ALTHOUGH her name is not mentioned in any of its forms -- J. Lo, Jenny, Jen --the inescapable image of Jennifer Lopez hovers over the clever Off Off Broadway satire 'Matt & Ben.' ' Set in 1995, when Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were struggling actors, the play has Ben fantasize about being famous. 'I'm going to meet Daisy Fuentes,' he says. 'I like Latin women.' ' The line gets a huge, easy laugh because we are all saturated with too much information about the couple sometimes known as Bennifer. Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers, the women who wrote the play and also appear as Ben and Matt, turn celebrity overload to their advantage, embracing our shared image of the actors -- Matt is the smart one, Ben is cute but dumb -- even as they send up the embarrassing amount of trivia we carry around about movie stars. The play shrewdly connects to its audience by tapping into our encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture. 'Matt & Ben' (now running at P.S. 122 in the East Village) had its premiere a year ago at the New York International Fringe Festival, at the very moment when the Ben and Jen Show was about to overshadow the Legend of Matt and Ben. Despite the hovering spirit of J. Lo (the line about Latin women has been added since the Fringe performances), it's the Legend that is central to the play. Script Matt And Ben PdfInstahack crack attack game. GOOD WILL HUNTING by Matt Damon & Ben Affleck. FADE IN: EXT. SOUTH BOSTON ST. PATRICK'S DAY PARADE -- DAY CUT TO: INT. L STREET BAR & GRILLE, SOUTH BOSTON -- EVENING The bar is dirty, more than a little run down. If there is ever a cook on duty, he's not here now. As we pan across several empty tables, we can almost smell the odor of last. Mindy Kaling & Brenda Withers as Ben Affleck & Matt Damon, respectively, on the TV show 'Cold Pizza' as the script from GOOD WILL HUNTING falls from the. Matt And Ben AffleckWe all know the story, of how two best friends came out of nowhere to win an Oscar for writing 'Good Will Hunting,' their first and so far last script together. 'Matt & Ben' depicts the only plausible explanation: the screenplay fell from the sky. Actually, here it falls from the ceiling into Ben's shabby apartment, cluttered with beer cans, nachos and a framed head shot of himself. 'Gigli' is a bad, boring movie. Any romantic comedy about a smart lesbian mob enforcer who falls for a bumbling male mob enforcer who has kidnapped a brain-damaged young man is probably going to stink. But it's not unwatchably, off-the-charts, 'Showgirls' bad. It's 'Hollywood Homicide' bad. Like this summer's excruciatingly dull Harrison Ford film -- a widely panned box-office dud -- 'Gigli' is the kind of big-budget turkey that's never hard to find. Only Ben and Jen overload can account for the savage critical response. The heads of critics and audiences are bursting with icky echoes of the couple's hourlong 'Dateline' interview, in which they pretended to be surprised at the media attention, and with images of her flashing what is inevitably described as her 6.1-carat pink diamond engagement ring custom made by Harry Winston. People magazine, Jay Leno and the rest of the adoring infotainment industry maintain the pretense that celebrities matter to us personally. The creators of 'Matt & Ben,' with their fond but pointed sendup of celebrity overload, understand that while we're insatiably fascinated by stars and their bizarre spectacles, we don't care in any profound sense. To us, the Ben and Jen Show is a real-life popcorn movie, a humorous diversion; the ring only proves that Harry Winston can be gauche too. That attitude helps the play speak to a younger audience raised on movies, television and entertainment gossip, for whom 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Mad TV' are bedrocks of popular comedy. It's not surprising that 'Matt & Ben' was the only play at this year's United States Comedy and Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo.
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December 2018
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