User:Nikau/Matthew McConaughey
Matthew David McConaughey (born November 4, 1969) is an American movie star with two profitable, yet seemingly contradictory, talents: a complete inability to act while satisfying every woman's description of the perfect man, and a truly incredible ability to act while satisfying every woman's description of a rapist.
McConaughey showcased the first of these abilities as he struggled his way through his lines in many romantic comedies, all while appearing more buff, toned, tanned and waxed than the entire clientele of San Francisco's salon district combined. He then captivated the public with his second talent as he played the bad-ass ex-con police officer "Rust Cohle" in HBO's True Detective anthology; a character who's pessimistic view on life makes the average serial killer manifesto look like sunshine and rainbows, with a plump cherry on top.
Throughout his career McConaughey has achieved (vague) praise for looking like the man the audience wish they were, and high acclaim for looking like the mysterious uncle the audience wish their mother had told them about earlier. He won an Academy Award for his role in Dallas Buyers Club (2013) as a man with a love for a "Unabomber" style mustache/sunglasses combo. However the character has to overcome the difficulties of HIV/AIDS, rather than cockfighting and indecent exposure convictions like the aforementioned uncle.
Early life[edit | edit source]
McConaughey, the youngest of three boys, was born on November 4, 1969 in the small Texas town of Ulvade. His father, James, was once drafted by the the Green Bay Packers, an NFL football team, suggesting Matthew's genetic disposition towards walking that thin tight rope between an object of women's fantasies and the subject of date rape allegations.
McConaughey attended Longview High School and displayed a unique aptitude for public speaking during his early years. He initially displayed great range in his speeches, and the school newsletter described them variously as;
- Vaguely witty but sounds like it was read straight off a script. (Oct. 1985)
- Very cheesy but he's flexing his fantastic bare pecs so you'll ignore it. (Feb. 1986)
- A nihilistic philosophy slowly described in a deep Southern drone. Captivating, but I wish I had some pepper spray. (Sep. 1986)
His time as a public speaker was, however, cut short when he delivered a rambling diatribe about "the sprawl" in October, 1986. Although the belief in a broad political and religious conspiracy is pretty typical for most high-school anarchists, the fact Matthew was caught fashioning crude pagan artifacts rather than crude bongs concerned the school authorizes, and he was quickly directed to the gym class to perfect a talent that would attract women other than therapists.
A coaches assistant took Matthew under his wing and enrolled him in further weights classes, a newly launched English language for the tall, dark and handsome class, and also the varsity shirtless-walking team. As a busy and mysterious student who only ever met other students through a series of entertaining coincidences, McConaughey cut a popular figure in his later high-school years, particularly among the female students.
For example, schoolgirls would be unwillingly nudged by her parents towards dating "Randy", who spent all weekend painting his Krull the Warrior King figures, instead of allowing her to date "O'Bannion", who caused 7 figures with of damage to police equipment at his last keg party. Matthew, who was a diligent professional and yet still more chiseled and shirtless than a Greek statue, was the obvious compromise. He had over a dozen strong-willed girlfriends during his time at high-school, ranging from exchange students who looked like supermodels through to Puerto Ricans who looked like supermodels.
Matthew was selected as the "king" at the senior prom and wowed the crowd with his character "David Wooderson", an alter ego Matthew had developed as a creative outlet for his desires to act creepy and wear scraggly facial hair. The audience at the graduation were deeply impressed by the acting ability Matthew displayed. They were less impressed when he returned the next year, uninvited, to reprise the role of an adult who hangs out with stoned highschool kids.
Early career[edit | edit source]
The director David Linkleter witnessed a recording of the performance and Matthew was offered a part in the upcoming film Dazed and Confused (1993), alongside Milla Jovovich and Jason London. Matthew shrugged his shoulders and said alright, alright, alright.
Dazed and Confused[edit | edit source]
Essentially the plot of Linkleter's film revolves around the final day of the year at a Texan high-school and the interactions of the students, none of who are McConaughey. David Wooderson (McConaughey) is a 20-something year old man who eschews the convoluted romantic arcs Matthew would later be famous for and instead offers high-school girls a slap on the backside and some Aerosmith tickets (as if he needed to prove he was any more out of touch).
The role called on his second, creepier talent as the character is most famous for the line;
| “ | That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age. | ” |
A phrase famed for being the second fastest way to get into prison protective custody, after snitching on a Hollywood director's various proclivities.
However, Wooderson has access to soft drugs and soft drug-influenced philosophy, so he is pretty much universally loved in the film universe and by the audience watching at home.
A Time to Kill[edit | edit source]
Directors rushed towards Matthew with every script concerning rape they had. Keen to prove his other, woman-pleasing talent, Matthew took the role as the heroic lawyer in Joel Schumacher's A Time to Kill (1996).
