The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1552 - Matthew McConaughey

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00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

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00:00:12.000 Hello Matthew.

00:00:13.000 Hello Joe.

00:00:14.000 What's going on man?

00:00:16.000 Got a book out?

00:00:17.000 Got a book out, got green lights.

00:00:19.000 Trying to catch them, trying to create them.

00:00:20.000 What makes a guy who is successful as you as an actor, what makes you want to expose more of yourself?

00:00:26.000 Because that's kind of what you're doing by writing a memoir, right?

00:00:29.000 You're exposing your thought process, your life, your lessons.

00:00:35.000 Another way of communicating.

00:00:37.000 You know, what I do in my day job as an actor, it's got four filters.

00:00:44.000 From the raw expression.

00:00:46.000 There's my raw expression.

00:00:47.000 There is what's being recorded.

00:00:50.000 There's what's being edited.

00:00:51.000 And there's what's being put on the screen.

00:00:55.000 I wanted to do something where I got rid of the filters.

00:00:58.000 Writing a book, there is one filter.

00:01:00.000 Because it's the written word.

00:01:03.000 What you do, what we're doing now, when you do stand-up, that's no filters.

00:01:08.000 That's the direct, it's live.

00:01:10.000 The big show is always recording sort of Yeah,

00:01:34.000 so you've been keeping a journal for 36 years?

00:01:41.000 Yep.

00:01:41.000 What made you start doing that?

00:01:44.000 I think probably in the beginning, the usual reason someone writes in a journal, you know?

00:01:48.000 Oh, my heart's broken.

00:01:49.000 Gretchen Donnelly broke up with me. 0.99

00:01:51.000 Why do I have little skimbles on my face?

00:01:53.000 Why do I only have peach fuzz over my pecker and everyone else has?

00:01:59.000 And then in my early 20s, I remember I was kind of rolling.

00:02:04.000 I was in college.

00:02:05.000 I had a job.

00:02:06.000 I had money in my pocket.

00:02:07.000 I had a nice girlfriend.

00:02:08.000 I'm making my grades.

00:02:10.000 My relationships were good.

00:02:12.000 And I remember going, oh, you hadn't been writing in your journal near as much.

00:02:16.000 Notice you don't do that so much when things are going well.

00:02:18.000 And I said, I think you better start writing down things when things are going well.

00:02:24.000 I mean, my idea was that, hey, you're going to get in a rut again.

00:02:27.000 You'll lose your frequency again in life.

00:02:29.000 You might want this to go back and look at to help you recalibrate.

00:02:33.000 And that proved to be true.

00:02:35.000 You know, so many times we dissect failure and hardships, but we don't dissect success.

00:02:41.000 And going back in those journals, I found that there were times when I got in a rut later and I was able to go back to those journals and go, what were your habits when you were rolling, man?

00:02:49.000 Who were you hanging out with?

00:02:50.000 Where were you going?

00:02:51.000 What were you eating?

00:02:52.000 What were you drinking?

00:02:52.000 How much sleep were you getting?

00:02:54.000 How are you looking at life?

00:02:55.000 And they helped me recalibrate in the times when I was off frequency and get back on the rails again and find my frequency again.

00:03:03.000 What were the things that when things were going great, what were the common factors?

00:03:09.000 Common factors were one, check in with yourself before checking in with the world when you wake up in the morning.

00:03:16.000 Really just sit there and take a little time.

00:03:18.000 Read a little something that's between me and me. 0.97

00:03:21.000 Write a little something that's between me and me before picking up the damn phone and saying, hey, what emails came in? 0.93

00:03:26.000 Or hopping out in the kitchen and going, and everyone else is already up going, hey, hey, what's up? 0.97

00:03:30.000 Take 10 minutes to check in with me before checking in with the world.

00:03:38.000 What were the other things?

00:03:39.000 Sense of humor.

00:03:40.000 Sense of humor.

00:03:41.000 I found that I was laughing more.

00:03:43.000 The happiest time in my life is when I got my wink back, man.

00:03:46.000 When I got my wink.

00:03:47.000 If I lose my wink, it's like, oh, I'm taking things too seriously.

00:03:53.000 So I had more of a sense of humor.

00:03:55.000 Didn't take things as personal in many ways.

00:04:00.000 And wasn't asking permission as much when I was rolling.

00:04:06.000 Asking permission?

00:04:07.000 Like, what do you mean by that?

00:04:09.000 Well, just ask permission about having the confidence to believe in something I want to do and just doing it.

00:04:16.000 And saying, hey, if you ask permission, you're already creating one of those filters away from the raw expression.

00:04:21.000 Just do it.

00:04:21.000 It's live.

00:04:23.000 You can.

00:04:24.000 What you're saying, what it sounds like is you almost self-medicated with a type of meditation that you invented yourself.

00:04:34.000 Right.

00:04:35.000 You almost figured out a meditation.

00:04:37.000 People who meditate, that's what they say to do.

00:04:40.000 Take X amount of time, 10, 20, whatever it is, minutes out of the day, focus on your breathing, clean the mind out of anxiety and stress.

00:04:51.000 And if you do that on a regular basis, you'll have a happier life.

00:04:55.000 And you seem to have figured that out on your own?

00:04:58.000 Or did you read books about doing this?

00:05:01.000 I think I figured it out on my own.

00:05:03.000 I mean, the other thing that I didn't tell you was to book in the day before I say my prayers at night, to go through the day, which I don't know about you, but it can be hard to remember what you had for breakfast after dinner when you're going to bed.

00:05:16.000 It can be hard to remember what those first things we did in the day.

00:05:19.000 I'll go back through my day.

00:05:21.000 When I'm happiest, I go back through my day.

00:05:23.000 And I like to write a mental note of what is tomorrow, what are my plans for tomorrow.

00:05:29.000 That's a big stress reliever for me.

00:05:33.000 I think I learned it on my own.

00:05:35.000 I've always been a list keeper.

00:05:37.000 I love making long lists of things to do during the day.

00:05:40.000 And I add everything.

00:05:42.000 I add the simple things that you know you're going to do anyway in the list.

00:05:45.000 You know, like kiss your wife. 0.91

00:05:48.000 You know what I mean?

00:05:50.000 Drop a deuce.

00:05:51.000 Whatever it is.

00:05:52.000 I write things that I'm going to do just so it's more to mark off the list. 1.00

00:05:55.000 You write down you have to take a shit? 1.00

00:05:59.000 Really? 1.00

00:05:59.000 Just remember. 1.00

00:06:01.000 Enjoy that.

00:06:02.000 Or read something funny.

00:06:04.000 Or have a listen to that favorite tune of yours.

00:06:06.000 Something that I know because...

00:06:08.000 The longer the list, the more things I can mark off that day, the more I feel like I accomplished and the more it makes it kind of easy to do the hard stuff.

00:06:15.000 I do that with some things that I have to do, like exercise and writing.

00:06:20.000 I do that with some things.

00:06:22.000 But it seems like you're very meticulous with this.

00:06:26.000 I go through hot streaks and cold streaks on it.

00:06:28.000 I do it more times than others, but I've found that those are the common denominators of some of the things I do when I am the most happy.

00:06:35.000 I'm not a big meditator, but my exercise, what I call breaking a sweat once a day, exercising, I find for me that is necessary because it puts a demarcation between all of my responsibilities.

00:06:48.000 And I can sometimes look up, you know how it is, Sometimes you go through the day or days and you're so busy.

00:06:55.000 And I'm good on autopilot at getting stuff done.

00:06:57.000 But everything you have to do, stress comes when those responsibilities feel like they're stacked vertically on our shoulders.

00:07:05.000 And there's a proverbial weight on our shoulders.

00:07:08.000 When I go break a sweat, all of a sudden all those things that were stacked vertically on my shoulders, my responsibilities, lay down and they're laterally out in front of me.

00:07:16.000 So there's no more weight on my shoulder.

00:07:18.000 And I find that I get those things done better.

00:07:20.000 And with more enjoyment, if I just go, oh, there they are in front of you.

00:07:24.000 Just handle one, then hop to the next one and handle that.

00:07:26.000 Then hop to the next one and handle that.

00:07:27.000 I handle it much more better, but I see demarcations between my responsibilities if I go break a sweat.

00:07:35.000 Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that.

00:07:37.000 I think there's a biological need for that when human beings are under pressure.

00:07:41.000 Because I think the way our bodies are set up, pressure historically, genetically meant your life was in danger.

00:07:49.000 And you had to exert energy.

00:07:50.000 And your body stored up this energy.

00:07:52.000 You had adrenaline rushes.

00:07:53.000 You had anxiety.

00:07:54.000 You had all these different physical needs that you had to take care of.

00:07:58.000 And if you don't exert energy, those physical needs are not met.

00:08:01.000 And your body's confused.

00:08:03.000 It stores up a lot of this.

00:08:04.000 And you get anxious.

00:08:05.000 You yell at red lights.

00:08:07.000 And people just freak out, generally. 1.00

00:08:10.000 Your tolerance for bullshit is way lower. 0.98

00:08:12.000 But if you can just get that physical energy You're way better at handling life. 0.99

00:08:21.000 Way better.

00:08:23.000 Way better.

00:08:24.000 Yeah, I couldn't tell people that enough.

00:08:26.000 I'm a broken record with it.

00:08:28.000 I say it too much.

00:08:29.000 And I love hearing people like yourself, successful people that have thought about a lot of the various aspects of what's good and bad about their life express that.

00:08:40.000 Because I think everyone needs to hear it.

00:08:43.000 It's just we need to hear it from enough people so that it just becomes ingrained in everyone's head.

00:08:48.000 Every day, brush your teeth.

00:08:49.000 Every day, break a sweat.

00:08:51.000 Just go do it.

00:08:52.000 I mean, it's...

00:08:53.000 It's good for so many things.

00:08:56.000 People talk about, oh, no stress. 0.99

00:09:00.000 I'm like, well, bullshit. 0.99

00:09:02.000 Stress is part of life. 1.00

00:09:04.000 It means you give a damn.

00:09:05.000 You know what I mean? 0.93

00:09:06.000 You're gonna have stress.

00:09:07.000 You're supposed to have stress.

00:09:08.000 But I know I handle things better and more thoroughly and more like myself, like I want to.

00:09:14.000 The outcome is always better, and I enjoy doing it more.

00:09:17.000 If I do go break that sweat and get those endorphins going, that presses reset for me.

00:09:22.000 It separates all the events, like I said, laterally, and they don't feel like they're stacked up on top of me.

00:09:28.000 Also, sleep for me.

00:09:31.000 How much do you get a night?

00:09:32.000 Nine and a half.

00:09:33.000 Woo! 0.99

00:09:34.000 I love it!

00:09:36.000 That's great.

00:09:37.000 I wish I could do that. 1.00

00:09:38.000 Goddamn. 0.99

00:09:39.000 When I get a nine and a half hour night, oh my god, I feel so good the next day. 0.99

00:09:43.000 I feel amazing.

00:09:45.000 I feel like a newer person.

00:09:47.000 Well, I'm lucky I have a wife that says, no, no, no.

00:09:52.000 You get your nine and a half.

00:09:53.000 I'll get my seven.

00:09:54.000 Because I'd rather handle the stuff I handle that you don't while you're sleeping than be around you when you hadn't had enough sleep.

00:10:00.000 Well, you set it up right.

00:10:02.000 Yeah.

00:10:04.000 Yeah, I can't stress that enough too.

00:10:06.000 Sleep is everything.

00:10:08.000 Sleep, exercise, health, keep the body functioning correctly, all those things.

00:10:13.000 They're not just, it's not a vanity thing and it's not a laziness thing.

00:10:18.000 It's literally like it improves the quality of the way the mind functions and you get better things done.

00:10:24.000 The quality of your work will be better.

00:10:27.000 Definitely.

00:10:27.000 Think more clearly.

00:10:28.000 You don't waste your time chasing down bullshit. 0.98

00:10:31.000 You do the right kind of work. 0.99

00:10:33.000 We all know that.

00:10:35.000 I love hard work, but I've got many times in my life where I'm doing the wrong kind of work.

00:10:39.000 I love the kind of work where I've accomplished what I needed to do during the day, and I lay my head on the pillow, and I'm exhausted because I got done what I needed to get done as best I could.

00:10:48.000 I do not like the exhaustion at the end of the day where I'm like, Man, I feel like I was just going to revolutions, man.

00:10:54.000 I don't know if today had any ascension to it.

00:10:57.000 I didn't build anything.

00:10:58.000 Today was a...

00:10:59.000 I don't know if I... Maybe I went backwards, you know?

00:11:01.000 I don't like that kind of exhaustion.

00:11:04.000 And that's the kind of exhaustion that actually...

00:11:06.000 I don't go to sleep well.

00:11:07.000 It actually keeps me up. 0.95

00:11:09.000 The only thing I get good out of those shitty days is a desire to never have those shitty days again.

00:11:14.000 I think the good aspects of negative feelings is recognizing how good positive feelings are, how good the feelings of accomplishment are by failing.

00:11:24.000 That's why we're talking about no stress, just live in peace. 1.00

00:11:28.000 That's a crock of shit. 0.99

00:11:30.000 That's like never feel bad. 1.00

00:11:32.000 Then you're never going to appreciate feeling good.

00:11:35.000 We need hills and valleys.

00:11:38.000 I'm with you.

00:11:39.000 100% on that.

00:11:40.000 I mean, I write my book, you know, and I get asked a lot, well, do you believe in fear?

00:11:46.000 And I'm like, well, hell yeah, I believe in fear. 0.99

00:11:49.000 Who the fuck doesn't believe in fear? 0.99

00:11:51.000 Well, you know, you see those, like, no fear. 1.00

00:11:53.000 Oh, those people are so silly. 1.00

00:11:55.000 Like, no, no, no, no. 1.00

00:11:56.000 And they're like, do you fear?

00:11:58.000 I said, I fear every single day.

00:11:59.000 It's the overcoming of the fear.

00:12:01.000 Or I know being raised, you know, we were a physical discipline family.

00:12:05.000 We got the belt.

00:12:07.000 We didn't get grounded.

00:12:07.000 My parents' motto was, we're not going to ground you because that takes away your time and your time is your most valuable thing.

00:12:13.000 Now, we never got injured.

00:12:16.000 We just get hurt at the time.

00:12:17.000 You cried and it was over with.

00:12:18.000 But there were things that I did not do growing up and still do not do.

00:12:24.000 For fear of the consequences.

00:12:26.000 That fear works for me.

00:12:28.000 Things I did not do growing up, going like, no, that'd be a lot of fun, but not so much, not more fun Then how much it's going to suck if I get caught.

00:12:40.000 Physical consequences, it's a very controversial subject because a lot of people think, I don't hit my kids, but a lot of people that I know who are my age were hit when they were young and they look back on it and they say, you know what?

00:12:54.000 I learned from that and my parents didn't beat me.

00:12:59.000 They physically punished me for something that I did wrong and they didn't do it to be sadistic.

00:13:05.000 They did it because they cared about me and that's how they were raised.

