Matthew McConaughey, Vol. II

0:00From athletic stuff like a full-court pickup game, swish, to athletic-ish stuff like a half-mile stroll. Get those steps in. Head to Sierra or Sierra.com for the brands you want at the prices that let you do it all. From athletic to athletic-ish, Sierra's got it. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom-scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state i've been told many times hey can't believe you turned down titanic i'm like i didn't turn down titanic and they're like well cameron said and i said i never got offered that part and if i did i need to find that agent this is a major mixed signal that agent owes me money prepare your ears humans happy sad confused begins

1:06hey guys it's josh welcome to another edition of happy sad confused today on the show another absolute icon is in the house we have matthew mcconaughey on the show today talking about his entire career from dazed and confused to his new film the rivals of m zaya king this man is one of the best out there as an actor and a storyteller this one is worth your time thanks guys as always for checking out the podcast remember to hit that subscribe button on youtube on spotify on whatever podcast platform you are using and if you enjoy what i do i encourage you to check out our patreon patreon.com slash happy say confused early access ask a question of our guests access to our live events in new york and la and beyond and so much more um i don't need to give Matthew McConaughey much of an intro, right?

1:50Do I, you guys know his work and, um, he is one of one. There's no one like him. And this conversation is fantastic because he can tell a story and he does in this conversation. Uh, we go back to the beginning. We go back to taste and confused and a time to kill. We talk about the bongo drum incident. Didn't have that on my bingo card, but we did it guys. We talk about the roles he's turned down some very famous roles all the way up to and including this new indie he's a part of called The Rivals of M. Ziya King. It's a mouthful. It's a great piece of work. Kind of sits on a shelf with mud in my mind of kind of a vibe of a movie, a musical movie without being a musical.

2:33Matthew is front and center with a largely unknown cast around him. It's been in the works for a long time and it's finally getting out into theaters now. It's been worth the wait. Check it out. The Rivals of M. Ziya King with Matthew McConaughey. That's enough of a preamble because you want to hear from the man himself, the legend. Here's me and the one and only Matthew McConaughey. Enjoy. Matthew, you're back on the pod. In person on camera this time. Last time we did it was a pandemic, right? Pandemic times. We're doing it for real this time. It's always good to see you, man. Thank you for making the time.

3:07We're going to dig into a lot today. Of course, as always, Rivals of M. Zaya King. and congratulations, man. This has been a long road for this one, I know. So you must feel some sense of pride, you know, completion. Yeah, you declare, and you never know. You know, usually what? You make a movie, it goes in a post, sometimes six, nine months, a year it comes out. You declare, this one's been a little bit longer than that. I'm glad it has. In a way, you know, the studio held onto it to find the right time to release it. We had a great declaration when we opened in South by Southwest, but now we're going to share it with the world and do it this weekend.

3:41and I'm honored to be a part of it. So the last time we spoke, I mean, we were talking about where you were at in your acting career, and you were talking, I was asking you about going forward, and you were talking about making legacy choices, about kind of like criteria for yourself. And sure enough, like this one, it was about, I think about five years between gigs when you shot this a few years back. So what made this like the one to get back in? Yeah. So I'd been reading scripts. And some good ones. But this is the first one that came across my desk. I was like, oh, that is an absolutely specific and original time, place, space, language, music, love story, father, daughter, shepherd.

4:29A character who gives belonging, who brings the light and puts people in the light. Everyone he meets puts them in the center of the circle and raises them up.

4:43and bees in a mandolin bluegrass band who plays in gravel parking lots on any given Tuesday night. It's part of the Hollywood handbook. Everybody knows this is how you make a movie. Right, but you hear it, and that's what you can get out of a good independent film. Yeah. Specific time and place. We were talking about Daniel Rohr. He did it with Tuner. Yeah. Texture to the world. And I didn't know that job. Someone goes and tunes pianos? Yeah. What's that world? Oh, that person would have a great ear. They could pick safes. Nice connection. So this, you know, arrivals had that. And the script that Andrew wrote just caught my curiosity.

5:22I know those people. I know how they use music and humor to survive and thrive and get through hardships. I know how their sense of humor that what may break other people's arms just bruises them. and they're making the best of it. And I know people like Amzaya who are just absolute legends, mythological characters in their own mind. Right. As well as making sure that everybody else they run into understands that they're a mythological character spell. You know? This might sound silly, but like do you respond ever to like a title of a film or a character name? Because this one jumps out, both of them.

