Transcript: Matthew McConaughey on This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #625

Which is tough to do.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: But if you spit a loogie on King Kong Bundy when he’s coming to the ring, yes, they will try to kick you out. But then you get put, you get kicked out. And there is a window on the exterior of Hersh here that goes to one of the bathrooms from which I snuck back in.

And then I had a hidden bag of rotten tomatoes and I pelted Skandar Akbar from the stands and got kicked out again.

THEO VON: Dude, they should have paid you for being there.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That’s…

THEO VON: Bro, you’re helping from the crowd. Bring up Skandar Akbar.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: There he is. Yeah. God. Remember, he was that, that was the bad guy at that time.

THEO VON: Always. Dude. They always had that little kind of cheeky bad guy, you know? We had Kevin Von Erich on here.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, there we go.

THEO VON: And that was pretty special, man. I loved wrestling at that time.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It was so fun, man. Hacksaw Jim Duggan was my guy.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Hey, what, they come out with the two by four?

THEO VON: Yeah, I saw him. I went to Terry, I went to Hulk Hogan’s funeral and Hacksaw was there.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, we go.

THEO VON: It was pretty cool, man. All my heroes were there. Like, I had figurines of them at home, and the figurines are taller these days, and half of them are, a lot of guys, like, in wheelchairs.

It was kind of tough to see because you see, like, just the remnants of these heroes, kind of like the stained statues, in a way. You know, it was pretty, it was magnificent and weird. You know, it’s like, it was beautiful and sad. It’s like you almost want to pretend that things are just in a certain place in time. You know, your book kind of goes into some stuff like that.

Evel Knievel: A Life Wish, Not a Death Wish

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. Were you an Evel Knievel fan?

THEO VON: I didn’t get into him much. We’d see him, like, I think I saw him do one jump, but that might have been just touched before I was, like, kind of awake to the world.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I got into because my brother turned, turned me on to my older brother Patrick. Anyway, he was just thinking about, you know, fallen heroes and icons that, you know, I got to know him later in his life when Evel, yeah. Got to know him pretty doggone well, man.

I was trying to, you know, there’s still a story out there to be told on him, a movie to be made, and I was around it, developing it for 25 years. And, yeah, there we are. Spoke at his, at his funeral.

THEO VON: No way. That’s so cool.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: What kind of guy was he?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, man. You know, he did not, people, the misconception are like, he had a death wish. He didn’t have a death wish. He had a life wish, dude. He was as, he said he needed to jump because he needed to sweat in his boots.

It was almost like, I think his, when he got on the bike and put his hands on the handlebar, I think his pulse went down remaining, you know. You know, the certain boxers that, that get the s* beat out them and they’re like, dude, you’re taking four or five years too many. And they like, tell you, no, I have to, my life outside when I don’t have train or get ready for fights, tougher on me.

THEO VON: Too scary. A lot of guys say that, you know.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And I think Evel, he would always say, like, hey, he wouldn’t postpone any jump, even if it was impractical. Even if his engineers like, dude, you’re not going to make it. He was like, well, the American people want, and they paid their tickets and they’re going to show up on time. We’re going to do this.

I mean, I think part of that for him, my opinion is that he was, no, I got to, I have to jump, right? I can’t postpone these things.

THEO VON: Well, also, to have that level of integrity with time itself, with the clock of life, right? To be like, cause I’ll postpone things. I’ll feed you. I’ll be 10 minutes late. I’ll be 15, 20.

But to say, to tell time, to tell, like, existence, I’m going to be there and meet existence right there. That’s pretty ballsy. I mean, these days it’s super ballsy. But, yeah, I mean, it’s just, I think it’s a ballsy thing for anybody to do. But he was like Red Bull before they made a damn liquid, remember? I mean, he was.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Hell, yeah. People would tune in all the extreme sports.

THEO VON: You know, I remember people just in the yard, if he was going to jump one night, that had people out in the yard drinking Dr. Pepper and just massaging each other’s shoulders.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, yeah. And the thing, you know, what happened, what got kind of, kind of sad, but it’s just true. Towards end of his career, and I saw this, with this happen with the son of the jump, too, is people started at first, came, wow, he made the jump. Wow.

Then it became like, I’m coming for the wreck. I’m coming for the crash. And I’ve been to jumps where, you know, because he always come out first, right? There’s the ramp. Here we go. Oh, he’s just bypassing. Yeah, you got a little tease. Yeah, you got to do a couple run around, get everyone going.

THEO VON: The bra off a little.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And then he’s getting the crowd going up, and they’re all just, you know, pulling down. Here we go. And then he does it. Boom. As soon as lands and makes it, it’s almost like I saw so many people like, oh, yeah, stomp a cigarette out. Throw that Dr. Pepper in the trash can. Leave.

THEO VON: Yeah. Dang it.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know.

THEO VON: Yeah, good for him. But…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, no, but he made a, he, he, he was, he was a legendary cowboy, man.

The Caesar’s Palace Jump

THEO VON: Let’s look at one of these. This is Caesar’s Palace.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, he, and he created this. He called, he was in a motel and called the head of Caesars, all right. And said, hey, my name’s, you know, Bobby Bernstein. I’m with ABC Wide World of Sports. I hear this guy Evel Knievel’s going to jump your fountain.

And they’re like, what are you talking about, Evel? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Hung up the phone, call back another voice impersonated I’m with the Wide World of Sports. Name is Bob, not, I hear this Evel Knievel’s going to, he did it, like, three times.

And finally the guy on the other end of Caesars was like, who the hell is this Evel Knievel. Evel Knievel got find him, right? And ended up calling back, Evel answers. His own is Evel. And goes, yeah, I’ll do it. And worked out the door.

But he created that jump. And this jump is, look at the violence afterwards. I mean, jumps the fountain. And look at the crash, man.

THEO VON: Boom.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Here we go. Oh.

THEO VON: Oh.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Can we talk impact.

THEO VON: Ah, bro, that’s, yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: There ain’t no smoking mirrors with that, man.

THEO VON: There ain’t no mattress that’s going to fix her. There ain’t no posture.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You didn’t fix that in post to make it look worse. Oh. Oh, dude.

The Moment vs. The Recording

THEO VON: Yeah, there was just something, like, there was something special about that time where it was like, I don’t know. The moment meant so much more. You know, there was something. There used to be something about the past at the moment. You couldn’t copy. You couldn’t record it.

Like, I think that’s why those times you talk about some of this in your book, man, and it’s, like, about time and, like, God, like, the moment of when I was a kid or sitting there laughing with my friends, like, the moment was so much more real because you were never going to get it again, right?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And you didn’t, you couldn’t necessarily record it, and you sure as hell couldn’t share it. There’s a study on this, man. I don’t know. I’m going to say it’s like 20 years ago, but 25. The moment was the biggest dopamine rush. The jump, the cresting of the mountain, the pulling off, whatever you tried to pull off.

Yeah, scientifically measured. The biggest dopamine hit. Cameras and, you know, mobile devices and stuff come out. It slowly turned to the recording of the moment. The snapshot. Okay, not the cresting of the hill, but we just recorded it.

THEO VON: The ownership of the moment.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Ownership of the moment, right? And then what has happened now and has been around for 25 years, the biggest scientific dopamine hit that we get as humans is not the doing of the deed, is not the recording of the deed. It is when we press share.

Really, that’s a little bit like living in third person. Like, we’re all running around going, my rush is not when I run for a touchdown. My rush is when I see myself on the jumbotron running for the touchdown. And that’s, that’s a slippery slope, man. You know what I mean?

THEO VON: Well, it’s slippery, but it also seems hard to even conceptualize who I am then, you know?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Am I myself? Am I just a viewer of myself now?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That’s it. We’re much more, much more voyagers now.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And our identity comes from being objective, trying to look at ourself from outside. And now comes from, well, what did you think of what I did and how.

THEO VON: Yeah. And that’s the worst. What do you think of what I did? Because that will be who…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That’ll be my definition of who I am, that we got to watch that dude.

THEO VON: My sponsor tells me, he’s like, you’re not who they think you are. You’re not who you are, and you’re not who you think they think you are.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: I don’t know if I messed it up or not.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No. But I hear what you’re saying. Yeah.

THEO VON: He’s like, but, yeah, it’s just interesting how that…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Especially these kids these days, man, it’s…

THEO VON: Hard enough as adults, but I think as adults, we, we put our, our thought process onto them, and I think they live in a different world and realm that we kind of can’t conceptualize because they don’t seem as affected as, you know what I’m saying? And it’s hard to even know.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, I, I hear you.

THEO VON: I hear you, but I hear what you’re saying, too.

The Challenge of Peak Performance

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It’s like, I’m not trying to be a dinosaur, either. You know what I mean? I don’t want to be one of those. When my kids are going on, geez. Yeah, it sounds like, you know, giving another TED Talk from back in the day.

Yeah, but I hear you, because there’s some things that they’re just with. It’s just part of their vernacular. It’s a. This thing’s an extension of their arm. That kind of sharing and socializing. What do you mean? That’s like having a conversation.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And we’re going to. I could say what I was. You and I were just talking about, because they could understand it. They would go, okay, but that’s not how it is.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know.

THEO VON: Right? It’s. I mean, it’s all kind of. I mean, it’s all fascinating. I mean, even we were talking about, like, I just got back from the Ole Miss game, and I know you were.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Congrats.

THEO VON: It was fun.

