Matthew McConaughey has led a pretty wild life. He was in a fraternity at the University of Texas and we've all heard stories about how crazy things are in Hollywood. But one of the best stories will always be the time that the actor was arrested in Austin, Texas for playing the bongo drums naked.
In his new memoir Greenlights, McConaughey opens up about that night in 1999 which found him playing the bongos naked after about 30+ hours of straight partying. He sets the record straight that he was trying to mind his own business when a couple of Austin cops took it upon themselves to break into his house.
"It was time to smoke a bowl and listen to the beautiful African melodic beats of Henri Dikongué play through my home speakers. It was time to stand over my drum set and follow the rhythm of the blues before they got to Memphis, on my favorite Afro-Cuban drum. It was time for a jam session," he explains (via ET Canada).
"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 actor explained.
"'Ohhh, looky who we got here,' the 'roided-up cop with a crew cut, who looked like a Nebraska Cornhusker himself, said as he read the driver's license he picked up off my coffee table," he writes.
"Then he picked up the bong. 'And looky what we got here. Mr. McConaughey, you are under arrest for disturbing the peace, possession of marijuana and resisting arrest,' he proudly stated while squatting atop me, knee in my back."
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"They escorted me out of my house through the courtyard entry on the way to the street. Still naked and reluctant to submit to the inevitability of my predicament, I got relative, and decided it would be a clever idea to run up the walls left and right of the gated passageway and do a somersault backflip over the Cornhusker cop who was guiding me from behind," McConaughey continues. "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, then stick the landing behind the Cornhusker, now with my fettered hands in front of me. My rationale at the time was that after pulling off such an extraordinary Houdini-like stunt, the officers would be so impressed that they would abrogate the arrest and set me free. I know, stupid, but remember, I'd been celebrating for 32 and a half hours straight."
Unfortunately, it didn't work out for the actor and he ended up spending the night in jail, getting released the following day on a $1,000 bond. According to the Associated Press, it really wasn't that bad either.
"I don't want to rent a place there, but it was a nice stay for a night," McConaughey said of his time in jail.
Joe Turner defended the Dazed and Confused star, the same lawyer who represented Willie Nelson in the past for possession charges. In court, he explained to the judge that the whole thing was ridiculous and pretty much everything, including charges for possession of drug paraphernalia should just be dropped.
"Judge, we all agree that this situation got out of hand very quickly, but you also gotta understand that these policemen literally broke into this man's house while he was playing some bongos in his birthday suit!" Turner told the judge. "The resisting arrest was self-defense! I suggest you dismiss it altogether and my client will plead to the class C violation of a sound ordinance as he was indeed bangin' on those bongos pretty damn loud for 2:36 in the morning."
The judge agreed and McConaughey paid a total of $50 in fines for the noise complaint. A couple of days later, there were t-shirts for sale all over Austin that said "BONGO NAKED." It seems the Oscar winner has calmed down a bit since he married his wife Camila Alves and they had three children. Find his memoir here for more interesting stories from the beloved actor's past.
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