by Neil Daniels
Magic Mike premiered as the closing film at the Los Angeles Film Festival on 24 June 2012. There was a huge publicity blitz for the film, which involved McConaughey, Tatum, Manganiello and Bomer participating in a photo shoot for Entertainment Weekly, which was published on 25 May 2012. McConaughey, Tatum and Manganiello also attended the MTV Movie Awards where they presented the ‘Best On-screen Transformation’ Award. Manganiello attended the presentation as a fireman stripper.
‘When I started showing the movie around,’ Soderbergh said to Film Comment’s Amy Taubin, ‘the first thing out of everyone’s mouth was, “Matthew McConaughey, what a crazy-ass performance.” He impressed the shit out of me. He showed up with a lot of ideas and they were all good. I described the part to him in one sentence and he said, “I know exactly who this guy is.” And he did. How he dressed, how he talked. Really fine.’
Magic Mike opened in US cinemas on 29 June and in the UK on 11 July 2012. It was a box office success grossing more than $170 million with just a budget of $7 million. Reviews of the film were also very good. Such was the acclaim for McConaughey’s performance that there was an Oscar buzz surrounding it and he won various nominations for best supporting actor from Broadcast Film Critics Association, Detroit Film Critics Society and Houston Film Critics Society. He won three awards for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ from Independent Spirit Awards, National Society Of Film Critics’ Awards and New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
Since July 2012 there had been talk of a sequel but nothing had immediately come into fruition, however in April 2014 the Channing Tatum-penned Magic Mike sequel, Magic Mike XXL, received a release date of 3 July 2015. McConaughey would be interested in a sequel if the story was right. Would the story be a sort of ‘where are they now?’-type situation. Sequels are often risky business, as punters usually want to see the first film remade; sequels rarely ever work as well as the original either, bar the odd exception such as The Godfather II.
McConaughey hopes that if the Broadway musical adaptation of Magic Mike goes ahead, they change his character’s name from Dallas to something else. He looks forward to seeing it, though.
Critics noticed how the film has nods to the likes of Shampoo, American Gigolo and Boogie Nights. They also praised McConaughey for turning his career around and offering one of the most interesting parts since his minor but pivotal role in Dazed and Confused and his lead role in A Time to Kill.
The Observer’s Philip French wrote: ‘The film’s most interesting and memorable character is Dallas, the club’s flamboyant owner, whose aim is to move to Miami and get into the big time. As played by Matthew McConaughey in a Stetson, black waistcoat, leather chaps and little else, he’s a warm-up artist who can bring the seated customers from zero to near orgasm in 10 seconds without leaving the stage… McConaughey’s performance reminds one of two other great movie MCs, Gig Young’s increasingly hysterical superintendent of the dance marathon in Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Joel Grey’s sinister host of the Kit-Kat club in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, both winning Oscars for best supporting actor.’
Jenny McCartney wrote in The Daily Telegraph: ‘I don’t know what fundamentally audacious change has been wreaked in the career plan of Matthew McConaughey, once the lazily handsome love interest in so many a forgettable rom-com, but it’s interesting to watch.’
The Daily Mail’s Chris Tookey said: ‘Another asset is Matthew McConaughey, dynamic on stage and off as Dallas, the egotistical owner of the club where Mike is the star dancer. McConaughey can look as if he’s on auto-pilot in routine rom-coms and often seems most interested in finding excuses to take his shirt off… However, in the right movie, such as last year’s The Lincoln Lawyer and now here, he is a powerful presence.’
McConaughey’s career, once the subject of critical derision, had taken a massive turnaround with The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Killer Joe and Magic Mike, and he had more films in the works that were to rejuvenate his career even further following that dip in the early 2000s.
Some reviewers were spot on in their praise for McConaughey in Killer Joe and Magic Mike, especially. McConaughey noticed how with Killer Joe he read the same four adjectives to describe his performance that he’d written in his diary and it was almost as if someone had stolen his internal thoughts. He’d never shared that passage before with anyone. The characters in those films had real identities.
