Episode 1168 - Matthew McConaughey
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:I don't know how many people are new anymore.
Marc:Are there new people?
Marc:Welcome.
Marc:If you're new, just sit over there and you'll get the hang of it.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm going to talk to some of these other people that have been here for a while.
Marc:And then I'll talk to maybe someone, a celebrity of some sort.
Marc:Maybe today it might even be Matthew McConaughey.
Marc:I'll be talking to Matthew McConaughey in a few minutes.
Marc:But now just hang out if you're new here.
Marc:And let me talk to some of the people that have been here for a while.
Marc:I'm not trying to exclude you.
Marc:I just want you to get the hang of what's going on.
Marc:So what's going on with that thing?
Marc:Do you get it fixed?
Marc:What's going on with your kid's arm?
Marc:What's going on with your kid's foot?
Marc:What's going on with your kid's rash?
Marc:What's going on with your kid's hair?
Marc:Who did that?
Marc:Was that on purpose?
Marc:How are you holding up, though?
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:Did you get that thing done?
Marc:How's working from home?
Marc:Did you stop masturbating during meetings?
Marc:Because I think you should.
Marc:I think that the vigilance necessary to get away with that.
Marc:It seems challenging to some people.
Marc:So and also we have to make the adjustment.
Marc:It's just time to make that adjustment.
Marc:All right.
Marc:The one thing that this pandemic has showed us.
Marc:Is that a lot of us, if you're if you're fortunate now, look, I've been working from home a long time, at least this part of my life that you're hearing.
Marc:I've been doing from my house for a long time.
Marc:And back in the day, pre-plague.
Marc:I would always I would require people to come over.
Marc:I would require the engagement to be live and in person.
Marc:But you can't require that much.
Marc:Every once in a while now, I can make a pretty safe situation out here.
Marc:I've got a plexiglass divider.
Marc:I've got hand sanitizer.
Marc:I've got masks.
Marc:But I've done a few people, mostly comics and Wayne Coyne live.
Marc:But it's a lot to ask somebody.
Marc:And I understand that it's slightly dangerous.
Marc:But I guess my point is.
Marc:What some of us have grown to realize is that you really can, if your job allows you, work from home and work from home in a fairly efficient way.
Marc:And I think people have adjusted to people working from home to such a degree that our major talk shows on television are now.
Marc:Just kind of guys sitting on their couch.
Marc:Now, the vulnerability of that is a bit much for me.
Marc:We can definitely see it's all the sort of machinations of show business have now been laid bare.
Marc:And you can really see who's got the juice and who doesn't, who requires more artifice than the next guy.
Marc:But I guess we're seeing that everybody's human now.
Marc:I don't want to get away from the point here.
Marc:The point is making the adjustment to knowing that your workplace is now your home means pants.
Marc:It means no dicks.
Marc:It means, you know, make sure at the very least that, you know, if you're trying to protect your privacy, you've engaged that properly.
Marc:You know, I think that we've seen the fall of a fairly public person because the adjustment hadn't been fully made yet.
Marc:That you are working from home, even if it's the same chair that you jerk off in when your family's away or during that special work time.
Marc:That's not really work time.
Marc:That when you're working, you're working.
Marc:And the repercussions of mixing work and whatever else you do in that chair can be disastrous.
Marc:That's a public service announcement.
Marc:Now, before I forget, I fairly frequently right now I'm going on Instagram live in the mornings and I have coffee.
Marc:I do about an hour of riffing and thinking and answering questions, thinking out loud.
Marc:I do a lot of what I used to do on a standup stage.
Marc:I engage in the moment and I kind of riff.
Marc:It doesn't cost anything, but I'm doing a new hour every few days.
Marc:That's for sure.
Marc:But I'm on Instagram live a lot and I seem to have gotten this hook going and
Marc:Where I say I kind of move my face into the camera I say use whatever options you have at your disposal to maintain your sanity without hurting yourself Or other people and then I say too close am I too close?
Marc:You can come and watch and enjoy.
Marc:I also usually post them so you can enjoy them later in the day.
Marc:But the bottom line is we're going to have a T-shirt.
Marc:There's a T-shirt.
Marc:We got the Marin Too Close T-shirt.
Marc:It was inspired by a photograph by a guy named Steve Rose.
Marc:who grabbed a bunch of shots from the live stream and put them together in a grid.
Marc:And then a fan named Cat Rhodes put them on a shirt and was like, wow, that's a good design.
Marc:So let's tweak it a little bit.
Marc:And we tweaked it a little bit.
Marc:And you can get them now at podswag.com slash WTF or click on the merch tab at WTFpod.com for the Too Close T-shirt.
Marc:It's a good one.
Marc:You know, it's official WTF merchandise, but it's kind of a spinoff because it's the IG Live tag.
Marc:Too close?
Marc:Can't really do that with audio.
Marc:But if you want to see what I'm doing over there, come on.
Marc:Come on over.
Marc:Come over.
Marc:What are you going to move?
Marc:What are you doing?
Marc:I'm going to bring it over.
Marc:Come on over to Instagram Live.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:What are you going to move over here?
Marc:What are you doing?
Marc:You know, Mike Binder, the comedian who I used to watch when I was a kid, was on this show.
Marc:And I don't know if you remember when he was on this show.
Marc:But he's part of the comedy store history.
Marc:He was always sort of a presence in all the stories about the old comedy store in the 70s.
Marc:So I wanted to have him on.
Marc:But when I had him on, he didn't want to talk about the comedy store.
Marc:And he had closed the door to that part of his past.
Marc:And I kept pushing him and pushing him into it.
Marc:And then now he's like full in, born again, comedy store guy, fully embracing the past and made a doc about it.
Marc:With the support of Peter Shore producing and Paulie's in it.
Marc:But it's a fully sanctioned comedy store doc.
Marc:It's on Showtime.
Marc:They've showed three episodes.
Marc:I think there might be six.
Marc:But this last episode, episode three.
Marc:It was a lot about Kenison.
Marc:I had some experience with Kenison, some dark, weird, druggie experiences with Kenison.
Marc:And I tell the story that you all know.
Marc:But I'll tell you, there's a beautiful moment in there where Kenison's old best friend, after he died, they definitely were not best friends, Carl LeBeau.
Marc:has been on this show and talked about the fact that posthumously, Carl learned that his wife gave birth to Sam's baby, his best friend's baby.
Marc:It's, it's some, it's a bit, uh, uh, what's the, what's the word I'm looking for?
Marc:Um, sorted maybe, but Carl tell Carl's as found peace with it.
Marc:And Carl's also ill.
Marc:Um, sadly, uh,
Marc:There's a GoFundMe for Carl if you want to help out.
Marc:Carl has terminal cancer and he needs some equipment and he's dealing with other stuff, back issues.
Marc:But you can go to GoFundMe.com slash F slash Carl, C-A-R-L dash Labove, L-A-B-O-V-E.
Marc:Now, it's weird.
Marc:I'll explain.
Marc:I've had some emotions about this.
Marc:Because that comedy store period for me, which didn't last long, which would blew my mind out on drugs.
Marc:And I would say it was a fairly traumatic time for me in that, you know, I did lose myself in cocaine and lack of sleep and cocaine psychosis.
Marc:And I had to leave.
Marc:in a very fucking compromised state.
Marc:I ran away from Hollywood in the late 80s, hearing voices in my head, being chased by things I only understood, though QAnon seems to understand them now.
Marc:Fortunately, I was able to get rid of the hallucinations and the massive universal conspiracy that had my number, and now it seems to have manifested itself as a political tool for fascists.
Marc:But...
Marc:I found out it wasn't true because it wore off.
Marc:Took a year and a half.
Marc:But anyway, so it was a traumatic time.
Marc:I had a tremendous amount of resentment against Sam Kennison and against Carl.
Marc:But over time, I sort of started to let some of that go and process it and whatever.
Marc:And Sam died, of course.
Marc:You know, I think me and Carl make up on the podcast I did with him.
Marc:But the bottom line is, if you watch this third episode of the Comedy Store doc,
Marc:and you watch carl there's bits and pieces of his stand-up and then he tells the story of sam dying in his arms and it's truly profound and moving but he was such a unique comedian and such a great talent and such a such a present dude in terms of how he acted things out and personified things and and the space he created on stage was truly unique
Marc:And it was weird because, you know, out of nowhere, I get this email from Dan Pasternak, who's a guy who's been involved with comedy for many years as in development, but also was a comic early on and spent some time at the comedy store.
Marc:And I get this email from Pasternak about the GoFundMe and about the tragic situation that Carl's in in terms of his health.
Marc:And on the link, there's a comedy bit
Marc:And I watched it, and it's a bit about being a designated driver.
Marc:And just watching Carl do the work.
Marc:It was moving to me.
Marc:I laughed.
Marc:And I thought about what I went through with these fucking guys back in the day.
Marc:How they hurt me.
Marc:But then how we made up.
Marc:But I just realized how exciting it was to be around funny people.
Marc:And how funny he fucking was.
Marc:And how much laughter I got out of that guy.
Marc:He was so fucking funny.
Marc:He still is.
Marc:And he's sick.
Marc:And I pitched in.
Marc:But it was out of gratitude.
Marc:And it was out of gratitude.
Marc:After all that, after all the darkness and all the weirdness and all the resentment and all the judgment and all the trauma, what really transcended, even watching this special about that time in my life, was how fucking fun it was and how much laughter I got out of these fucking people.
Marc:I mean, the one thing about being a comic and coming up in it and spending your whole fucking life in it is you're around the funniest fucking people that ever lived.
Marc:If you walk into it, it's different for everybody, but everyone's got their crew.
Marc:And I've been through a few crews and I've had the honor of spending a lot of time with some of the funniest people that ever lived throughout different points in my career.
Marc:Some people you don't even know.
Marc:Some people you do at the comedy store before the comedy store, Boston, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, different lives.
Marc:I've lived a lot of lives and I've spent a lot of time with a lot of fucking hilarious people.
Marc:And what a fucking gift.
Marc:What a fucking gift to remember just how much you fucking laughed.
Marc:I mean, I'm a comic.
Marc:I'm an angry idiot.
Marc:You know, I've been through my own shit.
Marc:But one of the great fucking perks of working in this fucking racket is being around the funniest fucking people that ever lived and laughing your fucking ass off.
Marc:I'm grateful for that.
Marc:And I hope Carl is okay in terms of comfort in this time.
Marc:But I hope that people can help out and make it as comfortable as possible for him.
Marc:Because he was a funny fucking guy.
Marc:And he probably gave me a couple more years.
Marc:That's all.
Marc:So Matthew McConaughey is here.
Marc:And this was interesting because I didn't know what it would be like to talk to him.
Marc:He's awfully excited.
Marc:And he seems excited all the time, almost to the point of like, is that even real?
Marc:But he wrote this book.
Marc:called green lights which is available wherever you get books and i get books by my guests i don't i don't usually have the time to read them or feel the need to but some reason i started reading this and i fucking read the whole book i think i said to him at the beginning i'm like i think if anyone else had written this i don't know if i would have finished it but because i could picture you saying it it all made sense to me
Marc:It's very excited.
Marc:It's very positive, proactive, a little bullshitty, a little self-mythologizing, a little entertaining, a little moving.
Marc:It's all in there.
Marc:But, you know, there was a part of me when I'm talking to Matthew McConaughey where I'm like, is this guy for real?
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:What's going on in there?
Marc:But this is me talking to Matthew McConaughey.
Marc:Hey, man.
Marc:Mark, Mark, Mark.
Marc:What's up, buddy?
Guest:A whole lot.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:Even if I didn't want it to be.
Marc:You're locked down with three kids and a wife and everything's going crazy?
Guest:And my 88-year-old mother.
Guest:Your mother's there, too?
Guest:Damn right.
Guest:We got the whole crew, man.
Guest:We were bunkered in, man.
Guest:Trying to protect a few susceptible lungs and outrun this old COVID bitch.
Marc:I got my Piggly Wiggly shirt on to honor Texas and New Mexico.
Guest:Yeah, baby.
Guest:That's up in East Texas.
Guest:We got those Piggly Wigglies, man.
Guest:You move down to Central and Austin, you start getting H-E-Bs.
