Matthew McConaughey Breaks Down His Career, from 'Interstellar' to 'The Wedding Planner'

Where I start in Woody ends,

and where Woody starts and I end is a murky line,

and we kind of have a comedic jive.

And I remember going into this where he,

you know, was like,

I think we need to look for

some funny in here.'

And I'd be like, Uh-hmm.

And he'd be like,

See.

[hand claps] Like that.

How you and I work, McConaughey

is I hit you the ball,

you hit it back.

I hit you the ball, you hit it back.

But now I'm like hitting you the ball

and you're just standing there,

and letting it go by,

and sit still the bottom of the fence

and just staring at me.

What the [beep]

And I was like,

my hunch is that might end up

being kind of funny.

[upbeat instrumental music]

Howdy. I am Matthew McConaughey,

and this is a timeline of my career.

You gotta do what Randall Pink Floyd

wants to do, man.

Let me tell you this.

The older you do get,

the more rules you're gonna try

to get you to follow.

You just gotta keep living, man.

L-I-V-I-N.

I had a friend at NYU,

Seth Robbins Bidler

who I had been sending short stories to,

and stuff and he was in film school there,

and he was writing back,

Look, you should go into storytelling.

Maybe you should even

get in front of the camera man,

you're good looking.

You got character, you know.

And I was like, Ah.

I don't know about that part.

But this behind the camera part maybe that.

He gave me the confidence

to decide that I wanted to do that.

Then that led to the confidence to call my dad,

and tell him I wanted to

change my course schedule,

which I didn't think it was gonna go well.

That went splendidly well.

And my dad told me that night,

Don't half ass it

if that's what you're gonna do.

And went to film school, learned a little bit.

But then in that summer, between '92 and '93,

which was between my junior and senior year,

when I went into the right bar at the right time,

and met the right guy, Don Phillips,

who then gave me a chance to read for the part

of Wooderson in Dazed and Confused.

Ended up getting that part,

and three lines turned into three weeks of work.

[upbeat instrumental music]

I had about two weeks to prep,

and use my imagination.

And it occurred to me that the man

who said the launchpad line of,

That's what I love about

those high school girls,

If I got older, I would stay the same age.

Was who I thought my brother was.

My older brother who was my hero,

when I was 11 and he was 17,

and we were going to pick him up at school

because his car was broke down for some reason.

My mom was looking for him,

and we were, Where's Pat?

Where's Patty?

Didn't meet us where he was supposed to meet us.

And I was looking out the back window

of our station wagon,

there in the distance, in the silhouette,

under the smoking section

was this body leaning against a wall

with a heel of right boot up against the wall,

and little lazy, two finger cigarette.

And it was my brother,

he looked seven feet tall,

cooler than James Dean, man.

Wooderson was not who my brother was,

but that image

hit through my 11-year-old eyes

who Wooderson was.

So this night on set, I do a wardrobe test,

get the peach pants on.

I got the T-shirt.

Man, I got the pipe.

I got the black pants, the tattoo.

I got the blonde comb over, little stash.

Boots, fries.

Come out and Rick sees me.

Linklater the director and he's like,

Ah, great.

He's circling me kind of measure me up.

This looks great, this ya-da-da-da

I said Cool, man.

See you in about a week.

Which was the scheduled day

when I was supposed to come to work

for the first time.

And he goes, Hang on a minute.

You know Marissa Ribisi, who is the actress

playing the redheaded intellectual.

And that's the last day of school.

She's in the car with all her nerdy friends.

You know you think Wooderson might be interested,

you know, picking up the redheaded intellectual?

You know, I was like,

Yeah man,

Wooderson likes all kinds of chicks, you know?

And he laughed.

Next thing you know,

I'm in the car getting strapped up

with a lava ear about to go do the first scene,

which didn't have a word written in it,

which I recently found out

just a couple years ago.

Rick told me he had a story hole in his script

that he needed to fill.

And the scene of Wooderson gonna pick up Marissa,

and talk about the party later,

You ditch the geeks in the backseat

and ride with me we're cool.

Filled the story hole for him.

First three words I said ever on film

were that night when I pulled in my '70 Chevelle

to go pick her up.

And I gave myself the three affirmations

of the things that I, Wooderson did have my car,

rock and roll and weed, all right.

As I was going to get the fourth thing

that I wanted,

which was the redheaded intellectual.

