He’s all right, all right
Perennial dude Matthew McConaughey says he’s having a ‘damn good pandemic’
Matthew McConaughey has some deep thoughts, man. The Oscar winner, whose off-screen persona comes off as “dude” incarnate, is spending his quarantine not just hunkering down, but having some big thinks. He’s diving into paradoxes, personal responsibility, mental callisthenics and hand-tohand combat.
“I’m just riding it live and going with how am I feeling,” said McConaughey. “People are losing their grease trapped at home. How do you have people own up to the reality that, yes, it is a horror show, and at the same time you don’t want to create chaos? The hard part is there’s no playbook.”
But he’s found a lane. Since the pandemic sent millions of people inside, McConaughey has popped up in the most McConaughey of places: on a Zoom call with his fellow University of Texas faculty members; delivering masks to his local police station; playing a soap opera doctor on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; carousing around his backyard as the masked character Bobby Bandito.
Is the man just bored? “Look, when a crisis like this comes and it causes disruption, your purpose can become very clear,” said McConaughey, 50, from his home in Austin. “I’ve just been going, ‘Hey, lemme grab a hold of some messages that I truly believe need to be put out.’”
In March, the message flashing on his radar was “stay at home,” but McConaughey didn’t see “an aggressive take on it.” He wanted to fix that, so he shot a 90-second video urging folks to “turn a red light into a green light” and “just keep living.”
“People thought that staying home was a cowardly move, so I thought it was important to get the message out there that this is sort of a paradox of the times. Your best weapon is to stay at home. That’s how we quote-unquote ‘win’ at hand-to-hand combat,” he said.
But he also he wanted to lighten the mood.
“l felt myself and everybody feeling overwhelmed with the solemn infomercial PSAs. We’re past the shock. Let’s put a character’s spin on it and have a little fun with it, so maybe its weirdly cool,” he said of his Bobby Bandito PSA. In it, bounty hunter “Bobby B” demonstrates how to DIY a mask out of a bandana. The actor’s “buddy,” Mud director Jeff Nichols, helped shoot it in McConaughey’s backyard.
He’s waiting for an expert to tell him what to do, how to do it and when all this will end. An international consensus would be best. But that’s not happening. So, in the meantime, his 3.4 million Instagram followers will get these PSAs, even if McConaughey realizes he’s in a better position than most.
“Relatively speaking, I’m having a damn good pandemic. I have to unpack what that means. I understand there’s people over there sweating bullets, pacing the house with three crying kids, and a wife or husband they only like spending an hour a day with and now have to spend 18 hours with. And there’s a bottle over there that sure would be nice to hit at noon. That’s hard. That’s real,” he said.
“I sit in a privileged position, but it would be foolish for me to say, ‘Oh, but it doesn’t affect me.’ The virus has brought even the highest-flying birds down to the same level.”
And he’s taking inventory, including his three kids with wife Camila Alves. “I think I’m becoming a better parent. I hope to maintain that presence,” he said. “We do more things together. We’re watching a lot less TV. We’re doing puzzles. We know the yard better. We’re grooming the dog. We’re eating more dinners and lunches together. We’re saying more prayers before those meals. That’s some of the upside. That’s keeping my compass where it is.”
The Washington Post