Epsiode 4: McConaughey, Baby! Alright, Alright, Alright

I think everyone gets to be famous for cinematic redemption. Specifically, the 15 seconds on the internet. I know Andy opportunity that is often afforded to men Warhol said 15 minutes, but what with as they age to reinvent themselves from the attention economy being what it is, like raunchy sex comedy guy or generic I think 15 seconds is more feasible. If rom com guy, to serious actor. you listened to the first episode of this podcast, you may recall that I said that And you know who rode that career high my claim to internet fame was the fact so hard we even coined a portmanteau that people really hated a post I wrote for it? Matthew McConaughey! 2014 was about Matthew McConaughey’s tiny the year of the McConaissance! Alright, forearms back when this podcast was a alright, alright. Seemingly overnight, blog. That’s still true – I’m yet to one-up McConaughey went from roles in rom the glory days of the 2012 blog market, coms like The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, to unless someone wants to give me a Oscar nominated films and a real scene- million dollars and endless adulation for stealing TV performance in True Detective. making this thing. I am open all hours for Where did that come from? Could he both love and bribery. always act? Had we been hoodwinked by his broad chest and muscular (but Anyway, I’m not cover old ground with very short) arms into thinking he was more content on Matthew McConaughey’s a himbo? What gives? It seems like it’s very short arms, although I may say the worthy of investigation, to be honest. phrase a few more times, just to optimise to that search engine, baby! Woo! But I’m Alex. This is Pop Culture Boner – the if you follow the pod on Instagram - @ podcast edition – and today, I’m thinking popcultureboner – you may have seen about Matthew McConaughey’s career me do a call out for content, asking if redemption. there was anything specific that people wanted to hear me talk about. One of the Matthew McConaughey’s career has gone suggestions I got was about Bill Murray’s through a number of phases through the career arc from lewd comedies like Caddy years. He started out as a promising up Shack to artistically weighty things like and comer who was sort of accidentally Lost In Translation, where he gets to be iconic in one of his first roles. I even an at least semi-serious actor. What’s quoted it in the intro. Then throughout that got to do with our short-armed the 00s he was a sort of middle-of-the- Southern king, Matthew McConaughey? road rom com guy. This is obviously the Well, it made me think about chances for peak of my high school years, which arguably should mean that I have some and diverse roles and redeem himself. To recollection of him being a bit hot. Not plumb the depths of his abilities and pull like heartthrob level – but sort of in a out spectacular performances that makes standard rom com way, where I thought us all go “Wow! Maybe he can act?” he was passably handsome. But I always So, I wanted to spend some time today remember him as feeling a little bit too examining what ageing as a famous old or kind of too grizzled to be hot. He man changes about the types of roles kind of lacked the universal appeal that you receive, whether there was anything really big rom com stars have and hold. spectacular about the McConaissance Which is why the thing lots of people at all and why those kinds of explosive remember about movies like How To Lose rejuvenations of careers always A Guy In Ten Days is not the perfectly inevitably fail. Was the McConaissance reasonable onscreen chemistry, but the all it was cracked up to be, or was it just fact that Kate Hudson looks absolutely a fever dream with a tabloid title? Let’s spectacular in that yellow dress. He find out, shall we? was upstaged by a dress, is what I’m saying. But then from 2011 onwards, I’m going to be overly simplistic about McConaughey’s career starts to take something which is ultimately kind of an uptick and he starts getting better complicated, but I think it’s fair to say roles. Roles that are outside his usual that we don’t really let women age in rom com stomping ground. He is fucking Hollywood. The life cycle of most female with the formula, so to speak. And it stars goes young, beautiful and talented starts paying off, eventually culminating and therefore leading lady material, an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club. It’s the and then once they’re past their prime McConaissance! The press love it. People they’re either someone’s mum or they’re write endless profiles. a terrifying hag and a warning to the rest of us. The bigger the role, the more likely That should be a happily ever after, they are to be some haunting reminder of but then McConaughey starts making mortality dressed up as a speaking part. irredeemably bad films again. Basically There are some notable exceptions to this everything post-Oscar is a pile of garbage. obviously, but for the most part ageing And I do want to preface all of this by is something to be feared because it is saying that, yes, I do include Interstellar a decline. That’s why so many talented in that. I fucking hate Interstellar. It’s women’s foreheads don’t move any more such fake deep “time is a circle” bullshit – that’s not a judgement call, it’s just a that I can’t believe any of you fell for it. sign the botox is working. Also, it’s too long. Jot that down, I guess. This pod is anti-Interstellar. And even if But what about the men? Are they scared you like Interstellar, it’s still an exception of the impending meaningless fluffy to the rule. roles as someone’s wise old father? Are they frightened that someone will see Anyway, all of this timeline is to say their receding hairline and their dropping that we’ve given McConaughey endless jowls and cast them as a metaphor for chances as he’s aged, to pick complex lost dignity? Probably not. If they were, we’d probably see more immobile male Compare that with a woman of a similar foreheads. But as it stands, men in age – for example, Sigourney Weaver, Hollywood tend to have a longer shelf who I’m definitely choosing