Greenlights

“I am the youngest brother of three and the son of parents who were twice divorced and thrice married, to each other. We grew up saying ‘I love you’ to each other. We meant it. I got whipped until my butt bled for putting on a Cracker Jack tattoo when I was ten.”

McConaughey offers a list of juxtaposing facts about his early life, indicating that he grew up in a colorful but turbulent household, where love mixed with loathing, but essentially won over. This is evident in his parents’ two divorces compared with their three marriages to each other and the open declarations of love, despite the physical violence in the household.

“Greenlights mean go—advance, carry on, continue. On the road, they are set up to give the flow of traffic the right of way, and when scheduled properly, more vehicles catch more greenlights in succession. They say proceed. In our lives they are an affirmation of our way.”

McConaughey defines the title concept of the book as a streamlined road to success. He uses the metaphor of the green traffic light to clearly illustrate a state where there is a lack of obstacles to the completion of a goal. In naming his memoir Greenlights, McConaughey hopes to frame his achievements in the context of goals accomplished through both skill and luck.

“We don’t like yellow and red lights. They slow us down or stop our flow. They’re hard. They’re a shoeless winter. They say no, but sometimes give us what we need.”

McConaughey shows the value of catching red and yellow lights, even if they deprive us of what we want in the short term. This stalling of our wishes and goals and the discomfort of a metaphorical shoeless winter may serve a deeper need. McConaughey encourages the reader not to think of these periods of faltering progression as the enemy, but as opportunities for growth.

“I believe everything we do in life is part of a plan. Sometimes the plan goes as intended, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s part of the plan. Realizing this is a greenlight in itself.”

In writing that life is part of a plan, McConaughey alludes to his belief in a higher power. His notion that even when events do not align with our own plans, it is still part of the greater plan, indicates a surrender of personal will to a higher belief in the common good. Thus, while we can engineer our lives to catch more greenlights, we cannot control outcomes and need to learn to accept that.

“Still facing off, weapons down, they stare at each other for a moment, Mom thumbing the ketchup from her wet eyes, Dad just standing there letting the blood drip from his nose down to his chest. Seconds later, they moved toward each other and met in an animal embrace. They dropped to their knees, then to bloody, ketchup-covered linoleum kitchen floor… and made love. A red light turned green. This is how my parents communicated.”

The incident of bloody violence turning to erotic rapture characterizes the dynamic of McConaughey’s twice divorced, thrice married parents. At the end of the scrap, which leaves McConaughey’s father with a bloody nose, they only remember their love and desire for each other. This scene sets up the McConaughey family’s notion that you need to prove your mettle through violence before you are shown love, and is repeated in Mr. McConaughey’s coming-of-age challenges to his sons. McConaughey relates this violent scene objectively and matter-of-factly, leaving the reader to judge it if they wish to.

“Slightly calloused on the surface, we know that what tickles us often bruises others—because we deal with or deny it, we’re the last to cry uncle to bad luck. It’s a philosophy that has made me a hustler in both senses of the word. I work hard and I like to grift. It’s a philosophy that’s also led to some great stories.”

McConaughey credits his tough-love upbringing with gifting him the capacity to fight for what he wants and to use any means necessary. He prefers the bruising road of adventure to the comfortable path, finding that it tickles or amuses him. This path has also led McConaughey to the compelling narratives that have been responsible for his success as an actor.

“Now on my knees crying from shock and fear just like my brother Mike had done but for different reasons, I was ashamed. Like him at the barn, I was a rat, a fink, a pussy, a coward. That’s not my boy, Katy, that’s yours, is all I could hear in my mind.”

After his father catches him lying, McConaughey is deeply ashamed. This is evident in his lowly posture and the sense that his father has disowned him for having a weak and effeminate character. He feels the wound deeply, because it speaks to the jokes his father cracks about McConaughey’s legitimacy and the idea that he is his mother’s son and not his father’s. The idea that McConaughey could belong to a feminized realm comes back to haunt him in Hollywood when he receives a succession of romance roles. Then, as in this instance, he is especially sensitive to the feeling of emasculation.

“I lost my truck. I lost the effort, the hustle, the mudding, and the megaphone. I lost the fun. […] I’d outfoxed myself when I’d traded in my truck for that red sports car, and I lost my mojo when I did.”

