Matt Damon remembers Robin Williams putting them over budget on “Good Will Hunting” due to his desire to reshoot scenes, even though they were already great.
While talking with Amy Poehler on her “Good Hang” podcast this week, Damon recalled his time working with the late comedy legend on their 1997 drama. He told Poehler that what shocked him was how often Williams wanted extra takes despite being so good. He chalked it up to the actor being a “ruminator.”
“He did a lot of takes,” Damon shared. “I remember Terry Gilliam telling me – after they did ‘The Fisher King,’ and Robin’s brilliant in that movie – Terry gave him a report card at the end. It had all these different categories like creativity, energy, all this stuff: A, A, A. Then there was ‘late-night phone calls’ … F.”
“He was a ruminator, and there were things we went back and did another pickup of – a thing we’d already shot 15 times. Ben [Affleck] and I knew we had it. [Director] Gus [Van Sant] knew we had it. I think that might be the comedy background; there’s always a joke, there’s always something more that I can grab in there. The guy just had so much energy. We went over budget on film. I remember every day at lunch we would send out to Kodak, they’d come back with more film because we were burning through a lot of film, really just for him to feel like, ‘Yeah, we got it.’”
Damon is making the press rounds promoting his upcoming Christopher Nolan film “The Odyssey.” He stars as Greek hero Odysseus, working alongside actors like Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Elliot Page, Benny Safdie, Bill Irwin and Himesh Patel.
The film is getting largely rave reviews from critics in its first reactions.
“‘The Odyssey’ is staggering. Packed with intense and spectacular set pieces, often backed by a soul-rattling score, it builds to a final act that’s as good as anything Nolan’s done. Purists might baulk at the adaptation changes, but as an experience, nobody is doing it like Nolan,” wrote Ian Sandwell on X, while Collider’s Perri Nemiroff added: “’The Odyssey’ is a filmmaking feast. grand and gripping rendition of Homer’s epic, and one that feels uniquely Christopher Nolan. It’s sincerely hard to imagine any other filmmaker on the planet being able to bring that source material to screen with this much scale, scope and heart.”
“The Odyssey” hits theaters on July 17.
