Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey (“Dallas Buyers Club”) chatted about starring in “The Lost Bus” on Apple TV+. In this roundtable interview, he was joined by his son, Levi, and mother, Kay, both of which also appear in the film.
“The important thing in life is not victory but combat; it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well,” said Pierre de Coubertin, French Educator who was primarily responsible for the revival of the Olympic Games in 1894. This quote applies to Matthew McConaughey.
Background on ‘The Lost Bus’
This survival drama was inspired by true events, and it is based on the book “Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire” by Lizzie Johnson.
Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) served as one of the producers.
“The Lost Bus” is a white-knuckle ride through one of America’s deadliest wildfires, as a wayward school bus driver Kevin McKay (played by Matthew McConaughey) and a dedicated school teacher Mary Ludwig (portrayed by America Ferrera) battle to save 22 children from the terrifying inferno.
Lessons learned over the course of his career
On the lessons learned over the course of his career, McConaughey shared, “Well, I learned to love the craft. I mean, I liked what I was doing at the beginning when I first started, but I didn’t actually know what I was doing.”
“I had instincts when I first started 30 years ago. Then for after about eight years, I started to learn the craft of acting, learn what it was that I had instincts for,” he noted.
“When I did that, I started to learn how to love it. I started to learn what to do if I got in trouble, if I got in a funk, if I was stuck, or if I was tight. Then I learned how to break down characters over it,” he said.
“That took 25, 30 years and I’m still learning how to do that, but I’ve got a good basis now. So, I’ve learned to love the craft, respect it for many different angles that I never used to have. Now, I want to have a personal experience when I’m going to take on a role,” he elaborated.
“Now, I feel I am having a personal experience when I go and act,” he added.
Lessons learned from ‘The Lost Bus’ screenplay
When asked by this journalist what did this screenplay teach him about himself, his son Levi said, “The selfless act of Kevin in real life that was what the story was about.”
“It’s just a reminder that you have your own things in life, but Kevin was selfless in that act, and he saved many kids, which is heroic,” Levi noted.
Matthew said, “Well, everyone is always talking about, ‘what’s the definition of a hero?’ There were a lot of heroic people and heroic acts at this time. It’s fire. I think one consistent thing is that heroes are someone when there is a crisis, right? Whatever that crisis is, they’ll run to it instead of away from it.”
“That’s usually pretty consistent with someone,” McConaughey said. “And that’s what Kevin did.”
‘The Lost Bus’ — A reminder about fatherhood for Matthew McConaughey
“Also, for me, it was a good reminder about fatherhood,” McConaughey noted.
“Paul Greengrass had this great line, which was sort of the launchpad line for me and personally for my character Kevin. He said: ‘I was too late as a son, and I think I’m maybe too late as a dad.’ And sometimes, you do get second chances…. To not be too late the second time,” the Oscar winner elaborated.
“I remember it’s sad. I really, really cried,” matriarch Kay said. “You know, tears and all that. I mean, you know, my eyes filled up because he was trying, but it was too late. I really felt sad in the movie. It moves you. I would hope so if you felt it,” Kay added.
McConaughey on the power of ‘second chances’
McConaughey opened up about the power of “second chances,” which is a theme in this movie. “Well, look, we always, most of the time when we’re looking for a second chance in life, we’re waiting around to wait for the right time,” McConaughey said.
“I think most people want to make sure they just don’t wait too long, to where they look back and they go, I missed it. I missed the opportunity. Man, it was there, whether that’s in a relationship or work or whatever, or something personal,” he elaborated.
“I would say take the chance to find out quicker and sooner than you might think you need to,” McConaughey noted.
“Also, second chances are beautiful. They are kind of like redemption,” Kay admitted.
Speaking of “second chances,” without giving too much away, there is a scene between Levi and Matthew that will hit audiences like a shot in the heart in this movie.
Working with director Paul Greengrass
On working with director Paul Greengrass, McConaughey said, “Paul loves claustrophobia. Look at ‘United 93’ and look at ‘Captain Phillips.’ Paul loves claustrophobia, and the urgency and sort of visceral intensity where he loves compounding the outside world, and the dangers into a smaller and smaller space with a ticking clock. He is wonderful at that.”
“Paul has got this great way of giving you a big, epic scale with the fire as the predator in this movie on a grand scale, and then still balancing a very personal story within it, and that’s not easy to do. Not a lot of directors pull it off like he does,” McConaughey explained.
“When we started with Paul, we had a 135-page script. By the time we were shooting, I think we had about a 50-page script. He knew the moment, and it’s not dialogue specific,” McConaughey said.
“It’s behavior specific and relationship specific,” McConaughey underscored. “Paul does not make the hard things hard, and he does not make the easy things hard.”
“I thoroughly enjoyed working with him,” he admitted. “Paul loves about working with non-actors and he likes mixing non-actors with actors. I think Paul will tell you that non-actors make actors better actors, and that actors can make non-actors better actors.”
McConaughey on his use of emotional recall for the intense dog sequence at the beginning of the movie
Losing a pet hits home for McConaughey, and he had to use emotional recall for an intense dog sequence in the beginning of the film.
“Regretfully, I’ve had to do that three or four times in my own life,” he said. “For anyone who has had to do that, it’s a horrible day and a horrible thing to have to do. Even if it’s the best thing for the dog, it’s a horrible feeling. Oh, man. So, it was easy to remember.”