First three words I ever said on film.

And they perceived me,

as you probably know today.

I'm not even on camera.

It's a wide shot above of this Chevelle

pulling through the parking lot.

How and why those words ended up sticking out?

I do not know, but I'm glad they did.

Do everyone a favor though.

Drop the case.

No.

I can't.

I won't, man.

I'm not gonna quit.

I quit now and all this for nothing.

No.

I get this camera test.

Schumacher did this camera test.

It was over a place on Fairfax.

It wasn't at a studio.

And I remember he did this,

it was real solid that he did for me

because he goes This way,

the word's not gonna get out

that you did a camera test.

Because no matter how good you do,

you're probably not gonna get the part.

And I don't want you starting your career with,

oh he failed at the screen test.

So we're doing it here so no one will know.

Thank you Schumacher.

I go in, I'm prepared for that.

I do the final summation.

I do the first take.

Bam.

That was good.

Connected the dots.

Did totally well.

But did the magic happen?

No.

And Joel goes, Throw the script away.

Everything that's written, just throw it away.

What would you say?

What would you do?

I dropped my guard and spoke,

and said things that would not be allowed

in a courtroom.

It affected me in a way

where I kind of spoke more like a father.

A father that I was not

yet in my real life,

imagining that was my daughter,

that that happened to her.

And that's the take that he goes,

No more.

Done.

Okay,

We're done here.

Great job.

And we'll see.

And it then I got a call 10 or so days later,

and I was working with John Sales

in the middle of the desert.

It was about midnight.

Now Joel Schumacher and John Grisham

on the phone.

That sounds like good news.

You wanna play Jake Brigans?

Fuck yeah, I do.

That little girl.

Now imagine she's white.

You don't necessarily wanna mark certain scenes

that you think are special,

but you know, reading that script,

that has to work.

That final summation has to work

for that story to work.

So I had always had,

even on my first read of that script,

this has to work,

that turn everyone close your eyes, the timing.

And then now imagine if she's white.

That day, everyone caught their breath.

I caught my breath.

And when you see the movie,

still people still kind of catch their breath

at that moment.

And that's like what Akiva wrote.

That was the first scene we shot after lunch.

Came back in and I was ready for it,

and Joel started to set up the wide shots,

and I heard him say like,

We'll shoot some wides,

and then we'll ease into it and warm up to it,

and then we'll get your closeup.

And I just went like Uh-uh.

And he goes, I actually nix that.

We want that.

We'll be shooting the closeup first,

moving things in.

And that take that's in the movie

is the first take we did.

You experiencing any dizziness,

nausea, difficulty breathing?

The breathing thing rings a bell.

And again, you are on top of me

cutting off my air supply.

Your mental clarity is excellent.

That's good.

Rom-com are creatively fulfilling

just in a different way.

They fill a different category.

They're built to be buoyant.

You have a ceiling in a basement

on like how mad

or how much you can love

or how happy you can get in a basement

on how mad you can get.

The compact on purpose.

Boy meets girl, get along,

one dupes the other one, they run,

she runs away.

Boy chase this girl, then we're out.

We know that's going to happen

in all those somehow,

but can we enjoy it?

Can we enjoy that happening in different ways?

And that's what a good successful rom-com does.

And I was fortunate to be a part of a few.

I really enjoyed making those.

Never have I poo-pawed the romantic comedies,

but what I was needing,

and looking for at that time in my life,

while I had just met the woman that I love,

while she was now pregnant

with our first child, which any father

or parent knows

how vital your life becomes at that time.

I was saying,

I'm glad my life feels more vital than my work,

but boy, I'd like to choose,

find some work that is at least challenging

the vitality of my real life.

I was not getting that from the rom-coms.

I felt like I could do 'em tomorrow,

Give me a script, I can do this tomorrow.

Nothing wrong with that,

but I was wanting to be scared,

shaking my boots,

something I like, whoa.

I don't know what I'm gonna do with this role,

but I can't wait to find out.

That was in dramas.

Those were not being offered to me.

Hollywood said, McConaughey.

Stay in your lane.

You making great money in the rom-coms.

We're making great money in the rom-coms.

Everybody us happy.

Why are you starting to tilt the boat here?

Even my brothers were like,

What's your major malfunction, Matthew?

And I said, I'm not doing 'em anymore.

And it became very clear to me

that if I couldn't do what I wanted to do,

I need to stop what I was doing.

