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Part 3 Dirt Road and Autobahns

JULY 1989

While in Australia I had begun applying to colleges. Duke, Grambling, UT Austin, and Southern Methodist. I wanted to study law and become a defense attorney. That had been the plan since ninth grade. I was a great debater and the somewhat serious joke in my household was “Matthew’s gonna become our lawyer, defend the family business, prosecute some bigwigs, make us some ‘Oil of Mink’ money.” I was set on SMU, largely because it was in the metropolitan city of Dallas, and I believed Dallas would have more opportunities for me to intern in a law firm, which would then give me a better chance of having a job as soon as I graduated.

One night Dad called me. “Son, you sure you don’t wanna be a Longhorn?” (My dad always named a school after its mascot and was particularly fond of UT’s.) “No, Dad, I wanna be a Mustang (SMU’s mascot), I’m pretty sure about it.”

He grumbled.

“Is that all right with you, Dad?”

“Oh, sure, son, sure, just thought you might wanna consider being a Longhorn is all.”

“No sir, I wanna be a Mustang.”

“Okay, that’ll work,” he said and we hung up.

An hour later my brother Pat called.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“You sure you don’t wanna be a Texas Longhorn, little brother?”

“Yeah, big brother.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, why do you and Dad keep asking me that?”

“Well, Dad won’t ever tell ya, but the oil business is in bad shape. He’s broke, tryin to keep from goin Chapter 11.” (The oil boom that had moved us from Uvalde to Longview in ‘79 had dried up, and it turned out Dad had been hustling to pay the bills for the last few years.) “He is?”

“Yep, and it’ll cost eighteen thousand a year to go SMU cus it’s private, but only five a year to go to UT cus it’s public.” “Oh shit, I had no idea.”

“Yeah, and, little brother, you ever been to Austin?”

“No.”

“You’re gonna love it, buddy, it is your kinda town. You can walk into anywhere in your flip-flops, have a seat at a bar, and you’ll have a cowboy to the right of you, a lesbian to your left, an Indian on the other side, and a midget tendin bar. All you gotta be is yourself in that town.” I called Dad back the next day. “I changed my mind, I wanna be a Longhorn.”

“You do?” he said, not masking his excitement.

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, gawdammy, little buddy, great choice! What made you change your mind?”

“I just like Longhorns better than Mustangs.”

Out of respect for my dad, I attended the University of Texas at Austin but never told him why. I knew changing my mind would make Dad happy. I’d soon change it again, but this time I wasn’t so sure of his reaction.

When we know what we want to do,

knowing when to do it is the hard part.

Get em early so you don’t have to get em as often.

Prevent before the cure, habilitate before the re.

It was the end of my sophomore year in college, final exams were looming, and I wasn’t sleeping well. Not because of my mattress, because of my mind. I was having doubts about my plans to become a lawyer. The math didn’t add up. Four years of undergrad and I’d be twenty-three, then three more at law school and I’d be twenty-six before I’d get out, get a job. I wouldn’t start making my mark in this world until I was almost thirty years old. I didn’t want to miss my twenties preparing for the rest of my life.

I’d also been writing short stories in my journal. I passed a few off to my good friend Robb Bindler, a film student at NYU, who attested they were original and worth sharing. “Thought about film school?” he asked. “You’re a good storyteller.” Film school? That sounded so flattering, but it also sounded so foreign, almost European, radical, irresponsible, indulgent—so “artsy.” I couldn’t even get the idea into the dialect of my dreams, much less consider it as a rational aspiration. Nah, not for me.

A few hours before my psychology final exam, I showed up at my fraternity, grabbed lunch, and went across the back alley to a couple of fellow Delt brothers’ place so I could finish studying. They were both sleeping in bunk beds because they’d pulled all-nighters cramming. I sat on their couch and opened my textbook. I was a diligent studier. I would use every spare second I had to prepare for a test and took great pride in being composed and ready for any exam. I made a lot of A’s.

