The Big Picture - Matthew McConaughey | Career Arc

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

With Harmony Korine’s latest film ‘The Beach Bum’ now in theaters, Sean, Amanda, and Rob take a look back through Matthew McConaughey’s mercurial career—including his breakthrough moments, peaks and valleys, and where his stardom stands today. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Amanda Dobbins, Rob Harvilla Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about some of our most fascinating movie stars. I am joined, as I have been recently, on these career arc episodes by a pair of thoughtful, deep, and possibly very high career archaeologists, Amanda Dobbins and Rob Harvilla. Hello, guys.

Hi, Sean. All right, all right, all right. Yes. There we go. Thank you, Rob Harvilla. Hello guys. Hi Sean. All right all right all right. Yes. There we go. Thank you Rob. Someone had to do it. In under 30 seconds. In case you couldn't tell from Rob's beautiful impersonation this is an episode about the the life and the career and the essence of Matthew McConaughey who is of course starring in a new movie Harmony Curran's new movie The Beach Bum which is in theaters right now. And we're going to be talking about that movie quite a bit. But before we do that, we're going to do what we always do on this show. This is only the second time we've done it. We're going to analyze different stages of an actor or actress

or director's career. And we're going to talk about the breakthrough moment and the personal pinnacle for each of the three of us. And then we'll talk about the big movie that's out right now. So, you know, guys, before we get started, I want to talk a little bit about just your personal connection to Matthew McConaughey, who has been in our lives for a long time, perhaps longer than I even realized when I was looking at this guy's career. Amanda, what is your general relationship to McConaughey? Well, like his career, it goes in phases. And we're going to talk a lot about, I actually don't know how much we'll talk about

the 2000s, but- You will talk about the 2000s. I will talk about it. Matthew McConaughey starred, he was a rom-com idol in the 2000s. And that's a very interesting time in romantic comedies. And it's a not so interesting work-wise, but in terms of a career arc, very interesting time in Matthew McConaughey's career. And that's kind of how I was introduced to him or how he became a part of my life. How about that? I knew about Matthew McConaughey, but I was very conversant in those romantic comedies. And then I was a culture blogger during the McConaissance. So it's in terms of watching an actor or a public figure, um, reinvent themselves and have a kind of public narrative that we're all participating in, in real time. He's a really prime example for me. Um, I can't really think of him without thinking of just this, not even transformation, but a return to self that he experienced. Would you say that time is a flat circle, Amanda? Oh my God, yeah. I would have to at this point because you all do so often. Rob, what about you? I suspect that your true relationship with Matt Mack,

which is something no one calls him, but I'm going to call him that occasionally on this show. Not me. What's your relationship to McConaughey? Because I assume it started before Amanda's. Yeah, I mean, it started very simply as like, I just want to listen to this person say words for the rest of my life. I mean, I do think he has just my favorite voice in Hollywood and possibly in the larger celebrity sphere. I mean, I'm pretty sure my introduction to him, like most people,

my age, our age, was dazed and confused. And just every word that came out of his mouth just sounded beautiful for lack of any other way to put it. I think following his career subsequently, I wanted to ask you guys, the McConaissance, that term sort of implies a really deep valley in the middle of his career. Matthew McConaughey is sort of a guy, when I started following and writing about entertainment, following the arc of an actor or a celebrity and the low points and the high points, I was always kind of confused by the McConaughey-sances and ideas. What was he recovering from? He doesn't really have a G-lee in that sense. I don't think there's one moment that's a terrible moment. And it's like, literally 90 seconds ago, I remembered that he was once arrested for playing bongos naked. That's the thing that happened, right? What a legend.

That wasn't the low point. But he's one of the first actors who I perceived as having this media-driven rise and fall arc to him. And I could never quite figure out what caused like the fall, I guess. I mean, I bet you have a lot of thoughts. I was going to say, Rob,

have you seen ghost of girlfriend pass and or I haven't fools gold and or forces of nature. And, uh, you know, the back half from 2005 to 2009, he's in a lot of leading man roles that are tough. And those are not good romantic comedies.

And those are not in any way the essence of McConaughey as we have come to understand him. And it's an interesting arc because he basically 20 years later returns to himself. It's an arc that I know, flat circle, blah, blah, blah. I get it. But he really is, the reconnaissance, I think more means that he finds his essence again, as opposed to coming from some valley. It's like a new expression, or some might say the original expression. Well, I think it's also about what we deem to be quality versus and meaningful artistic choices

versus things that are pop or frivolous. I think particularly in that period that you're talking about, Amanda, you've basically got 2004 Sahara and Two for the Money. Things kind of start to go a little south there. And he's just making a lot of stuff that is moderately successful, but just not very good. And when he comes back with The Lincoln Lawyer and Bernie and Killer Joe,

and we'll talk about that period, he seems to have turned the ship. And he starts working with, you know, filmmakers that he had worked with in the past or people who seem interesting and on the forefront of something. And so I think the reconnaissance, Rob, I guess for lack of a better phrase, has just meant he started doing good stuff again. And I would argue towards the end of this podcast, we're actually in a phase where, with the exception of the movie we're going to be talking about at the end, he's actually made more bad stuff in the last five years than good stuff,

and maybe more bad stuff than he did in that fallow period. But nevertheless, let's go back to the very beginning. Rob, you wanted to talk about days as a sort of breakthrough. So what is it about David Wood uh that enraptured you i mean i feel first of all this is there is no need to overanalyze him that movie like this moment like he's in days and confused for like 10 minutes maybe you know and like just to jump right in like his delivery of the line i get older they stay the same age is like this perfect mixture of like casual and formal. That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.

