Scott Discusses Dallas Buyers Club with Matthew McConaughey and Jean-Marc Vallée

While it might be easy to view Dallas Buyers Club in purely formulaic terms – a homophobic cowboy learns to be more accepting and loving after contracting HIV – the execution, in big ways and small, is anything but. “No cowboy music in this world,” director Jean-Marc Vallée declared as he sat down to a roundtable interview, blasting the film’s end-credits Marc Bolan track from his cell phone. “Glam rock!” That texture alone separates it from the very world its protagonist believes himself to occupy, showing that all along, he really belongs amongst Texas’s weirder and wilder elements.

What both Vallée and McConaughey really latched onto, however, was the real origins of Ron Woodroof. “He doesn’t start off as this crusader for the cause,” McConaughey mentioned during the roundtable session. “He’s not waving the flag. If anything, he’s a selfish son of a bitch who’s doing what he can to survive.” Vallée recalled early screenings with audiences, watching their revulsion to this guy, unsure if they’d come around for his transformation.

I will say I was quite struck by just how unpleasant they made Ron for much of the film, not just in his particular attitudes towards homosexuals, but in how he treated friends, doctors, police officers, and himself. McConaughey is given plenty of license in the second half of the film to work his particular charm, but it’s interesting to watch him twist that at the beginning into something kind of repellant. Even the spark of that transformation is ugly, as he reads up on symptoms of HIV, discovering that the doctors may be right about just how dire his situation is – his outburst is sudden, ugly, and painful in its honesty. It might not even be a second of screen time, but McConaughey makes it one of the best moments in the whole film.

To find these little moments, Vallée followed the nonsense mantra that myself and several of my high school cohorts would utilize – “keep it loose, keep it tight.” Having only twenty-five days to shoot the whole picture, they were in an absolute rush through every second of production, utilizing every moment they had. Vallée instantly abandoned tripods and artificial lighting, and, even though he shot digitally, managed to maintain a certain earthiness that underlined Ron’s biological struggle and the modesty of his eventual business, selling memberships in order to give people drugs that were unapproved by the FDA, but still legal.

I asked McConaughey if that rushed production schedule contributed to playing a character whose mortality is quickly crumbling. “Absolutely,” he said. “And Ron was just a feverish son of a bitch. He was like a rabid dog. And so we would show up, day one, at 7am, didn’t leave. We were not in a rush, but we were moving much faster than any movie I’ve ever been a part of. I don’t think we actually could have moved any faster.”

But not too fast to squash all the life out of the thing. He continues, “And a big part of that was that Jean-Marc and I were real secure on what the story was, and that allowed us to still come up with scenes – he added scenes, I added scenes, we added dialogue – but we knew what movie we wanted to make. And we trusted each other; there wasn’t time to say, ‘Are we doing this right?’ There’s nothing precious about it. My thing was like, I don’t always know if this is exactly what we need, but this is true to Ron. We wouldn’t talk about it, we’d just say, ‘Show me, do it, let’s go.'”

The result isn’t always as well-formed as one might like – an awkward scene of Ron masturbating and accidentally glancing at a picture of a guy is hilarious, but forcefully wedged between two more serious scenes, and it throws the momentum off a bit. Mostly, though, you can feel the looseness of the production, that the actors and cameras could go just about anywhere, and it lets the scenes breathe in a way most directors resist. Vallée said he shot a lot of coverage during the shoot, but found in the edit that letting the shots go on a little long, letting the performances provide the momentum, ended up being the way to go, and I’d have to agree – the best shot in the film, the one that most justifies his decision to shoot in anamorphic widescreen, is a long one that finds Ron stretched out in a hospital bed while Rayon (Jared Leto), a transgender AIDS patient and Ron’s eventual business partner, massages his cramped leg. It cements their relationship, which never really rises to the level of intimacy but which also belies a deeper understanding and compassion than simple professionalism.

Leto is quite outstanding himself, creating a bit of an otherworldly figure who’s constantly brought down by her own limitations and weaknesses. Rayon was a construct of the screenplay, but becomes to the perfect device through which to show Ron’s growing acceptance of the lifestyle the vast majority of his customer base leads. By partnering him with someone so extremely different from himself, yet equally as cocky and confident, it ensures Ron’s authority will automatically be limited. Leto, like McConaughey, underwent quite a substantial weight loss to convey the effects of AIDS, and both allow their gauntness to not play merely tragically – they’re at times strange, unwieldy, iconic, and mystical.

Though Vallée views the film as a departure from his wilder, more esoteric Café de Flore, he said, “I like to try to aim for some magic in films, so I try to find a mystical quality, either in a song or a moment, or a character’s intention.” Indeed, some of Rayon’s intentions may seem a little convenient or calculated, but Vallée positions them, and Leto plays them, as inspired acts, something at once innate and surprising even to herself.

Dallas Buyers Club hits select theaters November 1st. Click here for a complete list of release dates.