In brief, a pair of racist rapists rape a young black girl, because acting like a pedophile is the best way to prove black people are worse than white people or something. The rapists are totally blown apart by her father (Samuel L. Jackson) outside a courthouse and to everyone's surprise it turns out being Samuel L. Jackson isn't actually a defense against murder yet. He contacts Jake Brigance (McConaughey), a white lawyer who is in fact still tall, dark and handsome enough to defend Jackson against persecution.
For added annoyance, both the KKK and Sandra Bullock turn up and proceed to harass Brigance with bombs and awkward "flirty" dialogue. Somehow he survives all this and defends Jackson in court by, uh, describing the rape of a 10 year old in detail and concluding with;
| “ | ...now imagine she's white... | ” |
Jackson is freed and invites him to a cookout, where McConaughey's character shuffles food around his plate and tries to hide his disappointment that his best remembered scene in the film will be about child rape, rather than his sexy-hair-and-reading-glasses combo.
Other films[edit | edit source]
McConaughey starred in several other films around this period, however the performance he is best remembered for is a ridiculously overacted nude bongo performance held for his ficus plants, and a few shocked passers-by, at the window of his LA apartment in 1999. While being arrested, he overhead observers of all genders, races and creeds remark how much they'd have paid to be that set of bongos and McConaughey realised the profitability of bad acting and soft core nudity. Romantic comedies were his calling.
Bad acting, looking like a sex icon[edit | edit source]
Ever the method actor, Matthew engaged in an array of preparations for his future roles. For 6 months he subsisted on a diet of cabbage, water and unresolved sexual tension, only moving to bathe in tanning oil and perform a specially developed chest bulking exercise with a stack of women's magazines. The experience helped him to obtain a diploma in English for the tall, dark and handsome (Ext.1) Cheesy lines, and how to deliver them without melting as well as the numbers of one hundred aspiring magazine editors and bakers who expected him to bust into their workplace and sweep them off their feet, any day now.
For the next ten years, he basically remade the same movie over and over and the only thing that significantly changed was the number of zeros at the end of the cheque.
- The Wedding Planner (2001) - Featuring Jennifer Lopez as a career-focused woman, and also some weddings. With sexy results.
- How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) - Featuring Kate Hudson as a career-focused woman, and also a urinating dog. With sexy results.
- Failure to Launch (2006) - Featuring Sarah Jessica Parker as a career-focused woman, and also a Zooey Deschanel. With sexy results.
- Fools Gold (2008) - Featuring Kate Hudson as a career-focused woman, and also buried treasure on an island where clothes are almost illegal. With the most sexy results.
- Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) - Featuring Jennifer Garner as a career-focused woman, and also a convoluted and pointless Christmas Carol homage. With confusingly sexy results.
Although he did spectacularly departed from form to give the audience a bromantic comedy once.
- Surfer, Dude (2008) - Featuring Woody Harrelson not as a career-focused woman, and also some surfing. McConaughey doesn't even actually surf himself, it's all CGI and body doubles. Without sexy results.
Matthew was bathing in pools of money, however he soon realised people generally regarded his shirt as a better actor, and it hadn't even appeared in 2 of his last 3 films. The final straw was when he phoned a prominent Hollywood director for a dramatic role and the director laughed him off, and gave him the number for an all-male phone sex recruiting agency instead.
Good acting, looking like a sex criminal[edit | edit source]
McConaughey's final film before the period of transition was Lincoln Lawyer (2011), where he again plays a tall, dark and handsome lawyer. He also defends a murderer, except this guy is the bad kind who actually shot people and should go to jail, as opposed to the Samuel L. Jackson kind who only shot people and should be let off.
Mud[edit | edit source]
Encouraged by the smattering of praise for his portrayal of a hero with unseemly qualities, he went all out with Mud (2012). McConaughey's character, Mud, up and murders a man harassing his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) and to everyone's surprise being Matthew McConaughey isn't a defense for murder yet. So Mud does the logical thing. Yes, he convinces a pair of young boys to accompany him while living as a fugitive.
Despite being the most pedophilic sounding premise for a film since a Rolf Harris biopic, McConaughey's character maintains his love for Juniper and the worst he does to the boys is teach them how to rob Arkansas scrap yards of boat parts. Unfortunately, dating a guy who lives in a broken boat and hangs out with more underage boys than shampoo bottles doesn't appeal to Juniper for some reason and she leaves him to share his life with a bunch of torch-and-pitchfork vigilantes instead. Fortunately, the love of old gun-hoarding recluses is eternal, and one named Tom helps Mud by blowing apart the mob, allowing both of them to flee to the Gulf of Mexico and sail to a non-extraditing country used to hosting unwashed fugitives who were last seen in the company of teenagers.
