by Neil Daniels
To celebrate his success, Matthew bought a one-way ticket to Peru where he hiked to Machu Picchu and canoed the Amazon. He was away for fifteen days. The first few days were tough as he had to face his demons and had to deal with his fears, but once he gained a decent level of confidence, he enjoyed the trip.
‘I had a lot to think about,’ he admitted to Tom Chiarella of Esquire in 2011. ‘Just grabbed a bag and left. And I went up and further in, until I was about as uncomfortable and unfamiliar with things as I could be. You know why I don’t go to Europe for these trips? Because in Europe everything pretty much works, or it almost works. I mean, it’s almost what I’m used to. But Peru, Mali, Morocco? Nothing works. Nothing. So you have to give up on what you know. At least I do. And for a while it’s very uncomfortable. Extremely. I mean you’re faking the language as best you can, nodding at things you probably shouldn’t be, and you start to miss the things you know. And you need to eat.’
It would be one of many open road trips he’d partake in throughout the decade and thereafter. ‘My favourite thing to do alone is jam in my truck and drive,’ McConaughey told People magazine. ‘There are very few people I could take a road trip with. It’s where I have my best thoughts.’
Thankfully McConaughey was able to overcome the disastrous Bill Murray comedy Larger Than Life, released in November 1996 in the US and March 1997 in the UK. A critical failure, Larger Than Life is about a motivational speaker (played by Murray) who discovers that his father’s inheritance is an elephant. McConaughey plays Tip Tucker, a fast-talking, slightly paranoid trucker who is on a trip to LA when he meets Jack and his elephant Vera. Extra scenes were added to the film after the success of A Time to Kill – McConaughey had turned into a major celebrity and the filmmakers wanted to cash in on his success so they delayed the film’s release until A Time to Kill had become a box office juggernaut. ‘I went and got this ugly green stretch-material jersey, stuffed it, pulled my American flag cap on all bowed over, put a big ol’ dip in, and just had fun,’ McConaughey told Texas Monthly’s Jason Cohen at the time of the film’s release.
Rob Nelson wrote in the Boston Phoenix: ‘Originally slated for release in May, Larger Than Life has tried to piggyback on Matthew McConaughey’s stardom by adding recently filmed scenes in which his character, a psychotic trucker, torments Murray’s motivational-speaker-turned-elephant-tamer.’
After Larger Than Life, McConaughey needed a hit film. Despite Lone Star being a very good film, superlative actually, it didn’t make a big enough splash at the box office as was expected for an actor who was touted as Hollywood’s next big thing, even though it was filmed before his breakthrough role when he was just another unknown aspiring actor.
‘When I go see a movie that I’ve made,’ McConaughey later explained to Terra.com, ‘you gotta remember that usually it was filmed like a year ago. Nine months to a year is about how long ago you finish making a movie. And to come back and watch it – I don’t know, for me it’s always been somewhat of an overwhelming experience because you’re looking at three months of work, twelve hours a day, six days a week, compressed into two hours of film.’
Nineteen ninety-six also saw the release of the little-talkedabout, straight-to-video film Scorpion Spring, directed and written by Brian Cox (not to be confused with the noted Scottish actor). Made in 1995 before A Time to Kill but not released until the following year, the film is about a desperate drug runner named Astor (Esai Morales) who, with his prisoner, is on the run from the law and struggling with the intense heat. The pair hook up with two naïve travellers after being offered a ride. Astor and his prisoner claim to be illegal aliens looking for a better life in the US but soon draw the two travellers into a dangerous world of drugs ruled by drug lord El Rojo, played by McConaughey. Inevitably, as with Larger Than Life, the film tried to cash in on McConaughey’s recent burst of success.
Michael Sauter of Entertainment Weekly wrote that McConaughey ‘only shows up a few minutes before the final, bloody showdown. It’s hardly worth the wait: Saturated desert colours are the only thing worth seeing in this listless, witless, pointless exercise in south-of-the-border noir.’