because she life before they are considered ‘old’, and was in Ghostbusters with Bill Murray. after they have tipped this point, they’re Now, I would never want to discredit afforded a certain dignity and wisdom anything Sigourney Weaver does that means that the roles they get have a because I love her, and obviously her lot more meat on the bones. They’re not career trajectory is slightly different to a warning – they’re wise. Bill Murray’s in the sense that she isn’t known as an exclusively comic actress. But But Matthew McConaughey isn’t old, most of the things that I have seen her in so what am I even on about? I think recently have been heavily referential to to understand the foundations of the her earlier career successes with the Alien McConaissance, and the way we as an franchise. Having her pop up at the end audience were primed for it, you have to of a science fiction film about aliens or a understand the scope we leave for male horror movie with ghosts in it is like a fun actors to improve with age. Or at least, be little nugget for audiences, regardless of taken seriously. I mentioned in the intro whether her performance is any good (it that the reason I’m even writing this is usually is). Being sort of unattached to because a friend mentioned Bill Murray. auteur directors the way that Bill Murray Now, Bill Murray got his start on Saturday is has meant that her appearances are a Night Live as a screwball comedian. He less consistently meaty in either screen went on to star in cult comedy classics time or substance. like Caddy Shack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day. But throughout his Now, while Matthew McConaughey is not career he’s also made several false-start in his 70s he was facing something of a attempts to become a serious actor – for dilemma pre-McConaissance. Throughout example, in The Razor’s Edge which he the 00s, McConaughey was the go-to co-wrote, and which was a commercial rom com guy. This period of his career and critical failure. They didn’t really produced such weighty performances start to stick until he was in his 50s, as Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Fool’s when we saw him do Lost in Translation Gold – I’m kidding. Most of them were and begin working with directors like objectively pretty bad films. Which wasn’t Sofia Coppola, Jim Jarmusch and Wes the problem actually – the problem is Anderson who have a little bit of weight that you age out of the rom com genre. as either serious or cool. Now that he’s in Or at least, you age out of the rom com his 70s, we see him pop up in cameos as genre as it stood in the 00s, where himself a lot, which kind of goes hand in the plot was always some variation hand with his kind of icon status, but you of “scumbag learns to love again” also see him doing roles like the Sofia or “successful nice guy woos career Coppola-directed On The Rocks which rely woman.” And in 2009, McConaughey on his age to deliver a certain gravitas to hit 40. Obviously, 40 isn’t so old that he the performance. didn’t still have some rom com life left in him, but it is rapidly careening to the point where people might say something radiates off his performances – there’s about the age gap between you and your this kind of roguish masculinity that inevitably 25-year-old female co-star. comes off him. In a rom com, that energy Lead actresses. You keep getting older seems to be wrestled into a kind of charm and they stay the same age. point. But it can also be re-directed into something darker. The Lincoln Lawyer has Presented with a career crossroads, McConaughey has a Southern Lawyer in McConaughey turned away from the perpetual motion, making deals, setting reasonably well-trodden road of up bribes and beating criminal charges. It decent-looking-rom-com-guy to decent- let McConaughey prove that he could go a looking-genre-cinema-guy (think like little dark, which gave him more scope to Gerard Butler’s switch from rom coms go even darker. to action movies, or Ryan Reynolds’ admittedly more eclectic comedy-action Following The Lincoln Lawyer he does a bent). Instead, McConaughey seemed number of roles which are essentially to be remembering the ‘next big thing’ variations on a the same theme. In Mud praise that had been thrown his way he plays a Southern fugitive with a heart after performances in movies like Dazed of gold, who guides a lost boy through and Confused, Lone Star and Contact. his adolescence. In Magic Mike he’s a McConaughey was starting to dwell on Southern male strip club owner who what it might mean to be a serious actor parties hard and loves his work. In his doing serious films. Luckily for him, much-lauded Wolf of Wall Street cameo opportunities were forthcoming, although he is a self-serving Wall Street guy by his own admission, McConaughey had raking in the cash. He admits he took his to take a pay cut in order to be considered role in Dallas Buyers Club because Ron for these roles. Too many years of cheesy Woodroof, the real-life AIDS patient who romance had tarnished some of his shine. smuggled unapproved pharmaceuticals To facilitate his transition, McConaughey into Texas, seemed like a ‘wild man’. The did a film called The Lincoln Lawyer. It parts take this roguish physical quality may surprise you to learn that the plot of that McConaughey has and amplify it. this film is actually the title of the movie. Matthew McConaughey is a lawyer who Which brings me to the next point, I works out of a Lincoln town car like some guess. Now have some context for the sort of Mad Max roving bureaucracy McConaissance, it’s time to ask ourselves scenario. if it was any good. I’ve watched about 9 McConaughey movies back-to-back It’s not a good movie, but it is a crime by this point, and I have to say that thriller. A crime thriller is a good vehicle my inkling is ‘No’. I’m not being unfair to tentatively launch a career revamp here, and I don’t even really mean it in because the central character is usually the sense of McConaughey being a bad just flawed enough for you to prove actor – I think he’s kind of fine and I’m some range. I read a lot of pieces about willing to admit that I did enjoy some the rise of