00:13:09.000 It's a very controversial subject because people get up in arms with the idea of hitting children.

00:13:14.000 So you bringing it up that it was beneficial to you is going to have a lot of people's hackles raised.

00:13:21.000 Sure.

00:13:21.000 And I get asked all the time and I've shared it openly how I was raised and what kind of corporal punishment we got.

00:13:27.000 I don't choose to discipline my children the same way my parents did. 0.93

00:13:33.000 But I've said this before, I wouldn't trade one single of those ass whoopings I got for the values that were instilled in me from getting them. 0.78

00:13:41.000 And I'm very clear and was at the time that I earned every one I got. 0.96

00:13:49.000 We earned everyone.

00:13:50.000 And we were a family, you know, my parents were like, we get it over with, and over, take it, and it's over.

00:13:57.000 And we don't hold grudges, no one's going to speak of it again.

00:13:59.000 And if you got in trouble, that was the night Dad would take us across town to our favorite burger joint and let us stay up as late as we wanted.

00:14:06.000 And it was over.

00:14:07.000 You got in more trouble if you brought something back up.

00:14:10.000 You know, to somebody in the family.

00:14:12.000 Yeah, but what about when you do that?

00:14:13.000 No, no, no.

00:14:13.000 They already got in trouble for that.

00:14:14.000 You don't bring it back up.

00:14:15.000 You could not go to sleep in our family holding a grudge.

00:14:18.000 My parents would stay up all night and let you miss school to sit there and keep passion out until we could hug it out, cry it out, and say I love you and move on.

00:14:27.000 Sounds like you had a wise family.

00:14:30.000 I mean, it's a controversial thing to say if they hit you.

00:14:33.000 A lot of people would say there's other ways to do it.

00:14:37.000 But the way they made you hug it out and stay up all night and communicate, it sounds very wise.

00:14:45.000 I think it was.

00:14:46.000 Like I said, I don't choose to discipline my kids the way my parents discipline me, but I damn sure don't judge them or say what they did was wrong.

00:14:56.000 They came from a different era as well, right?

00:14:58.000 Yeah, they came from a different era, yeah.

00:15:00.000 That's the thing that is very difficult for people to come to grips with.

00:15:05.000 Human beings that were raised 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago, it was a different world.

00:15:11.000 It just was different.

00:15:13.000 And we know more now.

00:15:15.000 And like you're saying, you do not choose to discipline your children that way.

00:15:20.000 But it was so common back then.

00:15:24.000 It was, yeah.

00:15:26.000 I mean, it was, you know, my parents probably thought they were taking it easy on their boys more than their parents treated them.

00:15:34.000 They probably had it much more harsh.

00:15:36.000 Yeah.

00:15:39.000 Like I said, there are things I did not do that I should not have done for fear hitting my backside.

00:15:46.000 So there's value in that fear and consequences.

00:15:50.000 And consequences go both ways.

00:15:52.000 There's good ones in the bad ones.

00:15:53.000 There's a consequence for everything we do.

00:15:54.000 But there were definitely things I didn't do that I should not have done for the fear of the consequences that were useful to me.

00:16:02.000 Is this the writing of this book?

00:16:04.000 Is some of it almost like Like letters to your younger self, like a lesson to people who are like you coming up.

00:16:15.000 Because one of the things that's so beneficial to young people with reading autobiographies and memoirs of successful people who've lived extraordinary lives is you get to see all the thought process.

00:16:28.000 You get to see the warts.

00:16:31.000 The failures, the whole thing.

00:16:33.000 The fears, the anxiety.

00:16:35.000 You get to see it all.

00:16:35.000 So you go, oh, that Matthew McConaughey guy, he's a normal dude.

00:16:39.000 He's not just the guy from Dallas Buyers Club and all these movies.

00:16:43.000 He's a normal human being.

00:16:46.000 And maybe I can one day achieve heights like him as well.

00:16:52.000 Or maybe I read this book and I'm someone who feels like You know, as we often do when we're going through a crisis, that we're the only ones.

00:17:02.000 And it's only happened to me.

00:17:04.000 I'm the center of the universe.

00:17:05.000 No one else will understand.

00:17:06.000 And you can read and go, well, here's a guy who's successful, who, shoot, I even maybe thought he just kind of rolls out of bed and makes everything look easy, which you find out.

00:17:14.000 I try to work to get to that point.

00:17:16.000 But maybe you look and you hear it and you go, oh, he went through some similar things.

00:17:20.000 I share some stories in here that are very subjective to me.

00:17:23.000 But the more subjective and personal I got, the more I found that, oh, these are more relatable to the more amount of people out there.

00:17:29.000 So you may read a story and go, I have that story, a similar story in my life.

00:17:33.000 Well, here's how...

00:17:35.000 McConaughey handled it or wished he would have handled it or here's some help he got along the way.

00:17:39.000 Here's somewhere where he took a walkabout with himself and found out some things about himself.

00:17:44.000 Maybe that's something I could do for myself.

00:17:46.000 So there are some tools in the book for someone to seed themselves in and help navigate our way out of crisis, red and yellow lights, but also how to navigate things when we are catching green lights because I have a chapter here called The Art of Running Downhill.

00:18:03.000 I've self-sabotaged myself when things were going too well before until I learned that that really wasn't my right to put a roof over my expectations for myself and who the hell did I think I was?

00:18:14.000 Well, that's more common than not, isn't it?

00:18:16.000 People get what they call imposter syndrome.

00:18:21.000 You don't feel like you deserve all the good things that are happening to you.

00:18:25.000 And it just seems odd.

00:18:26.000 You see it happen to other people and it almost makes sense.

00:18:29.000 You see other people being very successful.

00:18:32.000 You're detached.

00:18:33.000 But when it's happening to you, it's almost like this is uncomfortable because this is not normal, and so I'm going to fuck this up so that I feel like I used to feel before, which at least, even if it was failure, it's comfortable.

00:18:47.000 I'm accustomed to it.

00:18:49.000 I need some resistance.

00:18:51.000 And look, I think there's very healthy ways to create resistance in our lives when we are on so-called easy street.

00:18:58.000 That maybe we're not challenging ourselves in the right way.

00:19:01.000 That we need to create resistance to overcome it, to feel most alive.

00:19:06.000 But there's also foolish times to create resistance.

00:19:09.000 And the fact of that is, Things are going so well you think that's how it's gonna be for the rest of your life.

00:19:13.000 No, trust me, the uphill's coming.

00:19:15.000 The drama, the real drama's coming.

00:19:16.000 Don't create any false drama in front of you right now because you're kind of patronizing yourself.

00:19:22.000 The real drama's gonna come.

00:19:23.000 Someone is gonna get sick.

00:19:24.000 You are gonna get hurt.

00:19:25.000 Something will happen in your life.

00:19:27.000 The world will do unto you or you'll do it unto yourself.

00:19:29.000 So don't trip yourself running downhill and face plant and break your frickin' nose just because you needed some resistance running downhill.

00:19:36.000 Yeah.

00:19:37.000 Because trust me, that uphill's coming.

00:19:38.000 You know what I mean?

00:19:40.000 To go to the first part of that, I'm a big fan of creating resistance to keep myself in check and to make sure that I'm feeling most alive to overcome the right things in my life.

00:19:51.000 Yeah, me as well.

00:19:53.000 I find physical resistance is the best thing to calm my mind and to provide physical challenges that allow me to deal with success easier. 0.99

00:20:05.000 Because there's bullshit that I have to deal with, but the bullshit is physical. 0.96

00:20:10.000 It's sometimes challenging mentally to do very physically exerting exercises, particularly jujitsu or martial arts, because it just breaks you down. 0.99

00:20:20.000 The other stuff that seems like it should be complicated, but it's not, you don't know why, you don't sweat it as much.

00:20:30.000 And it sobers you up in a very literal way.

00:20:33.000 In the same way, it's a daily routine to sober yourself up, to throw off the mendacious bullshit in your life that you were so concerned about and get down to what really needs to happen.

00:20:44.000 Mountains become molehills. 0.74

00:20:46.000 Big moments in our life sober us up too.

00:20:49.000 I know my father moving on and passing on from this life sobered me up.

00:20:54.000 In a way that I then stepped up and said, oh, you don't have your dad to rely on anymore to catch you when you fall.

00:21:01.000 All these things he's been teaching you that you've been kind of making B minuses in life.

00:21:05.000 Now you better start making A's at him because he's not there.

00:21:10.000 So you better take some ownership.

00:21:11.000 And I remember when he moved on, I carved this in a tree, be less impressed, more involved.

00:21:18.000 And what it was, as soon as he passed away, I noticed that all the things that I was revering in life Mortally, like the fame, people, success, money.

00:21:29.000 They lowered down to high level things that I was looking up at.

00:21:33.000 And all the things that I was patronizing and condescending and going, oh, sloughing off, that's not worthy of me.

00:21:38.000 They rose up to high level.

00:21:41.000 And I remember saying, boy, the world is flat.

00:21:43.000 I'm looking it in the eye.

00:21:44.000 I see further, I see wider, I see clearer.

00:21:48.000 I've got to take ownership of myself.

00:21:51.000 And I stood with my heart higher, I stood with my head higher, and I walked forward and started doing things in that way that I was saying earlier, without asking so much permission all the time, and got a lot more done and became a lot more myself and found more satisfaction.

00:22:03.000 Yeah, sometimes people do need some wake-up call to let you know that this is a temporary existence.

00:22:11.000 And make the best out of it.

00:22:13.000 And sometimes it doesn't happen unless something tragic happens.

00:22:17.000 Like they are in a terrible way, but also a beautiful way.

00:22:21.000 There's a lot of power in tragedy.

00:22:23.000 Because you get something on the other end of it.

00:22:27.000 And you get clarity.

00:22:29.000 We will get some clarity out of this tragic and awkward time of COVID. Yes.

00:22:34.000 There are lessons we're learning that we don't even know what they are right now.

00:22:39.000 That when we get out of it, we'll inherently be part of our being that will go forward.

00:22:43.000 I sure as hell hope so.

00:22:44.000 But you know us humans, we're quick to snap right back to how we were before.

00:22:48.000 My concern is that it's happening so fast, but it's going to take a long time to sort of even out and for us to reach equilibrium.

00:22:59.000 That's what I'm worried about with this.

00:23:01.000 Wait, what's happening so fast?

00:23:03.000 The deterioration.

00:23:04.000 The financial deterioration, the fear, the changes with the masks and the social distancing.

00:23:11.000 Everything's happening so fast, I'm worried it's just going to take a long time before people feel comfortable again.

00:23:18.000 Oh, yeah.

00:23:20.000 I mean, look, I think for millions of people, this is the new normal.

00:23:27.000 I don't think we're ever really going back to how it was.

00:23:31.000 I mean, this is a year that agree or disagree with how we've gone about it and how things have been politicized here and there.

00:23:37.000 This is a year that has shaken our floor.

00:23:40.000 I don't believe this year is going to be on page 14 of the news for quite some time.

00:23:46.000 I think we've got a lot of rebuilding to do in the long term.

00:23:49.000 It may be a 20-year build.

00:23:52.000 Yeah, no, I agree.

00:23:54.000 It's just strange.

00:23:55.000 It just feels strange.

00:23:57.000 You go outside, the world just feels different than it felt a year ago.

00:24:02.000 And that phrase, the new normal that people like to bring up.

00:24:05.000 And this is where we find ourselves.

00:24:07.000 But I, along with you, I'm almost always optimistic.

00:24:12.000 And I have a lot of faith in human beings and I think that we can get through this and have a very valuable lesson about when things do happen that are positive and good, maybe we won't take it for granted as much as we did before.

00:24:25.000 Because we never thought that something like this was ever going to come along where the whole world was going to shut down for 7, 8, 9, 10, who knows how many months.

00:24:33.000 Yeah.

00:24:34.000 Forced winter.

00:24:35.000 Yeah.

00:24:36.000 We had winter forced upon us in something that we don't Take enough time to force upon ourselves and choose upon ourselves to do.

00:24:45.000 You talked about optimism, which I'd love to open that up with you, and faith in mankind.

00:24:49.000 And I was asked the other day about how do I trust?

00:24:53.000 And this is a time in the world where there's great distrust and people don't believe.

00:24:56.000 You don't trust others, you end up not trusting yourself, et cetera.

00:25:00.000 That reciprocity goes back and forth and then everyone's walking in circles.

00:25:03.000 But my answer, and I never thought about it until this guy asked me, is I was like, well, I'm talking to you right now, Joe.

00:25:10.000 You have 100% of my trust until you don't.

00:25:15.000 I'm not coming in hedging my bet with you or anyone that I meet for the first time.

00:25:20.000 I'm not coming in like, well, you're going to have to really earn your trust with me.

00:25:24.000 I'm looking out for you.

00:25:25.000 No, you have 100%.

00:25:27.000 You may ask me some questions right now that I'm like going, I think he's getting at something else that's not really in my best interest.

00:25:33.000 And maybe then you start losing some of my trust.

00:25:35.000 But as of right now, we meet, you have 100% until it starts to decrease.

00:25:38.000 And that's up to you.

00:25:39.000 I try to go towards everybody like that first.

00:25:44.000 So how is that?

00:25:45.000 And let's talk about optimism because there's foolish optimism.

00:25:50.000 There's like, and I don't think what you and I are saying is, hey, Glass half full.

00:25:56.000 Always see it half full.

00:25:57.000 No.

00:25:59.000 Let's recognize that it's half empty.

00:26:01.000 That's the inevitable part.

00:26:03.000 It's half empty or it's half full.

00:26:04.000 Now, what's the constructive way forward?

00:26:07.000 What can you do something with?

00:26:08.000 The half the glass has got nothing in it or the half that's got something in it?

00:26:11.000 Well, I think what I can do is, with the half that's got something in it, make something, irrigate something, create more water so I can fill it up.

00:26:17.000 I mean, it's choosing where can we be constructive.

00:26:21.000 Choose the affirmative, and that's not a foolish optimism because a lot of times I think certain optimisms, Hallmark card optimisms, can almost deny that there was the other half of glass that was empty or deny there's a problem.

00:26:34.000 And I'm not really a purchaser of denying where there's a problem.

00:26:41.000 You've got what I call whiskey philosopher wisdom.

00:26:47.000 Like, if you and I were having a couple of drinks at the bar, I have a feeling you would say some cool shit that I would remember and I would take home and I'd go, hmm, I'd be like lying in bed going, I'm going to remember that. 0.58

00:26:59.000 That makes a lot of sense. 0.71

00:27:01.000 Where'd you get that from?

00:27:03.000 I think, I mean, I grew up and found the storytellers.

00:27:07.000 I love them.

00:27:08.000 I love bumper stickers.

00:27:10.000 I love slogans.

00:27:10.000 I love to deconstruct a big conversation down to what's a one-liner?

00:27:15.000 What's the title of that song we just sang?

00:27:18.000 What's the title of this hour or whatever you and I talk?

00:27:23.000 What's the title of a relationship I have?

