Matthew McConaughey (best of)

[MUSIC PLAYING] When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas to the culture, you get criticized. You do? Yeah. Did you hear about that? I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected, and we made it the one. In the sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive, on the one hand. On the other hand, everything could be addictive. If there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Peltrow. This is the Goop podcast, bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers, and seekers, here to start conversations. Because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. This week, we're sharing a gem from the Goop podcast archives. Welcome to the Goop podcast. I'm Gwyneth Peltrow. And today, I'm joined by a voice we all know, the unmistakable draw, equal parts grit and charm. We talk about resilience, individuality, and his continual pursuit of the best version of himself as a man, a husband, and a father. It's so full, surprising, and very much Matthew McConaughey. Well, I'm really excited to talk to you. I'm excited to talk to you. And this is so beautiful, this collection of poems that you've done. And you've had such an interesting life and such an interesting career, and I admire you a lot. So I'm really happy to have you on the podcast today. I'm excited to be on it, too. And you know what, you've been-- it's been exciting to watch you from a distance, too. Just how you-- affirmative choices forward an identity for yourself when the rest of the world's going, wait, no, just state. Why wouldn't you stay in your lane, you know? Awesome. It's true, and a lot of what you wrote really resonates with me around that, around this kind of like abject, strength around individuality, and you know leaning into yourself and your own identity. And I find that really inspiring. Oh, cool. So I would love to start just a little bit with-- like, take me back to the beginning, because you start to write this book or these poems, I believe, in 1989. So at a young age, and before you were discovered, before Hollywood discovered you. So will you tell me a little bit about kind of-- because I imagine this idea of masculinity in Texas in the '80s. Like, I can't imagine it sort of neatly folding into such a poetic heart. It's Friday nights around the keg at the tailgate. So can you tell me a little bit about your upbringing and what it was like to hold this world of poetry and spirituality in your soul? Sure. So I mean, spiritually and religiously, we were a raised Methodist. And it was the ritual of church every Sunday in grace for dinners and Methodist is not very friar and friar and brimstone. It's very much gratitude and be thankful for what you had and compounded that. And, you know, growing up, like probably most kids-- and didn't listen to that much in church-- but it was the ritual that on Sunday, you're at the highest number two. And I don't care. What you did Saturday night, we're up Sunday morning as a family going there in fellowship, which I thought was a wonderful practice and got a lot of ethics from it, et cetera. I was very much an extrovert. But part of the reason-- I mean, I was always writing even at 16. But I would say part of the reason that I continued to write more confidently in things like poems and prayers was part of the same reason I ended up in Hollywood and saying I wanted to be in the storytelling business in front of the camera. Those were not poetry and art and storytelling and we're not on the front line of expectations of my family growing up, or what you know. I remember when I called my dad to say, I don't want to go to law school, I want to go to film school. I thought he was going to go, bullshit, that's a hobby. You can do that on Saturdays, but that's not a real job. And in the hindsight, he didn't. He actually said, don't have acid. So I also had a friend that I made there, Rob Benler, a Jewish friend of mine, who was not in the popular groups. And I was-- I was a student council. I was an athlete, a Renaissance guy with buddies with all kinds of different walks of life in school. At the same time, I was an extrovert. And I was a part of here. In Friday night, it was like, hey, man, go get tailgate. Chase the girls, let's have a great time. My buddy, Rob, was not that. So when we became friends in art class, he introduced me to, hey, you want to cover my place on Saturday night, and we'll watch a movie. I was like, watch a movie on Saturday night. So he would come with me on Friday, I'd bring him out. And then on Saturday, we go to his place and talk about life, and watch a movie, and talk about art and stuff. So he was actually one who gave me the confidence to even say, I want to go to film school. Or what if I could audition for that part? So part and parcel, that was around the same time that I became more confident to write poems or prayers or love songs and things like that. I then took a year off as an exchange student in Australia, which was a wild and lonely loss to looking in wobbly year. And when I was my only friend, I had, I wrote to myself. I was losing my mind. But I was writing 14-page letters to myself with way too many adjectives and adverbs. And I was returning letters to myself. A 15-page, to outdo my original letter to myself. So I was, it was a sacratic dialogue, and it was a way to cope. It was a way to deal. It was a way to get it out on a page, trying to figure out the existential why questions. What the hell's going on? Is there a meaning in this life? Am I stuck here? No, you're not. Trust that if you go through this, there's a golden pot on the other side. Trust that, Matthews, gave me resilience and strength. And so I continued to write. So where did that come from? Do you think this-- because most teenagers, they can default to, what was me? I'm lonely. I'm in a foreign country. And where do you think that comes from? This idea that pain can be a teacher. And-- Good question. I mean, look, we were raised to be very resilient. I mean, get up, dress yourself off. You could ask me for new pair of shoes. I'm going to introduce you to the kid with no feet. Oh, shit, OK. It was baseline gratitude. Don't come in near to breakfast until you're ready to see the