Matthew McConaughey on his 1999 nude bongo arrest: 'F**k, yeah, I resisted'
Matthew McConaughey’s arrest — while playing the bongos naked and stoned — is one of the wildest, though harmless, celebrity arrest stories in history. In his memoir, Greenlights, he tells his side of the story — and why he refused, multiple times, to put on pants as he was hauled to the station.
Almost exactly 21 years ago, on Oct. 25, 1999, McConaughey — then known for A Time to Kill and Dazed and Confused — recalled living in a two-bedroom rental home in the “sleepy” and upscale Austin neighborhood called Tarrytown. He had gone to see his alma mater’s football team, the Texas Longhorns, win big on Saturday and partied “though the night into Sunday and through Sunday night without sleeping a wink.”
It was at 2:30 a.m. on Monday that the then 29-year-old actor began to “wind down,” by lowering the lights, getting undressed and opening the window to allow the jasmine scent from his garden to waft in. It was also time to “smoke a bowl,” of marijuana, and listen to the “beautiful melodic beats of Henri Dikongué,” a Cameroonian singer and guitarist, on his stereo. He joined in, playing his congas for a jam session.
“What I didn’t know was that while I was banging away in my bliss, two Austin policemen also thought it was time to barge into my house unannounced, wrestle me to the ground with nightsticks, handcuff me and pin me to the floor,” the future Academy-Award winner wrote.
He said one “‘roided-up cop with a crew cut” was more aggressive from the start, sneering, “Ohhh, looky who we got here,” after seeing McConaughey’s driver’s license on his coffee table.
Then the cop picked up the bong and said, “And looky what we got here. Mr. McConaughey, you are under arrest for disturbing the peace, possession of marijuana and resisting arrest,” while the actor was still pinned to the floor.
McConaughey, now a married dad of three, recalled having choice words for the cop — “You broke in my house! F**k, yeah, I resisted” — as he was pulled to his feet and told he was being taken to the police station. The more civil officer took a blanket off McConaughey’s couch to wrap around the still-naked star.
“‘Ohhh no!’ I barked. ‘I’m not putting shit on! My naked ass is proof I was mindin’ my own business!”
He had a crazy idea when being led handcuffed through the gated passageway to the street, deciding — while “still naked and reluctant to submit to the inevitably of my predicament” — to run up the wall, do a somersault backflip over the less civil cop, who was behind him.
“My thinking was that in mid-flight, while upside down in the air, I would assume a pike position and then slide my cuffed wrists under my butt and up and over my legs, and then stick the landing ... with my fettered hands in front of me.” He thought “pulling off such an extraordinary Houdini-like stunt, the officers would be so impressed they would abrogate the arrest and set me free,” adding, “I know, stupid, but I’d been celebrating for 32 and a half hours straight.”
Three steps into trying, the cop he had butted heads with slammed him to the ground. Once through the gate, there were six cop cars — and 40 neighbors there to watch. Asked again if he wanted a blanket, McConaughey replied, “Hell no, this is PROOF of my innocence!!”
Walking into the Austin Police Station, he declined pants for the third time — but was eventually swayed by the fourth offer. It was not by a cop, but a 6-foot-6, 285-pound, tatted up working inmate, who held out a pair of orange institutional pants. While he again dropped his “proof of my innocence line,” the inmate said, “Trust me, you do wanna put these on.”
“Maybe it was his honest eyes or the fact that he was a fellow offender or ... the realization that when a 6-foot, 6-inch jailbird built like a brick shithouse tells you, ‘You do wanna put on some pants before you go in the clink,’ it’s probably best to listen.”
Hours later, McConaughey faced the judge, who had no idea how a noise complaint escalated to that degree — or why the officers forcibly entered his home without fair warning. She dismissed the disturbing the peace and possession misdemeanors outright, he said, and his lawyer — who had repped Willie Nelson on a possession arrest — got the resisting arrest charge dismissed in place of a violation of a sound ordinance, a $50 citation. It was later expunged from his record. (The cop he tangled with was later dismissed from the force.)
McConaughey recalled the attorney handing him a bag of clothes to change into — and telling him there was a car waiting in the back to avoid the press staked out in the front. After a quick phone call with his mom, Kay, a real firecracker, who was outraged that he was arrested in that manner, told him to keep his head up. So, he wrote, “I hung up and decided to stride toward the media mob out front instead of sneaking out the back.”
At the time, the Washington Post reported that McConaughey walked out of the jail and said, “I don’t want to rent a place there, but it was a nice stay for a night.”
McConaughey’s arrest was all over the news for weeks. He recalled the “bongo naked” T-shirts — and how, after a local paper printed his home address, strangers flocked to his house to drop off six-packs of beer, “a lot of weed” and even different kinds of drums. While he didn’t hate all the treats, it made his “sleepy” neighborhood a circus, so he knew he had to move on. The happy wanderer then headed back to Hollywood to begin his rom-com era.
Greenlights is out now.
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