6:00You're the titular character. There's something there that invites more, you know, investigation. I'll respond to it for sure because it's almost like a, sometimes when I do a film, I want to go talk to the producer or director and go, what's the poster like? Just like Tim. It's a close-up silhouette of you. Okay, this could be more of a character study. Oh, no, it's a wide shot of the planes and there's 60 caliber men coming over. Oh, okay, it's more of an epic. Right. You get a sense. Am I going to be weaning against the door? No, I've done that. Yeah. You know, the name can be just almost a musical note that you go.

6:41But Amzaya and rivals of Amzaya King. That's very biblical. Yeah. Mythologically biblical. Yeah. And so I want to know who's this guy? And it's in all caps. It's a proper noun. It's not a common noun. You know what I mean? Totally. That's part of the mythology. And so, yeah, to read the script that was there and then talk to Andrew about who Amzaya was, how the world revolves around him, how he draws people in. And then also, not to give a spoiler, leaves in a certain way at an interesting time in the film. You are obviously a huge part. I mean, you are the titular character, but you're in some ways a supporting player in this without revealing too much.

7:21And I think it's also like, you know, speaks to you that like, you know, you've been front and center a lot in films. You've been the leading man many, many times. You've also taken the supporting role when it calls for Wolf of Wall Street that behooved you well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And something like this, like kind of helping the next generation. Like, you know, is that important to you kind of like to pass on what you've learned and be kind of a mentor to a younger actor on set? Yeah. It's not important to me to go, hey, I want to play number two on the call sheet so I can raise up the, no. No.

7:54They can work their way up there. I'm not giving that away. At the same time, I want to be a part of great stories. Yes. And this was a great story. and what happens to my character in the middle of the movie, which, again, not to give it away, some would say, some could say arguably to me, wait, why would you do that? Bill, why would you choose that? Don't do, no. I'm not scared of what happened to this character. Actually, it's beautiful. It's part of the poetry of the film because my motto for my life has been just keep living. You know? How do you keep someone's spirit alive when they're not there?

8:27How do we admit that sometimes people have to leave us and what they leave us gives us our purpose and place to go. And if they were still around to help shepherd us, we wouldn't do it. There's a certain amount of clarity and courage you get when our mentors leave us and go, no, I'm not going to be there this time. You got it. It's a musical film without being a musical. It's source. We don't break into song in the middle of dialogue. It's source music. It's what we do. Yeah, it just permeates the atmosphere. It's everything. I mean, you strike me always as such a free and confident performer.

9:04Do you have that when you're called upon to sing? Like, do you feel the same kind of confidence performing music? Oh, I get quite nervous. But look, I'll be honest. I still get nervous when I go to set each day to act without singing. Now, when I have to pick up a new craft, being very comfortable in the middle of 10 ,000 bees crawling all over me, you don't just show up on the day and go, I'll do that. I'll just be cool. No, no, it takes a while to get comfortable and then, you know, to then go play a mandolin and sing live. Yeah, that's some nerves. I'm going to go work on that for a few months to get my feet under me.

9:55And, you know, what have I found? That when I'm playing mandolin really good, I'm not as good of a singer. When I'm singing better, I'm not playing the mandolin. You just get to both going the best at the same time. You're just talking about bouncing life, dog, life, everything. It's the same thing. You gotta get everything. Same thing. Hey, man, just keep them out of the red. Yeah, but to practice it enough and prepare enough to where on the day I can be confident, but still, major butterflies on the day. When it's time to actually do, this is that performance. This is what you've been working on for three months.

10:27This is what you've been rehearsing. This is what you've been up in the morning and night with, trying to play and learn the tune. Now we have to do it like we've done it a thousand times, because this character does it all the time. The mandolin is an extension of his arm. He plays it like he whistles, and so how do we make it look and feel like that and believe that? That's the trick. I mean, it's funny, because you have always struck me as like one of the people that seemingly is the most confident in their own skin. I mean that as a compliment. Like you know who you are. And a constant conversation I have with actors is kind of what you just alluded to a little bit, which is like imposter syndrome, which like in many conversations like plagues every actor virtually at every strata.

11:08Do you feel like that's still, I mean, you kind of just talked about this a little bit, but when's the last time you felt like imposter syndrome? Like I'm the wrong guy for this or I'm not meant to be here. Okay, so I think the way that I shake hands with that, and I did feel it very early on in my career quite a bit, like success came over a weekend with Time to Kill. The amount of yeses and green lights that came to my lap on that Monday morning that I did not have the previous Friday were monumental. And I was like, whoa, me? Why me? What? Should I can do any of these scripts? Wait, three days ago I couldn't do any of them.

11:44And you want me to read all 100 and tell you which one I want to do when three days ago I would have done any of them? Right. Now, look, and I'm not saying this in jest, but I am saying it somewhat in jest. When I shook hands and going, oh, hell, man.

