MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY COACHES FOOTBALL

Matthew McConaughey portrays real life coach of fated Marshall University football team in We Are Marshall.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Coach Jack Lengyel in We Are Marshall, the true story of the 1971 plane crash that killed members of the Marshall University football team in Huntington, West Virginia, and the coach who healed a team as well as a town.

Matthew had been looking to play a teacher or a father so the coach of a college football team had those characteristics.

“The story takes place in the healing process after that, what happens after that loss, which for me is when the character comes in. He’s part of that process. He’s the outsider who comes in and coaches this team and through the theme of football which is a metaphor in our story for a team coming together and a community coming together. You cut to 26 years later, 36 years later the program is more than alive, it’s thriving.”

Matthew not only got down the rhythm of Coach Lengyel’s speech, he also developed his walk leading with his chin. He says Lengyel was the only man for the job.

“The one guy who did take the job only kept it for 48 hours, then quit. So we’ve already got someone who’s been unorthodox. And you need an unorthodox man for a very unorthodox situation. What I immediately saw and noticed that he did was he got people to deal with reality, I mean not reality, he got people to deal with the present. What we need to do right now.”

Matthew received an e-mail from Coach Lengyel as well as the assistant coach of Marshall University football team Red Dawson played by Matthew Fox thanking him for telling the story truthfully and not giving it the Hollywood treatment.