The monumental Matthew McConaughey movie he initially rejected: “I was disgusted by it”
While he is now regarded as a fine actor, Matthew McConaughey was, for a time, relegated to roles that usually involved him taking off his shirt and making puppy dog eyes at his romantic co-star. Despite gaining his first real acting opportunity in Richard Linklater’s classic Dazed and Confused, McConaughey spent the decades after his breakout moment becoming the go-to rom-com specialist.
Fool’s Gold, Failure to Launch, The Wedding Planner, and How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days may all have their place in the realms of entertainment, but they are rightly barred from the pantheon of great cinema. That’s not to say that all rom-coms are bad pieces of work, but that the ones McConaughey frequented were made without the barbed wit of When Harry Met Sally and instead relied largely on his looks to sell the picture.
Of course, things would soon change for McConaughey. The actor would begin to find more and more serious roles, such as his star turn in Dallas Buyers Club and his generation-defining role in TV’s True Detective. But there’s good cause to say that without one role as a bloodthirsty psychopath, McConaughey would never have made it out of the Hollywood heartthrob zone.
Despite his previous success, 2011’s Killer Joe, directed by William Friedkin, is the movie that gave Matthew McConaughey his big break. Playing the titular hitman, the film allowed Mccomnaughey to move into unusual territory, playing a violent, calculated and ultimately dangerous lead with a verve and vigour that many thought beyond his pail. However, the star almost turned down his momentous opportunity.
“I didn’t get Killer Joe at first,” said McConaughey. “When I first read it, I was disgusted by it and threw it in the trash. A couple days later, I was talked into doing a re-read and look for the humour. As soon as the humour clicked for me, and Tracy’s dialogue clicked for me, then I started to see the humanity in the characters.”
“There does seem to be a bit of an abyss behind those eyes,” said McConaughey of the character that arguably changed his life. “A bit of that thousand-mile stare. And he’s a guy who is not there to reveal himself. He is there to find revelations. He also needs order and structure. You see the way he goes about his contract, how he goes about his rules. When does he become destructive? When the family is out of order. That would be the simple math to his madness.”
However, the movie did work on making McConaughey move out of the shadow of his often-shirtless previous repertoire as the romantic lead. Aside from the psychopathic tendencies of Joe and the sheer violence of the role, Killer Joe is also infamous for what is known as “the chicken scene”, which sees Joe force Sharla into performing oral sex on a chicken leg in front of her husband.
Killer Joe isn’t exactly the first movie one thinks of when ranking the career of Matthew McConaughey, but there can be no doubt that it helped to move the needle on his storied journey from burning heartthrob to serious actor. Magic Mike would follow the year after. However, McConaughey would then take on his most famous roles in Dallas Buyers Club and Interstellar, which cemented his spot in the hall of acting greats.
It can sometimes take years for a moment like Killer Joe to occur, and McConaughey almost let his pass by.
