Transcript of Matthew McConaughey Read 20 Years of Bad Reviews in One Weekend

There were many things, successes I had, that I engineered. I didn't have that story of, you gotta wait tables for 6 years before you get your first job. So, who's playing the lead? I don't know, who do you think should? I think I should. And he laughed. Never gonna happen.

I'm understanding why the pressure can destroy a person.

You keep your own damn scorecard. I'm not calling that a failure. Rustin Cohle, True Detective. I was able to go so deep into that guy's mind. I don't want to become that numb to not be embarrassed. It actually becomes not a contradiction, it becomes a paradox. If you're gonna make it in this business, it's can you stay in it? Yeah, there it is. Hey, ah, she got him!

I think you started speaking Spanish right there.

That's one take. That's the first take. For real?

Yeah. Fuck you. It's not that bad stuff doesn't happen to my guest today. It's what he does about it, how he turns setbacks into growth opportunities. He walked away from dozens of movie deals, including a $14.5 million offer, and that ultimately led him to an Oscar. He flirted with running for governor of Texas, helped unite our country around some of the most divisive issues, and then he created a TV series parodying his journey. Perhaps most important, he turned his naked arrest into an ad campaign for his own award-winning tequila. One of the most famous people on earth is also one of the kindest, a Renaissance man like few others. Matthew McConaughey, welcome to Build or Break.

Good to be here, Daniel. Thanks for having me.

Matthew, I'm so excited that you're here. And I want to start with what the intro was about, because I've known you already for a couple of years, and from afar you just seem invincible to me. But then when I started reading your book and stuff, it's not that shit doesn't happen to you. It's how you metabolize setbacks into learning opportunities, into growth, into what you call green lights. Tell us a little bit about your philosophy and also how did it come about? When did you discover that?

Oh boy, when did I discover? It's a really good question because, you know, sometimes you don't know what you knew till you go back. And maybe I, maybe I knew this when I was, you know, 10 years old, even before that, from my mother. Uh, maybe I didn't figure it out until I went back and wrote the book Greenlights, um, and looked back over that 45 years of my life. I, I looked over my, at that time, 50 years of journaling, personal journaling that I had done, and I noticed that, oh, there were many things, successes I had that I engineered, that I could raise my hand and go, yep, I did that. I could look in the mirror and go, Congratulations, you did that. By habit, by preparation, by willpower, by talent sometimes, by hustle other times. There are also sometimes that I had great successes, and I think maybe more than 50% were not engineered. I think it was what we want to call good timing or whatever you want to say, where luck meets opportunity, where I was right place, right time. Did I do something with the opportunities? many times that I had that led to those successes?

Yes. But I don't know how or what I had to do with how they came into my life or the opportunities came in my life. I also noticed that, um, as you said, bad things, because I stepped in shit a lot of my own making, um, probably more than it was the world's own making. Um, I was always very kind of habit of being resilient. You get up, you dust yourself off, you carry on. That's one of the things my mother taught us, and that's, that's from my mom. Uh, you get up, you, you step in shit, you step in the pothole and you fall down, you get up, dust yourself off, and you keep going. It's resilience. It's a very wonderful trait to have, and I think one of my strongest traits. What I started to learn in my 40s is that, well, if you're gonna say be resilient and, and get up and dust yourself off every time you fall down and fail, And if you don't take the time to look at the pothole that you fell in, the shit you stepped in, you will continue to step in that same pot every time around the bend.

And my mom was, get up, move on, don't even look at it, deny it even happened, go. In my 40s, I started going, oh, wait a minute, before I get up and go, let me have a look. Why do I keep stepping in that particular pot? Seems to be a habit. I keep falling down right here. It takes a little bit of introspection. It takes a little, let me have a look back, which I've never been that comfortable doing. But that's been a learning curve for me and still is. The resilience part, I think I've got instinctually. That's been hammered into me from day one.

I think it's a combination, if I'm understanding you correctly. One is having the grit to not give up and to be resilient and to dust it off. The other one is the ability to be introspective and learn. But even more with you, from what I read about you, it's also the ability to tell your own story. And that, that touched me a lot. Um, tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so, so look, if, if, if, if your story, which we all love— look at Instagram— is all success, all perfect smiles, all the best waves, all our best greatest hits moments, no one really gets anything from that. You're not putting up a mirror to for other people to see their own humanity when you do that. If you don't have that confusion, frustration, loss, and failure, then either you're not taking enough risk or you just kind of seeing life as nothing but entertainment. People, when we're afraid to share our failures, but when we do though, what do people do? The people we respect the most are the first ones that go, me too. Yeah, thanks for saying it. You know?

Can I ask you a little bit about, about the essence of that? Because Matthew, we have an exhibit on the Art of Failure Museum. where we showcase your trophy. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Yeah, so this is a picture of me holding my trophy for what I believed was first place, Little Mr. Texas, in 1977. I was 8 years old. I was on the stage. I answered some questions. I, I rode a horse. All of a sudden, the confetti came down and everyone was yelling. They put a trophy in my hand, and my mom looked at me from down on the floor. She's like, you did it! You're Little Mr. Texas! I'm like, Yay. We get home and a few days later, there's a picture of that, me holding that trophy right there on the refrigerator. So every morning from 1977 through 1988, throughout graduating high school, every day when I came to breakfast, my mom would look over and go, look at you, Little Mr. Texas. I was Little Mr. Texas about 6 years ago. I'm like, just 50 years old, I'm writing Greenlights, and I go back through and I find that picture. And for whatever reason, I got curious to zoom in on the nameplate on the trophy. And as I zoomed in on it, I learned something for the very first time in my life. The trophy said runner-up.