Emanuel Levy was just a little more forgiving in his Variety review: ‘Unfortunately, midway through, the director loses grip on his tale and the plot gets progressively silly and convoluted. Indeed, along the way, the quartet encounters a nasty Mexican drug lord (Matthew McConaughey), a bigoted white sheriff (Kevin Tighe) and a decent border patrolman ([Rubén] Blades), each motivated by his own personal agenda. Cox’s strategy is to pile up more bizarre characters and more outlandish incidents as the picture goes along – until it falls apart.’
With a couple of dodgy films to his name post-A Time to Kill, McConaughey received a ‘special thanks’ on the 1997 documentary Hands on a Hard Body, directed by S.R. Bindler about an endurance competition. McConaughey spoke to Bullz-Eye’s Will Harris about the film: ‘Yeah, that was shot in our hometown, where Rob, the director, and I met when we were fourteen years old. It was shot in Longview, Texas, and he went down and shot it, and then he needed some extra financing to go and finish it up, so I invested in it. But, yeah, I was a fan and knew of it, and it’s a great documentary, too.’
The film follows the 1995 annual competition that lasted for seventy-seven hours, and focuses on twenty-four contestants competing to keep their hands on a pickup truck for the longest amount of time. The winner gets the truck. The contestants are given five-minute breaks every hour, and fifteen-minute breaks every six hours. The film won the ‘Best Documentary’ award at the 1997 Los Angeles Film Festival. Texas has always been close to his heart; no matter where he is in the world he takes Texas with him and to be involved in such a revered film about the culture of his home state was a major coup for him.
McConaughey had a two-film option deal with Warner Bros. as part of his contract for A Time to Kill; he had to pass on a remake of The Day of the Jackal as well as the sequel to 1994’s Jan De Bont directed action flick, Speed. He had to be careful that his career would not veer off track, becoming the next Chris O’Donnell or Burt Reynolds, when in actual fact he desperately wanted to become another Gary Oldman or Sean Penn. Deep down, though, being the first – and only – Matthew McConaughey was unquestionably his main priority. He wanted to take on character parts, move between genres and work as a leading man. McConaughey was adamant that he did not want to be pigeonholed. Hollywood, though, is not quite that simple.
CHAPTER FOUR
FAME AND FORTUNE
‘I think if you rely on fate, it bites you in the butt. If you blow in the wind, you’re going to get dropped in the gutter.’
Matthew McConaughey, Cinema.com, 2001
Matthew McConaughey had ceased to be the next Paul Newman almost as quickly as the press had labelled him as such. He famously lost out to Leonardo DiCaprio for the lead male role in James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster, Titanic. A part in Curtis Hanson’s 1997 adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel L.A. Confidential also never materialised. McConaughey’s next released film was a science-fiction tale with philosophical ponderings on alien beings. It wasn’t the shrewdest of choices, career-wise.
Contact is based on the science-fiction novel of the same name by the much-respected author Carl Sagan. The original 100-page story outline for the film was written by the late author with his wife Ann Druyan in 1979, and pitched to Warner Bros. with producers Peter Guber and Lynda Obst, but it entered development hell. Sagan published it as a novel in 1985 and then attempted to kick-start the film treatment four years later. Various directors came and went such as Roland Joffé and George Miller, but Joffé quit the project in 1993 and Miller left in 1995. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? director Robert Zemeckis was then hired and filming took place in New Mexico, Arizona and Los Angeles between September 1996 and February 1997.
McConaughey dropped out of The Jackal after being hired by Zemeckis – who had not made a film since the enormous success of the Tom Hanks’ movie Forrest Gump
– to play Palmer Joss, a respected Christian philosopher who becomes romantically involved with Dr Eleanor ‘Ellie’ Arroway, the film’s protagonist, played by Jodie Foster. Arroway is a SETI scientist who uncovers evidence of extra-terrestrial life and attempts to make first contact. Contact also stars James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Jake Busey and David Morse. McConaughey’s fee was a reported $4 million.
When it comes to picking roles, McConaughey tries to mix it up a little – as his more recent parts have shown – though his decisions tend to be based on what else is going on in his life. Many of his performances are unforced. When he takes on a role he looks to some close friends and associates for their opinion as he tries to define the character and see how the whole thing comes together. The most important bits happen during pre-production so on the first day of filming he establishes the character in front of the camera. Actors become married to the roles for several months as they live and breathe the parts on, and even off, camera, such is their dedication to the part. McConaughey completely immerses himself in the film.