He knows, the character knows how good a line it is. The actor knows how good a line it is. Like he takes a little step forward. Like in that exact moment, like I realized that for the first time that he's wearing good a line it is. The actor knows how good a line it is. He takes a little step forward. In that exact moment, I realized that for the first time that he's wearing salmon-colored pants and a Ted Nugent t-shirt. It's just this beautiful transcendent moment that doesn't need to be belabored. But it's like, this guy is a star, just right in that moment. And the other scene in Days that I love rewatching, he pulls up alongside another car, like a burger joint, and the two guys in the other car go like,

oh, Christ, like immediately, like they can't stand him. But the driver of the other car, a young redheaded lady who I believe is Marissa Rabizzi, is smitten with him. Okay. Say, you need a ride? No, I got my own car thanks yeah well listen you ought to ditch the geeks in the car with now and get in with us but that's all right we'll worry about that later i will see you there all right bye he tells them about the new fiesta it's

happening at the moon tower there's going to be fresh kegs and it's just i would just i would just follow this man anywhere and i watching it again like i feel there's a version of days and confused like the studio like focus grouped like diluted belabored version of the movie that feels compelled like to have an actual plot and like a moral would make his character not like the villain but like the cautionary tale like the worst case scenario. Like you don't want to end up like this guy, actually. Like, one of the things that makes it great is like it's a high school movie

where at least some of the actors look like they could conceivably be in high school. And so it makes it hard to tell like how much older he's supposed to be than the rest of the people. But I love the way that like his job is working for the city. Like he says that several times and doesn't of the people. But I love the way that his job is working for the city. He says that several times and doesn't elaborate at all. But he's kind of lame. Part of what makes

Ben Affleck's character lame is that he shouldn't be there anymore. I think he flunked. He got held back a few grades or something. He shouldn't be hanging out with these people anymore. And it should theoretically be the same for him, it's not but even at the end like when they're on the football field and he gives the speech about like it's about living l-i-v-i-n like you can take that as like really profound you can take that as like kind of pathetic like there's a version of the movie where like the the plot is like the football player trying to decide whether to sign like the promise not to take drugs or whatever like it that moment could be the football player realizing like i don't actually

want to end up like this person you know and if i agree to like not fuck up like even 20 of the time then i won't end up like this person but like the actual movie can't bear to do that to mcconaughey and like mcconaughey's performances is too good to even make you feel like he's even a little bit pathetic. Like it's just, it's a very fine line and just uncomplicatedly a beautiful thing. But like, when you think about it, it's, it's just, it's perfect. He's unquestionably one of our most beautiful statutory rapists. He's just, it's amazing. It's amazing how willing we are to forget that that is literally the point of that character is that he is a predator. And it's like, oh, what a charming predator, you know, and that is really his power.

Like this is the first significant role that he had. And it's it's one of his best roles. It's it's like communicates a lot about the kind of actor that he is, even though he's, as you said, Rob, on screen for so, so little. Amanda, what did you think of Dazed? Yeah, I agree with you. It's just kind of an instant stardom. I was on a podcast recently talking about Pretty Woman, and the power of that movie in a lot of ways is just you're watching Julia Roberts become a star in real time. And it's so rare to see someone in one of their first movies just like be fully formed.

It's kind of like, OK, you know what you are and so does the director and you know how to be on screen. And like, I understand the qualities that you're going to bring to your other roles. Like you have just you've got star quality from the get go. And like he clearly does like Dazed and Confused is kind of, it's his first movie or his first big movie, but also definitely the thesis statement for the rest of his career or at least the successful parts of his career. And people don't often figure it out that early.

It's true. And it's notable though that it takes a few years for him to find real stardom. You know, even though I think anybody who saw Dazed and Confused when it came out, and it was not a huge box office hit, like there's something going on with that guy. Who is that guy?

And then he appears in significant roles, but not necessarily the lead role in Angels in the Outfield, which I'm sure we all know and love. Bobby Wagner, our producer, a baseball fan. I'm certain he's seen it. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Next Generation, which is quite bad.

