No. 10 No. Vol. 27, THE 8 KITCHEN OCTOBER 201 OCTOBER ULTIMATE ULTIMATE ARSENAL ESSENTIAL 8 WORKOUTS KETTLEBELL KETTLEBELL No. 10 No.

Vol. 27, OCTOBER 201 OCTOBER

MATTHEW Himself—Again

NEWNATIONAL PARKS

CONAUGHEY CONAUGHEY C

A Hollywood Icon Reinvents HollywoodIcon A M WILDEST

BRAIN TRAIN YOUR

HOW TO

of Fish of

The Future The Future

AMERICA

BEERS IN

BEST BEST THE WORLD’S THE

MATTHEW McCONAUG H EY THE UNITED STATES OF SUDS / HOW TO TRAIN YOUR BRAIN / THE FUTURE OF FISH OCTOBER 2018 50 By J E S S E WILL

Photographs by MILLER MOBLEY

McCON AUGHE Y ’ S

WITH A TRIO OF UNEXPECTED ROLES, MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY IS REINVENTING HIS CAREER, AGAIN. YET THE OSCAR WINNER SEEMS TO STAY THE SAME. ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. not knowing the two had split: “I just thought Mom was in Florida on vacation.” I AM SHIRTLESS AND MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY IS NOT. A few days before filming ended on Dazed and Confused, Big Jim, then 62, suffered a heart It’s a sweltering day in the midst of the hottest attack and died while making love to Kay. May ever recorded in Austin, Texas, and the McConaughey’s ad-lib for his character in clothing-averse actor is wearing a wifebeater Dazed, “Just keep livin’, ” was a phrase that and backward ball cap, the very portrait of the actor had been uttering to himself in the Texas decorum as we post up on stools at a days that followed his father’s death, as a way waterside burger-beer-and-taco joint, an of dealing with the loss. (It’s now the name of impromptu stop on a four-hour-plus paddle- McConaughey’s foundation, a wellness and boarding circuit of Lake Austin. When we service curriculum for at-risk high schoolers pushed off from his boathouse in the morn- across five states and D.C.) ing, I didn’t see him tuck a shirt away in the I had read about an Irish wake that the waistband of his Just Keep Livin boardshorts. family held in Longview, Texas, and asked Hours later, as we drag our boards up onto the McCon aughey what he said at it. He paused for restaurant’s dock, he pulls out the shirt and a minute. “I said, ‘There’s people in this room slings it on. Now everybody in the place, other that owe my dad money. Just ’cause he’s moved than me, is properly attired. on, don’t think you’re not paying him back. I ask McConaughey how much of a prob- You’re paying my mom back.’ ” They paid. lem this is. nothing’s a big deal. It’s relaxing. Spending How did he decide to become an actor? He I ask if he’s raising his own children to be “Zeeee—ro,” the actor says, in that signa- time with my kids, my wife, following through picked up a random paperback. McConaughey similarly independent and free-thinking. “I ture south Texas drawl. The o syllable has a on 3 a.m. ideas. Writing, poetry, music. Stuff was drawing stellar grades but getting bored realize I have 18 years to shepherd,” he says.

long tail, trailing off reassuringly. I just don’t have time for when I’m working.” as a sophomore studying law at the University “And I use the word shepherd—they are who A problem? Ha. Such a thing is granted We paddle past a park, scattered with of Texas. During a break while cramming for they are. I’m not trying to make them into me, no quarter in the realm of McConaughey. barbecue grills and fronted by a sandy beach finals, he scooped the book off a frat-house but there are some values I can teach them. An extended hang with the guy turns out to that’s vacant, despite the day’s perfection. floor that would change his life: The Greatest Then they’re gonna be who they are.” be exactly as weird and meandering as you “Be a lot cooler if you diiiid,” McConaughey has roles in White Boy Rick (September 14), As I ask McConaughey about his past—pick Salesman in the World, a self-help tome from PREVIOUS SPREAD: MCCONAUGHEY WEARS TOP BY JOHN VARVATOS. VARVATOS. JOHN BY TOP WEARS MCCONAUGHEY SPREAD: PREVIOUS might imagine. A brief paddle and Q&A ses- retorts. Serenity (October 19), and The Beach Bum a period—I realize that he inevitably reveals 1968. In the story, a rich trader credits his pros- sion has evolved into something else entirely: Fist bump. Laughter. (TBA). Now that they’re all in the can, McCon- some magic-realist moment where some truth perity to some old scrolls bearing principles: “I Chief among the values McConaughey is part endurance test, part vision quest, and an “Oh man. Oh dude,” Washington says. aughey, 48, a husband and father of three, is was revealed to him. will persist until I succeed.” “I will greet this trying to instill in his kids: the concept of opportunity to, the actor tells a guy named “This is crazy. Mind blown.” taking a breather, spending the longest stretch Take the move to Texas. Why’d he decide to day with love in my heart.” “I will laugh at the delayed gratification. So far, he thinks it’s Rowdy, sitting at the bar next to us, “explore Washington makes the “exploding” hand of time in the Lone Star State since his Hol- come back? Simple. A stoplight turned green. world.” “Today I begin a new life.” working. About two years ago, he tells me, a bit, get some tans, get some tacos, make a motion at both of his temples, then staggers lywood career began. In 2011, McConaughey and Alves were vis- McConaughey heeded its advice. That Levi pointed to his father’s Oscar statue. “He Wednesday feel like a Saturday.” back and does it again. “Craziest moment in “Is there any place on the planet you’d iting Kay, the wild-ass outlaw matriarch of night, he called his parents and told them he said, ‘What’d you get that trophy for?’ And I