Guest:But yeah, Piggly Wigglies are going Bible Belt, barbecues and Baptist churches, parts of Texas.
Marc:Yeah, I grew up in Albuquerque, so there was a Piggly Wiggly or two there.
Guest:Albuquerque, man.
Guest:We shot gold there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm a fan of Albuquerque.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:I've never seen so many CVSs.
Marc:I that's new to me.
Marc:I mean, I, you know, back when I like you grew up in Texas and where I mean, I'm older than you, I think.
Marc:But there was no CVS is when I was there, maybe a Walgreens or two.
Guest:Well, the Walgreens and the CVS, and I was guessing, my inside joke in my head was it was about Breaking Bad being around there.
Guest:But Albuquerque reminds me of, it was a sister city of what Austin, Texas was 25 years ago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And also Tucson, Arizona.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Albuquerque, Tucson, Austin.
Guest:It's like, there's less curbs.
Guest:Go down a road and just kind of
Marc:pull off the side it's just everything's a little bit more of a merge around albuquerque right yeah and they were big those are college towns like i used to work at a place across from the college i loved it i was just out in taos a few weeks ago trying to run away from something it kind of worked for a week let me ask you this talking about running away from something or running to something do you know the monastery christ in the desert there in abiqui no but i read about it in your book if you get there dude
Guest:Those are some radical dudes, man.
Guest:Those are some righteous, radical dudes.
Guest:I met that guy, Brother Christian, there.
Guest:There's 13 different people.
Guest:There's monks from 13 different countries there.
Guest:And they're like the Oakland Raiders of monks.
Guest:They didn't fit in at the very formal Benedictine monasteries.
Guest:And so they were sort of outcasts.
Guest:And they all go there because...
Guest:It's in the desert and you're just surrounded by the Chalmer River and where George O'Keefe was doing her paintings and other natures there.
Guest:It's a beautiful spot, man.
Marc:Well, I mean, you got it like, but what is their, what's their deal?
Marc:I mean, I, you know, I'm a Jew and I, as a wandering Jew, do I just go in and go like, help me out?
Guest:All you got to do is ring that bell, Mark.
Guest:You ring that bell, they find you a God.
Guest:I promise you.
Yeah.
Guest:Wandering Jews, all welcome, sir.
Guest:A Buddhist guy is a guy who gave me a room the second time I was there.
Guest:I went and showed up.
Guest:There were no rooms.
Guest:And this Buddhist guy gave me his room.
Guest:He gave me his cot and he slept on the floor.
Guest:I mean, they welcome everyone.
Marc:Well, we can get to that because how you got there is sort of interesting.
Marc:I ended up reading the whole book.
Marc:I don't know how.
Marc:I don't usually do that.
Marc:I was going to ask you that.
Marc:What?
Marc:If I read it?
Guest:Well...
Guest:Yeah, if you really read it.
Guest:I mean, it's a big ask.
Guest:No, I didn't read it.
Guest:Someone throws a book on me and says, hey, man, we read my book.
Guest:I'm not going, damn, it better be good, man, because I got a lot of stuff to do.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Well, fortunately, there is time now to do things.
Yeah.
Marc:So I was able, like, I just sort of locked in.
Marc:The weird thing is, like, with the sort of philosophical bent and the, I mean, at the beginning, you say this isn't a self-help book, but you do have a, you have sort of constructed retroactively a functioning philosophy of life and sort of a hero's journey for yourself.
Marc:And, you know, like I think if anyone else had done it, I would have been annoyed.
Marc:But for some reason, because you're you and it's so it's so in your voice.
Marc:I'm like, man, this guy would be annoying if it wasn't Matthew McConaughey.
Marc:Well, let me ask you this.
Guest:Would it have been annoying if I didn't step in shit so much myself?
Marc:No, I don't think it's annoying.
Marc:Like, I think the humility of it is fine.
Marc:And I think all of it is pretty good.
Marc:But it's your passion, you know, that comes through it.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, I'm not being critical because I read the whole thing.
Marc:And there's a couple of things that you wrote down, like your little post-its and shit.
Marc:Yeah, I enjoyed the book, but there was a couple where I was like, oh, come on, man.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Come on.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Give me one.
Guest:Give me one.
Guest:Give me one.
Marc:Well, here's one.
Marc:Sometimes we have to leave what we know to find out what we know.
Marc:You're repeating it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I get it.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:But like, are these all things that you've written?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you just like, but these are things you've written your whole life.
Marc:What do you put them on post-its around your house?
Marc:What do you, I mean, I have little notebooks everywhere too, but none of my post-its or notes to myself are proactive in any way.
Marc:They're always grim and dark.
Guest:Well, you see, a lot of my early stuff was grim and dark and absolutely Looney Tunes.
Guest:I was imploding on myself.
Guest:But the opening, you know, who, what, where, when, how, why, that's the greatest question.
Guest:Well, wow, that's a great existential question as an 18-year-old.
Guest:You know, no one wants to watch that independent movie.
Guest:So...
Guest:They started off just complete seeking without answers.
Guest:And as it went on through life, I'm still interested in the same stuff I was interested in.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:I've tried to make them a little more proactive and said, hey, okay, enough with the mental meditation, McConaughey.
Guest:Let's get proactive and see if we can get some affirmation to move forward with some of this shit that is on your mind.
Guest:And so that one came to me just very simple, very simply.
Guest:It's kind of like that one in Peru.
Guest:I want all I want is what I can see.
Guest:And what I can see is in front of me.
Guest:Very simple.
Guest:But it came to me that, that one came to me about, uh, in Australia, the year that I was thrown out.
Guest:How about that story together?
Guest:Was I going through some shit then?
Marc:No, I mean, it's just like one of those horrible things where you're young and you're sort of like, this sounds interesting.
Marc:Being an exchange student in Australia, the biggest nightmare of being an exchange student is being with a family that's creepy or weird.
Marc:It was a lot.
Marc:And I, again, I wasn't criticizing the book.
Marc:I enjoyed the book or I wouldn't have read the whole thing because, you know, you have a, you know, you kind of call yourself out on a lot of stuff.
Marc:You do sort of set up at the beginning that, you know, you're, you can be a bit of a bullshit artist.
Marc:Like, you know, like the one thing, a couple of things stood out to me.
Marc:It's like, yeah, I understand you stole the wood in the middle of the night to build the tree house, but you didn't tell me that tree house was 13 stories high.
Marc:I mean, stop it.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Start it.
Marc:It was 13 stories high, Matthew.
Guest:Ponderosa, 13 stories.
Marc:You built a treehouse in the middle of the night over a series of months.
Marc:That was, I mean, that's like Swiss family Robinson big though.
Marc:Nobody knew.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Nobody knew.
Guest:Like I said, I had that chamois tied around my waist.
Guest:You know the... Daisy BB gun?
Marc:Oh, the nail gun.
Guest:The nail gun.
Guest:You know those straps?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, was it 150 feet or however many?
Guest:That might have been a tad of an impression, but it was 13 stories and I would cut around and it was a great tree to do it.
Guest:It was 13 stories when I was done.
Yeah.
Marc:And you never went back to see if it was still there.
Guest:No, but you know, you bring that up.
Guest:I've had two people bringing up going back.
Guest:Oh, you should go back or someone should go back and see if there's relics of that in that tree out there.
Guest:Cause I bet you it's been developed by now.
Marc:I mean, you went to Africa twice based on dreams.
Marc:You can't go back to the fucking town.
Marc:I know the town in Texas to see if your childhood tree house is still there.
Guest:I don't even know if I can find it, the area I'd have to go back in my old family and find out where, where, where was that double white dad and I were living in that time.
Guest:I'm not even sure where it was.
Marc:That's the interesting thing about some of this stuff.
Marc:He started out...
Marc:the whole book opens with like a pretty, you know, aggressive scenario of domestic violence.
Guest:And you kind of move from there, you know, you're like, you know, I want to set the bar real quick to say, okay, we're not just, we're not just completely joking around here and we better have some thick skin.
Marc:Well, I know, but like how much of that, how much of that, that was there?
Marc:I mean, how old were you when you were born in Texas or no?
Guest:Yeah, born in Texas G Valley, 1969.
Marc:So you've got one biological brother and one adopted brother?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:My oldest brother is 16 years older than me.
Marc:That's that's Mike.
Guest:That's Mike, a.k.a.
Guest:Rooster and Pat's Pat's in the middle.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so you're born in Texas and your dad now, like I just got to ask, because there's a there's a process in the book where, you know, you're kind of putting yourself together.
Marc:You challenge yourself and you're kind of like there's the type of self-awareness you have around becoming the person you want to be.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Sort of has to come from a place that, you know, where, you know, obviously, you know, you had the wherewithal to think about that.
Marc:So you were conscious of that, which means that, you know, there must've been enough drama in the house with your parents and your, and, and, and your dad, they must've been selfish enough to somehow leave you kind of longing for a sense of self.
Guest:Oh, I didn't the way I saw it.
Guest:I mean, the way, the way I saw it was look, all those, those stories that, that on paper, um,
Guest:or, you know, that's why I call it beauties of brutality.
Guest:On paper, you go, oh my gosh, call the CPS.
Guest:McConaughey must've been, he must've been in therapy for the rest of his life to get over that stuff he saw.
Guest:No, that's not, that's not, that's not true.
Guest:No, no, I get that.
Guest:The love, I didn't, like I said, we were a super tight family and you get the humanity I tell through those stories.
Guest:Why I, when someone asked me about the love in our family, the things that turn me on and make me feel so much for the way I grew up, I always tell those stories of discipline.
Guest:That people go, put their hand over their mouth.
Guest:They're the ones that turn me on and go, no, that showed the love.
Guest:That's how my mom and dad communicate.
Guest:That's not how I communicate now with my wife.
Guest:I don't choose to do that.
Guest:It's not how I raise my kids with the discipline.
Marc:You mean you guys don't have a standoff with tools and knives and forks?
Guest:12-inch blades and ketchup bottles.
Marc:Bloody each other.
Guest:And then make love on the kitchen floor.
Guest:In front of your kids?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's the other thing.
Guest:Yeah, there was no that's another thing.
Guest:They were not check.
Guest:No, there.
Guest:If you look at that story, beautiful part about how they how they perceived each other is you didn't.
Guest:Neither one of them had one iota of a thought of like, oh, wait a minute.
Guest:our son, who's whatever, four years old, is over there.
Guest:Maybe we should make this R-rated instead of NC-17.
Guest:There was no objectifying situation.
Guest:They were the subject.
Guest:They're in it.
Guest:If you're there to witness it and you're in the seats, well, settle on up, big boy.
Guest:And then I chose to leave once the lovemaking's talked.
Guest:But you're four.
Guest:You chose to leave because it got weird?
Guest:No, because I was crying.
Guest:The fight was finally over.
Guest:I was so happy the fight was finally over.
Guest:And the knife had been dropped and the ketchup bottle had been dropped.
Guest:And all I know is whatever they were doing on the floor, they weren't fighting.
Marc:They were loving it.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But on some level, I mean, you have to look like I just read a whole book of you sort of constructing who you were and who you are and being hyper aware of a system to be put in place so you can become the man you want to be.
Marc:And you're going to tell me that four-year-old that was sitting there watching shit being thrown and ketchup everywhere and crying –
Marc:wasn't sort of like these people aren't going to help me exactly.
Guest:No, I thought I come a hundred, a hundred percent said these people never even in context.
Guest:Oh, a hundred percent.
Guest:These is my mom and dad that love me.
Guest:This is a wild rodeo.
Guest:And wow, I guess this is, this is, this is one way to do it.
Guest:I mean, I didn't contextualize it for years old.
Guest:And I also, it wasn't something that I got to be older and was like, you know, I really got to go talk that out about what that meant to me.
I,
Guest:I kind of immediately saw it as like,
Guest:I brought it up to mom after that.
Guest:What the hell was that about?
Guest:And she just straight up, like she said, hey, that's how I needed that to communicate.
Guest:My fingers broken four times because I needed that to communicate.
Guest:She started on fights.
Guest:She admits it to this day.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I'm not leaning on the therapy angle.
Marc:I'm just leaning on the angle.
Marc:I just think it's sort of interesting that you present all this chaos, which is their love and however you want to define that.
Marc:It's hard to explain relationships.
