Matthew McConaughey says Ron Woodruff’s diary was like a monologue guiding him at every stage while shooting Dallas Buyers Club
Since the film has an important track of homosexuality, how immersed were you into the gaycommunityIJ
Pretty immersed in those bars you see me in, which was great because you’ve got Ron Woodruff over in the corner going, ‘Oh no…’ He doesn’t want to be there. But Rayon (Jared leto) comes over and goes, ‘The one who has the honey attracts the most bees. C’mon. Play the part.’ It wasn’t really like any kind of immersion into it. I had the blinders on. I had so much to do with Ron and we had 25 days to do it. I didn’t have time to look in the rear view mirror. I never had time to get outside and look at, ‘Hey, what are we doingIJ’ I just remember them yelling, ‘That’s a wrap’ at the end of the film and me looking around and going, ‘Wrap-wrap or…IJ’ And they went, ‘No. It’s over. We did it.’
Since the film was shot in 25 days, did that help you stay in your characterIJ
Ron was like a rabid dog. He was just attacking at all times. And so, we would show up on set on day one and didn’t leave until that’s the day. We were not in a rush, but we were moving much faster than any movie I’ve ever been a part of. We could have moved any faster. A big part of that was Jean-Marc and I were really secure on what this story was and that allowed us to come up with scenes. He and I added scenes. We added dialogues, improvised, but knew what movie we wanted to make.
Since you were playing a real life character, was there something about Ron Woodruff that surprisedyouIJ
When his family gave me his diary, it was like a pandora’s box. I had all the interviews and research. I had him, not just his words, but him on tape. And that was informative. But that was after he had the Dallas Buyers Club and he was doing an interview with Craig Borten, the writer, about his club. So, he’s a salesman. And if you’re talking about yourself in retrospect, you talk about yourself differently than when you’re that person at that time. Maybe you romanticise things. Maybe you exaggerate certain things. When I got his diary, I got his monologue. And that’s where I learned if you get the monologue to the man, then you can have the dialogue to speak. So I knew I was opened up. When they gave me his diary, I saw who the guy was on Monday morning with his pager on charged, an electrician organised, waiting for the call that never came. I knew who the guy was on Saturday night getting high by himself, doodling in his book, writing poems and blasphemous jokes, actually wondering, ‘What’s with this lifeIJ I want to get out of here.’ You’d see what he’d wear. I was like, ‘Is this HalloweenIJ He’s dressed up like a gangster.’ And they’d say, ‘No. That was just one Tuesday.’ And he loved these 30s jazz bands and stuff.
He wanted to get out of this time and place, and this was before he had HIV. So he was already stuck. What I got from his writings indirectly was getting HIV gave him the first purpose in his life. That was the first time when he had something he could grab hold of to fight 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day until he was here no longer. So that’s where he was immersed. That’s where he found real identity. That’s where he found purpose.
Your weight loss obviously attracted a lot of attention. What did your family think of itIJ
It was gradual for them so it wasn’t as alarming. It was more alarming when I would run into people that I hadn’t seen in months. But I had full support. My wife knows there are certain things I’ve to do for the job. I did it as safely as possible. I became meticulous. Ron would have everything so meticulously laid out. He was like a clean freak. And then there was something that came up in the movie. Do you think he has a dogIJ Nope. You could have no animals. Now mind you he’s a bull rider in the movie, but there were certain things that arose with my weight loss, because the weight loss wasn’t just the diet. It also means I wasn’t going to meet anyone at the restaurant to have the discussion. I wasn’t meeting somebody out for drinks. I wasn’t going to put myself into the temptation of having a buffet of some food I like. Plus I was getting pale. If the sun was out, I came inside. So I was doing more writing, reading, researching. I was finding new ways to entertain myself. There was no extroversion. And I’ll say this, for whatever energy I lost from the neck down, I got it added onto the neck up, which was also where Ron was coming from. He was a bull dog. And if you think about it, even if he was alive from the waist down, he couldn’t use it. And that’s another one of his tragedies which we handled in a tragic but funny way.
Was there anyone you had in mind who had HIV, while playing this roleIJ
There was a certain buddy whose cancer was getting the best of him, and he had a lot of similar instincts to fight and characteristics that Ron had, and yeah, I secretly had some of this based on this guy and the way he was fighting against cancer.