He has a small role in Boys on the Side, in which he's very charming. And he has a smaller but crucial role in Lone Star, which we've talked about on this podcast before. And then comes A Time to Kill. Now, if you are listening to this show, you probably know how much I like the John Grisham adaptations of the 1990s. This was a subgenre that Hollywood thrived on over the years. Amanda, The Pelican Brief is one of your favorites. I love The Pelican Brief. The Firm is one of my favorites. I'm a big fan of the client. Rob, you and I were having a grand old time recounting some of the ridiculousness of

A Time to Kill, which I had forgotten and yet still feel entertained and compelled by. It's actually quite a gruesome story. And if you think Wooderson is a sleazebag the stuff that happens in A Time to Kill is awful it's uh it's a it's essentially a courtroom drama um about a man who is on trial played by Samuel L Jackson and his lawyer is Matthew McConaughey and Matthew McConaughey is playing essentially modern day Atticus Finch a person who is like uh he starts the movie out as sort of a wastrel, like a slick, drunk, southern courtroom operator. And by the end of the movie, he transforms into this morally righteous, profound, emotionally resonant figure. And this movie is really weird. I cannot believe this movie exists.

And so intense and so upsetting. And it also features a million famous people. Sandra Bullock is essentially McConaughey's right-hand woman who is helping him with the case, who understands the law significantly better than McConaughey's character does. Samuel L. Jackson, of course, is on trial. He plays Billy Ray Cobb. Kevin Spacey is the DA who comes in from out of town and is quite evil. Brenda Fricker plays

Matthew McConaughey's secretary. Oliver Platt plays his legal partner. You know, Donald Sutherland, I believe, plays his father. Is that right, Rob? It's like it's not his father, but like the lawyer who gave him his start

and is now a drunk sort of wasteoid. Right. He's McConaughey's protege. His father figure. His character's name is Lucian Wilbanks. Right. His father is his protege. His father figure. His character's name is Lucian Wilbanks. Sure. Which is just some

perfect John Grisham-esque southern writing. The reason that I chose this movie as his breakthrough is because it's the first time that McConaughey is in the center of the frame

the whole time. The movie lives and dies by him. And because of its preposterousness, I think almost any other actor wouldn't have been able to pull it off. And of course, there's a very, very famous speech at

the end of this movie that we're going to listen to right now. I want to tell you a story. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes. I'll tell you this story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. So, on the one hand,

I remember seeing this movie for the first time and being in tears. I remember feeling like this was a profound moment in American cinema history. But you know, the what if she was now picture she's white. It seemed like a revelation at the time. I was like, man, and then that's really the problem with young white men. Upon reflection, it probably hasn't aged that well. Rob, what was it about a time to kill that struck you? Well, now I'm in tears, uh, Sean, I, I have, I, I figured I would just do my top three favorite moments from this film, if I may. Um, number three is a tie between the way he pronounces the word defendant, uh, which

he says several times. It's mesmerizing. I, and it's tied with the fact that the judge is named judge noose. That's his name. It's, it's a metaphor. Um, that's,

that's, um, number two is when Matthew McConaughey leaves court to personally punch a hooded and robed Klansman in the face in the midst of like a Molotov cocktail throwing race riot that is transpiring outside the courtroom. This is halfway through the movie. It's a two and a half hour movie. This is after the first of several burning crosses and before the sniper attack. So that's number two. And number one one is when the clan burns his house down or like blows his house up or whatever and matthew mcconaughey is sitting in the wreckage afterward

like looking for his dog and like his dog is fine like everybody's fine but he's he's crying for the second for the of three times in the movie the third time is during the closing argument and he while he's doing this he is wearing a john cougar mellencamp tour t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and it's just he's it is like everybody in this movie is super sweaty at all times like i just imagine there was like an industrial strength barrel marked like sweat parentheses sexy in it like ashley judd is his wife and like it's it's just an amazing performance in the midst of a ludicrous legal thriller. Nevertheless, I really like it. And I watched it recently. I visited my brother. My brother had a kid. And my brother and I had watched so many movies together growing up. We would just sit

in front of HBO for hours and hours. And lo and behold, here I am on this podcast just talking about those movies I watched. But we caught a time to kill. I was visiting him after having a baby, and they were hanging out at their house. and we were in it within five minutes. I was like, we can't leave the house. We were going to go to a brewery. We're going to have some afternoon. And I was like, no, we have to stay here. We have to stay and watch this movie. And it holds a unique power. And I think McConaughey is the center of that power. And it's just a, it's just a weird artifact of nineties pop culture. I think this movie is so weird. And this is really, I

must have seen it when I was like 12 or 13. I would have been 12 when it came out. And this was just some real like with adult eyes, whiplash of just being like, wait, this is what this movie was about. And this is all the things that were happening. And Matthew McConaughey is at the center of it. So that speech we listened to, that is a five minute speech in the movie. It is just five minutes on Matthew McConaughey's face as he recounts the extremely brutal and gruesome graphic details of the rape of a young girl. And it's just, it goes on and on and on. And Matthew McConaughey as like the source of moral authority and the, Matthew McConaughey as Atticus Finch, knowing what we know about Matthew McConaughey now is hilarious to me.

I think it's so funny that we were like, yeah, that seems right. But I went back and I was curious about the contemporaneous reviews and they were pretty positive. They were. And pretty credulous. It was interesting to me. I think it was the Janet Maslin review in the New York Times that was talking a lot about the Matthew McConaughey star power even then. Like he was really positioned in 96 as the matinee idol and was on Vanity Fair, and she kind of made reference to the media saturation of McConaughey as the sex symbol even before you get to see this movie. And the associative powers of him is like, it's Matthew McConaughey,

almost like he's Tom Cruise. And I think of Matthew McConaughey and Tom Cruise as very different actors at this point in time. But in 96, I guess they were being positioned the same way. It's wild to look at now. We didn't know that much about him. We had not seen him naked banging on a bongo in a paparazzi photo. And so it was a lot easier to accept him in a role like this.

