Actor / Screenwriter / Producer — Good Will Hunting, Bourne, The Martian, Argo, Air — Artists Equity — Cambridge, MA

Matt Damon & Ben Affleck's Watches: A Joint Investigation

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck co-wrote Good Will Hunting in their twenties, won an Academy Award, and have spent the thirty years since being each other's most reliable collaborators, creative partners, and mutual support structure. Neither of them is wearing a watch. We checked both wrists. We checked them twice.

Matt Damon. Wrist status: bare.

Ben Affleck. Wrist status: also bare.

Matt Damon was born on October 8, 1970, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ben Affleck was born on August 15, 1972, in Berkeley, California, and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They grew up as friends, attended the same schools, pursued acting simultaneously, and at some point in the early 1990s sat down together and wrote what would become Good Will Hunting — a film about a self-taught genius from South Boston who resists the help of everyone trying to improve his situation, which in retrospect says something about the Cambridge experience that we will leave to the academics. The screenplay sold. The film was made. Gus Van Sant directed it. Robin Williams won a Supporting Actor Oscar for it. Damon and Affleck won Best Original Screenplay. They were in their mid-twenties. The watches they were not wearing at the time were also not present at the ceremony.

The careers that followed were distinguished by range, resilience, and a mutual loyalty that has survived thirty years of tabloid interest, career peaks and valleys, creative reinvention, and the specific pressures of being two of the most scrutinized people in American popular culture. Damon built one of the most durable action franchises in film history as Jason Bourne, starred in The Martian, The Departed, Saving Private Ryan, Ford v Ferrari, and Oppenheimer, and has maintained the rare distinction of being both a genuine movie star and a serious actor. Affleck directed Argo to a Best Picture Oscar, directed The Town, starred in Gone Girl, played Batman, and produced and starred in Air — a film about the Nike deal that signed Michael Jordan, which is relevant here primarily because it is about a shoe and not a watch. Together they co-founded Artists Equity, a production company. Neither of them has been observed wearing a watch in the course of this investigation.

"How do you like them apples?" — Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting (1997). The apples are still not watches.

The Case Against the Cambridge Defense

One possible explanation for the joint watchlessness of Damon and Affleck is geographic: Cambridge, Massachusetts produced them, and Cambridge is not historically a city defined by conspicuous display. The intellectual culture of the area — MIT, Harvard, the broader ecosystem of people who are confident enough in what they know to not particularly care what they wear — might be offered as context. This is a reasonable theory. It does not explain why Jason Bourne, who grew up in a CIA black site and has no home, found time to track his seconds, while the man playing him did not.

A second theory: they are simply very busy. Between them, Damon and Affleck have starred in and produced dozens of films, raised families, maintained a friendship that has survived more public turbulence than most marriages, and co-founded a production company. Perhaps the watch is the one thing that did not make the cut. This is also reasonable. It is also not an excuse that we are prepared to accept from two people who have collectively attended enough award ceremonies to know that the right accessory on the right wrist is not nothing.

Our Recommendation (Joint Edition)

Damon should wear an IWC Pilot's Watch. Mark Watney survived Mars on ingenuity and available resources. The IWC Pilot is built for people who solve problems under pressure with whatever is at hand. It is also from a German-speaking Swiss manufacturer, which feels correct for the director of photography on a Jason Bourne film. Affleck should wear a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso — a watch with two faces, which suits a man who has played a caped vigilante and a shoe salesman in the same decade. Both watches are available. Both wrists are ready. The Academy Award, we note, has a clock face on the base. They know what time looks like. They have simply elected, together and separately, not to wear it. At spot.watch, we remain available for consultation.

Others Who Also Declined on Spot.Watch

• Palmer Luckey — No Watch (Confirmed)
• Mike Rowe — No Watch (Also Confirmed)

And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.