00:27:25.000 And you get enough of those and you go, ooh, what's the album title?

00:27:29.000 I think of things lyrically, and I think that may be where it comes from, as I think in a musical way.

00:27:35.000 Is this something you've acquired?

00:27:37.000 Is this something you always had?

00:27:38.000 Or you just sort of slowly developed it?

00:27:41.000 I think I'm guessing it was slowly developed.

00:27:44.000 I mean, again, I come from a family of storytellers where we sat around the table and told stories.

00:27:48.000 And if you didn't tell your story good, somebody else at the table took it over.

00:27:52.000 And you better be telling a good story and not dragging on or losing your train of thought because somebody else will step in and roll over you.

00:27:59.000 So when you wanted to get a word in, you better be a good storyteller.

00:28:04.000 Is that how you got into acting?

00:28:06.000 The ability to entertain?

00:28:08.000 Because a storyteller is essentially an entertainer.

00:28:10.000 Sure.

00:28:11.000 Well, I went to film school first.

00:28:13.000 Because when I look back at the diaries, I really couldn't admit that I wanted to be in front of the camera as an actor.

00:28:18.000 But that's what I really wanted to do.

00:28:20.000 But I went to film school because I felt like...

00:28:23.000 Being the storyteller behind the camera was something that my dad, one, could digest as a possible route forward for his son.

00:28:32.000 And it was all that I could digest at the time.

00:28:35.000 So when I made the leap to film school, I immediately would direct actors by performing myself in front of the camera.

00:28:42.000 So I really liked the first-person subjective performance.

00:28:46.000 And then I got that job in that summer of 92 on Days Confused, where I ended up three lines turned into three weeks work.

00:28:53.000 I'm getting paid 320 bucks a day.

00:28:55.000 People tell me I'm good at it.

00:28:57.000 I keep getting invited back to set. 0.99

00:28:58.000 I'm like, is this fucking legal? 0.97

00:29:02.000 And so I went back, graduated, picked up and packed up my U-Haul and drove West, young man, you know, two weeks out of graduating college. 0.98

00:29:11.000 And, you know, I didn't have that story of roughing it when I first got out there.

00:29:18.000 First two auditions I went on, I got the job. 0.97

00:29:21.000 That's pretty fucking amazing. 0.92

00:29:23.000 Yeah. 0.83

00:29:24.000 When you say that you didn't want to admit that you wanted to be in front of the camera, what do you think was holding you back?

00:29:32.000 I think it was the idea...

00:29:34.000 Look, I was raised in a blue-collar family where you get a job, you work your way up the ladder, company ladder.

00:29:38.000 To be in the arts...

00:29:40.000 To be in front of a camera, the actor sounded so vain, sounded so avant-garde, sounded so European, sounded so... 0.70

00:29:48.000 nothing stable about it.

00:29:50.000 And so to bring that up to my dad, even bring it up, like I said, it was not even in the vernacular of my dreams.

00:29:57.000 I did not even dream about it.

00:29:58.000 The only place that I admitted it was in my diaries.

00:30:01.000 And I found those where I wrote to myself before I could even consciously admit it, that I did want to be an actor.

00:30:10.000 All the way back since 1988. But I never admitted it until I started doing it.

00:30:15.000 And it turned into about 1993 that I was like, okay, I think I can do this.

00:30:20.000 I'm giving it a shot and I love this.

00:30:23.000 It's totally understandable that it would fall into some form of self-sabotage if it came that easy.

00:30:30.000 If all of a sudden you're on Dazed and Confused, all of a sudden you do your first two auditions, you get the gig, everything's rolling, you're young and handsome.

00:30:39.000 Woo! 0.99

00:30:40.000 Come on.

00:30:40.000 Dream nights.

00:30:43.000 I mean, how did you self-correct?

00:30:47.000 Tell you what I did.

00:30:50.000 It really happened...

00:30:52.000 Around 96 after I did a film with Time to Kill.

00:30:56.000 I remember the Friday before Time to Kill opened.

00:30:58.000 That's the movie that I was the lead in a big budget John Grisham movie.

00:31:02.000 That was the one that made me famous.

00:31:04.000 So the Friday before that movie opened, there's a hundred scripts I wanted to do.

00:31:12.000 I would have done anything to do any of these scripts.

00:31:14.000 99, no you can't.

00:31:16.000 1, yes you can.

00:31:17.000 I'm walking down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

00:31:20.000 400 people in the promenade.

00:31:23.000 396 minding their own business, four of them checking me out.

00:31:25.000 Two girls that thought I was cute and a couple other people that maybe like my shoes. 1.00

00:31:30.000 The Monday following that weekend, Time to Kill opens that night.

00:31:33.000 The Monday following, all of a sudden, out of those 100 scripts, 99 yeses.

00:31:40.000 You can do any of these, Matthew.

00:31:42.000 One no.

00:31:43.000 All of a sudden, that same promenade walk I took, 400 people.

00:31:46.000 Now 396 were staring at me.

00:31:48.000 And four people weren't, one of them was blind.

00:31:51.000 It inverted.

00:31:53.000 The world became a mirror. 0.99

00:31:54.000 I noticed, oh shit, I don't need any strangers anymore. 0.98

00:31:57.000 People are coming up to me going like, I'm so sorry about Ms. Hud. 0.99

00:31:59.000 And I'm going, wait a minute.

00:32:01.000 Number one, what's your name?

00:32:02.000 I've never met you.

00:32:03.000 How'd you know I had a dog whose name is Ms. Hud and has cancer?

00:32:06.000 You just skipped five filters of howdy.

00:32:10.000 You know what I mean?

00:32:10.000 And I remember feeling unbalanced about it.

00:32:13.000 How old were you?

00:32:14.000 I'm 23 at that time.

00:32:16.000 Woo! 0.99

00:32:17.000 I'm being told, I love you, I love you.

00:32:19.000 And in my mind, I'm going, man, we don't throw that word around.

00:32:22.000 I've said that to four people in my life.

00:32:25.000 So I wanted to know what the heck was real, what really mattered.

00:32:28.000 And I was looking for a place to go.

00:32:33.000 I needed to get out.

00:32:34.000 I needed to go, those demarcations we talked about earlier.

00:32:36.000 I needed to go break a long sweat.

00:32:38.000 I needed to go out and let memory catch up, see what the hell was real, what was not.

00:32:42.000 So I packed up my stuff.

00:32:45.000 I went to a monastery for about a week, and then I got back and I went off.

00:32:50.000 I had this certain dream, a repeating dream that came to me, and I went to Peru and flooded the Amazon for 22 days.

00:32:57.000 And it was a forced solitude.

00:33:00.000 Nobody there knew my name.

00:33:01.000 They didn't speak English.

00:33:03.000 I was forced to be with myself and my thoughts in my own company, which I was not enjoying.

00:33:08.000 So after about 12 days of shaking the monkeys off my back, figuring out what the hell I was going to forgive myself for and what I was going to lay down the hammer and say enough's enough about, I came out of it, woke up one morning light as a feather and shook hands with myself and said, we're going to be all right,

00:33:23.000 man.

00:33:24.000 You're the one person I can't get rid of, McConaughey, so we might as well get along and reentered. 0.98

00:33:28.000 And that recalibration helped a lot to disseminate through all the bullshit and all the excess of affluence that was coming at me at the time. 0.95

00:33:36.000 And I found some discernment. 0.69

00:33:37.000 I found some discrimination in my choices again and moved on from there.

00:33:43.000 But I've had to do that.

00:33:44.000 I've had to take off on my own many times to go recalibrate.

00:33:48.000 That sounds like a story of a man running and the rocks fall right behind him.

00:33:53.000 You just missed it.

00:33:56.000 Also, 23 years old, you weren't a child star, but it was damn close.

00:34:02.000 We all know what happens when your personality develops in the spotlight and you're famous.

00:34:10.000 Almost no one gets out alive.

00:34:12.000 I mean, and I understand it.

00:34:14.000 I wasn't ready to go out to Hollywood before I did.

00:34:18.000 Hollywood's not a place to go find yourself.

00:34:20.000 Hollywood's a place where you can be anything you want.

00:34:22.000 It's infinite yeses.

00:34:24.000 Well, in the infinite yeses, as you know, the infinite options can make a tyrant of any of us.

00:34:30.000 What is that noise that keeps going off?

00:34:32.000 Is that on your end?

00:34:33.000 That's on my end.

00:34:34.000 What is that?

00:34:35.000 I think it's emails coming in.

00:34:37.000 It's a crazy ding.

00:34:40.000 Ding!

00:34:41.000 Sign it.

00:34:42.000 Is that what you get when you get emails? 0.80

00:34:44.000 That would annoy the fuck out of me.

00:34:46.000 What's yours do?

00:34:47.000 Nothing?

00:34:48.000 Nothing.

00:34:49.000 I check them once a day.

00:34:51.000 Oh, see, I don't text.

00:34:53.000 You know, I like to email more than text because I can flag an email.

00:34:59.000 I can't flag a text.

00:35:00.000 I wish text would allow me to flag it.

00:35:01.000 Oh, I'm going to save that to answer it later.

00:35:04.000 And if I would just do text, I may forget you wrote.

00:35:07.000 And then two weeks later, I go, I never wrote him back.

00:35:09.000 Right, I do that.

00:35:11.000 But at least it doesn't go ding!

00:35:14.000 Ding!

00:35:18.000 There's, I don't know, maybe Jodie Foster made it out alive.

00:35:22.000 She might be the only, I mean, you worked with her. 0.93

00:35:24.000 Did she make it out alive of being a child of fame?

00:35:29.000 She made it out alive.

00:35:30.000 You know, she was, yeah, she was, wasn't she the Coppertone girl on the beach?

00:35:34.000 She was a bunch of things. 1.00

00:35:35.000 She wasn't in, she in Taxi Driver? 0.98

00:35:38.000 Yeah.

00:35:39.000 I mean, man.

00:35:40.000 She did.

00:35:41.000 You know who else did?

00:35:42.000 Ron Howard.

00:35:43.000 Yes, he did.

00:35:44.000 He's a very nice guy.

00:35:45.000 I ran into him at a doctor's office.

00:35:47.000 He couldn't have been nicer and more normal and really enjoyed talking to him.

00:35:52.000 Yeah, solid.

00:35:54.000 But I don't know.

00:35:55.000 I've never talked to them about how they navigated in their youth.

00:35:59.000 They obviously had some support because...

00:36:04.000 I see parents with their children and they want them to be in front of the camera.

00:36:09.000 And I've even seen some set that we work with.

00:36:11.000 And the mothers behind the camera, like Olin Mills photography, going, cheese, say cheese. 0.99

00:36:18.000 And the director, you go, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:36:20.000 This is not Olin Mills.

00:36:21.000 We just want the child to be himself or herself if they have the confidence to be themselves.

00:36:27.000 Don't be acting like anything.

00:36:31.000 This is not a Olin Mills photo shoot.

00:36:34.000 And so a lot of times I've seen the parents.

00:36:36.000 They're the ones that actually need the recalibration.

00:36:40.000 Yeah.

00:36:41.000 To go, whoa, don't be making your child doesn't know who he or she is yet.

00:36:45.000 And yet you're forcing them to try and be someone else.

00:36:48.000 And that's their reality.

00:36:49.000 There's danger in that.

00:36:51.000 Yeah.

00:36:52.000 For sure.

00:36:52.000 No, there really is.

00:36:53.000 It's very unfortunate when you see that.

00:36:56.000 You've worked with kids that have had to play your kid.

00:37:01.000 Like, does that feel conflicted to you when that happens?

00:37:06.000 Like, you almost, like, don't want them to do it?

00:37:09.000 No.

00:37:10.000 That's been some of my most comfortable roles, is playing a father, or a father figure.

00:37:15.000 And I think that's because...

00:37:17.000 The one thing I always knew I wanted to be in life was a father.

00:37:20.000 I knew that since I was eight years old.

00:37:22.000 What I mean is for the children themselves?

00:37:23.000 Do you feel weird for them?

00:37:25.000 No, no, the kids that are playing your child.

00:37:28.000 Like, knowing that they're going to be in a film at a really young age and they're going to experience all this.

00:37:35.000 I mean, I'll check in with, you know, again, what I've noticed is it's the parent that may need the recalibration.

00:37:40.000 The kid's just fine.

00:37:42.000 But then you see the mother or the father loving it more than they're loving it.

00:37:46.000 Or loving that child.

00:37:48.000 Is it from the camera we're going to be famous?

00:37:50.000 Well, you know, when I can, I'm trying to talk about...

00:37:54.000 Are your values in line here?

00:37:56.000 Because your son or daughter's future and who they are is depending on how you deal with it.

00:38:02.000 I've also seen parents handle it really, really well.

00:38:05.000 You're going to work, you have a job to do, if you have a talent to do that, but you still come home and you still do the chores and you're still my son or my daughter who acts just like you do and we don't do any of that BS. Things aren't changing around here.

00:38:20.000 You don't want to steal.

00:38:21.000 I wouldn't want my child to be raised in Hollywood by Hollywood.

00:38:29.000 Early in my career, I was like, no, I would never want my kids, if I have them, doing what I do.

00:38:33.000 I've completely turned to 180 on that.

00:38:36.000 I would love if my kids got into the industry that I'm in.

00:38:38.000 It's been great to me.

00:38:39.000 I've met some of the most creative, awesome people in my life.

00:38:43.000 But there's a time.

00:38:45.000 I wouldn't want them to go find out who they are.

00:38:49.000 In the Hollywood game by being an actor or that kind of story.

00:38:54.000 Tell your own.

00:38:55.000 I want to know their own story first before they're going to go tell someone else's story.

00:38:58.000 Yeah, I've likened it to almost like a chemical process.

00:39:02.000 Like if you want to make epoxy, you have to add a bunch of different ingredients.

00:39:05.000 And if you don't add the ingredients while you're mixing it up, it'll never be sure.

00:39:08.000 It'll never really firm up.

00:39:10.000 It'll never be complete.

00:39:11.000 And I feel like that's one of the things that happens to a lot of child actors.

00:39:15.000 Like the experience of people not knowing who you are, you have to earn their respect.

00:39:21.000 You have to earn their love.

00:39:23.000 Earn their friendship, prove yourself, not have people love you before you even meet them.

00:39:30.000 That seems toxic for children.

00:39:32.000 It just seems crazy.

00:39:34.000 I think it is highly toxic.

00:39:37.000 We started off the conversation on this topic 10 minutes ago.

00:39:41.000 Not many have recovered.

00:39:43.000 No, not many.

00:39:44.000 From that, the insecurity, the lack of knowing who they are, the lack of...

00:39:48.000 Talk about resistance.

00:39:50.000 You know, Hollywood's a place of yes.

00:39:52.000 Yes, of course you can.

00:39:53.000 Be whatever you want.

00:39:54.000 It's Halloween every day.

00:39:56.000 Now, wait a minute.

00:39:57.000 If you're playing dress-up every day and you have the option to be whoever the heck you want and, you know, you want to go to the club all night, you can do that too.

00:40:05.000 Everything's a yes.

