?

  Russel, what's next for you?

• 1:51:54Speaker 06

  We got an Uber headed to the Squire about 15.

• 1:51:57Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Fantasy?

• 1:52:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'm gonna drink a few more beers tonight, I think.

• 1:52:04Bill Simmons?

  All right. Boston, thank you for having us. Appreciate it.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games!

• 1:52:27Speaker 03

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 1:52:29Speaker 04

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star.

• 1:52:32Speaker 03

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 1:52:33Speaker 04

  Make them remember you.

• 1:52:36Speaker 03

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 1:52:41Speaker 05

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