Killer Joe[edit | edit source]
Encouraged by the smattering of praise for his portrayal of a hero with more than unseemly qualities, he went even more than all out with Killer Joe (2012). McConaughey's character, Joe, up and uh... just look at the picture.
True Detective[edit | edit source]
Having now proven himself competent at portraying a murderer, and also more-than-competent at nudity (and bongo playing to boot), McConaughey had satisfied the requirements for a role on an HBO program. The True Detective series would take the form of eight hour-long episodes covering the seventeen year search for a group of child-abusing satanic-ritual serial-killers who sound so brutal and depraved they could only have escaped from the other 23 hours of HBO programming.
McConaughey's character, Rust Cohle, is a Louisiana police officer who's back-story includes the death of his daughter, the murder of a drug user, a long stint in a psychiatric ward and basically the genocide of a Mexican cartel; enough to sustain a whole AMC program on its own, and this was before the scope of the series. Cohle works alongside Hart (Woody Harrelson), a family man with a wife and two daughters who are annoying enough to make one flip out and try to out-do Cohle's rap sheet.
The series picks up in 1995 with the pair investigating the murder of the prostitute Dora Lange, shortly after her victory in a competition for most satisfying name to hear in a Louisiana accent. Cohle extracts information from criminals by threatening to make them wear the painfully tight button shirts he enjoys walking around in, and by lecturing them with the cynical life philosophy he enjoys recounting in his slow, Texan drawl. Eventually, Cohle attempts to discuss the nature of time and a murderer high on PCP names the "The King in Yellow" to stop the pseudo-scientific torture. The information allows the partners to corner a pair of child-abusing satanic-ritual serial-killers — who also have Nazi tattoos to make their resumes stand out just a bit above all the other child-abusing satanic-ritual serial-killers — and Hart shoots one of them to save the criminal from having to hear Cohle promoting his atheism on the ride back to the station.
The audience can be assured all this is very well acted, though, because 1995-model Cohle manages to sound more child abuser-y, satanic ritual-y and serial killer-y than any other character.
| “ | I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware... we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self... programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight - brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. | ” |
The series then shifts to 2012, where it is revealed "The King in Yellow" was not actually stopped in 1995, the murders have continued and Louisiana have set their finest, blackest detectives on the case.
Hart and Cohle broke off their friendship in 2002, after Hart asked him to buy some watermelon Bubblicious and Cohle, prompted by the thought of chewing gum, delivered a 2 hour monotone diatribe about the human condition. Cohle then spent 8 years living alone in Alaska, until he felt the emergence of Sarah Palin as a political force vindicated his pessimistic outlook on humanity.
Now blessed with suspicious, unexplained gaps in his employment history and a unkempt mustache full of fish bones, Cohle returns to Louisiana to face the shocking allegations from the black detectives that he may have been responsible for the murders all along. Thankfully, Hart is on hand to calm the detectives' fears and assure them the hate Cohle feels for women, children, puppies, clouds etc. is intellectual and not like that of a child-abusing satanic-ritual serial-killer. Hart and Cohle reconnect and Cohle shows him the storage locker full of crude pagan artifacts and newspaper clippings, proving this was a a broad political and religious conspiracy and not something hallucinated during his time as a high-school anarchist.
After beating up the parish Sheriff — the last friend Hart had in the town who didn't hate existence and smell like fish — Cohle and Hart uncover the identity of "The King in Yellow"; a member of a corrupt, inbred Southern family who have probably been contacted by a cable television channel to host a reality show.
As Cohle had access to hard drugs and hard drug-influenced philosophy, he is pretty much universally hated in the film universe, but still loved by the audience watching at home. Many critics have called Cohle the finest character in the finest series ever produced outside of Baltimore, and certainly the most interesting character to listen to, unless you enjoy women, children, puppies, clouds etc.
True Detective has proven to be the high watermark of McConaughey's career thus far, and his loss at the Emmy awards was due to the longstanding meth debts the Hollywood elite owed Bryan Cranston rather than than any deficiency in Matthew's talent.
The Wolf of Wall Street[edit | edit source]
As consultation, McConaughey received the chance to act in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) as the boss who teaches Leonardo DiCaprio's character about the one small trick to winning an Oscar and other cruel scams. Although fantastically acted, the character partakes of so much cocaine and so many hookers it is likely he has forgotten about the concept of consent, so McConaughey's record stands intact.
Present & future[edit | edit source]
Now that he has won an Academy Award, it remains to be seen whether McConaughey will again return to satiating the desires of career-focused women and subsisting on a diet of cheesy lines and chewed scenery. Depending on the success of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014) McConaughey may even open up a third talent; the ability to act and look sexy at the same time, a "George Clooney" in the Hollywood lingo.