00:40:06.000 In those infinite yeses, you can get lost and not found.

00:40:11.000 Yeah, I think they, you know, you gotta have some structure.

00:40:14.000 And like I said, I went out at 22, 23. I don't think I was ready to go out there before I went out there.

00:40:19.000 Because I had a sense, if I didn't, as much as I had a sense of who I was, I had a very clear sense of who I was not.

00:40:25.000 And that helped me because I was able to see some things and be invited to things and be around some places.

00:40:30.000 I was like, you know what, this is a stop, not a stay.

00:40:34.000 This isn't really going to feed me and really turn me on.

00:40:38.000 This is a short-term, you know, something I'm getting that's feeding me in the short term, but this isn't going to last.

00:40:44.000 This isn't really who I am.

00:40:46.000 Yeah, I've talked to a few child stars that sort of got, like Miley Cyrus is one that I talked to recently, and you see it in the conversation when she's describing what it was like to grow up famous.

00:40:59.000 And it's a very difficult path.

00:41:01.000 And I don't, you know, I think Jodie Foster, Ron Howard, there's a few that have gotten through it.

00:41:06.000 Someone should actually sit down with those folks and try to figure out what's the common denominator.

00:41:10.000 Like, how did they do it?

00:41:11.000 That'd be some great science.

00:41:12.000 That'd be some great science of how they did it.

00:41:15.000 You know, a story about...

00:41:17.000 I had a teaching tool that had to do with something I pulled off in Hollywood for my kids.

00:41:22.000 And I'm big on delayed gratification.

00:41:26.000 And, you know, after I won the Oscar for Best Actor, my kids were like, well, what'd you get the trophy for?

00:41:34.000 And I said, well, you remember a year and a half ago, we were in New Orleans, Popeye would go away, you'd wake up in the morning, I was already at work, and I'd come home, and have dinner with y'all, and tuck you in, and you wake up the next morning, I was gone again, and remember you said I looked like a giraffe because I was so skinny?

00:41:50.000 They're like, yeah, and I go, well, what I was doing for those 30 days when I was gone all day, a year and a half later, somebody said, deemed that excellent work, and they gave me a trophy for that work.

00:42:04.000 What I did a year and a half ago, and I remember I saw them click.

00:42:08.000 They were like, oh, Oh, our future is a compounding interest, you know what I mean?

00:42:13.000 Oh, you can build, you can do something today and get rewarded tomorrow.

00:42:19.000 And it was an example that worked for them of understanding, you know, that you can invest and make choices to engineer more ROI. I know that was a milestone for you,

00:42:34.000 and obviously you won the Oscar for it, but there's something about these physical transformation roles when an actor does something where you realize, like, they're literally torturing themselves.

00:42:47.000 I mean, how did you get down to?

00:42:50.000 How much did you weigh?

00:42:52.000 I weighed 135. And look, you know this, I was not torturing myself.

00:42:57.000 I was militant. 1.00

00:42:59.000 The hardest part was making the damn choice. 1.00

00:43:02.000 It was my responsibility. 0.99

00:43:03.000 If I looked like I do now, playing Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club, you are out of the movie the first frame. 0.99

00:43:10.000 Oh, bullshit. 0.99

00:43:10.000 He's not stage four HIV. I'm out. 0.99

00:43:13.000 What's my job?

00:43:14.000 I had to lose the weight.

00:43:15.000 Once I made my mind up, I did the smart thing.

00:43:18.000 I gave myself five months.

00:43:19.000 I got on a diet.

00:43:20.000 Where I'd have my tapioca pudding or whatever, three egg whites in the morning, five ounce of fish, a cup of vegetables for lunch, five ounce of fish, a cup of vegetables for dinner, as much wine as I wanted to drink, and I lost 2.5 pounds a week like clockwork, no exercise.

00:43:33.000 As much wine as you wanted to drink?

00:43:36.000 Much as I wanted.

00:43:38.000 What kind of diet is this?

00:43:40.000 It worked, 2.5 pounds.

00:43:42.000 And it didn't matter if I was going to the treadmill and burning 2,000 calories a day or not.

00:43:48.000 2.5 pounds a week.

00:43:51.000 Clockwork.

00:43:51.000 And what happened during that time, and this is another reason that I really didn't torture myself, when people say, oh my gosh, it's been so hard.

00:43:56.000 I was like, no, what did I learn from it?

00:43:57.000 That the body's more resilient than we give it credit for.

00:44:02.000 The power I lost from the neck down, equally or more so, sublimated to the neck up.

00:44:08.000 My mental game was so acute and so on point.

00:44:12.000 I was clinically smart.

00:44:14.000 It didn't matter if I drank my wine till one in the morning.

00:44:17.000 At 4.30 a.m., No alarm clock.

00:44:20.000 Bang! 1.00

00:44:20.000 I was up. 1.00

00:44:22.000 Every morning.

00:44:23.000 I had an incredible amount of mental energy.

00:44:25.000 I had no leverage from my neck down.

00:44:27.000 I mean, my knees, I had no insulation anywhere.

00:44:30.000 You know, my body would hurt when I'd try to run 10 feet.

00:44:33.000 But from here up, there's some things I actually miss about it.

00:44:36.000 What do you think?

00:44:37.000 What was the process?

00:44:39.000 Like, why did your brain work better when you were starving yourself?

00:44:43.000 I think because it wasn't relying on it.

00:44:45.000 I think on a cellular level, I felt my body going, hey, to use a baseball term, you got people over there on the bench in the dugout, then you got people out in the field that are, you know, sitting in the bullpen not working out.

00:45:00.000 On a cellular level, cellularly, My sales that were in the dugout and over there in the bullpen had to get up and go, whoa, we're not getting fed what we used to get fed.

00:45:12.000 We got to exercise here.

00:45:14.000 We got to come too.

00:45:15.000 Hut-hut! 0.98

00:45:18.000 My body's not getting, we're not getting what we used to get.

00:45:22.000 We're not placated by what we used to get.

00:45:25.000 Our insulation's gone.

00:45:27.000 What we used to rely on is gone.

00:45:29.000 So I think my whole body woke up and my brain got really super, super sharp on that as well.

00:45:36.000 So I think it was the going without.

00:45:37.000 There was a bit of a, it was what I went without that sharpened up and made my brain on the cellular level much more hungry.

00:45:45.000 What do you weigh normally?

00:45:47.000 188. Jesus Christ.

00:45:50.000 So you lost 50 pounds?

00:45:51.000 Yeah.

00:45:53.000 There's roles where guys do this, where it defines their career.

00:45:58.000 Like Robert De Niro when he gained weight for Raging Bull.

00:46:01.000 Christian Bale when he did The Machinist.

00:46:05.000 There's these roles where a guy or a woman just transforms.

00:46:10.000 Charlize Theron when she played Monster.

00:46:12.000 They transform their body.

00:46:14.000 It's a different level of commitment.

00:46:19.000 When you entered into that film, was this the first time you'd ever had to do that?

00:46:23.000 Yeah.

00:46:24.000 First time I ever had to do it.

00:46:25.000 I mean, you got jacked for that, well, I don't know how jacked you were before, for that dragon movie.

00:46:30.000 I'm sorry, I forget the name of it.

00:46:32.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:32.000 Reign of Fire.

00:46:33.000 Reign of Fire. 0.99

00:46:33.000 I fucking love that movie. 0.99

00:46:35.000 Van Zandt. 0.99

00:46:35.000 That was a great movie. 0.99

00:46:36.000 Van Zandt.

00:46:37.000 I miss Van Zandt.

00:46:38.000 It was a great movie. 0.91

00:46:40.000 Talk about a guy who was about no bullshit. 0.93

00:46:42.000 Boy, that was a sobering character. 0.94

00:46:43.000 I miss that guy.

00:46:45.000 Yeah, it was a fun character.

00:46:46.000 But you were jacked in that movie.

00:46:47.000 Were you jacked normally, or did you have to get jacked for that movie?

00:46:51.000 I got more jacked for that. 0.95

00:46:52.000 Look, our family, we come from our anatomy, and the McConaughey's had a big tricep. 0.59

00:46:59.000 My dad, you'll love this.

00:47:01.000 I'd be sitting there as a kid, and my dad was a big guy, 6'4", 265, played Kentucky under Bear Bryant, got drafted by the Green Bay Packers.

00:47:10.000 He was a big bear of a man.

00:47:11.000 And he comes in the living room one night, and I'm in front of the TV watching my favorite show, Incredible Hulk.

00:47:15.000 And there's Luke Rickman.

00:47:16.000 And I'm like standing in front of the TV doing all this.

00:47:19.000 He goes, boy, what you doing?

00:47:20.000 I was like, dad, look at him, man.

00:47:21.000 I mean, he's got these baseball-sized biceps.

00:47:23.000 Look at him, wow.

00:47:24.000 And he goes, uh-huh.

00:47:26.000 And he takes off his shirt.

00:47:29.000 And he goes, let me tell you something, son.

00:47:31.000 He goes, that right there.

00:47:33.000 He pulls the bicep.

00:47:33.000 He goes, that's nice.

00:47:35.000 Makes the girls scream.

00:47:38.000 You know, it's for show.

00:47:41.000 He goes, that right there.

00:47:44.000 He goes, that's the work muscle.

00:47:45.000 That's the one that puts the roof over our head.

00:47:48.000 That's for dough. 0.70

00:47:55.000 Show and dough.

00:47:56.000 The triceps for dough.

00:47:57.000 So I had big triceps.

00:47:59.000 So when I went and worked out, and if I take a little bit of creatine, my triceps go bananas.

00:48:04.000 So that was a minor transformation.

00:48:06.000 It wasn't that difficult to do.

00:48:09.000 No, it was minor.

00:48:10.000 It was a lot of boxing and just some nice, you know, throwing some weight around.

00:48:17.000 You just got fit.

00:48:19.000 But for Dallas Buyers Club...

00:48:21.000 Yeah, I've always tried to stay within 10 pounds of striking weight of whatever I need to do for the role.

00:48:26.000 Was it hard to make the decision to do that for Dallas Buyers Club, though?

00:48:30.000 Because that was a giant transformation.

00:48:32.000 I mean...

00:48:35.000 It wasn't hard.

00:48:36.000 I was looking for something to be all consumed with, something to be obsessed with, a singular obsession.

00:48:42.000 You know, this is my job.

00:48:44.000 So my life revolved around that.

00:48:46.000 My wife made me meals.

00:48:48.000 Trust me, I didn't go to Pizza Hut and say, no thank you to the pizza, I'll have a salad.

00:48:52.000 I did not even put myself in front of Temptations.

00:48:55.000 I was a hermit.

00:48:57.000 I stayed in.

00:48:58.000 My wife made me the meals, and I studied and wrote and created the character all day long.

00:49:04.000 And I never got tired of that.

00:49:06.000 So my world, I was in a bubble.

00:49:08.000 I just put myself in a bubble for five and a half months.

00:49:11.000 And that commitment to put myself on that island, to know that it's good to have this singular obsession.

00:49:17.000 You cannot go far enough, McConaughey.

00:49:21.000 There's a freedom in that.

00:49:23.000 I've always found having a character that I can commit that much to.

00:49:27.000 You cannot go far enough.

00:49:29.000 That was your thought process.

00:49:32.000 Yeah, I knew when I got down to 135, I was like, oh, okay, that's good.

00:49:37.000 And mind you, I will tell you this, when I started to eat more at 135 to say, let's slow this train down and quit losing weight, my body had already got the message and had its blinders on that we're going south, and it kept going south.

00:49:48.000 So that was a bit scary because I kept losing the weight because my body had already gotten in the rhythm of losing weight.

00:49:55.000 And like I said, it turned a blind eye on getting any more food.

00:49:58.000 So there was a tough transition there for about two weeks to get my weight to balance out again and say, let's just hold at 135. So you dropped below 135 at one point in time?

00:50:08.000 Just went below 135, got down about 132 and then brought it back up.

00:50:15.000 Now, how long did it take for you to physically recover from something like that?

00:50:18.000 Where you're back to normal?

00:50:20.000 Man, I'm still recovering.

00:50:21.000 Really?

00:50:23.000 Because I thought that.

00:50:24.000 I thought that when I saw you in that film, I told my wife, I remember saying this, like, this is going to take a long time for him to bounce back.

00:50:31.000 Because I know how hard it is for guys to cut weight for fights.

00:50:34.000 And I know a lot of guys that have really depleted their body doing that.

00:50:38.000 And when I saw you that gaunt and skinny, I was like, he's eating his body.

00:50:43.000 Your body ate itself.

00:50:44.000 It was eating itself.

00:50:45.000 It's the only way.

00:50:46.000 Yeah.

00:50:48.000 Look, I came back and I did True Detective after that, and I got on True Detective, I got to about 167 and held.

00:50:54.000 And I loved that weight as well, because I had a little more leverage, I had a little more athletic ability, I had a little more insulation around my joints, but I was still pretty stripped and ripped.

00:51:04.000 Slowly coming back from that, I did learn this.

00:51:07.000 I had to come back very slowly because I'd heard stories about people that go, well, now I'm going to gain weight.

00:51:13.000 I can eat as much as I want.

00:51:14.000 And that you can grow back and look deformed.

00:51:17.000 Your features can come back if you rush it.

00:51:20.000 They can come back in odd ways.

00:51:21.000 So I very slowly put the weight back on.

00:51:25.000 I then did a role a few years ago, I guess it was about four, three years after Dallas Barsdale, where I put on 47 pounds.

00:51:34.000 So I was 220. What was that?

00:51:37.000 Which is a hell of a lot more gold.

00:51:38.000 It's called gold.

00:51:39.000 It's a hell of a lot more fun to put that weight on than to take it off, where I was just cheeseburger king.

00:51:45.000 And my family loved me in that role because I was Captain Fun.

00:51:48.000 I was yes to everything.

00:51:49.000 Milkshakes for breakfast, you got it.

00:51:51.000 Let's go.

00:51:52.000 Now that was, I've never talked about at that time, I was still mentally sharp, not as sharp as I was when I was down at 135, but at 220, libido was through the roof. 0.96

00:52:05.000 I couldn't catch a cold if I swam in the damn canals of Amsterdam, man. 0.95

00:52:10.000 I was like the abominable snowman. 0.99

00:52:12.000 I was insulated and had great energy.

00:52:16.000 During that time.

00:52:17.000 Now coming back from that, I still got a couple things on my back here around the waist.

00:52:21.000 I'm like, where'd that come from?

00:52:23.000 That came up with that roll in gold and what's that still doing hanging around?

00:52:27.000 You know, so I did have to come back slowly.

00:52:33.000 But I will say this, you know, 188 since then, that's my fighting weight before.

00:52:42.000 I look a little different than the 188 before then.

00:52:46.000 Before Dallas Buyers Club.

00:52:47.000 It's a different 188. So it did take a physical toll?

00:52:51.000 Sure.

00:52:52.000 I would say, you know, even, you know, neck and things like that.

00:52:58.000 You know, neck and bone structure is the same, but where...

