When you think of Matthew McConaughey, what’re the first words that come to your mind?
It’s gotta be:
“Alright, alright, alright.”
It’s no secret that McConaughey has become easily one of the most well known and beloved actors in not only America, but the world.
He’s 100% the kinda guy you want to sit down and roll one up with, and listen to him talk away about some wild stories he’s collected over his 30-plus year acting career.
Although many of us have known him as a football coach given the tall task of restoring a program in We Are Marshall, a homer on Failure to Launch, the man getting played on How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the Lincoln Lawyer, and so many others, a lot of us who were born in the late ’90s and later aren’t familiar with how the man got his start.
And no, we’re not talking about his appearance in Trisha Yearwood’s music video for her iconic 1992 hit “Walkaway Joe.”
We’re talking about the movie that put him on the map, the 1993 classic Dazed and Confused.
I’ll admit, I had no clue where the “alright, alright, alright” saying was made famous, but McConaughey himself sat down recently to talk about how he came up with the iconic line while filming for Dazed and Confused.
In the video, he explains:
“Next thing you know I’m sitting in my ’70 Chevelle, about to shoot the very first scene I’ve ever done on film, and there’s not a scene written. All I know is that I pull up, I gotta go try to pick up the red headed intellectual, and I’m sitting there and I’m starting to get a little anxious, and I’m starting to run through my mind, ‘Who’s my man, who is Wooderson? What am I about?
And I say ‘I’m about my car,’ here we go I’m in my ’70 Chevelle, I say ‘I’m about rock & roll,’ so I got Ted Nugent on the 8-track rockin’, there’s two. I said ‘I’m about gettin’ high,’ so I said Slater’s riding shotgun he’s always gotta doobie rolled up, next thing you know I hear ‘Action.’ And I hear action, and I look down across the way…”
That’s when he pulls up to the car full of women in his first movie ever, and it all finally hits him:
“And in my mind when I put it in drive and say, ‘Fourth thing I’m about is chicks.’
I got three out of four going to get the fourth? Alright, alright, alright.”
Although the movie was never shot on scene, the iconic line can be heard while he’s driving the car from a distance, and that’s how Mr. Alright Alright Alright came to be.
Legendary.