Lane Kiffin’s Leadership Approach

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You guys are rolling, man. And Lane’s doing a great job of keeping y’all mentally in the right spot with all this noise about him going Florida or elsewhere. Yeah, he big boyed it. He big boyed it. Look.

THEO VON: What do you mean?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Meaning he didn’t go the traditional. No, it’s not true. And keep it, keep the noise out. He went, we got this. I got this noise. Y’all got this noise because we’re winning. Yeah, this is the noise that’s out there. He’s talking to those young men like an adult who’s up with the times. Yeah, he’s going, this is part of it.

THEO VON: Right?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: This is part of it. And doing it because we’re doing good. So let’s do as well as we can right now. Keep winning. It’s a great message. Because your players are going. They get it now. I think these players, the portals, the.

THEO VON: The, the, the, the.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: The. You probably not going to be playing with the same guys for three years straight. Yeah, four years straight. There’s. You can transfer in season. You can go here. I mean.

The Fair Weather Fan Dilemma

THEO VON: Yeah, there’s two portals now, I think, aren’t there. Aren’t there two portals during the season? And I’m actually a van. I’m a Vanderbilt fan, but my, but I’m friends with Lane and I grew up as an LSU fan. Right. And, and, and sometimes people are like, sometimes they’ll be like, well, you’re a fair weather fan or something. I’m like.

But now, like, you’re saying there’s kind of like. It’s like there’s kind of like fair weather franchises in a way. It’s like they’re changing players so much and things and that. And they expect you to lock in like, like my dad did or like I did when we were kids. It’s like, if you buy a jersey, the guy’s gone. And, you know, things change so much. So I think it’s interesting some of the expectations sometimes out of fans, you know. Yeah.

Building a Brand in Modern Football

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, it’s harder to create as an organization, as a team, as a school as that. That. Oh, this is our brand of football. Last one to do it. Pros is what New England. No matter who came and went, it was Belichick’s way of football. It was Tom Brady, quarterback.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Robert Kraft is on. There’s a certain way. Remember, people come to studs, would come to big names would come to New England, and there wasn’t a lot of press about them. And all of a sudden next week you’re like, oh, they got dropped. It wasn’t a big. No big fanfare. It was like, you didn’t play our way. That’s. You’re going to go right we’re good.

THEO VON: If you’re not our way, we. Our way is our way.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. So now when you’re plugging in so many players and we’re going through this with Austin FC, our soccer club, do we have a brand of what they call football, soccer that you. This is how we play. Coaches and players can be plugged into our system.

It’s harder to do because players move around. You get a. We got a chance to get this stud player. Well, if he’s a running option quarterback and we’ve been running traditional offense, which is drop back. Be dumb not to update the way we play offense, you know what I mean, or whatever that is. But you. You have X. Yeah. How much are the expectations for the brand of how people play football at certain schools? Yeah, you know, I don’t know. What’s the brand? Who has a brand of. This is how you play?

THEO VON: It’s a great question.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I mean, in college football, this is how we play. The expectations about maybe the brand, maybe the act, maybe the cultures are similar. And you have. This is. This is an understood. Whether it’s aggressive, violent or finesse, whatever that is, or we’re going to have a great defense.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No matter what.

THEO VON: Well, Saban had one. Kind of. Saban felt like he had it.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: He did.

THEO VON: I feel like Sarkeesian is a guy that is very much. He is the boss there. You know, there’s an energy there with him that is very cut and dried, you know. But yeah, when I was growing up, it was like Pittsburgh kind of had the defense. You know, Baltimore had a defense. There was a toughness about those places. You had San Francisco that was always a great passing attack. Yeah. I don’t know. I guess like.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, if you have Earl Campbell back there for Houston or you have. What’s the guy for? Big boy out of Alabama for Baltimore.

THEO VON: Oh, Derek Henry there.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: If you have them, you’ve gone, okay. We’re going to be a running team.

THEO VON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Earl Campbell Story

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Okay. You know, I mean, you ever hear that Bum Phillips quote on Earl Campbell? I don’t know what. Listen, y’all remember Earl Campbell out of the Tyler Rose? Oh, yeah, he played.

THEO VON: He played for Dallas. Who didn’t hear now?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, Houston.

THEO VON: He played for Houston.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, the Oilers at that time. Oh, yeah.

THEO VON: The Oilers ended up in Tennessee. That’s where I live now. They ended up in Nashville.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So they would give Bum. Phillips was coach and he would give Earl the ball like 35 times a game.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And if Ford started coming out going, man, are you worried about the wear and tear on. On Earl giving him the ball that often? Bum says, no, not really. It. That ball ain’t that heavy.

Classic Coach Personalities

THEO VON: Dude. Well, you used to have just so many good personalities. We. There’s a Jim Mora talking to reporters. Will you look it up? Saints Jim Mora, playoffs. This is even before that.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, it is. Oh, yeah, bro.

THEO VON: Wait till you see this. He’s talking about his team. But yeah, playoffs. He was great, man. Watch this. Listen to this. This is crazy.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Jim, obviously you’re not happy. Oh, we got our a kicked. We got our a kicked.

THEO VON: It was.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It was. It was sickening. First three, we have 18 plays on offense. First 18 plays, we turn the ball over, one for a touchdown. The other one’s going to set up a touchdown. We can’t, you know, we got backs that can’t hang on to the ball. They out hit us. They out toughed us. You know, we stunk today. Not even close. Between that football team and our football team. Not even close. Ridiculous.

We run two screens, we don’t block anybody. We get a back. Gets his knee blown out on one of them. Didn’t block anybody. We stunk. Just stunk. Injuries. Dean told me he blew his knee out. You know, you got to block people on a screen. Shady gets the ball out there and two guys, big old animals, nail his a. S, it’s ridiculous. We run a screaming before that, we get our a* nailed.

I don’t know. I don’t know. You know, Dean said he couldn’t put any weight on his leg. That didn’t sound too good to me. We’re down, you know, we’re down in fat. We’re down in everything. We, you know, we don’t have enough people right now. Be hard to practice next week.

THEO VON: There you go.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: There’s not many of them out there. I mean, you know, I miss my friend Mike Leach watching that. Yeah, you know that guy.

THEO VON: Oh, that guy was great. What was he at Oklahoma State?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Texas Tech.

THEO VON: Oh, Texas Tech. Cliff Kingsbury country.

Mike Leach’s Fat Little Girlfriends

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Have you heard the one amount after they went and go? There are players sitting out there in the river on a blanket. Fat little girlfriends. Oh, bring up Mike Leach’s fat little girlfriends. Listen to this.

Telling them how great they are. This guy’s classic. As coaches, we failed to make our coaching points and our points more compelling than their fat little girlfriends. Now, their fat little girlfriends have some obvious advantages. For one thing, their fat little girlfriends are telling them what they want to hear, which is how great you are and how easy it’s going to be and how you know, you know, we have, we, you know, we had a whole bunch of people. Everybody wanted to win the football game, but nobody wanted to play the football.

Work ethic that exists with regard to football. And as coaches, we have to solve our failure on reaching them. And the players have to listen. And I’m willing to go to fairly amazing lengths to try to make that happen. I don’t know if I’ll be successful this week or not, but you know, I am going to try. And there will be some people inconvenienced and if it happens to be their.

THEO VON: Fat little girlfriend, that’s awesome. That’s what we need. I’ll just people to be brave enough to have a personality these days. It’s kind of interesting, you know, but.

The Belichick Approach

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Check this out, because I’m with you. That’s entertaining, it’s smart, it’s an inside look, it’s frank, it’s open. You know, people call it politically incorrect. Whatever. Forget all that. It’s. It’s in the moment. It’s great hearing somebody be honest in the moment with some color.

But I also look at people like a great franchise. Bill Belichick says nothing. Do your job. Do your job. That’s it. Great. Coach of the Spurs.

THEO VON: Oh, Popovich. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Pop cuts off interview. Yep. No. You saw it. Thank you. Bam. So there is something that they keep noise out because they don’t give any color commentation.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And is there something about that that is a stability within a franchise that your head coach is going to handle all that color behind closed doors or just stay on that line, keep it super simple. Do your job. Do your job. You didn’t do your job.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Going to get someone that can do your job. I know it’s much more complicated than that. They’re running X’s and O’s and everything.

But this is another question. And look in college football, which is why I like college born pro so much. So our great legendary Texas coach, Darrell K. Royal told me one time, he goes, Matthew, you can get the maximum potential out of your team three Saturdays a season. I believe it was number three Saturdays out of a seat out of a season. At that time you had 10, so you got 12 now. So now you’ve maybe you say you can get four. Boy, there’s an awesome black hole there to fill for the psychology. That’s all. Psychology.

THEO VON: Yeah.

The Psychology of Peak Performance

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Because you hope you have you coach to have your team at peak for one of those peak three weekends against the best teams and then you hope they’re just play kind of. All right. Against the all right. Competition and then have their worst days against competition they should beat anyway. Yeah, they should just roll.

But boy, if three. I’m still curious. I think the what if you got a coach right now? If you could get six top peak performance Saturdays.

THEO VON: Seven.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I mean because I’m asking for three hours. I’m asking for. I’m asking for 36 hours a season for you to be mentally and physically in spirit right there on the edge and locked in and there’s an opportunity there. Is that what I’m saying?

Navigating Life’s Ups and Downs

THEO VON: And for somebody to even see that there is an opportunity there, right? Because sometimes you might just look at life and be like, well, there’s going to be highs and lows. You can have a great team, but you’re not going to win every single time.