Marc:But also alongside of that, you know, this book,
Marc:Is really about self parenting, dude.
Marc:I mean, I mean, there's no I mean, it's it's not about pathology.
Marc:It's not like I have problems, but it's really about like these are like I look back at my life and this is how I became the man I'm going to be.
Marc:And, you know, you credit your folks.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hear you.
Guest:I mean, self parenting, self determination.
Guest:I talk about not being reliant on on fate at the same time.
Guest:Yeah, that it's going to happen with or without us.
Guest:And after it happens, it's a science.
Guest:But yeah, you know, and you and look in a constant recalibration.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just many times through the story.
Guest:I think I've got my shit all together and I and I about face stepping shit and see, you know, spit the loogie in my face, proverbial loogie in my face.
Guest:Right.
Guest:When I think I'm in the cradle of God, you know, I mean, so part of the humor and the in the in the leaning into the arm, my own impermanence and our own impermanence of humanity is part of.
Guest:the identity that there's not, that I'm never gonna, we're never gonna find it.
Guest:That's, that's the point.
Guest:So let's, let's, let's dance through this son of a bitch as best we can.
Guest:forgive where we can, persist where we need to, and put ourselves through hell, but also shake hands on some things and say, hey, I'm stuck with you.
Guest:You're the only person you can't get rid of.
Guest:You're the only person you can't get rid of, Mark.
Guest:Since we're here, shit, might as well try and get along.
Marc:Yeah, with the guy inside.
Marc:Where are you in Austin now?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You ever go out there to Opie's BBQ in Spicewood?
Marc:Love Opie's.
Marc:One of my favorite three tastes
Guest:In my mouth ever is that sausage dipped in that jalapeno corn.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, it's so good.
Marc:Do you know Kristen and that gang out there?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's my place.
Marc:I always go out there.
Marc:It's killer.
Marc:They sent me a bunch at the beginning of the quarantine.
Marc:She sent me a big package.
Guest:They came out and cooked it.
Guest:My wife threw a 50th birthday party for me out in Marfa.
Guest:where we flew in, friends from the West Coast and friends from Austin, and we all spent three days camping out.
Marc:and tents out there and opie's opening night we had them they did the barbecue yeah i love it and a lot of people don't know about it but i talk about it constantly i think i've definitely sent a lot of people over there i'd never heard about it i just recently got turned on to it yeah just about a year and a half ago from from from neighbor friend of ours it's nice because it's still off the beaten path and it's not crazy you know what i mean and it's like at that level of barbecue i mean it's all pretty good you know but but they do some stuff that's real good their sausages are real good
Marc:That sauce is dunk, dunk in the jalapeno corn.
Marc:I'm with you.
Marc:I'm with you.
Marc:And the cobbler, the cobbler.
Guest:If you can make it.
Guest:The cobbler is what gives me.
Guest:If I want to go take a nap, have the cobbler after eating all that.
Guest:With that vanilla ice cream, with that blue belt.
Guest:Come on, man.
Guest:So do you hang out with Willie?
Guest:Not that often.
Guest:I see him and Annie and Lucas from time to time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, last time I saw Willie, Woody and I went out there to his...
Guest:his ranch there in austin played cards all night yeah so it's not a regular thing i just i'm just trying to think of people i know in austin it's not i mean not not not a regular thing you know i mean if he comes in town and he's going to play a show and sometimes i'll go introduce him or like i said we played card a couple times yeah i have not ever seen him in hawaii uh which i which he spends a lot of time out there yeah now link ladder do you guys hang out
Guest:Yeah, actually just wrote with Linklater this morning.
Guest:He just read the book and wrote back what he thought of it.
Marc:What do you think of it?
Guest:He loved it.
Guest:I got my doggone eyes got wet after reading what he thought of it because I really value his opinion.
Guest:And he's a guy who chooses his words carefully.
Guest:And he had so much to say that he that he that he liked about it.
Guest:And he actually, then he ended it with saying, look, it's a great living object to be dropping into the world at this time.
Guest:And, you know, he, and he also said this, he goes, one of my favorite things about the book is, is what it is not.
Guest:He goes, it's not a gossip teller industry story.
Guest:you know story oh i should have had this part you should have given me this and and i you know and he was like it's not that at all yeah you kind of avoid that almost yeah i mean those people know who they they are i don't need to spend i don't want to spend time on a page trying to call them i i call it one person and i don't name them with the rain of fire story when i shave my head oh yeah yeah yeah right but now i was never my goal going into it i knew i was like okay here i am a con ain't gonna write a book i i
Guest:I want to go see what all my diaries are.
Guest:I think there may be something worthy in there.
Guest:But I know that coming out as McConaughey, I'm going to share the book.
Guest:I'm going to have some people that are going to be, oh, I want to read it right away because McConaughey wrote it.
Guest:I got other people that are going to go, I'm not reading that fucking book.
Guest:I don't need to read another fucking book by a celebrity.
Guest:What's he doing writing a book?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Guy's got a family, successful actor.
Guest:What now he's going to write?
Guest:Come on.
Guest:You got that side.
Guest:So I said, look, and I told the publishers early on, the first thing that I wrote, I said, look, this should never end up being between –
Guest:hardcovers, any kind of hardcover, if the words are not worthy to be signed by anonymous.
Guest:But at the same time, when you read it, it should be only McConaughey could have wrote this.
Marc:No, it definitely feels that way.
Marc:I mean, think that's what drives you the experience.
Marc:Is that like, it's definitely you.
Marc:So that comes through.
Marc:That's what, that's what makes you finish the book is because you're talking like you and you can picture you doing this shit.
Marc:I did it.
Guest:I tell you this, man.
Guest:I tell you this.
Guest:I've been, you know, as a performer, I perform the stories around many campfires, many dinner parties.
Guest:I tell stories.
Guest:And I thought, here, I'm going to go put them to the page.
Guest:Why don't I just record my best version of the story?
Guest:and dictate that and put it on the page.
Guest:Well, guess what?
Guest:That don't work.
Guest:The writing has to be like, from my experience, 30% shorter than the telling.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You got to transcribe it though.
Marc:Like, like it's good to have those transcripts and then tighten it up.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Transcripts helped, but then I did have to do a lot of time.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's the way I did a book and I, you know, I, it was taken from a lot of talking and, and yeah, it's, you got to tighten it up.
Marc:It's better because it gives you a framework and then you can get in there and you can sort of reflect a little bit within it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:You know, you got the story and then you're like, oh, but here I could kind of go back to this, you know, which you wouldn't do in the telling.
Marc:But in the writing, you can kind of draw it out a little longer.
Guest:Well, in the telling, you can you don't get this intonation that I'm leading up to a certain fact.
Guest:And you see my raised eyebrow and my my voice is a little higher.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You up for the punchline.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But in the in the in the writing, you don't get all that.
Guest:So you have to choose your words more carefully.
Guest:And like you said, go back because I would also write something down and I'd have my editor read it and they'd miss the story.
Guest:They missed the moral of the story.
Guest:They didn't get that it was a joke or they didn't get that it had the humanity in it.
Guest:And they'd be like, oh my God, this is so...
Guest:This is so mean.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:And I was like, oh, I took for granted.
Guest:I was giving you the Cliff Notes version of what I've already known.
Guest:So I need to go back and remember you're reading it for the first time.
Marc:Describe it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So now like talking to Linklater, I mean, that guy is really it must mean a lot to you.
Marc:I mean, he's the guy that that started this whole journey for you, really.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, uh, you know, had that faith in you at the beginning.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And like, I didn't know, I didn't realize until that, that how much of that story of how that happened, uh, you know, and then being on set in the improvising because you approach that thing, you had no acting training really.
Marc:Right.
Guest:No, I've been in the middle light commercial for about that long, a Miller light commercial, but that was a background background, uh, model.
Marc:But you always had a certain amount of swagger.
Marc:The swagger carried you.
Guest:Yeah, I walked.
Guest:My shoulders were usually somewhat back.
Marc:Yeah, you were never a wallflower.
Marc:You're not some you weren't hiding from anything.
Marc:I would say that probably if I knew you in high school, you know, I would be with a group of guys that would turn and go like fucking McConaughey.
Guest:No, there's no.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:Here's the thing, though, dude.
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:I here's who I was in high school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got in two fights in high school.
Guest:They were both for taking up for an underdog who was getting picked on.
Guest:One guy was named Ronald Hadley, who was the nerd who sat on the front row.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was getting picked on.
Guest:Another was a short black kid who was getting picked on.
Guest:I got in fights defending those.
Guest:I was the only friend.
Guest:I was in the most popular.
Guest:I was in student council.
Guest:I had straight A's.
Guest:I had a poor handicap.
Guest:I had a truck.
Guest:I was good looking.
Guest:I was affluent.
Guest:At the same time, at the same time.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I was the only one that was really, I was really good friends with Betty Rice, the first gothic
Guest:Everyone thought she was the lesbian in high school.
Guest:Betty was cool as shit.
Guest:Betty and I got along, so I didn't have.
Guest:I was cool with the in and out groups.
Guest:I really was.
Guest:I was cool with the nerds.
Guest:I was cool with the non-athletes.
Guest:I was cool with most everybody.
Guest:Not a dick.
Guest:I was never a dick.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I was not a dick.
Guest:Nah.
Guest:I had fun with all kinds.
Guest:And I also like guys like Bindler.
Guest:who's the guy who robbed Bindler, who I met in art class, who got me, gave me the courage to even pursue going into a film career.
Guest:He was the artistic guy whose dad was an interior decorator and the Jewish kid who was kind of, you know, kept to his own.
Guest:Well, I would bring him out on the Friday nights to the truck at the dead end with the kegger and the music with all my popular friends.
Guest:Let's drink some beer and chase the girls.
Guest:I'd bring him into that group.
Guest:And I was always with him.
Guest:And they're like, well, what's he doing around?
Guest:Until they met him.
Guest:Like, oh, he's really cool.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then on Saturday night, he introduced me to something I'd never done.
Guest:Hey, why don't you come over to my house and let's watch a movie and do some writing.
Guest:What?
Guest:Saturday night, we've got two nights to go chase, chase girls.
Guest:Let's try this.
Guest:And so that was the first time I got introduced to any sort of introversion through him or that type of creativity.
Marc:But you were open to it for some reason, which is interesting.
Marc:I wonder why that was.
Marc:I mean, I guess you don't have to question it.
Marc:You just had a big heart for people, I guess.
Guest:I guess I also, you know,
Guest:I've always had that side to me.
Guest:Like I say about my dad, I mean, look at my, look at my dad, you go football player, green Bay Packers, six, four, two 60 bear of a man, work your way up through a job, son.
Guest:That's how we do it.
Guest:Hard work that gets us there.
Guest:Well, at the same time, the guy took ballet at the same time.
Guest:He was a painter.
Guest:After he passed away, I found paintings of his.
Guest:I found sculptures of his.
Guest:I'm like, when was he doing that?
Guest:Really?
Guest:After I went to bed.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:He'd go off in the garage and do that.
Guest:Never showed us.
Guest:So we had it in us.
Guest:It just wasn't something that was out in front.
Guest:Or like I said, when I decided to go to film school, the idea of going to film school in my 18 year old, 19 year old head was, well, that's too avant-garde European, uh, hippy dippy.
Guest:You can't do that.
Guest:You know, it's like, you got to work your shit.
Guest:Soon as I, soon as I told him, I want to go to film school.
Guest:And he said, don't half-ass it.
Guest:He was so happy.
Guest:In our family, this is it.
Guest:And I think it was this way for society in general in a lot of ways.
Guest:You set up rules.
Guest:Here's the rules, the laws.
Guest:And until you break them and you go, I'm not asking permission to break them.
Guest:And guess what?
Guest:Consequences be done.
Guest:That's when my dad was like, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:You broke out and went your own way.
Guest:You look at society, a private sector, a Steve Jobs, a somebody who goes and goes their own way, an Elon Musk.
Guest:All the rules say you can't do that until you do it and you play so well that you're on the starting five just because you've done it.
Guest:And then everybody, the government and families go...
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Bravo.
Guest:Good job.
Guest:You went far enough to break the mold.
Marc:Do you think your dad saw himself in you in the way that he couldn't quite manifest that part of himself?