I let my agent and everybody know.

I said, I'm not doing anymore rom-coms.

And this took a while for the industry

to get that message across.

As I turned down quite a few,

and then it was nothing.

Then it was cold silence

as my agent at the time Jim Tom said

after about eight months in, he goes,

Matthew, I haven't seen or heard your name

in months.

I'm like, Uh-oh.

So then I'm like, all right,

maybe I've just wrote myself

a ticket out of Hollywood.

What happened is after about 18, 20 months,

I was gone long enough.

I wasn't on your screen in rom-com.

I wasn't in People Magazine on the you know,

on the beach shirtless,

which was also its own sort of rom-com genre

going on or at least a you know, surf comedy,

right.

After about two years,

you hadn't seen me there,

and all of a sudden I became a new novel.

Good idea for Hey what about McConaughey

for the Killer Joe?

They started coming,

and those were things I was looking for,

and just voraciously bite on and nod at,

and off I went.

Talking about my boat.

We found it.

Hey you found it with me living in it,

possessions.

Nine tenths of the law.

You got crosses in your heels,

Nails shape like crosses.

What for?

Ward off evil spirits.

[Interviewer] This is also the beginning of

what you had titled The McConaisance.

I didn't tell that.

[Interviewer] That's what you said

in your memoir.

Shhh.

Well, I planted it. [laughs]

And the interviewer goes,

That's a great title for it.

That's it.

Where'd you hear that?

I go, John Smith down there.

He just brought it up in that last interview.

I was playing with my marketeering skills.

[birds chirping]

What are you doing?

John never sleep in the same spot twice.

What you got there?

Brought you some food.

Here, take it.

I owe you boys.

I was gonna try run a trot line this afternoon.

See where that got me?

It wasn't about trying to break away

from anyone's thought.

It was about this is what I want to do.

I know who this man is.

I understand this predicament.

This is real drama.

And a real drama allows you,

when I was talking about rom-coms having

a ceiling in a basement.

Real drama is about,

there is no ceiling, there is no basement.

How do you feel about it?

Laugh as loud as you want.

Hate as much as you want.

Love as hard as you can love.

Let me see you.

That's what a drama allows.

There's no, there's nothing to compress.

It was a wonderful character, a real romantic.

It was a beautiful love story.

Aristocrat of the heart, Mud was.

I need

To get this letter to Juniper.

Can you take it to her for me?

Yeah.

Alright, now listen.

You gotta be careful.

Why you can't just walk up and knock on her door.

You hear me?

You gotta watch yourself.

I can handle it.

I knew that place in that world,

and that relationship with him,

and the boys and a boat in a tree.

The magic, the reality of it all.

I was like, Ah, what beautiful story

to be a part of.

I never had in my mind.

Oh this is going to make everyone

think differently of me.

I never thought that.

Even when I first started with the Killer Joe,

and the Lincoln Lawyer and all,

I never was doing an anti.

I would never revenge.

I was never like watch this.

I was like, No.

This is what I want to do.

And I was very affirmative

with going forward there.

I was doing it for me.

They ended up being creative enough

or successful enough

that even something like Killers Joe

popped its head above the Indy water line

and was like,

Eh, it's something interesting here.

Well you hate the movie, love the movie.

It was like it got a little bit of notoriety

about it.

Went or it.

Whatever, it went for.

And so I was a part of movies

that were taking big swings,

and some of 'em were landing to a certain extent

and my roles were landing to a certain extent.

So that happened as a circumstance of me

doing what I wanted to do.

Then all of a sudden it was like,

Okay, you flipped the script.

Definitely not just rom-com guy anymore,

McConaughey.

Look around your teams.

You seduce.

Clock eyes.

Don't lock in on any of 'em.

You gotta believe that you are inside

every single while.

When the time is right, you'll know it.

Stick it.

He was great .

Soderbergh, one,

the fact that he called,

I wanted to work with him.

I was really excited that he called.

And then I remember I said,

Steven, I said,

I remember the script, da da da,

this sounds great,

but can you give me one line

that I can just hang up this phone call,

and just have in my mind so I can kind of

float around in my mind until I get the script.

And he goes, he paused.

He goes, Well you know this character

Dallas, man.

He's pretty connected to the UFOs man.

And I just started laughing,

and that was in the phone call.

Now what a great thing to tell an actor

for first line

because talk about no roof,

talk about no ceiling with imagination.