But on this day, for some reason, with the exam only a few hours away, I said to myself, You’ve got this McConaughey, and put the textbook and my notes back in my backpack and turned on the TV. ESPN. Now, I love sports. I will watch the World’s Strongest Man competition if that’s all that’s on. Today it was a baseball game. Even better. But after five minutes, for some reason, I shut the TV off, not interested.

I looked around the room. On the floor to the left of me was a stack of magazines. Playboys, Hustlers. Now, I love women, and I love looking at naked women. But for some reason, not today. Not interested. As I flipped about seven mags deep into the pile I came across a small paperback book. It had a white cover with a handsome red cursivelike title. It read: The Greatest Salesman

in the World

Who’s that? I wondered as I picked it up from the pile and began to read.

Two and a half hours later I got to the first “Scroll” in the book. The book had just revealed that the title was referring to the reader of the book, me, in this instance, and now my instructions were to read each scroll three times a day for thirty days before moving on to the next one. I looked at my watch. My exam was in twenty minutes.

I rustled my friend from his bunk. “Can I borrow this book, Braedon?” I asked.

“No, man, you can have it.”

I left, book in hand, and made it to my test on time.

I was high. Something about this book, the title, the story so far, the mystery of the ten scrolls, felt special, like it had found me.

I rushed through my exam. I didn’t care about psychology class and I didn’t care what grade I made, I only cared about reading that first scroll. Somehow I knew that something bigger than a classroom exam lay within the pages of this book.

SCROLL 1

“I will form good habits and become their slave.”

It occurred to me that it was a bad habit to lie to myself any longer. Becoming a lawyer wasn’t for me. I wanted to tell stories. I paced my dorm room trying to assess the best time to call my dad and tell him I had changed my mind and no longer wanted to go to law school, I wanted to go to film school. At 7:30, I thought, he would just have had dinner and would be relaxing on the couch with his first cocktail, catching some tube with Mom. Yeah, 7:30 was the right time to call.

My dad taught us to do a job well and climb the nine-to-five company ladder. I had been groomed to be the family’s lawyer. We were a blue-collar family. Film school? Oh shit.

Taking deep breaths, sweating, I made the call at 7:36 p.m.

Dad answered.

“Hey, Pop,” I said.

“Hey, little buddy, what’s goin on?” he asked.

Another deep breath. “Well, I wanna share something with you.”

“What’s that?”

Oh shit.

“Well, I don’t want to go to law school anymore, I want to go to film school.”

Silence. One. Two. Three. Four. Five seconds.

Then I heard a voice. A kind, inquisitive voice.

“Is that what you wanna do?” he asked.

“Yes sir, Dad, it is.”

Silence. Another five seconds.

“Well…Don’t half-ass it.”

Of all the things my dad could have said, of all the reactions he could have had, Don’t half-ass it were the last words I expected to hear and the best words he could have ever said to me. With those words he not only gave me his blessing and consent, he gave me his approval and validation. It’s what he said and how he said it. He not only gave me privilege, he gave me honor, freedom, and responsibility. With some formidable rocket fuel in his delivery, we made a pact that day. Thanks, Pop.

Greenlight.

biology and giddyup

DNA and work.

Genetics and willpower.

Life’s a combination.

Some get the genes but never the work ethic or resilience.

Others work their ass off but never had the innate ability.

Others have both and never rely on the first.

I didn’t have a short film or a piece of art to audition for film school, but I had a 3.82 GPA. Not only did it get me into film school, it got me into the Honors Program.

But now I was pursuing a career path, where, unlike law, my GPA did not matter. I knew Hollywood and artists didn’t care if I made A’s or F’s, they needed to see something worthy of their attention. I needed to make something—a film, a performance. I needed a job.

I signed with the local Donna Adams Talent Agency and started interning at an ad agency four days a week between classes. I wore a pager on my hip and would step out of class without hesitation to drive to San Antonio or Dallas to audition for a music video or a beer ad. I got a bunch of no-thank-yous.

