Back to...1998?

Last night on the Golden Globes Ben Affleck won the best directing award and my jaw fell to the ground. Ben Affleck? Who would have thought it; I know he's won an Oscar for writing and all, but who thought this would happen. I haven't seen Argo, yet, but was planning on seeing it before this happened. I mostly think of Affleck as the not so serious and not quite as talented half of a famous bromance (the other half being Matt Damon).

Back in 1998 when they won the Oscar (watch it here) for writing Good Will Hunting, I was on vacation in Los Angeles. We went down to the Shrine Auditorium (where the Oscars were being held. You can't really get close enough to see anything without fighing massive crowds so we found ourselves hanging out on the sidewalk where all the limousines line while waiting to turn onto the street where the occupants would exit to the red carpet. Surprisingly, we were the only people on the sidewalk and we were free from the mayhem in front of the building. We found it much more fun to try to guess who was in what car; we could see the sparkles of sequences and diamonds through the tinted windows. We could tell someone was wearing a green dress and later decided it had to have been Kate Winslet.

The most exciting event was when a hand came out of a sunroof with a piece of candy. My friend ran over and excitedly took it. I don't know if she ate it or not (I can't remember) but she said she got a good look at the hand of a young-ish man. We spent the Oscar viewing analyzing hands and decided it was either Ben Affleck or Matt Damon. It had to be.

Within the past few months both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have both been guests on David Letterman. I don't know if it was intentional or not; I would think not, but they both told the same story. Apparently, when Ben Affleck was giving the cast of his film, The Town, a tour of Boston (the location of the film) he pointed out Matt Damon's apartment. At this point Blake Lively exclaimed something like, "OMG, you know Jason Bourne." To which Ben Affleck was taken aback because he thought everyone knew about his best bud. This made Affleck and Damon feel a little old and irrelevent. I actually had a different reaction to the story. It made me think of Blake Lively as an airhead because, in the very least, who doesn't read the imdb page for the person that will be directing them? Clearly, she had no idea who Ben Affleck was; her agent or someone told her she should make this movie and she said, "ok." And that was that; she did not do any legwork to prepare herself.

Getting back to 1998. The best part for me was actually a few hours after the Oscars were over and we decided to go back to the Shrine. Nobody was really there at that point, but some blockades were up so you couldn't just walk into the building. There were maybe ten people still hanging out and out of nowhere Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin suddenly walked up. She had her the Oscar she had just won for L.A. Confidential (one of my favorite movies) in hand and she walked up to us to show it off. Baldwin stood back on the street and watched, seemingly proud. Soon, their marriage ended in a most spectacularly horrible way. It's funny and kind of odd that I can look back on the lives of these people I don't know.

Well, that was the best Golden Globes I have seen in awhile (thought the acceptance speeches seemed a little long). Wonder what the Oscars will be like?

P.S. Remember when Jennifer Garner was in Felicity? And what do you think J'Lo thought of all the cuteness radiating from Garner and Affleck? I couldn't help, but think of Bennifer.


(Photo Source: top School Ties with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, bottom Ben Affleck's hands Sunday Night)