thank you for translate!
Translation: “The Gray Gubbler [sic] Hour”
Note: I translated this very quickly and was varyingly idiomatic or literal depending on what was easiest for me. Also, I tried to preserve the punctuation and formatting as much as possible for ease of comparison with the original. Please let me know if any clarifications or corrections are necessary!
Terry Richardson and John Waters were not wrong: this actor, director, and illustrator deserves a thousand times the almost secret cult that he is the object of. An encounter with Matthew Gray Gubler, a mixture of creativity, humor, whim, and charm. Our new Johnny Depp!
To meet him is to adopt him. It is impossible to not succumb in five minutes and counting to the eccentric Matthew Gray Gubler, “the Gube”, to those close to him. With his Mickey Mouse T-shirt and his innate gift for making faces, this whimsical guy with the enthusiasm of a kid has put the whole team in his pocket. It must be said that with the girls, the match had more or less been won already: ex-model for Marc Jabobs, Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger and Louis Vuitton, at only 31 years of age, he could easily make an iceberg melt. But it is the rest that is the most important.
The “Gube” is in effect of the type to go drinking the whole night with his new friends, to give out his email to everyone, and to carry girls’ heavy suitcases for them (really). Add to all of that his role of a touching and gifted nerd on the series Criminal Minds, his gothic artist side with drawings à la Tim Burton and that irresistible little cousin from the Addams Family, Francophile to the death, easily clinches the title of “the new Johnny Depp”.
A colorful family
Two famous discoverers of talent were not wrong: the photographer Terry Richardson made him his muse, then the filmmaker and writer “extraordinaire” John Waters (Hairspray, Cry Baby), with whom he shares a truly twisted sense of humor, also took him under his wing. From the beginning Matthew cultivated his love for the unconventional in general in Las Vegas, where he grew up: “I didn’t think that it was weird until I left! Now, I tell myself wow!, it was truly bizarre. My school was right on the Strip, the most venomous part of Vegas, with prostitutes who did business there. In fact, I grew up in a John Waters film. I remember, when I saw his movies at film school, everyone was so shocked. I told myself: wow, this resembles my lunch breaks in fifth grade.” As for his family, there is no lack of colorful figures there either, with his great-grandfather, “Wild” William Gubler, a legendary Utah gunslinger, and his grandparents, Laura and Maxwell Kelch, the founders of the first radio station in Las Vegas, Keno, who told him excellent anecdotes about the most famous millionaire recluse in the world, Howard Hughes. To complete the family portrait: his father, John, a lawyer, and his mother, Marilyn, a consultant and politician who runs a ranch and of whom he says with admiration: “My mother is like Clint Eastwood with breasts.”
Inevitably, the conversation veers towards film, a passion for which he cultivates an eccentric taste. In his pantheon, one finds Ghostbusters, Buffalo 66, The Night of the Hunter, Mary Poppins, and Rushmore, evidently: “I did my internship in film at NYU with Wes Anderson for almost two years on The Life Aquatic; I played the role of an intern in the film and I made a parodic documentary on the shoot. It was one of the best times of my life! I had acted in tons of student films during the years when I was studying directing, at the university, but I would never have imagined becoming an actor. What I loved more than anything when I was an adolescent was magic, doing tricks.” Today, like Cary Grant before him, Steve Martin, or Neil Patrick Harris, he is a member of the mythical Magic Castle in Hollywood, an extremely exclusive club with a strict dress code, that houses the Academy of Magical Arts founded in 1963. But one of Matthew’s greatest magic tricks has been never to have struggled starting out in Los Angeles: “My second audition was for a TV show in development and I got the part! It’s always pretty unlikely a show gets made, passes the pilot stage, and even goes on to be successful. Everyone told me that that wouldn’t last. Well, Criminal Minds has existed now for seven years with seven seasons and is watched around the world: I’m really lucky!”
Last year, he already directed two episodes of the series, Lauren, and also Mosley Lane, with Bud Cort (Harold and Maude). His character, FBI agent Spencer Reid, gifted in the sciences with an IQ of 187 and affected by Asperger’s Syndrome (like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. House), has some points in common with Matthew: “I’ve put a bit of myself in Spencer and, conversely, he rubs off on me a little year after year. But I’m not as intelligent or as cool as him. I have a lot of fun playing him and, after seven years, we are almost like an old couple. In my mind, he forms a joint personality that evolves. Sometimes I perceive a situation from his point of view, then mine. That worries me.” He bursts out laughing: “Sometimes I feel like a psychopath!”
“I am a control freak”
Perhaps not a psychopath, Matthew devotes himself all the same to hobbies bordering upon obsessions: “I compulsively document everything that I do with my Lomo camera. Which makes about 70,000 photos these last years. And I archive everything. I’m very fastidious, such a ‘control freak’. For example, it took me years to find the ideal house and, there, I just bought an old fairy tale house, haunted by nice ghosts, on the hills of Hollywood. You’d think it was Snow White’s castle, with a spiral staircase and deer outside. This will be my lemur house, my ‘Gubler Gables’.” It’s not surprising that his favorite author is Edgar Allan Poe. One even perceives a hint of Edward Gorey in his macabre drawings and cartoons sometimes: “I’ve concentrated on drawing in addition to doing Criminal Minds. While waiting between takes, I started to scribble, and then paint things that I posted on my website, which is constructed in a playful way. Like a labyrinth, with little doors to look for everywhere. Like a pop-up book.” At the moment, Matthew is working on a children’s book, the story of a monster who lives next to a “boolanngerie” [boulangerie, “bakery”; my guess is that this is Matthew’s attempt to speak French] in the city of his dreams, Paris: “I truly have no musical ability but I would love to record, as a joke, a children’s song called Haunted Bakery, as an homage to Serge Gainsbourg and to the really bizarre Halloween albums of the seventies. I also started a little record label, CornStalk Recordings, to promote my childhood pals’ bands, Halloween Town and Folded Light.”
It must be confessed, his enthusiasm for everything he loves is incredibly contagious: “Whether it’s taking a photo, writing, drawing or acting, what is important is sincerity. That’s how to do things well. It’s what I also love about Terry Richardson: he loves to have fun and do silly things, like kids do. It’s the power of pleasure. People should keep that part of childhood in themselves, curiosity, without masks, without sarcasm. And besides, why does we stop loving childish tricks at a certain point? Perhaps it’s misplaced pride. Deep down inside, everyone still loves Bambi! I am a huge fan of Walt Disney, of his life, of his diehard optimism. Like Hitchcock, he also understood the joy of being afraid.” Megalomaniacal in jest, his bric-à-brac website, a distillation of his universe, contains, amongst other animated and auditory delights, an application to become a “Gubloid” citizen. Rule 1: draw your own portrait. Rule 2: swear to help old ladies cross the street, to pick up trash and litter, if there is any, to be polite, friendly, nice and to say nice things, in order to make this “country” a marvelous place to live. As far as he’s concerned, mission accomplished. Welcome to Gublerland!
