Summary

• McConaughey's chance meeting with the casting director at a bar led to his iconic role in Dazed and Confused, kickstarting his career.
• The actor made the character Wooderson his own, portraying him as a free-spirited, happy person with a love for life.
• The real Wooderson sued the director for emotional distress over his portrayal in the film, but the lawsuit was eventually thrown out.

Matthew McConaughey landed his famous role in Richard Linklater's second movie, Dazed and Confused, is the coming-of-age comedy-drama that stars an ensemble cast of characters, many of whom have gone off to have incredible careers in Hollywood. Ben Affleck as Fred O'Bannion, Renée Zellweger as Nesi White, Parker Posey as Darla Marks, and Cole Ha as Benny O'Donnell are now well-known names in the industry.

Of course, the Dazed and Confused is essentially McConaughey's film debut though he had a very minor role as Guy #2 in My Boyfriend's Back, a movie that came out a month earlier. However, it's his portrayal of Wooderson that seared the actor into the impressionable minds of high schoolers in the '90s. That performance set the tone for the next two decades of acting before "The McConaissance" again changed the trajectory of his career. And it all started with one lucky meeting.

Matthew McConaughey Charmed The Dazed And Confused Casting Director At A Hotel Bar

Matthew McConaughey did not get his Dazed and Confused role by going to an open casting call. Instead, he sidled up to the film's casting director, Don Phillips, at a hotel bar and impressed him with his charm. According to Phillips in an interview with Maxim, the young actor introduced himself after the bartender tipped him off,

"I come home to the hotel one night and go to the bar, and this handsome dude comes in with a beautiful blonde. The bartender says to him, 'See that guy down there? That's Don Phillips. He cast Sean Penn in Fast Times.' And Matthew goes, 'I'm gonna go down and talk to this guy.' Matthew comes and has a vodka with me. We get louder as the night goes on, and midway through the evening he says to his girlfriend, 'Look, I'm gonna stay here and talk to Don. Here's some money for a taxi.'"

As Phillips tells the New York Post, the bartender gave McConaughey a call to tell him to get to the bar and take his chance. McConaughey corroborates the story, telling Maxim,

"Had I not gone out that night and met Don? Not sure what I’d be doing today, but I’d still be in the storytelling business at some level."

It's pure luck that Phillips walked into a bar where McConaughey happened to know the bartender, and it's even more fortunate that the bartender was a good enough friend to call McConaughey. Wooderson is an easy-going, life-loving type of guy and the fact that the actor who plays him was cast because of his genial, friendly, and "go-with-the-flow" attitude makes the character all the better.

How McConaughey Made Wooderson His Own

Despite Linklater at first perceiving McConaughey as too handsome for the part, he quickly warmed to the actor. McConaughey managed to make Wooderson a personal and specific character, using his experience with similar people in his life. He tells Maxim,

"Society says, 'You're too old, Wooderson. You're a has-been; you gotta get on with your life.' But Wooderson knows who he is, what he wants, and is a very simple and content man. I always saw him as right on time, in his glory days—in his mind, and that's all that matters."

McConaughey saw Wooderson as ultimately a happy person, even if viewers may have thought him a joke. He also said about the character,

"I always saw Wooderson as an American classic. Soon as I read his response, 'That’s what I love about high school girls: I get older, they stay the same age,' I flew with him. I said to myself, Anyone who believes in that has massaged a massive perception into a personal truth, without attitude or a need to defend. That is a classic character."

McConaughey knew exactly who this character was from the start and understood him as something more than the strange things he would say, which is also a good look into McConaughey himself, who is famous for his free-flowing way of speaking. The actor even came up with the famous Wooderson quote in Dazed and Confused, "Alright, alright, alright," after a Doors song, reasoning that each "Alright" (there are four in the song) was for one thing he has in his life: car, weed, rock ’n’ roll, and women.

The Real Wooderson Sued Dazed And Confused Director Richard Linklater

While McConaughey brought a lot of personality to the character, Wooderson was still a creation of Linklater, and the director apparently based the high school graduate on a real person. The real Wooderson was none too impressed with his pot-smoking, girl-chasing portrayal in Dazed and Confused, and sued Linklater for "severe emotional distress" and "mental anguish" in the case Wooderson et al. v. Universal Studios Inc. et al. Wooderson did not appreciate the infamy and scrutiny his name now elicited and wanted compensation for his hardship, via The Washington Post.

Nothing ever came of the lawsuit and Linklater's comments on the suit paint the real Wooderson and other of the Dazed and Confused lawsuit in a "lot less cooler" light, via Texas Monthly,

"I did have to show up on a Saturday and give a deposition. And then the judge looked at it on Monday and threw it out of court, said it was baseless. It was one of those frivolous goofball lawsuits that you know someone's doing on a percentage, or they're just hoping to get a quick payout. They think you're so rich, or the company is, that they're going to say, 'Here's $100,000, just shut up.' Then the lawyer will take their cut. I think they were kinda hoping for that. I mean, the guys who sued me were so strange, because I barely knew those guys."