Kevin Smith played a major role in helping Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's breakout Good Will Hunting get made. But when the opportunity to direct it himself came up, he declined.
Smith, 54, recently relived his experience meeting Affleck, 52, and Damon, 54, in the mid-1990s and helping bring the Oscar-winning 1997 drama to the big screen with PEOPLE while discussing the 25th anniversary of his 1999 film Dogma, in which Damon and Affleck also starred.
Smith began working with Affleck as early as their 1995 movie Mallrats, by which time Affleck and Damon had already sold their script for Good Will Hunting to Castle Rock Entertainment. As Smith recalls, he helped set up the production at Harvey Weinstein's production company Miramax after Affleck told him Castle Rock intended to make the movie without Affleck and Damon in its cast.
"The first question that I was asked by Ben and Matt and the Miramax folks was, 'Do you wanna direct it?' I think they all asked that with clenched a------s hoping that I would say no," Smith recalls. "Naturally, I was like, 'Oh my God, no. If I were to direct this, I would just turn around to Ben and Matt the whole time and say, 'Is this what you saw when you wrote it?' "
Given that Damon and Affleck had written the movie themselves, Smith recommended to Miramax that the company also let the pair direct the movie.
"I was told that the lunatics would not be running that particular asylum, so the search for a director began at Miramax," he says.
As Smith recalls, "Twenty of the top directors on the planet were interested in directing" Good Will Hunting, including Michael Mann and Mel Gibson. Gus Van Sant wound up making the movie with Affleck and Damon in their now-famous roles, in large part due to Casey Affleck's interest in working with Van Sant again after 1995's To Die For.
The movie -- which Smith saw as "one of the best things I've ever read" upon reading its script -- ultimately helped launch Damon and the Affleck brothers as movie stars. Damon and Ben both won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, while Robin Williams won Best Supporting Actor.
Smith tells PEOPLE the combined success of Good Will Hunting and Affleck's 1997 movie with Smith Chasing Amy gave the group "enough juice" to put Dogma into production.
The filmmaker had given Affleck the scripts for Dogma and Chasing Amy at the same time years earlier but warned Affleck that producing Dogma would require "movie stars" in order to secure the larger budget required to make it.
"I'll never forget the first day we're on set shooting with Ben and Matt. Right before the first take, we're about to roll for the first time and the boys have been nominated for Academy Awards," Smith recalls. "So we're about to shoot, and I look at Ben,and Ben looks me dead in the eyes,and he goes,'Guess who became a movie star just to do your stupid movie.'And I was like,'Well done,my friend.Well done.'"