12:10What's wrong with being a fraud? Go be a great frickin' fraud. Run towards it. That's what we're playing, make believe. So let's make them believe. So to be literal and go, there's a journey an actor takes to go, no, I have to inherit this from the inside out and understand that this is who I am. And by the time an actor's shooting on a script, that's where we want to be past any intellectual or philosophical definition of why I would do something. We want to get down to the nut of it is because it's who I am. right that should be after you do all the work and there's hundreds of pages of notes and you've gone into the psychology of the character should end up why because that's who i am right now you go that take that journey to get there to to understand and feel from the inside out who you are that is that has that character that you're playing and who that character is that that that that you also that that you're becoming that you learn from them

13:08but it's fraudulent it is fraud you put a great fraud yeah you're fooling yourself and the audience that's art yeah i mean art emulates life life's not the fraud art's the fraud and thank goodness for the fraud steal from me and if you and if you use it well you just complimented me well it's also also because if you don't believe if you haven't fooled yourself into believing that you're the guy the audience isn't going to believe it either yeah you're the first audience see you yeah twitch they'll see you stutter yeah they will see you do trying to do the work on screen and think about can i pull the uh it's a great fraud you don't see any of that you don't you see we see performance and you see the work you see the choices like i shouldn't see that yeah it's not as good for it's not as not as good of a fraud you're an excellent fraudster no i get it totally fraudster is that a real word if it isn't it ought to be i like that we know you make words let's go with fraudster yeah so i mean a good fraud a good con i mean a good ruse a good muse um good emulation imitation is not necessarily always a great product it can be it can be oh okay connect the dots hey that was very much like that no you're already into a simile if you get into the similes you're in trouble right i don't want to be like something i want to be the thing be the thing so you get past the simile which is past the invitation if you can pull it off pull it off pull off the fraud and as you know there's that here's another way to put it there's all that you know we have this sort of credo in society about hey find out who you are what's your real identity Go there.

14:56Well, let's also give what Bob Dylan says some credit. What are you talking about, man? Be the creation. Be what you want to be. Now, what's the genius do? The genius can be anybody they want to be. But they're always one at a time. How many Bob Dylans have there been? We know. He kept reinventing. You know? More Happy Say Confused coming up.

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17:33Segueing a little bit. We talked, I know way back when, on the film Gold, you based that primarily or partially on your dad. And you mentioned your mom for this one. Is it fair to say there's a lot of your mom in this character? Yeah. Yeah, there is. And I don't know how much I noticed it until I've talked about it in post since we made it. But my mother is a beautiful and true example of the value of denial if you truly commit to it. and I don't mean being sensitive to crisis. I don't mean be foolish. I don't mean being a foolish optimist. I mean, absolutely. If there's something that you don't, if somebody doesn't take your favor, instead of going off and going, oh, what was wrong with me?

18:27Oh my God, was it me? You know, you make up your mind. That's their problem. Boom, to the next. If you don't like a condition, part of getting through it, well, even if it's medical, Yeah, you may need to go do the medical steps to take care of yourself, but part of getting over it is the mind going, I don't have this.

18:52I'm getting past it because I don't have it. And she does it to an extent where it's more than intellectual exercise. She actually... Bies into the story. She beat two types of cancer on aspirin. You may hear this and go, BS, bullshit, that doesn't make sense. i'm telling you that's what i said too and when the doctor said it's gone i'm like how she didn't take any of them yeah i don't know um so and she also is this look when we would grow up you know one if me or my brother showed up and we thought we were that came home and thought we were the cock of the walk or my middle brother flipping his hair back after he won the 100 meter dash thought he was all that we walking on his toes as my mom would say my family was great at finding your Achilles heel and just jabbing it until you were on the ground crying for mercy and cried uncle.

19:44And then we lifted you up, hoisted you in the air and celebrated you and said, welcome back. And at the same time, if you were ever insecure, if you were down, if you were not feeling confident about yourself, my family and my mom, especially would bring you to the center of the circle and start celebrating every asset and attribute you got that was that was original about you and awesome about you and it you you didn't it wasn't a discussion right it was a revival and all of a sudden she would she and the family would hoist you in the air and and and get you back to yourself and seeing yourself in a great light and then bring drop you down to the ground and go there you are don't forget that made it all the more sweet don't ever forget that yeah and she just did that out of it and that's one of the reasons she was a great mother so anyway that sense of community and family and bringing my whole family has always had an affection for the underdog and I think back of the only fights I got in in high school were when I was taking up for the underdog whether it was a little black guy Ronnie who had a big fro and they called him a runt kind of fight defending him whether it was Betty who was the one gothic lesbian in our school who I was friends with and everyone was pick up those are the only fights I got in and I got it from my dad and my mom well if you were an underdog we loved you we're gonna go okay watch this we protect the underdog yeah and and actually I've gone through my whole career with whatever success I've had and I know for me I work better believing I'm an underdog even if with a little resistance even if seemingly it seems like even if I create my own resistance You know what I mean?

