Matthew McConaughey recalled how his mom, Kay McConaughey, supported him after he was arrested for enjoying bongo drums whereas bare and excessive in 1999.
The 55-year-old actor detailed the infamous incident in his bestselling 2020 memoir, “Greenlights.” Finally weekend’s Texas Guide Competition, which featured McConaughey and Malcolm Gladwell because the headlining authors, the Oscar winner joined director Richard Linklater for a dialog about “Greenlights.”
Whereas talking with Linklater, McConaughey remembered the recommendation Kay shared with him after the notorious arrest.
“‘You go outside in front of that media, and you hold your head high,’” the Texas native recalled Kay telling him, according to People magazine. “‘I know what you were doing last night playing bongos, smoking that funny stuff in your birthday suit, and you’ve carried out it many instances earlier than. And I do know you’re going to do it once more.’”
McConaughey instructed Linklater, who directed the actor in his breakthrough film, “Dazed and Confused,” that Kay had shared related phrases of knowledge with him earlier than.
“‘Don’t walk into a place like you want to buy it, walk in it like you own it.’ She tells me that before we go to prom. She tells me that on the morning before I went in to go do a screen test for ‘A Time to Kill,’” he mentioned.
In “Greenlights,” McConaughey wrote that the arrest occurred after he attended a soccer sport throughout which his alma mater’s workforce, the Texas Longhorns, squared off towards the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
After the Longhorns triumphed over the Huskers, McConaughey, who was 29 on the time, recalled that Austin was “on fire” and “it was time to celebrate.”
“I partied through the night into Sunday, and through Sunday night without sleeping a wink,” he wrote. “At 2:30 that Monday morning, I lastly determined to wind down. It was time to decrease the lights, get undressed, open up the window and let the jasmine scent from my backyard come inside.
“It was time to smoke a bowl and listen to the beautiful African melodic beats of Henri Dikongué play through my home speakers. It was time to stand over my drum set and follow the rhythm of the blues before they got to Memphis on my favorite Afro-Cuban drum born of ceremony and speaking in tongues, the congas.”
Nonetheless, McConaughey wrote that his nude jam session was unexpectedly interrupted.
“What I didn’t know was that while I was banging away in my bliss, two Austin policemen also thought it was time to barge into my house unannounced, wrestle me to the ground with nightsticks, handcuff me and pin me to the floor,” he recalled.
McConaughey remembered that one officer instructed him that he was being charged with “disturbing the peace, possession of marijuana and resisting arrest.’”
“F— you, motherf—–! You broke in my house! F–, yeah, I resisted!” the “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” star recalled yelling on the officer.
McConaughey wrote that he refused when the opposite officer tried to wrap a blanket round the actor’s bare physique.
‘”Ohhhh no!” I barked. “I’m not putting s— on! My naked ass is proof I was mindin’ my own business!”’ he remembered telling the officer.
Because the actor was being escorted to the police automotive, he noticed that his arrest had attracted a crowd.
McConaughey famous that “word must have spread over the police scanner as to just who had been arrested because there on the street were six lit-up cop cars and about 40 of my neighbors.”
After arriving on the Austin Police Division, McConaughey remembered {that a} fellow inmate satisfied him to placed on a “pair of men’s orange institutional pants.”
McConaughey initially had instructed the inmate that his bare state was “proof of my innocence.”
“‘We all innocent, man. Trust me, you do wanna put these on,’” the actor remembered the inmate saying.
“Maybe it was his honest eyes or the fact that he was a fellow offender, or maybe it was the sudden realization that, when a six-foot, six-inch jailbird built like a brick s—house tells you, ‘You do wanna put on some pants before you go in the clink,’ it’s probably best to listen,” McConaughey wrote.
After spending the night time in jail, McConaughey was visited by Choose Penny Wilkov and prison protection lawyer Joe Turner.
Wilkov determined to dismiss disturbing the peace and possession misdemeanor prices and allowed McConaughey to be launched on bond for resisting arrest.
McConaughey wrote that Turner suggested him to go away the jail from the again entrance as a result of reporters had gathered in entrance of the constructing.
The actor wrote that he felt “guilty” and was not sure the best way to deal with his departure from jail. At that time, he referred to as Kay.
“Looking for some fearless consolation, I decided to call my mom before I chose which way to leave my first prison stint,” McConaughey wrote. “Perhaps it was the truth that whereas I used to be positive she would don’t have any mercy for my circumstance, on the similar time, I knew she would pour a drink and toast to the way it was I obtained into it.
“Was it going to be her that answered or was it going to be that new groupie fan? I didn’t know. Seems it was each.
“‘They what, Matthew?! Broke into your house!? Those son of a bitches, you keep your head up,” he recalled Kay saying. “‘There is nothing wrong with smokin’ slightly enjoyable stuff and enjoying your drums bare at night time in your individual residence; who do they suppose they’re comin in your home like that?!’
“Just what I needed,” McConaughey wrote. “I hung up and determined to stride towards the media mob out entrance as an alternative of sneaking out the again.
“Two days later, BONGO NAKED T-shirts were all over Austin.”
Throughout McConaughey’s look on the Texas Guide Honest, Linklater identified that McConaughey wasn’t the one creator within the household.
“You’re not the first McConaughey to write a memoir,” the director instructed him.
“Your mom beat you to it,” Linklater added, referring to Kay’s 2008 self-published memoir.
“You want to know what my mom’s memoir is called? ‘I Amaze Myself.’ She has a bumper sticker — still does to this day — ‘I Amaze Myself,’” McConaughey mentioned.
“She’s 92, and you can’t argue with it,” he added.