My imagination took off, sprinting up and out.

You know, there's no conservation

off of that line.

Like, oh, okay.

Let's open the aperture for whatever's to come.

And so the imagination went wild,

and then it all seemed of laid right into

the script.

And who this sort of very capitalist leader

of this dance club was.

[upbeat instrumental music]

Some blood tests.

What kind of blood tests?

I don't use drugs.

We didn't test your blood for drugs.

Well good.

That's right.

Um.

You've tested positive for HIV,

which is the virus that causes aids.

You fucking kidding me?

I'm talking about every character

has a monologue.

I got the monologue from this guy

before he was diagnosed with HIV.

There was an entry of Friday night.

He's right in his day.

Spent gas.

He drove here, he drove there,

he filled up his tank with five bucks of gas.

He figures he's got this many more miles

for the weekend,

and maybe he'll swing by,

and see so and so,

you know, here comes Sunday

and he's pressed his pants,

and he's got his shirt pressed.

He's got new batteries in his pager.

Because tomorrow morning

he's driving across town,

and he's gotta hook up some speakers

for this house.

And he's excited about it.

Clothes are laid out, alarm set,

getting to bed early,

got some purpose,

only to wake up and find out that the people

where he had the job had canceled.

You could just see the deflation

because he would have these,

I got purpose, I got plans,

and then it would flutter off into,

and his night just turned into

a bit of a no plan.

And then you see him try to come back up

with an idea

or plan and not really be able to follow through

on it.

So that said a lot about the world.

Whether you see that literally on screen

or not,

that's a lot of the subtext that gives an actor

so much of an engine with which to move,

listen, see and and hear from you know.

This is my patient, you treating these people,

Oh, they're treating themselves.

With what?

Vitamins, peptide, tea, ABC,

anything but that poison you're hawking.

So you ever wear any color?

Seems like every time I see you,

all I see is white.

You had white coat, white shoes,

white.

Tell, Aaron I was looking for him.

And tell him my patients to stay away from here.

Ron's just hungry.

Remember Ron's got the greatest

obstacle in the world that he's fighting

to overcome and that's death.

And boy you can find a character

that that's what they need.

The need to survive is paramount

because the highest obstacle in their face

every day is death is at their doorstep.

I'll talk about drama

where there's no ceiling about

how hard you'll fight or how much you'll hate,

or how much you're willing to live for.

That's that personal to everybody.

So drama, you really do get to bring yourself

to a character more than in other genres.

He's a coyote.

He wasn't a wolf.

He was a coyote man.

And coyotes.

They get trapped,

they'll gnaw their own leg off

to get out of the trap.

That's how hungry he was to to survive

to beat this thing and also kind of become,

became a successful businessman in it.

Stay at the end of the bed.

$10 minimum.

Be my guest.

All right, miss man.

What you got?

Full house.

Jack's ever three.

Well I figured you for Queens.

Fuckers.

Sorry darling.

Yeah, that was just my responsibility

to the role,

that size and which I often miss

sometimes being that weight because boy,

the memory and the brain was so acute.

I needed three and a half hours less sleep

at night than I do now at that weight.

And my mind was just so sharp.

I wasn't that easy to be around.

My wife was like,

Will you please

have a fricking glass of wine?

Take the edges off buddy.

Okay.

You know, I was just vociferously hungry,

and acutely sharp in my mind.

Not everybody wants to sit alone

in an empty room beating off the murder manuals.

Some folks enjoy community.

The common good.

Yeah, with the common goods.

Gotta make up fairytales,

and it's not good for anybody.

You know what I discovered is that

my faith was strong.

It was very easy for me to inhabit

rusting Cole's head and heart and spirit.

Which I don't know, I don't think

belief in the divine prime mover

or God was in that.

But because my faith was strong

before going into Russ, it was easy

to turn my back on my own faith,

and go full bore with Russ down that

philosophical agnostic

or even atheist sort of belief,

and into that man's mind and soul,

and trust that when it was over,

ah, come back and my faith still be there.

It's just one story.

The oldest.

Okay.

Light versus dark.

Well I know we ain't in Alaska,

but here's to me that the dark

is a lot more territory.

Woody and I had worked together

before on Ed TV,

and then Surfer Dude and then in real life.

Where I start in Woody ends

and where Woody starts and I end is a murky line

and we kind of have a comedic jive.