Bizarrely, McConaughey joined British band The Cult on stage on Saturday 2012 and played the bongos. The band played a free gig at the Austin, Texas event as part of the Auditorium Shores Stage Concert Series and McConaughey jammed with lead singer Ian Astbury during ‘Spirit Walker’. McConaughey is just full of surprises.
The actor spoke at a press gathering for Magic Mike about his recent success: ‘I went back to back to back to back to back, and it was my most creative, constructive and fun working year I’ve ever had. I did not have one single day in all five films where I was not excited to get out of bed in the morning and go to work. I didn’t have one hour of complacency in any of the work I did in five films, and I’m happy to be able to say that because that’s not always been the case. It’s fortunate to be able to say that, and I got to work with a lot of very interesting directors and some very interesting stories and all characters that didn’t really pander or placate to any laws, government, parental guidance, what have you. When I say committed characters, that’s really fun because it’s boundless how far you can go, almost four dimensionally.’
*****
McConaughey was gearing up for more critical acclaim as his run of good luck was continuing. His wife and kids were healthy and his career was flourishing thanks to some bold decisions and creative manoeuvres. The film McConaughey released next was something altogether different.
The Paperboy had a limited theatrical release in the US in October 2012 but didn’t reach the UK until the following March. The film competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and it also screened at the 39th edition of the Flanders International Film Festival Ghent, 2012 Ischia Film Festival, 2012 New Orleans Film Festival, 50th New York Film Festival, 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and finally, at the 2012 Stockholm International Film Festival.
The Paperboy also stars Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and John Cusack and is directed by Lee Daniels; it’s based on the 1995 novel The Paperboy by American author Pete Dexter. McConaughey plays Ward Jansen, a reporter who goes back to his hometown in Florida to investigate a death row inmate.
‘I’ve always had an affection for the swamp, whatever it is, the murkiness, the humidity, the mystery,’ McConaughey said to Helen Barlow of SBS on working in the swamps of Florida during the making of the film. ‘I love the people there, I love the rhythm there, I love how time just seems to trickle along and gravity weighs more in the swamps. Mother Nature rules; that’s the main thing. People live there but you have to say, “I am a guest”. It’s coming at you in four dimensions. It’s not only coming from the ground up, it’s coming from the top down, coming from front-to-back and the back-behind. I get very turned on by that and all over. Spiritually, all over. I really like it.’
Lee Daniels likes to cast actors against type so for The Paperboy he wanted to make McConaughey look physically unattractive. Even Daniels’ mother, a fan of the actor, was shocked by the way he looked.
Critics were not overly keen on the film. Robbie Collin, writing in The Daily Telegraph, said: ‘Readers of the film’s Wikipedia page may spot the claim that it received “the longest sustained standing ovation of the festival at 16 minutes”. As someone who was present at that screening, and the cacophonous quarter-hour of jeering, squawking and mooing that followed, I think Wikipedia may want to clarify its definition of “standing ovation”.’
A majority of the reviews praised Kidman and yet barely mentioned McConaughey, but then again, her performance is show-stealing and she has the lead role. Time Out’s Dave Calhoun said: ‘One minute The Paperboy grabs for crude come
dy or racy vulgarity, the next it nods to swampy noir or issues of racial politics, sexual repression and generational divisions. The whole affair feels way off the mark.’
Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers said: ‘Boring it’s not. This campy Southern trash-wallow is too jaw-dropping for that. Already infamous is the scene in which Nicole Kidman squats down and pees on Zac Efron. Hey, a jellyfish stung him; urine is the best cure. There’s no cure for The Paperboy, the shamelessly lurid film version of Pete Dexter’s 1995 novel.’
Much of the acclaim for the film went to Nicole Kidman who plays Charlotte Bless, a woman who the inmate Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) has never met but has fallen in love with, and is adamant that he’ll be released so they can marry and receives regular correspondence from her behind bars. McConaughey, nevertheless, won acclaim from critics too and won ‘Special Award For The Best Body Of Work’ at the 2012 Austin Film Critics Association Awards and ‘Actor Of The Year’ at the 2012 Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards.
