The Unrivaled Matthew McConaughey Gets His Own Alamo Drafthouse

There’s old wisdom that says that no native of a place will love it as much as someone who chooses to make it their adoptive home. That’s a homily proven true by the life and actions of Matthew McConaughey. From the day he moved here in 1989 to attend the University of Texas, through his career-defining start as the sleazy Wooderson in Dazed and Confused, even for those years when he lived in Malibu, he’s been synonymous with the city.

Ever since he moved back to Austin in 2014, he’s become more enmeshed than ever in the community, becoming an ambassador for UT and a professor of practice in the Department of Radio-Television-Film. He’s also part of something new for the city, with his upcoming show for Apple TV with longtime friend Woody Harrelson, Brothers, being the first half-hour sitcom ever shot in Austin. Now that connection with his adopted home has become indelible, his name is cast in metal on the plaque that renames the Alamo Mueller as the Matthew McConaughey Cinema.

The naming ceremony took place Monday in the Barrel o’ Fun bar at Mueller. The event was a triple celebration. First, the unveiling of the plaque, to be installed later. Second, the reading by Mayor Kirk Watson of the official declaration of Monday, August 10, 2026 as Matthew McConaughey Cinema Day. And third, a preview screening of McConaughey’s first onscreen feature film role since The Gentlemen in 2019, hard-stomping bee rustling drama The Rivals of Amziah King. Written and directed by Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), the film revolves around McConaughey as King, an apiarist in rural Oklahoma whose already joyous life is given new radiance when his former foster daughter (newcomer Angelina LookingGlass) returns to his home.

The night concluded with a return to the barrel and a live performance from the Last Buffalo, the real band that serves as Amziah’s friends, neighbors, and porch buddies in the film. That musical interlude kicked off with a raging rendition of the Avett Brothers’ “Talk on Indolence,” and just as performed in the film McConaughey was part of the onstage ensemble. As he explained, he’d spent six months learning about bees for the part, and six months learning to play the mandolin. So he showed off that second skill for an appreciative audience, many of whom were imbibing the night’s signature cocktail, the King’s Sting. Two ounces of tequila (McConaughey’s own brand, Pantalones, of course), one ounce of honey, one ounce of lime, a honey and coarse salt rim, and a habanero slice for garnish. (For those not lucky enough to make the guest list for the night, it’ll be served again at special cocktail party screenings this Sunday.)

His return to the screen seems to mark a new phase in McConaughey’s career, just as much as it does in the career of his director, who was shooting car dealership commercials before his first feature. “That was a crazy whirlwind,” Patterson said the morning before the ceremony. When he made 2019’s The Vast of Night, he was basically completely self-taught, applying that knowledge to the film that put him on the radar of filmmakers like Jeff Nichols and Steven Soderbergh, who quickly became a mentor to Patterson. But applying YouTube tutorials only gets you so far, he added. “That means you know how to make movies, but that doesn’t mean you know how to navigate Hollywood. And by that I mean the industry at a certain level.”

Fortunately, he had McConaughey on hand for his sophomore project, who was eager and ready to be a resource for him. Patterson said, “I wore him out in post, asking him how to navigate this, how to navigate that, and he was really good about, ‘Hey, you’re going to grow this muscle.’”

McConaughey also had one big lesson for the director about filmmaking at this level, a lesson best summed up as “don’t take the process personally.” The actor said, “It’ll break you down, and a lot of our talk was, ‘Hey, man, it’s not for you in particular. This is just what you do. There are certain compromises that are part of the initiation, in pre-, during, and post-. And where do you concede, where do you not, how much is the powers that be just wanting to see, testing you to see how long you won’t concede ’til they go, ‘Hah, he pushed us ‘no’ five times. We were just checking if you really meant it.’”

A quiet part of McConaughey’s reputation is how much of an interest he takes in working with up-and-coming artists and filmmakers. As he noted, Daniel Roher, the director of his next film, Positano, is only 32, and he’s already announced that he’ll stay connected with Patterson as Amziah will be the subject of the next semester of his UT course. It’s become a theme in the actor’s career, to take time from his higher-profile projects to get back into the indie trenches. “My wife was bringing that up,” he said. “It’s not a conscientious thing, but getting someone on the come, it’s nice. It’s exciting to work with someone like that and hopefully bring out their best.”

On set the two had very simpatico styles of working. Patterson, who described his role as director as being “a steward of the story,” said, “I came from such small movies that I would just roll all the time, which is a luxury of being on digital rather than celluloid, but it did get to where we got some amazing stuff, and then when we started working together I figured out that [McConaughey] likes to never break out of the feeling of the scene. We’d be talking, and he’d be talking to me but kind of as Amziah, and I would look over at my camera crew and they would know to start rolling, and he would transition and start looking at Angelina and become the character.”

Yet there were a large number of extras who had no clue when the camera was rolling, and that would be the bees. So, who got stung the least? “I guess I did,” McConaughey said. “And it’s a good thing I got stung the least, because I’m the only one that’s allergic, and I found that out a week before shooting.”

As for who got stung the most, that would be LookingGlass. “Seven times,” she said, and fortunately she didn’t share her costar’s allergic reaction. In fact, she got used to the experience and felt more sorry for the bees than for herself. “It’s not as bad as getting a shot at the doctor’s. … I got stung on my neck the first day we started shooting. Andrew was talking to me and all of a sudden there was this sharp thing in my neck, and he gets the stinger out. People were panicking a little bit, and they were just waiting for me to react. But [McConaughey] was cool. He was just on his mandolin.”

“I didn’t even know you got stung seven times,” McConaughey confessed. “We were just sitting in the middle of scenes talking and she’d go, ‘Tsk, there’s another sting.’”

The Rivals of Amziah King is in cinemas now. Find our review here.

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