So it’s like those moments where you’ve had two great weeks in a row and now the spread is 17, but it’s like, no, that’s not the laws of life, right? So how do you adjust what’s realistically possible to weather that storm of that third weekend where the laws of the universe are not going to allow it to be as perfect?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And balance how much. Look, sometimes your team needs confidence. I remember talking to Mack Brown at practice after we used, I don’t know, 20-something years ago. We just came off like, I don’t know, 45-nothing route to UCLA. They beat us. No, they rattled us. We were not good.

And that Tuesday practice or that Monday practice, it was like a completion for two yards, a clean handoff that went for two yards, we got to applaud that.

THEO VON: Applaud that.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It was like, man, the team’s confidence. We need good clean handoffs and a reception and a clean pass that wasn’t intercepted. We have to build the confidence back up.

So sometimes you’re there. Other times you have such talent and they’re so confident. How do you keep them playing? I’m not worried about your confidence. I need to make sure you feel like an underdog against yourself, right? Against the ability that you can play to.

Because great teams are essentially playing against themselves and how great they think they can be. And that opponent is nothing but in my way to me being as great as I can be. And that’s if you got that working, if you can flick that switch in you. Howdy.

Understanding Ego and Confidence

THEO VON: Well, in your own life, because this is something I think about a lot. I think about confidence and ego, right? And I’ve always had a tough time knowing what my feelings are. When I was growing up, I didn’t have a lot of feelings, I think, and so I didn’t know what they were.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: A lot of them were.

THEO VON: And then as I’ve gotten older, it’s like…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You didn’t have feelings. When you had feelings, you just didn’t know what the hell.

THEO VON: I didn’t know what they were. So I couldn’t tell if I had instincts or was uncertain. When I was making decisions, I couldn’t tell what was instinctual or what was me making a choice. I just didn’t have a lot of feelings when I was young, so it was kind of like a late bloomer in some of those worlds.

But one of the things I struggle with sometimes still is just ego and confidence. How do you know? Because one can be super dangerous, one is healthy.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, look, man, I think ego’s gotten a bad rap. This elimination of the ego. There’s a difference to believe, to go on. I have confidence. Then there is, “Oh, look at me.” The difference between “I” and “me.”

“Me” is the objective one, right? “Me” is that Jumbotron, the lawyer one where you’re going like, “Oh yeah, how do I look? I look good.” There’s where I get my confidence from, something I saw myself outside of myself.

Confidence with the “I,” which I think is true ego, when we handle it right, is extremely healthy. It’s like judgment. You got to have judgment or you have no identity. And where do you get judgment from? Well, part of that I believe is part of the ego of “I am discerning because I prefer this over that. I expect this more than I expect that,” experiences for myself or from others.

Now, ego can get out of check when it gets into the “look at me.” But when it’s coming from the subjective place of like, “No, I’m prepared for this. This is what I’m fashioned to do. I have the ability, I’m capable and I’m willing. I’m going to do that. And no one’s going to judge myself harder than I’m going to judge myself because I believe what I am capable of doing.”

I mean, look, I wrote about this in “Greenlights,” a little bit in “Poems and Prayers.” These men, these roofs, these limitations we put on ourselves, we make those up. That’s a cocky thing to do. Who do we think we are to put limitations, to put these roofs on our ability, if we have that ability?

Now, we get into what’s humility? Humility, which is a word I had trouble with because growing up, especially in religion, humility. I always kind of cowered. My head kind of, my shoulders came forward, my head kind of got down and I didn’t know how to have confidence with humility. How do you have confidence and be humble?

And then I heard a new definition of humility or being humble: admitting that we have more to learn. Now that definition, all of a sudden my shoulders backed up, my head went up and I said, “Oh, I can dig that. I’m in. I have more to learn.”

THEO VON: Because that’s an act of humility.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Now I’m going forward. It’s affirmative.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I can still be graceful, still be empathetic and listen. But I’m not retreating. I’m not being passive necessarily. I think we got to have a…

THEO VON: Empowering taking on of knowledge and admitting you have more to learn. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It was a freeing. Sometimes a definition of a word for me, like, “Oh, I never thought of it that way. Now I understand it.” Sometimes it takes 40. I didn’t learn that one till I was 45.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So for 45 years, “Hey, get off your toes. You better be humble.” I was like, yeah, I’d cower down and miss opportunities and not be the first to speak up if I knew the answer or something or pass the buck too often. And that’s a false modesty.

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s really pretending to. It’s like, “Oh, let me let you see me be modest.”

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And it’s bull. It’s bulls*. You’re lying. It’s kind of cocky in reverse.

THEO VON: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it’s all like having some awareness about yourself, but try not to be too crazy where you’re sitting there just thinking about yourself all the time. It’s all pretty fascinating, man.

Courage and Taking the Next Step

I mean, and there’s a lot of good stuff in this book. I’m trying to think of some of the parts that I really liked. You write that courage is often one…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: More step in the right direction.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: And you talk about that in marriage, faith and character.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: And yeah, I thought that that was pretty interesting because there’s times where I stall. That’s where I stall. Sometimes I stall with that. Like, I don’t know what this is going to be like. I don’t know what this is going to feel like. I already don’t like the feeling of this.

It happens to me a lot with commitment and relationships and stuff. It happens to me a lot. And like, try not to control the outcome of even a moment. Like, God, I just, to have a little bit of courage there, to be like, well, let’s see what this…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right. What would one step more take me? Deeper into debt? Or am I going to power through and get to the other side and go, “Oh, okay, I stuck with it. Now I see it. Now I see the light. I like this.”

It’s a really interesting measurement I think we always got to do, man. I mean, I try to measure, like, remember the “No Fear”? I was always like, what do you mean, no fear?

THEO VON: Oh, yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: There’s a lot of stuff I fear. There’s a lot of stuff I think we all should fear. It’s what things do we go, “No, but I’m going to have the courage to go, I’m overcoming that fear.”

But there’s good and there’s bad fears. Meaning, like, if I’m reading the script and I kind of like the script, but man, I’m not sure about the director, and this financing doesn’t have enough money behind it. Can we really make this good movie? And I’m kind of scared of that. I think maybe, okay, that maybe that’s a healthy fear you got there, McConaughey, because the pedigree around it may not be as excellent as you want it to be.

There’s other times I’ll see a script, see a character, man…

THEO VON: All.

Faith and Family

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Everything. I like the directors on it, man. We got good financing behind us, production values going to be good. The script’s damn good. And I’m looking at this character, when I am scared shitless about how am I going to pull this off? Well, okay, I would subscribe that maybe that’s a good fear, that I need to dive in and go, well, let’s go find out.

But don’t back off of that one, because that one. And then I’ll see the movie two years later, I’m like, oh, it was great. And look at that part that that other guy got to play. And then I’m kicking myself. Yeah, going, you didn’t have the huevos and the will to go sit there and go find out. McConaughey, come on, man. You know what I mean?

So it’s measuring the good ones in the battery. You say you got a bad feeling if you already have a bad feeling. Look, I do think this man, my brother Rooster says this. He goes, man, if everybody only did what they love to do, there’d be a whole lot of unemployment. You know what I mean?

I mean, it’s sometimes it does suck, and you got to do some hard things. You’re like, man, I’m not. This doesn’t feel right. Now, does it not feel right, or do we just not like it? A lot of things I got to do that we got to do that we don’t like to do to get to the other side and go, well, you know, especially as we get older, we got things that we’ve invested in family and friends and relationships, our own self.

Those are some fires that we’ve been putting logs on for a while, and it can be hard sometimes to sit there and keep tending those fires or keep tending those gardens we’re talking about right on our own. So, but you see it there, and you go, I believe that if I do the hard work now and break this sweat and draw some blood to make this work, which sucks, I’m going to get to the other side.

It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to take to get the other side and go, oh, there we go. All right, there we go. Now I can sleep better. Now I can wake up going, yep, I’m still connected to what I was, what I created in the past for myself. I did the next right thing for myself, and it sucked. But damn it, that’s right there where I could have backed off and retreated.

I could have said, oh, I smell smoke. Going to be fire. Well, sometimes it’s like, no, it’s smoke. Maybe go put out the damn fire before it turns into one. Yeah, that’s why I mean.

THEO VON: Or let’s procure this fire a little bit, make a little bit of barbecue for the future.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. You know what I mean?

THEO VON: Yeah, I do. Well, I think also it’s like it creates linchpins in your life. Some of those things you’re saying even with family and stuff and being willing to do that, right. And be like, okay, this is a project that my wife and I, my partner and I are going to create together. You know, did you have fears about that at certain points in your life of starting a family and committing to that and doing that? Was that kind of tough?

Becoming a Father

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So look, the one thing I always knew I wanted to be was a dad. 8 years old, I’ll tell you a good story. So you know, dad had introduced me to a lot of his male friends through life and you know it’s shake their hand, look them in the eye. Nice to meet you sir. Sir. Sir. Sir was a big thing in our family.

And I remember I was 8 years old, we were in an Oak Forest Country Club parking lot in Longview, Texas. And I met these two men. They were both in black slacks, white shirts and black jackets and one of them had shades on. And as I’m shaking their hands, I remember the sunlight was behind them. It was kind of in my eyes. I was like nice to meet you sir. Nice to meet you sir.

It hit me in my 8 year old mind at that time that oh, and they were talking about their own children and it hit me in my 8 year old mind that oh, all the people I’ve shaken that my dad’s introduced to that I shook their hands, said sir to were fathers. And in my 8 year old mind I went oh, that’s how you succeed in life.

