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Transcript
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: How you doing? I’m Matthew McConaughey. We’re going to be playing back some scenes in some films that have been important to me.
MCCONAUGHEY: Interstellar.
[CLIP STARTS]
[Cooper (McConaughey) falling through the tesseract]
MCCONAUGHEY: Ooh. Through space into the tesseract.
Look at what Chris [Nolan] does with light and sound, and Hans Zimmer’s minor chords coming in there.
[CLIP ENDS]
What people may not know, is we shot that in the most simple, college, university, film school way. I was on a gimbal, meaning like a ten-foot bar on a, on a prism. On like a triangle, right? A seesaw.
I’m laying on the end of the bar here, strapped to it. There’s lights here, bouncing off the wall. And Christopher Nolan’s on the other end, just sort of- [gesticulates moving the gimble] up and down and around. And I’m just acting. DP’s holding a light, popping it in and off of me, getting a flare.
There was budget and everything to have so much more. And I remember going like, “This is crazy.” He’s like, “Yeah, and it’s just as good, if not better, than if we’d have spent all that money.”
Just all that falling through space probably took 30 minutes. It’s a great example of what you can do with light and music and the dynamic of going to the silence. Chris has gotten very good at that in his career, of that dynamic of the, in and out, in and out, epic, personal, epic, personal.
MCCONAUGHEY: To Kill A Mockingbird.
[CLIP STARTS]
ATTICUS FINCH (GREGORY PECK): I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and our jury system. That’s no ideal to me, that is a living, working reality.
[CLIP ENDS]
MCCONAUGHEY: The justice system has always more than intrigued me. You can make all your arguments and you can have as much logic as you want. But in a closing argument, you still need to tell a story that will speak to the heart of the jurors.
It’s a performance. I’m not saying he’s faking it, but he’s performing. He’s painted the pauses, the stops. He’s letting things sit. There’s quiet moments where the feeling’s got to come through, the emotion’s coming through. Even though he’s saying, “just stick to the facts,” he’s appealing to the jurors’ better natures.
I was going to be a defence attorney. Dropped out of law school or dropped out of my path towards law school. Called my dad and said I wanted to go to film school. Thought he was going to go crazy and say, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Thank goodness he said, “Don’t half-ass it.” I’m glad that I didn’t go to law school and I’m very happy I’ve gotten to play a few lawyers on screen.
MCCONAUGHEY: Dallas Buyers Club.
[CLIP STARTS]
DR. SEVARD (DENIS O’HARE): I’m sorry.
RON WOODROOF (MCCONAUGHEY): Fuck this. Piece of shit.
MCCONAUGHEY: [Laughing as he watches the clip]
WOODROOF (MCCONAUGHEY): Fucking 30 days, motherfuckers. Let me give y’all a news flash. Ain’t nothin’ out there can kill fuckin’ Ron Woodroof in 30 days.
[CLIP ENDS]
MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. The coyote.
Got nominated for the Oscar for Best Performance and they called my name. In the career that I’ve chosen, in the craft of acting, that’s the gold standard, where my peers deemed my performance the most excellent that year. That means a lot. That meant a lot, you know.
I remember we shot it in less than a month and for less than $5 million. I remember showing up on set that first day, I pulled up in my car and I got out of the car as Ron Woodroof and son of a gun, if Yves didn’t have the camera on his shoulder getting me getting out of my car, which my car wasn’t even period [accurate].
But it was like, cameras are on as soon as you show up, because we don’t have much time and we don’t have much money. Let’s go.
At that time, when this was shot too, HIV was still like, “What are you talking about?” It’s almost like you’re picking a fight. Denial can be necessary for survival. And that’s him denying.
“One, I don’t have what you say I got. And don’t you say I got it again or I’ll knock your fucking block off. Two, whatever you’re talking about, ain’t nothing getting me. In thirty days, nothing’s fucking killing me.”
You see him in the beginning. He gets the news and he takes his time digesting that news. And that could go either way. That could go into defeat. “Why me? Holy shit.” But no, he [whistles] gets on top of it and just – [laughs]. He’s a coyote.
MCCONAUGHEY: The Lost Bus.
