فصل 4-بخش اول

Part 4 The Art of Running Downhill

JANUARY 1994

Don loved that I had gone on the motorcycle trip through Europe with “his boys!” The three of us, all cast by him in Dazed and Confused. Back sleeping on his couch, I didn’t say a word about meeting an agent. Didn’t even think about it. Didn’t need to.

One night, over another scoop of vanilla Häagen-Dazs and some strawberry marmalade, Don said, “You’re ready. Tomorrow morning, I got us a meeting with Brian Swardstrom and Beth Holden at the only agency that would see us, the William Morris Talent Agency. Tell em you wanna direct as well, you’ll sound even less needy, they’ll salivate.” My résumé was my performance as Wooderson in Dazed and Confused, which had been released in limited theaters a few months earlier. (Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation hadn’t been released yet.) Boots, jeans, and a tucked-in button-down, I shook their hands and sat down for my next job interview. I acted like I wanted them, not like I needed them. Swardstrom nibbled, Holden bit. I signed with Beth and William Morris the next day.

Now, this is usually the point in the story where the protagonist, the young wannabe actor gone west, grovels and lines up hundreds of “almost got it” auditions, has to take a job waiting tables, and gets asked to suck somebody’s dick for a cameo role.

Well, that’s not my story.

One week after signing with William Morris, I got my first audition in Hollywood with casting director Hank McCann for the role of Drew Barrymore’s very honest husband “Abe Lincoln” in the film Boys on the Side. They liked my audition enough to schedule a second one for director Herb Ross six weeks later. A week after that first audition I got called in for another one, this time for a Disney film called Angels in the Outfield. The role was that of an “all-American baseball player named Ben Williams.” I wore my American flag baseball cap and a white T-shirt for this job interview. Warner Bros. lot, Bungalow 22, parking-lot level. I opened the door to enter, backlit by the afternoon sun.

“Whoa! Look at you! All-American kid!” a voice boomed from a couch opposite the entry door.

I stopped in the doorway and looked down at the squinting man who was addressing me. “Yes, sir,” I said.

“You ever play baseball?” he asked.

“Twelve years, from six years old till I was eighteen.”

“Great, you got the job, we start shooting in two weeks!”

$48,500 to play baseball for ten weeks in Oakland. You kiddin me? And I needed it, I only had $1,200 to my name at the time.

I called my brother Pat to share the news.

“Fuck, yeah, little brother. Super Bowl’s comin up, let’s go to Vegas and celebrate. On me!”

Greenlight.

Now, I like to gamble. Mostly on myself but occasionally on sports, specifically NFL football. I never bet enough to change my lifestyle, win or lose, but rather, just enough to buy a ticket to the game, meaning, enough to make me want to watch it closely and give a damn, enough to get a buzz. For me, that can be $50. I’ve never used a tout service (expert “pickers”) because to me, what’s the fun in that? If I lose, I try to figure out where I misread the matchup, but ultimately I like to pick my own winners because when I win, I kn-ewww it.

When I win, it was so easy, such a clear choice, a lead-pipe cinch. I’m a fortune-teller, Nostradamus, a magician, all because I fucking kn-ewww it. That’s what I love about betting, and I give a lot more credit to the I kn-ewww its than I do to the What the fuck happened?s. I bet for the entertainment value, the enjoyment I get when I kn-ewww it.

When betting, I specifically enjoy considering the intangibles. The bet on San Francisco at home to cover against Baltimore because Baltimore will be jet-lagged from the long flight West bet. The take Brett Favre and the Packers on Monday night because his dad passed away last Tuesday or bet on any team who has a star player who just had his first newborn child because they’re now playing for more than themselves bet. The bet against the Philadelphia Eagles because they’re playing their first game in their new stadium and have Sylvester Stallone, aka Rocky Balboa, there to commemorate it, because it’s too much celebration about stuff OFF the football field bet. When I win these bets based on these psychological hunches and tells that are neither scientific nor measured by the Vegas line makers, I believe I have an inside track, betting 5.0, Machiavellian craft, all because I kn-ewwww it.

