MOVIES

Matthew McConaughey surfs back to Austin

The Texas actor and his high school pal S.R. Bindler reunite for the loopy beach comedy 'Surfer, Dude'

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER
Friday, September 05, 2008

Matthew McConaughey is keeping his shirt on, but taking his shoes off. He's displaying his natty slip-ons, which resemble canvas moccasins — eminently comfortable, marvelously casual. The shoes are flat inside, with no arch supports. That's the key to their magic, he explains.

Arch supports, McConaughey drawls, "aren't good for your feet."

We tell him we've heard differently, that arch support is important for proper podiatric well-being.

"No," he counters. "This is actually the way you're supposed to go. It helps your back."

We are flummoxed. We make a mental note to get a new podiatrist.

As he slides his shoes back on, McConaughey, sporting cargo shorts, T-shirt and a Slinky of bracelets, says his feet are sore from completing the Human Race 10K run on Sunday.

We keep our sympathy in check because this is Matthew McConaughey, upon whom pity is not generally bestowed. Envy, perhaps. Seething jealousy, sometimes. Pity — ha.

Sitting unassumingly next to McConaughey on a couch at the Gibson Showroom in South Austin is S.R. Bindler, who directed and co-wrote the philosophical beach comedy "Surfer, Dude," starring McConaughey and opening today for an exclusive Austin run.

Bindler is tall and lanky in dark jeans and black sneakers. Pale and pensive, Bindler, who goes by Rob, is nearly the opposite of McConaughey. One looks urban art school, the other tan, wild-haired beach bum. One is taciturn, one gregarious. Despite the disparities, McConaughey and Bindler became terrific friends as classmates at Longview High School in East Texas, from which they graduated in 1988.

"My mom would always call us 'salt and pepper,' but we always hung out," McConaughey recalls.

Matthew was the universally popular guy — the smile, the dimples, the athletic physique and supernova charisma. Bindler was the aspiring sculptor and writer, cutting a more introspective niche. They began a symbiotic relationship that continues 20 years later.

"Rob's dad is really into art and their house had all this art," McConaughey says. "I didn't know art. I wasn't a TV kid. I never watched films. I wasn't a big book reader. So we broke it down. On a Friday night I'd take Rob to wherever the big party was and do a big social thing. Then on a Saturday night, he'd have me over to watch a movie. We'd play ping-pong, eat some food and watch film and talk about it. He introduced me to films."

The boys, yin and yang, met in art class at age 15.

"We both ended up at the table in the back left corner, because we weren't front-row dudes," McConaughey says, his fluorescent whites flickering. "I was over here and Bindler came in and sat down right there and we introduced ourselves. That's where our friendship started."

Allow Rob and Matthew to complete the picture:

Bindler:In one of our big art projects we had to make a self-portrait mask out of clay. We each did one. I glazed mine in black, as I'm more apt to pick darker palettes. Matthew picked white ...

McConaughey: The matte finish, not a glaze.

Bindler:Right. And we took first and second place for them in some art contest. Matthew was first.

McConaughey: (Laughing) That's where it all started!

Bindler:People liked the lighter, less ... How should I put this?

McConaughey: Oh, geez. It's gettin' thick, man. It's gettin' thick! And it's been thick since that day. He hates this.

Bindler: Let's face it. Matthew is slightly better looking than I am.

McConaughey: No, it had nothing to do with that. It was an honest portrait of how you see yourself. And people say, "Yeah, that's you."

Bindler:Yeah, he's better looking.

McConaughey:He still doesn't like that he got second and I got first. He hates that. That was the beginning.

Well before they embarked on separate college routes — Bindler wound up studying film at New York University; McConaughey did the same at the University of Texas — the pals agreed they would map ambitious futures.

"We shook hands on Longview not being our destiny," Bindler says. "These were good times, but we were going to get really serious once we left."

Before heading to UT, McConaughey spent a year as an exchange student in the Australian bush. Feeling isolated and confused — "going a little bit crazy" — he sent verbose correspondences to his friend in America.

"I'd write these 10-page letters, and Rob was the one person who would write me back and match them in length," McConaughey says.

At UT, McConaughey and Bindler, who was deep in film studies in New York, were mutual sounding boards. McConaughey entertained law school until Bindler suggested film.

"He even suggested acting before I thought it was a possible occupation," McConaughey says. "I'd never even dreamed of it. He gave me the confidence to go to film school."

The actor got his first break while at UT, landing the memorable role of tight-pantsed, mustachioed David Wooderson in Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused." It's Wooderson's freewheeling ethos that furnished the name of McConaughey's longtime production company j.k. livin'. (A famous Wooderson motto: "Just keep livin'.")

Bindler's breakout was his 1997 film "Hands on a Hard Body," an entertaining documentary about a grueling truck-giveaway contest in Longview. He borrowed a video camera from McConaughey to shoot it, and j.k. livin' paid to transfer the video footage to film for a theatrical run. (At the Dobie Theater, the movie broke box-office records and ran for more than a year.)

After years toiling in Los Angeles, screenwriting feverishly and making commercials and industry music documentaries, Bindler still had no new movie to his name. He passed on big studio comedies he was offered, opting for his personal projects. It wasn't until a friend wrote an early version of "Surfer, Dude" — then called "Killer Surf" — that things started moving. J.k. livin' optioned the script. Rewrites ensued and Bindler was signed to direct. McConaughey eventually decided to produce the movie and star in it as surfer-stoner Steve Addington, who becomes an almost Beckettian character holding a forlorn vigil for vanishing waves.

"I liked exploring the idea of what happens when a sole surfer, who loves nothing but waves, is land-locked and stuck in a drought with no waves," McConaughey says. "So it's the flip of a surf film, more about surf culture as this playful romantic sport that's as analog as it gets — a man, a board and a wave. It's as simple, pure and natural a sport as you can get. What happens when Mother Nature takes away the waves?"

The old high school buddies were together again, working on what they love. Besides co-stars like Woody Harrelson and Willie Nelson (and hundreds of goats), "Surfer, Dude" is a low-budget labor of love. It was shot in 28 days for $6 million.

McConaughey can only laugh about his recent spree in the media as the perpetually shirtless golden boy of the sea. All of that, he insists, springs from making "Surfer, Dude."

The Adonis beach-god "idea of me happened during the filming and preparation for this film," McConaughey says. "I learned to surf for this film. So that's when I was grabbing all my beach time. Half the stuff you've seen was taken while we were shooting.

"The shirt-off thing, that's the character," he says. "He's a surfer. It wouldn't have worked in V-necks."

Once a celebrated Austinite, McConaughey doesn't keep a local residence anymore, though he owns a ranch in West Texas.

As of July 7, he's also the parent, with girlfriend Camila Alves, of a boy named Levi. The little one was spotted with Alves on Saturday at the Longhorns football game.

"We're taking him everywhere, getting him out in public," McConaughey says. "He's living a good life. It's not like were not doing anything we did before. Levi's just going with us. He's traveling around and seeing the world."

Is fatherhood all it's cracked up to be?

"It's just ... " he begins.

"It's the hardest best job in the world," injects Bindler, who has a 3-year-old child.

"We've got a tribe now," McConaughey says, beaming.

cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649