Greenlights Page 7

  The life I had left back home in Texas was summertime year-round. “Most handsome,” straight A’s, dating the best-looking girl at my school (and across town), a truck that was paid for, and I. Had. No. Curfew.

  Australia, the land of sunny beaches, bikinis, and surfboards I never saw, gave me the ability to respect winter. I was on my own, for a full year. I was in the bathtub every night before sundown jacking off to Lord Byron and Rattle and Hum. Telling myself daily, I’m okay, I’m good. You got this McConaughey, it’s just cultural differences. I was a vegetarian, down to 130 pounds, abstinent, planning to become a monk and free Nelson Mandela.

  Yeah, I was forced into a winter. Forced to look inside myself because I didn’t have anyone else. I didn’t have anything else. I’d lost my crutches. No mom and dad, no friends, no girlfriend, no straight A’s, no phone, no truck, no “Most Handsome.”

  And I had a curfew.

  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. 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.

  And while I was going crazy, I kept telling myself that there was a lesson I was put there to learn, that there was a silver lining in all of it, that I needed to go through hell to get to the other side, and I did. We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows. We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing. It’s better to jump than fall. And here I am.

  Greenlight.

  P.S. The Dooleys’ son Rhys was also in the exchange program, and he came over to live at my house with my parents while I was with his. What kind of time did he have?

  My parents took him to NASA, to Six Flags, and to Florida for the summer, where he threw parties every weekend. Clearly taking advantage of his accent, he took an ex-girlfriend of mine on dates in my truck, and I was told that his seed found purchase in the private parts of two particular swooning American girls. The liquor cabinet was drained. He had the time of his fucking life.

  the monster

  The future is the monster

  not the boogeyman under the bed.

  The past is just something we’re trying to outrun tomorrow.

  The monster is the future.

  The unknown.

  The boundaries not yet crossed.

  The challenge not yet met.

  The potential not yet realized.

  The dragon not yet tamed.

  On a one-way collision course with no turning back,

  the future, the monster,

  is always waiting for us and

  always sees us a-comin.

  so we should lift our heads,

  look it in the eye,

  and watch it heed.

  * * *

  Back home in Texas, I was nineteen years old, had a year in Australia under my belt, and was now drinking age. On the way home from buying dog food and paper towels at Walmart one night, Dad and I stopped by a neon-lit pool hall in a strip mall on the southwest side of Houston.

  We had a few beers, I met a few of his friends, mostly kept to my yes and no sirs, but had enough confidence and experience to chime in to some of the tall tale telling. A couple hours later we paid the tab at the bar and started to leave. As I stepped out of the entrance door, my dad behind me, the big-bicepped bouncer who was standing just outside stepped in front of my dad and said, “You pay your bill?”

  Without slowing his pace, Dad said, “Sure did, pal,” and continued walking. That’s when the man at the door did something that my mind’s eye can still see in slow motion today. In an attempt to slow my dad’s passage, he put his hand on my dad’s chest. Another man’s hand on my dad. Before Dad could correct this wannabe muscleman with his own hands, I did with mine.

  The next thing I remember: I was on top of this bouncer who was now splayed across a table fifteen feet back inside the bar. I pounded down on him with vicious right fists until the drunken jeers of a good bar fight slowly turned to murmurs. The fight was over. It had been over, but not for me. Then I felt myself being pulled off the man and held back. I continued to kick and spit at the doorman on the floor until I heard a strong, calming voice in my ear, “That’s enough, son, that’s enough.”

  That night was my rite of passage. Dad let me in. It was the night I became his boy, a man in his eyes. The night we became friends. The night he called every one of his buddies who knew me and said, “The youngest one’s gonna be okay, boys, you shoulda seen him take this big ol’ boy out last night at the bar, just decked him…We gotta keep an eye on him, though, he’s got a berserker switch, he’s a little bit crazy.”

  From that night on I could go to the bar with him, my brother Mike, and all the men I’d been calling Mr. all my life. It was a primitive initiation into my father’s regard, but finally, instead of only hearing about the stories from last night the next day, I could be a part of them.

  Greenlight.

  *1 Four-wheel driving through the soggy-bottom creeks of East Texas.

  *2 Still one of my all-time favorites.

  *3 Why I felt the need to contextualize my reasoning by saying “and they’re still alive,” as if they were not, I don’t know, but I did.

  *4 Fair dinkum is an Aussie slang meaning for sure, absolutely, without a doubt.

  *5 You’ll understand later why I never put a “g” on the end of “livin.”

  JULY 1989

  While in Australia I had begun applying to colleges. Duke, Grambling, UT Austin, and Southern Methodist. I wanted to study law and become a defense attorney. That had been the plan since ninth grade. I was a great debater and the somewhat serious joke in my household was “Matthew’s gonna become our lawyer, defend the family business, prosecute some bigwigs, make us some ‘Oil of Mink’ money.”