Contact offered science-fiction fans a different kind of film than had been seen in the 1990s, with alien invasion films such as 1996’s Independence Day and 1997’s Starship Troopers. Zemeckis’ film was perhaps too ponderous and whimsical for some fans, though it does offer interesting philosophical notions on extra-terrestrials.
Contact was released to positive reviews in the US on 11 July 1997 and in the UK on 27 September and made over $170 million at the worldwide box office. It also won the Hugo Award for ‘Best Dramatic Presentation’ and earned some Saturn Awards nominations.
The Total Film review said: ‘Jodie Foster, in her first film for three years, hogs the screen with a powerful performance, her faith an unshakeable, almost fanatical belief in science. McConaughey flits in and out as funky priest Palmer Joss (‘I’ve been called a man of the cloth without the cloth’), while Tom Skerritt plays the sceptical scientist, prepared to step over Foster’s crusading stargazer in the pursuit of self-advancement.’
Variety’s Todd McCarthy wrote of Matthew’s performance: ‘McConaughey’s role of a presidential spiritual adviser whose attraction for Arroway persists over the years comes off like a middleweight part unnaturally pumped up to heavyweight status in a misguided attempt to create a male lead; the film’s one ridiculous scene has him turning up on remote Hokkaido Island on the eve of Arroway’s top-secret mission to state his feelings for her.’
David Ansen wrote in Newsweek: ‘Just about every scene with the philosophical reverend is a clinker, and he keeps popping up in implausible places to continue his debate with Ellie about the existence of God. It’s a role that could make any actor look bad, and McConaughey, too young and too pretty for it, cuts a ludicrous figure.’
Time Out in London said: ‘Regrettably, these visual coups only point up the inadequacy of a screenplay (from Carl Sagan’s novel) which marries profound philosophical questions with hokey melodramatics, shallow characters and infantile conclusions. It’s not just that it resorts to an albino Adventist to inject spurious suspense, nor that it foists McConaughey on us as a randy Luddite priest who is, coincidentally, the love interest (the pillow talk is physics vs. metaphysics).’
McConaughey’s next released film saw him jump back into the world of criminal law after already having played a lawyer in A Time to Kill, but this part was much different. He went back in time to play a young attorney named Roger Sherman Baldwin who specialises in property law in the film Amistad. Based on the 1987 book Mutiny On The Amistad: The Saga Of A Slave Revolt And Its Impact On American Abolition, Law And Diplomacy by historian Howard Jones and written by David Franzoni, the film, directed by Steven Speilberg, is about the 1830 mutiny by the recently captured Menda slaves who took control of the US-bound ship La Amistad on the coast of Cuba. The mutiny became a Supreme Court legal battle in 1841 after their capture by the US Revenue Cutter Service, a maritime law enforcement agency.
‘I’ve always been fascinated with the system,’ McConaughey told Australia’s New Idea magazine on his interest in the American legal system, ‘and how the system works and lawyers are great characters ’cause they get to be the tour guide between guilt and innocence. How the system works is very interesting and it’s not as idealistic as I used to think it was. There is a lot of deal making that goes on…’
The film also stars Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Nigel Hawthorne and Djimon Hounsou. The script was brought to Spielberg’s attention via the actress and director Debbie Allen who was having fundraising problems with the project. Spielberg was looking for a serious film after the second Jurassic Park venture, The Lost World. His studio DreamWorks was in the process of being launched, and his WWII film Saving Private Ryan was still in pre-production, but it didn’t stop Spielberg from immersing himself in Amistad, even though he was initially dubious about the project after his previous film about black culture, The Color Purple, was so badly received by African Americans on its original 1985 release. Nevertheless it was another string to McConaughey’s bow, and he was picking up some more serious roles. But was he really the right actor for the film?
Released in December 1997, Amistad was fairly well received by critics though many admittedly approached it with caution knowing how cynical successful white directors can be when tackling black culture. Despite Spielberg’s name and a strong cast it was not a box office success. Spielberg was probably hoping for something similar to his 1994 masterpiece Schindler’s List, but, alas, it never happened.