Now, I think because he's a credible actor, you could still see him in The Lincoln Lawyer, you know, 20 years later and still buy that he could do something like this. He's, because of that great voice that Rob was talking about, he's kind of a perfect lawyer. He's a perfect speech giver. You know, he's kind of made for movie star soliloquy. Even though he doesn't always seem like the smartest

guy in the room, there's something that you want to be close to with him. And it's kind of interesting what he does after this, because when you pick your breakthrough moment here, you're going to shoot way into the future. I'm skipping a lot, yeah. And the stuff that he does in the late 90s is interesting. He kind of returns to that courtroom thing in Amistad, another also racially complicated, bizarre, only in the 90s kind of movie. And they're really so close together. It's so odd that that is the tact that he took. You know, he went on to make a bunch of other movies

that are kind of fine. I can't recall a big movie star whose films I have skipped more often than Matthew McConaughey. And that's why it was kind of interesting to go through this. But, you know, if you've got movies like Ed TV and U571.

And then you get into The Wedding Planner, which is, I would say, beloved by a certain segment of McConaughey fans sure I mentioned to Juliette Libman that we would be doing this and she said The Wedding Planner is one of my favorite movies yeah Juliette is one of my dearest friends and my comrade in many things

but she and I differ on some rom-com things that's you know it's what keeps the relationship interesting after all these years I wouldn't say that The Wedding Planner is on the top of my list. It's a fascinating artifact because obviously Jennifer Lopez is the star and it's Jennifer Lopez in an interesting moment in her career. So it's kind of two people doing things that are very different from what they do now. How about that?

And we have a lot of history with them since then. It's, I don't know. It's a weird movie. There's some very weird politics between Jennifer Lopez and the guy that she's supposed to marry. And then until Matthew McConaughey shows up, I don't know.

People watched it. People referenced it. It's certainly in the canon. We talked a little bit about the mid 2000s and everything that McConaughey did there. You went even further into the future for your breakthrough. Where did you go? Well, again, this is cutesy because you guys picked the ones that are obvious,

but you picked the real ones. I went with Magic Mike. Now I want to go with a few rules with y'all tonight. It ain't that hard. Don't worry about it. All right, rule number one, this is the what can you touch and not touch rule. Can you touch this? Can you touch this? And I alluded to the McConaissance earlier, and I know we'll talk about it some more. But after that decade of romantic comedies and kind of weird choices, Matthew McConaughey in,

it starts in 2011. It starts with the Lincoln lawyer. He does Lincoln lawyer. He does Bernie. He does killer Joe. He does mud and they're, they're not romantic comedies starring Jennifer Lopez and they're a little weirder. And he's kind of leaning back into the dazed and confused some of those are leading roles but just kind of you're not your typical leading matinee idol kind of role and magic mike is kind of when it all clicked together in the public consciousness can't imagine why that was for you yeah i mean mean, it's extraordinary. I remember at the time, but even now I watch this and I'm just like, I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe it's just like Matthew McConaughey fully greased up. You thought he was sweaty and a time to kill.

But my man, you know, leaning into the voice that Rob is talking about and just a total. He's not a total derelict because he's supposed to be a mentor to the other people. I think it's important that this is a supporting role. We should talk more about his supporting roles going forward. But not only is it when this new phase of McConaughey kind of really solidifies and you think, oh, wow, he can do some different stuff. He can be that bongo guy on screen. But it's also when people really started investing in McConaughey as this weirdo. I think because Magic Mike was, for obvious reasons, something of a cultural phenomenon. It sure was. Thank you, Steven Soderbergh, forever and always. But I think this is when the McConaissance really takes off. And I think this is how you get to True Detective. I think it's how you get to an Oscar. I think it's how you get to... He levels up.

And so it's a breakthrough to greatness. Wow. You know, I chose for my personal pinnacle a movie that comes right before this. And it's a little bit of a cheeky pick. Because it's hard to effectively organize McConaughey's career because I think he's often best when he's used somewhat sparingly. And, you know, none of us are going to choose Dallas Buyers Club as a centerpiece of this conversation because I don't think that's a movie that the three of us really like very much, even though

that's the movie for which he won an Oscar. I chose Killer Joe, which is a, just a very fucked up movie. A Time to Kill is a curio from the 90s. Killer Joe is evil. It's sort of purposefully evil. It's directed by William Friedkin

and based on a screenplay by Tracy Letts, which is based on his play. And it's just a, like a low down, dark,