I was not Little Miss Texas. I was runner-up. Now, I throw that in the library of failure because There are some failures that— malaprops get us places sometimes. Sometimes denying or not knowing the, the what, what actually that you didn't win can help you succeed. I'm curious, would I— I half-jokingly say, would I be sitting here right now if I'd have thought I was runner-up? Well, my mother told me I was not runner-up. She told me I was Little Miss Texas, and I believed it. for 40-something years. Now, kind of still believe it, even though the trophy says runner-up. You're kind of like, well, I'm going with it. I've believed it for 40 years. I'll keep sticking with it. But there's certain things ignorance can lead us to success. Ignorance of our failures, maybe sometimes when they're not— they don't need to be broad— had broad attention to. Um, denying certain things, not giving a crisis credit, not giving certain failures credit, and just blowing by them and going, well, uh, you know, I'm either not giving that crisis credit because it doesn't matter that much to me, or I'm not giving that crisis credit because they may call it a failure, but they're keeping a different scorecard than I am.

There's a real genius to being able to do that. And so it wasn't a typical failure. It's a failure of ignorance and almost omission and a malaprop of denial by my mom, but it led to great success and confidence on my own part.

One of the things that I've noticed in talking to fascinating people that have those setbacks is a lot of it is what you do with it. Like you're saying, attitude is destiny. And for you, turning those yellow lights and those red lights into green lights is so important in life. But can you trace back to how were you when you were a little kid? Yeah. Were you like that, or did that take a while, that piece of doing something good with whatever.

Yeah,

like you're not being a victim is such a fundamental essence of you.

Yes, not being a victim and not accepting being a victim. Because what happens also in life, we know, is sometimes we don't feel like a victim, but the world tells us we ought to be a victim. And it's okay, you are a victim. Don't let somebody brand you like that. You know, this goes into your whole philosophy of building. When we're talking about success and failure, especially failure, Well, by whose measure? Because, hey, sometimes just because it— I laugh and it tickles me and it bruises you, is that my fault? You know, sometimes resilient people who fall and fail, the world will tell them, oh, you poor baby, let's go to rehab. Well, if that person's going, what are you talking about? I just fell. I'm okay. A lot of times they're right. Sometimes we don't give, we shouldn't give a crisis as much credit as the world tells us to give it. Now, obviously there are times we should give crisis credit. That's what I mean by a red light in the book Green Light. But a lot of times we can find ourselves sort of almost the misery loves company. We love a red light.

We loathe in the red light. We want company that's in a red light with us. And let's drown out. And you're sitting there going, man, the light turned green, go. And we bathe in the red light. We bathe in crisis a lot of times. And again, the world tells us it's okay to do that or will brand us to be in a crisis when we're like, that's not a crisis.

What you're saying right now is huge because when you and I were growing up, I think it was very different. I literally just— I was thinking about this with my wife. One of my— both your son and mine are seniors, are rising seniors, and they do so many things for the seniors. Well, oh, now we're going to celebrate this way. Now we're going to celebrate this. We're cuddling them so much and we're helicoptering parents so much, and we're not allowing them to bruise their knees, to just deal with shit. And I worry that in the world we're living— Yeah. To your point, that celebrates victimhood and turns everything into a victim versus oppressor, it's actually teaching the wrong things rather than giving people agency. But how did you figure that stuff out?

Well, let's, let's talk about that example now, because I think about it a lot as a father, as you do. Look, kids aren't— kids aren't afraid of heights until they fall. All right? And as a parent, we— every parent knows this. You let your kid go out on a limb, right? And maybe it's 6 feet off the ground, but there's beautiful St. Augustine grass below. And you're like, well, if they fall, they'll Oof. But they're not going to have to go to the hospital. Well, then get up 12 feet, 18 feet, 20 feet. Now you're over a gravel parking lot, concrete parking lot, and you start to get a little worried. If they fall, we may have to go to the hospital. And then they're at 50 feet and they don't know better, but damn, man, if they fall, it could be the end. So you're kind of like, hey buddy, come on over. You don't alarm them, but come on over to the trunk. So take your time and come on down. But if you scare them at 6 feet or 10 feet, whatever, when the fall might just be a bruise, and if you scare them or you put the proverbial safety mat under and they're like, well, why is that down there?

Well, that's because if you fall, you won't hurt yourself. Whoa. You've already taken away a beauty of ignorance, which is something that I know has gotten me through a lot of pickles in my life because I was ignorant at the time to know how dire the actual situation was. And I pulled it off because I didn't give the crisis the credit maybe it even deserved at the time. And that's part of youth. That's part of youth. Denying. Denial, I think, is another big one. And I learned this from my mom. My mom is the queen of denial, and she is proof of the value of denial if you really commit to it. Now, this is a woman who's beat 2 types of cancer on aspirin alone, because I don't have it. I don't have cancer. Well, Mom, you do. Your red blood cell counts here, you do. No, I don't. Now, we had to trick her into giving her, you know, later on, giving her some medication, but she beat it for years on that. She's 94, kicking ass because of her use of denial. If it grates, something grates against her in her life, or even a failure, she will move it out of the way, not give it the credit.

She is definitely, I think, a good, a good definition of an optimist, which is, um, uh, what's the word? Uh, um, uh, she has a positive bias.

And by the way, it's kind of like, what do they call that thing where you take the fake pill? That is

placebo.

The placebo. It's actually the power of our mind. And there's— she, she uses that a lot.

Yes. And it's not even— it's past an intellectual exercise. It's past a belief. It is ingrained.

She wills it into existence.

Happens. And I mean, you can talk 5 minutes later and you go, that just happened. She goes, no, it didn't. And you laugh and you think, oh, is that kind of woman shallow? Not shallow at all. It's survival. And it's working. Something I can— we can learn from her, something I still try and learn from her. But she is the queen Of denial. I mean, when we fail, right? I think what we forget to ask a lot when we start to go, oh geez, I lost, I didn't hit the mark, I sinned, I failed. Okay, before you go there, because the world will all jump on the bandwagon when you say you failed, they will all jump on the bandwagon, most of them, to say, yes, you did. We got to ask, By whose measure? I think this goes back to that. What tickles one of us may bruise someone else. Is that our fault? Not necessarily. By whose measure is it a failure? And what, what was it we were trying to get that we did not get is worth the measurement too. Because again, the world will tell us, it's quick to say we're a failure at things.