Marc:Because it seems like there was a lot tied up in your own sense of masculinity and
Marc:you know, wanting to be approved by your dad in sense of your manhood, but him having this sort of secret creative life that he kind of kept hidden that like because it was a very interesting and emotional turn for you to to say you're going to film school in thinking that, you know, he would, you know, at least be hard on you about it.
Marc:And instead, he just wants you to do the best that you can.
Marc:speaks to his, you know, to maybe that part of him that's sort of like, you know, I got a garage full of paintings and I never had the courage to do that.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know if it's, that may be two levels too deep for the way he was thinking.
Guest:I think it was more like he was, he was, he appreciated my independent rebellious spirit to go against everything that was expected of me, even by him.
Guest:In an immediate 10 seconds, he was already inside his mind going,
Guest:There we go.
Guest:Paving his own path.
Guest:Daring himself.
Guest:You're damn right I'm for it.
Guest:Don't half-ass it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's too bad, man.
Guest:And he passed away during... Five days into my first day of shooting, Days of Confuse.
Marc:And it was a complete surprise.
Guest:Complete surprise.
Guest:I got a call.
Guest:I always find out about death in the damn kitchen.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm always in the kitchen when I get the phone call about somebody close to me dying.
Marc:That's good for, that's cinematic.
Marc:You know, you're, you're doing some stuff in the kitchen, the phone rings.
Marc:Hello.
Marc:And then you stand there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Something, right?
Guest:I always hit my knees too.
Guest:And I remember, um, I got the call.
Guest:It was a, it was the night.
Guest:It was the Monday night.
Guest:So he had, he had made love to my mother climax and had a heart attack that morning at six 30.
Guest:Mom didn't call me until seven o'clock that night.
Guest:I never asked her why she waited.
Guest:But she called me and it was real quick.
Guest:I could tell she was catching her breath.
Guest:She goes, Matthew, you there?
Guest:Can you hear me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go, yes, man.
Guest:What's up?
Guest:What's up?
Guest:What's up?
Guest:Your dad died.
Guest:And I was, you know, shock, hit my knees, blah, blah, blah, and composed myself, made a cup, you know, got a cup of coffee and jug of water and hit the road and drove home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a complete surprise.
Guest:Complete surprise.
Guest:Now we had found out.
Guest:You know, dad, dad smoked like, you know, two, three packs of filterless camels a day.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So he, so he had gone to, you know, like Baylor medical where they did this experiment where they put the dye in you to see how your aort and everything's running.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and, and he'd come back.
Guest:And the next day, we'll be on the golf course.
Guest:He's having a cigarette.
Guest:I go, pop, you sure you should be smoking that?
Guest:He's, oh, yeah, son.
Guest:Doc says I got the heart of a 22-year-old high hurdler.
Guest:So, boom, he has a heart attack.
Guest:And we're like, the whole family, we're going, we're going to get that doctor.
Guest:We're going to get his ass.
Guest:We barge down there going, you didn't tell us.
Guest:You told our dad I had a heart of a 22-year-old high hurdler.
Guest:You son of a bitch.
Guest:You said he could keep.
Guest:He's like, what?
Guest:no look at these grabs i told them don't ever smoke again you're all clogged up and blocked like huh it's completely but you guys are ready to go oh we were ready to take that back out and then also we were like oh well of course okay yeah he didn't want to change nah he's gonna go out and he went out that's something
Guest:Called the shot.
Guest:Always told us, boys, when I move on and I get out of this place, I'm going to be making love to your mother.
Guest:Son of a bitch if he didn't.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:He said that?
Guest:He said that.
Guest:When I go, boys, I'm going to be making love to your mother.
Guest:And then sure enough, you know, and he went.
Guest:There's other still parts of the story that aren't even in the book.
Guest:He evidently, I found out later, because when the ambulance came to get him at the house, obviously all the neighbors came out in the street.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the neighbors that were somewhat friends came and told me later that mom, in her negligee nightie that she had woke up in, wouldn't let the paramedics cover him.
Guest:She kept ripping the sheet off, going, uh-uh.
Guest:I want the world to see you.
Guest:His nickname was Big Jim.
Guest:Don't you cover him.
Guest:That's how he went out.
Guest:Oh, God.
Marc:Looney Tunes, man.
Marc:Carney is all get out.
Marc:Well, it's funny because that sort of ties into you being busted and refusing to put the blanket on because you wanted to prove the point.
Guest:Maybe that's where I got it from.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:prove my innocence my birthday suit is obvious obvious a picture shows that i was minding my own business yes yeah that was it in my mind runs in the family so when you're shooting days and confused though like are you paralyzed with grief or are you able to just kind of move past it or use it or what what was it you know what was the feeling um
Guest:definitely more grounded.
Guest:So here, this first thing happens.
Guest:I get my first acting job.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:People are telling me I'm good at it.
Guest:I'm getting invited back to set.
Guest:I'm like getting paid 320 bucks a day.
Guest:I'm thinking, is this legal?
Guest:Can I get away with this?
Guest:Having a great time on a high of my life band that happens.
Guest:Well, what had just become the most important thing in my life, getting my first job and acting that I loved me, I became an obvious distant second.
Guest:Um, and so I came back and
Guest:It was very thoughtful.
Guest:I remember walking around the football field in that final scene of Days Confused.
Guest:It was just before sunset.
Guest:Rick Linklater and I were walking around.
Guest:I just got back from my dad's wake.
Guest:And we were just talking about, hey, what's it all about?
Guest:Life.
Guest:And I said, you know what, man?
Guest:I think it's about you to just keep living, man.
Guest:I mean, like my dad, he's now gone, but I have an opportunity to keep alive in me.
Guest:what he taught me about what I loved and why I loved him.
Guest:And if I keep that alive, he may physically not be here, but spiritually he's still alive.
Guest:So I have that opportunity.
Guest:So I think you just got to keep living, man.
Guest:And then that night in that scene, I said it to Randall Pink Floyd, you know, we wanted to sign the drug contract.
Guest:And I was like, you know what you do when you are, you're going to get a whole lot more rules once you get older, whatever you do, you just got to keep living, man.
Guest:And then that sort of just sat on me as I, as, as I do is I'll find a,
Guest:a phrase or a bumper sticker or an aphorism, and I'll test it in life and take it into life and see, does it apply or where does it not apply?
Guest:Can it hold up?
Guest:And look, it's a simple one, but just keep living.
Guest:Even Chekhov said it.
Guest:What else are we here to do?
Guest:I've never found a place where it's not applicable.
Marc:And I like that.
Marc:I like that.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:It was just sort of a throwaway.
Marc:And then it became the defining phrase of your life.
Yeah.
Guest:The three affirmations of the things my character had at that time, Wooderson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had his car, 70 Chevelle.
Guest:He had his weed because Slater's riding shotgun and he had Ted Nugent in the eight track.
Guest:So he had his rock and roll and he was going to get the fourth thing that he loved, which was,
Guest:Go pick up the chicks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And pulling out after putting in drive, I said those three words.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:There was also I had been listening to a lot of the doors at that time.
Guest:And there's a gym.
Guest:There's a there's a recording of Morrison in a live concert where he barks to the crowd four times.
Guest:All right.
Guest:All right.
Guest:All right.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So maybe that was somewhere in the back of my mind too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did do it in Wooderson sort of way.
Guest:And, and then just laid down the three affirmations of what I had.
Guest:And those are the first three words I ever said in film.
Guest:So the reason I don't, I love it when people say it or tattoo it on them or whatever, or walk down the street and say half, you know, and say half of it.
Guest:And I say the other half.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those are the first three words I said ever on film, 28, whatever, 28 years ago.
Guest:Now, I didn't know at that time if that was going to be a one-off hobby where I got to work for a week in the summer of 1992 and never did it again.
Guest:But it turned out to be a career.
Guest:So I'm like...
Guest:Please.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I'm in.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That was it.
Guest:All right.
Marc:That was the baptism.
Marc:That was it.
Guest:Come on.
Marc:But I think it's interesting that the one part of whatever you do to sort of identify with these characters, like, you know, you talk about that was one line he said that, like, you know.
Marc:Launchpad line.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's something you that's your tool.
Guest:Yeah, a launch pad line.
Marc:Like Wooderson, it was, what was it, like, I'm going to get older?
Guest:That's what I love about those high school girls, man.
Guest:I get older, they say the same age.
Guest:And you were like, dude, I read that.
Guest:I'm like, who's that guy?
Guest:That guy really believes that.
Guest:That line is not an attitude.
Guest:That's like part of his constitution.
Guest:There's an encyclopedia on that guy.
Guest:Right.
Yeah.
Guest:In that belief.
Guest:It's like the Wolf of Wall Street.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was able to riff on that was one of the lines that were written when he tells the Jordan Belfort, the leading Leonardo DiCaprio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The secret to stockbrokering is cocaine and hookers.
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:Who's that guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's a book on that guy.
Guest:If that's truly his perspective.
Guest:And he really means that a launch pad line.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, but that like, that's how you start.
Marc:Cause you refer to these guys as your man, you know, like, and, and so you're going to take that.
Marc:That's, that's your window into them to put that together, to write that book.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To write that book.
Guest:Then the rap starts.
Guest:I can rack and write that song.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Now,
Guest:100,000 of pages based off of that one-liner.
Guest:Unpack that.
Guest:Deconstruct that guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And right after you do, like, you know, like, Dazed and Confused, then you have this kind of run.
Marc:Like, you work with, like, you work with Sales, right?
Marc:John Sales.
Marc:John Sales on Lone Star.
Marc:Because that was an interesting movie.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And, like, so, like, you work with Linklater and you work with Sales.
Yeah.
Marc:And they seem pretty organic about their process.
Marc:I mean, those are the kind of movie makers.
Marc:It's a good way to start.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:What a great way.
Guest:What a great way to start.
Guest:I mean, they weren't huge budget studio films where the machine is kind of leading the personal side of things.
Guest:They weren't huge fans.
Guest:you know, studio movies that you had money to pay for everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you had to get more creative and independent.
Guest:You have to sort of be able to adapt quicker.
Guest:And they both have a vision.
Guest:They got vision.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They have a vision and they're more, they're more personal.
Guest:They're not spending the spend on those are not for,
Guest:the star in the movie or the special effects.
Guest:So it's just, it's interpersonal.
Guest:The story's got to be written well.
Guest:And let's see how, let's see how we, what story we tell on the ground through human interaction.
Guest:So I saw collaboration is what I saw.
Guest:And I went into days confused thinking that, that like directing was a dictatorship.
Guest:And like, if you didn't know something, you were obviously failing as a director or, and I saw, and I said, see Linklater pick up an idea from a PA.
Guest:I'd see Linklater go to a spot like that night when he came to me.
Guest:He just told me this about a month ago.
Guest:He came to me that night.
Guest:my very first night I was not supposed to be in the movie.
Guest:I had not been in the movie at all yet.
Guest:I was just doing a wardrobe and makeup test and he came up and he goes, Oh, I look at you.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You look like quarters.
Guest:And then he goes, Hey man, you know, I figured Wooderson's the kind of guy who's been with the typical hot chicks, you know, the cheerleaders, majorettes and stuff.
Guest:And I'm like, Hey, he goes, do you think you'd have an interest in the redheaded intellectual?
Guest:I'm like, Oh yeah.
Guest:Wooderson likes all types of chicks, man.
Guest:And he goes, well, you know, Marissa B.C.
Guest:'s overplay.
Guest:You think you maybe pull up and pick her up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well,
Guest:I said, yeah, but I found that two months ago that actually 15 minutes before that Rick was on the set and noticed without having anything to do with me that, oh, I got a story hole.
Guest:in our story right now.
Guest:Who's going to tell everyone there's a party tonight?
Guest:No one knows there's a party tonight to get everyone to go.
Guest:So he comes and he says he sees me.
Guest:He goes like, well, maybe Wooderson could be the one that says there's a fiesta in the making tonight.
Guest:So he gave that to me because he needed a story point.
Guest:He didn't tell me that until two months ago.
Marc:Yeah, I know, because the stories in the book about would you pick up, would you hit on the redhead?
Marc:But now he tells you, he's like, oh, yeah, I just need it.
Marc:I need you to fill a story on it.