He’s right about the shirt. No one pays atten- my life,” he says, walking away. rather be?” he asks, standing on his bright yel- INC. CTMG, © 2018 PAGE: THIS the McConaughey clan, who lives in nearby wanted to change majors: He wanted to study said, ‘Remember when we were in Louisiana, tion to the near-naked reporter with a recorder. low Laird Hamilton paddleboard, a gift from Georgetown. At the time, she was having film. After a beat, his father, Big Jim, replied, and how skinny dad was, and when you woke Everyone wants a piece of McConaughey, the surfer Strider Wasilewski. He swings a carbon- some health issues. (She’s since recovered.) “I simply: “Don’t half-ass it.” up, I had already gone to work—and we would local hero, sitting here with his wraparound This kind of encounter is nothing new to fiber paddle, and his cadence is steady; when hadn’t thought about moving,” McConaughey See, the McConaugheys know a thing or only play on Saturdays? Well, the work I was shades on the counter, his roman nose flecked McConaughey. He’s been repeating it for I ask a question, he answers in full paragraphs says. “I didn’t know it was coming. I was driv- two about mavericks. Kay was a kindergarten doing then, my industry deemed excellent.’ ” with high-SPF sunscreen. The bystanders chip exactly 25 years, since Dazed and Confused without stopping to take a breath. ing, we were at a stoplight, and Camila said, schoolteacher who bluffed her way through a “I think there was this cool ‘ding-ding’ for in from the conversational rough. hit theaters in the summer of 1993 and his It’s a Wednesday morning, and the dusty ‘We’re moving back here, aren’t we?’ There 39-year career without ever obtaining a teach- him,” McConaughey says. “What you do today Rowdy asks McConaughey about his cur- character, David Wooderson, the hanger-on turquoise water of Lake Austin is free from boat was a second of silence, and the stoplight ing certificate; Big Jim, a Green Bay Packers can line up for what you get tomorrow.”

