BREAKDOWN IN DETROIT
McConaughey plays overwhelmed dad of drug-dealing teen in ‘White Boy Rick’
TORONTO — In Friday's “White Boy Rick,” Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey co-stars with a novice who'd never acted before and didn't initially know who he was. Why would the Hollywood A-lister make such a huge gamble? “One reason is partly for the excitement and adventure of the whole thing. I was excited by the unknown,” McConaughey said. “White Boy Rick” tells the true story of Detroit teen Richard Wershe Jr., who in the mid-1980s became an FBI informant — at 14. At 17, he was given life for drug dealing.
As his overwhelmed father, McConaughey's performance has generated early Oscar buzz since the movie's premiere last weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“This is an amazing story,” McConaughey, 48, said. “This is not a story about redemption. This is a family trying to survive abject poverty — and they don't pull it off.”
Richard Sr. is a character “who was somebody I knew personally — fathers who wanted to be friends with their children, and that isn't a good recipe,” McConaughey said.
“Fathers and mothers who raise kids in single parent homes — and that's epidemic.
“Also, I'm the one who usually handles the situation. This is something I haven't done before, play a man who is done unto — he's the Fredo character (from `The Godfather').
“He's usurped by his son. He's living in between everything, living on hopes of the future. Paralyzed in the present. Stuck in the past. Hoping for things and what life can be. “He'll say, `Today is going to be a good day!'
it's not. And this is a time when that's part of the American dream, and it's fading.”
Finding an unknown to play White Boy Rick took more than two years before a casting director spotted Richie Merritt, then 15, in a principal's office in Baltimore.
“We first met in the parking lot of bowling alley in Los Angeles — and he didn't know who I was,” McConaughey said.
“What was interesting was the effect it had on Matthew when we did a workshop of the two,” said director Yann Demange (the IRA thriller “'71”). “He tuned into Richie's frequency: `I'm going to show I'm his father and he's my son.' He was bringing Richie up to the frequency; there's this dance taking place.”
McConaughey shrugged his broad shoulders, saying, “We weren't going to turn him into an actor and he didn't want to. So, let's go ride this bull.”