00:53:02.000 But how much of this is just getting older, too, and having less fat cells?

00:53:06.000 Right.

00:53:06.000 I'm not sure.

00:53:08.000 But, yeah, it didn't hurt.

00:53:11.000 Like I said, I think I stretched my body.

00:53:13.000 I noticed when, you know...

00:53:15.000 When I got down to that weight at 135, if I tried to sprint 10 yards, my knees would buckle.

00:53:21.000 I had no insulation.

00:53:23.000 My knees hurt.

00:53:24.000 Yeah, I watched it again recently just to kind of get it into my head, and that's when I was thinking, this is going to take a while to bounce back from.

00:53:30.000 I almost forgot how gaunt you got.

00:53:34.000 It was striking. 1.00

00:53:37.000 That's a fucking crazy commitment, man. 1.00

00:53:40.000 You drinking moonshine? 1.00

00:53:40.000 What are you doing there? 1.00

00:53:43.000 What is that?

00:53:44.000 Some kombucha.

00:53:45.000 Oh.

00:53:47.000 It was neither that or whiskey.

00:53:49.000 52 hours.

00:53:50.000 Okay.

00:53:51.000 Yeah.

00:53:52.000 You're a kombucha guy?

00:53:53.000 Mm-hmm.

00:53:54.000 I love that stuff.

00:53:55.000 Daily.

00:53:56.000 I do too.

00:53:58.000 Yeah, that's great for the immune system. 0.68

00:54:01.000 When you look at a role, like a role like Dallas Buyers Club or something like that, what makes you choose a role?

00:54:07.000 Does it just have to resonate with you?

00:54:09.000 Is it who's involved, who the directors are, the producers, the other actors that are committed to it?

00:54:15.000 What makes you decide, this is Interstellar, let's do it?

00:54:20.000 Alright, well first, what's the pedigree of the people around me?

00:54:23.000 The director, the script, the producers, or Are they excellent?

00:54:30.000 Are they the right for this story?

00:54:32.000 I do look at that.

00:54:33.000 But the main thing I look at is this character.

00:54:39.000 The last 12 years, I've been able to choose characters that made me shake in my boots the right way.

00:54:45.000 You know, that good kind of scared, where you're like, ooh, I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do with this, but I can't wait to find out.

00:54:51.000 I like characters where the decisions are really going to cost them, where there's consequences with every single scene that they're in.

00:55:00.000 And the favorite consequences to have are something like a Ron Woodruff.

00:55:04.000 It's life or death consequences.

00:55:06.000 Something like a Van Zandt.

00:55:07.000 How can I remain from becoming extinct?

00:55:10.000 You know, those are great.

00:55:11.000 Okay, we brought it down to the bare necessities.

00:55:15.000 How to survive or how to stay alive.

00:55:18.000 From that place, Then I can give my all.

00:55:22.000 Choosing roles where I'm not going to have any compression from the ceiling to the basement of the emotions I want to give.

00:55:30.000 No one's going to tell me, oh, you can't be that angry.

00:55:33.000 Oh, no one's going to tell me you can't be that sad.

00:55:35.000 You can't cry that hard.

00:55:36.000 No one's going to tell me you can't laugh that hard.

00:55:38.000 No one's going to tell me you can't hurt that bad.

00:55:41.000 I've been enjoying choosing roles that have a really high ceiling and a limitless ceiling and a limitless basement to where I, Matthew, can go as deep or as high as I want to with them.

00:55:52.000 There's a lot of roles that I've done in my career, for instance, like with romantic comedies, where those emotions are compressed for a reason.

00:55:59.000 The ceiling, you can't laugh that loud.

00:56:01.000 You can't love that hard.

00:56:03.000 You can't get that pissed off.

00:56:05.000 You'll sink the ship of those movies. 0.98

00:56:06.000 They die.

00:56:07.000 Built for buoyancy.

00:56:09.000 I've been enjoying the dramatic roles and that's what I love about drama is that, no, it's to the individual actor.

00:56:15.000 Your ceiling of how much you want to love or your basement of how much you want to hate, go for it.

00:56:21.000 There is no limit on either one of those.

00:56:24.000 That's the kind of role that really has been turning me on.

00:56:27.000 And that makes me feel like I'm having an experience in the making of the movie, in the architecture of the character, rather than just going and doing a job and getting a paycheck.

00:56:38.000 During the quarantine, the lockdown, my family and I had movie night basically every night.

00:56:43.000 Especially when the kids were doing Zoom classes.

00:56:47.000 We had to do something different, so we mixed it up.

00:56:51.000 We watched Contact again.

00:56:53.000 I haven't seen Contact in forever. 0.99

00:56:56.000 First of all, God damn it! 0.99

00:56:58.000 Damn, what a good movie that was. 0.99

00:57:00.000 That's a good movie. 0.99

00:57:02.000 And a great movie about aliens.

00:57:06.000 Like a movie that gives you a different perspective on the possibilities of contact and just the fact that it was a Carl Sagan book and there's just so much good to it.

00:57:18.000 That character that you played was a fascinating guy and I kind of feel like there's some of you in that guy.

00:57:27.000 Sure.

00:57:29.000 I mean, you are...

00:57:30.000 Am I wrong here?

00:57:33.000 You are religious in some way.

00:57:35.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:57:37.000 And I want to bring this up in this day and age when people go, no, I'm not religious, I'm only spiritual.

00:57:45.000 You know what the Latin root of religion is?

00:57:48.000 Re legare.

00:57:50.000 And legare means to bind together.

00:57:53.000 Re means again.

00:57:55.000 Well, in a world that's saying I'm only spiritual because I want unity, that's exactly what religion means.

00:58:00.000 We bastardize the meaning of it over time, and we've excluded people, and we've corporatized it and such, but yes, I am religious.

00:58:09.000 That character, you know, I had written stories.

00:58:12.000 I'd written a college paper called John Wayne Goes West, and it was about how can you be a believer in In a world of science.

00:58:20.000 And I remember writing things like, during the make of that movie, like, science is the practical pursuit of God.

00:58:27.000 The two are not exclusive.

00:58:30.000 They dance together.

00:58:32.000 They go together.

00:58:34.000 Belief in science.

00:58:36.000 And I never saw those as contradictions.

00:58:38.000 And that's part of what the reason I attacked that role and became part of that movie.

00:58:44.000 I wanted to play a person that had that point of view of a believer in a world of science.

00:58:50.000 Not at the exclusion of science and not at the exclusion of belief.

00:58:54.000 Yeah, it's a confusing role for a lot of people if someone is a believer and also a proponent of science, because they want to know what are your literal beliefs.

00:59:06.000 Like, are you taking the Bible at its literal word, or do you use it as some sort of a guidebook of the experiences of these people that lived thousands of years ago that have been translated from multiple different languages back to English?

00:59:22.000 And is there wisdom in those translations?

00:59:25.000 Is there wisdom in those original thoughts, these thousands of years of people contemplating and mulling on these things, and that so many have used these as a scaffolding for morals and ethics and for societies?

00:59:43.000 Yep.

00:59:45.000 It's...

00:59:46.000 I mean, you know, for people that go, oh, it's...

00:59:51.000 It's a circus book, or people are non-believers, and I'm like, well, it's still the best one going.

00:59:57.000 There's a lot of great truths that come out of the Bible, and it is open for a lot of people.

01:00:04.000 It has been interpreted and reinterpreted.

01:00:06.000 It has been translated.

01:00:07.000 It has been handed down.

01:00:09.000 I, for myself, I don't know what to do in my daily life with the burning bush.

01:00:15.000 I don't know what to do with that.

01:00:17.000 I do I do know what to do with love your neighbor like yourself.

01:00:22.000 I do know what to do with Matthew 6.22.

01:00:25.000 If I be single, that whole body will be full of light.

01:00:28.000 I do know what to do with some proverbs that I can take into daily practice and go, oh, I felt.

01:00:33.000 My life.

01:00:34.000 I felt improvement.

01:00:36.000 I felt success in my relationships and my relationship with the day, with my career, by following that, by treating others how I wanted to be treated, the golden rule.

01:00:46.000 So I take the practical stuff myself and try to utilize it and pick out what can work for me.

01:00:52.000 When you say you don't know what to do with the burning bush, what do you mean by that?

01:00:58.000 I don't know what to do on a daily basis with the teaching of, and then he showed up as a burning bush, or the magic tricks.

01:01:07.000 And I don't know what to do with, and Jesus healed everyone, and he couldn't walk, and now he touched me and he can walk.

01:01:13.000 I don't know what to do with that.

01:01:15.000 I don't know how to take that into my life and go, oh, there's something useful and practical and healthy for you, Matthew, that you can practice there.

01:01:23.000 So the magic that leans in towards what we would call now more fantasy, I don't know what to do with that.

01:01:30.000 There's philosophies and there's proverbs and there's teachings that I think are very valid and very helpful that we could all be reminded of that are in the Bible that I do find quite useful.

01:01:41.000 Yeah, I think it's almost impossible to figure out what they were trying to say with a lot of the things.

01:01:48.000 It's why it's open to interpretation, but also open to manipulation.

01:01:52.000 And that's where people have a real problem with it, when it's used for...

01:02:01.000 Sure.

01:02:22.000 100%.

01:02:22.000 Look, I get it.

01:02:24.000 I mean, you know, it's like, what do our fathers teach us?

01:02:27.000 Is your father still alive?

01:02:29.000 Well, I don't really know him.

01:02:31.000 I have a complicated family history.

01:02:34.000 Okay.

01:02:35.000 Well, fathers are father figures.

01:02:37.000 I have a stepfather.

01:02:38.000 He's still alive, and I'm close to him.

01:02:41.000 Well, stepfather, when he goes, you'll find out some things where the messenger and the message weren't exactly in simpatico.

01:02:47.000 You know what I mean?

01:02:48.000 Does that mean that you throw the messenger out? 0.99

01:02:51.000 Because you're like, oh, bullshit, you weren't following all that stuff. 0.92

01:02:53.000 No, you take the message that this is the stuff that you can, that could work for you, that maybe they wanted it for you, they couldn't follow through on it themselves. 0.99

01:03:01.000 There's certain parts of the Bible that have that too.

01:03:04.000 You don't throw out the whole, you can't, I don't think it makes any sense to throw out the whole book.

01:03:07.000 It's what we're doing in society now.

01:03:09.000 I mean, we're making people persona non grata.

01:03:14.000 Because of something they do or that is right now deemed wrong or it's the hot point and a hot topic right now.

01:03:24.000 You can't erase someone's entire existence.

01:03:28.000 Where the heck does some forgiveness go?

01:03:30.000 And again, that like optimism, it's not erasing the crisis.

01:03:34.000 It's not saying there wasn't a problem first.

01:03:36.000 It's not saying that there's parts of the Bible that people have bastardized and used in the wrong way.

01:03:43.000 But you don't throw the whole book out and say, well, it's all bad then.

01:03:47.000 Because it's false.

01:03:50.000 Have you encountered difficulty expressing this in Hollywood?

01:03:57.000 You know, Hollywood is predominantly left-wing and very secular or Jewish in some circles, but it's not like a place where Christian fundamental values are espoused openly.

01:04:12.000 You know, a lot of Jewish folks are in Hollywood, and that seems to be okay with a lot of people, but Some other religions, particularly if you're a fundamentalist Christian or if you have Christian values, a lot of people frown upon that.

01:04:27.000 Why do you think that is, and have you had difficulties with that?

01:04:31.000 I don't know.

01:04:32.000 I haven't had difficulties.

01:04:34.000 I have had, and I won't throw any people under the bus, but I have had moments where I was on stage receiving an award in front of my peers in Hollywood.

01:04:50.000 And there were people in the crowd that I have prayed with before dinners many times.

01:04:56.000 And when I thank God, I saw some of those people go to clap, but then notice that, whoa, whoa, it's gonna be a bad thing on my resume, and then sit back on their hands.

01:05:07.000 Oh, wow.

01:05:09.000 And I've seen people read the room and go, whoa, that wouldn't bode well for me in the future.

01:05:17.000 If we're getting a job or getting votes or what have you.

01:05:23.000 I have seen that.

01:05:25.000 I've witnessed that.

01:05:26.000 I don't judge them for it. 0.93

01:05:28.000 I just wish that it seems like a silly argument.

01:05:35.000 One of the things that are some people in our industry, not all of them, but there's some that go to the left so far As our friend Jordan Peterson, who's back, saw his video being back,

01:05:51.000 that go to the illiberal left side so far that it's so condescending and patronizing to 50% of the world that need the empathy that the liberal side gives and should give to Throw somebody's,

01:06:13.000 illegitimize them because they say they are a believer.

01:06:19.000 It's just so arrogant. 0.98

01:06:22.000 And in some ways hypocritical to me.

01:06:26.000 Yeah, so I haven't run into, you know, I haven't head-butted trouble on that, but I've always, you look, my career, I've pretty much gone my own path.

01:06:36.000 And by hook or by crook, just trying to figure a way out into what I was doing.

01:06:40.000 And I haven't measured or noticed where it has harmed or gotten my way of what I wanted to achieve in Hollywood.

01:06:48.000 I think you slipped through the net.

01:06:51.000 You got far enough down the river where it's not going to be a problem.

01:06:56.000 Well, kind of like when I, you know, like my mom when I first got famous, you know, it's this great story in the book. 0.90

01:07:04.000 Right when I got famous, I'm trying to figure my own shit out, right? 0.90

01:07:07.000 And then next night, I get a call. 0.98

01:07:09.000 My buddy says, hey, are you watching this?

01:07:11.000 I'm like, what?

01:07:11.000 He goes, turn on hard copy.

01:07:12.000 And there's my mom with the cameraman taking a guy through our house going, this is where I caught him in bed with Melissa.

01:07:20.000 You know what I caught him doing in there?

01:07:22.000 Oh, don't worry about it.

01:07:23.000 It's no big deal.

01:07:23.000 I've seen it a thousand times.

01:07:24.000 And I'm going, I call her up.

01:07:25.000 I'm like, mom.

01:07:26.000 What did you do?

01:07:27.000 She's like, what?

01:07:28.000 I go, don't say what.

01:07:29.000 I can hear it on the other end of the line.

01:07:31.000 You're watching it too.

01:07:32.000 It's hard copy.

01:07:33.000 She's like, oh, I didn't think you'd find out.

01:07:38.000 I had eight years where my mom and I's relationship was strained.

01:07:42.000 I didn't have a mother to talk to to share things with because hell, it'd show up on a hard copy the next night.

01:07:49.000 My career got solidified enough, you know, I slipped through the net.

01:07:54.000 I was stable enough.

01:07:55.000 I went in and let go of the rain and said, Mom, you go for it.

01:07:58.000 You can take the mic anytime.

01:08:00.000 You can hit that red carpet, wear your short leather dress and talk whatever, tell whatever stories you want to.

01:08:05.000 But again, it took a while for me to feel stable enough to slip through the net and let her go be herself as well.

