Did You Know ‘Good Will Hunting’ Was Meant to Be a Thriller?

When someone mentions Good Will Hunting (1997), you instinctively think of emotional drama, overcoming trauma, untapped potential, genuine friendships, therapeutic breakthroughs, and also raw Boston grit. Oh, and obviously, the heartwarming Oscar wins of Robin Williams and the two (until then almost unknown) kids. It’s unlikely that words like “espionage” and “thriller” should occur to anyone. That makes sense because the film has nothing to do with them.

But what if I told you these words would have been at the heart of the movie if its original version had made it through?

It doesn’t sit right with the film’s current vibe, but that is exactly the case. There was a chance the movie that we know, which has a lot of “sitting on a bench and breaking the emotional walls” bits, would instead have a lot of “jumping off the walls and running for life from the NSA” bits.

Crazy world!

The Script That Could Have Been

The Origins

When Matt Damon was studying playwriting at Harvard (yes, he is one of Hollywood’s “brainy bunch”), his final assignment was to write a one-act play. However, he ended up writing a 40-page script instead, almost a film treatment. This was the birth of Good Will Hunting. Later, when he moved to LA, he brought this script with him. It’s in LA where his writing collaboration with Ben Affleck began, and it started with this script. They rewrote it and fleshed it out.

Once finished, it was a high-stakes conspiracy thriller. It still showed Will Hunting as a math genius, and he still worked as a janitor at MIT. However, in this version, he caught the attention of not only Dr. Sean Maguire, the friendly therapist and college professor, but also the U.S. government, the NSA, in particular. In the story, the NSA thinks of Will Hunting as an asset to national security. The rest of the plot was about the NSA ruthlessly pursuing Will to recruit him into a life of intelligence, counterintelligence, and code-breaking. It involved shadow figures following Will, quite a bit of coercion, kidnapping, and a lot of chase sequences.

To think of it, this was a “Jason Bourne” parallel. Don’t you think so? I guess Damon was destined to navigate the world of tactical threats one way or another.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the movie’s central plot didn’t revolve around Will’s internal conflict, and he didn’t try to solve it with the help of a therapist. In this version, the main plot was the external conflict, which involved dodging a big-bad government agency.

The Advice That Changed Everything

The script showed promise. When the duo started pitching, it quickly created interest. Especially, it caught the attention of Rob Reiner at Castle Rock Entertainment. He liked the central idea but thought the script was suffering from an identity crisis. It had both the heartfelt emotional drama between Will and Sean and good thriller elements. Sadly, they were both canceling each other out. He advised them to find out which element had more potential and focus solely on it.

Further discussion revealed the thriller plot wasn’t as convincing as the one that centered on Will and Sean. Reiner opined that the most compelling parts of the script were the scenes between Will and Sean, as well as between Will and his girlfriend, Skyler. Ultimately, it was decided that the movie’s central plotline would deal with the relationship between the boy genius and the compassionate therapist.

The Salami Test

After the script was ready (as we know it), Damon and Affleck started sending it to production houses. They suspected that most people were not really reading the script. So, they devised a naughty test. In the script, on page 60, they included a graphic sex scene between Will and Dr. Sean. It was random, made no sense, was completely out of sync with the rest of the movie, and went on for a good few lines. The idea was that those who will actually read the script will be confronted with the scene; those who don’t read will be none the wiser.

As it turned out, it was only Harvey Weinstein who raised a question about it. That’s when the writer duo decided to go with Miramax Films.

To Sum It Up

Once the story was stripped of the “manhunt” parts (and the government agents that came with it as a package), it was allowed to breathe. It shifted from an external conflict (Will vs. the government) to an internal conflict (Will vs. himself). It was saved from becoming a jumble of conflicting elements and instead became a sincere, heartwarming drama.

The breakthrough therapy sessions with Dr. Sean Maguire, which are the emotional heart of the film, would not have been possible with the distracting thriller elements hovering around. It’s a good thing that the cat-and-mouse chases were replaced by a battle for a young man’s soul. What would have been a generic 90s thriller blossomed into a timeless masterpiece about vulnerability and friendship.