Good Will Hunting’s Affleck in hoop star Patrick Ewing’s shadow at old high school

By BOB THOMPSON
Toronto Sun

HOLLYWOOD — So far, Ben Affleck is keeping Oscarmania in perspective.

Sometimes it is hard to be humble. High school buddies Affleck and Matt Damon are being touted as the new young turks around this Academy Award-crazed town. “Whoa,” says the 25-year-old Good Will Hunting co-writer and actor. “We’re not even the most famous guys from our Cambridge high school,” reports Affleck laughing. “I think Patrick Ewing will permanently hold on to that title.”

The New York Knicks centre can have the Cambridge Rindge Latin Collegiate crown for a little longer, but his collegiate fame rating might have to be adjusted after the Oscars. Damon — also nominated as best actor — and Affleck are strong favorites to pick up the original screenplay award thanks to their emotional yarn of a genius street tough (Damon) trying to find himself.

Affleck barely has time to review the Oscar impact this weekend. Even he admits “things” have distracted him over the last few months. Like dating Gwyneth Paltrow, and working on a Shakespeare In Love project with her.

He also signed to co-star in Kevin Smith’s Dogma with Damon, even as Damon and Affleck work on their Good Will Hunting follow-up dealing with mentally handicapped patients called Half Way House.

In the great tradition of movie industry irony, Affleck just completed the megabudget sci-fi disaster picture Armageddon, which he jokingly calls “the anti-Good Will Hunting.”

“My space suit in Armageddon cost almost as much as Good Will Hunting cost,” he says. “I was told, ‘Don’t break the space suit, because it will cost you $10 million’.” He couldn’t afford to pay it — just yet. He can afford a few more “items of pleasure.” Not so six years ago as a struggling 19-year-old wisecracking actor on the set of Richard Linklater’s Dazed And Confused. “It was a good job,” says Affleck, who subsequently made a name for himself in Mallrats and Chasing Amy. “But I started to resent the film after a while. Everybody wanted the jock tough guy. “People would always say, ‘Like, weren’t you the 6-foot-2 bully who pushed around that kid in the weird ’70s movie’.”

Not that he’s complaining now. The typecasting was one of the reasons Affleck persuaded Damon to expand on his Good Will Hunting movie treatment he had written as a college assignment. Other than that, Affleck recalls that it was an easy Dazed And Confused acting assignment, playing high school partyers. “The truth is we were a bunch of 19-year-old kids getting drunk in Austin every night.”

So you were a bit of a high school rebel compared to Damon. “Let’s put it this way,” says Affleck, grinning. “I was into challenging everything and everybody, and going to McDonald’s between periods. “Matt was always disciplined and brought a lot of apples to the teachers.”