Greenlights

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2020

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 2

Parts 3-5

Parts 6-8

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Themes

The Tension Between Hustle and Surrender

The tension between hustling for an outcome despite the odds and allowing life to do its work without interference is a key theme of McConaughey’s book. Catching greenlights, which are affirmations that our dreams are coming true, depends both on conscious effort and “skill: intent, context, consideration, endurance, anticipation, resilience, speed, and discipline” and also a matter of luck and being “in the zone, on the frequency, and with the flow” (Location 180).

Hailing from a tough-loving family who are the “last to cry uncle to bad luck,” McConaughey considers that he always hustles for the outcome he wants (Location 282). When as a relatively inexperienced actor in Hollywood McConaughey is offered the small part of Freddie Lee Cobb in A Time to Kill, he is far more drawn to the starring role of Jake Brigance and shows up to Joel Schumacher’s office “with a plan” (Location 1603). While Schumacher acknowledges McConaughey’s talent, he says that the studio would not allow a relative unknown to star in a role. McConaughey is not put off by this early rejection and eventually lands the role by taking advantage of both the greenlights he has enabled and those that have shown up to help him. Coincidently, the studio’s original choice for the role, Woody Harrelson, is rejected after his character in Natural Born Killers inspires a copycat killing. Thus, after giving a powerful secret audition, McConaughey adds skill to the luck already paved for him.

McConaughey acknowledges that he has been lucky, in the sense that elements outside of his control have conspired to help him achieve his dreams, and he has only needed to add his intuition and persistence to what has been a life of many greenlights. He can see that he has been lucky compared to others, considering that “in the grand scheme of things” his brother Pat “had terrible luck compared to me and brother, Rooster” (Location 2349). Pat’s tragic loss of his first wife and subsequent inability to find another partner for almost three decades, gave McConaughey an understanding of struggle and more compassion for others. McConaughey’s respect for discrepancies in luck means that he does not expect everyone to have his success and influence, and accepts that people must make the best of the cards they have been dealt.

After contemplating his lifelong wish to be a father and his exciting yet futile search to find the perfect woman, McConaughey has a wet dream of eternal bachelorhood. He finds that “the redlight vision of being a lifelong bachelor had come to me in a greenlight wet dream. It was a spiritual sign, a message to surrender, to quit trying so intentionally to find the perfect woman for me, and rather, concede to the natural selection process of finding her, her finding me, or not” (Location 2461). Here, McConaughey reinterprets the previously undesired “redlight” vision of eternal bachelorhood as perfectly acceptable and so relents his frantic search for the woman who would prevent the outcome. This in turn propels the phenomenon McConaughey describes as the target drawing the arrow, rather than the arrow seeking the target. He has the belief that “sometimes we don’t need to make things happen” and can just relax into the outcome the universe decides for us (Location 2465). In the case of attracting his life partner and the mother of his children, McConaughey finds that acceptance and going with the flow works better than pushing too hard.

McConaughey illustrates how the best course of action, or inaction, is situation-dependent. While he tends to lean on the side of being proactive in changing your luck for the better, he acknowledges that there are times when the opposite remedy is required. With life experience, we can sharpen our intuition for when to move and when to stand still.

Coming of Age as a Man

McConaughey is very in touch with his masculine identity. His father Jim was the head of the family in the traditional sense, and set a similar example for his sons through his coming-of-age rituals and emphasis on toughness. While McConaughey’s brothers breeze through the coming-of-age initiations, which involve assaulting other men, either by beating them unconscious or urinating on them, McConaughey fails. When his father challenges him to a fight after the incident which sees him lying about a stolen pizza, McConaughey is “paralyzed, numb,” as “the idea of striking my dad made my hands feel like papier-mâché” (Location 690). His father calls him a coward and rather than questioning his father’s system of proving yourself as a man through violence, McConaughey regrets his failure to take up the challenge. He wants to prove himself to his father on his father’s terms rather than changing the terms, which to many people might seem violent and outdated. Indeed McConaughey goes as far as saying “I wouldn’t give back one ass whupping I ever got for the value of the values my parents impressed upon me” (Location 3057). He thus credits this tough-love system with his current success, and never turns down the challenge to a fight.

Coming of age as man in the movies means seeking challenging roles that center male protagonists and masculine adventures rather than being typecast in romantic comedies, which have the hero playing second fiddle to the heroine. McConaughey considers that “I had kept as much masculinity in the neutered rom-com male as you could,” a statement that implies that he was fighting against the tropes of a character that disempowered him as a man (Location 2420). Arguably, the neutering that McConaughey describes does not only comprise a loss of virility, but feeling as though he cannot use his full emotional range and grow as an actor. Instead, the drama and action roles that he seeks force him to become a person who has the heroic or complex attributes McConaughey wishes to embody. For example, in the training for Van Zan McConaughey attempts to become an even manlier man by setting himself a warrior-like training regime. He runs five miles across the desert barefoot and attempts to wrestle bulls to the ground. While both attempts end in injury and failure, he feels satisfied that “I experienced a lot of pain, as any good dragon slayer would” (Location 2173). The real-life adventures following his semen-charged wet dreams are also attempts to come of age and prove himself amongst the manliest men; he wrestles with a champion fighter in Mali, seeking to prove his physical and mental strength in all areas of life.

Storytelling into Acting

McConaughey identifies as a storyteller before an actor. He grew up wanting to be in his father’s stories and started documenting the events of his life in the long letters he wrote during his stay in Australia. When someone recommends film school to him, it is because “you’re a good storyteller” (Location 1095). He carries his storytelling abilities into his acting roles, where he can tell himself compelling stories about the characters that he is playing and convey those stories to the audience. While Wooderson was played based off a story McConaughey told himself about his brother Pat, the complex character of HIV survivor Ron Woodroof required a more layered approach. He undertook a strict diet to whittle down to an emaciated physique, listened to Woodroof’s relatives’ stories about him and read Woodroof’s old diaries. Through the latter especially, McConaughey invented the stories that helped him embody Woodroof, as he felt like he could picture who Woodroof was before HIV, “a guy who would lie in bed on a weeknight smoking a joint, drawing doodles in a spiral notebook” (Location 2874). The ability to tell convincing stories about Woodroof landed McConaughey an Oscar.

Whenever McConaughey tries to be a good actor in the traditional sense and impress Hollywood, it interferes with his natural intuition and spontaneity. Throughout his career, McConaughey is consistently revitalized by becoming involved in a new type of story, whether it is an adventure abroad or a romantic relationship. In recent years, as movies have lost box office currency, McConaughey has adopted other modes of storytelling, including being a brand ambassador, writing a book, and trying to encourage Texan university students to embrace new narratives about values and competency. Thus, regardless of his area of focus, storytelling continues to be the means through which McConaughey navigates the world.