True Detective Creator Thinks Some Rust Cohle Fans Missed The Point Of His Character
"True Detective" season 1 is a darkly beautiful masterpiece. Nearly a decade later, it's remembered as a moody, disturbing mystery about deeply flawed detectives investigating gross ritual murders, but the show was also wildly funny. Edgelord Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and womanizing "family man" Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) made a perfectly mismatched pair; Cohle spouted nihilistic nonsense and bizarre asides like "I don't sleep, I just dream," while openly irritated Hart stared at him like he'd just grown a second head.
Cohle became a major part of the pop cultural zeitgeist in 2014, the topic of many a parody, homage, and fan obsession. McConaughey's performance earned him an Emmy nomination and launched a new chapter for his career. Yet as "True Detective" got bigger, references to the character got broader and at times became co-opted by fans who'd look at contextless statements like "I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution," and say, "So true!" At a panel at this year's Austin Film Festival, which /Film's Ryan Scott attended this week, series creator Nic Pizzolatto spoke about the response to the character of Rust Cohle, who he thinks doesn't actually believe the things he says.
Rust wasn't a nihilist, actually
"I think if you watch the show, it's obvious Cohle does not believe in the stuff he says," Pizzolatto said in response to a question about the character. He continued:
"Anytime somebody called Cohle a nihilist, I was always like, 'What do you think a nihilist is?' Because far from nothing meaning anything to Cohle, if anything, the world seemed overwrought with meaning to Cohle and for an nihilist, he sure does care about doing the right thing and serving justice."
This came through clearly in the season 1 finale, a misunderstood end note that sees Rust brought low by his injuries in the line of duty — and more openly in awe of the universe than ever after a cosmic encounter. McConaughey's performance is so beautifully shaded that from episode 1, it's clear that the guy is presenting a practiced facade, but he grips it so tightly that it's easy for less attentive viewers to think he might buy into his own BS. Take a bleak Cohle quote, strip it of context, and throw it on an image or gif and you've got something capable of un-ironically circulating around the internet on blogs and pages devoted to the pointlessness of it all.
The character is like an edgy college freshman
"When he complains to the sky, who does he think he's complaining to?" Pizzolatto asked at the Austin Film Festival panel. "So there were always these contradictions in him. And I always thought it was a real bummer that certain faction of people who thought, 'This guy is laying down truth.'" Popular characters end up removed from their context all the time, but I can see how it would be particularly troublesome to see one used to justify a deep lack of hope for one's own life. "I was always like, 'Well, if you've ever been in a freshman dorm room, you might hear the same sorts of stuff,'" the writer explained at the festival panel. As someone who admittedly had a "True Detective" themed blog at the time (and, ironically, was a freshman in college), I saw these attitudes firsthand. In my experiences, though, many more fans of the show understood what Pizzolatto was going for and considered Cohle more of a secretly nice weirdo putting up a front.
The days in which Rust Cohle's unbearably grim (and intentionally funny) drivel took over the internet feel like a distant memory now, but "True Detective" is set to return with a fourth season in January. The new storyline takes place in Alaska, stars Jodie Foster, and is showrun, written, and directed by Issa López, director of the acclaimed horror film "Tigers Are Not Afraid." While the show has long-since been an anthology, the first trailer for season 4 shows a glimpse of an eerie symbol that viewers have seen before — way back in season 1. Cohle was right about one thing: time really is a flat circle.