And it, you know, whether I malapropter that was the meaning I gave it. It stuck with me and it was always been my measurement of what successful life would be as a man to become a father and to then help raise kids. So I knew I always want to be a father.

Now then you get to can you meet a woman that you’re in love with and that you know is going to be a great mother, you know, to them. I fortunately met that woman in Camilla. So but we didn’t get married right off the bat. We were and maybe this is because my mom and dad were married three times, divorced twice and her mom and dad were married two times and divorced three times. So we had a track record for reason to go.

THEO VON: Like jewelry.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, a whole lot.

THEO VON: Yeah.

The Pregnancy Announcement

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So we’re rolling along, man, and saying it’s going great and we don’t want to get married because that’s just what you’re supposed to do. I don’t want to back into it because someone goes legally, it’s wrong, but no, bullshit. I want to want to. And I didn’t really want to. I wasn’t against it, but her and I were like, we’re doing good.

We have our first child. Or let me go back to nine months before we have a first shot. I come home and there’s cheeseburgers she’s cooking on the grill. I smell them. She pours me a double of my favorite tequila. I sit down. She gives me a gift. I open it up. It’s the sonogram or whatever gram that is where you see in the belly, you got a baby and fetus pregnant.

Oh, my gosh. Cry, tears. We hug it out. Oh, my God, this is so awesome, etc. Let’s call my mom, tell her the good news. I get my phone out, call Mom. Camilla sitting next to me. Mom, you there? We got some great news to tell you. Got you on speakerphone. Can you hear? Camilla is here. Hi, Camilla. Hi, Ms. McConaughey. How are you? Mom, you there? You got to meet. Yeah, yeah, I’m listening. I can’t wait. Tell me, tell me, tell me. Mom, Camilla’s pregnant.

Crickets. Our next thing here is, no, no, no, no, no. Matthew, this is out of order. I didn’t raise you to do this. No, Matthew, you’re supposed to be married. And went on and on and on in a five minute monologue and then hung up.

I stop. I look over at Camilla and she looks at me and we’re like, oh, that didn’t go the way. And so, you know, let’s talk. You know what I mean? Okay.

Ten minutes later, the phone rings. It’s my mom. Yeah, hi, Mom. She goes, hi. Hi, Matthew. Mom, speakerphone. I go, I put you on speakerphone. Okay. Is Camilla there? Yes, she’s right here. Okay, can y’all both hear me? Yeah, we hear you, mom. We hear you, Ms. McConaughey.

Okay, I would like to put some white out over that last. I was being selfish, thinking about myself. If you two are happy about it, I should be happy for you. It’s not my place to be unhappy.

So we had two children before we got married, but, yeah, I mean, look, the big project, you know, as far as I can tell, the one that’s non negotiable. That’s the thing. Can we find non negotiable projects that we go? Nope. When I’m lost and don’t know what the hell I’m doing, or I’m looking for my North Star, what are some things in our life that we can look at and go, if I concentrate on that, I can’t go wrong sometimes.

That’s just it. I still have it now. Maybe I don’t know what new things I want to do. And when I’m kind of lost and wobbly, I’ll try to look at the things that I go, like family, like fatherhood, like the marriage, and go, if you work on that, McConaughey, you can’t bogey. You may not eagle the hole, but you’re not going to bogey. And you definitely going to hit one out of bounds. You can’t spend too much time on that in your spare time.

And then that’ll help you spiritually, heart and head. And so I try to go to the non negotiables when I’m a little. When I’m like. And then when things are going well, that’s another thing. I love to accomplish it, man. I love to go work and I’m going. All of a sudden I’m hitting the road, I’m all over the place. How do I keep my marriage and my fatherhood out of the debit section?

Yeah, how do I, you know, because I don’t have the time as much time. That’s another challenge when things are going well, personally, you know, to take care of those non negotiables.

Getting Out of Self

THEO VON: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot, if I don’t know what to do, I try and. Yeah, it’s always help others, you know. That’s the thing. That’s probably been the thing that’s been most helpful in my life. If I don’t know what to do whenever, you know, it’s trying to help others, think of somebody else, call somebody else, see what they’re doing. Get out of myself.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Getting heard, heard.

THEO VON: There’s that prayer. It’s like, “God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self and take away my difficulties so that,” I don’t remember the end of it.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Relieve me of the bondage to myself. Relieve me of it. Off it.

THEO VON: Third step. Here it is. Yeah. “Offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as I will. Relieve me the bondage of self that I may better do thy will.” That’s it.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: There we go.

THEO VON: So it’s just like, yeah, God, my problem is me right now. I’m just so. I’m sitting here, I’m just. I’m breaking myself up and putting myself into a joint and smoking myself.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right.

THEO VON: I’m just getting high on my, you know, something here.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: And it can be a low point or a high point, though.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: That’s the thing. Sometimes I think it’s just the lows, but it’s like, even if I get too high on myself, it’s like, that’s not good either, you know?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, it keeps our pursuit not about that. It’s talking to the God. Godliness within us. The more God likeness in us that we can be that a lot of us are striving to be. That pursuit is such a valuable pursuit, you know, religious or not.

THEO VON: You know, a connection to a creator. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: To not feel higher.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That you’re not going to reach, but you’re going to.

THEO VON: I mean, otherwise I would feel so homeless if I don’t want my soul to feel homeless.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, there’s a lot of people that feel very homeless.

Maintaining Faith

THEO VON: Will you talk about just your own times of faith and how hard it, you know, it’s tough to keep that connection going, you know, and to work on it more.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It takes maintenance, doesn’t it?

THEO VON: Yeah, it takes a lot of maintenance, man. That’s probably my biggest.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That’s where my ego will get out of control, where all of a sudden I start. I take for granted that I didn’t just pull it all off of my own. And I started thinking I did, and I do the math and go like. I mean, I did. And all of a sudden it’s like, ooh, here comes humble pie pretty soon.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s a tough thing. I mean, having a relationship with our creator and giving ourselves, saying God, you know, giving thanks, getting a good perspective for ourselves. Have you. Has there been practices that you’ve used realistically over the years? I’m sure once you have a family and stuff like that, some of that starts maybe get more built into you. But just because it’s. There’s a visual, there’s an actual component that’s right there alive.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: But have you noticed for yourself.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: There’s a. Having kiddos is, in some ways, are how we become immortal, if we’re fortunate enough for them to outlive us.

THEO VON: Yeah.

Family Traditions and Rituals

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And fortunate for them to have kids and crept past on a lineage. It’s like, you first have a kid, you’re like, I have helped create a being that is outside of myself, but my blood is in them. Yeah. It’s a certain way to immortality.

And I don’t mean in the religious sense of, oh, if you live this way, you live forever because you get to the gates and the kingdom of heaven.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: But it is a mortal way of going. No. Just kind of signed to evolutionary wise. It’s a way to become immortal. And I find there’s a great power in that and a great freedom and responsibility that comes with that.

Because you’re shepherding your future self through your child or what you’re, you know, for 18 years, so to speak, generally in the household before they go off into the world. So you’re taking care of yourself.

THEO VON: Right. In a weird way, by taking like a chunk of yourself.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: By taking care of your. It’s our greatest children. Either. It’s the greatest export and it is the most. Closest thing, piece of art in the world that we’ll ever put out.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know.

THEO VON: Yeah. That’s pretty fascinating.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Do you and your family, do you have any traditions that really mean a lot to you guys that you have felt like, have helped you establish more of a sense, like a familiar sense, like a team sense? Kind of.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. I mean, my wife’s better than my family ever was on the actual rituals. I mean, my family’s like, they won’t come over Thanksgiving. We’re going. And it’s like, swing by the pit and get some food while you’re dead. And we’re going to sit down. Well, not if. Unless everyone wants to sit down.

My wife’s like, no, we are. I’m setting the table.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And we’re sitting down and doing this. And we’re going to say prayers before and everyone’s going to go around. That’s one of the things we like to do. Call it around the horn, everybody, for a week, share something out loud. Something thankful for.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Share it up. And at very least out there, it at least makes the food taste better.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, at least. But it also is a great conversation starter because you’ll say things and a lot of people don’t like to share them out loud. And it’ll start a conversation with somebody that you didn’t know.

Why do you say you’re thankful for that thing? Oh, I didn’t know. Your grandmother just got out of the hospital. Oh, I didn’t know that. You did good on that test last Tuesday, and you’re thankful for that. And it’s a great way to get a conversation started.

We do. We practice that. We are. We have dinner each night. It’s a small ritual, but in a busy world of today, huge to have that down. And everyone comes in and you hear a little bit about the day, and we kind of. It’s kind of like the team gets together.

And I was talking to my kid. We were talking kids about it the other day. You know, I was like, look, this.

THEO VON: These.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Talk about these bonfires. We have our family. We’re calling it a bonfire, not a campfire bonfire. Boys and girls, let’s go, man. We. This is non-negotiable. We got to. We created it. We’re on our way. We think we’re doing all right. Let’s keep putting log wood on this fire.

But you three kiddos, you’re responsible for going and chopping wood here, too, and bringing the log back to the fire. It’s not just me and your mama.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That are doing that. It takes. It’s talking about back to sports. We were in the very beginning. It’s a team effort here.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Y’all got to start adding that.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And take the. And take the. Have the confidence yourself that you do have a log to add to this fire.

