Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2008 > September > 08 > Entry
Elaine Stritch & Matthew McConaughey, Part 3
See lower posts for first two parts…
Back on his old stomping grounds, Matthew McConaughey dived into Barton Springs, attended a lopsided Longhorn victory at the expanded Royal-Memorial Stadium, hung with Austin buddies and titillated admirers with his appearances at the Paramount premiere of “Surfer, Dude,” which he produced as well as starred in, and the after-party at the Belmont, where he kindly allowed his picture to be taken with fans, even though cameras were generally forbidden.
McConaughey has worked pretty steadily since Richard Linklater’s “Daze and Confused” broadcast his core persona to wider audiences in 1993. Many a brash young movie star has faded before the 15-year mark. Not McConaughey. His prolific mixture of light comedies and fairly substantive dramas begs comparison with another native Texan and sometime Austinite, Dennis Quaid, also compared to Marlon Brando in his youth, although for different reasons. (And to round out the coincidences, Elaine Stritch actually dated Brando, until the former convent girl fled that Lothario’s apartment when he emerged from a back room in pajamas.)
Here’s the point: McConaughey is no slacker. Yet is he milking his looks and charm while reaching no higher than the lowest rungs of his talent potential? Ask people which of his roles they remember most, and they’ll say David Wooderson from “Dazed and Confused,” way back at the beginning of his career. Since then, he’s confounded his critics in “Amistad,” “A Time to Kill,” “Lone Star” and other movies, plus he was memorable in “Reign of Fire” with Christian Bale.
Yet will anyone care about McConaughey when, like Stritch, he’s 83?
I hope so. He’s a genial guy. And like Quaid, he’s been generous to his partly adopted city of Austin. Perhaps he won’t have to suffer, as Stritch did, to discover that it’s really all about the work.
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By Jennifer Obenhaus
September 9, 2008 8:59 AM | Link to this
Banking on your good looks is fine and well to a degree if you expect to have a lasting career in the film industry. Look at actors like Johnny Depp or Leonardo DiCaprio. These men have been actors from very young ages. Also, both are dashing men, but they profit from talent and developed craft. Neither of these two actors run around shirtless in chick flicks-- not that there's absolutly no merit in that-- or do commercial modeling gigs. I believe that this will do nothing but help launch their careers for another five to ten years. I can't say the same for Matthew McConaughey.
By Caroline Wallace
September 8, 2008 5:28 PM | Link to this
I think McConaughey's legacy has definitely turned in the favor of shirtless scenes in unfunny RomComs lately.
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Wedding Planner, Sahara, Failure to Launch, and Fool's Gold are all a testament to this fact.
As I mentioned in your earlier post on Surfer, Dude I was very surprised by how funny he was in Tropic Thunder. However, this may be because it was such a "Hollywood" role.