Marc:You move my narrative along, man.
Marc:So the big break is a time to kill, right?
Marc:That's the big, yeah.
Marc:And that guy.
Marc:That's the big.
Guest:What was that?
Marc:Joe Schumacher.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, what was that guy?
Marc:What was the line that got you into that guy?
Guest:So the line that got me into that guy, well, with that character?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, look, I'll say this.
Guest:I knew even at that point that if that final summation doesn't absolutely nail the truth.
Guest:Right.
Guest:then it doesn't matter how, how, what the rest of my performance is like that, that the turn in that story depends on Jake begins delivering that final summation and hitting and getting the jury into that world.
Guest:And then making the flip where he goes, now imagine she's white.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Kiva Goldsman wrote that.
Guest:And I knew early on, I was like, this summation is the thing that has to work.
Guest:This is,
Guest:If this doesn't work, no matter how good you do in the rest of the movie, the movie doesn't work and your performance won't work unless you nail this.
Guest:And that, you know, that summation, I had that day flagged in my calendar for months.
Guest:And once we got to it, I remember going in.
Guest:I was very, very calm that day.
Guest:I was prepared.
Guest:I was very calm.
Guest:I knew it was a big moment for me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember Joel Schumacher going, okay, so Matthew, we're going, we're in there in the rehearsal.
Guest:And he goes, we're going to shoot.
Guest:I'm going to shoot the jury first.
Guest:We'll do the wide shots.
Guest:You could warm your way up into it.
Guest:And I wasn't even looking at him.
Guest:I was kind of, just kind of gazing off.
Guest:I was already in my zone.
Guest:And he was saying that, and I was not agreeing with him.
Guest:And I just kind of glanced out of my eye and I went,
Guest:And he goes, without missing a beat, he goes, and we're going to shoot the wide.
Guest:No, I take that back.
Guest:We're shooting Jake.
Guest:It's close up first.
Guest:Everyone get ready.
Guest:And everyone came in.
Guest:Cover me first.
Guest:One take.
Guest:Bam.
Marc:Move on.
Marc:Oh, so you did that.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:You did that close up first because you didn't want to do it.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:I said he could tell I was locked in.
Guest:I let him know that saying I was locked in.
Guest:I was locked in.
Guest:And so he said, we're not going to shoot everything first and let you warm up.
Guest:We're going to cover you right now first because you're ready.
Guest:right and then that was it man then all of a sudden i remember i remember the press it's like the new paul newman is here yeah this is the guy say saves the movies what the fuck dude right oh it was wild dude it was wild i remember going through you know hell going to the supermarket yeah my groceries yeah looking at three magazine covers and i'm on the cover of them going like
Guest:I think I'll purchase a few of those.
Guest:But then I remember it was, and I write about it in the book, the world became a mirror.
Guest:Everything got inverted.
Guest:The Friday before it came out, the Friday afternoon of the day it came out, like I said, there are a hundred scripts out there I would have said yes to.
Guest:And there were 99 no's and one yes.
Guest:Bam.
Guest:It opens up Friday night.
Guest:It has a good opening weekend that Monday.
Guest:It inverted a hundred scripts.
Guest:I want to do 99.
Guest:Yes is one.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I was like, Whoa, three days ago, I would have done any of these.
Guest:And now it's on me.
Guest:And last time I checked, there's only 24 hours in a day.
Guest:It's on me to be discerning through 99 of these scripts to decide what I want to do.
Guest:Let me catch my breath here.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And have you been with the same agent forever?
Guest:No, that was at the time I was with, uh,
Guest:That was right around transition, I think, when I went from William Morris over to see a, I believe that was a transition, Don.
Marc:Because, like, those decisions, I mean, like, it's interesting because in the book, when you talk about the career and you talk about, like, how, like, because you didn't take a lot of acting classes, but once you got to L.A., you felt like you should.
Marc:So you did.
Marc:And you felt like it fucked you up somehow.
Yeah.
Guest:You know that transition when you learn a new craft.
Guest:Something if you have an instinctual understanding of something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you kind of do it pretty good.
Guest:And then you go, let's go get learned.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Let's get the intellect and let's learn something.
Guest:There's a bridge you have to cross where there's an awkward period there where for the first time you're conscious of what you're doing.
Guest:And you're learning how to do what you were just doing naturally.
Marc:Yeah, but it's also according to this one person you decide to trust with the education.
Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you go to this class and all of a sudden, because you have an instinct for it and you're good at it, but you want to get better at it.
Marc:So it's like, who's this guy?
Marc:Well, these people told me this is the guy.
Marc:And then you go listen to the guy.
Marc:No, I mean, it didn't work.
Guest:I was too tight.
Guest:I had an awkward couple of years there where I was not not getting the parts because I was thinking too much.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Later on, as in my career, I did get with a wonderful lady, my one of my great mentors like Penny Allen and really dove into.
Guest:what acting was, what my rights were as an actor.
Marc:What movie was that?
Guest:When did that start?
Guest:That started right before Ed TV and went up to two years ago when she just passed away from cancer.
Guest:That's one of the most important people in my life.
Guest:I was with her for, I think, 19...
Guest:years as a coach as a coach yeah she wouldn't call herself a coach but she she was she was i don't even know what to call her she was a people that work with her know that she's like no other she had no connection to the business side she had no connection that like oh this movie has got a studio behind it this could be a big deal she didn't care if it was getting offered a dollar or ten million dollars she was just only about the role and what was right what was truest for me and she just pushed me pushed me quickly now that she did
Guest:As Don Phillips says, lower my handicap as an actor.
Guest:That first foray did not.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because like your instinct around the idea of the line, what'd you call it?
Marc:The launch pad line, you know, and building out from that, you know, that, I mean, that's teachable, you know, like that, you know, that's like, but any actor, I think most great actors are, are naturally half 80% of it.
Marc:Is it just a gift?
Yeah.
Marc:And then the other 20 is some education and also just doing it over and over again.
Marc:But I mean, that's as good a tool as any acting coach is going to give you.
Marc:It's like, here's your launchpad line.
Marc:Figure out what the book of the character is.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, but also...
Guest:I learned more from her.
Guest:There's a lot more to it.
Guest:You go, well, don't just rely on the one launchpad line that you think your character takes literally.
Guest:Let's see who he is.
Guest:Let's also see who he is not.
Guest:Let's see what they need.
Guest:What is their obstacle they got to get over to get what they need so it's not all just easy street.
Guest:The who am I?
Guest:The launchpad line helps a lot with the who am I in a character.
Guest:But also...
Guest:I learned a lot about how to get out of trouble when I got in trouble.
Guest:If I got stuck, if I got, if I got tight, if I had tension, tension's an actor's worst enemy.
Guest:If I had tension on set, if I wasn't, I learned how to get out of trouble.
Guest:I learned how to, when to go walk off and take a moment, when to go shake it out.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Come back.
Guest:Let's, let's re-approach this situation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I learned how to arm myself, so to speak, how to come to a set with like,
Guest:I got four versions in the truth and my holsters are loaded.
Guest:So you can let's call the audible press record.
Guest:You can throw at me whatever you want.
Guest:I want to be able to just I can go with it.
Guest:I can dance with whatever you give me.
Guest:And that's when it's really fun.
Guest:When when as actors were really hitting it on the screws is when it's like, don't even say cut.
Guest:If you've got a million hours of film, if you've got a million hours of film video, press record right now and put a blindfold on me wherever you want to go.
Guest:Keep the recorder on.
Guest:I'll be my guy.
Marc:That's when it's like... That's when you like it.
Guest:It doesn't always happen, but that's when it's like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's what makes it worth it.
Marc:That and the money.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So when did the...
Marc:The two primary, it seems like there were three primary kind of like.
Marc:Necessary recalibrating spiritual journeys that you had to take because of some existential crisis.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that that there's that's a lot of the book in a way it kind of hangs on these things.
Marc:And they're interesting to me.
Marc:I mean, outside of the fact that they were all sort of, you know, driven by wet dreams that were non-sexual, which that's nice.
Marc:Good for you.
Marc:But.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:Way to be the one.
Guest:Congratulations.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When did the first one to Africa, when did that happen?
Marc:Because I mean, but also like the I think that the living in the trailer thing, it's hard for me to sort of see in the context of the career and in time.
Marc:Like, you know, you took two trips to Africa, a trip to a monastery, but you also lived in a mobile home for what, years, months, four years, four years.
Marc:So you brought the business to you when it needed to come to you.
Guest:Or I drove my Airstream to Vancouver.
Marc:But you were in demand at that time.
Marc:It wasn't like you were on the outs at that time.
Guest:I was in somewhat demand, yes.
Marc:Because that was a lifestyle choice.
Marc:This is how I'm going to live to make me me.
Marc:I'm going to be out on the road with my dog, living life, meeting real people.
Marc:So what happened when you hit the wall enough to really check out and go to Africa the first time?
Guest:Well, so the first, I had the... Nocturnal emission?
Guest:The nocturnal emission, hands-free.
Guest:LA show-free nocturnal emission.
Guest:The first one was in...
Guest:I think in 96.
Guest:And that one sent me to Peru.
Guest:As I knew in the dream, there were two things I knew to be facts in the dream.
Guest:There was the Amazon River and African tribes been on the left bank as far as you can see.
Marc:Two separate dreams, right?
Guest:No, that's the same dream.
Marc:That's the first one.
Guest:Same exact dream.
Guest:11 frames, 11 seconds.
Guest:Snapshot.
Guest:I'm floating down the river on the Amazon River on my back, wrapped up in anacondas, freshwater sharks are swirling, crocodiles and piranhas on my back naked.
Guest:There's African tribesmen with shields and spears all on the left bank above me, all the way as far as the eye can see.
Guest:Then I came.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was not a nightmare.
Guest:I go, oh, geez, I wake up from that.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:That's got to be someone's telling me something here.
Guest:What do I know about those?
Guest:I know it's the Amazon.
Guest:I know it's African tribesmen.
Guest:So as I say in the book, I go to the Atlas for Africa looking for the Amazon.
Guest:Wrong continent.
Guest:So I didn't find the Amazon.
Guest:I said, I'm going there.
Guest:I go for a 22 day trip to float the Amazon.
Guest:That story is in there.
Guest:I think, OK, I fulfilled it.
Guest:I have the dream again.
Marc:I had it again in 99.
Marc:I know.
Marc:But like when you go down there, like, okay, so, you know, it's only 21 days, but it's a, it's a pretty big journey.
Marc:And like, what was it?
Marc:Cause all these times, you know, you have these existential crises and, you know, you seem to feel like you have to pay some penance for something.
Marc:I mean, what was, what was the cleansing thing?
Marc:What did you have to, what was it that you had to reconfigure to go down there?
Marc:Like, what were you like?
Marc:I got to fucking do this because why?
Guest:Well,
Guest:Well, look, it was a celestial suggestion to me that I took quite seriously.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I did not know exactly what I was going needed to go fine.
Guest:But I was like, this is a wonderful excuse to get the fuck out of here and go off on your own.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:I'm going to say that's probably a good idea anyway for somebody anytime they can do it.
Guest:But right now, since you've got that celestial suggestion through this wet dream, this one may have a higher hand and let's go chase it down and see what we get out of it.
Guest:So then I had that dream, same dream again over three years later.
Guest:And I'm in the northern side of the living in the Morrison Hotel, just finished Reign of Fire in Ireland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Had the exact same dream, 11 frames, 11 seconds, wet dream.
Guest:And I'm like, whoa, hadn't had that in three years, but it's the same one I had then.
Guest:Well, maybe it's calling me out to do the second half of my dream.
Guest:What's the second half, the other thing that I know about the dream geographically?
Guest:African tribesmen.
Guest:Okay, I guess I need to go to Africa.
Marc:Now that I got the river part done.
Marc:I got the river part done.
Marc:What are the Africans doing there?
Guest:So I got to chase down the second half.
Guest:Now I'm going mighty big continent.
Guest:What's my coordinate over there, baby?
Guest:Listening to music.
Guest:Ali Farquhar.
Guest:Anyway, that guy, where's he from?
Guest:Check him out.
Guest:He's from Nia Funke.
Guest:Where's Nia Funke?
Guest:Oh, it's in Mali.
Guest:Okay, I'm going to go find Ali.