Teaching Kids Responsibility

THEO VON: Right. I think encouraging or like, encouraging kids to think and feel like that it’s important, you know, because kids don’t know how to think and feel. I think there’s, like, this understanding that people just know what feelings are and what’s happening and, like, what their responsibility is as a brother or a son. It’s like a lot of that stuff has to really be kind of instilled.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I think. I think you’re right. Because I’m guilty of giving the Cliff Notes version of things to a kid sometimes. Or they’re like. I think is like, well, duh. You understand that? You know what I mean?

Like, little things, man. Hey, what’s. How do you wipe your butt? You know what I mean? What’s. What’s deodorant for? You know what I mean? Little things. You’re like, well, duh. And like, no.

THEO VON: Yeah, but with deodorant, it’s going to burn.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know? How would I know? You know, things. You got to let them know.

THEO VON: Yeah, there’s that extra step a lot of times. And I think. We think that kids are just adults in a week sometimes, or they saw.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It somewhere, they picked it up that they already know. Because that’s the other thing. You do find out a lot of things that they did pick up that you didn’t know they knew.

THEO VON: Right. And then you start to be like, oh, well. And you kind of help many when they’re like, I already know this. So it’s like. It’s probably a little catch.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: A little. But there’s a whole lot of things that. Yeah, they don’t know. You know, we. It’s. It’s in our frame. One of the things is, when are the kids ready for this type of movie?

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: PG or an R or something. And I’m just. And what content is in there? I just don’t want. There’s some certain things in life about. About love, about. About. About violence, about all the ways of the world that I don’t necessarily.

I want my kids to get it from an outside piece of entertainment before they have a context of understanding it from me and their mother, for sure. Like, let them understand it first before seeing it for the first time. And their emotions are going all over the place for pleasure or pain, but they don’t know what it all means.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Or does that happen? Well, so I want the context coming from the mom and dad first so they can then see it and go, I understand that was realistically. However realistically that was done and how that affected me, but I understand the context.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Of what that scene I just saw or. And that’s why I try to hold back certain content, you know.

THEO VON: Oh, I think it’s from the kids.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: To have just an understanding of the reality so you can at least appreciate it. But know that that’s fiction.

THEO VON: Right. Yeah. You got to be a keeper. You got to be a keeper. You know, you’re. You. You’re the. You’re running the kennel. You know, when you’re doing that, you know, if I could go back in time, one thing I would start to do would be to start saving my money a little bit earlier.

Lane Kiffin’s Yoga Class

THEO VON: I was at Ole Miss, dude. Lane Kiffin’s crazy. That guy’s absolutely crazy, dude. He took me to yoga class, right? He goes to this yoga class. I’m in there, right? And he. I think he’s. He has the heat on his phone. He’s hijacked the heat system and like this. So he’s sitting over there pumping up the heat.

Yeah, I mean, just like hot yoga. Like Putin over there. Yeah, he’s got it way hot, though. And he’s. He’s even holding a lighter in there, like, adding a little bit of heat to the room. But at one point, he’s, like, wandering around and just, like, saying things to people and whispering, like, affirmations.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Wait, is he. Is he in the class or is he teaching the class?

THEO VON: He’s in it. He’s not the teacher.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Okay.

THEO VON: And the teacher has, like, the microphone thing on, and she’s kind of pointing at him every now and then. There’s a picture that we just put up yesterday from. And I don’t know if you can even see it. It might be out there somewhere.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Can you raise it up a little bit? I can only see his head, and this seems like a shot. You got to see out.

THEO VON: Okay, that’s lame. But find the other photo, too, if you can, Nick. But he’s. Dude, he comes in, he puts a peppermint in my mouth. Dude. And he has his hand kind of even touched my lips a little bit. And I don’t even. I mean, we’re both straight males, you know, me and he has a family. I hope to have a family.

But he just, like, I’m like. And I’m in there sweating, dying, basically trying to look okay, you know, And. Sorry. I wear a towel like that. I was raised by a single mom.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, this is you over On. Are you over on the right?

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Post peppermint.

THEO VON: His Post peppermint. Yeah. But, I mean, Lane is crazy, though, dude. He has these weird rituals and stuff in there, and he’ll, like, bounce a golf ball in. It’s like people. It’s, like, dead. And he’ll bounce a golf ball across the. He’s just doing bizarre stuff in there.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Does he have a method to it? Is he doing it?

THEO VON: It is. It’s this. I can’t. It’s like he’s some sweat Moliere or something, you know, I don’t know what he’s doing, but it’s just amazing over there. But he’s just always likes to be involved in causing, having an effect.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Okay.

THEO VON: So that’s what I noticed about him. And it’s interesting and it’s fascinating. In the same way, is he a—

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Trickster or is he a sort of, as you said, he’s just going to throw in some color commentary on the situation. He’s going to give a different color.

THEO VON: He’s very colorful. Okay. And so, but he’s got a big heart. He’ll make sure that everything’s taken care of. He’s on top of everything, right? But I think he likes to be very colorful and stuff.

But we had a great time over there. Anyway, this was just an experience that we had where he goes to these yoga class every single day and he never misses. And it was just, yeah, it was a great experience. I mean, I had to lay down for a little while, and some girl was like, “Do you need CPR?” And I’m like, “No, I don’t need CPR.”

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Okay. Just taking a rest.

THEO VON: Yeah, I’m just taking a rest with my eyes closed.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And you went through it. Man, you look like I was laying there.

THEO VON: I was laying there like this for a little while because I wasn’t doing really good. And, yeah, I didn’t black out, but I light browned out or whatever, but it was like, I’m fine.

But anyway, yeah, but it was just fascinating over there, man, just to be over there. And we got to walk through the walk that they do up to the stadium, and that was pretty crazy. I mean, yeah, they’re just, that fan base is pretty rabid. I didn’t realize how special it was over there in Oxford. I didn’t realize.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Going on right now.

THEO VON: Yeah, they got it going on. I think they’re going to make the CFP. I’m hoping Vanderbilt makes it in. I don’t think that they’re going to.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, what did y’all, y’all lost two.

THEO VON: We lost two. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Us and to Alabama. Alabama. All right. That ain’t, that’s—

THEO VON: But they need a big win, you know, we need a big—

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Who do you got left?

THEO VON: We still have Tennessee and we have Kentucky next weekend, and then we have Tennessee.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: All right, you clear those two with the two losses and you’re maybe most likely in. Well, look like we just can’t. We have Sanford Stadium down in Georgia. Got it handed to us.

THEO VON: You were down there at the, what’s that like over there at that. I never been between hedges. It was—

Between the Hedges at Sanford Stadium

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I had never heard Sanford say in between the hedges as being like one of the places. Whoa. It’s really hard. Oh, yeah, man. Was it 90,000? And those fans are in unison, man. And they had, I tell you what, I get to measure stadiums, right, when I go to them. Like, what’s the fan base?

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s amazing.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: How happy are they that I’m there compared to how much did they, “F* you, McConaughey, we’re going to get it.” You know what I mean? Yeah. And this crowd was loud from the beginning, especially that first half. And then the second half when they started to boat row, they were still really that. But they were one of the higher decibels that I’ve heard.

But they were continuous is the thing. Especially anytime that they’re, that we were on offense and, but the unit. Because you get crowds that are in unison, they know the chants.

THEO VON: Auburn does a good job of that being in unison.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, they have their big thing. You can have 30,000 more people. But if the rituals and the cheers aren’t in unison, it doesn’t, it’s not as intimidating at all. And yeah, they were happy I was there, but they were also giving me straight horns down and going, “We’re going to whip your,” you know, tonight. You know, so it was a good, it was a good, it was a healthy, healthy hate they had.

THEO VON: I love that.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know what I mean? Because I’ve been to some, some visiting and they get a ledgy. Oh, no, I got some. And I won’t say their names on it. I got some that, dude, I’m dodging, I’m dodging loogies.

THEO VON: Yeah. You know, you’re dodging those tomatoes you were throwing.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And they’re like, “Here we go.” Okay. And I’ve been to others.

THEO VON: They’re like, “Time to kill us now.” Whatever.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know? And then I’ve been to somewhere, it’s like they’re too happy to, they’re too nice to me. I’m like, “Oh, y’all are in trouble.”

THEO VON: Dude. How great is it, though? Is there anything better than being a college football fan? I don’t know if there is.

SEC Tribalism

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It’s great. And the SEC is one of the best forms of tribalism in the world.

THEO VON: I love hearing that. I think I agree with you. I didn’t know I toured so much. I’d never gotten to have the fall off. So the past, I’ve been in nine games this year, I think from different stadiums. Probably five of them were at Vanderbilt Stadium, but it’s just been amazing, dude.

To go to Alabama, to go to Virginia Tech, to go, we’re going to go to Neyland in a week or two. To be at Ole Miss yesterday. Yeah. Just to see some of it. And just that, what it’s about for them in those places. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, and you know, Athens, that’s basically just college town. And they were just, the fans, the fans were great and they were loud and they were rabid. But to go, one of the things of love about being in the SEC, I can’t wait to go. You know, been in Tuscaloosa. I’ve been, I can’t wait to go to Death Valley, LSU on a night game when we go there, because I’ve only been there once and they played Vanderbilt when Vanderbilt was a doormat. Not the Vanderbilt now.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And so that was a good experience. If that wasn’t a great Death Valley experience, I still, I can’t wait to get over to Tennessee.

THEO VON: That’s a beautiful place that I think might be the most beautiful place to see a game. Is that Neyland Stadium. But I haven’t been to see a, at Austin. I want to go see that. I know that Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe went one time. You might have went to that same game that they went to.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I’ve been most of them. I’m over there on the sidelines. Yeah.