I flew Southwest Airlines to Vegas for the big game, the second year in a row the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills would meet in the Super Bowl. An agent, a 48,500-dollar job in hand, a weekend of blackjack, boozing, and football with my brother Pat. I was flying high.

The Dallas Cowboys were a powerhouse that season: Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Charles Haley, Michael Irvin. They had drubbed the Bills in the previous Super Bowl and opened as 10.5-point favorites in this one. The line was stretching further in Dallas’s favor, already up to 12.5.

The Saturday night before Super Bowl Sunday Pat and I dominated the blackjack table for eleven straight hours and walked out of the casino at daybreak up big. I’d won almost two thousand bucks and Pat was up over four grand—major money for both of us at the time.

We woke up Sunday around noon and started strategizing on who we were going to bet on and why.

“I think +10.5 was too many points to begin with and it’s already up to +13 at the Aladdin,” I said. “Second time’s a charm, let’s go Bills.” “Shi-iit, I think they might even upset the Cowboys money line (straight-up win),” Pat said. “Let’s round the wagons with the Bills and hammer em every which way.” An hour before kickoff, we found a casino that had Buffalo at an astronomically high +14.5 and placed our bets. We put our money together, six grand total, and laid our bets on the Bills in every way you can imagine.

4g to cover the 14.5 point spread.

1g to win 3.2g on Bills money line.

$250 at 8 to 1 that Thurman Thomas gets more yards than Emmitt Smith.

$250 at 12 to 1 that Andre Reed has more yards than Michael Irvin.

$250 at 6 to 1 that Jim Kelly throws for more yards than Troy Aikman.

$100 at 18 to 1 that Bruce Smith is the MVP.

$100 at 4 to 1 that Dallas has more than 1.5 turnovers.

We bet every penny we had except $100 for our beer.

At halftime the Bills were up 13–6. We were dancing, singing, and buying doubles. “Holy shit, we’re gonna upgrade to first class for the flight home. We’re geniuses. And we were getting 14.5 points! We kn-ewww it.

But you know what happened, right? Dallas scored 24 unanswered points in the second half and not only won the game, but covered the 14.5 point spread 31–13.

Emmitt Smith outrushed Thurman Thomas.

Michael Irvin had more yards than Andre Reed.

Jim Kelly did not have more passing yards than Troy Aikman.

Bruce Smith was not the MVP, and Dallas turned the ball over only once.

We lost every single bet we placed. Every. One.

Heads hanging, our buzz turning into fatigue, we walked out of the casino and hailed a cab to take us back to the hotel with twenty bucks between us. A dusty yellow ‘86 Bonneville with its back-left bumper grazing the pavement pulled up. “Holiday Inn,” we said as we got in.

Behind the wheel was a shaggy old guy who hadn’t shaved in three months or showered in three days. Clearly taking interest in our defeated body language, he reached up to his rearview mirror and tilted it to get a better look at us as he pulled away from the curb.

Pat and I were staring out our backseat windows in stunned silence, wondering what the hell had just happened, when an all-knowing voice boomed through the cab, “Bet on the Bills, did ya!? Coulda told ya that was a stupid-ass bet. I kn-ewww the Cowboys were gonna kill em, ya fuckin losers!” Pat stared ice picks into the guy through the rearview mirror, then, exploded.

“Oh, yeah, motherfucker!? If you kn-ewww the Cowboys were gonna cover, then what the FUCK are you doing driving a cab!”

Everybody likes to be in the know. Even when we lose two and win one, we believe the one more than the two. We believe the one winner we picked was a product of our truer selves, was when we met our potential and read the future, was when we were gods. The two losses, however, were aberrations, misfits, glitches in our masterminds, even though the math clearly makes them the majority. After the game is played, everybody kn-ewww who the winner would be. Everybody is lying. Nobody kn-owwws who’s going to win or cover the bet, there is no sure thing, that’s why it’s called a bet. There’s a reason Vegas and Reno continue to grow. They kn-owww we bettors love to believe we do. That is a lock.

