-Thank you all for being here. I know you guys pretty well.
Nicole, we're new friends.
For those of you who don't know Nicole,
she is an amazing writer-director.
"Enough Said." "Friends with Money."
I'm so happy that you're here.
Thank you. -Thank you so much.
-I'm not saying that you have friends with money. Sorry.
They're the titles of the film.
-Well, I do have friends with money.
-Yeah, you do. -Clearly.
-How did you get involved with these guys for this project?
-I got an e-mail from Ben saying --
Who I knew a little bit.
We were mutual fans of one another --
-I was jealous of her, basically, is the truth.
-Is that right? -Yeah, well, we met because
we had movies come out the same weekend.
I think one was "Daredevil," and they said it was, like,
the worst film ever made, and I turn the page,
and it was like, "Nicole Holofcener
is a modern-day Jane Austen."
I'm like, "How do I get this?"
-You go, "Yeah, boy, these are different reviews."
-I've been trying to work with her ever since.
-Yeah. It was very flattering.
And, so, he e-mailed me, and I think you might have said,
you know, a medieval movie. I'm not sure.
But whatever it was, I thought it was a joke.
-Because you don't write medieval movies.
-Oh, I'm the go-to swordfight movie woman.
-That is not your type of writing at all.
-No, it's not. -No.
-But I was thrilled and flattered,
and I met with them, and, you know, I said,
"I don't know how to write like this."
This milady, milordy. My lady, my lordy. See?
-"Milordy." -"Milordy."
He said that's not really --
-You were making that word up, yeah.
-Luckily, we were like, "Neither do we." So...
-Well, you heard of this book first. Is that right?
-Yeah, yeah. I had the book.
Someone at our company gave it to me,
and I read it and sent it to Ridley Scott and --
-It's got to be Ridley Scott. -Yeah.
It just really felt like right in his wheelhouse and --
-It's a big movie.
-It's a very, very big, medieval kind of something.
You know, this whole world that he could really create.
And then I showed it to Ben, and we decided to write it,
and the way we thought of doing it was in these three different
perspectives -- two male perspectives
and one female perspective.
Because it's about these two knights.
This is a true story.
It's the last sanctioned duel in medieval France
between these two knights,
one of whom claimed the other raped his wife,
and they fought to his death.
And so we saw it as this story of perspective,
and so we needed somebody to write the female perspective,
and she's our favorite writer, so we were like,
"Well, why don't we just beg?" -"Let's get Jane Austen."
[ Laughter ]
-Get the best. Why not? -She was dead, so we...
-Jane Austen wasn't available. -Yeah.
-So you guys wrote the female part.
-And you did the male part, yeah.
-Exactly. -Did you find it challenging?
Because obviously, and unfortunately,
a lot of male perspective has been written about,
and women's perspective actually --
No one's really -- -Who?
-Yeah. Yeah, who are women. -Yeah, what?
-How sad is that?
But, I mean, is it exciting kind of?
-Yeah. -Because it's a challenge
to find out actually what is her perspective, her story.
-Yeah, there wasn't that much written in the book about her.
There are a few things we know about her.
She spoke many languages. She was really smart.
And clearly she was an incredibly brave woman
to speak out the way she did then.
And so I just had to make some stuff up
with a lot of research and help to figure out,
like, what exciting things did women do in 1360?
It's like, well, they crocheted.
-Yeah.
-They got to play music. -Yeah. Wow.
-They were property of their husbands...
-Geez.
-...and had no rights or agency, so they had a blast.
-Yeah, yeah. Not gonna be a reality show.
-No. -No. Okay, yeah, understood.
You guys wrote "Good Will Hunting" --
it was 25 years ago, I want to say.
You haven't written a movie since. Why?
-I mean, I think that "Good Will Hunting" took us so long.
we were, like, unemployed, broke guys.
Like, it took us forever to write that screenplay.
I think we wrote thousands and thousands of pages.
We didn't really know what we were doing,
and I think that kind of put us off writing again,
because we never thought we'd have the time.
And I think we found writing this
that we actually kind of picked up structure
over the last 25 years of kind of making movies,
and so it went a lot faster.
And then we also made the really good decision
of getting a great writer to come with us, so...
-Yeah. -I was like, "Come on, boys."
-"Come on, boys." Yeah. -I have a photo here of -- -
It's like, "You see what I had to deal with?"
-This is the "Good Will Hunting" movie premiere.
It's at the Ziegfeld. December 1997.
-You wouldn't imagine
that those two idiots would still be around.
-What do you remember about this?
This is -- Do you remember this?
-Yeah. -Yeah, I guess.
I'm not sure what was going through my head there.
Looks a little like a "Zoolander" outtake.
It was kind of like very --
You know, I mean, I think that, like,
we were just shocked that it all happened
and wouldn't have imagined getting another job.
The whole thing of "Good Will Hunting"
was really just to make them a video cassette
that was like an acting reel. You know what I mean?
Because we were like, "Well, we can't get the job.
Just show that we can do interesting stuff."
So the whole thing was have a reel and show casting directors.
And so we'll write these parts for ourselves,
and it was at a time when there were, like, these filmmakers
that start, like -- Spike Lee did "Do the Right Thing,"
and Richard Linklater did "Slacker,"
and Kevin Smith did "Clerks."
-There was this whole sort of --
And Quentin did "Reservoir Dogs."
It was like, "No, you don't have to do the studios.
You can do it cheap, and you get a movie star,
and I'll make it for a million bucks,"
and so we wrote, like, a movie that's just all, you know,
interiors and people talking in rooms 'cause it was inexpensive.
And they were like, "Write the cool monologues,
and we'll get a famous guy and, you know..."
It was sort of put together as -- That was our ambition.
So I think we were shocked that it even got released.
-I mean, you know, we've heard about you and heard stories.
Oh, you guys are old friends
and you've known each other a long time.
But you actually do know each other a long time
and are old friends.
This is a photo.
I think you sent it to Matt just the other day just to go,
"Hey, remember these dudes?"
Here's 17-year-old Matt and Ben in a photo booth.
Look at this.
[ Laughter ]
-Now, listen.
Hard not to see that those guys are going to make it.
-Yeah, those guys clearly have "star" written all over them.
-That's awesome. -You know, I think it's the
matching puka necklaces that give it away.
-Best buddies.
That's BFFs right there. Come on.
That's BFFs for life.
-Nicole, you should write a movie with those guys.
-No way. -No way. You would never do it.
More with Nicole Holofcener, Matt Damon,
and Ben Affleck after the break, everyone.
We're going to talk about "The Last Duel."