rose in the face instead of the dust in the table. Get your ass back in bed. It was very baseline gratitude from my mother, especially. Now, the challenge, and I think one of the problems with that kind of resilience, is you become a repeat offender of the same problem. You step in the same polish, shit, around the same term, because you never stop to go, wait a second. Let me have a look here. Why am I feeling this way? Let me get objective about why do I keep tripping on the same damn pothole every time we're on the bend. And if you just get up and dust yourself off and keep going, you never stop to look, right? So I would say I've been a repeat offender. At the same time, I've got great resilience. I also honestly believed that the trials and the tribulation that I was in when I was lost in that year, I started to gain a little bit of almost confidence and sort of reverence for the fact that, oh, the longer this goes, the greater the reward on the other side. I'll endure this. And I started to get kind of-- ego got even full of like, OK, to an extent where I know when I came back in the reverse culture shock of coming back to America, if people and friends weren't to talk about just, hey, the weather or party, and I would almost like, what kind of conversation is that? I was too serious, almost. I'd been in the trenches, you know? And it was like, I'd skipped. And I had to find my sense of humor again to actually come back and enjoy a small talk for quite a bit of the time when I came back. I think it came from how I was raised. I think it also came from whatever inherent faith I had that. I think resistance and a little discomfort and sweat equity was always kind of breaded to me to be like, ah, that's how you earn it, the experience. That's how you'll remember it. That's how it'll be part of your lineage. I didn't in school. I made good grades, but I don't remember how the Liberty Bill cracked, but I had passed that test. Life's experiences where I got burned or hurt or one, that's what I remember. And my parents are pretty, I guess, courageous on the height of the limbs they would let us walk out on to fall from. And go, and now you understand, they would not want to go, "No, no, no, no, come down, come down." They'd be like, "No, no, no, go ahead." You know, so I guess it was part of my how I learned, how what I understood about learning lessons. And I will say this, Gwyneth, it, like I said, it over-compensated later for me in life when I became successful in Hollywood. I didn't want to, how to deal with, whoa, when it was easy straight, when it was champagne and caviar and red carpets, and I love yous. I like, I like felt like I needed to, like, trip myself, and like, you know, like fall down and screw the thing up, you know, when it was easy. I would be later on learned and still learning that, no, when it's easy, you can enjoy the downhill because the uphill will be coming anyway. You don't have to trip yourself running downhill. Do you think that you, when everything was really easy in Hollywood, do you think that that was you know, do you think you, you changed? Do you think, you know, you had a period of, you know, one thing, when it was easy straight, like things. Yeah. Yeah. I let myself off the hook for things. Yeah. I rode, I still engaged. I didn't work any less hard. I wasn't any less committed. But it's that, it's that double-edged sort of gratitude we were talking about. You got, you know, yes, be thankful, but you got to be more than just happy to be here. You know what I mean? And I think, you know, I'd such a, you know, when I first got successful in Hollywood, I was like, I had a little bit of whatever it's called, the impostor. So why me? Well, oh my gosh, this amount, I just made 48, five schedule left. They're paying me $48,500. I was going to play baseball for 11 weeks. Is that legal? Is what way to serve this, do you know what I mean? Yeah. So it got to a point where I called it on myself as it looked, you've got to be less impressed and more involved. What kind of thing. And that came to me after my father died. It was something. How old were you when you died? 21. I'm sorry. 21. And the gift from that was whatever lost my crutch. I lost the person in my life that was above law, that was above religion, that would have my back if it really came down to it. I knew someone had that and that person was going. So it was like, okay, man, do you better man up? You better quit acting like you want to be one and quit talking about what you think you ought to do and start doing it. Now that was a process for and still is, but that took a while, but become less impressed and more involved. So with my work and with success, as much as I was thankful and going like, I mean, what else do you want? This is more than you ever imagined. As you know, you've got to get hopefully past that, look it in the eye and go, well, I don't know, just because I just because I can do I want to. And you've got to get kind of, it's more mature, you've got to be more mature and start discerning, well, okay, I may have a lot. I may have more than on most people, but is it what I want? And then you start saying no to things that are a great paycheck, but not their success, but they're not profit. You start going, no other things when you go like, I'm just feel like I'm going in circles here. It's a great circle, it's a high class problem that I'm having, but I don't I don't feel like I'm growing. And so that led to, you know, me taking a couple of years off. Yeah, which is so, which is an interesting parallel that we have as well, because I really hit a wall and took a bunch of years off and the birth of my first child really precipitated that. And I think maybe because I'm a woman, it was sort of the first time I felt like I had permission to stop and slow down, stop, you know, running so fast towards a goal. But it seems like you kind of looked at the sum of your career and had some deep philosophical questions around the kind of art you were making. Is that am I projecting? No, no, you're not, you're, you're projecting what you're right on at 100%. And I don't think it's coincidental that it was at the time when Camilla was pregnant with our first child. Right. Interesting. There's a real