With maths skills like that he could have taken over as Carol Vorderman on Countdown.
The scene, for context:
Will: [both leaning on a pick up truck while drinking beers and smoking cigarettes on a construction site] What do I wanna way outta here for? I’m gonna live here the rest of my fuckin’ life. We’ll be neighbors, have little kids, take 'em to Little League up at Foley Field.
Chuckie: Look, you’re my best friend, so don’t take this the wrong way but, in 20 years if you’re still livin’ here, comin’ over to my house, watchin’ the Patriots games, workin’ construction, I’ll fuckin’ kill ya. That’s not a threat, that’s a fact, I’ll fuckin’ kill ya.
Will: What the fuck you talkin’ about?
Chuckie: You got somethin’ none of us have…
Will: Oh, come on! What? Why is it always this? I mean, I fuckin’ owe it to myself to do this or that. What if I don’t want to?
Chuckie: No. No, no no no. Fuck you, you don’t owe it to yourself man, you owe it to me. Cuz tomorrow I’m gonna wake up and I’ll be 50, and I’ll still be doin’ this shit. And that’s all right. That’s fine. I mean, you’re sittin’ on a winnin’ lottery ticket. And you’re too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that’s bullshit. ‘Cause I’d do fuckin’ anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin’ guys. It’d be an insult to us if you’re still here in 20 years. Hangin’ around here is a fuckin’ waste of your time.
This is a good joke but it’s worth pointing out that while Boston has always had the universities, it was a very different kind of city 30 years ago. The tech boom completely changed the character of it from a roughneck working class city to a wealthy one.
If you want to see what Boston was like up until about 2000 or so, The Friends of Eddie Coyle did a great job of it. Technically it takes place in the south Shore but since we’re calling Cambridge Boston here we can let that one slide as well.
Also, the most famous of those universities (MIT and Harvard) are in Cambridge.
Someone from outside Boston might look at the entire metropolitan area and call it “Boston”, but one of the key elements of the movie is that Will and Chuckie are locals who are living their entire lives in a small neighbourhood in South Boston.
For a local, there are huge differences between Cambridge, Somerville, South Boston, the North End, Beacon Hill, Charlestown, East Boston, etc.
In any case, in the movie he never says “you’ve gotta get out of this town and make something of yourself”. What he does say is that the best 10 seconds of his day is when he walks up to Will’s door and hopes that he’ll have left without saying goodbye. That does suggest that to fulfill his potential he’ll have to move somewhere else, at least for a while. But, the way the lines are delivered, it’s not that he has to leave the Greater Boston Area, but that he can’t just get stuck in a rut, living in the same place, doing the same thing, never taking a chance to improve his life.
Sure, theoretically Will could live in the same house for the rest of his life, while also making the most of his talent by working at Harvard or something and just commuting from South Boston. But, the other context for that scene is the girlfriend.
Chuckie asks Will about his girlfriend, and Will says she’s moving to California to go to med school. That’s what kicks the whole scene off. The audience knows that Skylar invited Will to come with her, and not only did he turn her down, he basically had a panic attack at the idea of leaving his life in South Boston. Chuckie knows Will well enough to know that it wasn’t just a casual fling, and he’s happy to end it because she left town. At the end of the movie, Will’s friends give him a car for his birthday, and he uses the car to drive to California to be with Skylar.
Now, maybe in 10 years he’ll move back to the greater Boston area, get a job at MIT or Harvard, buy a house next door to Chuckie and commute to his job from his old neighbourhood. Maybe his and Skylar’s kids will play little league games together, and the two will hang out to watch the Patriots (and they’ll be in for a hell of an era for that team). But, even then, he’ll have done what Chuckie wanted and not waste his talent.
The scene has nothing to do with leaving the Boston area to get a good intellectual job, and everything to do with not getting stuck in a rut, being scared to take a chance and use your talent.
a small neighbourhood in South Boston.
Aside from the underlying do something with your talent, I took the literal meaning to be getting out of southie. The Boston-Cambridge metropolitan area has many top schools and tech oriented companies that would be excellent opportunities …… but none are in southie. Southie has a very different stereotype than say Cambridge, or the financial district, or many tech areas
Southie has had a bit of a glow up and is maybe even a hip gayboorhood in some parts. But in the 1970’s they threw bricks at school buses because they didn’t want black children at their schools.
It has been a while since I watched the movie. But, consider the scene at the beginning where Will shows off his intelligence in a bar. I think the movie set that up as Will and his friends wanting to take a “field trip” to a non-Southie bar. It felt like they were far from the place where they belonged, even though it might have only been a 15 minute drive.
In any case, it isn’t just about leaving Southie. Like I said, at no point does Chuckie say “you’ve gotta get out of this town”. He just hopes that one day when he goes to knock on Will’s door, Will isn’t there. And, it isn’t because he wants Will to move to “a different town”, or something. It’s that he wants Will to not get stuck in a rut, never taking a chance on life, and not using his talents.
Will answering his door whenever Chuckie knocks doesn’t just mean he’s still living in Southie. It also means that he is probably still working the same job, still hanging out with the same people, still in the same rut.