The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote of the film: ‘The Africans are baffled by the hymn singing of grim abolitionists, whom they mistake for bad entertainers. They are also horrified by Matthew McConaughey, as a lawyer whom they call Dung Scraper, and the audience may not react much more kindly. Amiable matinee idol that he is, Mr. McConaughey should cease and desist from affecting mannerisms from previous centuries or playing any more smart lawyers.’
Empire’s Christopher Hemblade wrote of the film: ‘Spielberg has mounted a courtroom drama to rival the finest Grisham, with a coruscating civil rights debate resonating both within the film and into the present as the audience knows it.’
‘I had some success. Now I wanted to go for directors. [Robert] Zemeckis, Contact. [Steven] Spielberg, Amistad,’ McConaughey said to LA Times’ Glenn Whipp. ‘But the movies didn’t stick, and my stock as an actor went down. Things dried up a little bit more. Off of that, which way can you go?’
*****
After Amistad other projects came McConaughey’s way but they were not high-profile ventures. In October 1998, McConaughey starred with Eric Roberts in a thirty-minute short film written and directed by Sandra Bullock called Making Sandwiches. It was shot in Ventura, California back in 1996 and debuted at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, and also played at the Austin Film Festival in October 1998.
Somewhat downbeat after losing out in some major roles, he directed a twenty minute short film called The Rebel, a comedy about an oddball guy who thinks living life on the edge is taking eleven items through the checkout express at the supermarket. He felt a great sense of pride after finishing the film. It was the best thing he could have done at that point in his career and was released in 1998.
‘…I kept getting really close to jobs but I wasn’t getting them, it was like I was getting too conservative,’ he admitted to Cynthia Fuchs of Pop Matters in the early 2000s. ‘But then I hopped up and wrote and directed a short, and then I started getting acting jobs, because I had that thing on the side that I had pride in. It allowed me to be free, to take more risks. I respected every audition.’
McConaughey then hooked up with Dazed and Confused director Richard Linklater for a second time, and Texas screenwriters Claude Stanush and Clark Lee Walker in 1998’s The Newton Boys, a drama based on the story of a family of Texan bank robbers. It had been in the pipeline since the days of A Time to Kill.
‘The Newton Boys we talked about
more but that isn’t an issue,’ McConaughey told Bill Graham of The Film Stage. ‘The process of getting to the day of shooting is really fun for Rick and I. It’s a really fun process. There’s nothing formal about it at all.’
McConaughey plays Willis Newton who leaves prison after a miscarriage of justice only to learn that a good life is possible only if you have money, and so he is persuaded by two criminals to rob a bank. The film also stars Skeet Ulrich, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and Dwight Yoakam. Filming took place in various cities around Texas such as Austin, Bartlett, New Braunfels and San Antonio.
McConaughey’s oldest brother Rooster has a small part in the film. Asked by Empire in 2006 if he had any plans of working with Rooster again, he responded: ‘Not necessarily. He has a day job. But he was right for this part, and he got in there and he had a good time. But if the right thing came up, I could see me directing him. Yeah (laughs). He’s a real character. It was fun, but kind of weird. I just had to sit there and make sure I could keep him relaxed, y’know? He’s a very relaxed guy, and then he started like going on, and I was like, “Don’t worry, man. Loosen up. Cheapest thing on set is film. Go ahead, loosen up, let it ride, let it ride…”’
The film was only moderately well received and hardly set the box office on fire after it was released at the end of March in the US. It didn’t reach the UK until March 1999. It’s one of those films that has seemingly disappeared without a trace though it does have worthwhile merits and deserves far more attention than it got at the time.
Emanuel Levy wrote in Variety: ‘An extremely handsome production that meticulously evokes the 1920s, and a likable male-dominated cast, headed by Matthew McConaughey in his best screen performance to date, only partially compensate for a story that’s too diffuse and lacks a discernible point of view that would make it dramatically engaging… After a couple of disappointing performances (Contact, Amistad), McConaughey finally gets a role that integrates his handsome looks, authentic Texan dialect and easygoing style.’