The first gig I landed was as a hand model. Donna Adams had told me upon signing that I had “good-lookin hands,” and if I “quit biting my nails” I might have a future in the hand modeling business. She was correct. I’ve never bit my nails since.

Good looks don’t cook the dinner, but they’ll get you a seat at the table, and I was determined to take advantage of any seat I could get. I directed short films in black-and-white on 16 mm Bolex cameras, I edited, I assistant directed other classmates’ films, I directed photography, I wrote and performed. I missed a lot of classes driving to San Antonio and Dallas.

One day, the dean called me into his office. “Matthew, attendance is mandatory in our classes, especially the Honors Program. You cannot keep missing class or leaving in the middle of class as you have been. If you continue to do so, I will have to fail you.” “Dean,” I said, looking him directly in the eye, “you and I both know that a degree in film production doesn’t mean squat to studio heads in Hollywood and New York City. It means nothing to the people that make movies. They want to see a product. A film, a performance, something. The only reason I’m skipping class is to go out into the world and try and make something that those people will want to purchase. I’m chasing things outside of the classroom that the classroom is teaching me to chase.” Then I had an idea, and I blurted it out. “If I promise to make it to every exam day in class, will you just gimme C’s across the board?” He didn’t answer.

Nonetheless, I stuck to my proposal. I kept skipping classes to chase my pager and I made sure I showed up as prepared as possible on exam days.

At the end of the semester, I received a C in every class on my college transcript. But I learned a lot more than when I was making A’s.

Greenlight.

I’ll take a little common sense with that knowledge

I was an outcast in class anyway. The only frat guy in film school. Boots. Pressed button-down. Tucked in. Tan. Affable. Nonneurotic.

Most everyone else wore black. They were pale, goth, and huddled in their private corners.

One of our professors made us go see movies each weekend and come back on Monday and talk about them with the class. I would always go to the Metroplex and see the blockbuster, then come in on Monday and say, “Hey, I saw Die Hard this weekend and…” “Nah, that’s shit, man, that’s shit, it sucks,” my classmates would say before I could finish my sentence. They had all gone and seen the Eisenstein revival.

I began to doubt myself. “This is what you have to do to be an artist, McConaughey. You have to see the art films at the art house, not the blockbusters at the Metroplex. You aren’t independent enough, you need to be more eccentric, less friendly.” I started untucking my shirt.

But I still went to see the blockbusters. The next Monday I got in front of the class to talk about what I’d seen, and again, the rest of the students started murmuring, “That’s big studio shit, man…corporate America sellouts.” This time I said, “Wait a minute. Tell me why it’s shit. Why it sucks. What you didn’t like about it.” They all got quiet, heads started looking to each other. Finally, one of them said, “Well…we didn’t actually see it. We just know it’s shit.” “Fuck y’all,” I said. “Fuck y’all for saying something is shit just because it’s popular!”

After that day I was comfortable being both in the fraternity and a film student.

I tucked my shirt back in.

Tribes

We want lovers, friends, recruits, soldiers, and affiliations that support who we are.

People, individuals, believe in themselves, want to survive, and on a Darwinistic level at least, want to have more, of ourselves.

Initially, this is a visual choice.

The where, what, when, and who…to our why.

Upon closer inspection, which is the upfall of the politically correct culture of today, we learn to measure people on the competence of their values that we most value.

When we do this, the politics of gender, race, and slanderous slang take a back seat to the importance of the values we share.

The more we travel, the more we realize how similar our human needs are.

We want to be loved, have a family, community, have something to look forward to.

These basic needs are present in all socioeconomic and cultural civilizations.

I have seen many tribes in the deserts of Northern Africa who, with nine children and no electricity, had more joy, love, honor, and laughter than the majority of the most materially rich people I’ve ever met.

We have the choice to love, befriend, recruit, call to arms, associate, and support

who we believe in, and more importantly, who, we believe, believes in us.

I think that’s what we all want. To believe in and be believed in.

We all must earn belief in ourselves first, then for each other.