21:26Yep. And I hope to keep doing that because if you don't, you can get complacent. Now, what can happen with underdogs, the antithesis of it is, well, but do you lose confidence? Right. No. No, there's something actually great about going, no, I'm not of the populace. You know, I'm not on top. If I think I'm on top, that's a mortal thought. I need to think immortally. No, I'm still an underdog. You know what I mean? And my mom was great. She used to say, we go out to a dance or something have a date and be nervous and she she'd see us she'd see whenever she was like look here's what you can do tonight you're not going to walk in that place like you want to buy it you're going to walk in that place like you own it bop and give you a slap and you're dead and be like damn right okay i'm going i'm going mom she was wonderful at that and that's a lot of ams i there's a lot of ams i and that side of my mother you know it struck me so i'm looking i always you know for these kind of conversations you'll get the arc of the career and the dates and everything.

22:22Maybe this has been brought up to you, but we're almost like 30 years to the day as we tape this. July 24th, 30 years ago, was the date A Time to Kill came out. Really? Okay. That August is the famous Vanity Fair cover, the Herb Ritz cover, which I always think about as kind of like, there he is. Was it the Herb Ritz cover? Was it Vanity Fair? I think so. Was that sitting in a truck? I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's it. Herbert's flew in on a helicopter to that photo shoot about an hour after I arrived. I remember that. I was like, oh, oh, that, oh, the big dog's here. I thought I was a big dog.

23:00No, the big dog shows up after I get here in a helicopter. Excuse me. I didn't get a helicopter. You got your helicopter, I'm sure. 26 then. I mean, how do you think you handled, I mean, you talked about kind of the no's turning into yeses overnight and the, you know, the fame. But like in retrospect, how do you think you handled that period of your life in terms of? In retrospect, I'm pretty proud of how I handled it.

23:27I had times where, you know, I smashed the champagne glass in the name of the mendacious caviar and this highfalutin bullshit. Everyone's, which was clumsy of me. Sure. because I partially imposter syndrome partially I was kind of right but still you don't need to just go right don't need to go prove it right know your zone I didn't know my zone sometimes I was also what I think quite boring in certain places but it was a it was a survival mechanism I wasn't things happen so fast and so so frequently that I didn't there were times I didn't I wasn't feeling where i was i was having trouble being present i'm much more present like sitting here with you now i couldn't be off the cuff and right giving anecdotes and swinging and saying yeah we're live we don't need to edit then there are certain times i was like be a gentleman don't lie i would like just give myself and i gave some interviews i was like jeez that's a boring interview but you did okay but you didn't you didn't put your ass bear up a flagpole yeah okay you know what i mean okay yeah it's fine that's your work and and i had it so i held a line and i did a cool thing where i did have the instincts to go spiritually i got to get out of here and i took a couple of trips which you know whether it was to south south america or whether it was to to to africa on my own right because i needed to go somewhere where memory could catch up with me those trips and i look back i'm going like that was necessary invaluable resets that you needed because one of the first things was and i've written about it you don't meet strangers anymore the world's a mirror yeah and people come up and they say sorry about miss hud and you go number one who are you number two didn't even introduce yourself number three how'd you know i had a dog number four how'd you know her name was miss hud number five how'd you know she had cancer you just jumped five deep into my life on howdy whoa you know so it would feel like you'd feel kind of trespassed upon um or i did so you know that that that took a while that wasn't that wasn't their fault you know but it took a while to get get the feet on the get the feel gravity at the same time be able to accept no you're in a really privileged position let's take advantage of this so I look back and I think I handled it pretty well because I didn't derail yeah um yeah I mean you never like seemingly from the outside looking in like went off a cliff like the worst you did was like you know it's the famous like the bongo drums like and that's just a silly funny story that's just that was kind of a good one that's a I mean that's a classic that he's been done since and before one of one yeah naked bongo drumming come on iconic I framed that ticket how loud were you playing to get a voice complaint like well i was playing loud quite loud i also had my window open there's and that neighbor that had just moved in to town mind you we should say forgive them but let me tell you the whole neighborhood got up on their ass going you don't call that cops come on you throw up a brick over the wall or something or or a hammock and just say hey shut up will you turn it down but you don't call my cops you know embarrass the hell out of them did you immediately have a sense of humor about that at the time or did that feel like a real like well here's a great mom mom m zaya moment yeah i was raised where you don't it's It's not as much about the crime, it's about did you get caught.

