"You got a joint? You'd be a lot cooler if you did." Could any other young actor have delivered those now-iconic lines with Matthew McConaughey's laid-back confidence and Texas drawl?
Was there anyone better equipped to make the creepy point for the ages that, "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age?" Now that we've seen McConaughey's audition tape, the answer is clearly no.
The newly surfaced video is part of the film's Criterion Collection release. In it, a blond McConaughey, age 23, stands against a hypercolor background, delivering Wooderson's words as if they were his very own. It made perfect sense; McConaughey only ended up at the audition because he was out at a bar, being himself, when he ran into the casting director for Dazed.
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McConaughey told the whole story to Newsweek at the beginning of the McConnaissance. He and the casting director got drunk and were thrown out of the bar, but that landed him a meeting with director Richard Linklater, who cast him as Wooderson.
Everything else since has been alright, alright, alright. McConaughey's just kept livin'.