Greenlights

McConaughey’s father, Jim, was “a big man” who considered his “fightin weight” to be six feet four and 265 pounds (Location 214). A former football player and later a Texaco gas station manager and an oil pipe salesman, Jim balanced traditional family values with an emotional temperament that could be both violent and eccentric. McConaughey considers that Jim taught him common sense, being a man “who values sirs and ma’am, discipline, loyalty, persistence, work ethic, humility, rites of passage, respect of women, and making enough money to secure your family” (Location 330). However, his respect was not easily won; he openly expressed his contempt and disowned McConaughey when he went against his values by lying and then couldn’t prove himself in a fight.

McConaughey goes through life with a strong sense of his father’s integrity and outlaw logic as a guide. His father has been a big influence in sticking through tough experiences and striving for excellence. His advice to McConaughey to not “half-ass” his chances as an actor have guided him in his hustle for the roles he wants and his full immersion in his roles (Location 1126).

Both Jim’s violence and his passion manifested in his relationship with Kay. He broke her middle finger “to get it out of his face four separate times” (Location 241). However, he also intended to die making love to her, and as his wish came true, there was a bittersweet peace to his death.

McConaughey’s mother Kay, sometimes called Katy by her husband, inspires her sons to “audacious existentialism.” A former beauty queen with “no upbringing” who “didn’t like her life growing up,” she constructed her own life story and beliefs (Location 323). She expresses the controversial belief that to understand a poem means that you could author it, encouraging a seventh grade McConaughey to pass off an already published poem as his own. She also attempts to right a class-based wrong when she pretends McConaughey is the winner of the Little Mr. Texas contest instead of the runner up, her reason being that the real winner was wealthy and less deserving. In this instance and when she advises McConaughey to audition like he owns the part—not like he merely wants it—she instills in her son a healthy sense of entitlement and sheer nerve. She occasionally takes this too far, specifically her interview with Hard Copy where she offers to show them the bed where McConaughey lost his virginity and the shower where she caught him masturbating. During the first years of his fame, he felt that while he would have preferred his mother to be a source of grounding and support, “she was on another type of extended vacation” trying to enjoy the spoils of his fame (Location 1742). When McConaughey is more grounded in his own fame, he repairs his relationship with his mother by surrendering to her demands and allowing her to share in her son’s success. When she does interviews about his acting career and tells the world she “knows where [he] got it from,” McConaughey accepts that she has a point (Location 1744).

McConaughey’s eldest brother, Mike, also known as Rooster for his ability to get up at sunrise regardless of how late he has gone to bed, is the son his father was most involved with, because he traveled more frequently during the younger sons’ infancies. Mike followed his father into the oil industry and is married with a family; he owns an enormous ranch in West Texas where McConaughey prepared for the role of Denton Van Zan. McConaughey describes his brother as “cool under pressure, with the pain threshold of a badger” and “the first person you’d want with you when the going got tough” (Location 345). McConaughey relies on his brother’s advice and experience as he grapples with his own feelings about marriage and considers the possibility of marrying Camila.

Pat McConaughey is Jim and Kay’s middle-child and their adopted son. The McConaugheys offer to take Pat to meet his real parents, but he refuses until he is 19; the visit barely lasts two minutes because Pat says “I just wanted to see if my dad was bald cuts my hair’s thinning” (Location 255). Pat is the cool older brother who inspires McConaughey and is his hero growing up. He is also the real-life inspiration for McConaughey’s role as Wooderson in Dazed and Confused.

Pat’s life is marked by tragedy when he loses his wife Lori “in a freak car accident, and for twenty-seven years after, he never allowed himself to love or be loved by another female except his dogs Neiman and Mollie” (Location 2349). Pat eventually finds love again, and McConaughey feels that Pat taught him compassion and forgiveness; he considers Pat his “lucky charm.”

Camila makes an immediate impression on McConaughey when he meets her in a Sunset Boulevard nightclub, her caramel-colored shoulders highlighted by a turquoise dress. He feels so much synchronicity in the meeting that he compares the experience to spotting “the final wave of a mermaid’s tail as it slid beneath the water’s surface heading downriver” (Location 1814). He feels that events have come full circle when Camila finds him, just as he has given up his search for the perfect woman to be his life companion and mother of his child. While Camila is a Brazilian model, McConaughey gives few autobiographical details about her life and career. He focuses solely on her appeal to him and their relationship together. Camila strikes McConaughey as a series of irresistible contrasts, being “naughty and fundamental. Young with a past. Homegrown and worldly. Innocent and cunning. Springtime and salty. A squaw and a queen” (Location 2471). These contrasts practically embody the feminine archetypes of the virgin and the seductress, reflecting the masculine ideal of finding the sweet-spot between someone who will be a good mother to her children, but also sexually enticing.

Camila’s nonchalant attitude toward McConaughey’s fame and her insistence that the family accompany him wherever he is filming indicates her extreme self-possession and confidence, and her ability to handle the highs and lows of fame. Like her husband, she seems to have her own understanding of life’s greenlights—she adapts and flows with the changes while staying focused and committed to what is most important to her. McConaughey also credits her with encouraging him to perform at the top of his game as she “never interrupted my belief that each role I played was the only, and last, role I’d ever play” (Location 3023). She is therefore an asset to his career and plays a supportive role that makes his achievements possible.

The Dooley family, who McConaughey stays with in Australia, play an important role in forcing him into the first introspective winter of his life. Norvel Dooley is five foot four, 220 pounds, balding, and has “a bit of an English accent I would later come to find out was an affectation he used to appear more proper” (Location 760). Norvel is obsessed with Winston Churchill and lectures McConaughey on the inferiority of the American culture to the English. His wife, Marjorie, who is four foot ten with a kyphotic spinal deformity, tries to force McConaughey to kiss her son Michael’s girlfriend and to call her “Mom.” While McConaughey initially attributes the difficulties he has with the Dooleys to cultural differences, he eventually has to search inside himself to find his own means of coping with their behavior and strict rules. Once he is placed with a different family and learns that his placement with the Dooleys was a prank—the whole town knows they are “out of their bloody minds”—McConaughey credits his ability to survive the Dooleys with his ability to deny their craziness and not lend any extra energy to the crisis (Location 996). He considers his experience with them as a practice run for the other hardships he might have to endure in his life.

Interestingly, the Dooleys’ son Rhys, who came to the US to stay with McConaughey’s parents “had the time of his fucking life,” taking McConaughey’s place in his truck and using his accent to score dates with the girls McConaughey had dated (Location 1029). Rhys’ positive experience during the exchange amplifies the aura of the greenlight philosophy surrounding McConaughey and his environment, and the contagious effect of “outlaw logic.” Even a foreigner coming to town experiences doors opening for him and life magnified to a heightened level of joy.