THEO VON: So cool, man.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Yeah. It’s, I just feel lucky to, first of all, even just get to be around some of the teams, to be that close to that energy that young. If you stay around young people, it just keeps you young. It’s like there’s something that’s, I don’t know, it’s just, it’s energy. That’s how energy works.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And I still have to remind myself how young these young men are.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, and that, you know, it’s like, because they’re so damn big, you know, and then you look and you go, “Oh, you’re 18.”

THEO VON: Yeah, 18.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: When was that? You know, got to go back and do the math. You know what I mean?

THEO VON: Yeah. You can’t even figure it out.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I’m down there and I’m feeling like I was at college UT just a few years ago. Well, few multiplied times a nice size number. Yeah. But it seems like it was the other day, you know?

THEO VON: I know it does. But that’s what’s kind of nice. It, too, is the connectivity of that. That there’s something special about when you get around certain things. That it, it’s undeniable. That it’s nice. That it feels not that long ago, in a way. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And again on the SEC, man, I was talking to Sankey about this the other night. They’re the only conference that wants to fight. Absolutely. Draw blood like brothers on a Saturday night when you’re in the game, but after the game, we’re the SEC.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: The only conference that you go to. And if you beat an SEC team, beats another team from any that’s outside of the SEC conference. Yeah. They may chant their, their name tag LSU.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: But they also chant SEC. They, nobody else does that. Man.

THEO VON: I used to get upset with my friends that would cheer on other SEC teams if our team was out of it. Right, right. But now I get it. Now I get it. Like, this is the conference.

Texas Rivalries and the SEC Spirit

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That’s why I’m kind of, look, I backhanded, you know, I got it. When OU beats Alabama like they did, I get a little, “Oh, there we go.” When I, even when A&M came back from down 33 against South Carolina, I’m like, “Here we go.” Because we’re the old Southwest Congress, the old Big 12. I’m rooting for them to go.

And I also, I’m a Texas fan who wants our two biggest rivals, those two Aggies and OU. Traditionally. I want them to be undefeated when we play this. You know what I mean? That we usually play OU around the, I don’t know, fifth game this season. Fourth, fifth. I always want OU to be undefeated, and I want us to be undefeated, and then I want to beat him. Yeah.

I want A&M, we have, we play A&M the last game of the year.

THEO VON: So it’s still coming up.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It’s two weeks, you know, from now. Or saying whatever week it is. I don’t know when this comes out, but, but that, you know, I want them to be undefeated. Hell, when we beat him, is what I wanted. You know what I mean? That’s, that’s—

THEO VON: Yeah, well, I always cheer for the underdog, man. I find I always cheer for the underdog. That’s one thing I loved about Vanderbilt this year. They’ve always been underdog.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Pavia is great. They have so many great guys. Every guy over there.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I met Pavia, he came up, said howdy after the game.

THEO VON: Oh, he did?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: In Austin.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s awesome. He’s a great guy, man.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: He’s the underdog.

THEO VON: He’s just been, whole time.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I was like, “Man, congratulations on what you’ve done. Keep doing it, man. Y’all got it rolling.” And, yeah. And what Lee’s done with that. Yeah. Because look, there’s a lot of players on there that a lot of these teams were talking about, didn’t necessarily sniff them.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah. Because they would have been on a different team. Yeah.

The Psychology of the Underdog

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: But look what they’ve done. It’s, again, back to psychology. Yeah, that’s, that’s a, that’s a mental edge. And the power you can get from believing you’re an underdog or that the world saying you’re an underdog fuels you instead of, right, makes you cower going, “Oh, yeah, watch this.”

But to believe that is different than to say that. We’ve seen plenty of teams that are cocky, right.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And you’re like, not to get into—

THEO VON: The ego side of it.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You ain’t got to, you know. Oh, you just laid it. You laid a big hit on that running back. And there’s three minutes left in the fourth, and you’re 17 down. I wouldn’t be doing a dance there. Yeah. Did you see a scoreboard? You know what I mean?

Or the want to, the come out is what more was saying. Or who is it, Mike saying, “Well, I got one to win the game. Didn’t want to play.” When do, you can see you, you know, you want. There’s a certain swagger that you’re like, “Are you playing the part or do, or do you believe?”

Right again. Are you looking at the Jumbotron and acting like what you think you should act like? Or do you believe that? And is that dance you’re doing coming from—

THEO VON: Yeah, from you.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That’s me. That’s how I feel. Different.

Teaching at UT and Breaking Down Films

THEO VON: Dude, we had a funny thing the other night. I was somewhere and there was like a Titans, one of the Titans kind of brass, and they had one of their upper people there. And Pavia was there. We were at some dinner thing. And I said, oh, have you guys thought about drafting Diego?

And the guy goes, well, he’s a little small for us. We kind of like this. One of our guys was a player there, and he pointed at a guy and he’s like, that guy’s six, seven.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: And I was like, that guy’s one in seven, right? I was like, Diego Pavia is eight and two right now. And I know it’s different.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, I hear you.

THEO VON: But for me, it’s like, if I’m a team in a city, I would get a player that everybody loves that played in that college. I don’t understand why pro teams don’t do that a little bit more.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, they do. The Saints have been the best at it historically. Drafting local, keeping it in Louisiana. So that Superdome is full of people going, that’s my cut, you know.

THEO VON: Oh, that’s a good point.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, look, I don’t know how much that really works in the pros because it’s a new single brand business. I’m with you, I like the sentiment of let’s keep the home cooking going.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s how I think. That’s how I think. You know, I like that kind of stuff. Are you still teaching? You teach. Were you teaching classes at UT?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, I visit. There’s a guy, there’s a professor that’s in there daily. But then I swing in and we’ll talk for three hours at a time. Because what we do is we break down films and ads that I’ve done. It’s called “From Script to Screen,” meaning let’s see the journey that this book that turned into the first script, that turned into a shooting script that turned into the movie.

Let’s see the journey it took to get there. Because the original screenplay is very different than the final package you see. And so let’s show these students, these serious filmmakers about how there’s many ways to skin the cat. And so I’ll go in and we just break down. We broke down most of my films, and then I have the director come in and talk about certain scenes. And it’s a badass class, dude.

The Marshall Movie and Huntington

THEO VON: I’ve loved. I used to go perform up in Huntington, West Virginia all the time. Were you guys checking out a Marshall movie? Yeah, and that was awesome, man. And one time, the guy that survived, Red.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yes. Dawson.

THEO VON: He was speaking at the hotel that I was staying at. He was speaking.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: When was this? How many years ago?

THEO VON: More, but more or less 16 years ago. 16, 12, 10.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So we had done “We Are Marshall,” which is probably 20 years ago. Yes. So, look, I don’t want to speak on Red’s behalf, but this is the story I heard, and I hope I’m getting this correct. If I’m not, excuse me, but that crash in 1971 with that Thundering Herd team, everyone in Huntington was somehow related to that.

All right. Whether by blood or by family or by, that was the identity of the town, the college at that time. And a lot of people retreated. We showed up to go tell that story, and they were skeptical of Hollywood coming to tell their story. For good reason.

THEO VON: For sure.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Like which version are you going to tell?

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know.

THEO VON: Are you going to add some elements that are just going to make us look bad?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You’re going to make us look like that. Do you know? Well, our director, McG, did a really cool thing. He let the whole town know in the paper, hey, anybody can come by the set. Anybody wants a script, I’ll give you the script. Slowly, people started to come around. Script was good. They were like, okay.

And then the movie comes out. And I think there was a bit of catharsis that can happen. Meaning, I heard that Red Dawson had been very reclusive and that the time around the film coming out and the story, and for other reasons, he started to come back out, watch a game, maybe get a little. Maybe it started behind the fence, then it moved into a bleacher. Then it moved into talk.

Anyway, you hear stories like that. And not that the film we did was responsible for that, but a part of that that you go, ah, what a cool thing to be a part of. That can happen. You know? Well, art.

THEO VON: That’s an interesting thing about art is that something can come out of something that’s nice can come out of this. Right. Something that still honors it, even if it didn’t do the best job. Something that earnestly tried to show up and honor this thing.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Or have some, spend time with it. Right. To spend time.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Spend time spent on it. Well intended.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Try to tell the truth on it. Ah, they get to then see a representation of some of their experiences on the proverbial jumbotron. But also that can help us get to know ourselves better, especially if you’ve been locked up and covering that, you know, what I mean, holding those things.

Ayahuasca and Processing Pain

THEO VON: Yeah. It’s crazy. Some of the things that we hold, you know, I got into doing like ayahuasca experiences over the past, like maybe five, six years. And that’s helped like bring up a lot of old stuff and process it, you know.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: That’s just been pretty good for me.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Now a lot of that’s talking about going back. We were talking about ego earlier. A lot of that’s about get rid of the ego in a way. What’s been your, what would you say has been the best thing, most healthy thing for you that those ayahuasca journeys have done for you?

THEO VON: I would say it’s helped me process a lot of old pain. Things that were like kind of weights.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Kind of things that were just like clumped up roots of my past.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Hard mud around them. Just help that stuff break up.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Okay.

THEO VON: So it’s easy for me to be up here a little bit in my own soil and have an experience to grow.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Not be locked.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: More receptive maybe.

THEO VON: Yeah. And not stuck in like a lot of like, kind of burned off a lot of like old like low self-worth stuff.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

THEO VON: Started to kind of disappear, you know. Have you had any experiences like that?

