The Matthew McConaughey Rom-Com That Made Quentin Tarantino Cry

Part of what makes Quentin Tarantino such a fascinating public figure is that his film opinions are often quite unpredictable. Not wrong (we are talking about subjective art, after all), just compellingly detached from the standard consensus. Just look at his list of all-time favorite movies, which includes the usual classic cinema suspects, but also a bevy of unexpected modern-day titles like Kick-Ass 2, Green Lantern, and Waterworld. Also on that list? Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a May 2009 romantic-comedy pastiche of A Christmas Carol starring Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Garner.

Today, like most of McConaughey’s post-How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days romantic-comedies, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past has been largely forgotten. If it’s remembered for anything, it’s for housing an early Emma Stone performance and being promoted with a trailer that hinged on Garner declaring McConaughey “looks like a gay pirate.” However, for Tarantino, the feature stuck around in his mind not just for being entertaining but for inspiring tears in this filmmaker. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past was responsible for making Tarantino cry, a sentence that sounds like it could be the headline of a crude news article from 2009 making fun of men being emotionally vulnerable. However, the finer details of this anecdote reflect how deeply personal the act of watching cinema can be. Viewers bring so much of themselves to the silver screen and that can lend extra depth to any movie…including Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

While attending his brother’s wedding, a serial womanizer is haunted by the ghosts of his past girlfriends

Release Date

May 1, 2009

Runtime

100

Writers

Jon Lucas , Scott Moore

What Was It About “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” That Made Tarantino Weepy?

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past emerged during a dark era for the American romantic comedy, when romantic-comedies engaged in weird streaks of misogyny by making plots revolving around the idea that women can’t innately like each other. This helps to explain why Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is so obscure in the modern pop culture landscape. Plus, Matthew McConaughey quickly left the romantic comedy terrain behind when the 2010s began. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past was a last hurrah for this leading man in this specific genre before the title got overshadowed by subsequent McConaughey movies like Interstellar.

Retrospective reviews of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past have suggested that this 2009 Mark Waters directorial effort succumbed to 2000s rom-com problems. In the case of Girlfriends Past, this motion picture stumbled by focusing on McConaughey’s misogynistic playboy protagonist while leaving its female characters barely sketched out. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like there’s much here that would leave a filmmaker of Tarantino’s caliber singing the praises of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past years after its theatrical run ended. However, Tarantino has especially singled out the emotional climax of Girlfriends Past for praise. That conclusion depicts the film’s two leads when they were younger. Years before McConaughey’s protagonist became a globally famous photographer, he was just a young guy in love. In that state, he’s handed a birthday present by his romantic interest…and it’s a camera.

On paper, it sounds like a predictable enough ending (this guy’s true love was the one that made his career possible!), certainly not game-changing enough to make Girlfriends Past stand out during what has been described as a bleak moment for rom-coms. However, for Tarantino, there was something deeply important about this moment. McConaughey’s character didn’t just get any camera…he got the first ever camera that Tarantino owned. Suddenly, Tarantino was brought back to his younger years like Anton Ego chomping down on that fateful plate of ratatouille. Reminded of his past and seeing his memories flickering on the big screen, Tarantino began to cry.

Related

The Scene So Disturbing It Made Wes Craven Walk Out of This Tarantino Movie

Even a horror master couldn’t sit still for this scene.

We All Bring Something to The Movies We Watch

There is no way to separate ourselves from the art we watch. Wildly diverging personal experiences make the process of talking about cinema so much fun to experience, since it means everybody (theoretically) has something new to offer. A movie that may seem clunky or ham-fisted to one person may come across as deeply moving to another. Still another human being may have experienced a personal epiphany during a motion picture that would sound nonsensical to somebody else. Watching movies is a communal activity, but the way art resonates with people is deeply personal.

This phenomenon is exemplified by Quentin Tarantino getting moist eyes over this climactic scene in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Nobody involved in this McConaughey feature could’ve imagined that the visual of a vintage camera would leave one of the most famous directors in history in tears. However, committing to a very specific period-era camera for this image lent an immediately emotional tangible quality to this sequence that Tarantino couldn’t resist. Suddenly, a motion picture about McConaughey being tormented by ghosts of his horny past was rooted in a reality Tarantino was all too conscious of. It’s likely nobody else on the planet had this emotional experience with Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, but that’s what’s so beautiful about movies. There’s no end to the kinds of moviegoing experiences you can have.

Taking time to single out Ghosts of Girlfriends Past like this and be so emotionally vulnerable also speaks to Tarantino’s admirable love for all stripes of cinema. This director is committed to film as an artform. He embraces all the different countries, genres, and styles that cinematic storytelling can occupy, whether it’s the works of Wong Kar-wai or late 2000s romantic comedies. While other filmmakers known for ultra-violent fare use romantic comedies as derogatory punchlines, Tarantino recognizes the innate artistic value of this or any other genre of storytelling. To listen to him gush about how personally moved he was by Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is to hear a man who has an endless love for all areas of cinematic expression, including ones involving McConaughey and ghosts.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past can be rented or purchased on Amazon in the U.S.

Watch on Amazon