01:08:11.000 This thing you're talking about with people disparaging people for their opinions and their beliefs and the way they live in their life, I think a lot of this is coming from this condensed way of impersonal communication that we're getting from social media.

01:08:28.000 I think this is so much of the way people are judging people and the way people are communicating with people.

01:08:35.000 One-on-one is how human beings are supposed to talk.

01:08:38.000 That's how we're supposed to work things out.

01:08:40.000 And when you look at a person's eyes and you experience their feelings and you read their social cues, that's how we communicate and that's how we work things out and hash things out and figure each other out.

01:08:53.000 And maybe someone has a different set of beliefs than you, but they happen to be your neighbor and you like them.

01:08:58.000 And you're like, hey man, tell me, what's it like to be a Sikh?

01:09:01.000 What is it like to be Muslim?

01:09:04.000 What are your beliefs as a Quaker?

01:09:07.000 What's going on in your life?

01:09:09.000 Tell me.

01:09:10.000 I had a neighbor who was one of my favorite neighbors I've ever had.

01:09:13.000 He was a Scientologist.

01:09:14.000 And he was a weird dude, man, but he was always friendly as hell.

01:09:18.000 I would go outside, we'd have weird conversations about these things that he was doing, and I'd just try to figure him out, and he'd try to figure me out.

01:09:26.000 We always waved to each other, we were always friendly.

01:09:29.000 I miss that guy. 1.00

01:09:30.000 But he and I, if we were talking online, I'd be like, you know, if I was a younger man and I was dumber and he said something about his belief and I thought that was stupid, I'd probably say, what kind of dumb shit is that? 1.00

01:09:44.000 You believe that nonsense written by a science fiction author? 0.99

01:09:47.000 But talking to the guy, that was never the way I talked to him.

01:09:51.000 When he and I were looking at each other, we were just two neighbors trying to figure each other out and just trying to be friendly and have a harmonious neighborhood.

01:10:01.000 Well, it's one of the things I think you're going to like about your new home, the city.

01:10:08.000 I think I mentioned this to you when I called you to say welcome.

01:10:12.000 You know, one of the great things about Austin, Texas is even though it's the blueberry and tomato soup, the more liberal city in the conservative state.

01:10:21.000 You can see neighbors next door to each other talking to each other and one has a Trump sign in the yard, the other one has a Biden sign in the yard.

01:10:28.000 They're still having a conversation.

01:10:29.000 No one's going, sneaking out in the middle of the night to go rip that other person's sign out.

01:10:35.000 When Austin is at its best, it has that.

01:10:38.000 You know, I think that the, you know, and I've got young children and they're starting to get, we don't allow them on social media yet, but you see these people who are living in a time where you put out Something of yourself.

01:10:51.000 And your whole value of yourself is reliant on what the world out there, strangers you don't know, comment about that.

01:11:00.000 And if I put out a picture that I'm really happy and excited about on Instagram tonight, and if I'm going to look what the reaction is, and the majority says, oh, F you, McConaughey, all of a sudden I have a bad night.

01:11:12.000 I'm having a bad time.

01:11:13.000 But if you go, same picture, and you go, awesome.

01:11:16.000 And the consensus is awesome.

01:11:18.000 All of a sudden, You've controlled how I feel and I'm having a great night.

01:11:22.000 I'm in a great mood.

01:11:23.000 So we're sort of at the behest, people, of we're reacting.

01:11:28.000 That's kind of what we're doing more in the social media.

01:11:31.000 We're reacting.

01:11:31.000 And you look at things that go on on issues right now.

01:11:38.000 Everyone's reacting to things instead of creating the story or having an opinion coming out of the gate.

01:11:48.000 And hey, I understand it to some extent because You get hired and fired on those things these days.

01:11:55.000 You're hired and fired or not hired because you don't have as many people following your whatever it is.

01:12:04.000 That's a measure now of what we call success in this life.

01:12:09.000 What's up at the top in America?

01:12:11.000 Money and fame, baby.

01:12:13.000 You got that.

01:12:15.000 You've made it in America.

01:12:17.000 You are successful.

01:12:18.000 We pat you on the back.

01:12:19.000 We give you respect.

01:12:20.000 I got nothing against money and fame.

01:12:22.000 I got money and I'm famous.

01:12:24.000 But that's not where my value system lies or what is most important to me and what I'm trying to teach my kids.

01:12:34.000 There's a way to get that.

01:12:35.000 And if you can do it in a way to have your value system, let's praise that.

01:12:39.000 But it's tough because that's not what the world right now, especially America, rewards people for.

01:12:46.000 Yeah, I think there's a real issue with social media, in particular with children, in that we're just not designed for that.

01:12:54.000 We're not designed for that kind of communication.

01:12:57.000 And it's so easy to dismiss someone who's just text on a screen.

01:13:01.000 It's so easy to shut people down.

01:13:05.000 And it's...

01:13:06.000 You see people getting praised because they're famous and because they're wealthy.

01:13:10.000 I mean, how much of what social media is for a lot of young kids is seeing famous people in front of Lamborghinis with a million dollar watch on?

01:13:19.000 It's a bizarre posing ritual that people are doing.

01:13:23.000 It's very strange.

01:13:25.000 Funny story about that.

01:13:26.000 I'm in Miami, Southeast.

01:13:28.000 Now, mind you, I really like Miami because it's so obvious.

01:13:33.000 I mean, in LA, people get like a boob job or a lip job or a calf job and they try to say, no, it's all natural.

01:13:40.000 In Miami, they go, I just got my calf job.

01:13:43.000 I just got a boob job. 1.00

01:13:44.000 Hold up, hold up, hold up.

01:13:45.000 Calf jobs? 0.71

01:13:46.000 How many people are getting calf jobs?

01:13:49.000 Guys will go get a calf implant.

01:13:51.000 Is that real?

01:13:52.000 That's still happening?

01:13:53.000 And in Miami...

01:13:56.000 They're showing you.

01:13:58.000 There's no shame in that.

01:13:59.000 There's no embarrassment in not being that.

01:14:02.000 I'm in Miami making a film.

01:14:04.000 I think it was The Beach Bum.

01:14:06.000 And I'm walking along the beach and there's this guy, unbuttoned silk shirt, got his gold chains on.

01:14:11.000 He's all greased up and he's leaning against his purple Lamborghini.

01:14:14.000 And he's got somebody taking pictures of him.

01:14:15.000 And I'm just saying, what's going on?

01:14:17.000 He's got the palm trees in the back of the ocean.

01:14:18.000 So I ask him, I said, what are you doing?

01:14:19.000 And he goes, oh man, I'm getting this picture taken from my Tinder page, man.

01:14:25.000 We sat there.

01:14:26.000 In the next 20 minutes, two other guys came by.

01:14:30.000 And I asked the guy, I go, is that your Lamborghini?

01:14:32.000 He goes, no, no, no, I just rented it for the day for my Tinder page pic.

01:14:36.000 Two guys walked by in the next 20 minutes and paid him 50 bucks to lean against his purple rented Lamborghini to get their Tinder page pic.

01:14:48.000 Oh my God.

01:14:51.000 I wonder if it works.

01:14:52.000 It's got to work.

01:14:53.000 It's got to work on someone.

01:14:55.000 And he got his rent paid for his purple Lamborghini.

01:15:00.000 Yeah.

01:15:00.000 Well, Miami, you should have a passport to go there.

01:15:03.000 It's barely America.

01:15:04.000 It's a lot of fun.

01:15:06.000 It's a great place.

01:15:07.000 It's a lovely city.

01:15:08.000 I love visiting there.

01:15:09.000 But I don't think I could ever live there. 0.99

01:15:12.000 I go to Miami and I just go, you guys are fucking out of control. 0.98

01:15:15.000 And then I get out of there. 0.99

01:15:17.000 It's the only place.

01:15:19.000 Before I was doing my last Netflix special, I was using these yonder bags.

01:15:23.000 And what a yonder bag is, is you have to put your cell phone in the bag when you go in there so you can't film the show or you can't talk on it.

01:15:30.000 And the idea is that the people won't be distracted because their cell phone will be in this magnetic pouch.

01:15:35.000 You have it.

01:15:35.000 You have possession of your phone.

01:15:37.000 Nobody's taking your phone.

01:15:38.000 But when you want to leave or use the phone, like if someone's going to call you, maybe you've got a babysitter, you can go outside.

01:15:44.000 They'll open the pouch up and then you can use your phone.

01:15:47.000 Most shows I did this, I did shows all over the country.

01:15:50.000 The shows people were more attentive, they sat down, they didn't get distracted by their phone, and they just listened.

01:15:56.000 In Miami, all they did was get up and go outside. 0.99

01:16:00.000 So the whole show, the fucking show is like an hour and 45 minutes. 0.98

01:16:05.000 It's just people getting up and going out and coming back and getting up and coming back and getting up and coming back. 0.99

01:16:11.000 It was like people were constantly going back and forth.

01:16:14.000 I don't know if they're doing coke or if they're just part, but the idea of not having their phone with them, they're like, what? 0.99

01:16:21.000 What the fuck? 0.99

01:16:21.000 I need my phone. 0.99

01:16:22.000 They're so distracted, so chaotic.

01:16:25.000 It was a lot of fun, though.

01:16:27.000 I'm not even complaining. 0.97

01:16:28.000 Where the mannequins, even the mannequins have fake boobs. 1.00

01:16:32.000 It's true. 0.98

01:16:33.000 It's true.

01:16:34.000 It is true. 0.99

01:16:35.000 If you go to a department store, the mannequins have giant fake boobs. 1.00

01:16:39.000 Yeah, because look, the girls that want to buy those clothes also have fake boobs. 1.00

01:16:43.000 They don't want some weird natural body.

01:16:46.000 Like, how am I going to know what it's going to look like on me?

01:16:48.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:16:50.000 And again, I'm not shitting on Miami. 0.96

01:16:52.000 I love it here. 0.89

01:16:54.000 I love it there, rather.

01:16:55.000 But I always said, if you want to starve to death, open up a bookstore in Miami.

01:17:02.000 Ain't nobody buying books there.

01:17:04.000 Nobody's buying green lights.

01:17:05.000 They might get the audiobook.

01:17:08.000 And listen to it when they're on the treadmill.

01:17:10.000 But it's a wild place.

01:17:12.000 And that show that I did, the shows that I did down there, they were fun.

01:17:17.000 I had a great time.

01:17:18.000 The audiences were great.

01:17:19.000 They laugh hard.

01:17:20.000 But they were just all over the place.

01:17:23.000 Just up and down and back and up and back and coming back and sitting down.

01:17:27.000 Excuse me, pardon me.

01:17:28.000 Up, more people. 0.99

01:17:30.000 I'm like, you guys are out of fucking control. 0.98

01:17:32.000 Yeah, it's an obvious place. 0.99

01:17:37.000 Have you ever seen the documentaries Cocaine Cowboys?

01:17:40.000 Yes.

01:17:41.000 Well, that's how it all got started down there.

01:17:45.000 The craziness.

01:17:47.000 Cooking Cowboys 1 and 2 are my all-time favorite documentaries. 0.99

01:17:52.000 Miami's got a wild fucking history. 0.99

01:17:55.000 Yep, it does. 0.99

01:17:57.000 And stories like that make great films, though, because there's real live stories about this country in particular, but this world in general, like Scarface or something like that, where it's just like, this is kind of based on reality.

01:18:15.000 You know, it's one of the beautiful things about a film is that a film like Scarface will make you look into that like, well, how much of this is real?

01:18:24.000 Did they really do that?

01:18:25.000 Oh, yeah, they really did send over prisoners and release prisoners and send them to America.

01:18:30.000 And they really did have hundreds and thousands of murders and gun violence all over the streets and cocaine everywhere.

01:18:37.000 That's real.

01:18:38.000 That was real.

01:18:39.000 Yeah.

01:18:40.000 And it was happening.

01:18:41.000 Well, that's...

01:18:44.000 You know, the best, it's always said, you know, truth changer is stranger than fiction.

01:18:49.000 But yeah, I mean, one of the words I have a page in the book about my least favorite word in the English language being unbelievable.

01:18:57.000 No, it's all pretty doggone believable.

01:18:59.000 And you see it happen, you're like, yep, wow, I didn't think that was possible.

01:19:04.000 Well, it damn sure was.

01:19:05.000 And it's usually stranger than any Hollywood script could make it. 0.74

01:19:08.000 Or more exciting. 0.99

01:19:10.000 Yeah, I say unbelievable too often, and it's sort of a placeholder word for holy shit. 0.99

01:19:15.000 Right. 0.99

01:19:15.000 You know, unbelievable. 0.99

01:19:17.000 But it is believable, yeah, for sure.

01:19:19.000 I mean, you have to be pretty odd in this day and age to be unbelievable. 0.94

01:19:24.000 I don't remember the last thing I saw that was unbelievable, whether it was or whether it was like, are you fucking kidding me? 0.53

01:19:31.000 I'm like, you know, boy, there's one thing you can depend on people being, it's people.

01:19:36.000 Yeah.

01:19:37.000 Well, so in your life right now, when, you know, you've had this incredibly successful career, and I assume you're still writing down these lists of things to do.

01:19:48.000 When you look at, like, what you would like to accomplish, I mean, you've accomplished so much in the world of acting and filmmaking.

01:19:56.000 Is there something out there that really is a goal or a thought that's sticking in your mind or something you haven't done yet?

01:20:05.000 Yeah.

01:20:08.000 One of the things I've got to do that's at the top of the list is do my best to shepherd three young children through this life so they can go off and be independent and autonomous and hopefully competent young individuals.

01:20:19.000 That's priority number one.

01:20:21.000 But personally, there's a role that I've created and assumed for myself called the Minister of Culture.

01:20:30.000 And it's about finding a shared...

01:20:34.000 Competent value system.

01:20:36.000 And it's something that I'm going to initialize it, hopefully right there in Austin.

01:20:43.000 Values, as far as I can tell, are the common denominator that they've always been cool.

01:20:49.000 There's ones that we can agree on.

01:20:50.000 They work then, they work now.

01:20:52.000 They will not go out of style.

01:20:54.000 We're in such a time right now where our social contracts are so broken and they're broken with ourselves as well.

01:20:59.000 We don't have expectations of each other or of ourselves.

01:21:02.000 It's kind of anarchic, a nation divided.

01:21:06.000 And in Austin in particular, as a very popular and fast-growing city, it's changing a lot.

01:21:13.000 And if Austin is a city, it starts to consume more than it creates.

01:21:22.000 Starts to not be conscious with its money.

01:21:25.000 Starts not to invest in itself.

01:21:27.000 If too many people come to Austin from California, wherever they're coming from, and try to turn Austin into a why they left where they were coming from, we're gonna look up in 10 years and go, what the hell happened, man?

01:21:37.000 And Austin's got a lot of soul.

01:21:38.000 Got a lot of soul.

01:21:40.000 And I think it lies in its values.

01:21:41.000 So this sort of campaign movement that I wanna push is reminding those of us from Austin why we love it there.

01:21:49.000 Austin's a place where nobody's too good and everybody's good enough.