Texas tale of murder and incest and crime. And there's something disgusting about it in a lot of ways and something a little bit haunting about it. But what it signaled for me and the reason that I'm choosing it in this space is McConaughey taking chances again. And I think that that's something that was missing for him from a long time. He does funny stuff in that fallow period. He's very funny as, um,

as the agent in tropic thunder. Yes. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Tug. You are a huge star. All right. But right now you're like that kid on the playground. You know,

the one, the one who has lice that none of the other kids want to play with. What do you mean? I mean, we got to shave your head and get you back on the monkey bars, right? What? I mean, we gotta shave your head and get you back on the monkey bars, right? What? You know, that's like one of his best sort of minor key roles

and he has other minor key roles that he'll, you know, the Wolf of Wall Street probably most famously since Days of Confused. He's so funny in the Wolf of Wall Street as Mark Hanna. I don't care if you're Warren Buffett or if you're Jimmy Buffett, nobody knows if the stock is gonna go up, down, sideways, or in fucking circles. Least of all stockbrokers.

It's all a fugazi. You know what a fugazi is? Fugazi. It's a fake. Yeah, fugazi, fugazi. It's a wazi. It's a woozy. It's a fairy dust.

It doesn't exist. It's never landed. It is no matter. It's not on the elemental chart. It's not fucking real. Right? Right? Right.

But Killer Joe is a full blown commitment to serious craft and even if you don't like that movie it definitely portends you know certainly Magic Mike which you talked about

Mud and The Paperboy which is also a ludicrous film oh my god in which he's really going for it and Zac Efron

is really going for it and Nicole Kidman is really going for it if you haven't seen The Paperboy I recommend it as a totem of a broken society. And so Killer Joe, even though I don't know if it's like the most rewatchable movie that he's ever made or even his best performance, there's something about that

choice that sticks with me and indicates that whether it was out of desperation or a desire to kind of reconnect with something originating about wanting to be an actor. I really thought that that was where he thrived. I think you went a little earlier, Amanda, on your personal pinnacle. Yeah, I did. And again, this is a little cheeky, but we just have to talk about how to lose a guy in 10 days. Take the lady's luggage back to her place. She has alternate transportation.

You call him my bluff? You bet I am. That is a really, I don't want to say important because I think it's a really, really tough rewatch. But that was, that represents a real moment in romantic comedies. And that is a real reference point for romantic comedies that come afterwards, certainly for the rest of Matthew McConaughey's career. I think many people would put it in sour and depressing. And, you know, many rom-coms teach you bad lessons about how to be a woman in the world. But that teaches you some, like, really dark ones. But at the time, it was successful. And I think it just kind of instantly became one of the cable rewatch and one of the points of conversation. And he is really essential to that. So it's also kind of before Magic Mike,

what I think of when I think of Matthew McConaughey. For me, that decade is like his kind of leading man Hollywood career until he reinvents it. Rob, when's the last time you saw How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? Five days ago, I believe. I'm sorry. That's incredible.

I'm really sorry. What did you make of it? Oh man, well, first of all, the first. I'm sorry. That's incredible. I'm really sorry. What did you make of it? Oh, man. Well, first of all, the first time I saw that movie in the theater, I was working in an alt weekly in early 2003, like just thinking of stupid story ideas. And one time I went to five rom-coms in a row at the theater. I just bought a ticket for one and then snuck into four subsequent movies.

Remember when you could do that and how great that was? Yeah, man. Yeah. Okay. It was one of the worst days of my life, if I'm being honest. All right. Well, you're the reason that women aren't in movies anymore, Rob. So... Yo, hey, wait a minute. Listen. It was How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Made in Manhattan, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Deliver Us from Eva, and I I cannot for the life of me remember the fifth movie and it's going to bother me for a long time. But I was most excited for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I too found it sort of incredibly sour. I think I've already said on here that I hate the

moment, the ugly fight moment that is sort of a requisite romantic comedy trope. But I feel like this movie is entirely an ugly fight in a way. And then the actual ugly fight, I literally couldn't watch when I rewatched it. Sean, can I get you to watch this movie if I tell you that there's a scene where they go to an NBA finals game at Madison Square Garden and it's Knicks-Kings? Oh, so this is a real fantasy. Yeah. square garden and it's nick's kings oh this is a real fantasy yeah and they it's they the first thing that happens is they adorably yell at the refs for displaying bias toward the kings it's like the least believable thing that happens in the entire movie and i yeah it's just i found it

all a little ridiculous like it's fine if the dog if you want to have the dog pee on the pool table but i i just believe that he can't the dog cannot also then pee on the poker table. That's one step too far. Sean, do you know the plot of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? This is a movie I've definitely seen 30 minutes of on and off on TNT for 15 years. It's not a movie that I've ever sat down and watched start to finish. Okay, but so what do you think the plot of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is? Okay, this is from whole cloth.

I'm making this up. This is fun. This is why we do this. I'm going to say that Kate Hudson is a magazine writer. Yes. And she's been given an assignment to essentially seduce and destroy an eligible bachelor for a story in her magazine. Is that right? Mostly, yeah.

I mean, destroy is like, that's an interesting choice of words that, you know, we can analyze later. And yeah, she's trying to... When will we be analyzing it? I don't know. I mean, I just like... Like on my deathbed? Yeah.

