I have to shut down for two or three hours, but I’m looking for thoughts and/or arguments about Failure to Launch star Matthew McConaughey. I’m cooking up a piece about the poor guy called “Dead Man Walking.” It’s my belief that McConaughey is a somewhat historic figure in that he’s one of the very few actors who’ve made it as a pseudo-movie star and yet, contrary to what you might think is a necessary attribute, exude absolutely nothing from within. No river, no spirit…McConaughey is the most empty-souled movie actor I can remember since Don Johnson. But he presents an interesting proposition, which is that sometimes, apparently, you don’t need to have anything going on inside to be moderately popular and sell a reasonable amount of tickets and be a semi-credible marquee attraction. Some movigoers, in other words, enjoy and/or identify with shallowness. Obviously some women and some gay guys must like the guy, right? But are there historical precedents besides Johnson? If Montomery Clift is an icon for the kind of movie star who was once very pretty but also had tremendous amounts of inner activity going on, who were the empty-cupboard stars of the ’40s, 50s and ’60s who were like McConaughey…if any? (I just thought of a few — Guy Madison, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue.) He’s the easygoing, nothing-to-say, nothing-on-his- mind, party-guy movie star of the red-state DisneyWorld TGIF set…right? Or am I missing something?