by our character names, and like

the guys were really scary.

And it was exhausting physically.

And to this day, it's the hardest thing

I've ever done.

[upbeat music]

School Ties.

[upbeat music]

I was playing like this anti-semitic bully,

and it seemed like those were the roles

I was kinda getting cast as,

was like bad guys all the time.

- It's so hard to find decent help these days.

[laughing]

- Can't you move any faster, please?

[laughing]

- If you care to step outside,

I'll show you how fast I can move.

[yelling]

- Come on!

- Obviously I knew Matt, and that was fun.

And I got to know Anthony Rapp and Chris O'Donnell

and Randall Batinkoff and Brendan Fraser

and those guys really well.

And it was definitely like a sort of thrilling moment

because it was the first real movie,

like I knew it was actually gonna come out,

you know that I was gonna be in.

It was a little frustrating to have such a small role

and for it to be so relentlessly unpleasant,

but you take what you can get, I guess.

Dazed and Confused.

[upbeat music]

- And you, get the hell off my property.

- I'm sorry, ma'am, I was just

escorting your fine young son home from school.

There were some ruffians about.

Oh and Mitch, Carl,

we'll be seeing other again.

- [Interviewer] What were you channeling

for the O'Bannion character?

I remember reading at one time that you

wrote "Fah-Q" on the paddle yourself.

- Oh, I don't know if that was me

or if that was Rick's idea.

I can't remember, but Rick encouraged everyone

to like write their own stuff, to you know,

try their own scenes, which is kind of amazing to me

that he gave us all that much freedom.

It was a little bit disappointing to be

like the only unlikable character in a movie

full of incredibly likable people,

but it was kind of a lot like what it looked like, you know.

Sort of like a bunch of young people having fun,

mostly workin' nights,

sort of running around.

I feel like we were sort of making it up as we went along,

and as I look back, I'm amazed that Rick

was so comfortable with that,

given like how much you need to schedule movies

and plan them out and know where you're gonna shoot.

But he was really fluid,

and he created a great creative environment.

It was definitely the movie where I got the sense

that like, this is somethin', you know,

it kind of was de-mystified.

Like I could do this, you know what I mean?

Maybe we could make our own movie.

And he was very inspiring in that regard.

Chasing Amy.

[upbeat music]

- Alyssa, there isn't another soul

on this [beep] planet who has ever made me

half the person I am when I'm with you.

And I would risk this friendship

for the chance to take it to the next plateau

because it is there between you and me.

You can't deny that.

- That was the first time that I was like

got to play a full sort of developed leading role

and also got to play kind of a range of emotions

and express myself emotionally

and had this speech about being in love with her.

And it was really an interesting experience

because we had so little time

that we had to kind of rehearse like a play.

So we rehearsed the whole thing all the way through

a bunch of times,

so we just knew the thing back to front.

And when we shot, it went by really fast,

you know what I mean?

And we shot on 16 and I don't even remember,

20 days or something like that.

And I guess I kinda thought maybe there would

be that much rehearsal on most movies.

You know, I didn't realize

that was a totally unique experience.

I slept on Kevin's couch.

We all soft of bunked together,

and you know we all wore our own clothes.

And it was definitely that sort of Indie era feel, you know.

And he had made Clerks, so he was already kind of famous

in the Indie world, you know.

And Rick had already made Slacker when I worked with him,

so both those guys I kinda looked up to and admired

as sort of DIY filmmaker models.

- What did you say?

[spits]

- You're chasing Amy.

- What do you look so shocked for, man?

Fat bastard does this all the time.

He thinks just because you don't say anything,

it'll have some huge impact

when he does open his fucking mouth.

- Jesus Christ, why don't you shut up.

- Kevin was a big inspiration to me

both like because he was able to do all this stuff

and he also was very specific about his writing.

He was very text oriented.

You know, it was not, like he was opposite of Rick

in a sense of like there was no improv,

no changing anything.

He wanted the writing to be exactly

as he kind of laid it out.

And not only that, but in some cases he had like

the inflection in mind that he wanted you to use.

