I just thought that it was a really great drama. I just thought that there was real good, hard life there, but I loved it that it was a winner who is losing. What's a winner? If you're a winner and you start losing, how do you win again - instead of where a lot of times, in some dramatic roles that will come across my desk, it will be a loser who keeps losing.
I like that this guy had great dreams, was a great guy; he played quarterback and loved to play football. He lost his ability to play great football because he got his knee taken out from under him. You see that everyday in some form or another. If you sing and you lose your voice box, you can't do what you do anymore. If you play football and you lose your knee, you can't play to that ability anymore. So what do you do? You do try to get by. As you're getting by what are you good at? 'Well, he's good at picking games.' He doesn't bet on them, but he's good at picking them. ‘Hey, you're going to offer me good money to go do that? Sure.’ He starts getting things and those things, I don't think, are necessarily what corrupt him. I don't think that that's necessarily one of the lessons. But that world that he enters is not as it seemed at first.”
Matthew McConaughey Shows Off His Dramatic Skills: “It was a special role for me. I haven't had what I thought was a really good meaty role in what I thought was a drama come across my desk, that I either liked or that was offered to me or was there for me to chase, in a while. And I had just done some lighter fair, romantic comedies, which have been successful and have been doing well. And I really enjoy doing that but coming off of what I had just done, I was looking for getting into something else.
Sometimes life is hard. It's not supposed to be easy. Romantic comedies are sort of designed so that the work is in keeping them sort of easy. That's not the same kind of work in a story like this. So as you would say, what is a drama? Well, the circumstances become much closer to life and death and survival and then it was just doing things that I was interested in. I love sports. I love competition. Even with betting, everyone, if you have any ‘gamble’ in you, whether it’s on sports or anything, you'll be able to get off to this film. The betting… We all love to be able to tell the future and that's the main buzz with betting on games like this.“
Matthew McConaughey on Staying in Shape: “This guy, I mean, he was a quarterback and so I needed to be in good shape. I don't like seeing sports movies and going, 'Man. I don't buy that that guy could play quarterback. I don't buy that that guy was a real golfer.' I like seeing sports movies and going, 'Okay. I buy it that that guy was a good quarterback.' That's part of it.
I look at that as being part of my job so that was part of my responsibility, and plus it was fun. It's part of a whole ritual of say getting into shape and running passing routes and working out with a team that mentally is something that you don't just pop up and create and say, 'Oh, I'm going to play a quarterback.' There's a whole leadership mentality to it. There are all kinds of things. It's a very vital and physical experience that also plays mentally. So I enjoyed that. It was fun. But no, everyday? No. I've already gone on and done work after that where I needed to lose some weight and to lose some muscle mass. So more running, more frisbee…”
Page 2: Matthew McConaughey on the Guy Who Inspired His Role and Gambling on Himself
