Not necessarily the Wonder Twins

Cambridge high-school buddies Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are just two regular guys trying to conquer the universe

by Alicia Potter

The new film Good Will Hunting, written by and starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, rarely hesitates to push emotional buttons. One scene, however, gets its power from its subtlety. Chuckie, played by Affleck, raps on the screen door of a shabby South Boston triple-decker. Will Hunting, played by Damon, steps outside, badly in need of the Dunkin' Donuts coffee his friend holds out to him. They slide into the monstrous blue Delta 88 idling out front, Chuckie behind the wheel, Will riding shotgun. Neither says a word. Neither needs to. Their comfortable silence is a quiet center in a heart-twisting movie.

The scene also suggests a question: for these Cambridge natives and real-life best friends, does art imitate life?

Yes and no. Yes, Affleck picked Damon up for high school every day in a cruddy Toyota Corona. But when Hollywood's boys du jour get together, as they did recently at the Charles Hotel to discuss their newly minted fame, there's no such thing as a comfortable silence.

"Yo, I want some free shit," announces Affleck, 25. "I want some free Armani shit."

Affleck has arrived at the hotel with nothing to wear to the film's Cambridge premiere that night. A publicist, one of several cell-phone-flipping women hovering nearby, promises to do her best to secure the Italian threads (as a promotional courtesy, of course). Damon, 27, breaks into one of his by-now-much-photographed impish half-smiles.

Whispering and giggling, the two trail their press entourage to the hotel's publicity suite, where a publicist dashes off to fetch Affleck a grilled-chicken sandwich. "Can I have fries with that?", Affleck asks, and then adds: "Thank you."

The exchange illustrates the curious cusp on which Damon and Affleck teeter. They are both famous and not-yet-famous. They are the subjects of Web sites and on the covers of magazines, but Damon can still visit Harvard Square's Bow and Arrow Pub, as he did last night, without a single autograph request. They're big enough to have an entourage of PR people to tend to their food and clothing needs, but they're not yet big enough to forget their manners.

Damon and Affleck's people better enjoy it while they can. At the moment, the world just can't get enough of Matt 'n' Ben, Ben 'n' Matt. They seem custom-made for passionate debate among the Seventeen set -- Matt, the earnest, blue-eyed, cute one vs. Ben, the wisecracking, brown-eyed, sexy one. This month alone, their handsome, cleft-chinned faces appear in at least a half-dozen magazines. What's it like to return to Cambridge after the photo shoots and the talk shows?

"It's weird," says Damon. "It doesn't really mean much yet. I've stayed in touch with all my friends, so it's not like I'm returning home. To them, it's like, `God, I can't get away from you. You're on the cover of everything.' "

Affleck interrupts, "Hey, did you see that comparison thing they did with you and [Matthew] McConaughey in Entertainment Weekly? It's pretty funny."

Damon cradles his head in his hands and groans.

"It's not that bad," Affleck says.

---

Good Will Hunting, directed by Gus Van Sant (To Die For, Drugstore Cowboy), is a classic town-vs.-gown story set in such local haunts as MIT and Harvard, the L Street Tavern and the Tasty. The story focuses on Damon's Will, a troubled math genius from South Boston who must choose between a familiar Southie existence -- menial jobs, Guinness on tap -- and the daunting, sweater-vested world of academia. Affleck plays his best friend, a surprisingly sensitive goofball with a gold chain and a hard-core Baw-ston accent. Robin Williams and Minnie Driver (Damon's off-screen girlfriend) costar.

Writing about and playing best buddies didn't exactly represent a stretch for Affleck and Damon. They grew up just two blocks apart on Pearl Street, in middle-class Cambridgeport, and met when their schoolteacher moms forced them to play together. They went to Rindge and Latin High School together; they began their acting careers in local theater productions.

"It's really like any friendship someone's had since they were little," Affleck says. "It's not like we're the Wonder Twins or anything. We were just lucky enough to want to do the same thing."

Thus, their "business lunches." Each day, in the Rindge and Latin cafeteria, Affleck and Damon rehashed their plan to conquer Hollywood. Affleck explains: "Yeah, we'd sit there with our trays and little crappy 50-cent chicken sandwiches and we'd say things like" -- he raises his slightly nasal voice an octave -- " `We're going to be big actors! We're going to really take the town by storm!' "

Damon joins in, adopting Affleck's affected squeal. " `We're going to be huge! We're going to be the biggest actors! Okay, so how was Spanish today?' "

Cackles of laughter. As it turned out, though, neither one of them took the town by storm. Both acted in relative obscurity for years, appearing together (along with BC hunk Chris O'Donnell) in 1992's School Ties. After that, Affleck won small roles, mostly "steakhead bullies," in several independent films, including the cult hit Dazed and Confused. This year, he broke through as the goateed lead in Kevin Smith's boy-meets-lesbian comedy, Chasing Amy. Meanwhile, Damon finally gained attention as a druggie soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire. Most recently, he's impressed critics as the scrubbed-faced star of Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker.

It was during one of their many dry spells that Damon and Affleck decided to write their own ticket. Based on a short story Damon wrote before dropping out of Harvard two semesters short of graduation, Good Will Hunting took five years to complete. After a brief bidding war with Castle Rock Entertainment, Miramax scooped up the rights and signed Affleck and Damon as the stars.

"I think that a lot of people start out trying to write their own way," says Affleck. "People told us we were making a mistake, that it would never work out, that it went against conventional wisdom. We just went ahead anyway."

"We definitely had to pick each other up at certain points, though," Damon adds. "It seemed like just when one of us was about to give up, that's when the other one was getting his second wind."

Affleck and Damon's buddy-system approach to surviving Hollywood seems to be working. The two are now writing a screenplay set in a halfway house; both have leads in major upcoming films, Affleck in the action flick Armageddon, with Bruce Willis, and Damon in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. And they're actually turning down roles.

Like writing and acting, fame is also easier to handle as a team. "I'm glad that everything happened this way," Damon says. "It's much better than doing it alone. It's easier for me to get perspective on what's happening to me, because I take a look at what's happening to Ben. I'm able to see it as an outsider."

Affleck and Damon agree that working with Robin Williams helped prepare them for the onslaught of attention. Says Damon, "It was like that guy couldn't go anywhere in Southie without someone yelling, `Hey, Mawk, didja fuck Mindy?' " Once again, he and Affleck roar.

In mid-guffaw, a publicist enters the hotel room, signaling that it's time for the two to attend a photo shoot elsewhere in the hotel. On the way there, Damon compliments Affleck on his recent appearance on Jay Leno. "Do you think it was all right?" Affleck asks, his bravado dimming for a moment. "You were really natural, dude," Damon assures him.

Affleck then begins snickering to Damon about his fellow Tonight Show guests, the Spice Girls, one of whom he refers to as "Porno Spice." Damon halts the tale with a "Let's go, man," and they assume their poses for the camera. As the photographer readies his equipment, Affleck whispers to Damon. They crack up. The flash pops like crazy.

Alicia Potter is a freelance writer living in Boston.