01:21:52.000 And initiating and educating newcomers and saying, hey, here's who we are, here's who we're not.

01:21:58.000 If you don't really want to abide by who we are and what we believe in, make it a stop, not a stay.

01:22:02.000 Keep on moving.

01:22:04.000 But I think Austinites...

01:22:07.000 I've earned that and I think newcomers will appreciate that.

01:22:12.000 I want to look up in 10 years and Austin be a city that's an example of a place that became a metropolis that held on to its soul.

01:22:22.000 The things you look at around town, crime rate, employment, etc.

01:22:26.000 are still at numbers that are incredibly respectable.

01:22:29.000 We don't get loose.

01:22:31.000 It's a very creative town.

01:22:33.000 And like I said, it's the blueberry in the red state.

01:22:38.000 But it's not an anarchic town.

01:22:40.000 It's not a dirty town.

01:22:41.000 It's not a sloppy town.

01:22:43.000 It's an innovative town.

01:22:44.000 It's a creative town.

01:22:45.000 And it's a young town.

01:22:48.000 And I think we all know progress is not saying yes to every new thing.

01:22:54.000 Progress is more about innovation, but it's also relying on tried and true things that work, have worked, and will continue to work.

01:23:00.000 And I just want to remind us all the certain values that we have as Austinites and as individuals.

01:23:07.000 Where that goes from there, if that goes outside of Austin and through the United States, it's a scalable idea that I dream of that could go outside of the United States.

01:23:16.000 It could go worldwide in success.

01:23:19.000 I like looking at cities and people, looking at cities as individuals that have personalities and reminding the people, let's sell a city to the people that live in it.

01:23:30.000 Sell Austin to Austinites and to people who are coming to it.

01:23:35.000 That's my goal.

01:23:36.000 That's what I'm into right now.

01:23:37.000 That's the character that I'm inhabiting right now in my life that's not on the screen.

01:23:42.000 I'm wanting to say, hey, the big show's live.

01:23:45.000 Life.

01:23:46.000 The recorder's always on.

01:23:49.000 What's the story we're telling in life?

01:23:51.000 That's the character I want to play right now in my life outside of my family.

01:23:56.000 That's not on any kind of screen or any kind of capsule that's going to be on your television screen.

01:24:01.000 If I pull it off, it's going to be something that I'm just living and doing and becoming.

01:24:06.000 There's something about this town that's very unique.

01:24:08.000 And I knew it for years.

01:24:11.000 I've been coming here and doing stand-up since the 90s.

01:24:13.000 But when the pandemic hit and I decided to move here, I did have that feeling like, boy, a lot of Californians are going to move here.

01:24:24.000 How do we not fuck it up?

01:24:26.000 And you and I had this very conversation. 0.64

01:24:28.000 Don't turn this into the place you left.

01:24:30.000 So what specifically do you think people need to not do?

01:24:36.000 To not do?

01:24:37.000 Yeah.

01:24:38.000 Well, you're coming to Texas because you got no taxes.

01:24:42.000 You're coming to Austin because it's affluent.

01:24:44.000 It's happening.

01:24:45.000 You're coming for the people, the food, the swing.

01:24:47.000 It's happening.

01:24:48.000 It's a creative town.

01:24:49.000 It's alive.

01:24:49.000 It's young.

01:24:51.000 You got to pay a tithe.

01:24:54.000 Ask not what Austin can do for you.

01:24:56.000 Ask what you can do for Austin and personalize the place, man.

01:25:00.000 I mean, Give your tithe to the city.

01:25:03.000 It is a place, like I said, that nobody's too good and everybody's good enough.

01:25:07.000 We don't run over people to get where we're going.

01:25:10.000 Austin will open up their proverbial roller decks, and you tell me if you've felt this with yourself, quicker than any city I've ever been to as a newcomer.

01:25:18.000 Oh yeah, you want some contacts?

01:25:20.000 Here.

01:25:21.000 I mean, in some ways I'm like Austin Boy, you know, you maybe could take more ownership of that IP, but it gives it away.

01:25:29.000 It's very free and we trust.

01:25:31.000 It's a very trusting town and a town of second chances for people.

01:25:34.000 But don't take advantage of that freedom.

01:25:37.000 Understand that there's responsibility to the freedoms that we have, that we do have to earn it daily.

01:25:44.000 And don't just Over leverage ourselves and spin because, hey, we're the most popular person in school right now.

01:25:51.000 Don't get caught looking in the mirror at ourselves going, oh, aren't I great?

01:25:55.000 Look at us.

01:25:55.000 We're number one.

01:25:56.000 We're popular.

01:25:56.000 Uh-uh.

01:25:57.000 We still got boots on and we still pull them on and strap them on and get work done.

01:26:03.000 Even though we're young and innovative in tech town, we're still a classic and It's accountability, it's responsibility, it's fairness to other people.

01:26:13.000 It's understanding where is Austin idyllic and what is it really?

01:26:19.000 Because in some ways I think of Austin, I'm finding out it's not as ideal as I think it is in my mind.

01:26:27.000 Well, I've got a listening tour and I talk about the diversity in Austin.

01:26:31.000 And it is a international destination.

01:26:33.000 And I talk about the, you know, the equality of Austin.

01:26:37.000 You know, the rule in Austin has always been, all you gotta do is be yourself.

01:26:41.000 That's kind of the rule.

01:26:42.000 That's what's cool about Austin.

01:26:44.000 Not what you think you ought to be, but just be yourself.

01:26:46.000 Doesn't matter if you're blue haired, short, lesbian, American Indian, cowboy, sheriff, whatever.

01:26:54.000 Everyone's sitting at the same bar having a drink and no one's yelling about their place because If you're yelling about, hey, I want to let you know how I'm different in Austin, Austin's like going, what were you yelling about?

01:27:06.000 We didn't really care.

01:27:07.000 That's one of the great things about Austin at its best.

01:27:10.000 It celebrates differences when Austin is at its best.

01:27:12.000 Austin's not trying to homogenize people to say, hey, we're all the same.

01:27:16.000 No, we're not.

01:27:18.000 We're all very different and that's cool, but we do have some social contracts amongst us.

01:27:22.000 We're a clean place.

01:27:23.000 We don't lie, cheat, and steal to get where we're going.

01:27:27.000 We look ahead, but we appreciate tradition at the same time.

01:27:31.000 We take care as much as we can of our natural beauties around here.

01:27:35.000 At the same time, we're metropolis.

01:27:37.000 We're growing up.

01:27:39.000 Now, how can we grow up and wide and still grow deep?

01:27:42.000 That's what I want to lean into is what are the roots so we're not just, again, looking up in 10 years and going, who did we become?

01:27:49.000 Where did all these socialites come from?

01:27:51.000 You know?

01:27:55.000 Yeah.

01:27:56.000 One thing that's plaguing Los Angeles that I'm starting to see here is the homelessness in tent form all over the city.

01:28:07.000 Los Angeles is out of control.

01:28:09.000 I mean, it's bizarre that it hasn't been handled.

01:28:12.000 I mean, I was just having a conversation with my friend Brian about it before the show.

01:28:16.000 And he was telling me that in Burbank, they just shut that down.

01:28:19.000 They won't let it happen.

01:28:20.000 You can't just put up a tent somewhere.

01:28:23.000 I mean, I'm an empathetic person and I think that, you know...

01:28:29.000 I think?

01:28:50.000 My friend Bridget sent me a video of her driving down Venice and it's a mile of tents.

01:28:55.000 I mean a straight mile.

01:28:56.000 She got the phone out the window and it's just tents everywhere.

01:29:02.000 It's crazy. 1.00

01:29:03.000 How do you put a stop to that without being an asshole? 1.00

01:29:08.000 How do you maintain empathy and say, hey, you can't put a fucking tent up on the sidewalk? 1.00

01:29:15.000 Great question. 0.99

01:29:16.000 And I don't know the answer.

01:29:18.000 You said it earlier.

01:29:19.000 Look, a lot of these, most of these people have a mental challenge or they've gotten drugs.

01:29:24.000 And so, you know, in Austin, we're putting some up in some vacated hotels.

01:29:32.000 I don't know to what extent that's working.

01:29:36.000 I've got friends who have businesses downtown who they've got homeless people camping out in front and if someone walks in, they're getting berated by this person that's homeless that has something mentally askew in their nugget.

01:29:53.000 I don't know.

01:29:55.000 You can't eliminate the problem, but this question of how do we rehabilitate is an ongoing question, not just with homeless people.

01:30:06.000 With people that don't have mental problems, we have the question of rehabilitation.

01:30:14.000 And for those people, I'm like, well, you have to be sincerely seeking retribution and understand what you did wrong to get the chance to be forgiven and rehabilitate and get a second chance.

01:30:29.000 For the homeless people, I think if you're going to go to the How do we get them more mentally stable, and can we to what extent?

01:30:38.000 Get them mental help.

01:30:41.000 And not just keep picking them up and saying, let's move them to this side of the curb.

01:30:47.000 Well, that curb got full, let's move them to this side of the curb. 0.64

01:30:50.000 And then you end up with a shantytown or something.

01:30:54.000 I think there are always gonna be, to some extent, there's gonna be homeless, there's always gonna be some socioeconomic imbalance.

01:31:02.000 I don't think we're ever gonna, that's another thing that I think we have to, as a people, especially on the left, have to realize.

01:31:08.000 This whole perfect equality amongst all of us and perfect justice, I don't think that's a possible destination for anybody.

01:31:17.000 I think it's great to keep, America is a constant chase It's a chasing of the cat.

01:31:26.000 We never will get there.

01:31:28.000 And that's the point.

01:31:30.000 Just keep chasing it.

01:31:31.000 Try to have a little ascension in our journey going forward and a little bit of evolution.

01:31:37.000 But we're never going to arrive at this utopian state where, ta-da, we did it.

01:31:42.000 It's the Garden of Eden before an apple was eaten.

01:31:46.000 It's not going to happen, I don't believe.

01:31:50.000 So, I don't know, I question how the best way to rehabilitate situations and like the homeless one all the time.

01:31:57.000 And I don't know the answer.

01:31:59.000 I do, if we can get them some mental health and then give somebody, you know, not just, if we can make jails not just a holding sale.

01:32:06.000 I mean, think about it.

01:32:07.000 If jails really worked, once you've done your time, You ought to be even money, right?

01:32:13.000 Yeah, you should be better.

01:32:15.000 You're not even money.

01:32:16.000 You're coming out with the scarlet letter on you and you're going to have to work five times harder than the next guy to get that job.

01:32:24.000 If you're an offender of such, you're going to be found and located and they're going to share your location through the city and you're going to find out from your neighbor that you're moving in.

01:32:34.000 And you can understand the people going, I don't want that somebody living next door to me.

01:32:38.000 Well, if rehabilitation worked, it would be like, well, no, it's okay, because they did their stint.

01:32:42.000 It doesn't really work like that.

01:32:44.000 So it's a constant question I have about what's the best way to rehabilitate.

01:32:50.000 No one seems to have an answer.

01:32:52.000 Everyone throws their hands up in the air and just keeps on moving.

01:32:58.000 I don't know.

01:32:59.000 One of the things you were talking about before, Jordan Peterson talks about that equality of outcome is a terrible idea.

01:33:07.000 Equality of opportunity is a fantastic idea.

01:33:11.000 The opportunity to succeed.

01:33:13.000 But the problem with equality of outcome is there's not equality of effort.

01:33:18.000 And it's one of the beautiful things about society is that you...

01:33:22.000 And this is what we were talking about before about reading your memoir and reading an autobiography of a successful person is realizing that there's work to be done.

01:33:30.000 There's things you have to do in order to be this person that people admire.

01:33:35.000 And it doesn't come easy.

01:33:37.000 And some people aren't going to do that work.

01:33:38.000 And if they're not going to do that work, they're not going to achieve that outcome.

01:33:41.000 And that's just life.

01:33:42.000 And the equality of opportunity, that's not even real.

01:33:47.000 Because different people start off at different blocks in life.

01:33:50.000 They start off in different spots.

01:33:52.000 They start off with different challenges and different physical attributes and physical problems.

01:34:00.000 Everyone has their own hand of cards that you're dealt.

01:34:04.000 But treating people equally and giving people the best possible chance that we can as a community and as a culture, that's what we all strive for.

01:34:14.000 And the problem with the homeless situation and the problem with prisons, it's a similar problem, is that the downtrodden, the people that have hit a bad spot in the game of life, What is our responsibility to them?

01:34:28.000 And if we are a community, if there's only three of us and one of us is fucked up, we go, hey, let's help Mike. 0.99

01:34:34.000 He's fucked up. 0.96

01:34:35.000 Let's try to bring Mike into the fold and give him some life lessons and give him some love and hope that we can bring him back up to a point where a couple years from now we're looking back on this going, hey, look, you used to be over there and now you're here and everything's great. 0.99

01:34:51.000 That's what we'd ultimately love.

01:34:53.000 But there's almost...

01:34:55.000 Too many challenges and too many people.

01:34:57.000 And everybody has their own problems.

01:34:59.000 So people throw their arms up in the air and they keep moving.

01:35:02.000 And these things don't seem to get better.

01:35:04.000 The prison population seems to increase.

01:35:06.000 Homeless population, especially during this pandemic, has increased.

01:35:09.000 I don't have answers.

01:35:11.000 I really don't.

01:35:12.000 So I'm spinning my wheels as much as the next guy.

01:35:15.000 Yeah.

01:35:17.000 Yeah, it's a question that's yet to be answered on many levels before this time and after this time.

01:35:25.000 You know, that equal opportunity, that would be the gig.

01:35:30.000 That would be there.

01:35:31.000 Because then you could measure.

01:35:33.000 Because we are all born with different innate abilities.

01:35:37.000 And if we're fortunate enough to be in a position where we go, well, I'm going to do what I'm good at and I'm going to work my backside off for it.

01:35:46.000 And I'm going to get educated about it.

01:35:48.000 I'm willing to put in the work.

01:35:50.000 America's a place that's the American dream.

01:35:52.000 That's what they mean by the land of opportunity.

01:35:55.000 You should have the chance to pursue what you want to do.

01:35:57.000 And if you're willing to work for it and get educated on it, you have an opportunity to make a life.

01:36:03.000 I understand there's not complete equal opportunity across the board.

01:36:06.000 I understand that I personally was born with different innate abilities than you or someone else.

01:36:12.000 I was also born with more opportunities than a lot of people.

01:36:16.000 I was born into a two-parent family.

01:36:19.000 That's one of our biggest diseases, I think, that we have in the States is that The family breaks up sometimes too quickly, too easily.

01:36:29.000 You know, mom or dad jets.

01:36:31.000 If the going gets tough, too quickly.

01:36:34.000 So, you know, I was, some would say, symmetrically speaking, I'm a good looking guy, so that's got me indoors that maybe it wouldn't have got other people into.

01:36:44.000 I tried to do my best once I got in the door.

01:36:46.000 I'm not gonna apologize for any opportunities I've had, but I do understand that I've had opportunities.