Earn it with you, then earn it with me, then we earn it for we.

Travel and humanity have been my greatest educators.

They have helped me understand the common denominator of mankind. Values.

Engage with yourself then engage with the world.

Values travel.

And sometimes we get a stamp in our passport just by crossing the street. ______________

Fascinated with the differences between people and cultures, I’ve always enjoyed looking for and finding the common denominator of values that are the foundation beneath our distinctions. When my college buddies and I would hit Sixth Street for a night out, they’d go to the popular bars littered with sorority girl possibilities and I’d go to Catfish Station, an all-black, sweaty bar that sold catfish, beer, and blues. It was standing room only when Kyle Turner was on his saxophone or the all-blind band Blue Mist were on the stage. I’d find my spot stage left by the beer cooler. I’d lean against it, serve myself, and let the cool air keep my perspiration from dripping. Laron managed the joint. Tammy was the black-and-beautiful-as-midnight rock star waitress who ran the floor and had every single dude in the joint thinking they had a chance just so they’d tip more. None of them did—have a chance, that is—me included, but we tipped a little extra anyway. One night around closing time while paying Laron for the six bottles of beer I’d drunk, I told him I wanted a job waiting tables. The hand modeling gigs were sparse and I needed some extra spending money, and besides, I liked the blues. Laron laughed. I was the only white person, male or female, who was ever in the place.

“I’m serious, I need the cash and I like the music in here,” I said.

He laughed again, then stared at me a minute.

“Ahh-ight, you crazy motherfucker,” he said, pulling out a pen and writing on a receipt. “Go to this address Tuesday morning at nine and ask for Homer. He’s the owner. I’ll let him know you’re comin.” I showed up at the appointed time. The place was also on Sixth Street but in a much bigger, open-floored club. Business at Catfish Station was good, and the joint would soon be moving up to a larger venue—this one. In the middle of the room stood a black man, well over 340 pounds, wearing an all-white janitor’s uniform and dripping sweat on the concrete floor he was mopping. Another black man was standing at the bar, back to the entrance, doing paperwork.

“Homer?” I asked aloud.

The man at the bar didn’t move. The other guy kept mopping.

“Homer Hill!” I said a bit louder.

The man at the bar turned his head over his right shoulder like he’d been interrupted.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“I’m Matthew, Laron told me to come by here and see you. I wanna be a waiter at Catfish Station.”

Over his shoulder he said, “Oh yeah, that’s right; grab a mop and go with Carl to clean the men’s room.” Carl turned with his mop and began rolling his water bucket back toward the bathrooms. Never turning back, he pointed at another mop and bucket against the back wall.

Not what I was expecting. I smiled. Homer did not. So I stepped to it, went to the men’s room, and started mopping the floors like I was trying to take Carl’s job.

Ten to fifteen minutes passed. Head down, cleaning a stall, I heard, “Man, put that mop down.”

I turned and there was Homer.

“You really want a job waitin tables?”

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

Homer shook his head a bit and let out a breathy giggle. “All right, show up at the Station, Thursday night at six p.m. You can shadow Tammy and learn the ropes.” On Thursday night I showed up at Catfish Station at 5:45. I knew Tammy from the many nights I’d been a customer, but now I was there to learn from her and she was not too happy about it. Tammy was the queen bee—she ran the entire floor—and I was now trespassing on her territory, and her tips. But for the next three nights, Tammy initiated me. Where to clock in for work, how to run the register, how to place orders with the cooks, what to tip them at the end of the night, which tables would soon be mine, and which high-tipping customers I best not even look at.

The next Thursday night I started waiting tables for real. Game on. The clientele was 90 percent black men, 10 percent black women with those black men. Eighty percent of those black men were single and as much as they liked the blues, they came to the Station for Tammy. And they weren’t delighted to be waited on by a young white man, and their tips told me as much. At the end of night one, I cleared $32. Tammy made $98.

