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Part 2: An interview with
Matthew McConaughey Suzy Byrne is a 1998 graduate of Marshall University. For the last three years, the native New Yorker has been the entertainment producer at iVillage.com, which is owned by NBC Universal. She is the voice behind iVillage's Daily Blabber gossip blog, which is also a weekly online show. Prior to that, she was an assistant editor at Soap Opera Digest.
That was as far from the truth
as possible.
I pulled up at the same time
as Matthew. I, admittedly, was all primped and crimped; he
stepped out of his pickup truck in... pajamas. In fact, old
plaid pajamas -- that were battered and bruised. And his
hair? Well, it stood straight up -- higher than Twin Towers.
I thought: Hollywood,
shmollywood.
The main thing that I remember
from that May day was just how much "Marshall" was on that
Atlanta set. Photos of every building on campus hung from
the walls. Barely an inch of wall was left untouched by
Marshall banners. There were piles of football helmets and
jerseys in the lobby. And everyone -- everyone -- on the set
had on Marshall gear -- whether it was a hat or a shirt or
sweatshirt.
It was like being in
Twilight Zone or something.
I was among the first
reporters invited to the set and, having viewed half of the
movie the night before, the actors and McG were pumped to
talk about the film. And when they found out that I went to
Marshall... Well, suddenly I was the one answering all the
questions instead of asking them.
McConaughey
specifically asked quite a few questions about being
at Marshall. He wanted to know when I graduated. And when he
learned I was there when Chad Pennington and Randy Moss
ruled the Herd, I got some more questions about that.
Suddenly, I felt
like the superstar.
What I took away from all my
interviews that day was the loyalty the entire company had
to Huntington and Marshall. Everyone -- from Anthony Mackie
to Matthew Fox -- talked about shooting in Huntington and
the people of Huntington. And it seemed genuine. They all
had little stories about meeting people or doing things in
town -- McConaughey talked about racing some school girls on
the track and going to Subway while McG talked about Glenn's
Sporting Goods and the Keith Albee.
Here's a story Matthew told me
about an interaction he had with a woman in town:
"The most honest thing that
I heard is when one lady stopped me and said, 'My uncle was
on [the plane] and one other family member,'" he
recounted. "I asked, 'What do you think?' She answered, 'I gotta
tell you, it's kinda spooky.' I was like, 'I bet it is kinda
spooky.' This ghost of make-believe storytelling has come
into town -- the circus has arrived -- to re-tell a story
that happened 35 years ago. When a movie production comes to
town and the film is not even about your town, people are
like: 'Whoa this is wild.' When you come to a town and
you're telling the story about the town -- and it's a tragic
story, but yet an uplifting one -- well, yeah, it is kinda spooky I would think. That was a real
honest reaction I got from somebody that made me say: 'I bet
you it is.'"
To read my more of my interviews and observations with McConaughey, Fox, Mackie, McG and more, check out my reporter's notebook
here on iVillage.com.
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