When McConaughey realizes that he is less popular with high school girls as a result of trading his utilitarian truck for a flashy sports car, he learns the lesson that substance is more important than image. It is more attractive to be active in a car that can get dirty than to preen in front of a beautiful vehicle. Later, when his father dies, the image of the vanity-acquired sports car comes back to haunt him as a warning to give up any superficial whims.

“My identity shaken, I needed some resistance to find my footing, something to overcome, a discipline to adhere to, a sense of purpose, so I could better maintain my sanity in the strange place I was in. I decided to become a vegetarian.”

When McConaughey arrives at the Dooleys’ home in Australia to find that all the characteristics that were praised and encouraged in America are mocked or overlooked, he seeks a novel concept to attach his identity to. He therefore disciplines himself to become a vegetarian, giving himself an independent purpose to distract himself from the discomforts that the Dooleys are inflicting upon him.

“It was a year that shaped who I am today. A year when I found myself because I was forced to. A year that also planted the seeds of a notion that continues to guide me: Life’s hard. Shit happens to us. We make shit happen.”

McConaughey credits the year in Australia with being fundamental to the most important life lessons he ever learned. He learned how to find himself outside of others’ approval, as he had to live entirely without the force that had bolstered him throughout his childhood and adolescence. He also learned to hustle even more to make unbearable situations bearable.

“To me, it was inevitable that I was staying the entire year because I’d shaken on it. I’d made a voluntary obligation with myself that there was ‘no goin back.’ So I got relative. I denied the reality that the Dooleys were off their rocker. It was a crisis. I just didn’t give the crisis credit. I treaded water until I crossed the finish line. I persisted. I upheld my father’s integrity.”

McConaughey here explains his concepts of the inevitable and relative, which reappear throughout the book. The sense of honor that he inherits from his father means that he finds it inevitable that he must stay, despite the difficult circumstances. However, he finds that being relative with how he perceives the Dooleys enables him to tolerate the situation, even though he does not like it. It is a great lesson in endurance that serves him for the rest of his life.

“Of all the things my dad could have said, of all the reactions he could have had, Don’t half-ass it were the last words I expected to hear and the best words he could have ever said to me. With those words he not only gave me his blessing and consent, he gave me his approval and validation […] He not only gave me privilege, he gave me honor, freedom, and responsibility.”

When McConaughey tells his father that he is going to film school, his father’s advice not to “half-ass it” or do a half-hearted job serves him for the rest of his life. He knows that he is there to chase excellence rather than to be self-satisfied. It is just the tough-love sanction that a person entering a precarious profession needs.

“My dad was the abominable snowman, the immovable force, a bear of a man, with the immune system of a Viking and the strength of a bull. Impossible. He was my dad. Nobody or no thing could kill him. Except Mom. He’d always told me and my brothers, ‘Boys, when I go, I’m gonna be makin love to your mother.’”

McConaughey relays the tragicomic story of his father’s death from climax-induced heart attack during a love-making session with his wife. Here, Kay is shown as this supremely tough man’s singular weakness, as McConaughey paints a picture of the deep and destructive love between his parents. The motif of sex and violence continues; however, whereas previously sex followed the violence, sex performs the violence in this instance. There is also a paradoxically peaceful element to McConaughey’s father dying the way he predicted he would: in the arms—literally—of the woman he always returned to in the end.

“The sooner we become less impressed with our life, our accomplishments, our career, our relationships, the prospects in front of us—the sooner we become less impressed and more involved with these things—the sooner we get better at them. We must be more than just happy to be here.”

The attitude of being less impressed and more involved that McConaughey cultivates after his father’s passing, indicates a sense of increased responsibility and an attitude of action, rather than waiting for good things to happen to you. This aligns with the sense that in losing his father, he has lost the protector and benefactor who put good things in his way. From now on, he will take responsibility for this.

“I noticed I was more uptight and not taking as many risks in the auditions as I used to. I was tense. I was earnest. I was literal. I was heady. The new intellectual exercise had me getting in my own way.”

McConaughey finds that the theoretical method of learning acting gets in the way of his process and he develops a self-consciousness that inhibits him. Once a straight A student, McConaughey can now see how being too intellectual can paralyze one’s creative potential. He realizes that he has taken the wrong approach to improving his acting.