Most of the time it’s not stolen, it’s right where you left it.

A month into shooting Angels in the Outfield, the studio behind Boys on the Side flew me back to Hollywood for my follow-up audition in front of director Herbert Ross. I’d been rehearsing for the part every night after playing baseball and was confident I had a take on my man. Herbert liked my audition and I got offered the role.

My very first audition in Hollywood had gotten me a second audition that landed me the fourth lead in a major motion picture drama starring Drew Barrymore, Mary-Louise Parker, and Whoopi Goldberg. It also got me a major paycheck of 150 grand.

As soon as I finished playing baseball in Oakland, I headed to Tucson, Arizona, where we’d be shooting Boys on the Side. Instead of the hotel where most others were staying, I rented a quaint adobe guesthouse on the edge of the Saguaro National Park outside of town. I rescued a black Lab–chow mix puppy from the local pound and named her Ms. Hud, after Paul Newman’s character in one of my favorite films. The house came with a maid. I’d never had a maid before.

One Friday night after work, a friend of mine, Beth, came over for dinner and drinks. Like a kid on Christmas morning, I was telling her all the things I was so happy about in my new digs—the mud-brick architecture, the national park as my backyard, the fact that it came with a maid. Especially the maid.

“She cleans the place after I go to work, washes my clothes, does the dishes, puts fresh water by my bed, leaves me cooked meals—and, she even presses my jeans!” I told Beth, holding up my Levi’s to show her the crisp, starched-white line running down the legs. Beth smiled at my enthusiasm, then said something I hadn’t ever thought to ask myself, and haven’t forgotten to since.

“That’s great, Matthew, if you want your jeans pressed.”

I’d never had my jeans pressed before.

I’d never had anyone to press my jeans before.

I’d never thought to ask myself if I wanted my jeans pressed before because for the first time in my life I could have them pressed.

The never-before-offered opulent option now being a reality, of course I wanted my jeans pressed.

Or did I?

No, actually. I didn’t.

When you CAN, ask yourself if you WANT to before you do.

After Boys on the Side, I returned to Malibu, now with my own loft on the beach. I started taking acting classes for the first time because I thought it was time to start learning the craft that I had practically fallen into. In the past, I’d always just gone with my instincts and they had served me well. Now, I was back in school, getting an education on how to read a script, what to look for, how to prepare for a role, how to study. How to be, I thought, a professional actor.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t gotten work in the six months since wrapping Boys on the Side. I hadn’t worked since I started taking those acting classes. I’d had a lot of auditions, and quite a few callbacks, but I couldn’t seem to land a gig. I wondered why. I noticed I was more uptight and not taking as many risks in the auditions as I used to. I was tense. I was earnest. I was literal. I was heady. The new intellectual exercise had me getting in my own way.

the INTELLECT

Is not meant to surpass the apparent so far as to conceal it or make it more confusing.

It is meant to expose the truth more clearly and reveal more of the obvious from more lines of sight.

It should simplify things, not make them more cerebral.

Finally, I received a blind offer for a minor role in a small independent film called Scorpion Spring. I’d only be in one scene. They offered ten grand and I took it. No audition, shooting in two weeks. That’s all I knew.

I decided that was all I wanted to know. I got the script and I didn’t read one page of it, not a word, not even of the scene I was in. Why? Because I had a bright idea.

To lubricate my creative juices and rid myself of all the theoretical tension I’d been carrying since that last movie and those classes, I decided I was going to go back to how I acted when I first started, when I played this guy named David Wooderson, when reading just one line of the script completely unlocked the character for me.

