Witness Matthew McConaughey at His Sun-Baked, Kitten-Cuddling Best
Sam Hayes’s job was to listen to Steely Dan with Matthew McConaughey. Well, sort of. Hayes was director Harmony Korine’s assistant through his process of writing The Beach Bum, the story of a troubled writer and stoner floating along in Florida. “When we started shooting, I kind of ended up just being a liaison between [Korine] and McConaughey. McConaughey stayed in his character for kind of the whole shoot,” said Hayes. And that character listened to a lot of ’70s stoner rock.
Hayes was in charge of the boom box, and also of taking photos behind the scenes, which weren’t so different from the weird, wild world happening in the movie. “The way Harmony directs, he kind of, it's kind of like, it's like the scene doesn't end at the edge of the frame,” said Hayes. “It was kind of just like, in some senses, documenting what was going on on the other side.” In these exclusive shots, Hayes walks us through the smoke-filled, sunburned, radical world of Moondog. (Or McConaughey. You can never quite tell the difference.)
1/15“The costume designer's incredible, Heidi Bivens," says Hayes. "She did Spring Breakers, and she also did Jonah Hill's movie, Mid 90s. She's kind of like an auteur costume designer. It's incredible what she does.”
2/15Korine and McConaughey relaxing on set. “Even when they were not rolling camera, him and Harmony would kind of be hanging out and just shooting the breeze. They definitely had a really amazing way of communicating.”
3/15“I think in the film he says, ‘I gotta go low to get high.’ He definitely kind of lives the life of a grimy Key West beach bum.”
4/15“The kitten is one of our early introductions to Moondog, the protagonist in the movie. He just happens upon this perfect white kitten, in a drunken, raw, on the dock—he's just like, stumbling drunk. He comes across this kitten, and it becomes his kind of, like, sidekick in the first segment of the film. You look at this dude, and he seems kind of like a wild street drunk, but then he has this kitten and you realize he's kind of, like, an amazing, innocent soul, you know?”
5/15“It’s like this character, Moondog, has taken the idea of vacation and kind of made it his whole life.”
6/15“Key West, it's just one of these places...that has these kind of people that could only exist in that ecosystem. These are his tribe, kind of. If you've been to any of these places like Key West, where outsiders end up going—you can day drink your whole life and it's all good, nobody's gonna cough at you.”
7/15Korine and McConaughey wound up sharing the typewriter a lot. “It is Moondog's typewriter in the film. He's not exactly, like, an iPhone guy.”
8/15As the film continues, Moondog runs through some of his luck. “That's, in a way, one of the biggest tensions in the film, letting all this bad stuff happen to him,” while maintaining his good vibes.
9/15Harmony Korine on set.
10/15“He's a poet, an over-the-hill literary celebrity. We get those every once in a while. He's kind of like a throwback to when you could be a literary star, you know?”
11/15Korine takes over Moondog’s typewriter.
12/15At one point, Moondog visits the home of his wife, played by Isla Fisher. “He comes back to Miami, to his wife and his mansion. He's just kind of out of place. In a way, he's going into her world. He's wearing her clothes.”
13/15“He's kind of living the dream in a certain sense, but as every single Behind the Music ever has shown, you're making deposits in a sadness bank, that the bill comes due for at some point.”
14/15“Nobody had any problems with [the photos]. It was like, everybody was just doing their thing. It was for real. It all felt very natural, you know?”
15/15Hayes says the shooting felt like a vacation, “but a very surreal one... That's the dream of the rock star, the art star that he is.”