And I remember going into this where he,

you know, was like,

I think we need to you know,

look for some funny in here.

And I'd be like.

And he'd be like, See.

Like that.

How you and I work, McConaughey

is I hit you the ball, you hit it back,

I hit you the ball, you hit it back.

But now I'm like hitting you the ball

and you're just standing there,

and letting it go by

and sit still at the bottom of the fence,

and just staring at me.

What the fuck??

And I was like, My hunch is that might end up

being kind of funny.

And he was like, Oh.

Now if we look back,

and I think we actually to some extent

did pull that off,

and you hear his frustrations with me,

which becomes almost the audience's frustration.

It's like, What the fuck did he just say?

What is Rusty Cole spinning?

Will you please?

You know.

So there actually became

some levity through that.

And that was the difference

in our working relationship.

Murphy stole grandpa's car.

She crashed it.

She's okay though.

Hey dad.

Look at this.

You're a grandpa.

His name is Jesse.

I remember we shot, there was a Monday morning,

and it was the first scene up,

and I'd gotten good rest that weekend,

and I had had a pretty humble good weekend,

but I think it was with my family.

I came in and similar to that final summation

with Joel Schumacher,

I remember we got in,

and Nolan was gonna set up some wides.

They were about to play the tape.

Let's rehearse the tape.

And I remember,

I think I had a note I'd written,

see you first please.

And I think I handed it to Chris,

and all of a sudden I was like, what?

All of a sudden things came over,

and cameras were there and we played the tape.

And again, this is that first take.

That's the one we use.

You once told me that when you came back,

we might be the same age,

and today I'm at the age you were when you left,

and this might be a real good time

for you to come back.

I didn't have to go to a place.

I did think about,

and I did try to understand what if they,

you went to work,

and you were gone for 10 years,

and when you know Casey Affleck,

and Chastain come on as olde,

and the way they're...

The gap, the dread of having to miss

that in my own life with my own kids,

I just reacted,

which is what I've learned I like to do.

If you got, there's scenes like that

because I've consistently tried to,

let's just do take.

Because everything

after take one is acting for real.

We can improve as actors,

we can improve stuff in take two,

I can't too.

But everything after take one.

If you're fully relaxed,

and just reacting,

everything after take one is acting.

I didn't wanna know what was coming,

and I wanted to just, that's all,

that's all about relaxing then.

And that's just me relaxing,

and then what happened happened,

There are 23 kids who are stranded.

Is there anybody in the area

that can pick them up?

Is there anybody that can go,

and pick these kids up?

That's one thing Paul's so good at.

He loves claustrophobic spaces

with something massive and dangerous,

and epic outside encroaching, you know,

a predator, a killer in this case,

a fire.

Look, that bus seat and driving that bus,

that was my own,

I did all the bus driving,

but I didn't never like getting out of that seat.

I felt great right there.

So it was a very comfortable space.

There's nowhere to go.

So much is internal.

Movements are small.

Every breath is precious.

Air is precious.

Heat over exhaustion.

All these things while trying

to maintain a sense of belief,

and hope that there might be a way out.

Because if we quit, if we lay down,

if we concede we're gonna die.

And I'm the one driving this bus.

No, I can't think that way.

And that's all gotta happen

in a small, small, small space.

So while everything is beating you down

physically and mentally,

spiritually, which I think

had to keep believing there might be a way out

or finally is sitting here,

and just waving the white flag the way out,

which we kind of think it is until, fire.

Oh shit.

And drive.

Sometimes get through hell,

you gotta drive right down

the throat of the dragon

to get to the other side of it.

When I told my dad

that I didn't wanna go to law school,

and go to film school and he paused and said,

Are you sure that's what you wanna do son?

I said, Yes, Sir.

And he said,

All right, well don't half ass it.

That launchpad that he gave me there to do

Dazed and Confused.

He had a heart attack,

and moved on from this life five days

into shooting Dazed and Confuses.

So his life actually overlapped me

getting to start.

What hell I didn't,

it know might just be a hobby.

No, but it wasn't a hobby.

His life overlapped me

finally beginning something

that turned out to be a career.

There's grace in that.

That I've always looked at as amazingly graceful.

So he was alive, he didn't come to set,

but he got to see me start,

and be alive for seeing his son start something

that was more than a fad.

It was more than a hobby

that became a career that his son loves.

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