According to Matthew McConaughey’s new memoir, he was nude, playing the bongos, and high on marijuana when he was arrested at his house by numerous police officers.

The press was all over it in 1999. He also mentions that Bongo Naked t-shirts were sold in Austin after the incident, and that they probably earned a lot of money.

Matthew McConaughey said in his memoir that he had been awake for 32 hours straight before the nude bongo incident. “It was time to smoke a bowl and listen to the beautiful African melodic beats of Henri Dikongué play through my home speakers,” the actor explains. It was time to unwind, and McConaughey knew just how to do it.

“It was time to stand over my drum set and follow the rhythm of the blues before they got to Memphis, on my favorite Afro-Cuban drum. It was time for a jam session. What I didn’t know was that while I was banging away in my bliss, two Austin policemen also thought it was time to barge into my house unannounced, wrestle me to the ground with nightsticks, handcuff me and pin me to the floor.”

When the cops told him he was “under arrest for disturbing the peace, possession of marijuana, and resisting arrest,” McConaughey retorted, “Fuck you, motherfucker! You broke in my house! Fuck, yeah, I resisted! ” To demonstrate that he was minding his own business, he declined to cover himself.

He had a mad thought while being brought handcuffed through the gated corridor to the street, deciding to run up the wall, do a somersault backflip over the less civil officer who was behind him, while “still naked and reluctant to submit to the inevitably of my predicament.”

“My thinking was that in mid-flight, while upside down in the air, I would assume a pike position and then slide my cuffed wrists under my butt and up and over my legs, and then stick the landing … with my fettered hands in front of me.” He thought “pulling off such an extraordinary Houdini-like stunt, the officers would be so impressed they would abrogate the arrest and set me free,” adding, “I know, stupid, but I’d been celebrating for 32 and a half hours straight.”

Three steps into his attempt, the officer with whom he had clashed shoved him to the ground. There were six patrol vehicles parked outside the gate, as well as 40 neighbors keeping an eye on things. “Hell no, this is PROOF of my innocence!!” McConaughey said when asked whether he wanted a blanket again.

Matthew McConaughey pleaded guilty to the class C violation at the time of his arrest, since he was indeed playing the bongos rather loudly at 2:30 a.m. He merely had to pay a $50 fine as a result of his misdeeds, but it’s a famous arrest that has endured in infamy in the decades following.

While the legalities of the night were minor, the tale made ripples in the entertainment business, and McConaughey was known for his free-spirited naked bongo playing for years afterward.

Greenlights also reveals that in 2010, the star turned down $14.5 million (£11 million) to feature in yet another romantic comedy, determined to break away from the genre with which he had been most identified.

He also disclosed that his father died of a heart attack in the middle of coitus with his mother.