And I didn't know any better.

I didn't know you weren't supposed to give actors

line readings, so I was just like,

"Okay, I'll say it like that."

We ended up just becoming friends.

And I think I did end up doing like six movies with him

or something like that.

And you know, he's my friend today,

and I really love him.

And he really wore his heart on his sleeve,

you know what I mean?

He was caring and thoughtful and empathetic.

And it was really like a, made a big impression on me,

that this was a guy who was making films

when I thought you had to be much older

and much more experienced and much more I don't know what.

You know, have more gray hair or something.

I thought, well you know, if Kevin can do it.

Again, that was right around the time

when we were working on,

start trying to get Good Will Hunting made.

And he was a big inspiration, and he helped us with that.

So that was a big part of that.

Good Will Hunting.

[upbeat music]

Most of the writing for Good Will Hunting

was done improv style.

We knew we wanted to do this sort of

Reservoir Dogs, Slacker, Clerks version of a movie.

And the way you did that was to do it inexpensively.

So we deliberately wrote a movie

that was mostly people talking in rooms.

And we wrote a part for, you know,

what we knew would be the person

that would get the movie financed

because we knew that wasn't us.

And so we tried to write some monologues

that would appeal to somebody famous.

We didn't even know anybody famous at the time,

so it was all sort of guesswork.

And mostly it was done because we had nothing else to do.

You know, we lived together.

We were goin' on auditions.

And a lot of days would go by and we just were hangin' out.

So we would talk about it,

and you know, it evolved quite a bit

and changed quite a bit.

But some of it is like still those early improvs

that we did and we would tape record

and then re go over the tape and pick out the good parts.

- So, when are ya done with those meetings?

- I think the week after I'm 21.

- Yeah, they gonna hook you up with a job or what?

- Yeah, fuckin' sit in a room and do long division

for the next 50 years.

- Probably make some nice bank though.

- It was odd that we even thought that we could do this,

you know what I mean?

That it was something that was possible

or that would ever happen.

I think we were young enough to be just sort of

and inexperienced enough to just sort of think,

"Maybe it'll work."

You know, instead of realizing how stacked against us

the odds were.

It was definitely like, you know, some of those early

Indie movie experiences that made me feel like

maybe with the right luck, this could happen.

And it did, mostly due to our agent, Patrick Whitesell,

who kind of made people believe in it

and got people the script.

That was the biggest hurdle that movie had to get over,

was kind of, you know, to get in the hands

of somebody who actually could make a movie.

And he was a young agent at the time,

he's still our agent, and kind of made his bones

on selling Good Will Hunting.

I guess we all sort of did.

Gus definitely lent a maturity to the movie.

It was a little bit adolescent,

a little big naive, you know,

in it's original sort of form.

And because Gus was much older than us

and much more mature and more sophisticated

and kind of had a better sense

of when we were pushing too far, you know,

for sentiment or reaching for something.

He definitely has made those real.

- You don't know about real loss

because it only occurs when you love something

more than you love yourself.

I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much.

- Robin was just like the biggest star in the world.

You know, we just couldn't believe that

we were working with Robin Williams.

It was like the fact that he was doing it,

the fact that we would get to hang out with him

and like ride in the van with him

and listen to him like tell jokes.

We went up and watched him do stand-up once.

It was like, you know, the beginning of a very sort of

dream-like fantasy sequence or something,

where I was doing all these things.

All these things were happening in my life

that I thought I wanted to do,

but never actually really believed

would quite come true, you know.

And yet, there we were with Robin Williams.

And I think he was just coming off like

this great run of movies, you know,

Awakenings and Good Morning, Vietnam,

and he was like such a big star.

And I hadn't even been around somebody

who was famous before.

And we would walk down the street and like

people in Boston would be like, "Mork from Ork".

And I was like, "Wow," all those movies

and that's what you remember, "Mork from Ork".

It was a fantasy, I mean he only worked for three weeks,

and it was like I remember every single day,

every bit of daily, every bit of dialogue.

It was literally a dream come true.

Armageddon.