And actually denying them and going, You keep your own damn scorecard. I'm not calling that a failure. Denial in that way is sort of part of the resilience that it takes to get to the time in your life where you do realize that, oh, that failure, which it was, was actually a gift. And but it can get you through that time. And is it delusional? Well, maybe. I don't care. It's— I think it's okay to go, I'm denying that. I'm not giving that crisis credit. I'm not calling that a failure. You can call it a failure.

Is that— is there ever going too far on that? Like, is that an attitude? So I am very much a believer like you that attitude is destiny, and doing something good with whatever you're delivered is how life should be lived. And yet suspending this belief is how you create incredible things in life, right? Because Kind would have not existed, your movie roles would have not achieved what they achieved, all of these things would have not happened if you didn't challenge conventional wisdom. Yeah. Challenge yourself, challenge your own doubts. By the way, if I had known how hard it would have been, I maybe would have been scared, right? So that blissful ignorance is what you—

Well, and let's call it maybe it's partially— be— just partially be— got to be a little crazy. And I think that's okay. I think we need more crazy. You know, every successful entrepreneur, right? We raise kids, we want— we teach them sort of common values. And here's— if you, if you do it this way and you go through life this way, you can climb a ladder And be successful. And what do we like that when our kids follow that? But what do we love as parents? And what does America love from entrepreneurs? When they go, nope, I'm going my own way. And they don't stutter. And they don't flinch. And they pull it off. We love to see someone go their own way. Children and businesses in America, we love it. But in the initiation process, a rite of passage is engineered to be really difficult to do that on purpose. You know, it's not supposed to be easy to pull it off. You're supposed to run into resistance. You're supposed to run into all— and can you pull it off? Parents in America applaud that when people— when we see that happen, we go like—

When you are with your kids, do you ever lose your temper? Because I love listening to you. And then I look at my life. And I love, you know how much I love my kids, like you love your kids, but sometimes I lose my cool.

Yeah.

And I read a little bit about how with your parents, they were a little bit more torrid.

Yeah.

My parents also loved each other, but also fought a lot. Sorry, Mom. You guys did. Like they were fighting all the time, but they loved each other very deeply. But their relationship was built on fighting. And I kind of learned some of the wrong things. I lose my temper a lot. I don't have the patience that I wish I had. But I can't imagine you losing your temper. Are you human? Or like, do you ever—

Yeah. Look, do I raise my voice for— we need a little attention getter? Yeah, sometimes. You know, I don't raise my kids at the same— with the same kind of corporal punishment and consequences that my parents raised me.

And I'm not judging. What did they do right and what did they do wrong?

I'm hesitant. It's not my place to judge what they did wrong. I can tell you a whole lot of what they did right. Love was never a question in our household. Never in question. You could not hold a grudge. You got in trouble, it was swift, it was quick, it was physical, it was the belt or something, and it was over. And they would say, I remember this, all my friends would do the same thing, they get grounded. I'd be like, can't you just ground me? And I remember my mom going, no, no way, because that's taking away your most valuable asset, time. Bend over.

Levi was once on my car, and I had a bunch of kids, And Roman, my son, and Levi and a bunch of their friends were there, and they made a mess of the car. Everybody got down and left the car. Levi stayed and cleaned it up. I was like, whoa, he was the only kid that was cleaning up the car. So there's something you're doing right.

He's extremely— he's the considerate, most considerate one in our family. And it's a great gift and a value he has. Yeah, I believe that. I see Levi doing that.

Is there anything else you and Camila have done to help your kids become— because they're very, to my eyes, they're very grounded, down to earth. You're probably one of the most famous people on earth. And whenever you meet your kids, they seem to me to be really grounded. I don't understand how you pull that off.

We're still trying. Okay. And it is a different circumstance being Camille and I's kids. For them, they go to school, people see the last name, the kids come up and go, oh, I bet you live in a big house. I want to see your house because I bet it's a mansion. Kids are like, what? But they're getting measured by things that— from strangers before they've even met them to show who they are. That can be a little off-putting. Every kid goes through that. But our kids being kids of people who are sort of famous last name, well-known, there's a— people project on them early, even adults project on them early. We have tried to say and teach them, look, you never lead with entitlement. You never lead like you're owed more or deserve more because of your last name. But don't you ever lower your head either. You look it straight in the eye.

Let me ask you a question because it never crossed my mind. I'm a very successful guy, and sometimes I catch myself feeling jealous or resentful, and I'm like, whoa, where the hell did that come from? It's such a weird, wrong feeling, and I try to get it out of my system, but it's a natural feeling. Somebody at your level of success, do you ever feel jealousy?

Yeah. My mind quickly goes to, oh, I am spiritually dry if I'm jealous. I'm not— I'm objectifying people, things, my own success. Uh-uh. Well, that's small thinking, Matthew. So I'll talk my way out of going, uh-uh. Watch it. If you're feeling that, you're weak spiritually.

Can you elaborate on what you do? Because it's a super good tool. I want to learn from that. What do you do to remind yourself to enrich yourself spiritually so you don't get so petty?

Slow it down and try and tell myself, listen, look around to what really matters. Look at your family. Look at yourself. I do believe that if it's, you know, yes, I want to fill my bank account, but not at the expense of my soul's account. We, Matthew, there's ways we want to— yes, I love to win, but I want to win the right way. Okay. Sometimes I'm going to take a— I need to take a loss here. And that loss is a good loss because it wasn't your game. It wasn't a game you should have been playing anyway. You were jealous about that. You wanted— no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Don't need to be, because I'll do— if you get jealous, you want them to fail and you go, oh, good. I saw them skin their knees. I saw them have to worm around on the ground and get embarrassed. Oh, speaking of embarrassment, I wish we could bring more embarrassment back. I don't think people are embarrassed enough today.

