Williams and Damon on a Park Bench - "Good Will Hunting" - Boston, MA, USA
Posted by: 
NorStar
N 42° 21.258 W 071° 04.243
19T E 329458 N 4691191
This bench, the spot in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams' character is lecturing Matt Damon's character about love, at the passing of Robin Williams, became an impromptu memorial to him.
Waymark Code: WM6AWR
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 05/04/2009
Views: 34
Good Will Hunting was a successful movie released in 1997, and starred Ben Affleck, Robin Williams, Matt Damon, and Minnie Driver. The film was written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and directed by Gus Van Sant.
IMDB states the plot as: "Will Hunting [Matt Damon], a janitor at MIT, has a gift for mathematics which is discovered, and a psychologist [Robin Williams] tries to help him with his gift and the rest of his life."
The web site, Eclecticinspiration.com, has a scene snapshot and a quote from the movie. They are sitting on a bench in a green park. There is a statue in the far background of a man on a horse and some sculpted bushes. The psychologist, Sean, gives Will something to think about. Essentially he says that though Will may know a lot about math, he knows little about what love really is and relates his own experience as he watched his wife fade away and die.
The movie location is Boston's Public Garden, which, together with Boston Common, are the green core of the city. The statue in the background of the movie location is of George Washington on his horse. The angle on that statue puts the location somewhere east and north of the statue. By the pond, there are backless benches, which fit the appearance of the benches in the movie location. The location mark is the best guess of the actual bench used. The largest of the bushes is recognizable, but some of the other bushes don't match up, exactly. My guess is that some of the bushes have been planted since the movie was made.
8/12/2014:
Yesterday (8/11), Robin Williams passed away. Today, the bench became an impromptu memorial for him. Throughout the day, flowers and other items have been left there. A bag of sidewalk chalk has been left here and people have been writing and drawing on the surrounding sidewalks. A small gathering of over 50 were present at the time of the visit in the evening. Tomorrow, rain will come and wash the sidewalks clean(ish) - I imagine that the sidewalks will soon be recovered.
Another note is that I seem to be off one bench. The bench with the offerings is within a triangular grass area delimited by sidewalks on all sides. According to a reporter on WCVB (TV Channel 5), the original bench was taken out years ago. So, it is possible that both the bench used as the impromptu memorial and the one I selected were the closest ones. However, new coordinates were taken and edited at the 'memorial' bench, and new pictures have been added from 8/13.
Sources:
Yahoo Movies:
(
visit link)
eclecticinspiration.com (with movie quote for that scene):
(
visit link)
The person who posted this waymark makes no claim to ownership of the picture with Williams and Damon.