MANLY GOODNESS

By : PHILIP BERK

CHANNING Tatum just can’t help being the leading man. But how do you explain his appeal? Mmm…is it his aw-shucks personality? Granted the GI Joe star is handsome in a strongly masculine way.

But he’s also lumbering, lugubrious, insecure and unchanged by the weight of Hollywood fame. Guess it all adds up to carnal sex appeal. But if you tell him that, he would blush.

His latest (and sexiest), Magic Mike sees him reliving his past life as a stripper. The testosterone-charged movie is set to cement his status as a sex symbol and he will have no trouble taking the lead.

How confident are you these days?

I don’t know if confident will ever be in my vocabulary. I think ‘ready’ is more accurate… I’m really ready now.

Your new movie, Magic Mike is about a male stripper and is quite provocative. Is it autobiographical?

Not autobiographical, even though everybody knows that I was a male stripper.

So how did it come about?

Director Steven Soderbergh and I were sitting over a beer while making Haywire. So over a beer while he was editing, I told Steve that I was a stripper for eight months when I was 18 and 19, and he was like, “Wow, that would make a great movie.” And he was like, “You should write it.” And I was like, “Ok, Steven Soderbergh, I’ll write it. No problem. Let me get right on that."

I’d never written anything, didn’t even know how to start. So cut to four months later, my producing partner and I started to get things cooking. We showed Steve the draft, we sat down, ironically enough at Carney’s on Sunset, and over a hot dog literally we made the deal. He was like, “Look, you should write it with your buddy. I’ll direct it. You should act in it. And we’ll both finance it. We wanted it to be an in-house thing, so we could do what we wanted to.

You play the mentor not the young kid?

Yeah. But it’s really not autobiographical whatsoever. The only thing that matches up with my story is that  he’s a 19 year old kid. He has a sister. And he played football. And that’s it. The things that happen in the story never happened. We took liberties with that. The things that actually happened we couldn’t put in a movie.  That would get an X rating. (He jokes)

What did you have to do to get in shape to appear nude?

I did not go to a nude beach but that would have been a good idea! (Again, he jokes)That would have been awesome. I’m sure the paparazzi would have had fun with that.

How about at home?

I actually did give my wife (actress Jenna Dewan) a dance - to sort of warm up. But that was just for fun. Our challenge was to make it as tasteful as possible. But we needn’t have worried about that because Steve just wasn’t going to do that.

So it’s a G rated version?

Not at all. It’s got shocking moments. You’re going to see barely naked men and you’re going to see barely naked women in it as well. And it really dives into that world. But not so much of the grotesque sexual stuff - that’s there. The drugs are there. You get to go inside a male strip club.

Even my guy friends wondered, “What is that like?” So that’s why we decided to make the film. It gives you a clear window into what that world is like. It’s not like a female strip club. It’s a little seedier, a little more real. Guys really make a fool of themselves on stage, and try to embarrass the women as much as they can possibly do. Because bachelorettes come in and birthday girls, you really want to embarrass them, so their friends might laugh.

And then they tip you a little bit of money. You don’t even make that much. 150 bucks, or 200 bucks at most, a night. Unlike female strip clubs where girls make thousands of dollars.

In Haywire you played opposite Mixed Martial Arts fighter Gina Carano. Rachel McAdams in The Vow is more feminine . Which do you prefer?(Being the Southern gentleman, he measures his response) For me it’s a balance. I don’t want a pushover and I don’t want someone that’s going to beat me up every day. I need somebody that walks the line.

What is the most romantic thing you’ve ever done?

Oh god… The one I always cite. It was my wife’s birthday. She was my girlfriend at the time. I told her, we’re going to go to dinner.  I blindfolded her. And we just showed up at the airport. I had packed her bag and we went away for the week. So that was my favorite thing I’ve done.

When exactly did you blindfold her?

At her apartment actually; she thought we were going to dinner. She had partied the night before, for her birthday as well. And she was a little hung over. And she was like, “Oh God I do not want to go to dinner.” But she went anyways. I put headphones on her. So she couldn’t like hear if a plane was coming over. I played her some of our songs and then we drove to the airport. And then, I un-blindfolded her and she was like, “What… Where are we at?" She was like, “Are you taking me to kill me? Is this going to end bloody?" Cause we were driving for a long time. It’s a long drive from Hollywood to the airport”