Can you elaborate on that?

Uh, I didn't know. I just think you're, you're in this, in this positive, overly positive thinking that everything— dream it, you can do it.

You should just be natural. Accept that shit happens.

Shit happens. And it happens to go— it's, it's the value of embarrassment and guilt. I noticed that people do somebody wrong Burn a bridge, steal to get where they want, and they sleep just fine. I don't want to become that numb to not be embarrassed. I still want to go, I bogeyed there. Damn it, I could have handled that better. I hurt you to get where I wanted to go, and damn it, I didn't need to do that.

I want to connect some of the stuff we're talking about to your career, because I do, from what I read, see how you've had setbacks. But when I, from afar, look at your career, seems insane. Hit after hit after hit. And I looked it up and I couldn't find fuck-ups in your career from my vantage point. So I really would like to analyze how you've built your career.

Yeah. I didn't know what I was doing the first 10 years of my career. I didn't know what acting was. I had good instincts for it. I met the right guy in a bar, took an opportunity, asked the name, got a name, got a script, read for it, got the role. All of a sudden, 3 lines turned in 3 weeks' work. I go back, graduate college, drive out to Hollywood, $2,000 in a U-Haul. And my first 2 auditions, which I got because of that movie Days of Confusion— Days of Confusion. —that I made a year ago, my first 2 auditions in Hollywood, I got them. I got the role. I didn't have that story of you gotta wait tables for 6 years before you get your first job. The first 2 auditions I went on in Hollywood, I got the doggone role. I then took another chance in a meeting with Joel Schumacher, who was the director of Time to Kill. And that was a big studio movie. And I knew it was. And I had been offered a role that was number like 8 on the call sheet, very small, much smaller role. And I went in to meet with the director and I knew I wanted the lead role.

And so I remember taking the chance in there and I go, if I get a moment, I'm going to find a moment to tell the director I want the lead role. And I remember I was wearing a sleeveless John Mellencamp t-shirt and smoking cigarettes at the time in his office at Warner Brothers. I was like, so who's playing the lead but Jake Brigance? And he goes, oh God, I don't know. Who do you think should? And I went, I think I should. And he laughed. Hahaha. Is this true, Robert? Yeah. Hahaha. Great idea, but never going to happen. But I left that meeting going, I planted a seed. I don't know if anything will come of it. 6 weeks later, we want to see you, McConaughey, in a test on screen for the role, because we hadn't been able to agree on who the lead role is. Meanwhile, 2 people that had been already cast, Samuel Jackson and Sandra Bullock— Sandra had gotten much more famous off of While You Were Sleeping, so now she was already cast in the number 3 spot, but her movie opened up to $18 million. Now that took pressure off the studio of having to get a well-known name.

That— things changed after that. Um, you know, life, career options, opportunities.

Yeah, I want to pause because that's a, that's a very, very interesting thing. So far there's 3 things that I've got that I really, I think are gold for all of us. Um, first of all, when you want something, going for it, hustling, like working it. Like, you weren't just waiting, you planted the seed with Schumacher. You believed in yourself. You had the chutzpah, the temerity, the passion to try.

And I don't even know— I believed in myself, but I was nervous as all get-out to say, I think I should be. And I just bet on myself going, if I get— they do put me in the ring, let's see if I can pull it off.

Such an important thing for everybody to understand that things don't just happen. And it's also connected to what we'll talk about in terms of your poetry, where you spirituality. You really have faith, but you also believe in your role to do something about it. You can't just wait for others,

right?

And the, the other one, it sounds like it's choosing strategically and holistically what feels right for you, what really speaks to you, what feels right, not just listening to the transactional thing. So far, those 2 are good pieces of advice for your movie decisions and for life.

Yeah.

But

yes, well, And everybody's a Monday morning quarterback, you know what I mean? You can love doing— making a choice, a business choice, a career choice, love doing it. It can all work out, and then all of a sudden, it— when you go public, it, it drops. You go private, it drops. Or the movie opens up to crap. That's me in my business too. Everybody's best friends until the movie comes out. And if the movie succeeds, those people remain best friends. If the movie bombs, you lose half of those best friends.

Can I ask you a related question? And then we'll go to the rom-com thing because that's— I find that super fascinating. But I, I have a number of friends in your industry, and I do Shark Tank, which is a tiny version of that. And I get very— I lose self-confidence sometimes because I want approval And I'm like, did somebody— did I screw up? Did people not like me enough? Did I not get enough? How do you make sure that— like, what if somebody criticizes you? How do you make sure that it doesn't impact who you are and your self-worth? Because it's like—

Well, first off, it does affect me, but part of my flip and the denial is, is the ones who wrote the good reviews were the smart ones. That's awesome.

You know what I mean?

And I'm saying that with a laugh, but I also mean it, because again, I'm, I'm, I'm positive.

Choose your own story.

And what story, right? What story are we gonna— now, I went away with all of my reviews, 20 years of reviews. I went away to the desert for a weekend and I took them all, and it was a thick book, and I read every one. All the negative reviews. I'm sorry, not all the positive, the negative ones. And I sat with them. It's all I took. And I spent 2 days looking at them. And it was hard. Some of the reviews, what I learned is that, oh, from the very first sentence, oh, this person has it out for me. It didn't matter if they saw the movie or not. They just don't like me. They were going to write a negative review. Other reviews I saw and I was like, person's got a point. They're actually a fan of mine. And they didn't get from my performance what I was actually kind of hoping they would have got? Where did I fail in a choice? Because this is constructive criticism. This person is a good critic. They were looking at the work and objectively criticizing it, applauded some things, but also applauded some things that shined a light on where I came up short.