Guest:Didn't know anything more than that.
Guest:And headed off, found Ali about five days into the trip and ended up taking the rest of the greatest trip of my life for the next 17 days after that.
Marc:So these weren't these were just sort of like impulsive, cosmically informed journeys that you had the wherewithal and the financial freedom to take.
Marc:And you wanted to just see what would happen.
Guest:Damn right.
Guest:And felt like and like I said, always looking for an excuse to go take an adventure or a solo to chase chase down a mystery.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And they all feed your character.
Marc:I mean, like that whole story in Africa, you know, around the wrestling, that was exciting and fun.
Marc:And you developed a friendship with the guy who drove you like your guide.
Marc:That's exciting.
Marc:Okay, so then getting to the monastery that we started the conversation with, it seemed to me that you would somehow... Because what's interesting about the book is that you have these events in your life that you thread together as defining events, right?
Marc:But there are definitely periods in your life and moments in your life that you either...
Marc:You kind of move through by going like, you know, there's a couple of references to, you know, I got to cleanse myself of these sins.
Marc:And and also like, you know, like like this, an intensity of loathing.
Marc:So like, you know, like.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And and but, you know, you don't write about either of those things.
Guest:Well, I mean, but I didn't... Look, my threshold, I have a pretty short threshold from my own feeling of self-guilt and my own feeling of self-significance.
Guest:My threshold's pretty quick.
Guest:I mean, I have a pretty...
Guest:sensitive wire when I'm feeling like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, McConaughey.
Guest:You're not being all of you right now.
Guest:You're not grounded.
Guest:Your mind and your heart and your spirit do not have an auto bond between them right now.
Guest:You've got some blocked roads here and you need to clear this up.
Guest:And, oh, why have you been thinking that?
Guest:Jeez, you've been kind of looking down on things.
Guest:You're thinking negatively.
Guest:I didn't like what you said last night.
Guest:How you said that was constructive about that, McConaughey.
Guest:Are you trying to be somebody else?
Guest:And so those triggers let me know, hey, my spider senses go off and go,
Guest:You need to check in.
Guest:You need to bend a knee, boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you need you need to get check out to check in.
Guest:And whether that is going to the monastery and praying or going off into nature, those are all fuga mundi as my as my brother Christian friend monk calls them that are walkabouts, which are to say, I'm going to go to a place where I can listen to myself.
Guest:I'm in a position of fame at that time in my life where.
Guest:There's a lot of frequencies coming at me.
Guest:There's a lot, 24 hours a day.
Guest:I got a lot coming at me.
Guest:A lot of voices, a lot of things I'm listening to, a lot of things I think I am and I want to be.
Guest:All of a sudden, you can start objectifying your life and go, wait, where's the subject?
Guest:And so I'm feeling like I'm living an object in my life and going, wait a minute, but I don't feel my own feet on the ground.
Guest:I need to go somewhere where I can hear myself think.
Guest:I need to go somewhere where memory can catch up with me.
Guest:Where I can go, okay, let's have this out, McConaughey.
Guest:Let's go back over the old docket here and see what we've been doing over the last year.
Guest:And let's measure them out.
Guest:And let's figure out which ones we're going to forgive and which ones we're going to say, I'm fucking tired of that no more.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm going to have that out with myself.
Guest:Let's go have that wrestling match.
Guest:Until we get to a point, which is usually around day 12, that there's a purge.
Guest:There's a forgiveness period where I go, okay.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Stuck with the one person I can't get rid of.
Guest:So let's shake hands on this guy and see how we can do from here on out.
Guest:We'll screw up again and need another one of these soon.
Guest:But for now, let's have a good time and be more present.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that and that works, you know, like because you go deep with it.
Marc:Like, you know, you you don't.
Marc:So you most of the time it's it seemed like that that first time it was about, you know, that line that you cross where you're no longer defined by yourself.
Marc:Right.
Marc:but by the business's expectations, other people's expectations, the, uh, you know, whatever the fans expectations.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, but, but, but alongside of that, you got all this bread and you can do whatever the fuck you want.
Marc:And there's no way you're not going to get into a decadence hole because you've lost your way.
Guest:That's what didn't want to get into a decadence hole.
Guest:Like I said, I write about the, the, the, uh, the value of resistance in, in my life a lot.
Guest:I, uh,
Guest:Yeah, you just said it.
Guest:I got all this dough, can do whatever the fuck I want.
Guest:Well, that's a prescription for becoming a tyrant.
Guest:A tyrant.
Guest:Unless you check in.
Guest:Or dead.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't want those, so I'm going, well, wait a minute, man.
Guest:What's, you know, how can I...
Guest:So I needed too many options.
Guest:I needed to decrease options.
Guest:I needed to hear myself again.
Guest:I write about it with the press jeans.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:That's a good, that's a good analogy.
Guest:When you can ask yourself if you want to, before you do.
Guest:So with success becomes all of this.
Guest:I can write for the first time I can.
Guest:So shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to, well, all of a sudden you go, wait a minute.
Guest:Some of this stuff isn't really feeding me back.
Guest:It's not really good for me.
Guest:So hang on, let me check in.
Guest:But I was just saying yes, because I'm just happy to be here.
Guest:Yeah, look, they're giving me free jackets.
Guest:Look at these hats.
Guest:You know?
Guest:I need to start to find a little discernment.
Marc:What was it?
Marc:Where were you?
Marc:What were you shooting when that happened?
Marc:They put you up in, where was it, in Arizona?
Marc:With the maid and the...
Guest:Yeah, that was Boys on the Side.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And what was that story?
Marc:That friend of yours comes up?
Guest:So I get this little great little adobe guest house on the edge of this like Sparrow National Forest there.
Guest:I mean, coyotes howling right outside my door.
Guest:Great little one bedroom loft.
Guest:It's got a nice kitchen and it comes with a maid.
Guest:right the housekeeper i've never had one before man she's making me great uh food breakfast and scrambled eggs and leaving me a dinner at night and having to set out and making my bed and all this stuff leaving water next to my bed cleaning stuff up and she also starts pressing my jeans right like with that little fine line right down the front leg and i have my friend over beth alexander who's now moved on um
Guest:And I'm telling her this stuff, like it's my birthday, like I just told you.
Guest:And I went and I said, look at this, man, she even presses my jeans.
Guest:And she was just laughing.
Guest:She goes, well, that's great, Matthew.
Guest:I said, right.
Guest:She goes, if you want your jeans pressed.
Guest:I hate that fucking line on my jeans.
Marc:I never thought of that before.
Marc:It's the worst.
Marc:But I like that that became this sort of point of wisdom, you know, where, you know, that was the click, you know, like.
Guest:Yeah, it clicked to go.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What do I want?
Guest:I don't have to take everything, even though you don't have to take everything, even though for the first time in my life, I can get all these things I never got before.
Guest:So, yeah, a little when you when you can.
Guest:Ask yourself if you want to before you do.
Guest:Were you brought up with Jesus?
Guest:Yeah, we were brought up Methodist, which is heavy on the New Testament.
Guest:You know, heavy on the thanks, heavy on the gratitude.
Guest:Not so much the Baptist Old Testament.
Guest:If you don't do this, then you're going to hell.
Guest:It was a lot of forgiveness and gratitude.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do you stay with that when you do these walkabouts and stuff?
Marc:Is that who you go to generally or is it broader?
Guest:I mean, it's one it's one of the places I go to because I read a lot of great I've read a lot of wonderful stuff that I appreciate through Jesus's teachings.
Guest:But I go more to.
Guest:Mystics have done a lot of, done a lot of the, um, um, Maestro Eckhart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, I'd call myself more of an optimistic mystic.
Guest:Um, and then I'm over, you know, I'm obviously learning, um,
Guest:Islam when I'm over in Africa and respecting how at any time they just lay a mat down and pray through the day, how it's a part of the daily language.
Guest:It's not like a separate thing that you go on a Wednesday night or a Sunday morning.
Guest:It's a daily ritual.
Guest:And so picked up some things about that, about through the day, how you can pray through the day, whether it's meditation or what have you.
Guest:You know, the monastery, they're out there in the desert.
Guest:part of the, their, their view is look, we're in the desert.
Guest:And when our mind wanders, we have, we bend a knee and look at right at our feet, dirt, rock, whatever, and go, that's, that's of God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's everything around us is of God.
Guest:So that's where they pray because they're surrounded by it.
Guest:Um,
Guest:So I'm more of a mix and, you know, different things.
Guest:And I've gone to Thailand with the Buddhist as well.
Guest:So I'm trying to take in what I can.
Marc:Well, I like in the book that like there was a point where, you know, you kind of hit the wall with with the movies that were kind of you're making you a lot of money.
Marc:You know, I was telling my friend it was funny.
Marc:I was talking to my friend, Sam Lipsight, who's a who's a writer in New York.
Marc:He's a novelist.
Marc:I said, I'm reading this Matthew McConaughey book.
Marc:And it's sort of like this.
Marc:hero's journey and uh and i said like you know i'm right at this part where he uh he just decides he's not going to do rom-coms anymore and he says uh yeah there comes a point in the hero's journey where they have to say no to rom-coms
Guest:I didn't know it was, yeah, it was across the board, huh?
Guest:Everyone has to do it at some point.
Guest:I mean, yeah, like I wrote in the book, they're Saturdays.
Guest:They're Saturday characters.
Guest:They're fun.
Guest:They're ease.
Guest:They're flip-flops.
Guest:They're shorts.
Guest:It's sunny.
Guest:They're built to be buoyant, to bounce from cloud to cloud.
Marc:But you can do it.
Marc:There's a great value in that.
Marc:And you had a skill for it.
Guest:Yeah, and it's about the jive.
Guest:It's about the vibe.
Guest:And you get the right male and female leads and those co-stars that I've been in.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:Look, I mean, the rom-com.
Guest:It's not about what my vocation is.
Guest:You know, how to lose a guy?
Guest:I'm in an advertising agency.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:It's just about the guy and the girl.
Guest:They're going to get together.
Guest:They're going to break up somehow.
Guest:They're going to get mad.
Guest:And then the boy will chase the girl at the end.
Guest:And then we're going to roll credits.
Guest:We're all going to go, hey, didn't that feel good?
Guest:Wasn't that fun?
Guest:That's the same story over and over and over.
Guest:People just want to sometimes go, I want to escape and not have to.
Marc:So you're only working your charm muscle.
Guest:No, it's working with the charm muscle because.
Guest:I don't think they would have been successful if it's only working a charm muscle.
Guest:Again, one of the things I did in the romantic conference I tried to do is try to not, you know, a lot of times the male is so emasculated in those, meaning they come back at the end and just like, whoa, be me.
Guest:Please take me back.
Guest:I am nothing without you.
Guest:And I always tried to give at least some dignity to that and go, look, I screwed up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I really want you back.
Guest:And if you forgive me, I think we could really do something great together, but I'm not, I can't just walk in here and just go, if you don't take me back, I'm a nothing.
Guest:I was like, cause I was always like, I would have these conversations with the directors.
Guest:I was like, that guy that you're talking about that comes back and just goes, whatever, just take me back.
Guest:I'm nothing without you.
Guest:What girl wants that guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a load to put on.
Guest:That girl's walking away going, oh, geez.
Guest:Stand up for yourself a little bit.
Guest:So I was doing those, having a great time doing them.
Guest:But as I said in the book, I felt like I wanted to challenge myself in a different way.
Guest:I felt like, okay, this is easy.
Guest:I got the script today.
Guest:I can do this tomorrow morning.
Guest:That was fun and easy, but I was like, I want something that I go, I can't do this tomorrow.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But yeah, I mean, you turned down a lot of money.
Marc:You had a wife at that point, you had a kid, you know, right.
Guest:And, you know, and that helped me.
Guest:I mean, look, I called my money manager when I said, I don't want to do rom-coms anymore.
Guest:I call my money manager.
Guest:How did I save my money?
Guest:Does you save your money?
Guest:Well, I said, cause I'm about to take off from the work that can come in my way.
Guest:I call my agent.
Guest:He says, great.
Guest:I said, really?
Guest:I'm bringing in a nice 10% with these rom-coms to your company.
Guest:You sure it's just great?
Guest:Jim Toff of Minch says, I don't work for them, I work for you.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Boom.