revelation, you know, of having a first child that all of a sudden everything else becomes number two, probably in the three hole. And all of a sudden, acting became like third thing that was giving me identity. You know, so I was looking at my life and how vital it was, how much how, how much the ceiling of my joy was so high, the basement of my anger and rage and pain was so low, it was wider, it was taller, it was deeper. Real life was dramatic. And I got a child coming in. I've got the woman I love. The tears are wet or everything. And then I was, it looked at doing the romcoms, which are a compressed frequency of emotions. They're supposed to be buoyant. They bounce from cloud to cloud. If you drop anchor in a romcom, you sink the ship, whoa, don't go there. So that frequency, I was like, ah, my life is so much more vital than my work. And I remember looking in the mirror going, well, congratulations, what kind of thing. Glad it's not the other way around. But is there a way that I can get my work to challenge the vitality of my life? And then I was like, this, that would be in dramas. Well, I was kind of like, was that hard to sort of, you know, because I do think like you touched on it before people like you in a box, right? And everybody was so comfortable with you as like this hilarious, affable, you know, sexiest man alive guy. So were you, were you concerned about trying to shift that, how you were perceived? Yes. It took a big risk. And I was trying to, you know, I was offering found dramas I wanted to do and was offering studios massive pay cuts. And they're like, no, thank you. Just stay in your lane there, bud. We're doing good here with the romcoms, man. They cost 35 or making 50. We could make a check. They all this, all this stuff, it was working. And so because I couldn't do what I wanted to do, I said, well, look, I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing. Now, what did I have going for me? I mean, love, it's pregnant. Got this coming. So that helped me stay a little grounded. Now, I didn't know how long this period of stepping out was going to take or win Hollywood and if Hollywood was going to call back. And, you know, after, I remember calling my agent, Jim Toth, there's a gem. I don't want to do any more romcoms or action comments. He goes, okay. And I go, what do you mean? Okay. You just said like real quick. I said, dude, I'm bringing in a nice dime on the dollar to the agency. What are you going to say Monday morning to the bosses? I mean, I've been, I've been paying this and he goes, no, no, no, I work for you. Not them. I said, okay, we'll set up. I need, I need you to just be my guard here because I'm saying no, and I need to get the signal out to Hollywood that I'm not doing any more of the romcom. That's all that came in. I said, no, I said, no, I said, no, I said, no. I didn't remember calling after six months and he goes, man, they haven't even heard your name in three months. So I'm starting to think, did I just write myself one way ticket out of Hollywood here? And I'll tell you this story. I don't know if you've heard or not, I think it's worth telling again. And I think you'll know what I mean. I had this offer come in after about a year. It was an action comedy. Good script. Big franchise thing came in. If they'd eat me in dollar offer, I said, no, thank you. Came back to 10 million dollar offer. I said, no, thank you. Came back at a 12 million dollar offer. Came back at a 14.5 million dollar offer. I said, let me read that again. It was the same word. Does that aid me in dollar offer script, but it was better. I could see myself. This could work. I might be able to, I ultimately said no, though. Wow. And I think that no had a reverberation in Hollywood of Oh, Makana has not bluffing. I don't know what he's doing, but he's playing, he's playing offense on something. You know, back to what we were talking about earlier. I don't know if we were on camera, not about how I was talking about your affirming choices of identity that becomes attractive. When it's not like someone's receding, no, oh, what's he doing? Well, cut to 20 months total. And after saying no to that, I think I became a new novel. Good idea. What about him in Lincoln, lawyer? What about Killer Joe? Makana, yeah. Oh, well, we haven't seen him. I don't know where he's been for two years. He hasn't been in our living room in our theater in a romcom. We haven't seen him on the beach in people magazine in another shirtless shot looking like he's living a romcom too. Where is he? And I think the anonymity that I got in the 20 years all of a sudden, I became like, huh, I've been an interesting idea for a dramatic role. And then that's when they started coming and I just ferociously said yes and charged. Right. But I will say those 20 months as much as I had Camilla and newborn, it was it was wobbly. I mean, I thought of other vocations. I thought of high school teacher, nature guide, going back to law school. And, you know, the days got long. I did suffer for some significance. But I think I wrote probably some of these poems and prayers along that way in that two years 'cause I needed them. - And did you find yourself sort of harkening back to your days in Australia and what you learned from that unmoored time? - Interesting, I think so. I mean, I never, as hard as maintaining the decision was, there was, it was non-negotiable, I was never going back. I remember over tears when I decided to make the decision of art, I'm stepping out, I'm not doing that. I remember the tears with Camilla and her and I sitting there and praying and just letting it out till three in the morning. And then once the decision was made, there was never going back, 'cause we knew we even talked about. This goes on for a while. I don't know how long you're gonna be in the desert here. You're gonna be tempted to come back. We decisions made, so we never went back. So because it was non-negotiable, does not leaving a parachute, not, it does help us endure, I think, in these times, when you go, I don't have the option. I'm not giving myself an option to go back. It was very much like the Australia. I'm not giving, I had people were like, you could go back. You can fly home. I said, "No, guys, hand