Okay, what can I learn from that? So I saw the difference in critics. in bad news. Some are going to write a bad— some are going to write bad about you, wish you the worst no matter what, because they just don't like you from afar, don't like your success or what have you. Some are really good critics, will write constructively about what you did wrong, and you can learn from it.

I'm a big believer in being introspective, but the thought of you taking all of the negative reviews and having the strength to go into the dictionary, it's almost like punishment. It's like, tell me more about what you wrote. Tell me more. Why? How?

I do. It was trying to disseminate the difference between what was fake and what was real. And whereas before I became a movie star or celebrity, everything that I had done in life or was measured upon or got a hug for or was told I love you for or was told, hey, uh-uh, you did that wrong, was measured off of how I did the job.

And then in Hollywood, everybody—

And in Hollywood, the successful weekend, all of a sudden all these people, I love you, I love you, I love you, champagne cup. And I got— and I'm like, wait a minute, who's— I, I— what's your name again? I've only said I love you to 4 people in my life, and all of a sudden everyone's saying it. Wow, this place is great. Or, and is this place kind of heat-seeking? Oh, I'm hot, they're heat-seeking me right now. So do I call out the mendacity of that and say, oh, you're full of shit? I did that early a little bit, not too much. But what I learned later is go, no, take it. Listen, it doesn't— don't be falsely filled up with it, but just take it in grace and move and dance through. That's part of the role that can come with success. Handle that gracefully as well. When you're going to be in the hole, when you're going to be down, when you're not going to have a hit, let's try to handle that just as gracefully. Lean horse, long ride. Don Phillips, the guy I met in the bar in Austin, Texas, told me that early on.

Lean horse, long ride.

Explain that.

Meaning, if you're gonna make it in this business, it's can you stay in it? A lot of people go boom, big hit, superstar.

But it's— as I'm listening to you, it's really fascinating for me because I'm understanding why the pressure can destroy a person, because all of those factors— and you do need the grounding of Camila, of spirituality, of introspection, of going to the desert, those reality checks. It's actually really necessary to—

It's been necessary for me. Look, I admire and I'm somewhat jealous of some people who don't seem to need any of that introspection and just charge on, carry on from one to the next, and they work.

Tell me if I'm wrong if you want. I cannot think of a single person that achieves greatness And unless they find a way to be introspective, do not implode. Because I am supremely insecure. I have— I mean, obviously I'm very self-confident in some ways and I'm very grateful in some ways. And I don't— I'm not coy about what I've achieved. And also about what you and I share in common is that we really want to help build a better world like that. And I'm very comfortable sleeping at night that I'm doing the right choices. But every single day of my life, I question myself. Every single day I wonder if I screwed up, if I screwed somebody over, if I burned something. Is that like— it's a part of who I am. It's maybe because I'm a confused Mexican Jew.

I don't

know. But do you have an element of what you called imposter syndrome? Is it still with you or you left that behind?

I have it less and less. I think I am— I've never achieved through acting, through husbandry, fatherhood, in any part of my life. I have not ever met the mark that I believed is worth getting to. And what I've shaken hands with in the last 15 years, maybe 20 years of my life, is that, well, good. Keep that bar outside of my grasp. And I got this funny line in the poetry book, rather go for an A and make a C than go for a C and fail. I keep coming up short. Now, that's something I try to hold myself to. And I'm like, well, that's it. You just keep chasing the end of the race. You're never going to finish. You will never reach that height. And that's good. But how close could you get? That's the best we can do in this life.

Let's go back connecting that a little bit about— do you remember the moment where you and Camila decided, No more rom-coms. Yeah. And you turn away a $14.5 million offer and many other offers. Was the last one you did How Do I Lose a Guy in 10 Days?

That wasn't the last one. I think the last one was Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Speaking of turning off your phone, the only one that comes in, ah, would be my daughter calling, but we'll let her know real quick. Hey, babe. Yo, I'm in the middle— you are live on Mr. Daniel Levitsky's, uh, podcast right now. Can I, can I call you back? Saw that. Okay. Okay. I'm in the middle of the podcast. We're live right now. Okay, bye.

This is my favorite part. Please do not edit that out. It shows what his priorities are.

And then having to remind them, because what she was going to ask me about is not overly time sensitive.

Yeah. By the way, our kids live in a world where they call me like, it's urgent.

Yeah.

And it's not urgent.

She's one of the few calls that can come through a silenced phone.

But so you've done these rom-coms, you're— and they're really successful.

Very successful.

So it's not like— and it was honestly really fun. I mean, How I Lose a Guy in 10 Days, I've watched it so many times and I enjoy every second of it. It's great, great filming. It's very entertaining.

Yeah.

So then why did you decide to completely hard stop that?

Started to feel like when they would come in, I could go, oh, yeah, great. I could do this tomorrow.

You wanted a challenge.

I wasn't scared of it. I'd like to be scared. I'd like to sweat in my boots a little bit. And then I know I can— I'm going to have an experience in the making of it. I'm going to come out the other side, having learned something myself. I want— I'd like that experience.

Our life is a product of all of our experiences. We are a product of those. For a film star who acts as all those people, do you also take into your life and adopt pieces of every character you've played? You inhabit that character, and there's some darkness and complexity to that character. When you finish filming, is some of him inside you?

Sure. When I dive into a character, okay, I work with what's off the text first. Who are they? And I'm immediately asking myself, well, how— who— what part of me is in that? And then I go to imagination. I go, oh, and who do I know like that? Oh, I see how this person thinks, feels, how they get up in the morning, what their personal politics is, whatever. But that going out to become another character is only half the journey. If you really pull it off as an actor, you come— when you're doing it,

you are

it. It's you. There's none of this, I am playing.