Guest:Then I go to Camilla.
Guest:Her and I've been talking about it.
Guest:I'd shed tears over trying to figure out what it was I could do in my career and what I wanted to do.
Guest:And about making this full stop about, as I said, what I wanted to do was not coming my way.
Marc:Which were meatier parts, more interesting, deeper characters, drama.
Guest:Dramas, right?
Guest:So they weren't coming my way.
Guest:So if I couldn't get what I wanted, I said my decision was, well, stop doing what it is you don't want to do, process of elimination.
Guest:So I said no to the rom-coms.
Guest:And it took Hollywood quite a while.
Guest:to say, okay, we get the message.
Guest:And then there was just nothing that came in.
Guest:Mind you, I had nothing came in.
Marc:You were taking a risk and you said no more rom-coms and there was nothing.
Marc:You weren't getting nothing.
Marc:So were those nights with your wife where you're like, what the fuck am I going to do, man?
Marc:What did I do?
Marc:Hell yeah, there was.
Guest:Yeah, there was, man.
Guest:There were some wobbly nights for sure, man.
Guest:I'm not going, what have I done?
Guest:And then my family's going...
Guest:what are you doing, man?
Guest:You turned down that money.
Guest:God damn, buddy.
Guest:You're going to go, what did you just go nail it?
Guest:Hammer it.
Guest:Get out.
Guest:I'm like, no, no.
Guest:But then, and they understood, but they were like, geez, man, sure.
Guest:You're taking, you're taking this too seriously.
Guest:I was like, no, it's what I got to do.
Guest:And my wife said to me very early on when we agreed to take the sabbatical, she said, all right, we're going to do this.
Guest:We're doing it all the way.
Guest:And we're not going to half ass it.
Guest:She repeated my dad's words to me.
Guest:And so 20 months later, after nothing is when,
Guest:Killer Joe was the first name that came in.
Guest:And then those dramas that I wanted started coming my way.
Marc:And all of a sudden I was like, whoa.
Marc:Killer Joe with Friedkin?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The Tracy Letts play.
Marc:He's a great guy, Tracy.
Marc:And so is Bill.
Marc:Friedkin's a trip, right?
Marc:Yeah, isn't he?
Marc:I mean, he's over there.
Marc:What's he doing?
Guest:Orchestrating some symphony in Czechoslovakia today?
Guest:Talk about stories, dude.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:I talked to him for like two and a half hours and it all came together.
Marc:It was crazy.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:You know what he does?
Guest:One take.
Guest:Tells everybody right off the bat, you get one take.
Guest:He's like, let's shoot, you get one take, that's it.
Guest:And everyone goes, oh shit, one take.
Guest:But what happens when you only know you only have one take?
Guest:is you just don't hold anything back on take one and you just go fuck it well let's let it rip it's actually a great exercise that you can't as an actor rely on oh well i'll fix it or i'll do something different no you got one here you go it's live right now so you were able so that was your your your kind of re-entry into acting it was that it was paper boy it was mike it was mud when was tropic thunder because that's a great one man
Guest:Tropic Thunder was before that.
Guest:The re-entry for me, I think, was Lincoln Lawyer, Killer Joe-ish.
Guest:Did you have fun on Tropic Thunder?
Guest:Oh, shit, yeah.
Guest:We shot that in Kauai.
Guest:That was so much fun.
Guest:You could tell that that was something when we were doing it.
Marc:I think it was a genius movie.
Marc:I think it's a genius fucking satire.
Guest:And so fun to watch over and over and over.
Guest:There's no dead weight in the movie.
Guest:The whole thing is a romp and a ride and originally funny.
Marc:When he's having the crisis of identity with the wooden statue and with the little, the kid made him an Oscar.
Marc:And he's putting that guy's teeth in to do the, oh my God.
Yeah.
Guest:So good.
Guest:It's dark, man.
Marc:So, okay, so Killer Joe gets you back in.
Marc:Mud gets you some recognition.
Guest:So what did I do in that two years, that 20 months?
Guest:I didn't rebrand, I unbranded.
Guest:Meaning I was not on the beach getting shirtless.
Guest:I was not doing rom-coms.
Guest:Your proverbial seat where you were like, where's McConaughey in the world?
Guest:It got to a point where nobody knew where I was.
Guest:It was like this.
Guest:I don't know where I think he's in a trailer.
Guest:I became a new good idea.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Guest:So I was away along enough that I became a new.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Hey, you don't be an interesting idea where two years before that, that would not have been an interesting idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So these movies start coming my way.
Guest:Those Magic Mike, Paperboy.
Guest:You know, I had had control of Dallas Buyers Club.
Guest:but nobody wanted to make it with me.
Guest:But I started, you know, I made a few movies that were critically successful and made some bank.
Guest:They were original characters.
Guest:And all of a sudden, somebody might be able to get Dallas Buyers Club financed.
Guest:Still, no one wanted to finance a 1980s period age drama.
Marc:But you, how'd you, what do you mean?
Marc:So you had, you were attached to it for years.
Marc:Yeah, I was attached to it for years.
Marc:How did that happen?
Marc:How did you, like, you know, what was the problem?
Guest:That came to me
Guest:I read it, loved it, and said, all right, there's something here.
Guest:This is an unsentimental way to tell this story.
Guest:I want this.
Guest:So I attached myself to it.
Guest:Now, that's just a – that means –
Guest:All right.
Guest:McConaughey is attached.
Guest:We can go out to look for directors.
Guest:There were plenty of times that other people tried to come swipe it from me.
Guest:And I was like to my ages, do not let that one go.
Guest:That I believe will see its day with me somewhere down the line.
Guest:And thankfully it did.
Marc:It's interesting how it came together.
Marc:But what I found like in the reading the book that.
Marc:You know, you got to know what was his name?
Marc:Woodson.
Marc:What's the character's name?
Marc:Ron Woodruff.
Marc:Woodruff like that.
Marc:You got to know his daughter and his his mother, his sister.
Marc:And they gave you his diary.
Marc:The diary.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you were really able to kind of like I imagine the depth of that.
Marc:And you're working with Penny, right?
Yeah.
Guest:yeah i'm working with penny he had all that information now i'm seeing the guy from the inside out now i'm seeing the guy that's not written about in the script i'm seeing the guy before he got hiv right all right so now i've got this whole story and it's in his words and i as a you know i saw this sort of this this dreamer like i said this guy who
Guest:You know, really, he had these doodles.
Guest:You know, you could tell when he was getting high or whatever.
Guest:He'd doodle in his diary.
Guest:And then he'd write things about, like, I'm going to go tomorrow morning, you know, 7 a.m.
Guest:I'm going to install these speakers for the Johnsons over across town.
Guest:You know, I've got speakers.
Guest:I've got to go.
Guest:It's a monster cable.
Guest:And he did real tiny writing and added it all up to the penny.
Guest:That means I'll have, like, $6.42 worth of gas.
Guest:I'll get me back.
Guest:And then he'd get up.
Guest:on a second cup of coffee ironing his shirt before he goes to work and the pager would go off and it'd be like oh i'm sorry ron we don't need that we're going with somebody else who can insure themselves boom now what's he do when i his days his ambition for the day was kind of gone so now he's going to head over to sonic and
Guest:See old Nancy Blankenship and maybe go shag up a little bit and get him a double cheeseburger and call it a day.
Guest:And Friday night's coming early.
Marc:Right.
Marc:This is just like mundane details of this guy who, you know, becomes this kind of like the arc and the hero of this tale.
Marc:Like you were able to humanize him to a depth that's not usually available because you had his own words, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it also allowed me not to go in and play a guy who has HIV.
Guest:Who's the man before he had HIV?
Guest:I played that guy who actually gets HIV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He also, you know, you saw how extravagant he would dress up for Halloween stuff.
Guest:And he loved jazz and he liked to go up to the Northeast.
Guest:And he was kind of a kind of a carny performer, you know, and his family told me about things he would invent.
Guest:but he wouldn't get the patent.
Guest:Like he didn't quite follow through.
Guest:He didn't vent.
Guest:And then all of a sudden they go get the patent.
Guest:He got no, no, no.
Guest:And then two years later, someone would get the patent on his idea and steal it from him.
Guest:And he's like, he never quite followed through certain things.
Guest:And there was a certain humanity and, and, and, and loneliness to that of a guy who was kind of drifted.
Guest:Um,
Guest:That just told me a lot.
Guest:I had the inside track on it.
Marc:Yeah, it was such a great character, great movie, great job.
Marc:You know, and it's like one of those, it's nice, like it was one of those years where, you know, you win best actor and you're like, hey, he deserved it.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Oh, cool.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It wasn't like, how the fuck did that?
Guest:Right, right, right, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you were pretty lit up that night.
Marc:You went with your mom.
Marc:Oh, yeah, man.
Marc:You went with your mom, right?
Guest:With my mom and Camilla, my wife.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a real special night.
Guest:you know, I was getting pretty numb, uh, as the category came up and the kind of the whole room kind of went like, and I remember just looking at the names and going, no one else's name starts with an M. So if you hear a, that means it's you.
Guest:And I remember laying my head back and I heard, and I was like, I'm not sure.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:And then I look around me and my mom sends up, my friend, Kevin Moore stands up, Camilla stands up there and starts clapping.
Guest:I'm like,
Guest:Started with them.
Guest:They called my name.
Marc:It's interesting that, you know, something that you put that much work into and that was that personal for you and that you champion the thing all the way through.
Marc:Were you a producer on it or no?
Marc:Uh, no, but it was, but you, your collaboration with the director was kind of tight, right?
Guest:You guys really, yeah.
Guest:Like we were John Mark Valet, who's now gone on to direct so many more things.
Guest:And, you know, he had done a film called crazy, which when I saw that film called crazy, I don't know if you've ever seen it.
Guest:Y'all check it out.
Guest:It's wild.
Marc:it's fun and really well told um and again i write the book i don't know how he got the money to get that soundtrack that guy gets music and i don't know how he gets the music for the budgets he has anyway he was the right guy for it and what was it like because i have to also assume that you're given i mean the fucking vulnerabilities of i've been watching a lot of old movies in quarantine and really kind of noticing you know what really makes a scene or a performance work is a vulnerability you know
Guest:Let's let's let's open up that word, because I've had I've had not the best relationship with that word through my life for what that means.
Guest:OK, I'm with you and I'm more involved.
Guest:And I like the word now and understand it.
Marc:Well, like an example that I was heading towards.
Marc:Well, I mean, I think that like it seems to me that vulnerability to you would somehow be somewhere in the the area of weakness.
Guest:It used to be.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I but I imagine it's primarily because you didn't recognize it and your definition was tied.
Guest:I think that's correct.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like for me, like, you know, the ability for you to engage in the character that, you know, was being humiliated by this disease and also find strength with it.
Marc:And also, you know, you'll have to reckon with the judgment reserved for people that he wasn't, you know, that he could not get away from.
Marc:And then develop a relationship with Jared Leto's character that you surrender to.
Marc:I mean, that's as vulnerable as you can get on screen, really.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, maybe.
Guest:I mean, it's just human.
Guest:Yeah, superhuman.
Guest:I mean, I...
Guest:You know, what was always in my pocket was, in my pocket as Ron Woodruff as an actor was, he's got to do whatever it takes to stay alive.
Guest:That's the, I mean, that's like the ultimate, talk about the ultimate obstacle to overcome.
Guest:I mean, that's like the baseline.
Guest:What's your job?
Guest:I'm trying to stay alive.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:The other thing I'm going to blame, I'm not, like I said earlier, the unsentimentality of that film dealing with that subject matter.
Guest:Ron was a businessman.
Guest:He was trying to make money.
Guest:So that sort of,
Marc:undercut he was never the guy who waved the white flag for the cause no no i get that but but when when his humanity got so stripped down yep he couldn't help but feel empathetically with the humanity of somebody else 100 100 so that you know that that's a vulnerability that's earned despite the character's intentions right right yep huh
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I think the word to me means that, you know, whether you mean to or not in the character or whether the character means to or not, where, you know, the human heart is exposed, you know, so so everybody can feel it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And that that I mean, look, I say this in a script written well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A character that goes through real things like that.
Guest:You listed a few.