It was easy for me to improvise in all those other unscripted scenes in Dazed and Confused because I was confident I knew who my man was, comfortable to just say and do what Wooderson would in any scene the director put me in. Back when I was all instinct, a natural.

Well, that’s what I’ve been missing, I said to myself. Enough of this academic, tight-minded, learn-ed studying shit I’ve been doing, it’s time to return to my roots.

In Scorpion Spring, my man was an “American drug runner in South Texas who meets up with the Mexican coyotes smuggling his dope back into the States,” who then “reneges on the deal, doesn’t pay for the smuggled drugs, and instead, kills the smugglers and takes the cocaine for free.” That’s all I needed to know. Just be that guy, handle the situation like he would, improvise, do what my man would do. Easy.

Two weeks later, I’m on location in my trailer.

I know my man. I’ve created my backstory of an upper-midlevel drug runner who works for the cartel on the American side in Texas. I need the cocaine and the money and I’m carrying a loaded pistol, willing to kill to get out alive with both. I even look the part: unshaven, greasy hair, black boots, leather jacket. Who needs a script? I know who I am. Press record. I got this.

Time to go to set. Time to shoot the scene. No problem.

I arrive in character. I don’t talk to anyone. I don’t introduce myself to the other actors in the scene with me because my man doesn’t care about them and my man is going to kill them in this scene anyway. I just want my cocaine for free.

Just before we take our marks a production assistant comes up to me, “Some sides,*1 Mr. McConaughey?” I take them and just shove them in my pocket without looking at them. All the actors settle onto their marks and prepare for “action.” Here we go.

Well, I guess I lost my nerve a little bit because I decide it would be a good idea, right at this moment, just before we roll the camera, to have a quick peek at the scene and the dialogue. My thinking at the time? If it’s written well, I’ll immediately remember the written lines because obviously that’s what my man would say, and if it’s not written well, then, I’ll just be my man and do and say what he would do and say anyway.

I unfold the sides and have a look.

One page.

Two pages.

Three pages.

Four pages…

Of a monologue…

In Spanish.

Holy shit. I feel a bead of sweat form on the back of my neck. My heart starts racing. What am I going to do? My mouth goes dry. I try to keep calm. And then I look up to no one in particular and aloud to the set, I say, “Can I get twelve minutes, please?” My half-ass thinking was that twelve minutes would be: (1) enough time to memorize all the Spanish because, Hey, I took a semester of Spanish class in the eleventh grade, and (2) not enough time to inconvenience the crew.

I take a little walk with the sides. A twelve-minute walk to be precise. I then return to set, put the sides back in my pocket, and step to my mark. The director says “action” and we shoot the scene.

I have never watched Scorpion Spring.

I did learn a good lesson that day, though.

We have to prepare to have freedom.

We have to do the work to then do the job.

We have to prepare for the job so we can be free to do the work.

Knowing my man does not mean I know Spanish.

we must learn the consequence of negligence–it’s not just what we do, it’s what we don’t do that’s important as well. we are guilty by omission.

A few months later, having quit the acting classes but learned my lesson, I was back on the Warner Bros. lot in director Joel Schumacher’s office to discuss a possible role in his next film, A Time to Kill, based on the book by John Grisham.

The irresponsibility of my half-cocked idea not to fully prepare for that last part had value. I was embarrassed, the embarrassment pissed me off, and that rage made me more daring.

Joel and I were meeting to discuss the part of “Freddie Lee Cobb,” a young head of the Ku Klux Klan in a small Mississippi town. I had read the script this time, I’d even read the book. “Freddie Lee Cobb” was a strong and stirring role, but it wasn’t the one I wanted. No, the man I wanted was the lead, “Jake Brigance,” a young lawyer who defends a black man for killing the men who raped his daughter. I showed up in Joel’s office that day with a plan.

Wearing a sleeveless John Mellencamp T-shirt and casually smoking a Marlboro, I sat across the desk from him.