27:16And you should feel a little bit of shame for getting caught. Because you didn't, you didn't, that's I remember my parents being like, look, it's not even what you did, just the fact that you were lazy enough to get caught. That you didn't respect me enough to try and get away with it better. Shame on you, yeah, here's the discipline. Well same thing with that particular, like crime. I remember everything was fun and games. Then I woke up in the morning after nine hours in the jail and started to have the blues because I had gotten caught. And I was in a jail, and I was like, I was not raised to be in a jail.

27:52I had no problem with what I did. I don't think my mom and dad got any problem with what I did. But I got caught, you know, and I'm not supposed to be here. Damn it. And I started getting the blues, and I had my one phone call, and I called my mom. bummed and i told her what happened and her first words out of her mouth were like those mother people you gotta say they came in here who the hell do they think they are i know you've done that before you'll play you'll play naked bongos on the funny weed getting your birthday suit in your life and don't you ever fucking not do that i've done that before and just pump me up yeah above the law it's like you hold your head high yeah you hold your head eye that's their problem but and i remember i had the decision you got a car over here to the right that's in the garage you can get out in private and leave the precinct or over here to the left there's a whole bunch of reporters out there and you're going to be on camera and make a statement and if i wouldn't have talked to my mom on that phone call you would have gone out the other side instead i talked to her and i went left went outside made a funny quip about nine hours in to say something silly about I've had better mattresses or something.

29:05Everyone chuckled. All of a sudden, the bubble was burst. Someone handed me a t-shirt that had already been made that night that said bongo naked with a picture of me running across naked bongos, and everyone got the joke. Everyone was like, what a great ticket. Perfect. You made the most of it. Okay, some random stuff. I mean, there's no segue to this, but I want to talk about some films. we've never talked a lot about Interstellar but Interstellar which was huge at the time has only grown like I'm sure you feel this like people now acknowledge Interstellar as like a modern classic it's hidden icon status and it was around just after that 10 year anniversary and since I still now and that was what 2 years ago?

29:493 years ago? that's 70 % of the people that come up to me Interstellar and all of them say the general line is, I've seen it four times. It's my favorite movie. And they don't stop and they don't slough it off and say it, they stop me. Similar to what they do with Green Lights, the book. Those fans stop me, put two hands on my shoulder, turn me around and make sure I'm looking at them and tell me this is what it meant to me. Interstellar fans are doing that now. How did you reach that level of intensity of, I mean, that now iconic scene? and it's like learning that 23 years have gone. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

30:26I mean, that's... So that was a Monday morning. We had just moved locations to a lot. I think we were on Sony lot, and we had just moved locations to L.A. And sometimes when you move a location, you got to get your stuff straight. If you've got big, important scenes coming up, it's like, no, I want to be kind of in my groove. But I remember I had a really kind of quiet weekend with myself i knew i had that scene coming up and i just wanted to make sure i had didn't have any tension i want to be relaxed and be able to receive and i remember showing up that morning first first up i walked set and uh nolan says all right we're gonna rehearse it and play the video and i and i remember having this feeling the same thing i did with jill schumacher in time to kill before the final summation.

31:20We walked on that set. He goes, okay, we'll rehearse it. You can ease your way into it. And I didn't even look at him. I was like, uh-uh. And he goes, okay, we're going to do close-ups first. Because I was in, I was. You were ready. It was in a zone and ready. And that, what you see in there was the first take. Yeah. In Time to Kill. On Interstellar, I think I handed a note to Nolan that said, see you, please. See you close-up. Close-up, yeah. And he goes, okay. And then they send someone else. He goes, okay, we'll just run the video back. And I'm like, mm-mm. meaning I don't want to see it you're already there well I want to react to yeah I got you yeah all right because that's where I came up with that understanding that line that's very true actually is everything after take one is acting everything after take one is fraudulent but take one can improve sure a performance through that's where technique comes in and right yeah but the first time in any scene the first time you see something you don't know what's coming if you relax and can react to it that's pure that's as pure as it can get then take two take three you try to keep from anticipating what you're going to see but you still have an idea in the back of your head you're going well this comes up so the first time it's happening in real time and that take is that is first take amazing so it came on they were older it was going through my head about my own children what if i had left and for them it was 30 years and for me it was whatever three weeks whatever the timeline is oh my gosh what a pain what a regret what a sense of loss and it was my choice