Everything happens for a good reason, although Hollywood occasionally takes its sweet time proving the point, as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck discovered.  While Matt Damon rides The Odyssey for what feels like an actual odyssey, the actor revisited the disappointment he and Ben Affleck faced when they were not chosen for Dead Poets Society, only to work with Robin Williams on Good Will Hunting. As in, the very 1997 smash hit that made the duo Hollywood royalty overnight and gave both men the sort of multi-decade careers that make rejection look almost embarrassingly useful.

The star also touched on how things turned out when Matt Damon and Ben Affleck finally decided to put their minds to work in Good Will Hunting.

While speaking to Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused about turning down James Cameron’s Avatar, Matt Damon explained why career decisions can feel impossible to understand in the moment. He recalled being 18 when he and Ben Affleck auditioned for Dead Poets Society, believing the Robin Williams-led film was the opportunity of a lifetime. They lost the roles, then spent that summer working at a Cambridge movie theater showing the film.

"There's something where he talks about, 'I thank God for my unanswered prayers,'" Matt Damon said, referring to Garth Brooks’ 1990 hit 'Unanswered Prayers.' The reference perfectly captured the bitter irony of watching packed audiences leave Dead Poets Society in tears while he and Ben Affleck had been serving popcorn and had to "sweep up after every show". As Matt Damon remembered it, the pair could only think, “That could have been us.”

Then came the twist worthy of a particularly well-written Hollywood screenplay. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck eventually wrote Good Will Hunting out of necessity, and Robin Williams joined the film through a genius bet of his own that made their earlier disappointment look suspiciously like a detour. The point that Matt Damon was trying to make while talking on Happy Sad Confused is that life can be unpredictable: sometimes, the Dead Poets Society opportunity you miss is simply making room for the Good Will Hunting opportunity you were meant to create.

“He Was a Ruminator”: Matt Damon Reveals Robin Williams’ Obsessive Perfectionism on ‘Good Will Hunting’

Although Good Will Hunting gave Ben Affleck and Matt Damon a major career win, the film only became so profitable after taking some seriously big risks.

Good Will Hunting began with Matt Damon writing a 40-page one-act play for a Harvard University class before giving the unfinished problem to Ben Affleck, who presumably had nothing better to do than help turn homework into a Hollywood career. The lifelong friends expanded it into a screenplay, complete with an FBI subplot about recruiting Will Hunting, before Castle Rock suggested that the troubled genius might be more interesting without the government hovering around. When studios wanted established stars, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck refused to sell unless they could play the leads, even inserting a ridiculous kissing scene to identify producers who had not actually read the script.

This was a daring position for two actors whose bank accounts and résumés were not exactly overflowing with leverage. The pair had pooled their money for acting expenses before splitting a $600,000 screenplay sale, then watched the payday vanish beneath agent fees, taxes, $55,000 Jeep Cherokees, and a $5,000-a-month Hollywood party house. Their remaining $110,000 disappeared within six months, but the $10 million film later grossed more than $225 million worldwide, earned nine Academy Award nominations, and won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, proving that sometimes stubbornness is simply ambition wearing a cheaper suit.

“Ben and I Risked Losing the Movie”: Matt Damon on the Verge of Losing His Breakout Role in ‘Good Will Hunting’

Do you think Matt Damon and Ben Affleck would have done a good job in Dead Poets Society? Let us know in the comments!