I'm not going to be around for the animation part of this the assignment is to teach women what they're doing wrong in relationships ah and so she does like all the things that like women are doing wrong to scare guys away like you know being needy or but and like what else tell me more it's like i mean i mean they're terrible so one is like letting a dog pee on a pool table like don't do that that is bad i mean sure but also it's presented in like the don't like protect his male space you know i encouraged my wife to include in her vows at our wedding that she shall ensure that no dog ever pee on my poker table. Yeah. There's another one where she befriends his mom with like by the second date. I mean, it's like it's all really, really intense crazy person behavior. There's like a scene where she names his penis Princess Sophia.

So that's like pretty tough. But I mean, that's true. It's a real thing. I have no comment. Yeah. But so don't do any of the things in this movie. But the lessons are of it are like you just have to walk on eggshells around a man or else they won't like you, which is which is not great. It's not it's not the best. And and then also that writing about relationships is not a real career. So you have to move to DC to be a political journalist. And that's the only way to get people to take you seriously and fall in love. That's a very bad lesson. Yeah, so it's not great, but they have pretty good chemistry. And I think it's also, this is definitely the most successful of the many rom-coms that he did.

Yeah, it is. It feels legendary, even though I don't know much about its legend. Yeah. Rob, what about you? Personal pinnacle, I have to assume, does not resemble How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I'm afraid it does not. I do honestly think it's True Detective. I don't want to know anything anymore.

This is a world where nothing is solved. Someone once told me time is a world where nothing is solved. Someone once told me time is a flat circle. Everything we've ever done or will do we're going to do over and over and over again. And that little boy and that little girl

they're going to be in that room again. Which is sort of in the A Star Is Born tier where it's just incredibly impressive that that character, that performance, that show has endured despite being interneted half to death. Like, you know, like we,

between the three of us, and by that I mean Sean, made like 75 times of flat circle jokes just during like the construction of this podcast like it's just that his performance has just been memed half to death and i it still resonates and i think as true detective has gone on like the pile on on season two is a little bit of overkill but it just it did prove that delivering like super hard-, like, do you even lift bro? Like sub Nietzsche dialogue is like actually very, very, very, very difficult, even for someone like

Vince Vaughn, you know? And I just, I think a lot about the scene in true detective where like they kill a scary guy and then they have to fake a crime scene to justify killing the scary guy. And there's a shot of Matthew McConaughey firing a machine gun, like just spraying machine gun fire over an empty field. And it's just the coolest anyone has ever looked firing a machine gun on camera anywhere. And then there's a subsequent scene

in the older timeline when he's like scraggly and he's describing the fake shootouts to like the cops who are interviewing him. And he's like pantomiming firing a the cops who are interviewing him and he's like pantomiming firing a machine gun he's got like this whoa dude type expression and he just looks crazy and there's a little bit of daves and confused sort of peeking through there like just the two poles of that alone and like i have seen those two gifts many many times like just ultimate badass masculinity versus like ultimate like hilarious pathetic like outdated

masculinity it's just there's there's just so much happening and it's his dialogue is so wordy and so ridiculous and just so self-parodic in a way that like the internet both loved it and immediately just started parodying it but like it actually does resonate and it actually has survived all of the meta-ness surrounding it. And it's still mesmerizing now. Yeah, I agree with you. I haven't returned to it. But at the time, it felt like an appropriate use of McConaughey's self-belief in kind of emotional juju bullshit. You know, that there is something like faux philosopher about him that is used in

a different way in the beach bum. And I'm sure we will talk about that, but it is this, it is the much more serious and stark and grave and masculine version of it. And it's effective in the mold of this, I think otherwise ultimately unremarkable story. I think that's a very well-made show with a plot that did not live up to its attendant hype. But without Woody Harrelson and especially McConaughey, you don't really have all that much. Even if you had Cary Fukunaga making a beautiful thing, you still needed those guys at the center. And I don't know, it's just the appropriate use of McConaughey. And you can sense when McConaughey talks about this show that he was a big time creative partner in making the character of Rust Cole.

You know, that he was in some ways the author of the essence. You know, that's the whole thing. McConaughey is always kind of, his characters, his best characters are always kind of questing for something. They're either questing or they're like setting the agenda. Mark Hanna in The Wolf of Wall Street is setting the agenda for Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort. In this movie, he's really setting the tempo for the story. And the time is a flat circle thing is a gag, but he's trying to make it mean something, even if it

doesn't. You know what I mean? That's kind of what I like about McConaughey. He's never giving less than 110% as a performer. Amanda, True Detective, no? No, I think, yes, it's good. And I've just been thinking a lot about, especially if you were, as I have established at this point, a woman who in the 2000s was watching him in all of these rom-coms and kind of like a handsome and charismatic,

but sort of anodyne male lead. And then he just turns a corner and becomes true detective bro. And that's just a very funny referendum on masculinity over the last decade in general. And I don't even mean that in a negative way. I'm just like, huh, that's pretty funny. The other thing I was just thinking of as you were talking about is that he really he has a knack for like the iconic line or the iconic moment you know even when you were talking about Wolf of Wall Street I was just imagining him like beating on his chest which I yeah I've

had I've had a lot of allergies this week and I've been trying to dislodge some stuff and like I have been beating on my chest and then thinking of Matthew McConaughey. But obviously, time is a flat circle. The Dazed and Confused, you can think, and even A Time to Kill. Now imagine she's white, which is, I mean, that's a lot. But you think of him and you can really imagine specific moments and both the physicality and the energy and like everything that he's doing is really instantly memorable in a way that not everyone has that ability. I agree with you. I want to share a theory that our colleague David Shoemaker has crafted about McConaughey's career, particularly this stage of his career. He says 2011-2012 was his contract year. He did a bunch of oddball parts and quote-unquote serious acting to earn the superstar contract.

