Matthew McConaughey says ‘Mud’ avoids stereotypical view of U.S. South

TORONTO – With his perennially tan skin and all-the-way-reclined Texas drawl, Matthew McConaughey embodies the American South like few other modern marquee stars.

Too bad movies so often get the South so sideways.

“A lot of times, depictions of the South are too stereotypical,” McConaughey said during a phone interview this week. “And you go there, and the people that (the movie) was about are like: ‘That was (BS).’ And a lot of times it is.”

His acclaimed new coming-of-age drama, “Mud,” is different, says McConaughey.

The sweet-natured tale — from “Take Shelter” writer-director Jeff Nichols — centres on Ellis (portrayed with remarkable sensitivity by 16-year-old Tye Sheridan), a clever teen from rural Arkansas living in a houseboat along the Mississippi River with loving parents who seem on the verge of divorce.

So Ellis and his adoring pal Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) venture up and down the river, exploring the mostly untouched wilderness sprouting all around them. That’s where they first come across McConaughey’s titular drifter, a magnetic if mysterious fugitive with a heart of gold and a pistol tucked in his jeans. He needs the kids’ help, and an unlikely friendship blossoms. Michael Shannon, seemingly enjoying himself, plays Neckbone’s goofy yet well-meaning uncle.

The kids in the film are not affluent, their homes and clothes tattered. But “Mud” doesn’t depict its deep-South denizens as the backward hicks often represented in media, and draws out plenty of positives in its portrayal of life in a part of North America that isn’t stacked with concrete and skyscrapers.

“It’s authentically set in the South,” McConaughey said. “You capture small towns, rural South, how time trickles by, where the kids hang out, how the kids talk, how they have a party, where they light a fire on Friday night, how you go from door to door delivering your fish, Piggly Wiggly, family, all those things are very accurate and (capture) how that place in the South is.

“But its themes are not bound to the South. They’re just straight human.”

Indeed, early in the film we learn that Mud is on the run after committing murder. The man he shot had roughed up Juniper (a glammed-down Reese Witherspoon), Mud’s perpetually troubled childhood sweetheart and the object of his never-wavering infatuation. An orphan, he’s returned to the town where he grew up to find her, but he’s relegated to living in the woods and communicating through the teen boys because a gang of toughs are tracking him for retribution.

The story, then, is about love, and as head-in-the-clouds Mud determinedly marches in seeming futility to reclaim his lost sweetheart, the younger boys come to understand the value of a dream, reality be damned.

“Mud’s really got the youngest heart in the whole doggone story,” McConaughey says. “Even though he’s a 40-year-old man.”

The first time we see Mud he’s traipsing around a beach, with McConaughey’s sandy curls dishevelled, his tooth chipped and a cigarette dangling precariously from his mouth while he chats up the boys. (He had previously witnessed and marvelled as some “wonderful” older men managed to simultaneously talk and smoke without ever taking the cigarette from their lips, and pulling the trick off himself was aided by the ridge created by the cracked tooth).

It was one dimension of a physical role. In another memorable sequence, Ellis sneaks some canned beans out of his house that a grateful and ravenous Mud proceeds to consume with his fingers, in a matter of seconds.

“Actually, they were pretty good,” said McConaughey. “I haven’t had Beanie Weenies since I was probably 12 years old and I had ’em that night. After the third can, I was done. But we got it in about three takes.”

For McConaughey, this was the latest impressive performance in a charmed string of roles in well-received films that also included “The Lincoln Lawyer,” “Bernie” and “Magic Mike.” Nichols wrote the role with the 43-year-old in mind, and McConaughey says the director told him he made that choice because of the actor’s “inherent likability.”

Indeed, Mud is meant to simultaneously charm and menace. On the one hand, he’s a naif who constantly spins implausible yarns and spouts out-there philosophy, and on the other, well, he’s an admitted killer whose black pistol always seems present in the frame.

McConaughey focused in on Mud’s storytelling. The actor, who lives with his wife and three kids in Austin, Tex., would try to turn minutiae from his day-to-day life — something his kids would do, something that caught his eye on the way to work — into absorbing tales. Even if it required a bit of Mud-style dishonesty.

“I would practise telling stories better than they even happened,” he said with a laugh, before channelling the spirit of his character. “If it ain’t true, it oughtta be.”

Still, for all Mud’s magnetism, McConaughey never wanted the audience to feel completely comfortable with the character.

“You have to believe that he could be dangerous. You gotta believe that this could not end well,” he said. “It’s the danger that’s part of the allure as well for him, for the kids.”

Like that river on which it’s set, “Mud” unspools in languid and winding fashion — and a conversation with McConaughey is rather similar.

The easy-going actor seems to consider each question carefully, and occasionally follows twisty tangents. For instance, he takes time to discuss other movies as they come to mind, including Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation” or the Paul Newman classic “Hud,” an all-time favourite of his that inspired him with its depiction of a “complete bastard” that he couldn’t help but like.

After a 20-plus minute chat, he laughingly notes — not quite inaccurately — that “you probably only asked me three questions and I talked for the whole time.” It’s just another indication that the one-time romcom mainstay has finally unearthed deeper roles, and he’s sure passionate about “Mud.”

“As you can see, I like talking about it,” he added with a laugh.

“Mud” opens Friday in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.