before I left." And I said, "I'm going the full year." Yeah, but you didn't know this was gonna happen. And you know what was gonna be this hard? I was like, "No, no, no." Like my word meant something. And spiritually with the decision to step out of Hollywood, Camilla and I, it meant something and it was done. So there was never a question of going back and going, "Okay, I can see, I tried it out, I'm back, what's the wrong?" You know? (gentle music) Did you ever, like, were you a student of the Stoics or anything? I'm just trying to. Not. Not directly. No, I've been asked that before. Okay, I was, yeah, because they're. And some things are just organic and come out of your own DNA and wisdom and life experience, but there's a real, there's a calling back to a lot of the Stoic philosophies and outlook. Yeah, I mean, Amerson, Solomon, Maestro Eckhart. There was, oh, I mean, I think there's always been a certain understanding of a felt, even living in excess, that minimalism and hunger and thirst and keeping away from a full satiation, mentally and spiritually, is good. You know, that that, 'cause then I think that's part of where just keep living comes from me. Then I'm always on the come. Then we're always on the approach, you know? And I don't succeed at it all the time. Sometimes look around and go, I'm full all over. Well, do I, does that mean I'm getting complacent or does that mean I need to get something out of my life? You know, that's taken up room in my day, in my life that I don't need. But on the approach, I love, then life feels like a verb. Then relationships feel like a verb. Then the journey feels like, you know, I did, because if I feel like I get, if I've landed, almost with anything, relational, art, career, spiritually, if I feel like I've landed. If I ever feel the tadaa, well, I'm gonna go, oh, you're being lazy, 'cause there ain't no tadaa. And I mean, you think a little higher, take the roof off, fly a little closer to the sun. It ain't that the wax ain't near melting yet. You might think it is, you got a lot further to go. - One of the things I really loved reading about was how you hold marriage with such reverence and this idea of, by your definition, what it means to be a good husband. And part of this is this agreement between the two of you, it seems that just as you say, there is no finish line, there's no exhale, there's a deep acknowledgement of the road and all of the things that life brings. So I guess what strikes me so much is the innate wisdom that you bring to all of these aspects of your life. And is Camilla, she must be, I mean, just by the way, I really believe that, and maybe this is weird or heteronormative or old fashioned, but I really believe that a woman really helps draw the energy for the man in the house and help set the course for the man. And so I'm wondering, well, first of all, how did you two meet and was this a deep resonance that you felt with her very quickly? - I'll tell you the story, it's a good one. So at the time, I was very healthily single. (laughing) Okay. - Getting it out of your system. - Yeah, and I can say, in a healthy way, I was taking care of myself, but I was feeling about six months before, I was feeling the clock tick, I'm like, I wanna find her. And you see, when a man's doing that, I mean, it's like every red light who's next to me in the produce section, who's, you know what I was like? You're, you know, we've got a party, I come to your place, you're gonna be introducing people. I'm like, you know, you're on the, you're on the, measuring, so the one here, is that it? Not very, not very attractive thing to be, when you're always looking, you're kind of, you see someone out of their space, you know what I mean? And looking, like to be, find some completion form. And I remember I had a wonderful, wild dream. I can tell it 'cause I wrote about it in the book, but I was an 88 year old bachelor in my wheelchair, and into my property, which was a horseshoe gravel driveway. St. Augustine Yard, I remember this very clearly, the St. Augustine grass was overgrown and on purpose, and cars were coming in in a procession, and in each one, a woman would get out, when two kids would get out. Well, when we get out, two kids would come out. And all the kids gathered around me, 88 of 'em, and 44 women, and they were the mothers of all my children and that was not married, and it was a beautiful celebration. And all the kids gathered and all the mothers were getting along, and it was a celebration of my birthday and picture. And I woke up and it was a, it was a beautiful dream, it wasn't a nightmare. - Okay. - It was a beautiful dream. And that, I remember waking up and laying in bed going, "What does that mean?" And what I heard and understood was, "It's okay, Matthew. "Don't press to try to find the one to marry. "If you end up an idiot, you're a bachelor. "Well, that's what you end up, but do quit pressing." - It's okay for Leonardo DiCaprio, you know? - Yeah, he's doing fine, you know? But that dream and the grace that I got from the dream gave me, it took away that looking around the corner, where is she at the produce section, at the party, at the red light? And I was like, "Okay, I'm not racing, it's time." So I now settle into myself. And as you know, it's the right time for us and it's the right person. Sometimes it would probably be a method right person. It wasn't the right time for us, you know? Sometimes it was the right time for us, but never met the right person. I was very settled in myself. I go out to a club with my friends on Sunset. I'm sitting there mixing margaritas at the table. Music's going, "I've had just enough to kill "I need to see clearly if you know what I mean." (laughing) This shape for the caramel shoulders, it was hot enough in the club to have just a bit of almost dude on a little bit of morning dew on the shoulders with a turquoise trap, was moving right to left across my island about 20 feet in front of me. And her head was not even bobbing. It was like just floating. And I remember looking on, what is that? And I stood up, I didn't say who is that. I said, "What is that?" And I got up and I went on and she went and sat down and I said, "Two friends." And I started to wave like trying to get