What the rise of Matthew McConaughey says about the hunk-hungry press
By STEVE VINEBERG
The starmaking campaign that has shoved novice southern actor Matthew McConaughey to the forefront of the Hollywood whirl this summer is beyond intense; you might call it ruthless.
The onslaught began when McConaughey showed up on the cover of Vanity Fair in jeans, with a Yale Drama School aura of actorly seriousness. Features and cover stories in Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, People and Texas Monthly followed. The latest is the cover of Interview, where he's pictured in a drenched T-shirt, looking lupine and sated, as if he's just stepped off the set of "The Red Shoe Diaries."
We're clearly meant to be dazzled by his range, but at this point the variety of his publicity poses far exceeds what he's done on the screen, which amounts to a couple of unmemorable supporting parts ("Dazed and Confused," "Boys on the Side") and major roles in two films, "Lone Star" and "A Time to Kill," that happened to come out in the same month. The movie press has treated the coincidence of these two releases with awe, as if it were a sign from the gods. But the only discernible difference between what McConaughey gives out in "Lone Star" (where he plays a principled young deputy sheriff) and "A Time to Kill" (where he plays a principled young lawyer) is that he's a Texan in the first and a Mississippian in the second.
If the McConaughey PR push were just a case of mistaking a stud for an actor, there'd be nothing new in it. Most movie reviewers feel sheepish for responding to a pretty face or a hunky body, especially in a male performer, so they tend to either condescend to him (Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze) or else pretend that what they're really applauding is the quality of his acting (Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt). And the more seriously the performer takes himself, the more likely he is to fall into the second category. Pitt's apocalyptic scenery chewing in "12 Monkeys" was an embarrassment, but it garnered him terrific notices and an Oscar nomination. Tom Cruise's entire career is premised on the unending capacity of both audiences and the press to be surprised at his sincerity about acting: he takes role after role that's preposterously outside his tiny range, and he's repeatedly rewarded for his efforts to stretch himself. Cruise gives off waves of good vibes, like a guy in a therapy group who really wants to get in touch with himself, and everyone smiles indulgently at his fumbling efforts.
But every time a new movie comes out featuring the blissfully unpretentious Keanu Reeves -- a magnificent camera subject whose pleasure in giving pleasure is palpable -- you can practically hear the snickers from the press. When Reeves stars for Coppola or Bertolucci -- directors so famously trapped inside their own concepts that they've forgotten how to coach actors -- he's the one who becomes the object of ridicule, as if the very thought that he might want to work outside the genre of "Bill and Ted" pictures was idiotic. Meanwhile, Matthew McConaughey boasts in interviews that he's never taken an acting class, and the press treats him like a prodigy.
It used to be that a young performer who gave off an exciting new kind of electric charge challenged pop culture writers to define it -- to determine what he or she was adding to the cinematic landscape. Since the 1920s, the studio PR factories have tried to generate a media buzz around their own star choices, and sometimes they've succeeded. But in the '90s, they've taken over, and an alarmingly large portion of the arts press functions merely as an affirmation of ad campaigns for the latest blockbusters.
What's extraordinary about McConaughey's abrupt rise to prominence is that he himself appears to have set the terms on which the entire country now views him. He reports that he idolizes Paul Newman -- he's named his dog after Hud -- and interviewers blithely add to their copy that he's the next Paul Newman. Since when does a rising star cue a journalist whom to compare him to? If these McConaughey puff pieces have an antecedent, it's the praise voiced by the brainwashed G.I.s in "The Manchurian Candidate," who mechanically extoll their sergeant in precisely the same words.
What's McConaughey really like as an actor? At this juncture it's hard to say. He's a little stiff in his handful of scenes with Kris Kristofferson in the badly-directed "Lone Star." And, although McConaughey has the plum part in "A Time to Kill," the movie is so energetically nonsensical that none of the characters seems to be living on a recognizable planet. In his big courtroom speech, he's clearly emulating Jimmy Stewart's filibuster in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." He's not up to it, but the no untried actor should be asked to pump up a nickel-plated phony like this scene.
The kid might turn out to have some talent, but in movies like these, how can anybody tell? If he is gifted, then the premature, flavor-of-the-month treatment lavished on him is going to end up doing his career no damn good. By the time he has a chance to give a genuine performance, everyone's sure to be fed up with his magazine-cover face. Meanwhile, if McConaughey really wants to ape his idol, Paul Newman -- who has amassed perhaps the most remarkable and varied set of performances of any actor of his generation besides Marlon Brando -- he'd be better off ditching his hyperactive press agent and enrolling in acting classes.
Steve Vineberg teaches drama at Holy Cross and is a frequent contributor to the Boston Phoenix.