Then came Dallas Buyers Club, for which he won an Oscar, True Detective that we're talking about here, and Interstellar, which is a major motion picture from Christopher Nolan. Yes, Amanda? Yes, and one more thing. What's that? Can we play the Lincoln commercials? Yes, let's play the Lincoln commercials. 1,800 pounds and do whatever the heck I want

I can respect that and and Shoemaker said after all of that he's officially first team all Hollywood even if he never does anything good again and that's notable because for a while, he didn't really do anything very good. You know, his movies, let's just go through his movies for the last couple of years. I'm not a big fan of Interstellar, though. It was a big hit and it is well liked by Christopher Nolan fans. And then comes the Sea of Trees, which is one of the all time debacles of this decade. It's a Gus Van Zandt movie about a man who goes to visit a forest in Japan

in which suicide happens often, which later became infamous from a Logan Paul video. But that is what that story is based on. Then he made Free State of Jones, which is a completely forgotten, similarly white savior, complicated movie. And then he makes Gold, which is a movie that I thought was actually kind of interesting, but completely came and went. And then he makes The Dark Tower, which is terrible. And then White Boy Rick, a movie that came out last year that also sort of came and went. And then one of the all-time curios from January, Serenity with Anne Hathaway. Now, these are all movies that on paper sound like they should work. The Dark Tower in particular, the long-awaited Stephen King adaptation of that novel series,

and they've all bricked. And so we find ourselves at the beach bum moment. You have pissed away your talent on women and booze and... Now you're talking. That's what feeds the juices up here in my nugget, man. I get all these things going. I start to hear music. The world's reverberating back and forth, and I hit the frequency. Amanda, you and I saw it at South By. I'm most interested in Rob's thoughts on this movie. Yeah. Rob, can you explain the context in which you saw this movie for the people at home?

I would be delighted to. I saw this movie at 9.50 a.m. today. The theater was completely empty. I was the only human being in the theater. I was as high as I've ever been in my life, which is not true. But I did consider getting some popcorn, though I didn't because it was 9.50 in the morning. But still, the thought felt illicit in a way that I felt like put me in the proper mindset for the beach bum. And probably because I knew I was the only person in the theater.

I don't know if I've ever laughed harder for longer. I laughed like an idiot through the entire scene where Snoop Dogg admits his affair. And I can't explain to you why that scene as opposed to literally any other scene in the movie but something about i'm i'm talking really sexual situations with your wife like just sort of triggered me and like they're taught they're comparing the size of their dicks relative to her hands and it was just i was it's just i was delighted in like a really ugly and embarrassing way at that.

And I feel like everyone should see The Beach Bum exactly as I saw it, which is in a theater alone at a disconcertingly inappropriate time of day, such that you're isolated from society. I don't know if any of you played a lot of Grand Theft Auto in your lives, but I would play Grand Theft Auto a lot. grand theft auto in your lives but like i would play grand theft auto a lot and then i would like drive to the grocery store and i would have lost all sense of like decorum and the law and i would have to sort of actively stop myself from like driving down the sidewalk and like firing rocket launchers at people on motorcycles or whatever like i drove

away from the theater with like just having lost all sense of like society in just a very pleasant but also very disturbing and possibly dangerous way like it just it just struck me as his dazed and confused character taken to his logical conclusion like just l-i-v-i-n is like an entire movie i completely agree the grand theft auto reference is not lost on me too, because this is kind of a very low key episode of the Vice City installment of that series. You know, just the way that it looks and where it's set and the tonality and the kind of characters that you come across and the surprising explosions and the sex, everything, and certainly the drugs, everything that's happening inside this movie, which is oddly a very slow leisurely deliberate 90-minute movie about a burnout poet who is married to an extraordinarily wealthy woman in miami but lives a kind of

itinerant creative lifestyle on the fringes of florida decadence i i don't i've definitely never seen a movie like it i've certainly never seen a movie like it. I've certainly never seen a movie this strange with this many famous people in it. Let's just talk a little bit about it. You mentioned Snoop Dogg. You also mentioned Isla Fisher, Rob. Zac Efron appears in this movie with a Panini-inspired haircut. Jimmy Buffett is in this movie. Martin Lawrence, memorably, as a sea captain with some personal handicaps. And Jonah Hill in what is definitely one of my favorite performances of the year as a literary agent. Amanda, what do you think of when you think of that screening of The Beach Bum that we attended?