her attention. And as I'm waving, I hear my mom and my 12-year-old here going, "Get your ass up, boy." This is not kind of what we wave across the damn room, boy. So I go over and she's there with two friends and it hits me, boom, invite 'em both, all three over. Which I did, which was the gentleman they think to do, which meant she said, "No, y'all stay. I'll go alone." She comes over. I mix a margarita, the music's blaring. I spoke better Spanish that night and I've heard Portuguese better that night than I ever have in my life. And all of a sudden, my buddy comes up and goes, "Man, we got a ghost, 2.30." I said, "Okay." Would you like to come home? We're all going back to mouse for a drink. I said, "Come home." She says, "No, no, no. No, but nice to meet you." I said, "I'll walk you to your car. We go to our car. Where is it? It's been towed." No. Would you like a ride home with us? Come have a drink and my driver will take you home when you're ready to go. Okay. Is she new? Is she new? Who you were? Yes. Yeah, she did. She did. She did. Yeah. Yeah. And for whatever reason, anyway, we go have a drink at my place, time to go and walk her out to my driver can take her. My driver's left. No. Yes. And this is pre-Uber, right? A pre-Uber. Oh, this pre-Uber. So now we're going to call a cab. Well, damn it. You know how it isn't. Those Hollywood hills sometimes. And the reception is no good. I think they're right. So she's stuck. Yeah. Take the extra bedroom down to the hallway upstairs. Great. She does. I got kicked out of that room twice trying to go down there later that night. I love it. And the next morning, I'm the last one to get up. It's 10.45 in the morning. I come down this spiral staircase and I can hear this chatter at the breakfast bar in the kitchen. And it's this beautiful kind of chatter of old friends. Overlapping, this innuendo, there's already laughs at jokes that were told an hour before. You know. And everyone's laughing, talking over each other. And it sounds like people have known each other for years, decades. As I get to the bombs here, as I look and I see that kitchen table, and there's those same to those same shoulders with that turquoise dress. She's wearing the same dresses last night. This is another great plus to me. I'm like, oh, this is not a little girl. This is not like, oh, I'm doing a walk of shame because I'm wearing the same thing last night. No. People close I have, and this is the dress I'm wearing, I'm wearing it now. She's holding court with my two buddies who are sitting there drinking on and she's with their shirts off hung over, and they're laughing and going on like they've known each other for decades. I'm like, wow. Beautiful. We'll get there. Then I decide I'm going to take her to the place where a car is impounded. It's an hour away. I put on this album of this reggae artist I had produced called Mishka. We put it on, drove the hour, the album thing is an hour long. We didn't say one word. In between the songs, didn't have any of that uncomfortable silence where, oh, I feel like I got to feel the gap. It was a wonderful science just to be in the presence of each other listening to this music and listening to this album. We show up. We get her car. I ask for her number. She gives it to me. It comes in down for a kiss, I scoot over caught about an eighth of an inch if we've lived there, to feel good. I asked her out. The next night I asked her out that night she couldn't ask her the next night, she said she couldn't. I said, why? It's my dad's birthday. I'm like, yes, family. She has a dad to see a family. Yes. Okay. So I kept asking her out and then finally about a week later, she said yes. And that's the only woman that have dated, slept with and wanted to wake up next to for the last 19 years. Oh my goodness. So that journey to that, what I've seen her, what I've had the confidence to see, because everything I saw on that walk, when she moved across the room, I saw that dignity. I saw that sense of she was, she wasn't prevent in any relational way. I mean, this was when I was like, oh, okay, she had history on her shoulders. The only thing that I saw on that image and that impression and that haze 20 feet away, that the amount of tequila I'd had, everything turned out to be true when you, when you, when we zoomed into the close up. And as the relationship got more intimate, those things turned out to be true. That is so beautiful. 19 years is, you know, it's a long time and in Hollywood years, it's like, you know? Yeah. Guess so. What is the love you never question, axiom that you two have? What does that mean? Well, like anybody and any couples, sometimes ones going faster than the other, sometimes one feels like they're sacrificing more than the other. And we, and we grow. So at the same time where we want and love and are there for that inherent person that I saw, move across through that night, who she is and how and what it is she fell in love with me about why we still want that. And that's what we believe in. We grow. There are amendments. We mature. Sometimes we go a little backwards somewhere and sometimes we go a little forward somewhere. We find new things, new interests, new hobbies, like decisions. But as long as that core, it's the core, it's the core, the very first thing I saw before I ever saw, ever spoke to her. First thing I saw in my mind and in heart when she moved across through, it was what I still love about her and what she still is. It's new. She is, you know, there's, there's, you have children, you have a family, you get older, there's the new challenges, but I don't think we've ever lost sight or ever not been able to show each other what we saw on each other that night. What I saw across the room, what we understood in each other in the language of love when I understood Portuguese and better than I still do now and I spoke the best Spanish I've ever spoken, you know what I mean? Whatever that was, I knew right then that this was not, that this was, if, if I got fortunate enough to go, it's been more time or that this was not a fling, I knew right then and I, I don't know if she did, I don't know, maybe it took her longer to see who I was, to trust who I was, but that lights, that lights never gone out and