The Paperboy had a budget of just $12.5 million and barely grossed two and a half million at the box office, so much like Killer Joe, it was not a commercial hit at all, and although it did receive some criticism, it was another stepping stone in the right direction for McConaughey.
‘…I just wanted to go do some [different films],’ McConaughey expressed to Bill Graham of The Film Stage in 2012, ‘and it actually ended up being five films. They’ve all been independents. The material was much more attractive, the budgets were much lower, but working on them, it’s just so much fun.’
If McConaughey had any kind of conscious plan to rejuvenate himself as a serious actor and to reignite his seemingly flagging career then it was working. If it was an unconscious decision then whatever drove him to opt for these films completely revitalised him.
‘I enjoyed what I was doing,’ McConaughey said to Adam Sachs of Details, ‘but I felt like I did it last time and I can do it again tomorrow. I just wanted to shake in my boots a little bit. I want to go deal with some real consequence in films. I remember writing this down: “I want to be able to hang my hat on the humanity of the character every day.”’
McConaughey was a much better actor than he had been given credit for, especially throughout the 2000s when he was picking projects that may have boosted his bank balance but had not won him much critical favour. Directors such as Soderbergh and Friedkin would not have even thought of, let alone considered, McConaughey as he was in the early 2000s. He was a different actor these days. ‘Last year was arguably the best creative year of my career,’ McConaughey said to John Powers of Vogue in 2013, ‘and it was the first year I ever lost money. I wound up in the red – and had the best time doing it.’
Looking back at his career and the eclectic film roles, it is evident that he did not have any career path with regards to specific roles; he simply took whatever he fancied whether it was for the character, the story or even the money. He’s gone from playing lawyers, to a crazed cop killer, an FBI Agent, a male stripper, a journalist, a photographer and many other varying parts. He’s not a chameleon, an Alec Guinness or a Gary Oldman. McConaughey is recognisable in the parts. Maybe one day he will play a character that requires a complete makeover?
‘So, for whatever reason, I attracted those things and then went after them,’ he told Susan Wloszczyna of Roger Ebert.com. ‘What I found – this is something I notice now as I explain it – is I really kind of said I really want to have an experience. I am going to go for something where I say, “I’m excited about this, I am scared about it for the right reasons, it’s intriguing, I can’t forget about it, it’s on my mind, it’s got its teeth in me.” I want the experience.’
It’s common for actors to move their career into different directions; sometimes it is for the money and fame, other times it is for longevity through acclaim and awards. Some actors manage to get the balance even, some don’t. McConaughey’s career path had been an interesting one with so many contrasting films. It was worrying in the early 2000s when he was almost becoming a lame Hollywood parody – a once notably talented actor, good looking and modest with a good career ahead of him and a small body of work in the late 1990s that had won him praise but whose films were now nothing but poor Hollywood comedies and sickly sweet dramas. It was as if throughout the 2000s, with a series of rom-coms to his name, that Matthew McConaughey had almost become a genre to himself. He’d usually play a professional of some sort, masculine but sensitive and indecisive. Those cheery smirks of his were usually part of his characters’ appeal as cringe worthy as they are at times. McConaughey has a Lothario charm and a sneaky ability for self-parody with his Texan drawl and pitch-perfect timing. But then he got bored of those traits and has since begun to choose his roles much more carefully.
‘I tell you one of the real joys, for me,’ McConaughey confessed to Total Film on his motivations for acting. ‘My favourite part is the making. I like the daily going to work. I love being on set, it’s my favourite place to be. Daily making the construction of the character, making a movie with a bunch of people who’ve all come here to do this, that’s my favourite part. Afterwards, what makes me feel the best? Well there’s two things as an actor. One is if someone goes “I know that guy, I know him” that’s a real compliment in the sense that you’ve created a character that is somewhat documentary for that person because it felt like a real life character.’
