Matt & Ben

We all know the story: Best friends from Cambridge write a screenplay, star in the hit movie, win the Academy Award, and suddenly the world can’t get enough of them. But what’s the real story behind Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s breakout success? Can fame literally land in your lap? Matt & Ben comes home to Cambridge with a sharp skewering of celebrity culture and an affectionate look at Boston’s favorite bromance. Warning: Matt & Ben contains strong language.

When Good Will Hunting captured the 1998 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay before 1 billion television viewers, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck rocketed from struggling young actors to household names and icons of hard-earned success. They had made their own way, penning a script with roles for themselves that forever changed their lives. Hometown boys who had made the big time, Damon and Affleck became Boston’s – and the nation’s – “Matt & Ben”.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2001. Recent Dartmouth College graduates Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers are camped out in their apartment in Astoria trying to beat the heat wave outside. They notice that Ben Affleck’s face is on the cover of almost every tabloid on the newsstands or in their mailbox. Immersing themselves in the gossip, they realize with curiosity that Damon and Affleck had not shown screenwriting promise before Good Will Hunting. So how did they do it? Around this skepticism they begin to improvise the plot for their own artistic vehicle, featuring Kaling as Ben and Withers as Matt.