Ben and Matt. Matt and Ben.
We loved them more together than apart, but for the longest time, the childhood buddies from Boston didn’t appear together on screen.
Growing up only two blocks apart, the pair met through their mums, who had set them up on a playdate. How cute is that. They both then went into acting and had bit parts here and there – Ben was a bemused basketball player on Buffy the Vampire Slayer the movie, and Matt played an army dude in Courage Under Fire.
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Even as “nobodies”, they somehow managed to appear in the same three films – Field of Dreams, School Ties and Glory Daze.
But Good Will Hunting would change their lives. It started as Damon’s assignment in a playwrighting class at Harvard, and when he moved to Los Angeles to join Affleck, he asked his mate to work on it together.
They brought the script to their agent and after it had been passed around, Affleck and Damon had a bidding war on their hands, eventually selling it in 1994 to Castle Rock for $US600,000. Apparently they blew that money in six months.
Ben Affleck, then 25, and Matt Damon, then 27, during their Good Will Hunting days. Credit: AP Photo/Yukio Gion
Before the film was released and the two would go on to win an Oscar for their screenplay (Affleck has a second Oscar that he won for producing Argo), they came to the notice of someone else: filmmaker Kevin Smith, the indie director behind Clerks which had famously been shot for $29,000 and became a Sundance sensation.
Smith read about the Good Will Hunting sale, and when Affleck came in to audition for a part in Mallrats, it was kismet. The director wanted Affleck for Chasing Amy, on which Damon had a small gig as executive #2, but that would all lead to the next big thing.
Smith had shown Affleck the script for Dogma while he was talking to him about Chasing Amy, and it was the fallen angels comedy that Affleck really wanted to do. Damon, who by then had become a big star as well, was cast as Loki opposite Affleck’s Bartleby, a large part of that was because the two had proven chemistry.
No one banters quite like Affleck and Damon, and it really is Dogma which showcases that chemistry at the height of its power. They share every scene together, and they fight and love like brothers.
It just so happens, after years of being unavailable on digital platforms thanks to the rights been held by the Weinstein brothers, the 1999 film that riled up Catholics is finally accessible at the click of a button. Smith was finally able to buy it back.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in Dogma. Credit: View Askew
That was, for almost two decades, the last time Affleck and Damon had any substantive onscreen partnership. They had some smaller collaborations – two more Smith films, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in 2001, playing satirical versions of themselves, and Jersey Girl in 2004, in which Damon has only a small role.
They went off to cultivate their own careers, understandably, and also made together Project Greenlight, a docuseries which gave fresh filmmakers a chance to direct a movie.
But for almost 20 years, while they often referenced each other in interviews and on late-night talk shows – the Sarah Silverman/Matt Damon and Jimmy Fallon/Ben Affleck mock-feud was a particularly brilliant piece of pop culture – we didn’t get to see them play opposite each other.
That changed with the 2021 Ridley Scott movie, The Last Duel. Damon was one of three leads – the film is told in triptych from three characters’ perspectives – and Affleck had a memorable supporting role as a peroxide-haired noble. They wrote the screenplay, along with Nicole Holofcener.
The film didn’t light the world on fire (the ever grumpy Scott blamed young people for being too obsessed with their phones), but it sparked a desire between Affleck and Damon to keep doing things together.
At the premiere of Air in 2023. Credit: Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP
A year later, in 2022, they established Artists Equity, a production company purportedly with a business model that is more inclusive of all the people working on its projects.
The first production off the line was Air, the Nike Air Jordon biopic which Affleck directed, with Damon in the lead and Affleck in a supporting role.
As producers through their banner, they’re now collaborators on a range of other films including The Instigators, which starred Damon and Casey Affleck, Small Things Like These and Kiss of the Spider Woman.
But what the Affleck-Damon bromance fans are really excited about is The Rip, an old-fashioned crime thriller in which the two have equal onscreen billing.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in The Rip. Credit: Warrick Page/Netflix
Out on Netflix today, the film features the two of them as Miami cops who, along with their team (characters played by Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor and Catalina Sandino Moreno), discover $20 million in a stash house.
That much money makes people silly, and the night devolves into one of paranoia, tempers and betrayal. Affleck and Damon’s characters aren’t always on the same page, and the good will of their off-screen relationships ups the stakes for their onscreen versions.
We don’t want them to fight, because they’re Matt and Ben, so you’re automatically more invested in their fates. It’s a clever way to leverage, for lack of a better word, baggage.
The brothers are back together, and given the pace of new projects since The Last Duel, it bodes well for more.
