Hunting Good Will, Part I

Don't Get Him Started

The other night I watched Good Will Hunting for the first time since it busted a move on Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s respective careers. Came out in 1997. Dazzled at the Oscars, la, la, la.
I have a hard time remembering movies and books, so it was kinda like watching it for the first time. I do recall enjoying it, but if you’d asked me what it was about, I’da said, “Oh yes, Good Will Hunting. It’s these two white male students who go to some fancy college in the east. Robin Williams plays a professor who helps them to defy the odds and reach new heights.”
Triumphant poignancy ensues.
That’s not what it’s about.
It’s about Matt Damon’s title character, a foster kid/working class math genius who provides custodial services to MIT. During his shift one day, buffing the floor, he pauses to solve an impossible mathematical formula on a chalkboard in a hallway outside a math theorist’s classroom. Earlier that day, you see, the teacher put the problem on the board and promised any student who solved it a chance to appear in some bigshit math journal.
Later on, some passing students see that the problem is solved, they find their professor, and all go to the hallway. While they stare in wonder at the board, the teacher asks who did it. None of the students know. So the next class day, the teacher asks all of the students who solved the problem. No one cops to it. This leads the teacher to find Will Hunting, who is in jail for assault. The teacher gets him sprung, under the condition that Will gets into therapy, enter Robin Williams.
Triumphant poignancy ensues.
There’s a shocking sticking point in this plot—one that still very much lingers in my mind.
When the professor asked the packed lecture hall full of students who solved the problem, I was astounded to realize that I expected someone to take credit, but no one did.
Ten short years ago, there weren’t that many cell phones. Folks in the movie use pay phones. There are no lap tops in classes, no text messages, MySpace pages or other myriad barriers between humans actually engaging with one another. Most of all, there was no C- president who lied, bullied and cheated his way into the White House for eight years, committing war crimes and looting various nation’s financial infrastructures, ours included.
I am now accustomed to people not paying attention to each other, to lying, bullying and cheating. Inspiring teenagers to commit suicide through sordid MySpace machinations.
So when the math professor asks who solved the problem, I was shocked that no one took credit. Worse, I was shocked to find myself shocked for this commonly decent act of normal human good will. No one cheated, or tried to steal Will Hunting’s thunder. I totally expected someone to raise their hand, and NO ONE DID. The wife had the exact same experience and we paused the DVD to recollect ourselves. It was seriously jarring shit.
The viewer knows Will Hunting solved the problem, but that is not the point. In just over one decade, we have become a population of lying, bullying cheaters—that’s the point.
Is it really possible that folks have devolved so dramatically in one decade? People in Good Will Hunting largely dress and talk the same as we do now, but the level of integrity I used to take for granted was freakishly, disappointingly, refreshing.
If no one answers the phone, it really means they are not home.

I told my dear friend Riz about this. He is older than me, and said, “It’s Bush. Don’t talk to me about not blaming Bush for everything. The president sets the tone for the way the people act, period. Reagan brought the “Me Decade,” you remember that? It went like this: Cocaine, me, me, cocaine, me. Bush took that shit to a whole new level. It’s disgraceful.”
Then he said,
“Don’t get me started.”

I was too young to have a frame of reference when Reagan became president. I was a teenager and it was very important to me to act like I knew what was going on. The grownups around me were the ones who showed me how to show I knew what was going on. And I did cocaine a few times too. I never gained an understanding about cocaine.
It hurts your nose.
(“Oh no, not pure cocaine, honey, this is pure shit. It won’t hurt your nose.”
Yeah, right jackass. Snorting baby powder would hurt your nose. Noses aren’t engineered for snorting. They’re engineered for blowing and breathing.)
And it makes you talk like a fool for hours on end and then you stay awake for three days.
Mmmm, fun. Cocaine.
Anyway, I didn’t see the 80s as a grownup. I saw the 80s as an insecure teenager—who, at all costs, must not let on that I am in any way insecure because it will Ruin My Life if anyone finds out how terrified I truly am—trying to figure out how to make my way in this society.
Which was, evidently, the Me Society.
In much the same way that anyone under 30 probably has no frame of reference for good will, intergity and actual human engagement.
Humans are really amazing creatures. Give us 8 years of unmitigated bullshit and we will learn to accept that bullshit is human nature.
Yes, indeed, I am an olden timer, harkening back to days of yore, when folks might actually notice your presence because they aren’t text-messaging their cousin who is pregnant with her best friend’s boyfriend’s baby and nobody’s mom knows yet, and the sht iz gna slam d fan. Im sayn: sht-fukn-strm.