Spiritual Breakthroughs Through Solo Journeys

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Not with ayahuasca. I mean, I’ve had, you know, my own. Most of my big sort of breakthroughs spiritually have come on singular journeys that I took by myself to places where they didn’t know my name. And putting myself in those places, whether it be in Africa or the Amazon and Peru, where everything that I relied on was stripped away.

Or the year I spent in Australia as an exchange student where all of my conveniences and my talismans of identity, whether it was my name or my nation or my state or my family, they’re all stripped away. And I was forced to rely on myself and forced to kind of look up and go, I’m listening.

And you know, when that truth comes on you, man, it’s like as gentle as a butterfly that’s strong as a lightning bolt. And you got some things that hit you. Sometimes you go, remember this when you go back into the world. And all that onion starts to get pre-peeled again. You start to take on all these things and play these different parts and get these ideas.

Remember this to be what you understand now to be a non-negotiable truth. It’s like there’s an Emerson line about the truth that comes to us in quiet solitude. It makes so much sense. But can we take that amongst the masses? Can we walk into the cathedral, the stadium with 500 million people, and still hold that truth to be ours and true for all time?

THEO VON: Wow.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know?

THEO VON: Yeah, I think that’s something. As I get older, that’s the thing I admire somebody that something the most. Somebody that can have just like a quiet self-confidence, you know, an integrity, you know, that you can tell that that’s kind of unshakable for them, you know?

Staying True While the World Changes

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, and it’s tough, man, because the world changes. And a lot of times we change by changing with it and adapting. A lot of times we change by staying exactly the same. And all of a sudden we look like an original. And you’re like, I’m doing the same thing I was doing. I just didn’t, I just jived when everyone else juked, you know what I mean? Or I just stayed the same while everyone else was juking and jiving.

THEO VON: Do you ever feel like that? Like, there was a comedy manager one time, I was on a plane with him and he said, your audience will evolve, right, because they’ll grow up, but so you have to evolve somewhat. Right. But there’s a fear, I think, especially with comedian stuff. Well, this worked.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: I got to stay. I got to be that person for, you know, that’s what I have to be a lot, you know?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if that’s like that for actors.

THEO VON: I guess it probably is.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, no, sure.

THEO VON: Like, this movie style worked for me.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That or these choices I made. Oh, everyone likes that when I do that.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That got memed. Or that guy. You know what I mean? I’m not, doesn’t mean I’m going to. You know, I’m not saying I’m going to, hey, I didn’t ever go, well, make sure you say “alright, alright, alright” every scene, every movie. I’m not saying that. You know what I mean?

THEO VON: Especially if your character’s deaf or whatever. Or he’s like just in a coma.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And at the very end he’s like, or just a pessimist. So that was something.

THEO VON: That would be the best. He’s like such a Jack Nicholson. Who’s that? Jack Nicholson in that movie where he’s just that pessimist. “Anger Management,” is that it? Yeah. And then at the end, you finally just say it.

Your Fastball and Playing It Fresh

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Here’s your bumper sticker. No, there’s certain things that you know, you know, you get to. I think we all do. Rock band knows what their encore is, you know. Bruce knows they want to hear “Born in the USA,” right. How do you sing that? Your proverbial fastball. You know, Clemens, those 100-mile fastball. Does he need to know curves and sinkers? Yeah, but do you forget your fastball? No. You don’t forget your fastball.

THEO VON: Of course not.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I think you go, but how do you do it? What I try to remind myself is if I know I’m going with something that’s a fastball, okay, how do I do it like it’s the first time? Each time. I’ve always wanted that. Probably with comedians, you got something, you know, man, bam, it works. How do you do it like that’s the first time?

How does a band go out and play that song they played 2,000 times, man? Like, how do they get off to it that night? What I’ve heard is that, oh, you got a new audience each night, so you’re feeding off of them and it’s their first time. So you can give it to them like it’s the first time.

THEO VON: That’s interesting. I even thought about it like that. Yeah. For me, it’s just always tricking myself. Laughing sometimes, laughing seems very present.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: And so things like that, some modalities I’ll do before, like ice bath, sauna, those types of things that just get your energy. So like at a fun level of being alive and existing, that no matter what you’re doing seems fun.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Joy of Performance

THEO VON: So I think a lot of it is having fun.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: How much of that. Let’s talk about that. How much of doing that, being successful is. Do you think is enjoying what you’re doing when you’re doing it? Like how much if you laugh at a joke and I think I’m agreeing with you here is that I’ve done things where I’m like going, I feel confident enough in it where if it makes me laugh and no one else laughs, I’m going to then think that’s funny.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And that will then probably in turn be funny.

THEO VON: Well, that might just be good acting. I mean, yeah, that’s probably just a really good way to as an actor to be able to have that shift. Like, okay, if this didn’t even land the right way, then that part of it is then funny.

Yeah. I think as a comedian I don’t. If I’m taking care of myself and I’m in a good way, then it’s going to go good. I know. I just think it’s like they just want to see you having a good time. Especially these days. People are just so, like with podcasting and stuff, people will get to know you so much. They just want to be in the room.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right, right.

THEO VON: They want the material to be good and you want it to be good. I don’t want you to just be good. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You’re all there wanting it to be good. Right.

THEO VON: And I wouldn’t show up if I didn’t think it was at least good enough to bring to you to trade for a fair. But a lot of it is just people want to spend time around each other.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: My greatest mentor, a lady named Penny Allen, who’s since moved on, would always say this, you know, and you got a crew making a film. You got 120 people, you got directors, producers. Not everyone agrees on everything. Right. And you can get in arguments and all that. And she was like, just remember this, Matthew. She goes, one thing everyone is there for and wants is a good show. You know what I mean?

THEO VON: Right. Like, that’s a uniform ways of getting it.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: But everyone, no one’s there going, I don’t want this to be a good show. Everyone wants it to be a good show.

Writing Through Uncertainty

THEO VON: Dude, in my head sometimes I’ll get in that thing, like, oh, I know how to make this. You know, like that’s a part I get stuck sometimes I want to talk a few minutes more about writing and stuff before you go. Thank you for your time.

Sure, man. Poems and Prayers. That’s your new book that’s out. When did you start writing and who kind of got you into it? I know there’s stuff in here from when you were 18, from you were in high school.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Probably when I started writing longer form.

THEO VON: Okay.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Poems. And that was a year in Australia where I was one of those times I was lost and wobbly and looking and trying to figure had. I didn’t have friends to rely on, didn’t have family to rely on. So I started, you know, dude, I was losing my mind in a good way.

I was writing 16 page letters to myself and returning them with a 17 page letter Socratic dialogue. I was going, hey man, we got to entertain ourselves. I ain’t got no one else to go to, so let’s have this out. And so I strained.

THEO VON: I mean, it’s cool it’s straight, it’s.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It’s strange. And I’m unique.

THEO VON: Sorry it was hard.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, it’s. That’s strange.

THEO VON: So what was the letter?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Were you saying, like, trying to work out? Yeah, I was losing my mind. I didn’t know what. I didn’t have a compass, man. Everything around me was odd. And I didn’t know if I agreed with it or disagreed with it or if it was just a cultural difference or if it was, or getting to know yourself.

And I didn’t know where to stand until I got pushed to where I had to make a stand. And boy, when I had to make a stand. Yeah. You know, when this host family wanted me to call a mom and pop and I went, no, that’s that. I’m not going to do that. I appreciate you thinking of me that way, but I still have my mom and dad.

And I remember at the time why I said this part, I do not know, but it was like, I thought it would ease the blow a little bit. I remember saying this. I was like, no, I have a mom and dad and they’re still alive.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I gave him this little context, like, oh, just in case. Like, what the hell does that matter anyway, you know? And to make that stand and go, no, and then call them, say goodnight and call them by their first names. And then wake up the next morning, my alarm clock was a screaming woman going, he won’t call me mom. Going, oh. And then going to her and going, no, I won’t, but put an arm around and going, I.

THEO VON: You know, creating some boundaries for yourself, figuring it.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I had to create a boundary. That’s it. I was, look, I didn’t. I was trying. And so to do that is part of, I think, a big part of identity.

And so I started writing. I’d always written since I was probably 12, but I started writing poems and jotting down prayers and things when I was, like I said, lost, wobbly and looking. But also times where things were going well and I felt spiritually strong and going like, well, what are some habits I got right now? What are some ways I’m seeing the world where the world seems to be. I’m putting this out of my soul and it’s music and the world’s kind of throwing back the next beat right at me. And when I’m just. We got a tune going.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, and then I stepped in. Well, that’s part of the tune right you know, they laughed at my joke. Hey, that’s part of the tune, too. Oh, they were crickets. They didn’t laugh. That’s still part of the same song.

THEO VON: You know, all part of the same song. Yeah. Instead of trying to get this old. This song, like, just the perfect song, you know, just recognize it’s a long song.

Making Wisdom Digestible

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It’s a long song. Yeah. And so poems and prayers. Look, look, you know, I’m trying to sell Sunday morning like a Saturday night, meaning there’s a lot of good stuff. Whether it’s you bringing up stuff in the Bible that has a lot of good stuff for living. There’s a lot of good things we’ve learned from mentors and other philosophers and great books and wisdoms of the past that we’re told to do.