  I was set on SMU, largely because it was in the metropolitan city of Dallas, and I believed Dallas would have more opportunities for me to intern in a law firm, which would then give me a better chance of having a job as soon as I graduated.

  One night Dad called me. “Son, you sure you don’t wanna be a Longhorn?” (My dad always named a school after its mascot and was particularly fond of UT’s.)

  “No, Dad, I wanna be a Mustang (SMU’s mascot), I’m pretty sure about it.”

  He grumbled.

  “Is that all right with you, Dad?”

  “Oh, sure, son, sure, just thought you might wanna consider being a Longhorn is all.”

  “No sir, I wanna be a Mustang.”

  “Okay, that’ll work,” he said and we hung up.

  An hour later my brother Pat called.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “You sure you don’t wanna be a Texas Longhorn, little brother?”

  “Yeah, big brother.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure, why do you and Dad keep asking me that?”

  “Well, Dad won’t ever tell ya, but the oil business is in bad shape. He’s broke, tryin to keep from goin Chapter 11.” (The oil boom that had moved us from Uvalde to Longview in ’79 had dried up, and it turned out Dad had been hustling to pay the bills for the last few years.)

  “He is?”

  “Yep, and it’ll cost eighteen thousand a year to go SMU cus it’s private, but only five a year to go to UT cus it’s public.”

  “Oh shit, I had no idea.”

  “Yeah, and, little brother, you ever b
een to Austin?”

  “No.”

  “You’re gonna love it, buddy, it is your kinda town. You can walk into anywhere in your flip-flops, have a seat at a bar, and you’ll have a cowboy to the right of you, a lesbian to your left, an Indian on the other side, and a midget tendin bar. All you gotta be is yourself in that town.”

  I called Dad back the next day. “I changed my mind, I wanna be a Longhorn.”

  “You do?” he said, not masking his excitement.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, gawdammy, little buddy, great choice! What made you change your mind?”

  “I just like Longhorns better than Mustangs.”

  Out of respect for my dad, I attended the University of Texas at Austin but never told him why. I knew changing my mind would make Dad happy. I’d soon change it again, but this time I wasn’t so sure of his reaction.

  When we know what we want to do,

  knowing when to do it is the hard part.

  Get em early so you don’t have to get em as often.

  Prevent before the cure, habilitate before the re.

  * * *

  It was the end of my sophomore year in college, final exams were looming, and I wasn’t sleeping well. Not because of my mattress, because of my mind. I was having doubts about my plans to become a lawyer. The math didn’t add up. Four years of undergrad and I’d be twenty-three, then three more at law school and I’d be twenty-six before I’d get out, get a job. I wouldn’t start making my mark in this world until I was almost thirty years old. I didn’t want to miss my twenties preparing for the rest of my life.

  I’d also been writing short stories in my journal. I passed a few off to my good friend Robb Bindler, a film student at NYU, who attested they were original and worth sharing. “Thought about film school?” he asked. “You’re a good storyteller.” Film school? That sounded so flattering, but it also sounded so foreign, almost European, radical, irresponsible, indulgent—so “artsy.” I couldn’t even get the idea into the dialect of my dreams, much less consider it as a rational aspiration. Nah, not for me.

  A few hours before my psychology final exam, I showed up at my fraternity, grabbed lunch, and went across the back alley to a couple of fellow Delt brothers’ place so I could finish studying. They were both sleeping in bunk beds because they’d pulled all-nighters cramming. I sat on their couch and opened my textbook. I was a diligent studier. I would use every spare second I had to prepare for a test and took great pride in being composed and ready for any exam. I made a lot of A’s.

  But on this day, for some reason, with the exam only a few hours away, I said to myself, You’ve got this McConaughey, and put the textbook and my notes back in my backpack and turned on the TV. ESPN. Now, I love sports. I will watch the World’s Strongest Man competition if that’s all that’s on. Today it was a baseball game. Even better. But after five minutes, for some reason, I shut the TV off, not interested.

  I looked around the room. On the floor to the left of me was a stack of magazines. Playboys, Hustlers. Now, I love women, and I love looking at naked women. But for some reason, not today. Not interested. As I flipped about seven mags deep into the pile I came across a small paperback book. It had a white cover with a handsome red cursivelike title. It read:

  The Greatest Salesman

  in the World

  Who’s that? I wondered as I picked it up from the pile and began to read.

  Two and a half hours later I got to the first “Scroll” in the book. The book had just revealed that the title was referring to the reader of the book, me, in this instance, and now my instructions were to read each scroll three times a day for thirty days before moving on to the next one. I looked at my watch. My exam was in twenty minutes.

  I rustled my friend from his bunk. “Can I borrow this book, Braedon?” I asked.

  “No, man, you can have it.”