McConaughey gets a real kick out of members of the public who approach him to say they were affected by one of his characters and then quote some dialogue from the film. Usually he gets identified with Woody from Dazed and Confused but it’s great when it’s a different character from another film. And then McConaughey returns conversation by discussing the film from his point of view. It’s not cool when he’s hounded during important social functions or when he’s with his family, but he does appreciate knowing how much people admire his work. His recent run of films saw McConaughey play characters that lived on the fringe, that didn’t pander to society’s conventions. They’re almost like outcasts who live in their own world. McConaughey was intrigued by these roles and sought to solve the mysteries surrounding the characters.
‘There’s a science to it somehow, but I don’t know the equation,’ McConaughey explained to Deadline’s Christy Grosz on his recent choice of film roles. ‘Honestly, I didn’t have things that I was grabbing ahold of. Career was going fine. Enjoyed what I was doing. But I was like, “Let’s spice things up a little.”’
His track record showed that even his most successful films were not massively popular worldwide, while some of his critically acclaimed screen outings were box office failures. Nonetheless, films such as A Time to Kill, The Lincoln Lawyer and Magic Mike were successes both critically and commercially; McConaughey needed to land more of those types of acting roles if his career was to continue in the right direction. Lucky for him, it did. Directors had become more important, too, as he’d gotten older. He became much more interested in working with filmmakers who had fresh ideas and an original point of view.
‘Somewhere in that endurance, after a year or two, other films started coming,’ McConaughey admitted to The Guardian’s Andrew Pulver on his more recent roles. ‘I didn’t go after Killer Joe, Billy Friedkin came to me for it. Soderbergh called me. Lee Daniels called me on Paperboy. I saw these as very determined, singular-willed fringe characters, arresting and kind of scary. I’m hanging my hat on reality and humanity, not morality. Not placating or pandering to any convention.’
CHAPTER NINE
OSCAR WINNER
‘I’m surprising people. ‘Jeez, You’re really emerging McConaughey. I’m seeing you differently.’
Matthew McConaughey, The Daily Telegraph, 2014
McConaughey with his wife and children rented a house in New Orleans where they would base themselves for the two movies that he was making back to back; first the already-released Magic Mike, followed by the soon-to-be-released Mud. Camila stuck with her d
ecision to stand by her man wherever he went. When McConaughey goes to work he takes his family with him. They become part of the adventure.
Mud is written and directed by Jeff Nichols and co-stars Tye Sheridan, Sam Shepard and Reese Witherspoon. ‘I remember seeing him in some of his romantic comedies. Actually, I saw him in Dazed and Confused, Fool’s Gold – Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, that was probably the first one I saw,’ Sheridan told Red Eye Chicago.
The film is about two fourteen-year-old boys, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), in De Witt Arkansas who meet a fugitive named Mud (McConaughey) on an abandoned boat stuck high in a tree on a small island in the Mississippi River. They want to keep the boat and Mud promises it to them if they bring him food while he stays on the island. They learn that Mud is a fugitive and help him evade the vigilantes that are after him and also help to reunite Mud with his true love, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon).
McConaughey has known characters like Mud in real life. Coming from the South he has met people from provincial towns and rural areas who are fully committed to their own way of life. If someone like Mud were to go to a city or the mainland, he wouldn’t know what to do, so in that respect he is institutionalised because he only knows one way of life. Mud gets his knowledge from the real areas – the rivers, the islands. His life is so ingrained in the ways of Mother Nature.
The premise for the film was hatched in Nichol’s mind back in his student days when he read Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer in 1999. Nichols had McConaughey in mind for the lead role having seeing him in 1996’s critically acclaimed film, Lone Star. Then Nichols watched Dazed and Confused and knew there was something about McConaughey that made him right for the part. ‘I wrote it specifically for him,’ said Nichols to Elle’s Holly Milea. ‘He’s like Paul Newman. Put him in darker roles, and his innate likability still comes through. It makes for a compound statement.’