Guest:The relationship with Leto's character, a world that's ostracizing him.
Guest:I mean, those are great obstacles to overcome and engage it.
Guest:If those scenarios are not there, those are dynamic scenarios.
Guest:That's not, we talk about rom-coms floating across the cloud.
Guest:That's not rom-com stuff.
Guest:That's like the basement.
Guest:That's what's great about dramas.
Guest:The basement of your lowest base levels of pain and rage and everything, it's as low as an actor as you want to go.
Guest:It's up to me.
Guest:It's up to me and that character.
Guest:I can go as far deep as I want to go.
Guest:Now, the extent, the ceiling of joy, of life,
Guest:the vitality is as high as i want it to be no in rom-coms you're you're compressed the ceiling can't be too high can't be too low you'll sink the ship if you go too low right you get a good drama it's like it's up to you the ceilings there's no roof and there's no basement you go tell me how you feel about how what what come show me your rage right show me your ecstasy right and you don't have to analyze it you know what that means you know it's just you you know you can feel the character
Marc:Well, it's interesting that your relationship with the idea of vulnerability, because that's another thing that was noticing in the book that, you know, you definitely, you know, keep some shit to yourself.
Marc:And, you know, and some of it is emotional shit.
Marc:And, you know, you kind of give short shrift to certain things where you like even, you know, whatever that journey was through that 20 months, you must have been, you know, just a pain in the ass and a wreck and a panic in some ways.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But at times, at times, I sure was.
Marc:And then, like, there's this other thing where we had to go back to Texas for personal reasons.
Marc:So there's obviously struggles and real shit that, you know, you're like, I'm going to keep this to me because I got to, you know, I got to own that.
Marc:That's my own heart.
Guest:And here's why.
Guest:Let's bring up the family deal.
Guest:That's just if I bring up what it was that I came back for the family deal, the family crisis, if I go into details of that.
Guest:I'm not interested in opening up my profile into my, and so now people want to ask that.
Guest:And that's, that's, that's not the profile on me and my, my family, something happened in my family.
Guest:That's a different book.
Guest:That's, and that's why I say, that's why bedrooms have doors on them, bro.
Guest:No, I get it.
Marc:I'm not you.
Guest:I'm just saying, I'm not you.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I'm saying there's certain things where it's like,
Guest:No, you know what?
Guest:I'll leave that up, too.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But like, but see, for me, you know, seeing you now and talking now, I'm like, I wonder how he handled that shit.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Well, whatever the fuck it was, because like, you know, I know how you handle, you know, like your your decision to to go to Africa because you came in your bed, you know, but like life, life handed up some shit.
Marc:You know, like, yes.
Guest:How do you deal with that shit?
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:There were nightmares amongst the wet dream.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I get that's a different book, but I think that's also has like, I don't know that you'll ever write that book and it has something to do with your aversion to the idea of vulnerability.
Guest:Look, we got 24 hours in a day.
Guest:You and I sit here and talk.
Guest:We got an hour, hour and a half.
Guest:I'm one for, you know, I still have a little bit of that.
Guest:survival mechanism i don't like to hear i don't want to hear all of your big problems either i like to hear how you overcome and go through them but i'm gonna go look that part happened it's not constructive to the story of how i got out of it um i don't like i'm like i'm a little bit of that day being got something good to say don't say it at all there's plenty of times i don't say i'm not i'm not i'm doing stuff and saying stuff that's not right of course you know yeah yeah the most constructive like i said i step in plenty of shit myself
Guest:But I'm not going to, I don't want to open that up to someone's armchair psychoanalysis of you.
Guest:So you went through with your family and they were going through that.
Guest:There's another situation.
Guest:So did you, I mean, I talk, you know, I mean, I talk about non-deserving complexes, times I'm feeling insignificant and all those things, but
Guest:That's my family business.
Guest:In the same way I don't talk, it's not a tell-all book.
Guest:I don't go in and tell you things about people I worked with that are negative to them or make you go, oh, that's juicy.
Guest:I'm like, that's nobody else's business.
Guest:That's just decency.
Guest:I believe it's just me being decent.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And it's also protecting the people you love on another level.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So I like the list at the end.
Marc:It's nice.
Marc:How about that?
Marc:I believe you.
Marc:I believe you.
Marc:How about that?
Marc:I believe that.
Marc:How about that?
Marc:I believe that that's a list that you wrote when you were.
Marc:1992 or three.
Marc:Ten goals in life.
Marc:Become a father.
Marc:Find and keep the woman for me.
Marc:Keep my relationship with God.
Marc:Chase my best self.
Marc:Be an egotistical utilitarian.
Guest:Utilitarian.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's that's sort of that's the system in the book.
Yeah.
Marc:Take.
Marc:Yeah, it is.
Marc:Take more risks.
Marc:Stay close to mom and family.
Marc:Win an Oscar for best actor.
Marc:Look back and enjoy the view.
Marc:Just keep living so that that's nice when you because like I know that about myself like and you didn't know this list was around until you started going through the shit to write the book.
Guest:I forgot where I put that list the day after I wrote it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like there's things in my mind where I'm like, I want to manifest that, but I don't want to talk about it too much.
Marc:And I just know, write it down on a note.
Marc:And then years later, you're like, okay, I don't know how I did it, but I did it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Where subconsciously, if what we write down is true, it's in our lineage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's the things that I noticed that I'll write down.
Guest:I go, I'm chasing it.
Guest:If I'm playing grab ass with my thoughts or grab ass with my memories, trying to chase it down.
Guest:I'm like, oh, you didn't quite.
Guest:meaning i'd say this book i write things i write everything down so i can forget it you know what i mean i write it down because i go oh i don't want to forget that so i'm gonna write it down so i can't right yeah i definitely relate to that so how's your level of loathing these days um i'm happy to say it's pretty low that's good um uh i'm more loathing for
Guest:What do we, can we get through this year?
Guest:Can we get through COVID?
Guest:Can we get through the cultural revolution?
Guest:Can we get through the election?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Without having a civil war.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Can we constructively turn a page here?
Guest:When does that balance?
Guest:When can that proverbial hand on the clock that was maybe oppressed to the fore?
Guest:When can it, if six is justice,
Guest:And right now it's swung over to eight and bypassed straight up, winking at level out and we can go, okay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where are we going?
Guest:Where are we going?
Guest:It's about us.
Guest:Where are we going?
Guest:And for me, I'm, you know, I'm, I'd like to meet you in the middle and I'd like to meet you in the table like this and go, let's talk about it.
Guest:Let's have some conversations about condemnations.
Guest:Let's see how this COVID time with this invisible enemy we had, how can we,
Guest:What are the positives?
Guest:What are the assets this time?
Guest:Well, I've been forced to do more inventory.
Guest:I've been spending more time with my kids.
Guest:I've been doing more cooking with my kids.
Guest:My kids are taking up on their creative hobbies more than they were before.
Guest:I've been petting my dogs longer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There are some assets to it.
Guest:So where do we get it?
Guest:What's the way we're going to work?
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Is this the way you and I talk for the rest of our life?
Guest:I hope not.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:And it's got its assets, too, because there's a lot of people that I'm doing.
Guest:I talk with on Zoom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm like, I prefer this.
Marc:Easier.
Guest:You know, so my loathing is more about and look, I'm in no place.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:I don't I'm not a place to that.
Guest:I've got my own stress going on to keep our ship afloat here, keep our head above water as a family, which is my first priority.
Guest:But I'm in a privileged position.
Guest:My pantry's full.
Guest:I don't have to work today to pay my rent tomorrow.
Guest:So I'm in a privileged position that a lot of people are not.
Guest:My loathing is more for those people that cannot.
Guest:And what are we going to do as humanity to turn the page out of this?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I, you know, it's really hard to say, man.
Marc:You know, it's a, it's a lot to carry every day because depending on, you know, I'd rather have your brain than mine in times like this in the sense that like, you know, it's hard not to get, you know, weighted down with the darkness of it.
Guest:It is, but I think we got to believe, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, what's our alternative?
Yeah.
Guest:We've got to believe that there's a light out of this where we're going to evolve.
Guest:We have to.
Guest:If not, if we don't believe that and it is the end of the world, well, then fuck it.
Guest:We might as well believe we can get out of it anyway.
Marc:Or there's the end of the country.
Marc:Ireland's nice.
Marc:You spend time in Ireland.
Marc:Could you live in Ireland?
Guest:Singapore is nice.
Guest:I mean, right now, I think more than ever, it's a time where it's like, where do you want to live on the planet earth?
Guest:And I'm even thinking about for the first time in my life, well, is it all restrained to earth only?
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Where, you know, when's Branson getting the rocket done?
Guest:I'm ready.
Guest:But where on the planet do you do?
Guest:Would you really like to live for you and your family, your kids?
Guest:And you're with, this is an example of these things.
Guest:discussions like this, this remote living, that you can kind of live wherever the hell you want and be wherever you want.
Marc:That's the weird thing.
Marc:It's like, yeah, it is a privileged place to be to make those kind of decisions, be able to make those kind of decisions, but to realize, but, you know, we, I don't know, you know, we got to, I guess,
Marc:It's like hope for the best is one thing, but obviously something has shifted kind of permanently.
Marc:And there is an adaptation to make, you know, whether or not we fall on, you know, the you know, on the side of sustaining life on the planet or we don't.
Marc:It's tough.
Marc:It's a tough call right now.
Marc:But we'll see.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:OK.
Guest:Yes, we will see.
Guest:We will see.
Guest:And I hope, you know, that we do.
Guest:We don't.
Guest:It's so easy right now.
Guest:You know, you've got the perfect Bermuda triangle.
Guest:You've got unemployment.
Guest:You got this invisible murderer called COVID who is also in our psyche because, you know, Americans, we want to meet the enemy at the gate.
Guest:This is one of those ones that says, yeah, that's where I want him.
Guest:I want you to meet me.
Guest:Come on out.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:So you can take it back in your home.
Marc:So or you can choose to deny it.
Marc:Yeah, we've got or deny it even exist.
Marc:Yeah, we've got the Bermuda Triangle of, you know, of covid, you know, of environmental problems and a tremendous kind of chaotic lack of leadership that's making it's exacerbated.
Marc:It's it's crazy.
Guest:And so what do we do?
Guest:And this is why part of the reason we're getting even more extreme right now.
Guest:People don't have an identity.
Guest:They've lost purpose.
Guest:They're wondering what the fuck's going on in the world.
Guest:I don't know what the next step is.
Guest:I'm unemployed.
Guest:Well, I want to cling on to something to feel like my feet are on the ground.
Guest:So where are they clinging on to?
Guest:These tribes that are way over here on the extreme.
Guest:How about hate?
Guest:Let's cling on to hate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know what I want, but I know what I don't want.
Guest:And that's whatever you're selling.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I got somebody says the other day, I said, they said, where are you simply because, man, I'm aggressively centric.
Guest:said i'm i'll meet you in the middle man i'm like yeah ain't nothing in the middle but yellow ain't nothing in the middle of highway but yellow lines and dead armadillos and i said well let me tell you something but i said i'm walking down the middle here and the armadillos are running free because the left and the right are so far to the left and the right their tires ain't even on the fucking pavement they're in the dirt yeah i got free road here the shoulder yeah yeah yeah open road well we'll see what happens man but i you know i enjoyed the book i'm glad we talked
Marc:I am too.
Marc:I enjoyed it.
Guest:I was looking forward to talking to you and glad we did.
Marc:I enjoyed your work.
Marc:We didn't talk about True Detective.
Marc:That was great.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:I missed that.
Marc:It's always good to see you, buddy.
Guest:Good to see you.
Guest:Carry on.
Guest:If you ever get past Abiqui, go hop over there.
Guest:Oh, Brother Christian's the Abbott over there.
Marc:I will.
Marc:Maybe I'll see you at Opie's sometime.
Guest:Deal.
Guest:Sausage and jalapeno corn.
Guest:I'm in.
Guest:Keep living.
Guest:Thanks, buddy.
Guest:Later.
Marc:there you go there's a moment in there and i'm not gonna you know tell you which one it was where i think you you get a window into what's behind all right all right all right now i will play some distorted loud guitar for you
so
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Monkey!
Marc:The Fonda.
Marc:All the cat angels.
Yeah.