10/30/2026
GOOD WILL HUNTING — SOME MOVIES STAY WITH YOU
Last night I watched Good Will Hunting for probably the fifth time. Strange thing about that movie. You can go years without seeing it, and when you do, it hits just as hard. Maybe harder, because you’ve lived a little more life in between.
I see pieces of my own life in that film. The stubbornness, the pride, the mistakes, and the long road a man sometimes takes before he figures out what really matters.
I grew up with a tough-ass father who was a Marine. Men like him weren’t much for explaining themselves or discussing feelings. You learned to stand your ground, take your lumps, and get on with it. Love was there, but you sometimes had to look pretty hard to find it.
Maybe that’s why I eventually opened an American Irish tavern. A place where working men could sit down, tell their stories, argue a little, laugh a lot, and occasionally say something they’d never say anywhere else.
About ten years ago, I flew into Boston with the Mrs. and our daughter Ali. We were headed for Cape Cod by ferry the next day, but I had a little mission of my own.
I wanted them to see the bars from Good Will Hunting.
Now, some men travel to see great museums, cathedrals, or famous battlefields. Apparently, I’m strange enough to drag my wife and daughter across Boston to visit a bar where Matt Damon once sat drinking b**r in a movie.
Our first stop was Woody’s L Street Tavern in South Boston.
We were hungry, and the bartender sent us down the street to another neighborhood bar that served food. When we got there, the bartender told us the kitchen was closed.
Then she looked at the three of us and said she’d make us ham and cheese sandwiches on white bread.
And she did.
Nothing fancy. Just three sandwiches made by a woman who didn’t have to make them.
I’ve eaten in some wonderful restaurants in my life, but I still remember those sandwiches.
Funny what stays with you.
There’s a line in Good Will Hunting about how you can know everything in the world from books, but there are things you won’t understand until you’ve lived them.
I think redemption is one of those things.
You spend the first half of your life trying to prove you’re tough enough, smart enough, or good enough. Then you spend the second half discovering that none of those things matters nearly as much as you thought.
Sometimes redemption comes from forgiving a father who only knew how to be tough. Sometimes from recognizing your own mistakes. And sometimes from realizing that the greatest thing you ever built wasn’t a business or a bar, but the life and family that came along with it.
And maybe that’s why I love Good Will Hunting.
It’s about a young man who had every reason to be hard, finally discovering he didn’t have to stay that way.
I suppose there’s a little Will Hunting in a lot of us.
