Good Will Hunting

With the recent death of George Dantzig still on the newswires, I thought I’d add to last weeks oh-so-fascinating 80s film facts with some 90s film tid-bits.

It is perhaps little known that in Good Will Hunting Will (Matt Damon) was originally going to become a physicist, at least according to Prof. Moniz, who was then head of the physics dept at MIT and is credited in the film.

The story, as told in the last lecture of 8.05 in Fall 2001, goes that he was approached by the producers and helped develop a storyline where Will went on to work in some General Relativity field and the film would feature images of galaxies etc. All this was devised when the mathematics department caught wind of this Course VIII coup and managed to convince the producers that the final storyline of Will getting a job wasn’t plausible as a physicist and that he should naturally be a mathmo. The producers took the bait and the rest, as they say, is history…

…and frankly the film is far better for this little twist of fate.
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