If You Need An "Inclusion Rider" To Make It In Movies, You Won't

While Good Will Hunting was released to critical acclaim and big box office in 1997, its eventual success was far from a foregone conclusion.  As Peter Biskind recalled in his 2004 history of independent filmmaking, Down and Dirty Pictures, the script written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon spent quite a lot of time in what movie insiders term “development hell.” The script kept being picked up by a studio, only for the same studio to sit on it. 

Eventually Good Will Hunting reached Miramax.  At this point Affleck and Damon were much wiser to the nature of Hollywood and its constant delays.  Asked to tweak the script yet again, they wondered if anyone was actually reading their changes.  Eager to find out, they inserted a rather shocking scene that would surely rate comment if their revised script were actually read. Soon after Miramax head Harvey Weinstein “green lit” Good Will Hunting, only to tell Affleck and Damon that they would have to remove the offending scene.