“I didn’t mishandle my newfound fame as much as I just didn’t really have a handle on it. I was numb, occasionally dumb, and picked a few battles that did not need picking. If I was thrown off balance for a bit, it was mainly because I gave a damn, and it mattered to me what it all meant, and didn’t.”

McConaughey finds that he adjusts to fame with difficulty because he wants to know what it all means and what is truly behind the praise and the accolades. He finds the experience so overwhelming that he tries to be numb to it and ignore it, but this leads to irresponsible actions.

“She wanted a piece of my fame, and while I was still finding my balance with it, I wasn’t self-assured enough to share it with anyone else, especially my own mother. The more she wanted a piece of my place, the more I locked her out.”

McConaughey describes how his relationship with his mother became increasingly fraught following his ascension to fame. There was a cognitive disconnect as his mother craved to be close to him and his fame and McConaughey mistrusted her and put off contacting her. The two had boundary issues, as McConaughey was uncertain of how to keep her in his life without having her take it over, alongside his public image.

“Engineered to be light, not lightweight, they are built for buoyancy and I learned to enjoy skipping from cloud to cloud as one needs to do in order to keep these types of films afloat. I quickly realized that, unlike in dramatic acting, you cannot drop anchor and hang your hat on humanity in a rom-com, lest you sink the ship. I enjoyed this kind of acting, it was all greenlights, like a Saturday character in a story that was a series of Saturdays.”

McConaughey initially enjoys the variety that romantic comedy acting lends to his repertoire. He finds that he enjoys the merry cloud-skipping required of him, finding it to be as easy as cruising through a series of greenlights at a traffic junction. However, much like his high school experience which was all greenlights, the greenlight district of romantic comedy will soon become insufficiently challenging and unsatisfying.

“Van Zan was a blast to inhabit—a warrior without a country and bald with a battle-ax. I miss him. Great characters earn my respect and Van Zan was one who didn’t so much get the madness out of system as he made me own more of my own.”

McConaughey finds the tough, warrior-like role of Van Zan a welcome relief from playing the lead in romantic comedies. He enjoys being able to own his madness and eccentricity, both of which were nurtured in his upbringing. He finds that he misses the role, especially as he is offered more romantic comedies. As McConaughey inhabits his roles, it is arguably an old self that he misses as much as Van Zan.

“The dream reminded me that all I ever knew I wanted to be in life was a father. The dream also let me know that if I never met the one for me and got married, that was okay too.”

The wet dream of himself as an 88-year-old bachelor in a town of mothers and kids reaffirms McConaughey earliest wish, which is to be a father. However, after looking for the perfect woman to be the mother to his children, McConaughey also surrenders to the fact that it will happen if it is meant to be and the other alternative is fine too. Here, he shows his belief in the plan not going to plan being part of the greater good.

“That mermaid from the Amazon nine years ago had seen me. Then she swam into the deeper waters of the Atlantic, around Cape Horn, and up the Pacific, where she finally disembarked in Hollywood, then came to a club on Sunset Boulevard where I recognized her turquoise shape and caramel shoulders swimming across the room and into my affection.”

When McConaughey finds Camila, he feels like he is returning full circle to the experience of seeing a mermaid in the Amazon. He considers that Camila, who appears a vision in watery turquoise, is the mermaid and that his search has been fulfilled.

“If anyone ever shows up on their high horse or is walkin on their toes, as Mom calls it, the rest of the family will rip them back down to earth until they cry for mercy, then we will lift them back up off the ground and serve them a drink.”

McConaughey shows how his family of origin keep him down to earth. Their tough love philosophy means that no worldly successes can cause them to feel better than anyone else. By being kicked to the ground and then served a consolatory drink, they are reduced to the level of the rest of humanity.

“Yes, by saying no. The target drew the arrow. I was remembered by being forgotten. I had un-branded. I was a re-discovery, and now it was time to invent.”

McConaughey proves that red lights can be just as fruitful as green. By spending a year refusing all the lucrative romantic comedies he was offered and removing himself from the minds of Hollywood casting agents, he finds that his rejection of the easy path draws the challenging roles he craves, much like the metaphorical target draws the arrow and not the other way around. As a “re-discovery” McConaughey is revitalized and free to go on with the next chapter of his life as a dramatic actor.