For sure, and I’ve said that about the town I grew up in as well. It was an ibm town when I was a kid, so very tech oriented. But it was a smallish town in the middle of nowhere and no other tech company replaced ibm when they left.
I came back for my 20 year reunion and just thought everything was grey, run down, stuck in time. It horrified me how many people I knew had just stayed. One of my brothers friends was driving the same Camaro. The same guy with a mullet was selling weed. My best friend from that part of my life admitted he had never travelled more than 50 miles. His gig as a DJ at the community college had been cool at the time but …… doing exactly the same thing? It had been 20 years and I got caught up in no time because nothing changed
That, and he’s not saying “Will, you need to go do good math.” He’s saying that if he’s still here in 20(?) years, he’ll fucking kill him. And that’s because he recognizes Will, thanks to his extreme intellect (which we see isn’t nearly limited to math), can go wherever he wants and do basically whatever he wants. He recognizes that unlike himself, Will chooses to stay there because he’s living in fear of the unknown – that people will hurt him, something he doesn’t have to worry about with his three Southie friends.
He’s talking about emotional growth and self-actualization for Will, recognizing that staying stuck in the place where he grew up and was brutally abused is keeping him trapped, because that’s where he feels “safe”.
I know this is a joke, but it’s completely misrepresenting the scene to get there, and it doesn’t even seem like obviously ironic misrepresentation.
Edit: IIRC, he doesn’t even say that he needs to leave Boston, just that Will still hanging around with them would be the problem.
Thanks for explaining.
I miss Boston in the 90’s
I just realized Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society have been the same movie in my mind, but now I realize they are two different movies.
Both excellent works with Robin Williams as a primary character
Capable of such a wide range and not just being “Robin Williams”
Have you ever driven through Boston? It truly is a feat to get out of that town
You need a math degree to navigate those roads.
My favorite part of driving through Boston is seeing icons on maps apps I’ve never seen before.
I like to think there’s a maps dev somewhere who got requirements, and reacted with “Oh why the fuck would we need an icon with a road configuration like that? God damnit, its Boston again, isn’t it”
I’m sure Boston has kept the Open Street Map people on their toes.
And a girl to see about.
It you! You’re the Good Will Hunting!
Hehe “titular”
Best use of titular character is Barb Wire
Explain to a non-American why that’s funny/interesting?
MIT and Harvard are there, which, depending on specialty, are two of the best places in the world to do math. In addition, it’s a big finance and tech town, so plenty of non-academic math to be done, too.
MIT and Harvard are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is a different city on the opposite side of the Charles river.
I mean, technically, but that’s splitting hairs. It’s surrounded on 3 sides by Boston, and closer to downtown Boston than a lot of Boston is.
Which 3 sides?
Northeast (bunker hill), east (downtown), southwest/west (allston)
Boston is where MIT is.
As a cheezeburger patriot, I needed this comment, thx
I also had to double check to be sure. I thank myself for my service.
MIT, Harvard is basically there, Northeastern… no shortage of places for smart people to land in Boston.
Yeah, plenty of people good at math there. Go to DC. Politicians suck at math.
No, they’re good at math, they’re just doing nefarious calculations
I can concur
I thought of that (after posting my question) but according to Wikipedia:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
Cambridge == Boston?
No, Cambridge isn’t Boston.
Cambridge is very close to Boston, but it’s a different city. They’re on opposite sides of the Charles river. These days the river is very narrow (it used to be a lot wider in colonial times, but they’ve drained swamps and built over them since then). The two cities have integrated mass transit systems, and it’s a short walk across one of the many bridges to go between the two.
But, they’re not the same city. The two places have different characters. Boston has “Southie”, the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Bruins. Cambridge is much smaller and has MIT and Harvard. It has no sports teams (other than the school teams) and is a very rich and diverse city because of those rich and diverse schools. Politically it is very different from Boston. People jokingly call it the People’s Republic of Cambridge because even by Massachusetts standards it is very left leaning.
You forgot Tufts
Cambridge borders Boston, and is basically surrounded on 3 sides by Boston. Harvard is about 5 km from Boston’s downtown, and MIT is about 3 km.
Which 3 sides? To the North-East of Cambridge is Somerville. To the North is Arlington, to the West is Belmont and Watertown. Boston is basically only to the South-East.
It’s all Boston. I’m from Jersey, and half my state gets lumped in with NYC, so Boston, in my mind, subsumes the likes of Cambridge and Somerville. And it’s been almost two years since my last trip to Boston, but they may as well be part of Boston.
Yeah. It’s part of the greater boston area and is across the river from the boston borders. In the cities that’s close enough to be wrapped up as part of the bigger city.
"You need to get out of [major American city that is one of the best places in the world to be if you’re good at Math due to the universities]“
My interpretation was
- you gotta get out of this little neighborhood where nothing happens
Southie has a very different stereotype from many other parts of the Boston-Cambridge metropolitan area. All those schools and industries Boston is known for, are NOT in southie. It’s known more as a blue collar town
Well, used to be one of the best places in the world. Now the fact that it is situated in the US kinda makes it a not very good place to go.
I’ve never actually seen the movie, just the reference to it in Jay and Silent Bob Strukes Back. I heard good things though. Is it worth it?
Yes.