You become—

you go, I am. You get past the objectivity and it becomes a very subjective experience if you can get that far. It's not all— it's very hard to get that far with all characters. Some of the characters I've only gone halfway and never found my way back completely to myself.

Do you ever get scared though that when you inhabit that with so much excellence and you become that, that, that dark— because some of these characters are complex and dark and whatever— that some of that will then turn you into someone you don't want to become?

Um, I used to fear that more than I have in the last 20 years. Rustin Cohle, True Detective. His philosophies, which some would say are nihilistic, I was able to go so deep into that guy's mind and trust being there because at that time in my life, my faith was as strong as it's ever been. I was able to turn completely for 6 months and go, go further, go deeper, and trust your faith will be there when you get out the other side. And your love of life will be there. And it was, if not more so. And I heard in my faith, I heard God going, I love it when you, when you trust enough to go into self-reliance far enough to trust that when you turn back around, I'll be here.

That's so beautiful. And also connects with me with what you're in your book about poems. I think that's where I read this about how you connect to truth and contradictions and realize that they're connected. Like, there's truth in contradiction. And I think it's a builder's mindset that's comfortable not dealing with everything's black, everything's white, easy, simple answers, but the complexity of our life. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, it kind of goes back to the top of our conversation. I think about how we deal with failures and successes. I mean, they both happen. When I was talking earlier about it's part of the same song. You know, and when you see that this is true, and this is true, and you see it this way, and you see it this way, it actually becomes not a contradiction, becomes paradox. And that's where both things are true. And that, for me, there's a great verse in the Bible, Matthew 6:22, if thine eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light. It's about how we humans love to judge. Like that New Orleans cab driver, the first time Camila got to New Orleans. taking her through the seedy side of town. She was like, are we going through the bad side of town? That New Orleans cab driver says, well, ma'am, you know, there's a little good in the bad side of town and a little bad in the good side of town. Look at that. It sounds like a blues song, which it is, but that's just true. We have every bit of evil in us that the most evil people in the world have.

We got it in us. We have every bit of goodness and light And joyous, that the most joyful and spiritual people have in them. We have it all in us. So how do we— which wolf do we feed? You know what I mean? But they're both simultaneous. There's a whole lot of evil things I can understand, but choose, which is a much better word than mandate. That's where it comes back personal. What are we choosing to— but choose to act and behave differently? Look, we talk about— look, if we're talking about failures and successes, and if we're going to talk about which is number one on the list today in the world, more what? Money. Got no problem with money. But if you are saying, I want more money at all costs, if you succeed in that, you will inevitably fail. In your character along the way. I don't see how you cannot if you don't mind lying, burning a bridge, cheating, no matter how you get there. If— and that's a— if that's it, but call that, call it out.

You're feeding the wrong wolf.

Because your soul's account, if you have one, which you do, whether you admit it or not, your soul's account will be in the debit section if your idea is more money at all costs. I think our biggest challenge right now is defining what what our more is. More what? I mean, we're told every day, reward, that more money is how you get to the top. It's how you get to the front of the line. And I got no problem with that. What I don't like is rewarding the most powerful or the ones with the most money who didn't get there the right way. And we reward those people all the time. And I think that we have to watch that because that's— I think ultimately that will be a downfall of civilization. if we continue to do that.

When I met you, if I recall correctly, our shared— I think when we met was at the Governors Association.

Utah.

In Utah. And what I've seen and followed from you is that you really care about helping society and uniting society. You talk about the difference between a good man and a nice man, which we talk about difference between being kind and being nice and civic. Participation sometimes is divisive, and you've managed to be a uniter in it, even in the issues that seem so divisive. So I can think of Uvalde, I can think of a couple of areas. A lot of us would love for you to lean in even more into helping heal our country. How do you think about that?

Let's all admit, first off, ain't nothing sexy about the word civics. Ooh. But what if we made civics sexy? What if the idea of helping out your fellow man and helping yourself, understanding that actually serving others does serve yourself in the big picture. It's not— there's nothing sexy about it right now. People run from it. I don't know how we make it sexy. I don't know how we make that broccoli taste good. You sell something right, market something right, people buy anything. They just will.

On the 250th anniversary of our country, you posted something. A lot of people posted stuff. I'm serious. Like, it was mesmerizingly good. I, I literally just preparing for us, looked at it again last night. It was incredible. Like the words you shared, the way you shared it. What a message.

250 years young. Howdy, America. And to a lot of people, that may seem like a long time to be a country, but it's really not. But I tell you what, it's definitely not too long to be— it's not too long to be an idea, which is what America is. A land that has never been yet. And that yet that we're seeking and chasing, that's the whole thing. It's a place where never going to arrive at. And that's not failure because we won't. That's by design. And think about it. We didn't start this country on any kind of proof. We started it on a belief that was worth fighting for, a wager that was worth betting on, an act of faith that a self-governing people could be something worth being and becoming. And here we are 250 years later, the The bet's still on the table, folks. We have not cashed in, and let's hope we never cash in. Today we're gonna let the kids run barefoot after dark, baby. That's the celebration. Not that we've arrived anywhere, but to the fact that we are still on our way. Take inventory with the one in the mirror and together.

Here's to more dancing in the home of the brave. Happy 250th America.

I want to break down— did you write it? Did people help you write it? How many takes did it take? Did you practice it? Because it is really powerful stuff.

It's things I've been thinking about and things we've been talking about here in the last hour. Um,

were you— did you have an outline?

No, I had bullet points of thoughts, bullet points and, and, and thoughts.

No teleprompter?

No. And that's one take. That's the first take. That's for real. Yeah.

Fuck you. I no longer like you as a builder.

Well, like,

like,

there's some themes in there that I've been thinking about working on for, for decades. You know, the, the, the, the yet. The idea of yet. Remember we were talking earlier about, I've never reached— it's a yet.

