Jake Gyllenhaal was at Sundance yesterday supporting his mother, Naomi Foner, and her film Very Good Girls. Look at how cute he is, sitting beside Jamie Lee Curtis, videoing his ma on stage.
Earlier during the festival, Jakey’s one-time BFF Matthew McConaughey was also in Park City. Remember when they used to bro-down all the time on their bikes with Lance Armstrong? It was 2006. They were inseparable. And then...it just stopped. Jake especially seemed to drift away the most permanently. Maybe he knew...? Fortunately for him right now he’s not scheduled for any imminent press so he doesn’t have to answer the question. McConaughey on the other hand...
McConaughey was asked by MTV about Lance’s revelations. He was as honest and as candid as he could be:
"My first reaction was I was pissed off," he said, explaining that he wanted to be "delicate" in how he addressed the scandal. "I was mad. I then got kind of sad for him. First off, I had a part of me that took it kind of personally, which I think a lot of people have."
"For him, it was impersonal because he was living a lie," McConaughey added. "It was a whole unanimous facade he had to carry around."
"What I realized is that those of us that took that personally, like, 'Oh, he lied to me,' it's not true. What I mean by this is, what was he supposed to do? Call me to the side and go, 'Hey man, I did it but don't tell anybody.' Then I would have really had a reason to be pissed off at him, going, 'You want me to walk around holding this?' "
“Where I am now is I've put myself out of the way and I am happy for this guy, who has now chosen to reenter this new chapter of his life a truly free man. And the weight he had on his shoulders, without the boogieman under the bed, the skeleton in the closet that he's carried for 14 years. Fourteen years he lied and carried the lie with him."
"You know the old line that Oprah said the other night, 'The truth will set you free,' " he explained. "Yeah, but she forgot one part. It's miserable in the beginning. And it's going to be miserable. But he's looking it in the eye, and he'll handle it. He'll deal. And he's ready for how hard it's going to be to deal. In my opinion, at the end of it all, this so-called life, his legacy will be what he did for cancer," he added. "That's what will go on living. That's if he doesn't do anything else."
Pretty gracious, right?
Totally.
So here I come, the c-nt as usual, to bitch about one small, insignificant detail...
"For him, it was impersonal because he was living a lie. It was a whole unanimous facade he had to carry around."
What is a “unanimous facade”? Do you know?
I don’t know.
I’ve been thinking about this for three days, seriously, and I still don’t know. No matter how you turn it, spin it, break it apart, “unanimous facade” MAKES NO SENSE.
This happens a lot. With celebrities and civilians. People make no sense because they try to use words they don’t understand in contexts that don’t work. My friend Lorella posits that this is because people don’t read much anymore and process words in writing, off the page, leading to a more sophisticated comprehension.
The person who points it out though ends up being the asshole. Like if you were to interrupt someone who says “between you and I”, you’re the dick for being so particular.
Anyway, here’s McConaughey at Sundance. And some old shots of him with Jake and Lance Armstrong back in 2006.