Matthew McConaughey, a plagiarist?
Creative takeaways from the coolest things this week
Forgive the provocative headline. No, Matthew McConaughey isn’t a plagiarist—but his most iconic line is a word-for-word, unattributed quote from Jim Morrison of The Doors. Intrigued? Let’s dive in.
Like a funhouse mirror
In Derek Sivers’s book, Hell Yeah Or No, he says this about copying:
You know that song you love that you wish you’d written? Copy it.
You know that existing business that you wish you had thought of? Copy it.
Why? because we’re imperfect mirrors.
Like a funhouse mirror that distorts what it reflects, your imitation will turn out much different from the original. Maybe even better.
He goes on to discuss musicians whose covers have become more popular than the original. Think Witney Houston and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” Big Mama Thornton and Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” or more recently Tracey Chapman and Luke Combs’s, “Fast Car.”
As you’re developing your talent, honing your skill, and finding your voice in whatever’s your creative medium, it’s impossible to not be inspired by your favorite artists, but that’s ok. Every artist who came before you did the same. It was their talent set and blend of unique inspirations that evolved their work into something we think of today as unique.
Takeaway: there’s a big difference between “copying” someone and blatantly plagiarizing.
All right, all right, all right
Mathew McConaughey offers a perfect example of Sivers’s funhouse mirror concept in the movie Dazed and Confused.
As his book Green Lights has entered paperback, McConaughey has been making the rounds on the podcast circuit sharing stories from his book and beyond. The story of how he came up with the unscripted, and now famous line, “All right, all right, all right,” is that he heard Jim Morrison of The Doors scream it into a microphone in a documentary about the band. Listen below:
While on paper, McConaughey lifted the line word for word from The Doors frontman, you’ll notice his version sounds nothing like the original version. HOW he says WHAT he says is absolutely transformative.
Watch the full telling of this iconic line here.
Takeaway: there’s almost nothing in this world that is truly unique. The best we can do is reflect back into the world what resonates with us most, shaped by our perspective and voice.
One more thing: Green Lights is a surprisingly good read. I recommend it on audiobook. I could listen to McConaughey read the phone book.
My Player Athlete
What do you get when you cross a stud college wrestler and a Photoshop nerd? Well, when those two people are actually one, you get a rad startup called My Player Athlete which “creates custom graphics and merchandise that not only tell an athlete's story but also connects them with their fans.”
In 2019, I taught a young man named Will Collins in my Digital Graphic Design class. He was a sophomore in high school and already a star wrestler. Fast forward to today, Will is about to start the second of “just one semester off from college” at Ohio University to work full time on a business he founded from his garage.
My Player Athlete designs graphics and produces merchandise for the long tail of NCAA athletes who, unlike Caitlin Clark who locked down $3.1 million dollars in NIL deals, would still like to build their personal brands.
Like Miss Excel, Will offers another great example of Kevin Kelly’s concept of not aiming to be the best and instead seeking to be the only. While Will set all sorts of records in high school, repeated injuries at the division one collegiate level ushered in the reality that unless he was willing face a third shoulder surgery, he wasn’t going to be a national champion—a decision he described as the hardest he ever had to make. The experience offered him another unique opportunity though—to pursue his passion for graphic design by helping the athletic department’s social media team.
This eventually led him to creating commit graphics for other athletes where he discovered a want in the marketplace—custom merchandise with athletes’ name, image, and likeness.
Today, his company works with nearly 1,500 NCAA athletes, and is showing no signs of slowing down.
Takeaway: sometimes unexpected “failures” are successes in disguise. Will could have felt dejected by his collegiate athletic career. Instead, he built an entirely new career for himself—one with a much greater potential for longevity too.
Creativity is just connecting things
I consider myself somewhat of a generalist. I can change the oil on my car, bake a hell of an egg dish, sing in a choir, compete in most sports, and I’ve hunted pheasant. My skillset is objectively wide, but it’s not terribly deep.
As a young person (and sometimes even as an adult), I’d get jealous of the kid who was a virtuoso violinist, D1 prospect, or math wiz. They were elite in their disciplines. I was at best above average.
I recently came across a Steve Jobs quote that originally ran in Wired magazine sometime in the mid 90s. It helped me appreciate being a “master of none”:
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.
It’s because I never dove in head first for years on end, day after day, hour after hour on any one thing that I had time to dip my toes into many waters and build a diverse toolkit for life.
As just one example, my experience 14 years ago working as on screen talent for a web-based television show called “For or Against” introduced me to an important content formula, one in which the subject matter never runs dry, that I’ve carried to this very newsletter. While the show itself was a flop, what I took from it was invaluable to me.
(side note, my co-host, John Thibodeaux, writes for Steven Colbert now)
Takeaway: It took decades of dabbling to start seeing connections others missed. Now, I can’t seem to turn it off—and I wouldn’t want to.
The Egg
During my senior year of college, a short story went viral. This was back when you still needed a .edu email address to get on Facebook. Social media was in its infancy, and the idea of something “going viral” was still pretty new.
The story, called The Egg, was less than 1,000 words—a compact work of fiction that swept through college campuses and much of the late 2000s internet. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine something so niche reaching so many people. But it did, and if you’re an elder millennial like me, you might remember its moment.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized the same person who wrote The Egg also authored The Martian, the book that inspired the Matt Damon blockbuster. Andy Weir was the writer behind both.
What’s remarkable is how he got there. Weir didn’t seek a publishing deal or Hollywood’s blessing. He shared The Egg on his personal blog. Letting the internet do what it does—amplify great work—fans discovered it and shared like crazy.
Several years later, The Martian began as a self-published serial, also on his blog, and gained a loyal cult-like following before it eventually reached mainstream success.
Weir didn’t wait for permission. He made something so compelling that the gatekeepers couldn’t ignore him. As I’ve written about previously, and as Steve Martin famously said, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
Weir embodies this mantra.
Takeaway: Your talent is your best advocate. Focus on creating work so exceptional it demands attention, and the gatekeepers will come looking for you.
The journey of finding your voice is just as important as arriving at the place of having found it. The community aspect of writing and sharing lends itself to that iterative growth.