Good Will Rumors AP Article

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: Bad Vibes Haunt 'Good Will' Oscar Nomination : March 16, 1998 8:44 AM EST : : By Nick Madigan : HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Is someone trying to jinx leading contender ``Good Will Hunting's'' chances for a screenwriting Oscar? Perhaps a competitor's sour grapes over the film's success? : A curious set of potentially damaging rumors -- none of them, evidently, with any foundation -- is doing the rounds about the script that earned Matt Damon and Ben Affleck an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. : ``This has been going on for months,'' said Tony Angellotti, a spokesman for Miramax Films. ``The calls are coming in anonymously. Who's got the most to gain?'' : There was one murmur to the effect that Damon and Affleck had bought the story from someone else; another that the script had been written by veteran William Goldman; and a third (pointed out by at least one person with no obvious ax to grind) that Damon had initially written the story at Harvard as a one-act play. The latter was conceivably the most devastating, jeopardizing the best original screenplay nomination if it could be proven that the story had been performed or published beforehand. Damon's association with the play has been widely reported -- everywhere from the Feb. 13 issue of Entertainment Weekly to the March 12 issue of Daily Variety. : It could all come down to simple confusion. : For the record, according to Angellotti, Damon bought the title, not the story, from a friend at Harvard; Goldman worked on the script with Affleck and Damon for one day while the project was at production company Castle Rock, and later praised their talents; and Damon wrote the first third of the work -- one act -- for a class at Harvard. Damon, reached at last weeke's ShoWest convention in Las Vegas by Angellotti, insisted the story was never performed as a play. : Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, said the writers' branch executive committee, which handles nods for screenwriting, was ``real tough'' on its requirements for nominations and would have slotted ``Good Will Hunting'' into the ``material previously produced or published'' category had there been any indication that it should not be in the ``original screenplay'' group. : Academy spokesman John Pavlik confirmed that the committee was aware of the ``Good Will Hunting'' script's provenance, had checked into it and found no problems. : The rumors are all the stranger considering the well-documented history of the two young actor-screenwriters' efforts to get the script made into a movie. They went through a year of rewrites -- the story was initially a conspiracy thriller -- before running into roadblocks at Castle Rock and finally landing a deal at Miramax. : ``Good Will Hunting'' pulled in nine Academy Award nominations, including the screenwriting nod, and has made almost $110 million in North America alone. : Not bad for a class project. : Reuters/Variety

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