for, for either one of us and how we see each other and who we expect to be for the other. Yeah, we have a, it's an inherent trust there and even in times where it's, it's harder or we're missing and ships sailing past each other than I just trust that, oh well, let's not, let's, you know, as you know, relationship to take work and so where do you sit there and just not make anything, this is not a big deal, just let it slide and when you go, no, we got to, we got to do some maintenance here, right, we got, we got, we got, we got to check in because we're chassis a little loose, you know, and if you don't check in, you can look up and it can be a mess and like, we have, we have friends that you look around you go like, boy, they didn't, they didn't do maintenance long the way and now look, they look up and you go, oh shit, what happened? And we, I think we do a pretty good job and thank Villa Hurk, because she, she instigates it most of the time of the, the maintenance check in, you know, for us, that we never get too far off even though we're trying to try new things and, you know, entrepreneurial relationship and I've got things and she's got things and we got three kids and that becomes another another thing where you can go and that's another thing to, to, to, to, to watch what I'm still learning to watch is you get children and those are the dependent, they need you, you know what I mean, and sometimes I can sometimes go, well, Camillo will be fine, but the kids need, you know what I mean? That, you gotta, you gotta watch and go on. Not totally orienting around them as first priority all the time. Yeah. Right. Yeah. How, how do you think that having this beautiful substantive marriage is like a, a key pillar in your life in terms of your growth, your success, your introspection? Yes. Look, her, their ways I don't even understand that hurt coming to my life, hell, but I look back and if I do the math, it's kind of obvious. The math is there and if I don't see it, I got plenty of friends at Dan Schiller who remind me of it, you know? Yeah. It's a true, a true sense of true confidence being stable, being, again, something beautiful happens I think in our, in our life when we have, when we find that kind of relationship or even especially and also when we have children that I'd be saying it say, I think I got better at my career, better at my job when I found the woman I love to Camilla and we had children. Why? Well, all of a sudden the career became in the three-hole of priorities. Yeah. And that doesn't mean I, I respected it less. It just meant it wasn't my full-on identity. Right. And boy, when it's number one and we're young and that's our identity, you can need it too much. And miss the magic, there's a form of taking something to, seriously, where it can sort of, you know, not allow us to be our, the most we can't add it. And it's part of who I am, but it's not my identity, I have things that I mean, I trust in. I write about this in Greenland. The one thing I ever knew that I wanted to be was a father, right? You know, when I was meeting my dad's friends and I, given them yes, sirs, I remember eight years old in the parking lot of Oak Forest Country Club. These two men I met and the son was coming out of my eyes and had shades. And I remembered the common denominator of all the men I'd met and shook their hands they were fathers. And I was like, ah, that's success. That's when you've made it. That was the definition in my mind. And I still hold on to that to a great extent. What kind of father are you? What kind of father am I? I am, I kind of to give you a little, these are not political terms, but I would say conservative or liberal late, meaning like let's learn our literacy and our math and our manners and our respect. Build the foundation. Build the foundation and the expectations within the family. We are a team and I'm sorry, no, we're not, we're not equals yet. No. We've got to maintain, we've got to earn these things. Part of it is going to be there for you. Part of it's going to be watch me, part of it's going to be watch how your mother and I treat each other. That's how you treat someone in your life that you, that you hopefully can end up loving and caring about. Part of it will be what we talked about earlier. No, you are not invited right now. This is your mother and I's time. And respect that. Go entertain yourself. I am coming now with teenagers, which I think is going to be my honey all as a dad. I think one, I'm really enjoying it because I don't have to edit my good stories as much anymore. No, it's true. You're coming there like you did, you're like, yeah, I know what you're talking about. You're like, damn, okay, you know what I mean? But I didn't know that there was this bridge between, because of my father, this parenthood. And then there's friendship. I think there's a time to hold off the friendship. I know too many parents because they're going like, my parents too much of my friend too early. I need a parent. And I didn't know there was this bridge that I'm finding now of being a big brother on the way to being a friend. And so there's things that they fundamentally understand that I don't have to teach them anymore. They don't need to see the example anymore. But I can be less judgmental as hope, well, let me tell you this is your dad and I can be more just listen and put a hand on the back and go, damn it. I know it, man. That sucks. A breakup, a heartbreak or something they wanted didn't get or how to get something they want, how to hustle for it. I don't know. We'll check this out. It's a little more of a hand on the back, arm around them going me too. I know you're talking about it. A little more of a big brother and it's a bridge between fatherhood and friendship that I didn't know was there. Could you do you have the book with you? Yeah. I do. Could you read me? You can pick. You can pick to a random page. You can read the first one you wrote when you're 18. That one's funny. It didn't mean to be funny. It felt various. Yeah. Okay. I'll read this one. I'll read this. Let's read that one from this is when I'm 18. Again, in Australia, losing my mind. I'd become vegetarian, didn't know how to be a vegetarian, because he had a head of ice burglettis