Matthew McConaughey didn’t get to add “Emmy Award Winner” to his resume last month, leaving him a full three awards shy of an EGOT. (And let’s be real—unless there’s a serious change in the way that bongo playing is perceived by awards voters, that Grammy isn’t forthcoming anyway.) But as a consolation prize, he can add “Lincoln pitchman” to his list of accomplishments—the latest stop on the McConaissaince tour is as the face and voice of the luxury car manufacturer.
The spots feature McConaughey driving around and offering typically rambling McConaughey-ish sentiments as he stares out at the open road—or, during one particularly memorable moment, at a big ol’ bull in the middle of the road. The campaign is clearly playing off of McConaughey’s public persona as our gibberish-spouting wiseman, while also honoring the fact that,before the McConaissance officially began, he once starred in a fim called The Lincoln Lawyer.
At least one of the ads was clearly filmed in Austin, a minute-long night-time sequence directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, the mind behind Drive and Only God Forgives. In it McConaughey drives around on Mopac, spouting the sort of nonsense that only he can make sound so profound. “Sometimes you have go back to go forward. And I don’t mean back to reminisce or chase ghosts—I mean going back to see where you came from, where you been, how you got here. To see where you’re going,” intones the man who described time as a flat circle in True Detective and his future self as his own greatest hero in his Academy Award acceptance speech. Until proven otherwise, we’re going to assume that it was an line from his unusued Emmy acceptance speech—either that, or writing ad copy for Matthew McConaughey is the funnest job in the world.
