Matthew McConaughey Based His Dazed and Confused Character on His Childhood Memories of His Brother

Matthew McConaughey had an unexpectedly sweet memory that inspired his now-iconic Dazed and Confused character David Wooderson.

McConaughey, 56, opened up about making the movie on the Jan. 7 episode of Where Everybody Knows Your Name, hosted by Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson. 1993’s Dazed and Confused was his film debut, and he was cast in the Richard Linklater coming-of-age comedy while he was a student at the University of Texas in Austin.

One night, he recalled, he went to the rooftop bar at the Hyatt, where one of his film school classmates was a bartender. He told him that casting director Don Phillips was sitting at the bar, and McConaughey went over to talk to him.

“3 and 1/2 hours later, we get kicked out,” The Wedding Planner star remembered, because they’d started talking about golf, and Phillips had jumped on a table to demonstrate his swing.

They shared a cab home, and Phillips asked him, “Hey, you ever done any acting?”

“I said, ‘Yeah, I was in a Miller Light commercial. I don’t know if you consider that acting. Maybe it was more of a modeling job.’ ” Phillips thought he “might be right” for a role in Dazed and Confused. He described Wooderson as “out of high school, but he still likes the high school girls.” He told him to go to a certain address at 9:30 a.m. the next morning and he’d have the script waiting for him.

When McConaughey arrived at the location, the script was there with a handwritten note that read, “Hey, Matthew, great night last night. I read this part. You might be right for it.”

He read the script. “There’s Wooderson and one of the scenes was him sitting outside of the pool hall, talking to his buddies. And girls walk by, and he leans over and checks out their backsides and his buddy says, ‘Wooderson, you got to cut that out, man. You’re going to go to jail, man.’ And Wooderson says, ‘No, man. That’s what I love about them high school girls, man. I get older, but they stay the same age.’ ”

McConaughey said that as written, Wooderson was a small role, but that line was a “launchpad line.”

“And I remember going, ‘Who is that guy?’ ” he said. That line wasn’t to make everyone laugh, but was how Wooderson saw the world. “You can write a book on that person,” he said. 

“So I’m trying to figure out who the guy is,” he said. With two weeks until the audition, he thought back to a memory of his older brother Pat from when he was 10 years old. 

“I was 10 years old, going with my mom to go pick up my brother Pat at school,” he said. Pat’s car was in the shop. “And we’re driving through the campus and I’m looking out the back end of that wood-paneled station wagon. I’m looking for Pat. . . . And as we’re going by, about 200 yards away, I see this shadowed figure leaning against the shady wall in the smoking section.”

He remembered, “I can see the ember of this lazy finger cigarette hanging on these two hands. This guy’s leaning against the wall with his left leg, boot heel up against the wall, smoking. And I went, it’s my brother.” He knew if he pointed Pat out to his mom, he’d get in trouble, so he let her drive on, and Pat got home some other way. 

“In my 10-year-old eyes, my 17-year-old brother, who was my hero, in that shot from 200 yards away, he was cooler than James Dean. He was 9 feet tall. He was the coolest man. Now, that’s who I based Wooderson on,” he said. “That wasn’t who my brother was, but that, in my 10-year-old eyes, that’s who it was.”

He auditioned and got the part. His first day on set, he was just there for a hair and wardrobe test. Linklater, 65, approved his look — and then he asked him to jump into a scene.

“He goes, ‘I got this girl in the scene, she’s the redheaded intellectual played by Marissa Ribisi. She’s kind of pulling up. It’s last day of school. She’s with all her friends. They’re kind of nerdy. You think Wooderson would maybe pick her up?’ ”

McConaughey said, “Wooderson likes all kinds of chicks,” and with just a few moments to prepare in Wooderson’s car, he was improvising his very first scene in a movie — which included the now-iconic line, “Alright, alright, alright.” 

“And we pulled up, improvised that scene. Bunch of people laughed. Felt kind of good to me,” he said. Linklater kept inviting him back to jump into more scenes. 

Harrelson and Danson asked if McConaughey ever tires of people saying, “Alright, alright, alright” to him. His answer was simple: “Hell no.”

Dazed and Confused also starred Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich, Cole Hauser, Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg, Joey Lauren Adams and Anthony Rapp. It made over $8 million at the box office and served as McConaughey’s breakthrough.