Au Bon Pain Restaurant Location, "Good Will Hunting" - Cambridge, MA - Movie Locations on Waymarking.com

In the Harvard Square section of Cambridge, at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Dunster Street, is an Au Bon Pain restaurant that was used as a movie setting for the movie, Good Will Hunting.

Good Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon) is a story about a gifted man, Will Hunting, who, with the help of a psychiatrist (played by Robin Williams) and a woman, Skylar (played by Minnie Driver) works through issues that he has and finds purpose for his life. The film is set in Boston and Cambridge, and several of the movie scenes were shot right in the area. In this case, there is a scene where Will and Skylar are talking at a cafe courtyard, which happens to have the decoration of an Au Bon Pain. In that scene, Will and Skylar start discussing the need to study O-Chem (organic chemistry), which develops into an analogy of his gift in understanding O-Chem from just reading the subject with ease to Beethoven or Mozart visualizing music from just playing the piano. Skylar so admires Will at this point that she kisses him, then pushes away. The scene ends when Skylar mentions having to leave in two months to go to California and says that he would like it there. Will is quiet after that statement.

The picture that I used to scope out Au Bon Pain can be found via the link at the bottom of the page. A better one could not be found at the moment. The scene is Skylar and Will sitting at a small table. In the background is a brick building with white trim. A key object is a white squarish sign mounted on the wall of the building. This sign is a historical sign about Cambridge. There is also a dark pillar with a lighter stripe just to the left of the sign. The glass with orange juice has lettering that identifies it as coming from Au Bon Pain.

At the Au Bon Pain, I tried to line up the pillar and the historical sign with tables to get an approximate location and direction of the shot. The sign is easy to locate. The pillar turned out to be a tree and the lighter stripe is an electrical conduit. The shot is one that has all the major elements in the scene. Line up your shot, buy a drink and sit in the same courtyard that Matt Damon and Minnie Driver sat!


Sources:

Film Locations for Good Will Hunting:

(visit link)

Image from film:

(visit link)

Movie or TV Show: Good Will Hunting Year Released or First Aired: 1,997.00 IMDB Link: [Web Link]

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.