“I think you’d be a great Freddie Lee Cobb, Matthew,” he said.

“Yeah, I do, too, Mr. Schumacher. I understand where he came from and why he is who he is but…Who’s playing the lead role of Jake Brigance?” Joel paused and cocked his head a bit. “I don’t know,” he said. “Who do you think should?”

I leaned back in my chair, took a healthy drag, and on the exhale, looking him dead in the eyes, said, “I think I should.” Joel burst into laughter. “Ahhhh! I think that’s a great idea, Matthew, but it is never going to happen! The studio will never put a relatively unknown actor in the lead role.” I stubbed out my cigarette and held his gaze.

I had pulled off the first part of my plan.

if only

Means you wanted something but did not get it.

For some reason, either by your own incompetence or the world’s intervention, it did not happen.

Sometimes this is just the breaks and we need to bow out gracefully.

But more often than we care to admit, we don’t get what we want

because we quit early or we didn’t take the necessary risk to get it.

The more boots we put in the back side of our if onlys, the more we will get what we want.

Don’t walk the it’s too late it’s too soon tightrope until you die.

What happened next was certainly not part of my plan, but a lot of things that were out of my control went my way.

Sandra Bullock, who was already cast as “Ellen Roark” in A Time to Kill, had recently starred in a film called While You Were Sleeping, which had recently opened with a respectable first weekend of just under $10 million. But since I’d planted the seed with Joel, While You Were Sleeping had crept up to over $80 million in domestic box office revenue. It was a big hit and had made Sandra Hollywood’s newest “greenlight” movie star, which meant that studios believed she was popular enough to headline a film. With an actress who could now open a film already cast in the number three supporting role in A Time to Kill, Warner Bros. was suddenly free to consider a less bankable actor for the lead role.

But did that mean Joel Schumacher started to take my suggestion seriously? Apparently not. They were considering my now great friend and brother from another mother, Woody Harrelson, for the role of Jake Brigance.

Then the plot twisted once again. Turns out author John Grisham also had casting approval on the role of Jake Brigance, as the character was based on himself. Also turns out that on March 7, 1995, a man named Bill Savage was murdered in Mississippi. The murderers, a young man and woman, said they were inspired by Mickey and Mallory, the characters brought to life by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Bill Savage was John Grisham’s friend, and there was no way the guy who played Mickey in that film was going to play Jake Brigance in this one.

Filming was scheduled to commence in six to eight weeks in Canton, Mississippi. All the roles were cast. Except for Jake Brigance.

A couple of weeks later, I was on the rooftop of a Mexican restaurant in L.A. having a 4:00 p.m. margarita with my manager, Beth Holden, when my phone rang.

“I want you to come in for a screen test,” Joel Schumacher said over the phone. It had been two months since I’d planted the seed. “We’ll do it next Sunday in a small private studio off Fairfax so no one will know, because, even if you do great, it’s such a long shot that the studio will approve you, I don’t want the perceived failure to be on your résumé around town. The scene I want you to test with will be Jake’s final summation.” Sunday came. It was Mother’s Day. I called mine at daybreak.

“Don’t walk in there like you want the role, Matthew, walk in there like you own it!”

Just what I needed to hear.

“Thanks, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.”

made for the moment

we are all made for every moment we encounter.

whether the moment makes us or we make the moment.

whether we are helpless in it or on top of it,

the predator or the prey.

we are made for that moment.

A black car picked me up at 11:00 a.m. and drove me to the studio on Fairfax. There was a makeup artist, a costume designer, a director of photography, and a crew of around thirty people. Around 1:00 p.m. I walked onto the set, which was a courtroom with twelve actors, all sitting in a set-made jury box. I was nervous, but I was prepared. Everyone quieted down and took their places.

“Whenever you’re ready, Matthew,” Joel said.

I caught my breath and began to enact the final summation just as it was written in the script until I finished it with the now classic line, “Now, imagine she’s white.” I was good, not great. I had remembered my lines, hit all the beats, taken my time, and told the story well. More than passable but nothing special.