rent roster of Airstreams. (He’s been collecting townie, the stoned philosopher-poet of the wake and, for the most part, people. Hidden up FROM TOP: ANNE MARIE FOX/© FOCUS FEATURES/COURTESY OF EVERETT COLLECTION;© GRAMERCY PICTURES/COURTESY OF EVERETT COLLECTION turned green, and I said yes. That was that.” draftee, owned a gas station, and later caught a Delayed gratification is something familiar them for years and now owns four.) A busi- parking lot, voiced the actor’s most famous on a cedar-shrouded hillside sits the McCon- piece of the Texas oil boom, selling to McConaughey: The Oscar for Dallas Buy- nessman playing hooky inquires about an lines—“be a lot cooler if you did,” “just keep aughey manse. The actor married Brazilian pipe. He was known to party with ers Club was a culmination of a career reboot appearance the actor made on the Golf Chan- livin’,” “all right, all right, all right”—most of model and entrepreneur Camila Alves there his shirt off, his cockatiel close that had been years in the making. By 2008, nel. A British woman apologizes for the inter- which he improvised. in 2012 in front of children Levi, then 3, and by. The pair wrote their own love the actor had spent the better part of a decade ruption, then introduces her small, scruffy I ask McConaughey if it’s fatiguing when Vida, then 2. (Livingston would arrive later story, getting divorced twice and taking home reported $8 million paychecks for dog. She asks for a picture. fans shout out, or ask him to repeat, Wooder- that year.) John Mellencamp sang psalms. The marrying three times. During one cable-friendly confections like The Wedding “No, no, no,” McConaughey says. “I’m local,” son’s lines from Dazed. actor and his family split their time between separation, when he was about 10, Planner, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure pointing across the lake. “You’ll see me again.” “No,” he says. “Look, ‘all right, all right, Austin and a ritzy enclave in Malibu; by the McConaughey spent the summer to Launch, Fool’s Gold, and Ghosts of Girlfriends A man with arms and hands covered in all right’ has become a national sort of moni- time the heat and bugs turn Austin truly hell- with his father in a trailer park, Past. But after a period of soul-searching, white paint approaches from the back of the ker. People say it all the time, and they want ish, he’ll pack the family into one of their Air- bar. me to say it. I’ve got no trouble giving it back streams and head back to the California coast. “Whoa!” He stops in his tracks. to them. For me, it’s original and genuine But today it’s clear that Texas is his ele- “Yeah!” McConaughey says. because they’re the first three words I ever ment. When we float past the few people on “Whoa.” said in a job that I got, that hell, I didn’t know the shore, McConaughey shouts a “How-de- “Yeah, man.” if it was gonna be a hobby. It could have been hay” or whistles. When he says or hears some- He says his name is Glenn Washington. my only gig. It ended up being a ca-reeeeer.” thing he finds amusing, he breaks into a high New in town from Detroit. Has a gig painting Fifty feature films later, that career exhi bits cackle. He’s not wearing a watch and didn’t a house down the road. Says he’s buddies with the twists and turns of a live oak, from early bring his phone. McConaughey is off duty, NFL players back home, but he’s never been breakouts like A Time to Kill to the highly bank- living moment to moment. this starstruck. able aughts and its quintet of rom-com paydays, “I’ve made everything a swing-by here,” he “Man. Oh dude. You gotta say one thing to the turn toward more serious fare known as says. “Nothing is an appointment. It’s been for me.” the “McConaissance,” the pinnacle of which cruisey as all get-out, man. I’m a clock-watcher, McConaughey has a half smile; he knows was a best actor Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club. but I’ve been 10, 15 minutes late to things Clockwise from top left: McConaughey and co-star what’s coming; he’s just waiting for it, hit me. A trio of upcoming films represents yet another recently, which I usually never am. Nobody Richie Merritt in White Boy Rick; and in The Beach “You got a joint?” Washington says. departure, a reinvention of sorts. The actor seems to give a shit here, no one seems to care, Bum, Dallas Buyers Club, and Dazed and Confused. 70 McConaughey decided to “unbrand”—passing “I LOVE PEOPLE ON THE FRINGES, on the big rom-com checks to search out more WHO serious roles. For a few years, the phone didn’t ring. In 2011, a strong performance in The DEFINE THEIR OWN PERSONAL CODES, Lincoln Lawyer provided a clue of what was to WHO JUST CAN’T SEE ANYTHING BUT come in the subsequent three-year McConais- sance: stellar turns in Magic Mike, The Wolf GETTING AWAY WITH IT.” of Wall Street, True Detective, and, of course, Dallas Buyers Club. “That [Dallas] was a hustle, dude,” says McConaughey, laughing as if he’s still sur- prised, years later. “I was attached, and nobody Critics lauded McConaughey’s lusty portrayal an unknown 15-year-old from Baltimore, as wanted to make it,” he says. “It was dangerous of a Kenny Wells, a paunchy, balding prospec- Wershe Jr. “By putting [McConaughey] in material, and some directors passed because tor looking for the big strike, but faulted the front of somebody who’d never done it before, they didn’t want to do it with me; they were slack run time. Audiences stayed away. Matthew had to come and meet him halfway,” still seeing me as the rom-com, action guy.” “Dude, that didn’t even see the light of day,” Demange says. “He couldn’t give a heightened Five months before the movie was slated he says. “It came and went. Boom. Bye-bye.” performance. That excited him.” to begin filming, McConaughey started los- He paddles onward. On the heels of White Boy Rick comes Seren- ing the first of the 47 pounds he’d drop to play “Do I want people to see the movies I’m in? ity, out in October, similarly from left field. It’s Ron Woodruff, an AIDS patient at death’s You’re damn right,” he says. “I mean, you spend a smart neo-noir/sci-fi flick in which McCon- door. It was a gamble—the movie still wasn’t that amount of time on something, you want it aughey plays a boat captain in the Caribbean. funded. Just days before filming, a Texas to translate. You want people to see it. It doesn’t Anne Hathaway, who starred opposite the actor feed shop put up the last million of the movie’s always happen. But I’ve learned not to be so in Interstellar, plays his ex-wife, who’s looking $7 million budget. completely invested in the outcome that I need for revenge on her abusive current husband. Lance Armstrong, a longtime friend and it to provide me with a sense of significance.” Directed by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, neighbor in Austin, witnessed firsthand Locke), the film is a beguiling thriller—central to McConaughey’s transformation for the role. its plot, another father-son relationship. “To watch somebody do that was absolutely Whatever his box-office results of the last few The third of the trio is a true wild card: A fucking mind-blowing,” Armstrong says. years, McConaughey’s next act—the three stoner comedy from Harmony Korine (Spring “After he had already lost the weight, they ran films that will come out over the coming Breakers) called The Beach Bum. In the film, set into budget problems. I was worried about year—offers plenty of promise. He won’t call it for next summer, McConaughey stars as a free- him. And he just doubled down, kept going, a “departure” or even a left turn. But the roles wheeling poet named Moondog; Snoop Dog just transformed; and oddly enough, the delay sure as hell are interesting. and Zac Efron play characters named Lingerie made him even better.” The first of the lot, White Boy Rick, follows the and Flicker, respectively. Says McConaughey, Armstrong points to a change that he started true story of Rick Wershe Jr., who at 14 was the “[Korine] wrote this anarchic, wild script, and seeing in McConaughey around the actor’s self- youngest-ever FBI informant, a teenage drug I hadn’t read anything like it. This was the first

