National Post (National Edition)
HERO FOR AN ANXIOUS MOMENT
I believe everything we do in life is part of a plan. Sometimes the plan goes as intended, and sometimes it doesn't. That's part of the plan. — MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY. REVIEW OF HIS MEMOIR, GREENLIGHTS,
Matthew McConaughey's memoir, Greenlights, has a way of convincing you that being Matthew McConaughey is just about the easiest thing in the world. Look at his filmography, and you'll see an actor who gutted his way to critical and commercial success: He started with cameos and lowbudget indies in the '90s, laboured in the rom-com salt mines in the early aughts, then pivoted to Oscar bait and prestige TV, finally reaching the mountaintop with a best actor Academy Award for Dallas Buyers Club in 2014.
That's an achievement. But the man who made a meme out of Nietzsche's notion that “time is a flat circle” isn't going to tell a simple story about hard work and steady forward progress. By his reckoning, his fame wasn't so much about raw ambition as much as it was with being preternaturally “all right, all right, all right” with everything, every step of the way.
Take a break from it all by heading to a monastery or RVing for three years? Perfect: “Driving the highways of America has always been my ideal office.”
Take a break from taking a break with a long debauch at the Chateau Marmont? That's perfect too: “I took a lot of showers in the daylight hours, rarely alone. I partook.”
Cash in for a bit and make dreck like The Wedding Planner? It's all good: “I enjoyed being able to give people a 90-minute breezy romantic getaway from the stress of their lives.”
Change course, demand juicier roles and launch the McConaissance? Gotta do you, man: “I'd been going to bed with an itchy butt, waking up with a stinky finger for long enough,” he writes, probably not plagiarizing Sir Laurence Olivier's autobiography.
McConaughey's self-effacing slacker-cool attitude, which lets him casually drop a few thousand on the hapless Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl, has made him an ideal masculine movie hero for our anxious moment. The world is on fire, but he's got you. A great thing about Greenlights is that the persona never sounds like a put-on. The bad thing, though, is that he obviously wrote it himself and seems certain that in addition to being a memoirist he's also a certified motivational speaker and, worse, a poet.
McConaughey, who will turn 51 Nov. 4, recalls growing up in rural Texas, the son of parents who married three times and divorced twice. His father was a pugnacious character. A pipe salesman and one-time draftee of the Green Bay Packers, he would recruit Matthew's brother for a urinating contest and once whipped up a scheme to have Matthew claim emotional distress from a breakout-inducing skin cream, a ruse undone when he was presented with a photo naming him the most handsome man at his high school. Later, McConaughey's dad would fulfil his dream of dying while having sex, and how could McConaughey not be inspired by that kind of temperament?
McConaughey's first major film role was fittingly quirky: A chance meeting with the casting director of Dazed and Confused in a hotel bar led to him to the role of Wooderson, the 20-something still stuck on chasing high-school girls. It's where he uttered that first “all right, all right, all right” — “the very first words I said on the very first night of a job I had that I thought would be nothing but a hobby, but turned into a career.”
McConaughey's pronouncements all feed into his core philosophy of what he calls “livin”: “There's no `g' on the end of livin because life is a verb,” he insists, which is a reasonable way to understand life, if not gerunds. Throughout Greenlights, the doctrine of “livin” manifests itself through aphorisms, bumper stickers and poetry, the last of which is cringeworthy.
Following the lead of his first connection in Hollywood, who told McConaughey he would get the work he wants when he stopped wanting it so much, McConaughey's most cherished advice is non-advice. “I believe everything we do in life is part of a plan,” he writes. “Sometimes the plan goes as intended, and sometimes it doesn't. That's part of the plan.” Some plan.