| By Fred Topel
In Theaters October 7
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Matthew McConaughey greeted the press by chanting his name over and over, emphasizing the last syllable. “McConaugHEY… McConaughHEY,” he repeated, though nobody reciprocated by dancing or waving their arms in the air. He was just so proud of his latest movie, Two for the Money, that he couldn’t contain himself.
“It was a special role for me,” he said. “I haven't had what I thought was a really good meaty role in what I thought was a drama come across my desk that I either liked or that was offered to me or was there for me to chase in a while. And I had just done some lighter fair, romantic comedies which have been successful and have been doing well and I really enjoy doing that, but coming off of what I had just done I was looking for getting into something else. Sometimes life is hard. It's not supposed to be easy.”
Based on a true story, Two for the Money casts McConaugHEY as Brandon Lang, a college football star permanently injured in his last game. With no more physical ability, he parlays his athletic affinity into sports betting, able to pick winners 80% of the time. But when big money corrupts him, Lang finds himself in a downward spiral with more at stake than just his career.
“I just thought that it was a really great drama,” McConaugHEY continued. “I just thought that there was real good hard life there, but I loved it that it was a winner who is losing. What's a winner? If you're a winner and you start losing how do you win again? A lot of times in some dramatic roles that will come across my desk it will be a loser who keeps losing. I like that this guy had great dreams, was a great guy, he played quarterback and loved to play football. He lost his ability to play great football because he got his knee taken out from under him. You see that everyday in some form or another. If you sing and you lose your voice box, you can't do what you do anymore. If you play football and you lose your knee you can't play to that ability anymore. So what do you do? You do try to get by. As you're getting by, what are you good at? Well, he's good at picking games. He doesn't bet on them, but he's good at picking them. Hey, you're going to offer me good money to go do that? Sure. He starts getting things and those things I don't think are necessarily what corrupt him. I don't think that that's necessarily one of the lessons, but that world that he enters is not as it seemed at first.”
Sticking to his own roots, McConaugHEY lived in a trailer while making the film. No five star hotels with movie star perks for him. “I can have one of everything that I like, but no more because there is no room. I lived in a beautiful spot right there on an Indian reservation. And yes, I like to do my own cooking if I can if I have the time.”
Tout services offer advice for sports gambling free of charge, but if a customer wins their bet, they have to share a percentage with the service to get next week’s picks. This way, the service cultivates its inbound clientele.
“If someone calls and you pick up the phone, they already approached you. So they are already going, 'Hey, give me some direction. Tell me what to do this weekend.' Like we say, it's great stuff in the movie. Someone goes, 'Well, I like OU.' And I go, 'Well, it's a good thing that you called me because that's not the way to go.' People love to have their minds changed. Also, I think that it's human nature if you're calling a tout service to get a pick and they disagree and can tell you, 'No. No. No. Don't take OU. Take Texas.' If the tout service likes Texas, you want your mind changed because then you don't actually have to blame yourself if you lose, and if you win they can sit there and say, 'See. I told you so. So next week if you want the picks again I'll give them to you, but you have to send me some of that Do, Re, Mi that you made this week off of my picks.' I mean, yeah, that's an obvious thing. People like to gamble. People like the buzz of scratching a lottery ticket. I know people who have quit their jobs and gone to Vegas because they feel like that's how they can make a living.”
Again, this was a stretch for McConaugHEY. The biggest bet he makes on sports is for bragging rights amongst his friends. “Never have I put myself in a position where I was dealing with any money that was money that I couldn't very easily afford to just play with. I don't go to Vegas thinking that I have to go there and make some money. If I go there and lose some money it's never an amount where I have lost anything or I'm returning home going, 'Oh, no. I can't pay my rent. Or Oh no, I can't do this. I really wasted that money.' That's not a place where I'm naturally drawn to luckily. It's a fun buzz, but it's never [been my thing]. I don't love it I guess. I guess that's it. It doesn't turn me on that much.”
Bet on Matthew McConaugHEY in Two for the Money this Friday. |
