Matthew McConaughey
"Some Lawyers Just Shouldn't Wear Shirts"
Matthew McConaughey is one of Hollywood’s most charismatic actors with his easygoing nature and thick Texas accent. His breakthrough role was in the 1993 cult classic Dazed And Confused before branching out to bigger roles in films like A Time To Kill, Contact, Amistad, The Newton Boys, Edtv, and U-571.
McConaughey’s focus in the past decade shifted to romantic comedies like The Wedding Planner, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, Failure To Launch, and Fool’s Gold. Now the 41 year-old stars in what is already being considered the role of his career as lawyer Mickey Haller in the drama The Lincoln Lawyer. Matthew talked about the switch back to drama from the romantic comedies that had become his comfort zone.
“The comedies are a different game,” McConaughey believes, “In a drama like this, you can hit as hard as you want. You can be as good as you can be and it still doesn’t mean you’re going to come out victorious. I like to always say, as a boxing analogy, it’s like Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. They may show up and have the best training camp and be in the best shape of his life and ready to fight and be in the best shape of his life mentally and physically, it still doesn’t guarantee he’s going to win. And he might not, probably doesn’t, actually he didn’t.”
“He did one time,” he continues, “You don’t need someone to have a problem or not be good at his job. You don’t need for Mick Haller to be good at his job to feel the tension of, ‘Oh, my gosh. How’s he going to get out of this scenario.’ He’s got to be great at his job. He’s also got to be a player, a hustler, all of those things, and you’re going to see all these circumstances that he’s up against, and you go, how in the hell is he going to get out of
Matthew McConaughey
"Some Lawyers Just Shouldn't Wear Shirts"
this? This guy is the best I’ve ever seen at what he’s doing and I don’t know how the hell he’s going to pull this off.”McConaughey talked about what liked most about Mick.
“One of the great things about Mick is he’s always one or two steps ahead,” Matthew believes, “And when he’s not, because there comes a time when he does not have the answer, he still bluffs and plays like he has the answer. But basically, he’s throwing a gamble on the table, and let’s go, big boy, let’s get after it. But he doesn’t even have the answer.”
“He doesn’t even know his next move sometimes, but he just does it,” he continues, “He throws his cards on the table. Mick’s also got a joker up his sleeve in many places. So he’s a card player, man, he’s dealing, he’s bluffing, he’s doubling down, and all this has to do with the livelihood of not only himself but his family, an innocent man that he put in jail, a guilty man that he’s defended.”
Matthew talked about the relationship he has with his own lawyer.
“My lawyer’s been a good friend of mine for a long time,” he says, “He and I continuously have conversations where I’ll go, ‘Come on, man. I know I read the 30 pages of blah, blah, blah last night. But basically, on a half bullet point list, what this is about is this, this, and this, because I got a headache from reading that crap. There’s so much sort of mendacity. They are wordsmen for a reason. There’s more hours, there’s more pages, it’s more money.”
“Their job is necessary,” McConaughey adds, “You need them. People need to be defended. People need to be prosecuted. It’s how the system works. I’m saying the job’s necessary. But what I’m always busting him about is going, where’s the common sense? What happened to common sense? He’s laughing, going, I know, I know,
Matthew McConaughey
"Some Lawyers Just Shouldn't Wear Shirts"
but that’s not our job, and it’s true. A lot of stuff that lawyers do just sound so simple really confusing. He hasn’t seen the film. He’s going to like Mick.”McConaughey also discusses the aspect that Mick works out of his car.
“Very practical,” he says, “It’s a small space. You control it and you’re always on the move until you’re mobile. Part of the deal with what Mick does is you got to be the first one there sometimes.”
“So, if you’re already on the road and got somebody driving you and you got your phone and you got your AC hookup that has your coffee maker,” Matthew adds, “You don’t know where the night’s going to take you. You’re ready. I love that. That’s one of my favorite things. I wish we could have more things in the car.”