“Great, Matthew,” Joel said, “now throw away the script and say what you’d say.”

Therein lies Joel Schumacher’s genius. Be you. You are the character. I loved that note. What I would say and do. How do I feel about a young virgin girl being raped by three vile men? What did they kill in her that day? What if it was my sister? What if it was my daughter? It was Mother’s Day.

I tossed the script off the set and out of my mind. I began to slowly pace, my eyes began to burn, and with rage building, I painted the dreadful pictures in my mind, then said what I saw. Not yet a father myself, but a father being the only thing I ever knew I wanted to be, I imagined my daughter getting raped. I forgot testing. I forgot time. I said and did things a lawyer in a courtroom would never say or do. I cussed. I spit. I painted cringeworthy pictures of a child’s lost innocence with bloody words that could have put me in jail alongside those I was condemning. I got sick to my stomach. I got violent. I broke a sweat.

I nailed it.

Two weeks later, working on the set of Lone Star in Eagle Pass, Texas, in the full-moon desert at midnight, I got a phone call. It was Joel Schumacher and John Grisham.

“You wanna be Jake Brigance?”

“You’re damn right I do!”

I ran off into the night until I was about a mile away from anyone. Then, with tears in my eyes, I dropped to my knees, faced that full moon, extended my right hand up to it, and said, “Thank you.”

Greenlight.

A Roof is a man-made thing

January 3, 1993. NFL playoffs. Houston Oilers vs. Buffalo Bills. Oilers up 28–3 at halftime, 35–3 early in the third. Frank Reich and the Bills come back to win 41–38 in overtime for one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history. Yeah, the Bills won, but they didn’t really beat the Oilers. The Oilers lost that game, they beat themselves.

Why? Because at halftime they put a ceiling, a roof, a limit on their belief in themselves, aka the “prevent defense.” Maybe they started thinking about the next opponent at halftime, played on their heels, lost their mental edge the entire second half, and voilà, they lost. In a mere two quarters, defensive coordinator Jim Eddy went from being called defensive coordinator of the year and “the man first in line to be a head coach next year” to a man without a job in the NFL…or even college football the next year.

You ever choked? You know what I mean, fumbled at the goal line, stuck your foot in your mouth when you were trying to ask that girl on a date, had a brain freeze on the final exam you were totally prepared for, lipped out a three-foot putt to win the golf tournament, or been paralyzed by the feeling of “Oh my god life can’t get any better, do I really deserve this?” I have.

What happens when we get that feeling? We clench up, get short of breath, self-conscious. We have an out-of-body experience where we observe ourselves in the third person, no longer present, now not doing well what we are there to do. We become voyeurs of our moment because we let it become bigger than us, and in doing so, we just became less involved in it and more impressed with it.

Why does this happen?

It happens because when we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we then create a fictitious ceiling, a restriction, over the expectations we have of our own performance in that moment. We get tense, we focus on the outcome instead of the activity, and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result, or it’s too good to be true. But it doesn’t, and it isn’t, and it’s not our right to believe it does or is.

Don’t create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great idea, the love of our life, euphoric bliss, who are we to think we don’t deserve these fortunes when they are in our grasp? Who are we to think we haven’t earned them?

If we stay in process, within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we aren’t thinking of the finish line, we’re not looking at the clock, we’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing. We are performing in real time, where the approach is the destination, and there is no goal line because we are never finished.

When Bo Jackson scored, he ran over the goal line, through the end zone, and up the tunnel . The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it. When we truly latch on to the fact that we are going to die at some point in time, we have more presence in this one.

Reach beyond your grasp, have immortal finish lines, and turn your red light green, because a roof is a man-made thing.

The day of the opening of A Time to Kill, I strolled to my favorite deli on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, to get a tuna fish sandwich on toasted sourdough with extra pickles and ketchup on the side.

