The Origin Story of “Alright, Alright, Alright”
A random night in a bar launched my acting career
Back in my film school days, I’d take my girlfriend to the Hyatt hotel bar in Austin for free drinks while my classmate Sam was bartending. On one of those nights, my life changed forever.
“There’s a guy at the end of the bar who’s in town producing a movie,” Sam said, handing me my vodka tonics. “He’s been comin’ in here nightly. Lemme introduce you to him.”
This is when I met the one and only Don Phillips.
He drank vodka and tonics as well, many of them. A few hours later, as Don stood atop a chair in the midst of delivering one of his legendarily loud charades of a story, the management, to no avail, tried to calm him down. When it was obvious Don wanted nothing to do with toning anything down, they tried to kick him out of the bar.
Matching him drink for drink, I had no interest in Don calming down either, so we were unpeacefully escorted out of the Hyatt. Now past two in the morning, as he rode with me in a cab to drop me off at my apartment, I pulled out a joint and we smoked it.
“You ever done any acting, Matthew?” he asked.
I told him I’d been in a Miller Lite commercial for about a second and a half and had done a music…
