Dude!

With an $8 million-per-film payday, a smokin’ Brazilian girlfriend, a baby boy named Levi, and throngs of adoring fans, Matthew McConaughey is ready to take on his biggest challenge yet: how to build a better flip-flop.

by John Spong

October 2008

(Page 4 of 4)

But even in Hollywood, few people equate making money with making art, and for McConaughey to be credible as a handsome man whom a woman might fall in love with does not seem to require much stretching by actor or audience. Linklater, for one, disagrees: “No one will ever give a good-looking guy, especially a leading man, credit for acting ability. The advantage that a Philip Seymour Hoffman would have is that he can just disappear in the character. But people don’t want Matthew to disappear. They want to look at him.”

David Edelstein, who reviews movies for New York magazine and is pound for pound the best film critic in the country, sided with Linklater: “People don’t appreciate the level of wit in his characterizations. He has a kind of wildness, a way of laughing at himself, a touch of gonzo. Now, I’ve not seen him in a heavyweight role, but in what he’s doing he’s pitch-perfect.”

Edelstein said he doesn’t always look forward to a McConaughey movie, but he always looks forward to McConaughey. “You never catch him acting, and when you can’t see the acting, you miss the craftsmanship,” he said. “If that actor is male, critics say, ‘He can’t emote.’ Matthew would have to play a deaf, dumb, and blind guy with one leg and brain damage to get good reviews. He’d have to star in a remake of Flowers for Algernon to get nominated for anything.”

But the Rain Man—Sling Blade—Forrest Gump route is not the only way to critical acclaim (though that is one of the key jokes in his current movie, Tropic Thunder). He could also throw a curveball, like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction and Burt Reynolds in Boogie Nights. McConaughey actually has projects on the back burner that could grow into those kinds of phenomena. One is a biopic of Billy Carter, the ne’er-do-well brother of President Jimmy Carter. It’s an idea that he and Linklater have bounced back and forth for years, and McConaughey’s eyes light up at the mention of it.

But come to think of it, that film wouldn’t change some people’s perceptions. The role sounds like too much fun.

A typical celebrity interview lasts roughly half an hour. Four hours after we started, McConaughey was still talking. The sun was no longer lighting the room, and the scraping sound of skateboard traffic had quit rising up from the alley. Venice was taking a nap. McConaughey was finishing a second beer and finally moving on to his next two projects, Surfer, Dude and Levi.

Surfer, Dude, which opened in two hundred theaters in mid-September, is the first film j. k. livin has created entirely in-house. McConaughey plays Steve “ADD-Man” Addington, a surfer who is suddenly landlocked, stuck in his Malibu cabin during a summer with no waves. While he struggles to make sense of that, his sponsor is pushing him to create a surfing video game and appear in a surfing reality-TV show. The projects strike Addington as less than honorable, but the lack of surf has left him vulnerable. ADD-Man needs the money. It’s a classic tale of surfer versus himself.

But it’s not your typical McConaughey chick flick. Though he’s shirtless for all but a few fleeting moments, there are ample scenes of ladies’ bare boobs and near-constant dope smoking, with a sense that the cameras were never stopped so a stunt joint could be brought in to double for a real one. As far as stoner comedies go, it will be hard-pressed to match the reviews of this summer’s Pineapple Express. But that’s beside the point. “You always want the movie you’re in to be great,” said Woody Harrelson, who plays Jack, a wake-and-bake yardman who moonlights as ADD-Man’s manager. “But in the end the most important factor may be, Did you have a great time making it? And we had a ball.” Of course they did. Willie Nelson made a couple brief appearances, along with folks from the j. k. livin office. The film was directed by S. R. Bindler, who has shot mostly music documentaries and commercials since making the 1996 documentary Hands on a Hard Body, one of the few truly great Texas films. Bindler has been friends with McConaughey since they sat across from each other in a high school art class.