with ketchup on it. I was running six miles a day. I believe I'm going to be a monk. Again, it didn't think he was wrong with me, but these are disciplines I was putting to myself to achieve each day just to give me a sense of, okay, I can't accomplish something. Because I was -- Why was it so bad? Just like -- Okay. Okay. It was a -- it's a wonderful story right in Greenwich, but it was -- we were going to be -- I was written that I was going to go stay with the family and live on the outskirts of Sydney. Well, the outskirts of Sydney ended up being about three and a half hours away in a little town called Warnervale Population 305, way out. I was a bit of the dolies, the founders, a bit of the family's price possession, the toy. And they had gone back. I graduated high school. I was free. I mean, I made my inscribed, made my grades. I got money in my back pocket. I had a job. I had a car. I got a full handicap. Man, I got a girlfriend. Things were rolling. I got no curfew. Let's go. And I was like, they wanted me in. Like, ten. And if there's a girl who wanted to go out with, they need to interview her. I didn't have a car. I didn't have friends. I didn't have golf clubs. I didn't have cash in my pocket. I had a curfew. So, and this family was just -- there was a bit of -- I felt that I still was feeling a bit of covetous. There was a bit of -- we'd like you to call this "Mummin Pup." Whoa. Okay. So, it's a beautiful black comedy. Okay. So, I'm at this point, after eating at 5 p.m., finishing at 5.30 and then doing the dishes each night, I am trying to get back to my room to go take a bath every night just so I can have some solo time with me. And this solo time, I'm hopping in the bathtub. I'm reading Lord Byron. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I would read Lord Byron and work one out. Pretty much six nights a week. But again, nothing was wrong now. Let's go. Let's go. Okay. This is my nightly ritual. And I'm writing things like this. Okay. Soil. Mm-hmm. What wretched extent is our life bowed to today? When will it end? When shall it begin? Our endless judgments that brandish the sin. Ignorant minds of the fortunate man blind of the fate shaping every land. Drifting day by day upon selfish wings of his past. Only seeking the winds of his narrow-minded castles. Love provides us a chance to cure this social disease. Or excessive infections have we never to believe. As bias past rule, unfortunate futures, living adversities of both heaven and hell, why the flame reaches higher is so hard to tell. No cell, no home, city, state, nor land. The untold doom bleeds throughout every hand. The shrouded wounds sweat the pain unknown of so many premiere as kings upon their throne. Self-destruction of the blind awaits in the range, the naive dwelling of the endless unchanged. The unaware return to the palace of the benighted. I too shall reunite, primarily delighted. But one thing infallibly, I shall never remain the same. Whoa, right? But that's incredible. I mean, I was talking about the menaces of the world. And at the end, I'm saying, I'm going to go back doing it too. But I'm going to be changed. And I was a pretty self-serious young dude and had a lot of my mind. And again, thinking my calling was to go become a monk. I was calling out what I called bullshit in society. And I was outside of America for the first time looking back. And when you leave what you know, you kind of look back and you kind of call bullshit. Because you see it in a different way. Right. And yeah, I mean. That is incredible, Matthew. My God. I think I had a I think I had a the sourced pretty handy though. Because I don't know what infallibly meant. And I don't know what it means now. But at the time, that amount of syllables and that adverb impressed me. But I was writing that that's me at 18. That's that's on actually that was written. Check this out. This is what I was doing. 189. Wow. New years day eve. Okay. That's incredible. That's incredible. So I know I can see how you think it's funny. It's actually like kind of mind blowing and extremely profound for an 18 year old boy. I know, you know, when we're trying to find our art and our voice. Sometimes we take, you know, impressions of other artists. Yeah. But it is pretty extraordinary. And so. And then. So if I, if we take that as kind of the jumping off point and then sort of the. what you've created and what you've put into the world, not only as a husband and a father, but an artist, your incredible performances, you know, your writings, like there's such a such a strong sense of self, you know, like this kind of brave sense of self that I get off of you, that that I find really inspiring and so how I guess I would love to understand how you cultivate that and how you are brave enough to retreat to that like you have a there's a poem in the in the book again where you say there's a difference between a good man and a nice guy right a good man stands for certain ideals and when those beliefs are contested a good man is not a nice guy which is you know for me who was raised to always be a good girl and you know go along and and I was so late in finding myself to a certain extent like when when did you understand that who you were was not only okay but a gift and how do you index into being a good man irrespective of what other people think I honestly think at the inception point the hinge where it really kicked in and again I'm still working on it but was that year in Australia I tell you why I'm alone I just come from a life of catchy green lights like I said I graduated high school mom and dad are happy I got no curfew I could gas my tank I got a truck man I got 45 bucks my back pocket I'm dating best friend when I'm in school and I want to cross town things are rolling and I'm in a set let's go the brakes come on when I go to Australia I'm alone doing what I was telling me I was doing you know there were differences there were oddities there were things that that were coming on me that I didn't agree with but I kept just chalkin up to be in a cultural difference it's a cultural difference a cultural difference and I remember the night about six months into the trip or the year that I was over there that they did say that question we'd like