I was unexpectedly moved by it, which is just like, I don't know. I don't know what to say. It was that the moment that we were in was that just like I was really tired. And I, you know, I, everything that you guys said about the weirdness and the gratuitous everything in this movie is 100% true. And I was like, wow, this is just a really romantic movie about embracing life. Like, just like, I don't even know what, like, what does that say about my mindset? I don't know. I do think it seemed pretty autobiographical to Harmony Corrine, who is certainly a unique individual with a unique view of the world and does live in Miami. And I think just, like, wants to make art and not worry about it and float through life. I don't have that ability as a human at all but i it i admire it

it seems lovely and aspirational hedonism i think is kind of the the subtext here yeah um but also you can tell that like the the work means something to him which which i do admire. So I thought, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. And, you know, it's not some great masterpiece on like existence, but actually maybe it is now that I say, but you know, it's not like a heavy weighty, important movie, but I was really taken with it. And I also just, to Rob's point, it really does seem like the essence of McConaughey. It's like McConaughey coming home and in many ways is marrying his attempts to be a leading man with his deep character actor weirdness. And they're finally together in this lovely movie where he wears a lot of really strong patterned shirts,

which I also loved. I really enjoyed the aesthetics of this movie, I will say. It is beautiful. And I agree with what Rob said, too, which is that it does kind of feel like the logical conclusion of Wooderson, which leads me to ask, I don't really know where Matthew McConaughey goes from here. You know, Shoemaker's observation that he is just on the team now forever and can kind of do whatever he wants, I think is correct. But Matthew McConaughey is not a young man. He's going to turn 50 years old this year.

So it's easy to see what 50-year-old George Clooney or Tom Hanks was going to be. It was evident what kind of roles they were going to take. Sort of. So it hasn't totally worked out for George Clooney just because leading man at this point in 2018 means something really different than it did 20 years ago. It's very true. But I think you, George Clooney would never play the beach bum. You know, McConaughey is operating on a unique frequency and he is honestly more daring than most of his leading men contemporaries. So, Rob, what do you want to see out of Matt Mack, our old pal?

I have to say, I really did like The Lincoln Lawyer, which is sort of on the outskirts of the McConaissance. And it's sort of like A Time to Kill in that it's like an airport fiction legal thriller. And I think you're right, Sean, that he's a soliloquizer. And he's perfect in that sort of sense. And so, you could see him, whatever the 2020s equivalent of Perry Mason is. I think he can really thrive there. I don't think that he deserves an Oscar for The Beach Bum necessarily, but I'd rather he have won his Oscar for this movie than for Dallas Buyers Club. I think this movie is much truer to his essence and truer to him.

I don't think Dallas Buyers Club is a bad movie, but I hate that that's the movie he felt like he had to do. It's sort of to get an Oscar. It's like the quintessential I want an Oscar movie. The man was talking about Magic Mike. It's striking that those movies are one year apart, like Magic Mike. And then the next year is Dallas buyers club.

And like, he's gotta be super frighteningly gaunt. You know, it's a movie where he has to learn something like he starts out homophobic and then he's not homophobic anymore. Like it's green book by other means. Like I, I've always been vexed by this question of like what he wants.

And if he sees that version of himself, like the super actorly oscar anointed figure of dallas buyers club when like yeah it's what's great about the beach bum is you feel like are there really paparazzi photos of the bongos thing i didn't know that i'm gonna i guess i'm gonna have to look into that but like it's like dude yeah it's it's it is that incident personified like into a character into a movie. What you can say about The Beach Bum is it's truer to its lead actor than any movie that I've seen in years. And you guys obviously spent this last Oscar season just talking about when somebody is due and there's

an air of inevitability versus when they deserve it and what role is truest to them. And I feel like the beach bum is as perfect as you're going to get in terms of displaying what i think of as his real self as his real character like his his idealized version of himself or at least my idealized version of him and so yeah it's i i agree that you can't see clooney in that role and subs i i don't know where he goes from there and i don't know where he wants to go from there. Maybe he doesn't have to go anywhere at all. You know, maybe he can just kick back, break open a cold one, check out a UT football game.

I think he's great in supporting work and in being weird. And there aren't that many opportunities like the Beach Bum where you get to be weird and have the the vision of Harmony Korine supporting and elevating your specific qualities so I agree with Rob I'd like to see him take more roles that lean into that basic expression of uh the bongos you know that's what we think of but that's also interesting as Rob was talking about like you you know, what does he want? And I was like, McConaughey like doesn't, he already has an Oscar and he doesn't need to do that. And like, I don't even think he ever wanted an Oscar, but I don't know. Like he definitely played the game and won an Oscar. He definitely did leading roles for a long time. So I don't

know if I'm projecting that level of laid back bongo-ness on him just because he's so good at it it does seem like that's his natural state and I would like him to follow it but maybe maybe he really wants to be a serious actor again I don't know you know what my favorite thing about Matthew McConaughey movies is what I get older and they stay the same age Amanda Robb thank you so much for chatting with me about the career arc of Matthew McConaughey we'll see you soon on a future episode of this show.