And I know this. No one really likes to be told what to do most of the time. And we also don’t really like to get advice. I don’t like getting advice. I. Hell, every director I work with, I tell them right off the bat, I’m easy to work with. Just don’t tell me what to do.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Or. And I tell them, even like that, you find a way to make me think it was my idea. There you go. All right. I even know you did it, but don’t tell me and I’ll swear. There you go. That’s right. You know, but if you can put it in a rhyme, if it can have a bit of a ditty to it, if you can dance to it, and it’s a good word, it’s more fun to digest it. It makes the broccoli taste like candy.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, and you go like, oh, okay, I can have a beer on the way to the temple. Thank you.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know what I mean? Right? I mean, I’d rather have a beer on the way to the temple and be headed to the temple than abstain. Say I’m abstaining from having a beer, but headed to the head of the wrong direction to the desert.

THEO VON: Right. Yeah. I never liked taking suggestions. It’s always been hard for me, I think. Well, it’s tough in your life when things go pretty good sometimes to want to relinquish the wheel, you know?

Taking Ownership of Success

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. But at the same time, things are going well. You’re responsible for that. Don’t give up the right to believe in that. You got. You had your hands on the wheel. When we’re. When we’re. Things are going well, we should not be so humble to believe that.

THEO VON: Oh, it’s all just fate. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I think God wants our hands on the wheel, and I think God’s. My hunch is God’s going. I got too many people relying on faith.

THEO VON: Yeah, that’s a good point. Take control of things.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, when things are going, there’s a re. Give yourself the ownership of going. I did. That wasn’t all me.

THEO VON: Right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Other things in the world happen that I’ll never understand. Timing and fortune and everything. But give ourselves credit. When we look at the mirror and go, you’re partially. You’re partially responsible for that. But there we go.

THEO VON: Yeah. You had to build some sort of gravity within yourself, you know, and understanding. Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Because there’s plenty. Because it doesn’t mean. And understand that there’s the other. The hard part about when we’re. When we’re succeeding. I think catching green lights. Got our hand on the wheel. We’re just smoothing through traffic. And life’s like. The hard part is believing. Oh, this is how it’s going to always be.

THEO VON: Oh, yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Because it ain’t there. Come you’ll blow a tire, man. Some goofball’s going to run a red light and hit you. You’re going to run out of gas. Something’s going to go wrong. So there’ll be times you don’t have your hands on the wheel. You don’t know where you’re going.

So knowing that those times are coming I think is another reason to go, well, when my hands are on the wheel and just working out, let’s look in the mirror and give myself a little bit of wink. Here, boss.

THEO VON: There you go. Let’s turn our favorite music up a little bit.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, a little bit.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Drop the top.

Heart Above Head

THEO VON: Yeah. You know, there’s somebody talked about prayer too, that I thought was pretty cool.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Prayer is worship. Putting our heart above our head. A beautiful sentiment, man. Prayer comes from worshiping, which means to literally bow down so we can put our heart above our head. So it’s a physical engineered act to listen to our heart. Compassion, kindness, forgiveness, peace above our head.

And we live in a world that is all we’re told. Every head above heart, man. Make it more quantity win however you do it.

THEO VON: Head up. Look at the jumbotron.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right. And the humility of putting your heart above your head, literally, just physiologically is such a cool image for what that’s for. And I don’t think a lot of people. I didn’t know that that is what prayer is actually engineered for. That’s why you bow, you bend a knee and you bow to put your head below your heart and your heart above your head so you can hear the sacred within you.

And the sacred’s coming from the heart and soul. Soul. I’m all for knowledge that we gain in our head. And we need knowledge to understand reason. Yeah. But there’s a lot of stuff that we don’t. The math doesn’t add up. And that’s languages of the soul and it’s not supposed to add up.

And I think that’s part of the pursuit of God. That’s what I’ve always. I think God loves a scientist because that’s. Scientists are the practical pursuit of God. Well, there’s some spiritual stuff that we’re not supposed to be able to make sense of.

THEO VON: I agree.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: What faith comes from.

THEO VON: Everything doesn’t have a balance sheet. Everything you can’t figure out. Everything. Like, especially emotions. You can’t. You can’t. Like there’s not a lot of math on it.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Nope.

Trusting Your Inner Compass

THEO VON: Like instincts, all of that kind of stuff. I think that’s something I want to lean even more into in my life is just believing. I just have to know. I have to know that what this feeling I have inside of me is real.

I don’t need to read an article to tell me. I don’t need to read this or know this. Even if somebody shows me some fool’s gold that they believe in, I have to know that this God-created compass inside of me has some semblance of direction and factuality.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It takes a lot of trust and faith to do that. And it ain’t easy. You know, one that I always give myself a little amnesty on is from this Benedictine monk named Thomas Merton. He said, “God, I believe in that trying to please you pleases you.”

Sometimes when we don’t know, I think it’s okay to give ourselves a little pat on the back and go, at least I’m trying. And I kind of trust that that pleases God, that I’m giving an effort.

THEO VON: Yeah. Some grace, huh?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, grace. Yes.

Reflections on the Book

THEO VON: Give ourselves some grace. Well, thank you, Matthew. Yeah, thanks for taking time to even contribute this to the world. Help people think. There’s a lot of neat things to think about in here, like just leadership, courage, little avenues. Yeah, I think it’s something that I wrote down. Your “carve and burn” was one that—

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I carve and burn wheat from the chaff, the fat from the meat. Yeah. Man, we got to—

THEO VON: In the name of transition.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: That’s that weed pulling we were talking about at the top of the show. We got to tend our own garden, man, around our soul. Make sure we’re pulling the weeds, because you can look down, you can go, where’s that diamond? Yeah. Where’d it go? Oh, it’s covered in all the weeds.

THEO VON: “I let go in the name of transformation, die a little instead of completely.” I really like that. Yeah, that’s really about having that extra beat of courage, that extra, you know, just believing that there’s something here if you just stay in this space.

Transformation vs. Transaction

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Transformation comes with sacrifice, and that’s part of dying a little bit. If you’re nothing but transactional all the way through life, not transform. If you’re only transactional relationships, if you’re only seeking work or things that can only pay your bank account or things that—

THEO VON: That are definitely, that are quantifiable. Right. That you know the outcome. Right. There’s not a lot of faith in that definitiveness.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No. And that transaction, if it’s purely for transaction, if our life is purely transactional, then I think then you die in the end. You die all the way. You die a lot. You did all right. Transformational, you will die a little because you make a sacrifice to live forever.

Prayer and Gratitude

THEO VON: Yeah, it’s cool, man. There’s a lot of neat stuff to think about in here. A lot of prayer, too. Do you have a kind of a prayer practice or what’s that been like in your life? Or what did you even learn when you were a kid? You remember the first time that you ever prayed? Yeah, we can finish on that conversation.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: First prayers. My mom was a big baseline gratitude. And we grew up Methodist, which wasn’t a lot of fire and brimstone. It was more, be thankful for what you have and try and multiply that with yourself and others.

And I remember if we come to the breakfast table kind of grumpy or something, mom would be in there cooking breakfast. And she grabbed us by the arm, walk us back down our bedroom and go, you get in bed. You get in bed. She goes, no, no, back under the covers. She already dressed. Get back to the covers.

She’d say, “Don’t you come to my breakfast table where I’m cooking you hot breakfast until you’re ready to see the rose in the vase instead of dust on the damn table.” And you’re like, oh, geez, I’m coming back. So you came back, “Hey, good morning.” There we go. Good morning. Like never happened.

Or you’re arguing about, man, I got this one pair of shoes, and they got holes in them, and I need another pair of shoes. You know, “You better quit bitching about having no shoes. I’m going to introduce you to a kid with no feet.” Whoa. Geez. So she was big on baseline gratitude.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And going, before you get into being upset or pouty about anything today, look outside this curtain. You see the sun rose again. That was not a guarantee.

THEO VON: Amen.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

THEO VON: Before you get how you feel about it, let’s look at the facts.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Let’s look at what gift was given. Now, we may have a hard day. We may have something we got to work with, but that’s baseline gratitude that you cannot, do not take for granted.

SEC Football Talk

THEO VON: And now I have a tool to work with it with. You show some gratitude. It makes everything, it certainly makes things smoother. Do you think, last question, do you think that, and this is back to football, do you think that the Oklahoma, Texas, do you think those teams like being in the SEC?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yes.

THEO VON: You do?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. Well, I know Texas does, and I think Oklahoma does, too. And I think A&M did when they did. You know, there were rumblings that A&M didn’t want us coming over there, but I think in their heart of hearts, they got enough hood spot. They wanted us to come there. They wanted, let’s get that rivalry going again. I know Texas wants to be there.

THEO VON: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: We want the greatest competition. We want to be in the greatest conference, and we want the greatest competition, and we want to push ourselves to compete at that highest level.

THEO VON: Yeah, it is exciting. Yeah. I just, yeah, I wondered that a little bit because you just get so used to things being a certain way, and then something else comes in. And I was like, do they really love it? So yeah, I was just curious.

Thanks for helping me think, man. Good to see you today, bro.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yep.

Closing Thoughts

THEO VON: Congratulations. Thanks for sharing so many creative things with us over the years and helping us have thoughts and feelings. I’ve had a lot of emotion to your movies and been inspired and felt things and unfelt things by watching your art over the years.

And so thank you so much. Thank you for Green Lights. Thank you for this new book. It’s out now, Poems and Prayers. Yeah. Just a lot of good stuff to fodder to think about and feel about. So thank you so much, man.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You’re welcome. Good to be here.

THEO VON: Yes, sir. Now I’m just floating on the breeze.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And I feel I’m falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I’ll share this peace of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones, but it’s going to take a little.

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