Yeah, I— what I saw in this is both an incredible message to our fellow countrymen, but it's also very rooted in your philosophy of very much— it's a personal philosophy for how do we succeed in our own lives and how do we join forces and succeed as a nation and as a world. But the craftsmanship of the language, like, let's just end with this question: where did that come from? Because for me, it's mesmerizing when you speak. As a kid, Did you have that gift?

Look, I grew up with storytellers at our lazy Susan table where my family sat and ate dinner at a round table. I was the youngest and my dad was a great storyteller. My brothers were great storytellers and mom was a decent storyteller. And so I was always looking for, am I going to be able to get a gap to get in one of my stories tonight? And then you don't find it for weeks, months. And then one night you got something you wanted to say and you get the gap and you start. And once you're in, I was like, oh my gosh, I have the floor. I mean, Stuttered, boom, my family would be like, huh, okay, and just start another conversation. So we had to work at being good storytellers in our family. I don't know, along the way, I'm not a huge reader. I don't have somebody that wrote that I'm like, oh, I like how they write. I can write very academically sometimes, but it's sort of sterile. I love it. It's philosophical, but it's a little sterile, maybe a little intellectual, too academic. That was all about, you know, part of that inspiration was Langston Hughes has a poem called America.

But what he talks about, what Langston Hughes, the poet, talks about is America as a dream. Like, like, like, we'll chase equality, never get it. We'll chase justice, not going to get it. But that it's the— it's, it's a way he reframed looking at America. And what I'm trying to do is reframe of looking at America as a verb. It's an idea, man. It's live. It's happening. We're in the middle of it. We've been here 250 years. It's nothing when you look at the existence of countries around the world. We're a baby. And so to think it, to remind us, oh yeah, we're still young. It's not time to start going, yeah, I guess that's just how it is. No, that's the whole antithesis of what America is. It was a bet. It was a gamble that a self-governing people could be a country worth living in. It was a— no one done it before. And we're young, so we have to watch getting so arrogant as to call out our failures as like, well, that's— we've just failed. No, that's part of it. That's just another— our flag. That's why I'm not for bringing down historical monuments and stuff.

I'm like, look, there are things we learn and the flag should have holes that we sew. So we have to watch again this overall judgment. to deny a past that we have. No, let's look at it. This is part of America's conversations. We are in the beginning of the conversation.

I love it. I feel a little bit bad about what's about to happen because that was so beautiful. And instead of rewarding you, we're now going to start punishing you with the next segment in our conversation, which is called The Mexican Inquisition. I'm going to ask you questions and you need to answer them. And if we don't like your answer, we'll turn it off. Okay. So first question in the Mexican Inquisition is, who is an unsung hero that helped you get to this moment? Either Sam Lawrence, who was your classmate, I think, Yeah, yeah. And fellow bartender that pointed you to Dazed and Confused, or Kevin Morris, who's been your attorney and with you for the last 10-plus years, helping guide you in your career?

Um, look, Kevin Morris is no longer my attorney, but Kevin Morris is a really important man in my life. You know, when you get to Hollywood The first person you meet is so important because they're going to introduce you to the next person you meet, and they're going to introduce you to the next people. And everyone that— most everyone I'm with now are through a connection of my first connection, which was Kevin Morrison Hollywood. And he took chances on me. He believed in me that I would one day be a star and be successful. And he was my working lawyer when I had no money to pay him, going like, it's all right, it's all right, bud. He goes, he goes, you, you, you have money to pay me one day. We're good. We're good. He worked for me for free and I didn't have any money to pay him.

Wow. So he's the winner.

Absolute Morris. Yes.

I was actually going to shock you because, like, you chose a lawyer. But on the other side of things, I didn't charge you at the beginning.

You're going to

pass. All right. Next question. Who would you want to bring in for a dinner conversation, either Richard Linklater or Marc Benioff? Who would have a more interesting, enriching conversation?

Well, it matters what you're looking for. All right. And right now, because I've had, I've had more recent dinners with Marc Benioff, who is a great dinner conversation. Big. I've never seen anyone have such big ideas and act on them so quickly as Marc Benioff. Um, link ladder is a friend of mine who I have in my notes who I'm trying to schedule a week with because I got to catch up with him. It's been too long since he and I have hung out. Now, a hangout with link ladder will not be specific. It's not like, oh, we have an hour, let's talk about the topics in our life. No, a link ladder relationship, you pick it back up whether it's been 3 years since you've seen each other, and there's no big preciousness on what the subject is going to be. You're going to talk about kind of what happened in front of you. It's going to be brand new. It's gonna be fresh. There's no library of information you bring to a link letter conversation that is like, oh, I want to talk to you about this. Oh, let's catch up on this.

It's all live. And just what happens moving forward at that dinner is what you would talk about.

Man, it's too good an answer. But you know what? I'm giving you half.

Okay.

Half a level. Yeah. Feel it yet? Do you want more?

Touch more.

Now you're at one.

And it's in there. It's in there.

You're starting to. Who would you take a road trip with, Saint Benedict or Sam Houston? One lived the life of a monastery, which has a spirituality, and the other one lived larger than life in Texas.

Road trips are pretty spiritual trips for me. But I also— I'm right now feeling a little like, uh, um, I want to hear the fangs coming out of Sam Houston's experience.

I'm gonna give you some shock because we're running out of time and you're only at 1, and I like to think that after Time to Kill you were discouraged. So you're going to 2 now. You're gonna feel it.

Okay. Hey, there it is! Hey! I'll do it to you.

Okay. Can you continue?

Okay.

I think you started speaking Spanish. I did.

I think I just cussed him out in Spanish, didn't I?

Um, which role shaped you more, your discovery role in Dazed and Confused or your rebirth role in The Lincoln Lawyer?