  I left, book in hand, and made it to my test on time.

  I was high. Something about this book, the title, the story so far, the mystery of the ten scrolls, felt special, like it had found me.

  I rushed through my exam. I didn’t care about psychology class and I didn’t care what grade I made, I only cared about reading that first scroll. Somehow I knew that something bigger than a classroom exam lay within the pages of this book.

  SCROLL 1

  “I will form good habits and become their slave.”

  It occurred to me that it was a bad habit to lie to myself any longer. Becoming a lawyer wasn’t for me. I wanted to tell stories. I paced my dorm room trying to assess the best time to call my dad and tell him I had changed my mind and no longer wanted to go to law school, I wanted to go to film school. At 7:30, I thought, he would just have had dinner and would be relaxing on the couch with his first cocktail, catching some tube with Mom. Yeah, 7:30 was the right time to call.

  My dad taught us to do a job well and climb the nine-to-five company ladder. I had been groomed to be the family’s lawyer. We were a blue-collar family. Film school? Oh shit.

  Taking deep breaths, sweating, I made the call at 7:36 p.m.

  Dad answered.

  “Hey, Pop,” I said.

  “Hey, little buddy, what’s goin on?” he asked.

  Another deep breath. “Well, I wanna share something with you.”

  “What’s that?”

  Oh shit.

  “Well, I don’t want to go to law school anymore, I want to go to film school.”

  Silence. One. Two. Three. Four. Five seconds.

  Then I heard a voice. A kind, inquisitive voice.

  “Is that what you wanna do?” he asked.

  “Yes sir, Dad, it is.”

  Silence. Another five seconds.

  “Well…Don’t half-ass it.”

  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. It’s what he said and how he said it. He not only gave me privilege, he gave me honor, freedom, and responsibility. With some formidable rocket fuel in his delivery, we made a pact that day. Thanks, Pop.

  Greenlight.

  biology and giddyup

  DNA and work.

  Genetics and willpower.

  Life’s a combination.

  Some get the genes but never the work ethic or resilience.

  Others work their ass off but never had the innate ability.

  Others have both and never rely on the first.

  * * *

  I didn’t have a short film or a piece of art to audition for film school, but I had a 3.82 GPA. Not only did it get me into film school, it got me into the Honors Program.

  But now I was pursuing a career path, where, unlike law, my GPA did not matter. I knew Hollywood and artists didn’t care if I made A’s or F’s, they needed to see something worthy of their attention. I needed to make something—a film, a performance. I needed a job.

  I signed with the local Donna Adams Talent Agency and started interning at an ad agency four days a week between classes. I wore a pager on my hip and would step out of class without hesitation to drive to San Antonio or Dallas to audition for a music video or a beer ad. I got a bunch of no-thank-yous.

  The first gig I landed was as a hand model. Donna Adams had told me upon signing that I had “good-lookin hands,” and if I “quit biting my nails” I might have a future in the hand modeling business. She was correct. I’ve never bit my nails since.

  Good looks don’t cook the dinner, but they’ll get you a seat at the table, and I was determined to take advantage of any seat I could get. I directed short films in black-and-white on 16 mm Bolex cameras, I edited, I assistant directed other classmates�
� films, I directed photography, I wrote and performed. I missed a lot of classes driving to San Antonio and Dallas.

  One day, the dean called me into his office. “Matthew, attendance is mandatory in our classes, especially the Honors Program. You cannot keep missing class or leaving in the middle of class as you have been. If you continue to do so, I will have to fail you.”

  “Dean,” I said, looking him directly in the eye, “you and I both know that a degree in film production doesn’t mean squat to studio heads in Hollywood and New York City. It means nothing to the people that make movies. They want to see a product. A film, a performance, something. The only reason I’m skipping class is to go out into the world and try and make something that those people will want to purchase. I’m chasing things outside of the classroom that the classroom is teaching me to chase.” Then I had an idea, and I blurted it out. “If I promise to make it to every exam day in class, will you just gimme C’s across the board?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Nonetheless, I stuck to my proposal. I kept skipping classes to chase my pager and I made sure I showed up as prepared as possible on exam days.

  At the end of the semester, I received a C in every class on my college transcript. But I learned a lot more than when I was making A’s.

  Greenlight.

  * * *

  I was an outcast in class anyway. The only frat guy in film school. Boots. Pressed button-down. Tucked in. Tan. Affable. Nonneurotic.

  Most everyone else wore black. They were pale, goth, and huddled in their private corners.

  One of our professors made us go see movies each weekend and come back on Monday and talk about them with the class. I would always go to the Metroplex and see the blockbuster, then come in on Monday and say, “Hey, I saw Die Hard this weekend and…”

  “Nah, that’s shit, man, that’s shit, it sucks,” my classmates would say before I could finish my sentence. They had all gone and seen the Eisenstein revival.