“If you’ve ever done that with a pet of yours, you don’t forget that feeling. So, that was easy to remember. Also, we put in some things. I remember when I had to put down my last dog. We went to the drive-thru and got him a cheeseburger first for the last meal, and he was happy about it,” McConaughey elaborated.
“It’s just so damn sad,” he noted. “So, anyone who has been through that remembers that. I sure did remember in those scenes in the movie.”
McConaughey on playing the bus driver Kevin McKay
On whether he drove the bus in real life, he remarked, “Yeah, I got very good at driving that bus, and I did all the stunts. I got to know that bus very, very well.”
“It was fun how good I got at driving that bus, as well as doing those stunts and stops and starts and having to miss marks by just inches at high speeds. I became a pretty good bus driver,” he explained.
Working with the child actors on the bus
“At the beginning of the movie, my character, Kevin, is not comfortable with the kids, not near as comfortable as me, Matthew is. So, I was not comfortable with them. I wasn’t that chummy with them. I was the bus driver. I told them ‘Go sit down until I pull up’ and ‘make sure you get your seat belts on.’ So, we kind of played it in real time.”
“I got to know the kids better as the shoot went on sequentially as Kevin comes around to be a little more comfortable with them and starts to take care of them. That was when they saw that side of me as well. I didn’t really show them that much before that,” he explained.
“The kids are great,” he admitted. “Kids can be great actors, even if they’re not technically professional actors. They can be great actors if they can just relax, be honest, and react to a situation. Paul was great at giving them great things to react to. I tried to do my best at giving them things to react to as well.”
“If the kids can just be honest and not try to act, so to speak, they can be wonderful on camera,” he said. “A lot of these young men and women were great on camera and were able to just be honest, behave, and react to things naturally in front of the camera. That’s what makes a good non-actor, especially one who is young.”
Young actress Sophia Jane Frick talks about being a part of ‘The Lost Bus’
Speaking of child actors, Sophie Jane Frick was one of those young actors in the bus, and she spoke about her experiences in this movie and working with Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera.
Lessons learned from this movie about man’s relationship with nature
On the lessons learned from this movie about man’s relationship with nature, McConaughey said, “It taught me that it’s a delicate balance.”
“As civilization takes over Mother Nature and the wild, it’s a delicate balance. We overcompensate sometimes where it throws it out of balance. Usually Mother Nature, through some way, or some form, will let us know,” he elaborated.
“We’ve got to move the needle back and get it back in balance, because we’re out of whack right now. A lot of times like with this film, that relationship that mankind has and civilization has with Mother Nature is thrown out of whack in dangerous ways,” he explained.
Matthew McConaughey talks about working with fire
A 2005 winner of People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive,” McConaughey discussed having the chance to work with fire on this project.
“The good thing about working with fire is to stay away from it and not get literally burned is a natural instinct. You feel the heat,” he admitted.
“The main thing was that we didn’t have a lot of wind on set. So, that’s where the fires become unpredictable. The wind is just blowing them and they’re jumping, you know, 10 feet, 20 feet, and even further in real life,” he elaborated.
“For this one, we didn’t have wind on the set doing that. We had a lot of times where we’d have big plumes of fire just come from zero to eight feet, and that’s another thing where, boy, you don’t want to overrun your mark,” he said.
McConaughey on whether ‘The Lost Bus’ was a ‘dangerous set’
“Was it a dangerous set?” he inquired. “Sure, but it was really well choreographed,” he noted.
“There were a lot of real pros who put this together from the pyro people to Paul Greengrass leading the charge, to the AD, to the stunt people,” he said.
“I mean, things were choreographed and we rehearsed. I would say it never felt dangerous, even though we had to make the order that we made the choreography look like chaos,” he elaborated.
“Again, that’s what Paul does very well. You know, I did not get injured making this film. And a lot of that goes to the stunt people and the pyrotechnics and Paul and the AD as we rehearsed them,” he said.
“There were a lot of moving parts and all, one person has to be just a second early or a second late with their cue, or when you’re playing with fire and it can create a real problem, and we never really ran into a big problem,” he added.
McConaughey on ‘The Lost Bus’ navigating the risks without glamorizing the truth to create a big and dramatic story
McConaughey spoke about navigating the risks without the need to glamorize the truth, in an effort to create a very big and dramatic story.
“Well, again, when Jamie Lee Curtis heard the story, I believe it was on NPR and went to Jason Blum and then they went to Paul and there was a script,” he said.
“It was always based on true events, and it was going to have some dramatic license to tell a story that was deemed, you know, going to be the movie we told. It was never a biography,” he explained.
“It was never pretended to be a biography based on true events,” he noted. “This situation that these two people were in with that number of children at those ages, all of that happened.”
“Listening to Kevin, who I talked to about where he was mentally and making decisions and on those eight hours of finally getting out, we stuck pretty close to that timeline,” McConaughey said.
“All of a sudden, it’s a mandatory evacuation, and it becomes a big problem because you have the entire town exiting the town. So, the first responders can’t get back into town to defend it,” he noted.
“I learned a lot from listening to him about when he understood that this was the case. So it was never supposed to be a biography,” McConaughey reiterated.
“This spirit of it is based on true events and there are little things dramatized here and there for maybe a richer personal story along the way.
In other Matthew McConaughey news, he has a new poetry book out “Poems & Prayers” that was released a few weeks ago, and it is already a New York Times bestseller. For more information on his new poetry book, visit its official homepage.
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