Matthew McConaughey isn’t tip-toeing around the now-problematic plot and production choices of his 20-year-old comedy movie, “Tiptoes.” The actor said during the “2 Bears, 1 Cave” podcast, hosted by Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer, that the feature was a “wild” film, with the star-studded cast being well-aware of how “anarchic” the production was.
McConaughey starred as Steven, a husband who keeps his family a secret from his wife Carol (Kate Beckinsale). Yet after Carol becomes pregnant, Steven tells her that his whole family, including his twin brother Rolfe (Gary Oldman), are little people, and that their child might inherit dwarfism. Peter Dinklage and Patricia Arquette also star.
If that sounds cringeworthy, well, it took McConaughey two decades to watch the trailer. “I’ve never seen the trailer. This is so good,” McConaughey said, joking that the project “wasn’t quite real, but it was real.”
“It doesn’t look real, but damn, that’s a good trailer. That goes for it,” he said, adding that he was “straight-facing it” for the role in the “absurd” film.
“Look, it was obviously a wild concept. [But] you see the talent it drew,” McConaughey continued. “It was anarchic; it still had some heart to it, which I think maybe in the script felt less sentimental than that [trailer] did. We knew it was a soap opera, but it felt so corny. Like, ‘This is wild.’”
McConaughey credited the film for pairing “high comedy” with scenes that “might actually make you drop a tear.” “The second half of that trailer pushes that direction,” he said.
“Tiptoes” was written and directed by Matthew Bright, who had previously penned “Guncrazy” and “Freeway.”
Producer Chris Hanley told Yahoo! UK that the feature was not offensive because “it was a story that was intended to support everybody in the world no matter what size they were.” “Looking back, I think the movie has some great merits for what it is, despite its flaws and despite the background story,” Hanley added.
The StudioCanal feature was released in January 2004 with the tagline “It’s the Little Things in Life That Matter.”
Dinklage weighed in on the controversy in 2012. “There was some flak,” Dinklage said. “’Why would you put Gary Oldman on his knees? That’s almost like blackface.’ And I have my own opinions about political correctness, but I was just like, ‘It’s Gary Oldman. He can do whatever he wants.’”
