Ben Affleck & Matt Damon Credit Kevin Smith For Saving Good Will Hunting

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have always enjoyed a good relationship with director Kevin Smith. The duo has been working together since their early days and are extremely close. That bond as well as their connection to the “Clerks” director may have saved the movie that made them household names.

The famous Hollywood pair recently got the Entertainment Weekly cover story. In the long-form interview, they discussed a lot of things, including the making of “Good Will Hunting.” The 1997 drama was written by a mostly unknown Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The story revolves around Damon’s Will, a genius yet to be discovered. Damon said the film was almost never made at all until Kevin Smith made a huge save.

“Kevin saved Good Will Hunting. We were dead in the water. And we would’ve lost it. It would’ve been made with other people in it, and we’d still be really angry I’m sure.”

We would have been the writers, but we wouldn’t have been the actors. And the whole thing was we wanted to be actors. And he got it to [executive producer] Jon Gordon and got people to believe in it.

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I promised him I would thank him if we ever got an Oscar, and promptly forgot. And then I told him if I ever win again, I swear to God, I’m going to thank you, and forgot again. So I owe him very much, and he did that. He believed. I remember he wrote me an email at the time and in typical Kevin fashion said, ‘I started your movie on the sh*tter. And I stayed on the whole time.'”

Ben Affleck also gave big props to Robin Williams for his willingness to work with two complete unknowns. The legendary comedian brought a professional attitude to the set. Affleck and Matt Damon got to work with one of their heroes. They owe it all to Kevin Smith.

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