[CLIP STARTS]
KEVIN MCCAY (MCCONAUGHEY): Try! Try it now! Yes!
MARY LUDWIG (AMERICA FERRERA): Okay! Okay! Okay! Go! Go! Go! Go!
Get down! Get down! We’re going through the fire.
[CLIP ENDS]
MCCONAUGHEY: Based on true events from 2018, the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, where 85 people were deceased.
And this is a story that we picked out to tell about two folks, a bus driver and a teacher, Kevin McKay and Mary Ludwig. And this is the story of the six hours that they had that day, trying to escape, trying to survive.
The fact that it was based in truth gave me a little more reverence. You know, as an actor, you kind of sink into the saddle a little bit more and you have more purpose to go tell it.
Then I got on the phone with our director, Paul Greengrass. He was somebody I wanted to hop in and take that journey with. If you do a Paul Greengrass film, you’re finding and creating things along the way.
You have the events that happen, right? And that’s the director’s job. The needs and your obstacles; that becomes personal to the actors.
I always need a monologue before I can have my dialogue. So what is Kevin McKay’s monologue? What’s the, the stuff that we call subtext? It’s said in the one line where Kevin says, “I was too late as a son, now, I’m too late as a father.”
In there is, all regret and remorse. And like so many men that I know and so many I see, that look up at their- around 50, and they look around their life and they’re like, “Oh…what do I have to show? I failed in my job, I failed in relationships.”
Some of them, like the Kevin I portrayed in this, it’s because when the going got tough, he snuck out the back door. You know, in life.
Some men are wandering because they were like, “I did the right things, I made the right choices. They told me- I was told if I did this, this and this, I could move up and I could succeed. And that didn’t pay off. That form of the American dream did not pay me back.”
He gets asked to make a decision, and he makes one of the biggest decisions he’s made in years to go back and get his mom and son and evacuate them, so this fire doesn’t get them. And right on top of that, which is very Paul Greengrass, because that decision alone is enough to push the entire second act.
But no, 30 seconds later, dispatch is calling saying, “I’ve got 23 stranded kids on the east side of town. Does anyone have an empty bus over there?” Well, guess who’s got an empty bus? So, these massive decisions and 180s on top of each other, Paul compounds the obstacles on top of you.
But I needed that monologue, for myself, of who Kevin was as a father. That sort of subtext infers how a man like that and how I portray him, how he listens, what he doesn’t say, what he’s not saying in between the lines, how he walks, how his shoulders sit, how he regrets, how he leaps into action here at the end, which in that scene is basically at the end of their rope.
Boom. Fire. Guess what? We’re not going to sit. I’m going to jump, instead of fall. Don’t know if we’re going to make it. This looks like a suicide mission but I’m going to follow through, for the first time in a long time in my life. And to get through hell, sometimes you’ve got to drive right down the throat of the dragon, which is this fire.
This is a horror film, at a very basic level. If you like a horror film, you get a horror film here. And at the same time, you’ve got a beautiful human drama that I think audiences will be able to see themselves through Kevin and Mary, the characters America and I play, in here. And maybe leave going, “Oh, I’ve got a second chance on my plate right now.”
Just when you think you’re at the end of your rope. It’s another example of how humanity, the will to survive, we have an extra gear that we don’t give ourselves credit for usually,
And if you like amusement park rides, if you like rollercoasters, if you like that kind of adrenaline, you will enjoy this ride.
I remember my first cinematic experience was seeing, King Kong. I loved that.
Now, my son and I, he just got to the age where I felt, at 16, where I could turn him on to one of my favourite films and watch it with him. And he could handle the material.
“You want to see some really good filmmaking? You want to see some really good performances? You want to see a really fun movie? Let’s watch Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson.” And we had a great time watching that film.
And so we talked about, do we understand, does he understand how that’s great storytelling? Does he understand how not every director, not every movie on the same subject is the same quality? That’s high quality. Do we understand why? That experience was really fun, to sit with him and then afterwards have all these discussions.
One film I think everyone should watch at least once…
Oh, shoot. Let’s go ahead and go with Raising Arizona, because everybody could use a good laugh and be reminded that if we’re not sure how to respond, make humour the default emotion.