imposed hiatus nearly a decade ago. “If he does dealer, and, later, the longest-serving juvenile role I’ve had where it’s all rhyme, no reason, SAINTS ALL BY BOOTS RRL; BY JEANS VARVATOS, JOHN BY BELT VARVATOS, JOHN BY SHIRT WEARS MCCONAUGHEY SPREAD: FOLLOWING anything, if it’s a role, if it’s a commercial, if it’s nonviolent offender in Michigan history. The plot man. It was just, find the music and go and stay an appearance, if it’s a charity event, if it’s a din- is a knotty tale of police corruption, 1980s gangs, in the music the entire time.” ner with somebody, he is extremely thought- and a failing war on drugs, set amid a Detroit in In his trademark ethereal mode, McCon- ful about whether or not he can fully commit. decline. McConaughey plays Wershe’s father, aughey talks of Moondog’s “hazy, buoyant There is absolutely zero bullshit to him. He’s all Rick Wershe Sr. As the auto industry withers, dance through life.” You can’t help but think LAUREN. GREG BY BANDANA RRL, BY JEANS VARVATOS, JOHN BY BELT PERSE, JAMES BY SHIRT WEARS MCCONAUGHEY in, or if there’s a sliver of doubt, he’s out, and he’ll along with its lucrative, lifelong careers, Wershe that he’s describing something of himself. tell you why. Few people I’ve ever encountered Sr. survives as a gun dealer, fighting abject pov- have that kind of discipline.” erty while inadvertently walking his son back- ward into a life of crime. McConaughey calls the We float up to an abandoned dock and sit role his “first country song, my first got-out-of- down. Hawks fly overhead; the heads of tur- After paddling past a few mansions McCon- jail-and-momma-got-hit-by-a-train song.” tles break the water surface every few minutes. aughey descries as “monstrosities,” we get to It makes sense, as Wershe Sr. is something McConaughey is still riffing on music, how he a stretch of lakeside lots dotted with mod- of a loser, a hands-in-his-pockets guy. “He’s uses it to find the character he’s playing. est, one-story, mid-century houses, and start a bad dad,” McConaughey says. “Not a good It started way back in 1992. Richard Link- talking about the strange thing that happened father. He tried, and his heart’s in the right later, in preparation to shoot Dazed, handed after McConaughey won the Oscar: His mov- place. But he can’t toe the line.” out mixed cassette tapes to set the mood. On it ies started bombing. That said, Wershe Sr. possesses a trait was a Ted Nugent track, “Stranglehold,” which Aside from the Christopher Nolan space- McConaughey finds irresistible: He’s a hustler. McConaughey played and replayed until it travel epic Interstellar, which was already in “I love the people on the fringes,” he says, “who infected his being, until he found Wooderson’s the can at the time of the Academy Awards, define their own personal codes, and are right posture. For Magic Mike’s Dallas, the song was and two animated films the actor lent his voice in the slipstream, right in the gut—and just Kiss’ “Calling Dr. Love.” In True Detective, the to, McConaughey-anchored projects have can’t see anything but getting away with it.” Black Angels’ “Young Men Dead” served as struggled to find audiences. The actor doesn’t The film’s director, Frenchman Yann “the Vietnam march” that would get McCon- bristle at discussing the cold streak. He grows Demange (’71, HBO’s upcoming Lovecraft aughey into the head of detective Rust Cohle. animated as I rattle off a few of the titles. Country), says the performance is a depar- And for the stoner-poet in The Beach Bum? I ask about Gus Van Sant’s 2015 Sea of Trees: ture for McConaughey—and not only because For that, along with some yacht rock and early “It was a beautiful script, a haiku,” McCon- it’s a supporting role. “He was looking for Bob Dylan, McConaughey homed in on the aughey says. “I ended up liking the script more something that had a lot of humanity, that weirdness of Peggy Lee’s 1969 hit “Is That All than the finished product.” The Civil War he could get lost in,” Demange says, “not a There Is?”—a maudlin catalog of life’s disap- period piece Free State of Jones: “It was a great movie with Matthew McConaughey in it.” To pointments. The chorus: “If that’s all there is my character—but another [film] that didn’t do keep the movie from becoming some “Holly- friends, then let’s keep dancing/Let’s break out jack.” And then, the one that hurt: 2016’s Gold. wood thing,” Demange cast Richie Merritt, the booze and have a ball/If that’s all there is.”