I waited tables at Catfish Station Thursday through Saturday for the next two years. Many of those black men became my friends and even came to choose my section. Many, not most. Tammy and I became pretty close but, like every other straight man in the Station, she never let me get so much as a peck on the cheek. I never stopped trying. I never beat her in tips, either.

Homer and I have maintained a friendship through the years. We went to a Longhorn game together last season.

Greenlight.

We are not here to tolerate our differences,

we are here to accept them.

We are not here to celebrate our sameness,

we are here to salute our distinctions.

We are not born into equal circumstances,

or with equal abilities,

but we should have equal opportunity.

As individuals,

we unite in our values.

Celebrate that.

I had a little cash in my pocket from my job at Catfish Station, but not so much that I didn’t appreciate a free drink. I picked up my girlfriend, Tonia, and took her to the bar at the top of the Hyatt where my classmate Sam was bartending, hence the free drinks.

“Two vodka and tonics, Sam.”

He brought them over and said, “There’s a guy at the end of the bar who’s in town producing a movie. He’s been comin in here nightly. Lemme introduce you to him.” This is when I met the one and only Don Phillips.

I welcomed him to Austin. We were both golfers and had played some of the same courses. He drank vodka and tonics as well, many of them.

A few hours later, as Don stood atop a chair in the midst of delivering one of his legendarily loud charades of a story, the management, to no avail, tried to calm him down. When it was obvious Don wanted nothing to do with toning anything down, they tried to kick him out of the bar.

Matching him drink for drink, I had no interest in Don calming down either, so we were unpeacefully escorted out of the Hyatt. Now past two in the morning, as he rode with me in a cab to drop me off at my apartment, I pulled out a joint and we smoked it.

“You ever done any acting, Matthew?” he asked.

I told him I’d been in a Miller Lite commercial for about a second and a half and had done a music video for Trisha Yearwood.

“Well, there’s a small part in this movie I’m casting you might be right for. Come to this address tomorrow morning at nine thirty and pick up the script, I’ll have the three scenes marked.” The cabbie dropped me off at my apartment and Don and I said our good nights.

The next morning at 9:30 (really the same morning just six hours later) I arrived at the location Don had given me and there was a script with my name on it, and a handwritten note from Don that read, “Here’s the script, the character’s name is ‘Wooderson,’ I’ll get you in for an audition in two weeks.” Over the years I’ve come to call the kind of line in a script that can send me flying a “launchpad” line. This script was for Dazed and Confused. The line that sent me into flight was: “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man.

I get older, they stay the same age.”

Wooderson was twenty-two years old but still hanging out around the high school. That line opened up an entire world into who he was, an encyclopedia into his psyche and spirit. I thought about my brother Pat when he was a senior, and I was eleven. He was my big brother, my hero. One day, Pat’s Z28 was in the shop so Mom and I were picking him up from high school.

We were slowly pulling through campus in our ‘77 wood-paneled station wagon, Mom driving, me peering out the window in the back seat. Pat was not where we had planned to meet him.

“Where is he?” asked Mom.

Turning my head to look left and right and then out the back window, I saw him about a hundred yards behind us, leaning against the brick wall in the shade of the school’s smoking section, one knee bent, boot sole against the side of the building, pulling on a Marlboro, cooler than James Dean and two feet taller.

“Ther—!!” I started to shriek, then caught my tongue because I realized he’d get in trouble for smoking.

“What’s that?” Mom asked.

“Nothin, Mom, nothin.”

That image of my big brother, leaning against that wall, casually smoking that cigarette in his low-elbow, loose-wristed, lazy-fingered way, through my romantic eleven-year-old little brother eyes, was the epitome of cool. He was literally ten feet tall. It left an engraved impression in my heart and mind.

And eleven years later, Wooderson was born from that impression.

cool

cool is a natural law.

if it was cool for THAT time,

then it is cool for ALL time.

a fad is just a branch on cool’s trunk,

a fashionable fling whose 15 minutes can never abide,

no matter how long she trends to try.

cool stands the test of time.

because cool never tries.

cool just is.