From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction
I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges – how to get relative with the inevitable – you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.”
So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.
Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.
It’s a love letter. To life.
It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights – and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.
Good luck.
Greenlights Book Review: Blog Entry
For any gift-giving opportunity I have, my wife is usually great at pinpointing what she surmises I would like. She has narrowed it down to media; books, a Blu-ray movie, or a record. The problem is, she never knows what I have. Instead of walking into my office, browsing my shelves, and possibly saving herself a trip to return the item, she crosses her fingers and hopes I don’t already have said item. Silly, I know, but I 100% appreciate the effort. I never know what she will get me, and often times she surprises me with her choice of gift. She gifted me with Matthew McConaughey’s semi-autobiography, Greenlights, last Father’s Day.
I was aware of this book as I saw it on my numerous trips to the bookstore but never once picked it up to read its synopsis. Correction, I did pick it up because I thought the dust jack and the overall texture of the book were interesting and eye-catching in that they looked, and felt, different. Still, that was as much interest as I had in the book, and reading about Matthew McConaughey was far from anything on my to-do list. His mere existence as an actor was like a thorn in my behind for many years. Of course, I exaggerate. There was a period in his career when his choice of film projects accepted was mediocre, at best. In other words, I did not like them. The films I refer to are his string of romantic comedies that were blasé and redundant. I know there was more to him as an actor based on what I saw in A Time to Kill, U-571, Frailty, and Contact, to name a few. But then there was The Wedding Planner, Tiptoes, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, Fool’s Gold, and Ghosts of Girlfriend’s Past. Sure there were other genre films sprinkled here and there, but I remembered him best as the Rom-Com guy. Now, I’m not saying they were bad movies, just bad for me.
Then, a switch was flipped, and his resume improved: The Lincoln Lawyer, The Paperboy, Dallas Buyers Club, The Wolf of Wall Street, True Detective, and Interstellar. This string of good movies and his comeback became known as the “McConaissance” which, he admits, was a phrase he coined himself. He got my attention again, and I was hook, line, and sinker. Yet, still, his book sat on my bookshelf. Then, a year later, I stumbled upon Greenlights again on a day as I was cleaning up my office. That odd-cropped dust jacket and soft leathery cover beckoned me to finally sit down and open it up, and I did.
I read the book in about two or three days, and by the end of it, I had a newfound respect and admiration for Matthew McConaughey. A man crush? Not so much, but certainly a new perspective and better understanding of the man and how he became the person he is today. The first thing that struck me and captured my attention was the way he thought and wrote: philosophical, intelligent, intricate, and well-thought-out. Much of this was portrayed in past journal entries written well before his rise to the top in Hollywood. Sprinkled throughout the book, these snippets, and nuggets, he highlights his goals and soon-to-be accomplishments. This reminded me of how my wife is constantly writing notes and checklists and then soon crossing them off her list. Goals and accomplishments are checked off sooner or later. To Matthew, a lot of these accomplishments and failures would often lead to what he refers to as, Greenlights. A green light is an action, event, or experience that propels you to move forward – career advancement, meeting the person of your dreams, or, in his case, leading to better acting gigs.
Matthew McConaughey’s personality shines through in this book, as a humble, down-to-earth, caring, and ambitious human being. He is the kind of guy I would like to hang out with, have a beer, and shoot the shit – definitely someone I feel I can learn a lot from, like a mentor. I never thought that I would ever think of McConaughey as someone I would consider a mentor, but here I am saying just that.
Greenlights is a look inside the man, his upbringing, thoughts, musings, eye-opening experiences, failings, and accomplishments. From what I read in Greenlights, his life can be made into a movie with many trials, tribulations, experiences, and adventures. One such venture was swimming in the Amazon in South America after a dream. Or, when he went to Begnemato, South Africa, and introduced himself as a writer and boxer named David and was subsequentially challenged by the village champion, Michel, to wrestle in a dirt pit—scratched that off his bucket list! Or how he traveled across the U.S. in his RV.
It was great how he addressed his string of Rom-Coms and sudden departure from this genre that eventually led to serious, award-winning roles that captured the hearts and minds of men and women alike. It was a pleasure getting to know Matthew through his book. It certainly gave me a better appreciation and understanding of this man I deemed a buffoon and a Hollywood caricature. Greenlights is inspirational in that McConaughey instilled a notion of not letting obstacles or red lights, get in the way, but instead, how can that red light turn into a green light? He describes many obstacles and how he managed to conquer or overcome and I can say, without hesitation, that his personality helped him get through many of them. I don’t have that type of personality, however, I admire it and certainly wouldn’t mind my own “McConaissance!”