 "Photo: Andrew Rogers")
Matthew McConaughey comes off as one of the most laid back people to walk this earth, so it was only a matter of time before he played a surfer. In "Surfer, Dude," McConaughey plays Steve Addington, a world-class surfer who returns to Malibu to be met by a reality TV offer and no waves. The Texan was able to sit down with McConaughey and director Robb Binder to discuss cinematic cannabis and the film's underlying green message.
The Daily Texan: What drew your cast (Scott Glenn, Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson, among others) to the project?
Robb Binder: All of these guys - Scott, Woody, Willie - are all tied into the environmental movement in all different levels. Scott is probably more of a conservationist, and Willie is obviously hard-core, and Woody for a long time has been politically active. So I think they all saw in this an opportunity to bring some awareness but without doing it in any sort of overly serious way. The movie doesn't suffer from seriousness by any stretch of the imagination, and yet it's dealing with some real things that are going on. We use the wave as a sort of metaphor for the bigger picture of the earth. The waves go away; what does that mean to Addington and, of course, us? We're at a place where we're risking losing this thing, the health of the planet. What would that be like for us? That was something I was super interested in, but we weren't interested in clobbering people over the head with dogma. So I think those guys saw something in that.
DT: The film has a very naturalistic feel to it. Was there a lot of improvisation during filming?
Matthew McConaughey: Sure, yeah.
RB: A lot.
MM: By design, it was loose like that. You've got a couple things going for you in this film that allow for that. One, nobody really has "occupations" like me playing Lt. Andrew Tyler in "U-571" or me playing a lawyer like Jake Brigance or in "Amistad" where you have a vernacular and, linguistically, there's a certain book you go to for words you use. These are surfers. [This is] not an occupation that binds your vernacular. It's about relationships and what's going on, so we never wanted "ba-dum-bum" jokes. We were like, let's get our humor through our characters and how they interact with one another. How Woody and I give each other a hug is something that only Woody and I can do, which says a lot. Even that sound effect of how we slap each other, just the hand clap, makes you go, "Oh there's a lot of history there." We've got to get through the scene, but that playfulness it's allowed; we wanted it to be natural like that.
DT: Weed plays a big role in the film. What exactly do you guys smoke on set?
RB: We weren't partying on the set; it was hard work.
MM: It's supposed to look like a party. Normally, it's oregano.
RB: And Woody was smoking tobacco, right?
MM: Not nicotine tobacco, but some kind of herbal tobacco.
RB: There's an amazing amount of products out there you can buy. They sell real pot that has the THC stripped out of it, so it smells like pot, looks like pot but has no active ingredients in it. I think it's illegal - well, obviously - to have pot on set.
DT: So the distribution of the film begins in Austin?
MM: Starts in Austin only.
DT: Aside from the obvious, why did you want to have it premiere here?
MM: I mean, I got my film start here. It's where half the guys I worked with now that worked on this film - we met at school here 19 years ago. Me and Robb have been buddies for 25 years.
RB: "Hands on a Hard Body" opened here.
MM: Austin's also a conscious, progressive, green community that respects all the Mother Nature they got here, and they've got a good sense of humor here in Austin. So all of those together, it was like, this is the perfect place.
RB: Austin's got some really heavy-thinking artists and whatnot, but there's always some levity in the work. They don't suffer from seriousness here in Austin, which is very easy to do as an artist.
MM: Austin gets the joke.
RB: And gets the point. It gets the theme without needing the seriousness, and I've always liked that about this place.
"Surfer, Dude" opens in Austin today.
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