Off-the-wall actor Matthew McConaughey has recently made a big splash with his memoir Greenlights. He was born in 1969 and raised in Texas, spending much of his childhood in Uvalde, a small town in the middle of nowhere. His mother Kay did a bit of kindergarten teaching and his dad Jim was an oil pipe salesman. Jim played golf whenever he could.
If you think that sounds all-American, it does. But it is all a little more complicated than that. Kay and Jim had a battleground marriage, marrying three times and divorcing twice.
This book defies categorization. Yes, it's an autobiography. Yes, it's a memoir. But it is also a reflection, a rehashing of events in his life. There have been some "red lights" (as in stop) like the death of his father that were really "greenlights" (as in go). It is very telling that there aren't many yellow caution lights in the story.
To write the book, Matthew holed himself up in a cabin for a couple of months with 35 years worth of journals and a collection of bumper stickers. Yes, bumper stickers.
At the end of the day, the book is a love letter to "livin".
The book takes you through his childhood, into a career in Hollywood, and, finally into finding love, marriage to Camila Alves, and fatherhood. And, focusing mostly on Matthew's childhood, here are some of the most amazing stories and memories from Greenlights.
A Dysfunctional Childhood?
Picture the small, idyllic town of Uvalde, Texas. Nobody bothers with locking their doors. The biggest attraction in town is the high school football game. That was the place Kay and Jim McConaughey called home. Matthew and his two brothers "Rooster" and Patrick did ordinary things like playing sports and rolling up for proms.
Now for the other side: His three times married, twice divorced parents Kay and Jim had a complicated relationship. They fought ferociously. Jim broke Kay's finger four times "to get it out of his face". He died making love to her. Dressed in a scanty nightie, she followed his naked body out to the ambulance, revealing his manhood and telling the red-faced neighbors that that was why she called him "Big Jim".
At dinner one night, Jim asked for more potatoes. Kay tells him he's fat. In front of the boys, Jims overturns the table. Kay grabs the phone to call 911, before whacking Jim with it and breaking his nose. She grabs a knife. He grabs a ketchup bottle and they circle one another, Kay slashing at Jim and Jim squirting ketchup.
They stop. She wipes ketchup from her eyes and he dabs at his bloody nose. Then? They sink to the blood and ketchup covered kitchen floor and make love. This says Matthew is just how they communicated. It was a red light moment that turned into a green light moment. It was just normal.
Kay and Jim's idea of discipline would now be called child abuse. If Matthew said a dirty word, Jim stuffed soap into his mouth. If he did something bad, then he got a ferocious "whoopin". Kay's idea of making a point was to slam Matthew to the ground and shout into his ear. That's just the way it was. McConaughey harbors no ill will or traumas. In fact, both he and his older brother Rooster think it was the making of them.
At one point his mother entered him in the Little Mr. Texas Cowboy competition. She told him he had won it, trophy and all. Later, he realized that he had only been a runner-up. Kay's reaction? As far as she was concerned, he had won. And that's all that counted.
High School Heaven
Matthew was Texas handsome from the very beginning. High school was bliss. Matthew was an honor roll student and dated the most desirable girls. Kay didn't believe in rules. So he had no curfew. It was glorious.
Matthew took girls cross-country in his truck and shouted out comments to chicks on a megaphone. He was pure fun. He was proclaimed the most handsome guy at the high school. The girls were all over him. Then, one day he decides to trade his truck for a red sports car. He became cool. The chicks? They were off with other guys in four-wheel-drive trucks. Redlight time. He gets the truck and the megaphone back. He reclaims fun. And the chicks were back. Another greenlight moment.
Nonchalantly, he recounts how he was blackmailed into having sex for the first time at 15 and how he was assaulted by a man in the back of a van. Does he feel victimized? Not a bit of it. It's just stuff that happened along the way.
College at the University of Texas was a turning point. He went from thinking he wanted to be a lawyer to wanting to act. So he entered the university's film school, a wholesome frat boy alongside arty Goth types.
Then one day in the early 1990s, he meets a casting director in an Austin, Texas bar, turns on the charm, and ends up snagging his first role in 1993's Dazed and Confused. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The thing about McConaughey is that at the end of the day he is a "greenlight" kind of guy, a glass half full human being. It's all about your perspective. Live, he says, is a journey and a joy. We'll skip over the time he was arrested stoned and playing the bongos naked.
