-Thank you for doing this Christmas movie different.
I appreciate you doing that. We hung out all day together.
-How fun with that? -It was the greatest.
We always -- We -- -Two-take maximum.
[ Laughter ] Two-take maximum.
-We nailed it! We had some good takes.
It was so much fun. Happy holidays to you and --
and your family. -You too.
-I'm happy to see you in person.
Thanks for making the trip and being here.
-Absolutely. -Well, what are your --
Do you have, like, family traditions?
Do you have holiday plans? What do you have coming up?
-This year, we're gonna get all the McConaughey family.
We're also getting Camila's family.
So when we do that -- When we have that
multicultural Christmas,
Christmas lasts a long time at our place.
Because they celebrate on the 24th.
Midnight, you exchange presents, all right?
So you have the big sit-down dinner.
You get the china out for the first time all year.
[ Laughter ] If it was up to my family,
it'd be paper plates. Thank you, Camila.
[ Laughter ]
-Get the china out. -A better ritual.
-"No, we are using china." -Yes.
-Thank you, Camila, yeah. -And then we do that that night,
and then we get up the next day, and we do our Christmas,
which is everyone opens presents, Santa came.
The problem, the reason I say it's longer already,
is that my mother, who's 90, still demands that you --
everyone open their present, and everyone watch one person
open their present at a time. [ Laughter ]
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. -If you got a big
Brazilian family, you got a big McConaughey family.
There's a family of 20.
There's a lot of presents, thankfully.
-Yes. -It may be dark on the 25th
when we're done opening presents from that morning.
And so, it's 7:00 p.m., and you just finished
opening presents from Christmas morning.
-Yeah. -So the nights get long.
-My grandma used to do this thing where we'd unwrap
the presents, she goes, "Can you just not rip it
just so I could reuse the wrapping?"
[ Laughter ] -Save the wrapping.
-Save the wrap for the next year.
I go, "Yes, okay, Grandma." -It's 3:00 p.m.
-"All right, let's go! Let's open up the thing," yeah.
It's so fun. I look forward to it.
Do you -- Are you a guy that makes New Year's resolutions?
-Eh... [ Laughter ]
I check in on myself. -You check in on yourself, yeah.
-You know, I ask -- I ask -- I ask myself
to work on my patience last year.
-Yeah. -On New Year's Eve.
-We all need to do that. -And I'm --
Now thank you for reminding me. I guess tonight,
I'll start thinking about how I've done the last 11 months.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah, exactly right.
Well, I think the last time we talked --
I mean, congratulations. Your book, "Greenlights"...
-Yeah. -...was on "The New York Times"
best-seller list. [ Cheers and applause ]
50, 5-0. -Yeah.
-50 weeks, it sold like 2.5 million copies.
It is a giant, giant hit, bud. Congratulations.
-Thank you. -I loved it.
-Thank you. -Did you -- Did you realize
it would take off like that? I mean, so many people --
-I had no idea. -It's massive.
-I -- It -- it hit a nerve. -Yeah.
-Thank you, everyone out there who had already read it.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-It was so honest, and it was so --
I loved it. I told you as soon as I read it,
I couldn't stop reading it. I go, "Oh, this is so --
it's so personal, but it's so, also, universal."
-Yeah. I think that's what people got from it.
People said, "Hey, I see myself in you.
I see my stories in your stories."
It kind of lays out a map, a process.
It's a process book. It is not a product book.
It's an approach to life
with this rodeo we're all trying to get through
and trying to get our 8 seconds on.
-Yeah. "Greenlights" -- -How can we --
how can we do our best to get it?
-You -- Actually, you're -- you're coming out with a --
a journal now, a companion journal,
to help people because I --
I think you were saying in the book, too.
It's tough when you write -- to just tell someone,
"Hey, just write something down every day or every night."
-A blank sheet of paper
intimidates the heck out of us, right?
-It does. -But journaling
or writing things down, I've done it all my life,
and it's how I wrote "Greenlights," the book.
Immensely valuable.
I mean, I write things down to forget.
If you write them down, you can forget them
'cause they're in there. [ Laughter ]
Don't just go to the diary or the journal to write down
when your frustrated and confused.