McConaughey around 2014 parts of the McConaissance, particularly that talk about this sort of energy that True Detective (although I actually think we should give Woody Harrelson more life philosophies about the fact that credit for that, to be honest). Anyway, you’ve just got to keep living. While it I think what I’m trying to say is that might have been blunted somewhat with while McConaughey’s hey-day partially his waltz through rom-coms, something of occurred because we were so surprised to that role has seeped through everything see him do something other than “make he has ever done onscreen and off – a flirty eye contact with charming female stoner philosopher that has somehow lead”, I think another part of it has to tapped into some vital universal truth. do with McConaughey himself and his Critics said his new choices of roles life stage. Like I said, in my reading of felt ‘organic’, ‘deliberate’ and ‘bold’. various McConaissance think pieces from Rachel Syme in The New Yorker said around the time, people seem really that McConaughey was “tapping into drawn to the kind of physical presence something essential, remaining himself that he has on screen and very keen to while stretching”. Roles like Dallas in conflate that with his offscreen persona. Magic Mike were seen to somehow find That’s not incredibly uncommon for that roguish stoner genius of his youth celebrities – much of the mechanism of and drive it to the kind of darkness that fame rests on having a public persona comes with age. His career resurgence is that lends itself to likeability and seen as reflecting something essential or therefore ongoing employment. We dynamic in McConaughey himself. often glean part of that persona from the roles that they play. I was reading I think the McConaissance led us to believe about Sylvester Stallone’s rebranding of that McConaughey had taste – he was himself into a so-called geriaction star in choosing dark and interesting roles that late career moves like The Expendables. seemed to reflect his own reckoning with The article, by Mark McKenna, suggested his age and public person. I mentioned in that there was a conflation of real and the intro that men age into wisdom rather on-screen personas for Stallone in the than decrepitude, and McConaughey’s eyes of the public. His career defining roles from 2011 onward seemed to be roles like Rocky and Rambo have him exploring the kinds of fringe existence playing an underdog and used those that his stoned genius persona inevitably roles to frame himself as an under-dog hits when left unchecked. While I do in his public persona too, meaning that think the career moves themselves were as he ages, he can still take on the action a conscious result of a man reckoning roles he’s known for because he’s seen with a changing industry and an ageing as still fighting an up-hill battle against bod, I think I would be more inclined to big studios. I think we’ve done the same believe in the essential and vital nature for McConaughey. of the thing if it wasn’t for the fact that the fading years of the McConaissance Pre-McConaissance, McConaughey’s saw him miss repeatedly. Following most iconic role was Dave Wooderson his Oscar, he simply stopped doing in Dazed and Confused – the Southern anything worthwhile… except allegedly 20-something responsible for lines about Interstellar, but I have made my thoughts high school girls and giving half-baked on that garbage fire abundantly clear. Find better sci-fi, people. Christ. Anyway. root for McConaughey because there is Writing for Vox, Charles Bramesco something likeable his linked onscreen called these post-Oscar miscalculations and offscreen personas, and by making a common mistake made by one-off a big deal about it we all had to watch winners, “Namely that a good actor is a him stack it in real time. Which is kind of ‘serious’ actor, and that ‘serious’ acting unfair to the talent he does possess. is necessarily good acting”. A post- All this is to say – Godspeed, my tiny- award McConaughey has chosen serious armed Southern prince. May you soon films with serious directors, like Gus find your niche. van Sant’s Sea of Trees, which is about a white guy who inexplicably decides Welp! That was the McConaissance. to kill himself in the Aokigahara Forest When I wrote my blog post on Matthew in Japan but is saved by the ghost of McConaughey’s very small arms, it was his wife masquerading as a depressed in the early throes of the McConaissance. Japanese man. He’s also tried it on with I got so much hate mail and I remember period dramas like Free State of Jones, thinking “Wow, people are really which covers off a rebellion against the passionate about this very average Confederacy during the American civil dude”. Then two years later he won an war and is just a white saviour film; Oscar. Joke’s on me, I guess. If you have or Gold which is a promising double- a favourite McConaughey film, or you just cross movie about a goldmine that has want to accuse me of being a jealous man McConaughey in a bald cap, but suffers with a small penis (which is an actual from an unfortunately bad script. As an piece of hate mail I received), talk to me audience, we were willing to believe that about it next time you see me at the pub! McConaughey’s moves were a calculated Peace! re-evaluation of his own career and showed an understanding of how to move forward. What his post-Oscar choices prove is that he ultimately probably understands less than we thought, or at the very least, doesn’t really have the good taste to back it up.

None of this is a judgment call on McConaughey as an actor or a person. I think some actors will only win one Oscar and some will win many. Some actors will consistently and successfully re-evaluate their own skills to produce nuanced and interesting performances; and some actors will show rare moments of insight before immediately blowing it. It’s an artform, and we can’t all be blessed. Audiences and critics wanted to This episode premiered on 24th February 2021.

Episode written by Alex Johnson and produced by Wes Fahey.

Theme tune by Wes Fahey. (Soundcloud: lee snipes)

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