Matthew McConaughey Explains The Origin of “Alright, Alright, Alright”

Or, as we prefer to spell it, "awright, awright, awright." Throughout his two-decade-long career, Matthew McConaughey has been spitting out that simple, repetitive catchphrase in movies, in public, and, yes, at the Academy Awards. Each time he's uttered it in his signature Texas drawl, we've always known what it meant. It's the herald of good times, a laid-back exhalation to the heavens, and a stoner cri de coeur. When things are going so well you've got nothing to say, it just works.

Never before, though, have we known where McConaughey's tag line came from. Of course, the phrase first appeared on film when McConaughey did, as the character of Wooderson in Richard Linklater's high-school slacker epic. But, given the improvisational nature of the Dazed and Confused, we always thought that McConaughey simply used a phrase he'd been saying since his youth. Can't you just imagine a teen McConaughey running around East Texas, smoking behind the gym, and saying "alright, alright, alright"?

As it turns out, the origins of the phrase are far more thought out and considered. Here, in this 2011 interview that's recently surfaced online, McConaughey reveals from whence the "alrights" came in a display that really speaks to who he is — a serious, hardworking actor with the soul of good-time boy. Click, watch, and enjoy.