Go to the journal to write down what you're doing in life
when you're rolling, when you're catching
green lights, when you're in the flow,
because we will get out of flow again.
And it's nice to have a document to back and go, "Whew!
What was I doing when I was -- when I was cruising?"
-Yeah, when life was perfect.
-You know, you see habits and you can change and recalibrate.
But, yeah, it's a journal. I got little nudges
along the way to kind of help you and ask you some questions,
to write your story. -Yeah.
-The book of "Greenlights" was my story.
This is for your story. -Yeah, I love that, buddy.
That's awesome. [ Cheers and applause ]
Congrats on that. -Thank you.
-We also -- You were nice enough to Zoom into us
when we couldn't get any guests anywhere.
No one was allowed to travel or do anything.
But there was talk of you maybe running for governor of Texas.
-Right. -And you recently decided
to not run for governor. -Yes.
-Can you walk us through that decision?
-Whew! Well, it was a two-year
consideration that I came to the decision, really,
over the last couple of months. And I was asking myself
the original question and trying to answer,
"How and where and what can I do to be most useful to myself,
to my family, and to the most amount of people?"
The embassy, the category of politics came up,
and it's a privileged one that I gave great consideration to.
But at this point in my life, with the things --
I've got a 13-year-old, an 11-year-old, an 8-year-old --
the life I'm living right now,
the storytelling I want to keep doing,
it's not the category for me at this point in my life.
-Still not ruling out future? -I'm not until I am.
-Okay. -Someone told me that was
a very McConaughey answer the other day.
[ Laughter ] -"I'm not until I am."
It's very -- yeah. Yeah, that is.
-I'll be keeping an eye open for --
-Because I know -- you know, Texas loves you.
And when we -- when we did the show from Texas,
you were nice enough to come on the show.
And, gosh, you're beloved down there, as well.
You think people love you here, standing ovations,
they love you there. -It's a great state.
-I know you put on a benefit concert with your wife...
-Yeah. -...called "We're Texas."
-Yeah. -After that rough,
awful winter storm. -Winter storm Uri came through.
We're not used to winter storms like that in Texas, okay?
-No. -We -- We were a bit awkward.
We weren't prepared, and a lot of people were out of home.
A lot of people were out of school.
A lot of people needed some help because they didn't --
they didn't know how to deal with it.
And so, my foundation, which is the just keep livin Foundation,
we got together and said, "We're not disaster relief,
but want to be disaster relief?"
We said, "Let's go." And I headed to Texas.
I got on the phone. Camila got on the phone.
100% of the people we called, whether it was companies
who donated, whether it was musicians who came in,
everybody was a "yes." And the first 30 seconds,
we went down to Texas, put the show on,
and we raised over $7.7 million. [ Cheers and applause ]
-That's how you do it right there.
You just stepped up, and I go, "Oh, my gosh.
What do you know about putting on a live concert?"
You're like, "Nothing." -It was, like, two takes today.
You get -- No, you get one take. You know, two maximum,
but let's throw it together because you have to --
disaster relief, you have to move quickly,
because if you take your time to say,
"Oh, this has got to be perfect,"
something else is taking the front-page news.
There's another disaster coming. You know?
So you need -- you need to jump on it quickly
and get everyone together and take advantage
of trying to get people to give at that time
when it is front-page news and they know people need help.
-I saw "Hollywood Reporter" gave you --
named you Philanthropist of the Year
for all the stuff you do to give back.
-That was cool. [ Cheers and applause ]
-It's good. It's good to be,
but it's also great to give back.
And it's also -- it's great. You know what you do?
You -- You show up. Every time, you always show up,
for me, but I think for anything.
I know you're a great dad. -Well, thank you.
Try to. I think we all try to.
You know, I think we -- we learn more and more as we age.
We serve ourself when we do serve others.
That is a reciproc-- little exchange right there.
-Yeah. -And then, also, there's ways
to serve ourself and serve others at the same time.
And where those two meet when we're filling
our bank account and our souls account at the same time,
we're getting the quantity and the quality at the same time...
-Yeah. -Honeyhole.
[ Cheers and applause ] -That's what I'm talking about.
I want to talk about and show a clip from "Sing 2."
More with Matthew McConaughey when we come back, everybody.
Come on back. [ Cheers and applause ]