Matt Damon and Ben Affleck star in a new movie this weekend that you can watch if you have a Netflix subscription. The Rip is one of their many collaborations over the years, ever since their first movie together, Good Will Hunting, won them and Robin Williams Oscars.
The acceptance speech that Damon and Affleck gave that night in 1997 is one of the all-time great Oscar speeches, as the two young actors were clearly blown away by the experience and had absolutely no idea what to say. Speaking about the speech on The Howard Stern Show (via EW), Affleck joked about it and the way he might have overdone it a little at that year's Academy Awards ceremony, saying…
Oh, god,. I just feel so... like, I thanked Boston as a city three times. Was that necessary?
To be fair to Affleck and Damon, the former only thanked Boston once, though he did so immediately after the latter had done it, so the city gets thanked twice. As all over the place as the speech is, that’s part of what makes it all quite endearing. Check out the win below.
The pair of stars are clearly like deer in headlights. The look on both their faces is one of astonishment. When they start trying to thank people, it’s just a random list of disorganized names of whoever either of them can think of as they try to list everybody. They mention all the key players in Good Will Hunting, they even thank their friend Cole Hauser. The only bad part about it is that the first person they mention is a name that hasn't aged well.
Damon says the reason the speech ended up like that is that the duo had never even talked about writing a speech. They felt that if they had, and then lost, they’d have felt silly for thinking they might win. He explained…
The funny thing about it, actually, the reason it's kind of disorganized was because we never ever had a conversation between ourselves about what we would say. because honestly, each of us knew deep down that if we had that conversation and didn't win, in 50 years we'd be at some bar in Boston going 'Can you f'ing believe we f'ing wrote an Oscars speech? You jackass.' So when we got up there, I remember I pushed Ben into the microphone. I was like, 'I'm not doing it.'
It's not shocking they didn't really expect to win. The entire story of how Good Will Hunting happened is a series of unlikely events. How would they have the audacity to think they could win an Oscar too?
In the clip above, you actually can see Damon nudge Affleck in front of the microphone, giving him the majority of the speaking time, just as he says. Of course, this makes him look the most unprepared. Affleck says he now wishes they had done at least a little pre-planning…
I'm like, 'What am I supposed to say?' So I do, in some ways, think it would have been smart to think a little bit about what I was going to say in front of the whole world.
Honestly, I think the off-the-cuff Oscar speeches are usually the best. You can tell when people are truly shocked to have won and are just trying to come to terms with it. It’s possibly only overshadowed by Robin Williams Oscar win for the same film, as he took home Bet Supporting Actor for his performance as Dr. Sean Maguire.
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