DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

Because I’m on the SAG Nominating Committee this year, I’ve gotten the privilege of seeing a slew of new films, most before they even come out. I had planned to review them in the order that I’ve been seeing this year, but Dallas Buyers Club, that I saw just two nights ago, was so fabulous, I had to push it right to the top.

I can tell you right now that I’m planning to nominate Matthew McConaughey for Best Actor without even seeing all the rest of this year’s crop; I can’t imagine that anyone’s performance will beat his. Nor should it. As much as it was hard to even look at him in this film, I was riveted to the screen the entire time.

In case you don’t recognize them, that’s Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, looking far from their usual beautiful selves.

And Jared Leto deserves a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The two of their performances are exactly what acting should be. [Note: I’ve never cared about either of these actors before, so it’s not like I’m just talking-up people I was already a fan of.]

Dallas Buyers Club is the story of Ron Woodroof, a real-life straight cowboy who developed AIDS in the mid-80s, and what he did about it. (He was really a day-worker electrician by trade, but also worked in/hung around the Dallas rodeo scene.)

I’m not here to regurgitate the screenplay, as most reviewers do. I’m here to tell you that this film is so worthwhile, whether you’re gay, straight, transgender, a kid, or someone who lived through that AIDS crisis that began three decades ago. (Well, I can’t believe it’s been around that long!) The journey this homophobic, macho man took his to be truly admired, on so many levels. Couple that with Matthew and Jared’s gorgeous performances, and you have a movie that everyone should see.

Besides everything else great about this film, it proves that skinny isn’t always better. I would’ve never thought in a million years that gorgeous Matthew McConaughey could be so bad-looking. I totally forgot that that even was Matthew on the screen! (Sidebar: When I was ninety-eight pounds a little over a dozen years ago, at 5’6”, no less, most people kept telling me that I looked like I was dying. But I was totally comfortable and having the time of my life. Now I finally see what they meant.)

I still think this is a great, and important, film, but as my initial euphoria over the performances is a day behind me now, I have to voice my one big problem with the screenplay. While I was watching it, of course I thought that every character was real, since this is a story of a real-life AIDS hero. But, at the end of the credits, came my most dreaded announcement: that even though the film is based on a true story, many characters are fictional or composites. This movie worded it even worse than most of the other credits I’ve seen; I don’t think it said the word “may,” I think it said simply that the characters are fictional. I was so confused that I actually wanted to ask the actors who spoke after this screening if any of them outside of Ron Woodroof were real people. But in my mind-pinched state since my hand surgeries, I didn’t know if that would sound like a stupid question, so I stayed mum, and no one else in the audience asked, either. I knew I’d be doing my usual researched the second I got home.

But after hours of searching the web, I still can’t find anything about the other characters being real people at all. And that’s very disappointing to me. The story of what this macho man did when he found out he had AIDS is compelling enough, as is Matthew McConaughey’s performance. So why cloud it with things that didn’t really happen? I know that if my life story is ever told, I’d want it to be exactly true, with no fiction whatsoever. Okay, if someone wants to write that Hugh Jackman and Simon Baker were madly in love with me and I rebuffed them, that might be okay with me. Might.

Seriously, adding fictional characters to an otherwise “true” story might be okay with other moviegoers, but I’m someone who remembers every word of every conversation I’ve ever had, what everybody was wearing, whom they were dating at the time, etc., so I really care about the truth being portrayed correctly. How are we viewers supposed to know just exactly which is the truth and which is fiction? I really hate that confusion in the film.

No matter what, though, I still urge everyone to go see Dallas Buyers Club. It’s the one truly important film I’ve seen to date. And if any other SAG Nominating committee members vote for any actors over Matthew McConaughey, they’re going to have to answer to me.