Matthew was asked if he believes Mick works outside of the law.
“No, he works through it,” McConaughey explains, “There’s a great line about, he’s an outlaw in the sense that the outlaws aren’t on the fringes. The outlaws are slipping right up the middle, picking from both sides, they’re in that slipstream. He’s an outsider to the system though. The system does not like the Mick Hallers of the world. Now is he a white knight? No. But are the people he’s defending white knights? No. Are the people he’s dealing with innocent? Not usually.”
“But that’s the fight he chooses to fight and as he says in there,” he continues, “Curly goes, ‘How do you sleep with yourself?’ He goes, ‘Had a client murdered somebody, they headed off so and so and so and so. Then, the D.A. came and piled two unsolved murders on top of it.’ That’s not how the system works. So he’s saying, sending two innocent people away is worse off than letting off getting off a guilty person. There’s two sides to the coin and Mick’s chosen a defense side.”
The Lincoln
Matthew McConaughey
"Some Lawyers Just Shouldn't Wear Shirts"
Lawyer was originally based on the novel by Michael Connelly. Matthew was asked if he felt a greater appreciation for Lincoln Heights after experiencing the story through Connelly’s mindset.“I never been to 90% of those places,” Matthew claims, “It’s right on the river and right on the train tracks and there’s a lot of abandoned buildings and it would just look like a place that could be developed and really, really be an interesting and eclectic part of town, plus you have the railroad tracks, which could be a hub for tourism, even though we didn’t see one train all day.”
“And a lot of places down there, we pulled up to the sights and there were bangers getting cuffed against the bathroom wall right next to the ladies taking their kids for a walk in a buggy or a stroller, you could feel the teeth in a lot of the places,” he adds, “But I’ve gotten comfortable in places in like that. But that’s something I’ve always kind of done. It was nice to go see that part of L.A. that I hadn’t seen before, little pockets and little communities that you could tell banded together and said we’re going to take care of our neighborhood. To see things like that, I enjoyed it. It was not Beverly Hills. Most people don’t know that part of L.A. and we get to show a lot of it, too.”
Matthew says that he ultimately didn’t really use the book that much in researching the part.
“I didn’t really go back to the book,” McConaughey says, “I felt like I had enough from the script, then I read the book and then I had enough. I had plenty. After about a month, I got pretty clear on who my man was and what was he about and what he needed.”
McConaughey has been known for playing lawyers in the past in the film A Time To Kill. It was asked if
Matthew McConaughey
"Some Lawyers Just Shouldn't Wear Shirts"
his playing lawyers had made the actor appreciate a love of law.“More of an interest in the law, how it works,” he replies, “Like I said, when I was young, it was the idealism. If I felt like someone’s innocent, I felt like I had the energy to defend someone that was innocent until the end of time. That I just couldn’t lose that. I wouldn’t allow myself to lose that fight. I still feel that way to a large extent, but I don’t know how many defense attorneys head out and hold on to that idealism.”
“I’m not sure how you could, because like I said, they are defending guilty people,” Matthew continues, “They are acquitting guilty people. That’s their job. So, like I said, most of them, that are successful, what they do are not necessarily basing their motives off of that ideal. They are doing a job that says this is the rights to a client and a right to a fair trial.”
Matthew says he has two conditions before he would consider revisiting the role of Mick Haller again.
“Two things, this movie’s got to make some bank at the box office,” McConaughey believes, “There’s a number out there that every movie’s got to make before anyone’s paying for someone else to put pen to the paper and writes the next one. And after that, if the script’s good, yeah.”
Finally, it was asked of McConaughey whether it was true or not that he originally wanted to be a lawyer.
“That’s what I thought I was going to do,” he answers, “That’s where I was heading. I’m sure of it. From 14 on to when I was 21, I was sure that’s what I was going to do. Looking up and noticing that I wouldn’t be out of law school until I was 28 years old. I was wondering, I’m going to miss my 20’s getting educated. I want to go try some stuff on
