Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's pal Kevin Smith recalls Harvey Weinstein's role in their Hollywood breakthrough

Daily Mail​

9 hours ago

Kevin Smith is looking back on how the convicted sex offender and disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein once played a crucial role in Ben Affleck and Matt Damon 's ascension to Hollywood royalty.
While looking back on the 25th anniversary of his film Dogma with People — which Affleck and Damon both appear in — Smith, 54, recalled how his early connection to Good Will Hunting became a pivotal moment for the two rising stars.
His influence brought Affleck, 52, and Damon, 54, into the orbit of Weinstein, who was later convicted of rape and sexual assault in separate trials in New York and Los Angeles in 2020 and 2022, respectively, though the New York Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in that state in 2024. A retrial commenced in April of this year.
Affleck, 52, began his professional association with Smith after scoring a small role in his 1995 comedy Mallrats, which came after he had already sold the screenplay he wrote with Damon for Good Will Hunting to the production company Castle Rock Entertainment.
The only problem was that the studio wasn't willing to also let Damon and Affleck star in the film because they were untested talent.
Smith recalled how he helped get the film — whose script he called 'one of the best things I've ever read' — picked up by Weinstein's studio Miramax Films, which had made a name for itself for producing and distributing popular independent films, several of which went on to garner critical acclaim and Oscars.
Smith said he was given a chance at helming the film from Affleck and Damon's screenplay after he had directed the hit indie film Clerks for Miramax.
'The first question that I was asked by Ben and Matt and the Miramax folks was, "Do you wanna direct [Good Will Hunting]?"' he recalled.
'I think they all asked that with clenched a******s hoping that I would say no,' Smith joked, as the film would have been a significant departure from the low-budget black-and-white comedy he had already directed. 'Naturally, I was like, "Oh my God, no. If I were to direct this, I would just turn around to Ben and Matt the whole time and say, "Is this what you saw when you wrote it?"'
Smith suggested that Affleck and Damon could direct Good Will Hunting themselves after writing the script, but even though Weinstein's team at Miramax would allow them to act in the movie, directing was too much leeway for the untested duo.
'I was told that the lunatics would not be running that particular asylum, so the search for a director began at Miramax,' Smith recalled.
Good Will Hunting proved to be a highly coveted script, and Smith said 'twenty of the top directors on the planet were interested' in it, among them Heat filmmaker Michael Mann and actor-turned-director Mel Gibson.
The film eventually went to the director Gus Van Sant, who had previously had critical and commercial success with Drugstore Cowboy (1989), the Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix–starring My Own Private Idaho(1991) and the black comedy To Die For (1995), which starred Nicole Kidman.
But it was reportedly a desire to work again with Affleck's younger brother Casey that ultimately led Van Sant to sign on for the job after they had worked together on To Die For.
Good Will Hunting ended up being a massive success for everyone involved.
Affleck and Damon's screenplay was honored with an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, while their costar Robin Williams also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and the film was nominated in seven other categories, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Good Will Hunting established Damon and Affleck as in-demand stars while also legitimizing their behind-the-camera work, and it helped Van Sant work on bigger-budget follow-ups.
Weinstein's help in picking up the film, combined with the success of Smith's Affleck-starring rom-com Chasing Amy, gave the trio 'enough juice' to start filming Dogma for Miramax.
Smith said he had shown the screenplays for Chasing Amy and Dogma to Affleck at the same time years earlier, though he warned the budding star that it would take major names in the cast to get Dogma off the ground because of the larger budget it would require.
Smith later recalled how Affleck jokingly thanked him for his assistance getting Good Will Hunting off the ground.
'I'll never forget the first day we're on set shooting with Ben and Matt. Right before the first take, we're about to roll for the first time and the boys have been nominated for Academy Awards,' Smith shared. 'So we're about to shoot, and I look at Ben, and Ben looks me dead in the eyes, and he goes, "Guess who became a movie star just to do your stupid movie." And I was like, "Well done, my friend. Well done."'
Back in 2020, it was reported that Affleck was one of the people listed on Weinstein's so-called 'red flag list,' which included the names of multiple people the producer feared could be speaking to the press about allegations of sexual assault and harassment that existed as behind-the-scenes whispers for years before they were widely circulated at the height of the #MeToo era.
Other names on the list, which was revealed in court, included Annabella Sciorra, Rose McGowan, Zelda Perkins, Lysette Anthony and Rowena Chiu.
In 2017, the actress Rose McGowan claimed that she had told Affleck that Weinstein had sexually assaulted her, to which he allegedly replied, 'Goddamn it, I told him to stop doing that.'
In 2017, Gwyneth Paltrow, who dated Affleck from 1997 to 2000, accused Weinstein of sexually harassing her earlier in the 1990s.