Well, Dazed and Confused. That's the first. I didn't know when I was doing Dazed and Confused if that was going to be a hobby that one day I would tell my kids about. Hey, in the summer of '92, I was in town. I got to work on this film, play this character. I did that one summer. It turned out to be a career for me. Lincoln Lawyer was very important, but Days Confused— what I learned on Days Confused, how to work, collaborate, etc., is still paramount.

Which early job impacted you more? Being a golf course sand trap raker and armadillo hunter, or the spate of jobs during your high school year in Australia?

Yeah. So in Australia, I worked 11 different odd jobs for free until construction, because I got good enough at construction and we built a house that they started slipping me some cash, um, even though they weren't supposed to. But I'm gonna go back to— look, I think we had 74 traps at Oak Forest, and now my job is to have every one of them raked before that first group got to the green. And that first group teed off at like 6:30. And it took me longer to rake traps on one hole than it took people to play a hole. So by the time they teed off, I needed to be on about 8 or 9, right? So I had to start early in the morning and get those traps raked. The armadillo thing, I wasn't the best armadillo hunter, but we did have an armadillo that was armadillos that were coming out at night. And me and my buddy Kenny Brown, and he was a bow hunter. We got put on— that was our payment, to go hunt down and kill the armadillos. I don't think we succeeded very well. We scared a bunch off, but I don't know how many we, we killed.

Uh,

what drives you? Getting inside another person's head, like how you developed Russ Cole in True Detective, or the pull of a story worth telling, like how you talked about Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club?

Well, ideally, I mean, I'm in a great character and a great story, but give me the character. That's at the end of the day. That's what I'm in charge of. At the end of the day, all I owe you is a good performance, and that's on me and nobody else. Yes, I'll take direction. Yes, I'd like to be in a good story surrounded by, but my job, my modus operandi, my single reverence Matthew

McConaughey, you have survived the Mexican Inquisition.

Hey, the last one on the MI, which does not stand for Mission Impossible, it does stand for Mexican Inquisition. That was a good one. That was coming up to my elbows.

Okay, Matthew, now we're entering the final segment called Build or Break.

Yeah.

And the way it's kind of like our version of rapid fire, I'm going to ask you a question. And you need to say build or break. If you're for it, build. If you're not for it, break. You can comment on it if you want or just let it stand on its own. Build or break intelligent alien life?

Build, I hope. Man, I hope so. That'd be great. I mean, I'm just not arrogant enough to think that there's not life out there. I hope there is.

Build or break Matthew McConaughey impressions?

Build if they're good ones, not the crappy ones. And you know who you are that do a half-assed version of them. Nah, nah. And those of you watching who give them a bunch of likes, just give the good ones likes. Damon does a good one.

Damon John?

Matt Damon.

Oh, Matt Damon.

Yeah.

Uh, Mr. Soderbergh, uh, today's scene I think would be a good opportunity for me me to take my shirt off.

Build or break, defining your life in eras like rom-com era, McConaughey era, the philosophical period. Like, is it constraining to look back and see your life in a series of eras, or does it help you construct a life strategy?

Break.

McConaughey was yours or somebody else invented it?

I invented it, but I plugged it. I made it sound like it was somebody else who said it.

Really? I love that.

Uh,

it took you a while to fess up to that.

Well, I wrote about it. I wrote about it in Greenlights. Yeah, I told the story about where I, where I, uh, I, I, I stole it, um, from something somebody said, and then I gave it the term McConnaissance because it sounded—

Well, McConnaissance, for me, we didn't get to because we had to finish within a time period. But for me, Leonardo da Vinci is who reminds me the most of you because he was a Renaissance man and he did so many different things. Has it not crossed your mind?

It hasn't. Renaissance man, though. I mean, that to me is sort of the icon.

For you. And so have you studied the life of Leonardo da Vinci? I have not. I'm going to get you a book. It's— he's a fascinating character. Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most incredible people who ever lived. The amount of things he did. He was an engineer, a painter. a scientist, an astrologer, astronomer, a thinker. He was incredible. And he really delved into so many different areas.

Let me ask you this, and maybe this is a conversation for us to continue outside of this, but do you think when you do switch categories, do you think that I need to change my title? Or just go and go, no, some people just are that way and they are their own title and they work in different categories.

I love the question. I actually, believe it or not, think about that question about title when I go. I don't know if I understood it, if you're being spiritual or practical. Practically, I go to events and I don't know what title to put on. Like, am I the founder of Kind or the CEO of Camino or the Build or Break or the Builders Movement? and I truly don't know how to present myself.

I think the real— if you— if, if it's possible, I'm not saying it, it always is at all— is that you don't. You get a new title, you star, and you do that, you do this, you do that. And like, yeah, I mean, that's just— that's them. Didn't need a new title, didn't need a new hat, you know what I mean?

I love that. And I think for Leonardo da Vinci, Matthew McConaughey, it works. But I want to now try something else very, very deep and more powerful. Build or break film junket interviews?

Kind of break. I understand, but the new age, they're not as necessary as they used to be. They take them to local television, but they don't hold the weight. That's not where people really go.

So you can throw away—

I throw them away.

Build or break, selling pantalones. Would you ever consider an exit?

I'd say build on that. We got, we got, we still got work to do, and we still love doing it. Um, Camila and I and the team right now, we're chugging on it and, uh, trying to build it. And it's a tough market, as you know, but we have our head above the water, and we have a great product, and we are enjoying selling it.

Build or break, Texas exceptionalism.

Build. Tribalism is a word that sort of has gotten a bad rap. We are all tribal. Come on. And I think there's room for every tribe to want to be exceptional. I wish more tribes identified and said, let's be exceptional. Look, and Texas's brand is independence. That's what it is. And let us not forget that. I wish— yeah, I wish that for all of us. So yeah, I'm for that. I'm for— I'm for that travel brand of Texas.

I love the way you explained it. Matthew, thank you so much for being on Build or Break.

My pleasure, Daniel.

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