Like We Are Marshall’s hero, the actor discovered that healing tragedy is just a matter of helping out

NEW YORK—There are two ways to tell a true story if you are an actor. You can either impersonate the character you are playing or you can follow the script and let it take you where it wants to go. When Matthew McConaughey shows up in a New York hotel’s interview room to talk about his latest film, We Are Marshall, which opens Friday (December 22), he appears to be making a statement about the direction he took with the film and its protagonist, football coach Jack Lengyel.

He is decked out in the shirt, jacket, pants, and shoes of another era. They look familiar, which makes sense, since the clothes are from the early 1970s, the period depicted in the film. “These are clothes Jack Lengyel wears,” he says. “I just borrowed them because I thought it would be cool to wear them today.”

The film looks back at the 1970 Huntington, West Virginia, airplane crash that killed 75 people, including almost all of the Marshall University football team, the head coach, the athletic director, and many of the town’s leading citizens. College coach Jack Lengyel asks to take on the team when no one else comes forward, and then sets out to restore the school’s football program despite a lack of coaches and players and the protests of some board members who feel that returning to football will dishonour the dead.

McConaughey says that although he spent a lot of time with Lengyel and likes him a lot, he never attempted to imitate him. He says the idea was just to emulate him, and to do that he started out watching footage of speeches Lengyel made to the team. “The rhythm of the speeches was a launching pad,” he says. “In a weird way, it opened up an understanding of his approach to coaching. I noticed, in the clips, that he led with his chin, and I already knew he was a bit of an outlaw and he was eccentric. When I spent time with him, I noticed the way he held his hands. I wanted, through the performance, to communicate a bit of who he was and that he did not come into it to be a saviour of the team. He came in to coach the football team in a very unorthodox situation and he was a very unorthodox man, but he was what was needed.”

When McConaughey read the script, he found things within it that convinced him that despite the difference in their eras and backgrounds, Lengyel was someone he could relate to. He says that he was particularly interested in Lengyel’s approach to taking the job. Most of the potential applicants backed down because they knew that it would take years to turn the program around. (They were right. Marshall didn’t start winning more games than it lost until the 1980s. It then started to gain momentum and currently has several alumni in the National Football League, including Oakland Raiders receiver Randy Moss, New York Jets quarterback Chad Pennington, and Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Byron Leftwich.)

McConaughey says Lengyel knew there were few benefits to coaching a team that would lose, but he couldn’t say no to the idea of helping out. McConaughey says he could relate to that through his own decision to go to New Orleans to help out victims of Hurricane Katrina.

“I identified with him when I read that he had said, ”˜I looked at my kids and my wife and felt that if something happened to them I don’t know what I would do. I understand that your town is going through some tough times and your team is hurt real bad. Maybe I can help.’ It was that simple. He was not saying, ”˜I thought about it and I think I can heal this town.’ He didn’t take the job to be a saviour. He was a guy who could understand the need to help out. When I was first trying to get into the role, I talked about that line with [director] McG and he said, ”˜Why did you go to New Orleans?’ And I said, ”˜I just wanted to ?help someone and didn’t know how.’ It wasn’t about the ego. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I got there, which was much like Jack. We were both thinking, ”˜I might be able to help but I don’t know how. Let’s go there and find out.’ I think both situations were about the fact that no one was saying positive things. No one was saying, ”˜The situation is stabilized. We have it under control.’ There was chaos. So neither situation was about being in control or bringing order, it was just about helping out.”