Monday, February 17, 2014

This post is not about McConaughey (AM)

I've been thinking a bit about Matthew McConaughey lately. You know, because the recent McConaissance has had him up in everyone's grill. He's been a bit of a joke for a pretty long while. All those romantic comedies. The constant toplessness. Didn't he get arrested once for being high and playing the bongos on a beach while topless? I seem to recall that he did, but also,  I generally think of him as a kind of cashed-up American hippy so I might just be making up the bongos thing because it sounds like a cashed-up American hippy's Friday night.
I don't make a habit of thinking about him, but when I do, there's the slightest bit of affection there because of the film Dazed and Confused.
I love that film. I love him in it. I love everyone in in, but I think I particularly love him in it.

I love it when he says "High school girls. I keep getting older but they stay the same age. Yes they do."
I kind of love it that to this day, he looks pretty much exactly like he did in that film. You know, apart from the recent weight loss.
I don't love that the baby looks like it could be high, but I do love how cute it is.

But enough about McConaughey, this post is not about McConaughey. No it's not. It's about Wiley Wiggins.
One of the things that the McConaissance has led to is renewed focus on his earlier films, including Dazed and Confused, and that's OK by me. It's great to think and read about that film again.
But what's not so great is to see how the years have been a little cruel to Wiley Wiggins, the chap who played Mitch Kramer.
In D&C he was a baby-faced addidas loving awkward teen, which is to say, totally J's type.
And while McConaughey look exactly like he did in his D&C days, this is what Wiley looks like now:


No shit, they're the same guy. Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it. And I don't know what to say about it. I mean, we all look different now, apart from McConaughey. I can't judge the man for looking older because he is older, and so am I and so are you and so is that guy. But this kind of breaks my heart a little. D&C was all about how being a teenager is hard and high school is hard and Ben Affleck is a horrible bully with fluffy hair and bad teeth and all the rest of it. But at the end of the film, there's some hope for Mitchey Kramer. And now this. It's hard to take, you know?
Still, he's probably happy enough, combining acting with working in software.
Oh geez.


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