01:36:50.000 That other people have not had.

01:36:53.000 I've created many on my own, but I've also been introduced and met people who opened those doors for me that would not have been open for other people.

01:37:02.000 Yeah, what do we do with them?

01:37:04.000 I think there's a place, and this is what I'm striving to get to and understand more and more.

01:37:10.000 None of us do a damn thing about anything unless it's personal.

01:37:13.000 Intellectually, we talk about it.

01:37:15.000 It makes sense.

01:37:16.000 But we really don't take action until it's trespassing on our walls and it's gonna affect me or you or my family.

01:37:23.000 That's when we go, okay, I'm gonna take action.

01:37:26.000 So I think whatever we do has got to be personal.

01:37:30.000 The choice that I'm making for my own self is choice for me.

01:37:35.000 There's a place where there's a choice where that also is what's best for the most amount of people.

01:37:41.000 Where the personal choice Is also the best choice for the most amount of people.

01:37:46.000 I call it the egotistical utilitarian.

01:37:49.000 That's where the I meets the we. 0.93

01:37:51.000 That's where what we want is what we need.

01:37:55.000 And what we need is actually what we want.

01:37:57.000 Where what's best for us is best for the most amount of people.

01:37:59.000 Where we're the most selfless, we're actually the most selfish.

01:38:03.000 Where we're the most selfish, we're actually the most selfless.

01:38:06.000 That's the place where, when I talk about like green lights, There's a place to create green lights that are best for ourselves and others at the same time.

01:38:14.000 That's the honey hole.

01:38:16.000 I don't know exactly what that place is all the time, but that's the place I think we could all be a little more conscious of how we go about moving forward and making choices based on that.

01:38:27.000 Austin seems to be of a manageable size.

01:38:30.000 I was trying to describe this to one of my friends in LA. He's like, what's so great about Austin?

01:38:34.000 I was like, first of all, people aren't devalued because there's not too many of them.

01:38:40.000 There's a problem with when there's too many people, then people become a nuisance.

01:38:45.000 There's too many of them.

01:38:46.000 Austin doesn't have that problem.

01:38:48.000 So when I look at the homelessness problem in Austin, I'm like, you know what?

01:38:51.000 This is not out of control yet.

01:38:53.000 This seems like you could still fix that.

01:38:56.000 Like, someone's got to realize that this could get out of hand, and this is a thing that you can kind of...

01:39:03.000 It's within the boundaries of resources to step in and manage this.

01:39:10.000 It manages now.

01:39:11.000 Yes, before it gets out, yeah. 0.99

01:39:13.000 People woke up in 10 years and go, shit, it's too late, it's out of control. 0.99

01:39:16.000 Like Venice, yeah. 0.99

01:39:17.000 We wanted to just grow and turn our backs on that and not look at it, and now all of a sudden it's out of hand and I don't know what to do with it.

01:39:24.000 And it happens quick.

01:39:25.000 It happens quick.

01:39:26.000 Venice two years ago was not this.

01:39:28.000 There was a few tents every, you know, here and there you'd see tents. 0.99

01:39:32.000 Now it's fucking bonkers. 0.96

01:39:34.000 And I would, I mean, obviously you're dealing with a much larger population in California, but... 0.98

01:39:41.000 This place is special.

01:39:43.000 I mean, it really is.

01:39:45.000 It's a great size, and the people here are really exceptional.

01:39:50.000 And it does have a personality.

01:39:51.000 It has a very unique mixture of cowboys and hippies. 0.58

01:39:57.000 It's a weird spot.

01:39:59.000 And it's that melting blending of...

01:40:03.000 Yeah.

01:40:17.000 I hear you.

01:40:18.000 Well, there's a lot of, you know, there is a community in Austin, and Austin at its best does come together and realize that it has an identity to move forward with, to protect.

01:40:29.000 And you're right, it's not so big, and I believe that it can grow.

01:40:34.000 But it can grow while still having a sense of itself and its own identity and to protect that identity and grow forward.

01:40:41.000 Turn the page, progress, yes, it's coming.

01:40:43.000 But also preserve the core DNA of who we are.

01:40:47.000 We're no longer the little hippie town that just had some music in the capital and a university.

01:40:52.000 No, we're dot com, tech town, we're banker town, lawyer town, international destination, all those things, that's fine.

01:40:59.000 But in that, there's a, you know, Austin has, I wanna help define I'm listening to a lot of Austinites as well.

01:41:05.000 What our constitution is in Austin that's separate from anywhere else.

01:41:09.000 So this is something you're actively trying to do.

01:41:13.000 You said a minister of culture.

01:41:15.000 Is this something you have a thought in your head of how to do this?

01:41:19.000 Yes.

01:41:20.000 I have a shared values campaign that I've put together.

01:41:27.000 And I want to sort of advertise and sell Austin to Austin, all around Austin.

01:41:34.000 And it's just sort of value-based, aspirational messages just to remind us who we are, to keep the community as tight as possible, to form expectations and solidify expectations amongst ourselves.

01:41:49.000 So if someone acts outside of those, they're noticed and they're kind of nudged back.

01:41:53.000 That's another thing Austin does very well.

01:41:55.000 Austin, I don't know how it is now, since we've had the protests with Black Lives Matter and stuff.

01:42:02.000 But Austin used to be, there was a great relationship with the police force.

01:42:11.000 Not just with me, with seeing Matthew McConaughey walk down the street, with John and Jane Doe.

01:42:16.000 You went jaywalking across Sixth Street, they caught you before and nudged you over and said, hey, don't do that, before they gave you the ticket.

01:42:23.000 There was a play of like they were part of the community.

01:42:27.000 They felt like, you know, you give them a wave. 1.00

01:42:29.000 You didn't see a cop in Austin and go, oh shit. 0.99

01:42:32.000 You saw one, you waved, and if they weren't looking, you never felt like they were looking to get you. 0.99

01:42:39.000 Crime was low, you know, so we'll see how that relationship has to be worked on in the city of Austin right now, you know, quite a bit.

01:42:48.000 Yeah, what were your thoughts when the whole idea to defund the police came to fruition?

01:42:55.000 Well, let's break that down one.

01:42:56.000 Defund the police, that moniker, if you wanted to say...

01:43:02.000 It's almost like it should have been renamed because defund the police does not sound anything like there's been money reallocated to different areas of handling some police exercise.

01:43:13.000 It sounds like you got a million, we're taking 300,000, good luck.

01:43:16.000 Yeah.

01:43:17.000 And it's not exactly what it is, to be fair.

01:43:24.000 The community and the police, and not just in Austin, but all over, and I think they are doing this in Miami, to bring up Miami, Need to get back together.

01:43:33.000 And the community needs to say, here's what's unfair.

01:43:36.000 Here's how I feel unfair as a black man or a person of color or whatever situation.

01:43:45.000 Here's my problem with my relationship with you as cops.

01:43:50.000 Well, the police gotta get clear to go, okay.

01:43:53.000 Our whole force isn't screwed up.

01:43:55.000 We have to have law and order.

01:43:56.000 Do we all agree on that?

01:43:57.000 Yes, we can all agree on that.

01:43:59.000 We got a few bad apples that either need to be trained better, so we don't have those kind of bad apples or people or cops choking under, under, under, under, and I mean the word as in fumbling at the goal line.

01:44:11.000 I don't mean literally choking.

01:44:14.000 Don't follow through on their duty in the right way when they're under the gun, under the heat of the moment.

01:44:20.000 That's what I mean.

01:44:21.000 There are cops that have done that. 0.66

01:44:22.000 So, few of these bad apples need to be removed, but they also, we need to make sure we're training them better.

01:44:28.000 Now, also the cops need to go to the community and go, can y'all remember and understand our point of view that we're like the tow truck driver.

01:44:36.000 We're not called when there's good news.

01:44:39.000 We're called when it's bad news, so we're coming in going, looking for trouble, all right?

01:44:44.000 So we're already under stress if we even get a call.

01:44:47.000 So can y'all help us in our way that we communicate?

01:44:52.000 Can we get trust again that if a cop says, hey, Stand still, take your hands out of your pocket, hold them up.

01:44:59.000 Yep, I'm doing that.

01:45:00.000 That we're not going to be, something's not going to happen to us that shouldn't.

01:45:05.000 That there will be a, you know, because obviously the situations like that, you're not being called.

01:45:10.000 You're not in that situation when it's good news.

01:45:12.000 You know, so everyone's already tensions are high.

01:45:15.000 But that's, you know, as far as the fund, we're going to see.

01:45:20.000 We're going to see if this reallocation of money, like in Austin and other places, how that works.

01:45:25.000 I mean, my first gut instinct was I don't see how that repairs the relationship between the community and the police force.

01:45:35.000 I don't see how that's coming together.

01:45:38.000 I don't see how that's going to rehabilitate that relationship.

01:45:43.000 And now you have spite on both sides.

01:45:48.000 Again, we're going to see.

01:45:49.000 I don't know if we really had a bird in hand when we made the change.

01:45:52.000 Have we practiced these other, have we seen these other forms where the reallocated money goes to for 911 calls and stuff?

01:45:59.000 Have we seen these other forms work?

01:46:01.000 Have we seen them be improvements?

01:46:04.000 I don't know.

01:46:05.000 So hopefully we'll see if this is just sort of guinea-pigging the idea.

01:46:10.000 We'll see how it works, but I'm more for saying, okay, instead of taking away your money and your funds, which you could use to train better and work on the relationship of what your job is and what you expect and what communities expect from you,

01:46:27.000 I'd rather have done that than pull money from them.

01:46:31.000 So we're gonna see how this experiment goes.

01:46:34.000 Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

01:46:36.000 I think they need training.

01:46:37.000 They need more training.

01:46:38.000 And I think we all need to understand that there's a tremendous amount of these people that are under insane stress every day, and they probably have massive PTSD. And every time you're pulling somebody over, you're worried about getting shot.

01:46:52.000 Every time you're visiting someone's apartment for a domestic abuse case, you're worried you're going to get killed, or you're going to see someone killed.

01:47:00.000 You've seen murders and deaths, and The human mind is not designed to deal with that kind of stress day in, day out. 0.98

01:47:08.000 And a lot of these people, when you see these horrible reactions that cops have to situations where they do completely overstep their boundaries and abuse people, I think a lot of those people are really fucked up by the time they get to that point. 0.95

01:47:27.000 I don't... 0.98

01:47:28.000 Yeah, a lot of those people were fucked up before. 0.98

01:47:30.000 That too. 0.99

01:47:31.000 That too.

01:47:32.000 Before they even became a cop, or they became a cop for the right reason.

01:47:36.000 They had personal problems before.

01:47:39.000 And we need to filter those people out, and that also comes through training.

01:47:43.000 The same kind of training that they filter people out through the military.

01:47:46.000 You know, when you want to be a Navy SEAL, you've got to go through buds.

01:47:49.000 And good luck, if you have a lot of character flaws, you're not going to make it.

01:47:54.000 They will be exposed.

01:47:55.000 And I think that counseling and training and then communication with the community is what we need.

01:48:02.000 We don't need to defund them.

01:48:03.000 It seems like a popular social sentiment that people are repeating because it puts you in this ideology of a person who cares and is progressive.

01:48:13.000 But I don't think it's ever been fleshed out.

01:48:15.000 I don't think people have thought it out in the long term.

01:48:18.000 And if you're looking at the consequences of how this is playing out in New York City, homicides are up by hundreds of percent, burglaries, armed robberies, everything's up.

01:48:26.000 It's not good.

01:48:28.000 The defunding of the police has been horrible for New York City.

01:48:31.000 The consequences have been the exact opposite of what everybody hoped they'd be.

01:48:37.000 I'm worried about that here as well.

01:48:39.000 But Governor Abbott has stepped in and said he's going to put a stop to that, which is, you know, there's talk about not giving the towns that do this, they're not going to have access to property taxes, and obviously there's no income tax in Austin, in the state of Texas.

01:48:56.000 So the governor has supposedly stepped in and going to iron this out.

01:49:01.000 So I'm hoping it works out and cooler heads will prevail.

01:49:05.000 Me too.

01:49:06.000 I'm with you training and have more reverence for the job and understand they're called in.

01:49:11.000 They're not called in when it's good news.

01:49:13.000 You know, my brother, Rooster, has a real good, interesting take, I think, on gun control.

01:49:20.000 And Texas is a big right to carry state and a gun state.

01:49:27.000 He brought up the samurai sword, how there was a reverence for it.

01:49:31.000 And I remember how we were brought up.

01:49:32.000 You got your toy gun and then you got your daisy one pump.

01:49:37.000 And until you'd mastered that, like not turning and ever, if you turned and even though it wasn't cocked, if it was aimed at someone, nope, you got the gun taken away from you.

01:49:45.000 You know what I mean?

01:49:45.000 But you had to master the daisy gun first.

01:49:48.000 And then after years of that, you moved up to the.22.

01:49:51.000 And you had to master that.

01:49:53.000 And you had to make sure it was always unloaded and put back in the case.

01:49:55.000 You've got a reverence for this tool.

01:49:57.000 There's a long sort of initiation reverence before you could move up to a larger gun.

01:50:03.000 We've lost a reverence for that tool.

01:50:07.000 And the samurai sword is a good example because there's a reverence for that.

01:50:11.000 There's an initiation period to get to where you could have that.

01:50:16.000 And I think that's kind of one of the places where I lie, that it's too easy to get a gun sometimes, that there should be that background check, which goes back into what we're talking about with police force.

01:50:30.000 Background check, training, have a reverence for the job, understand the expectations, understand it's a high-stress job.

01:50:38.000 Can you handle it?

01:50:39.000 Let's learn how to handle it.

01:50:42.000 Because they have to call audibles in the moment that our life is audibles.

01:50:47.000 Yeah, and as we said, get rid of the ones who can't. 1.00

01:50:49.000 Because it is a hard job.

01:50:52.000 And hard jobs are not for everybody.

01:50:55.000 And that punishes the good cops.

01:51:00.000 When someone does a horrible thing, like the George Floyd case, all those good cops who would never think about doing that, ever in their life, ever, are lumped into the same category as that guy.

01:51:11.000 And I think that's awful.

01:51:13.000 Yep.

01:51:13.000 Agree.

01:51:14.000 Yeah.

01:51:16.000 Listen, man.

01:51:17.000 I enjoy talking to you.

01:51:18.000 This was great.

01:51:19.000 I really do.

01:51:19.000 And I wish you luck with your book.

01:51:21.000 And I've loved your movies.

01:51:22.000 And I wish you nothing but success.

01:51:24.000 And let's get together and break bread someday.

01:51:28.000 I look forward to it, Joe.

01:51:30.000 Thanks, man.

01:51:30.000 Enjoy talking to you.

01:51:31.000 And I look forward to doing it in person.

01:51:33.000 Let's do it, brother.

01:51:34.000 Thank you.

01:51:35.000 Good luck with the book.

01:51:36.000 Goodbye.

01:51:37.000 Thank you, man.

01:51:37.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - October 22, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1552 - Matthew McConaughey

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