FRIDAY FAB 40+ DYLAN McDERMOTT

A funny thing has happened on the way to the male nudity forum in movies in the past year. Actors who have been among the biggest prick teases in Hollywood have decided to do nudity, and oddly now that they are over 40. Fortunately for us, these actors have lost none of their luster, and look pretty much as good as they did when they first came into our lives. Still, it's annoying that they avoided these opportunities along the way, pretty much the way young actors are doing today. Do you think Zac Effron will be doing nude scenes in 30 years?  My money is on yes. 

Matthew McConaughey was a previous Fab 40+ to celebrate the opening of Magic Mike, and I discussed the oddity of him picking now to show us the goods, since he refused to at every other logical opportunity.  

Joining Matty Mac is an actor starring in the film The Campaign, being released this weekend,  the every beautiful blue eyed...

Dylan McDermott

Born Mark Anthony McDermott in Waterbury, Connecticut on October 26, 1961, he took the stage name of Dylan to please his stepmother, who was going to use the name for the child she would not be able to have. She is Eve Ensler, the playwright most famous for The Vagina Monologues. She encouraged Dylan to go into acting. Our gain there....

And for the record, I will not be referring to him as Dilly Mac.

Dylan was the go-to guy in Hollywood whenever they needed a bland but gorgeous leading man whose still waters ran deep, but by the end of the film, you just had to take their word for it. In other words, he's a good actor, but he never seems to be asked to do much. 

In this scene, it really looks like he is being out-acted by his hair, which is one of the best heads of hair Hollywood has ever seen. 

 In 1987 Dylan would begin his career in the Vietnam War flick Hamburger Hill. 

In this movie, Dylan begins a trajectory of bad film choices and avoidance of showing his ass when the scene pretty much dictates it would be necessary.

Yes, there's the actress showing her tits, and there's Dylan (with Steven Webber) not showing his ass. In this scene, the two men get alarming news and the camera cuts away the MOMENT Dylan's hips come up to water level. It was the beginning of 24 years of avoidance nudity. 

Dylan would next be in The Blue Iguana and The Neon Empire, neither of which got any more attention than Hamburger Hill did. Then he was in films that would have far better known leads. In Twister he was a weather fanatic who always taunted Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, and who doesn't want to do that?  In Steel Magnolias, he wasn't even in the top ten of the cast members based on screen time.  Even the guy who played Daryl Hannah's husband got more lines! When you're the promising newcomer, but you're the 11th lead, it's time to do something different. 

So Dylan follows up the blockbuster hit of Steel Magnolias with a film that was completely obscure, Hardware, which was another example of Dylan's non-event nudity in a monotonous, dystopian menage-a-trash science fiction....oh, who the hell cares?  No one has ever sat through this movie from beginning to end.  As you can see from this pic, Dylan showers and his leading lady joins him...

Oh, what a complete surprise!  The camera stays above Dylan's hips, but we get to see plenty of the actress naked. Gee, it's filmed so differently than the similar scene in Hamburger Hill. 

Next up, Dylan continues doing what he did best throughout the 90s, which was prick teasing us with more obvious reason to have nudity but avoiding it in the aptly titled Into the Badlands. 

For this board's non-American visitors, The Badlands is an eerily beautiful section of the American West located in the state of North Dakota. It is a National Park, and it got its name because back in the 19th Century, criminals would escape there, never to be heard from again, much like Dylan's career at the time.

Next up, Dylan was in the film Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (not Die, as the picture below incorrectly states), which I think was a Southern gothic potboiler...or maybe not. I really have no idea. I have not seen this film. In fact, no one ever has, not even Dylan or its director. 

This scene should have been Nude Descending a Staircase, and it would have been if it had been with an actress, but in this case....no. 

In the moments leading up to this scene, there is ample opportunity to give us a glimpse of Dylan. Doesn't happen. 

It seems that once he was on a roll, Dylan couldn't stop making movies that no one could ever tell you he saw play at a local theater. And in all of these movies they pay heed to his good looks and body, but never push one step further to show what any respectable person would stand in line to see.

In 1992, Dylan makes The Fear Inside, which one can only assume was his feeling about doing a real nude scene while his leading ladies carried the load for him. In The Fear Inside, Dylan gets even prick teasier. He shows us his butt....all distorted in a water shot. 

In the 1995 film Destiny Turns on the Radio, Dylan is caught by a gunman coming out of the bathroom as he is naked. However, the view of him is obstructed by objects so blatantly that it was probably the inspiration for the comic blocked nudity scene in Austin Powers. And then get this: the gunman, all the while holding Dylan at gunpoint to keep him in control, tells him to put on some clothes!  

 If someone is such a threat that you cannot let them escape to the very point that you had to hold a gun on him, wouldn't you actually find it to be to your advantage that he were naked?  Nonsensical!

Oh, sure. Nudity would be offensive, but this wardrobe isn't?

By 1997 Dylan was done starring in films that were barely even direct-to-video.  He gave in and starred in the TV series The Practice, in which he did some very PG-rated shirtlessness. 

Still Dylan wasn't completely done unleashing bad films in which he refused to unleash his bare bum. Here he is in The Tenants, which is a movie presumably about people who pay rent. Again, I haven't a clue as to what it's abut. 

Quite clearly he had created his own movie genre: Films Starring Dylan McDermott That No One Paid to See and in Which He Deliberately Avoids a Nude Scene. It looked as though he was never going to change that, but being a man of surprises...or at least after 24 years, Dylan broke down. He starred in the T.V. series American Horror with Connie Britton and Jessica Lange. Set in a haunted house of sorts, at the edge of 50, he finally gave us the nude scene that he was so clearly designed for, but so carefully avoided....

 Video to enjoy...

Courtesy of my friend xyzpdq's magnificent blog, Scenes of Male Skin, here is the file for his two nude scenes:

DYLAN McDERMOTT IN AMERICAN HORROR

In an interview, Dylan stated that he filmed a full-frontal nudes scene for The Campaign, but that the scene wasn't used. Isn't that just like a director?  We finally get an actor going our way, but he decides not to take the scene out. *sigh*

Nonetheless, we know that the scene will be on the DVD, and that will be something to look forward to around Christmas, dontcha think?

Dylan McDermott--at 50, a fully blossomed career as a nude actor!