“It’s a j. k. livin movie that I made with my buddies,” said McConaughey, “and it’s got a j. k. livin message. It’s about fun in the sun, brotherhood, and not selling out just to become a more marketable item. The Man tells Addington to do it one way, and he tells the Man, ‘Not feelin’ it.’ That’s his decision-making paradigm. Yeah, that’s au natural.”

So Surfer, Dude won’t change anyone’s image of McConaughey either. But to Bindler, the movie represents something more. “Matthew is a shrewd businessman, salesman, and thinker, three things ADD-Man is not,” he wrote in an e-mail. “He also has a big heart and big passions, but that’s all Addington is.”

But why not some dark indie film with an unhappy ending, something ambiguous for the critics to interpret? McConaughey started laughing so hard I thought he’d swallow his tongue. “We’re just not unhappy people!” he said.

“Look, there’s a misconception of me that I have never stepped out or recoordinated. People think I just go be myself, and it’s easy. I work my ass off. I do my work and my homework. To make it look easy. And it’s funny how the image precedes the reality, how the two aren’t always on track. It almost depends on what movie somebody just saw you in. People like to say, ‘You’re going to be such a great dad . . . will the kid have any rules?’ Uhhh . . . quick answer: Yes.”

The thought took him back to his dad. “You lose a crutch when you lose a parent. It’s that thing, a place to go, a strong spot to lean on. I was already becoming a man before Pop moved on, but at that point I learned ‘less impressed, more involved.’ Respect situations, but don’t be in awe of anything more than that.”

He’s cool with being that crutch. “It’s not frightening, it’s liberating. It’s an opportunity. But it’s already more real than that. This is a great world we live in, and Levi’s gonna go out and engage it. Now, there’s rules to survive. There are people that will pickpocket, hoodwink, and pull a Vegas foul on your ass. But this kid’s passport’s gonna be full quickly. Culture and travel would be the two best educators in my life.”

He says that when Alves started showing, he got a feeling that solidified the moment Levi was born. “You start seeing the future, a little further, a little wider. Your peripheral vision gets better. You’re responsible for taking care of that kid. So I was lying down having a dream the other night, and I woke up and wrote it down: ‘It’s like being a courier, and you’ve got the Holy Grail strapped to your side.’ Wherever you are, you’re on constant delivery. There’s this jewel in your pocket. You start living less for me, more for we.”

That wider view has him sounding like a lot of first-time parents, or at least expressing the same concerns. Violence on TV. Too much time on the computer. Not surprisingly, McConaughey plans to raise Levi outdoors. “I’m not worried about the hurricane or the tornado or the shark bite in the Pacific Ocean or the water moccasin in the creek or the bear in the woods. It’s the passionate act of that guy who doesn’t know if he’s talking to you, me, or the wall. Chaos theory. Wrong place, wrong time, it happened. No rhyme or reason to it. That’s what concerns me. The natural stuff has a rhyme, reason, and a rhythm, if you’re not foolish with it. So we got a natural spot. This kid’s going to have some grass under his feet.

“I’ve got such a great woman. Our rhythm is so similar, and we both understand that we got to be completely a team, a unified front. We’ve already had a j. k. livin moment. I was changing his diaper, and he shit straight on my belly. I leaned over and said, ‘Levi . . .’ And he peed in my face. I said, ‘You just enjoy this, because there comes a time when you gotta start aiming that stuff. So you just have a ball, right there. ’Cause this is a privilege.’”

That seemed a fine place to stop. We picked up our empties, threw them away, then headed down to the lobby. It was nearly eight-thirty, and the j. k. livin employees were long gone. “We’ll go out the back door. You’ll get some entertainment if the paparazzi’s out there.”

He walked through the kitchen to a large metal door and put his hand on the knob. He stopped and turned around. “If you show up in their photo, they’ll follow you home. Find out where you live. Do a history check. Find out who you are.”

He turned the handle and leaned into the door. “This is a bit of a jigsaw.” But when we stepped outside, no one was there. “Or maybe not,” he said. He looked down both ends of the alley, then gave an understanding nod. “The boys must be off waiting to catch somebody else doing something.”

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