It was like any other stroll down that Promenade for me. Four hundred or so people milling about. Three hundred ninety-six made nothing of me. Four did. A few girls who thought I was cute and one dude who liked my shoes.

That night, A Time to Kill premiered in theaters across America and grossed fifteen million dollars in its opening weekend—a box office hit in 1996.

The following Monday I went back to the Promenade to get another tuna fish sandwich on toasted sourdough with extra pickles and ketchup on the side.

It was not like any other stroll down that Promenade for me. Four hundred or so people milling about. Three hundred ninety-six stared at me. Four did not. Three babies and a blind man.

I checked my fly and lightly thumbed my nose to see if I had a booger hanging out.

I didn’t.

What the fu-uuuuck?

I was famous.

sometimes you have etc.

sometimes etc. has you.

—Fatima Alves

The hype surrounding my “arrival” was off the charts. Being hailed as the next big thing, “Matthew McConaughey Saves the Movies” was the boldface caption behind my head on the cover of certain industry magazines. Save the movies? Hell, I didn’t know they needed saving, and if they did, I wasn’t sure I was or wanted to be the one to save them. I just wanted to act, to play roles that interested me in stories that mattered to me.

From that day on, the world became a mirror. Strangers laid their hands on me and spoke to me like they knew me well. Actually, they weren’t strangers at all anymore.

People I’d never seen or met before would approach me and say, “My dog had cancer, too, I’m so sorry about Ms. Hud…”

How’d you know I had a dog? How’d you know her name? How’d you know she might have cancer? What happened to introducing yourself?

Everyone had a preconceived bio of me now.

Honest first impressions were a thing of the past. That check had been cashed.

My world had changed. In the words of James McMurtry, “Now it’s upside down and backwards, the foot’s on the other shoe.”

Everyone loved me now, and they weren’t shy to say it out loud and often.

Me, I’d only said it to four people in my life.

Anonymous no more and forever.

The same happened with scripts.

The Friday before opening weekend there were one hundred scripts I wanted to do. Ninety-nine nos. One yes. The Monday after?

Ninety-nine yeses. One no.

Wow.

Awesome.

Shit.

What was real? What was not? The sky just opened up to me and it was tough to feel the ground beneath my feet. My differential split, my spiritual foundation in flight, I needed some gravity. It was time to bend my knee bone.

why we all need a walkabout

Noise-to-signal ratio.

We are more constantly bombarded by unnatural stimuli than ever before.

We need to put ourselves in places of decreased sensory input so we can hear the background signals of our psychological processes.

As the noise decreases, the signals become clearer,

we can hear ourselves again, and we reunite.

Time alone simplifies the heart.

Memory catches up, opinions form.

We meet truth again, and it teaches us,

landing on stable feet between our reaching out and retreat, letting us know we are not lonely in our state, just alone.

Because our unconscious mind now has room to reveal itself, we see it again.

It dreams, perceives, and thinks in pictures, which we now can observe.

In this solitude, we then begin to think in pictures, and actualize what we see.

Our souls become anonymous again,

and we realize we are stuck with the one person we can never be rid of: ourselves.

The Socratic dialogue can be ugly, painful, lonesome, hard, guilt-ridden, and a nightmare vicious enough to need a mouth guard not to gnaw our fangs into nubs while we sweat cold in feverish panic.

We are forced to confront ourselves.

And this is good.

We more than deserve this suffrage, we’ve earned it.

An honest man’s pillow is his peace of mind,

and no matter who’s in our bed each night, we sleep with ourselves.

We either forgive or get sick and tired of it.

Herein lies the evolution.

With nowhere to run, and forced to deal with ourselves, our ugly everyday suppressions break out of the zoo and monkey around, where we find our self in the ring with them, deciding, no more, or let it slide.

Whatever the verdict, we grow.

It’s us and us, our always and only company.

We tend to ourselves, and get in good graces once again.