72 “SOMETIMES THEY’RE SINGING ABOUT YOU, McConaughey, laughing, tells me he even got the song placed in the movie: In one scene, AND it plays on a boom box strung around his neck. SOMETIMES THEY’RE SINGING TO YOU, “See,” he says, “sometimes they’re singing SOMETIMES YOU’RE LIKE, ‘YOU’VE BEEN about you, and sometimes they’re singing to you, and sometimes you’re like, ‘You’ve been READING MY MAIL, MAN.’ ” reading my mail, man.’ ” I ask him, aside from music, what he does when he’s struggling to find his way into a character. The answer is satisfyingly expansive: “You look at the script when you have a different energy. Read it after having a few glasses. Read it Saturday night at midnight. Laminate pages and read it in the shower. Read it at 6 in the morning on Tuesday when the world is stone- cold silent. Take it to church, read it in the pew. Read it over at the restaurant, alone. Pitch the story to your kids, to your mother. Get to the bloodline, the DNA of your man. That’s how you uncover his hu-man-ity.”

Hours later, somewhat sunburned, we paddle up to McConaughey’s dock, and my balled- up T-shirt. He sits down, flips his board up onto the landing, then walks over and opens the door of a closet. Inside, monitors show live footage of the boathouse from four or five angles. He rifles about, then turns around with two tumblers and a bottle of the actor’s most recent nonfilm-related project—Long- branch, a Wild Turkey bourbon McConaughey developed in his post as creative director for Wild Turkey. “How ’bout a sunshine sip,” he says, then pours a few fingers of the stuff, hands it to me, and explains how the bourbon came to be. It’s aged, like all Wild Turkey spirits, in Kentucky, but mellowed with oak and Texas mesquite charcoal. “It still goes poof,” McConaughey says, “but doesn’t bang ya on the back note.” His signature bourbon is appropriately mellow. As we drink, the conversation turns to other celebrity-branded vices—Dylan has his own bourbon coming out, too—and I ask if McCon- aughey’s ever tried his good buddy Willie Nelson’s brand of weed, Willie’s Reserve. “Oh yeah,” he says. “Just once. I got so high that I was paranoid my steaks were burning on the grill, only to run off and find out that I hadn’t even put them on the grill yet.” As it turns out, the two men saw each other only a few weeks ago. Nelson had a big bash at his Luck, Texas, ranch with his band of Texas brothers. He, McConaughey, and Woody Har- relson—the “last wild man,” McConaughey calls him—played cards until 4 in the morn- ing. (Speaking from his tour bus, Nelson later tells me that neither he nor McConaughey are especially good at playing cards. “We both talk better than we play,” Nelson says.) McConaughey swallows the last bit of bourbon, takes a breath, then slams his glass down. “We get a little younger the more time we spend together.” Almost as if he’s channel- ing Wooderson. Then he locks the gate, says goodbye, and, still barefoot, leaves in a Lincoln sedan, a booster seat in the back. MJ 75