you to call some mum and pup and I remember immediately going fucking cultural difference or not that ain't happening and I remember to even caught myself like whoa you just like it stood up and I remember I said well thank you for thinking of me that way but I have a mom and dad and I love this part because I said this I remember saying this I go I have a mom and dad and they're still alive like it needed the context but no I will call you by your first names in thank you very much you know got quiet at the dinner table and I cleared off the dishes and before I went back to the bathroom to go do a nightly ritual I said good night everyone and call them all by their first names in the next morning I guess what my alarm clock was now I'm gonna put my arm around are going on I it's not personal it's it's it's just but I was not wavering that was the non-negotiable right right right I remember that this the rest of this stuff okay culture difference this one sorry standing on it and I had no one to check in with I didn't have a friend I didn't have my dad I never brother I did my mom to check him like is this okay can I stand for this it was clear and I remember I'm forced so I was forced to make a decision on my own and stand up for it because it was black or white to me and I that was the launch pad of where I started taking my identity at the same time when I was on my own so I just stood up for something but now who am I so then I'm starting to go through I remember returning to college coming back and going to college and I remember you know going to movies and laughing at things in in the theater that no one else laughed at and then the stuff that everybody laughed at I was like that's not fucking funny and feeling weird and going no no no double down on that my guy and I remember going to funerals and not crying but crying when my friends or family would have a child I would cry at birth but not death and I was a weird look no trust that man it's not there's not a right wrong with that's double down on that if that's how you feel and telling myself that's okay so and I think it all started with that day I went no I'm not calling you pop I'm calling pop pop pop pop and so and writing things down and see you know noting things where I thought I was odd or weird or wasn't of the status quo and going and then going as you know as that you do that for why you started kind of get off to it like yeah my individual how do you feel cool when I put my shoes on I walk out the door I can get reservations for one I would do that I remember you know could come back on Monday what did you do this week and I went saw the song so the movie oh who'd you go with no what do you mean and like oh I'm sorry I go no I I did that on purpose I preferred that right you know and so I think and it's something I'm trying to teach my kids now I was like hey there's one person you got to be able to get along with buddy because it's the one person you can't get rid of you yeah you've got to shake hands with yourself and if you're not get if you're uncomfortable when you're alone it's a pretty good sign that you need to spend some more alone time with yourself until you can shake hands I go because our old minds could be tricks and we got we got shake some demons and get rid of them but you got to end up high five and shaking your hands with yourself and going dude man we're the only one that we can't get rid of so let's let's try and get along in this gig and I did that for a lot and I would take at times where you know life became big I just when I got famous bam 20 suits I got famous I was like I can't tell the difference between reality and bullshit here I got to get the hell out of here boom 22-day trip backpack alone to Peru oh why just put myself in a place where nobody knew my name and where memory could catch up with me and I needed to say goodbye to people in my life to where the tears out of their eyes when I left were from the man they met and spent time with the last 22 days named Mateo who they don't know what he did not from Matthew's famous I needed that you know test my own metal see if I still had it and I did but I needed that to separate reality from the heightened stuff so I think I've done a decent job of going on solo trips to make a stand there started an all-street and then trusting things if they weren't harmful to me or other people oddities about myself and going cool fine double down on that I love it it's it's amazing so this is going to be the rapid fire around that yeah okay just one word or whatever okay greatest teacher the one who's most understood favorite character you've played mud favorite thing about Camilla wet eyes favorite thing to do is a family cook together in the kitchen death row meal cheeseburger walk-on song Ted dudes it's strangled place you feel most at peace in the desert something your wife and kids make fun of you for oh they make fun of me but they're just making fun of me last night oh one that you when I when I when I do get on my soap box starting to teach read it'll be like okay gonna give us not a tattoo so so they'll have I do have to play general sometimes you know or come in and go all right guys hey hold up here we wrote then we wrote that it is we wrote the rules on the fridge we seem to go to the fridge we don't seem to be reading them and we just went over yesterday do we need to do this every day okay and I have to sometimes play the general and they kind of listen and get a big kick out of it that's hilarious okay last one which one of your poems or prayers would you want to introduce you at your eulogy oh that's a good one I'm gonna go with the one that's on the back we read it the victor sees the light last the final believer wears the crown don't pull the parachute too early fly until you touch down amazing thank you so much this has been such a fantastic conversation I've learned so much well I sure did enjoy it gonna thank you for the time thank you so so much thanks for tuning in this has been a presentation of cadence 13 studios I hope you'll listen follow rate and review all of our episodes which are available for free on apple podcasts Spotify Odyssey or wherever you get your podcasts. 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