I find it fascinating that several celebrity books came out in 2020, or at least, were written in 2020. It’s clear that in many of these books, people wanted to talk about their lives and not just find an alternative revenue stream. In 2021 I read Rick Ross’s ‘Boss Up’ which was written in 2020 and is a bit of an autobiography and a bit of a self-improvement book, which is similar to how Greenlights is structured. There’s a bit about the celebrity, and bit about how readers might apply some of the celebrity’s wisdom to their lives.
The McConaughey book came out in the depths of COVID in 2020, but has less to do with COVID and more to do with his career before that. I get the feeling that it was being conjured for years on end, and COVID was what kicked it out of any remaining nest it was stuck in. For many, 2020 and 2021 were years of “why not?”
The first movie I ever saw with McConaughey was Contact, which I loved as a young person. I think I saw it when I was about 13 or 14, it was one of those borderline PG movies that could have been PG-13 that I managed to see very ‘early’. The most interesting character in Contact is by far the main character, and later on, I thought it was interesting how McConaughey’s character was sort of an antagonist in the film and also a love interest. I hadn’t seen that done in a movie before, at that age. Usually, the love interest is supposed to help the main character, right? Or, the love interest is more like a sought-after thing.
Maybe worst of all, McConaughey’s role in Contact waxes a bit like an afterthought - he’s a very good-looking guy who gets some substance but not much. The book talks about this tendency a bit, as McConaughey identifies that he had enjoyed wild success, yet he was getting pigeonholed into rom-com roles. It took him a lot of saying ‘no’ to break out of getting more and more roles like that, until he got the role in Dallas Buyer’s Club (which also barely got made!)
What I also had to appreciate in this book is when he talks about going to film school, and every other person in film school is a bit serious and maybe even a snob. This was an opportunity for McConaughey to stand out - it’s hard to think of him in any way as being a snob by the time you get to the film school section of the book.
Before reading this book, I had no idea how much he traveled. I will suspend any further commentary on this, it’s fun to read about his travels in the book and why he goes to the places he goes to.
In all, I enjoyed this book. Like reading biographies of other celebrities, there’s more than what meets the eye to this particular actor. I found the most interesting parts of this book to be his biography, but others might enjoy the poems or asides, or the images of his writing throughout the years.