Then we return to civilization, able to better tend to our tendencies.

Why? Because we took a walkabout.

The Monastery of Christ in the Desert sits in miles of undisturbed desert, on the banks of the Chama River, in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The thirteen-and-a-half-mile dirt road from the highway that leads you there is usually washed out, so you can’t bring a car. Thomas Merton loved it there. He said this monastery was a place where people can go to “re-adjust their perspectives.” I read about it in a book and thought, That’s what I need at this time. A spiritual realignment. I was all messed up in the head. Lost in the excess of my newfound fame and struggling with a nondeserving complex, my now roofless existence not only had me searching for my bearings, it was bearing down on me. How could a working-class kid from Uvalde, Texas, be deserving of all this opulence and accolade? I didn’t know how to navigate the decadence of my success, much less believe it was mine to enjoy. I didn’t know who to trust, including myself. In the book, the brothers said that, “If you can get to us, just ring the bell, we’ll take you in.” A good friend and I drove from Hollywood to that dirt road, where he dropped me off, and I made the thirteen-and-a-half-mile march to the monastery. I arrived an hour after sundown and rang the bell. Dressed in cowl and tunic, a short man named Brother Andre greeted me, “Welcome, brother, all travelers have a place to stay here.” I washed up and went to the group dinner where Psalms were read aloud and talking was strictly prohibited. Later, Brother Andre ushered me to a small, simple room with a cot and a sleeping mat on the floor where I lay down for the night.

The next day, I said to Brother Andre, “I need to talk about some things going on in my life and mind, do you know who I could talk to?” “Yes,” he said, “Brother Christian would be a good man for you to talk to about such things.”

I met Brother Christian and we went for a long walk in the desert. I unloaded my feelings of guilt, the low and lecherous places my mind had been traveling, the perverseness of my thoughts. “Since becoming famous,” I professed, “I’ve tried to be a good man, to not lie and deceive myself, to be more pure of heart and mind, but I am full of lust, objectifying other people and myself. I do not feel a connection to my past nor see the path to my future, I’m lost. I don’t feel myself.” I shared the demons of my mind for three and a half hours with Brother Christian. I took myself to the woodshed. He did not say a word. Not. One. He just patiently listened as we wandered side by side through the desert.

At hour four we found ourselves back at the chapel sitting on a bench just outside the entrance. Now weeping, I eventually came to the end of my confession. We sat in silence while I awaited Christian’s judgment. Nothing. Finally, in the unrest of the stillness, I looked up. Brother Christian, who hadn’t said one word to me this entire time, looked me in the eyes and in almost a whisper, said to me, “Me, too.”

Sometimes we don’t need advice. Sometimes we just need to hear we’re not the only one.

Greenlight.

both are true

I’m an optimist by nature, my eye is high, I have hope, and the man I want to be sleeps in the same bed with the man I am, in head, heart, spirit, and body. I don’t always enjoy my company because of that son of a bitch Jiminy Cricket, but I am rarely able to knock him off my shoulder either. And for good reason.

Even when I’m out of tune, off frequency, having trouble feeling any traction or viscosity between my being and my actions, or, alternately, when I am so lost in the music that I am unaware, my best self is always there, and he will start the Socratic dialogue sooner than I choose to hear him and long after I want to, because he’s insatiable.

I, of course, eventually do hear him, then the challenge becomes, to listen. Once I do, and stop pitting fate against responsibility, truth against fiction, sins against who I wish I was, selfishness against selflessness, mortality against eternity, I learn, and then begin just being who I am, and doing what I do, for me—not for anyone else and for everyone else at the same time. For me and God, together. Then I realize I am responsible for fate, fiction is truthful, a sinner and saint I am, an egotistical utilitarian as well. I’ll be mortal forever.

Now, each step at a time has the big picture in mind, and I am the man I want to be, Jiminy Cricket is a bluebird on my shoulder, and Socrates has one voice.