Good Will Hunting scored Ben Affleck and Matt Damon $600k, but the duo broke a few months later.
Ben Affleck & Matt Damon Bought Jeeps
The writing partners were paid a hefty sum for the 1997 Gus Van Sant’s directed movie. They immediately thought they were rich bitches! Affleck detailed the story to Drew Barrymore on The Drew Barrymore Show.
“When we sold ‘Good Will Hunting,’ I thought we were now rich for life,” he embarrassingly admits. “My needs are over! I’ll never have to work again! I’m rich forever!” were his sentiments. He never thought it would get this good.
He recounted how he and Damon spent their earnings. “We sold [the script] for $600,000. We split that, $300,000 each, and then the agents got $30,000, so we had $270,000. We paid about $160,000 in taxes, so we had $110,000. We each bought $55,000 Jeep Cherokees and then had $55,000 left.”
The Spending Continued
Affleck and Damon used the rest of their money to put a roof over their heads… for a few months. “Naturally, we decided to rent a $5,000-a-month party house on Glencoe Way by the Hollywood Bowl, and we were broke in six months,” he says, smiling.
Thankfully, the experience made these two guys realize that as quickly as it comes is as quick as it can go! They managed to have staying power in Hollywood, and now we can all confidently assume that money is not a problem for either party.
But before all their worries were shelved, they decided to stick together to succeed, and one of the things involved was having one bank account. You may be thinking, why do two grown men share a bank account?
The way they explain it makes a lot of sense to The Blast. “It was unusual, but we needed the money for auditions,” Damon told Variety, admitting that it was a bit weird.
“We were going to help and be there for each other,” Affleck added. “It was like, ‘You’re not going to be alone. I’m not going to be alone. Let’s go out there and do this together.’”
Ben Affleck & Matt Damon Had Rules
While the two shared an account and had free reign of the money, there were rules. “You were allowed to attend [auditions in] New York with the money. You were allowed to take out $10 and get quarters and go to [the arcade] and play video games,” Damon added. “Eventually, we were allowed to try to buy beer, which never f**king worked.”
But if they didn’t do this, who knows how life in Hollyweird would be for them. “As long as one of us had money, we knew the power wouldn’t get shut off. After doing [1992′s] ‘Geronimo’, I probably had 35 grand in the bank. I said, ‘We’re good for a year,” said Damon.
To this day, the besties still make films together and support one another in Tinseltown. Most recently, they directed and starred in Air together about the rise of Nike’s Air Jordans.
