As soon as Matthew McConaughey saw a rough cut of the new Texas nature documentary Deep in the Heart, the native-Texan actor had an easy time saying yes to being its narrator.
“That actually happened a lot easier than I had anticipated,” filmmaker Ben Masters said in a recent episode of Factual America in collaboration with the Lone Star Plate podcast timed to the film’s theatrical release on June 3.
You can hear Masters and producer Katy Baldock’s interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or right here:
“We got to a rough cut stage, and I called his agent, I just googled McConaughey’s agent, and called him on the phone, and he actually picked up,” Masters added. “Told him about the project. And he asked for some sample footage to send to Matthew, and Matthew saw it and was like, ‘This is awesome. Like, this is just bleeding Texas. I want to be a part of this.’ And he delivered a phenomenal performance.”
In addition to some soothing audio from Matthew McConaughey Deep in the Heart offers an up-close look at Texas’s beautiful wildlife and their habitats — plus a nod to what we humans can do to help preserve those natural spaces.
“Deep in the Heart is a 100-minute movie that is similar in style to Planet Earth in the sense that it has different wildlife sequences that build on top of each other that show off some of the most remarkable wildlife spectacles and eco-regions in the state of Texas,” Masters said. “It also weaves in the story of our society’s relationship with wildlife in Texas over the past 150 years. The movie begins with the great slaughter of the bison on the plains and this horrible loss of our wildlife in Texas. And then it shows these amazing recoveries that we’ve had in the state, as well as some opportunities for us to do a lot better in ensuring that we conserve our amazing rivers and bays and functioning eco-systems here in the state.”
Baldock’s wish is that as much as the documentary is a cautionary tale about what happens if we don’t respect our environment, it also leaves people people with a sense of hope.
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“It’s easy to get really discouraged by animals that are being endangered and going extinct, and eco-systems that are being impacted by human activity. It’s easy to kind of get down and lose hope on that,” she said.
“But at the same time, a lot of these wildlife species and ecosystems are resilient, and when given the room to recover, they can. And in some cases, that just means humans stepping back and allowing it to recover. We’ve seen that with the forest in East Texas, by just purchasing land and allowing them to regrow. In other cases, such as the ocelots, that involves human interaction with us stepping in and then taking measures to recover those species. But regardless, there’s always stories of hope. What we hope to show with this film is that, yes, there’s a lot of work we have to do and there’s a lot of problems that we have to solve. But there are people and organizations that are working on doing that. And there’s a lot of actions that people can take both in large and small ways to contribute to that recovery.”
Deep in the Heart has its Texas-wide theatre release on June 3rd, and will be available on streaming platforms in July 2022. Here are some time stamps from the Factual America and Lone Star Plate interview:
00:00 – Guest introduction and Deep in the Heart trailer.
07:00 – Where people can see the film in Texas and when it will stream online.
08:38 – What Deep in the Heart is about and how the idea for the film came about.
15:50 – How the film crew managed to capture ocelots on camera and what other animals they filmed.
26:30 – What message Ben and Katy want to get across to the audience with this film.
32:30 – How they got Matthew McConaughey to narrate the documentary.
37:05 – Cinematography in Deep in the Heart and the approach to filming the wildlife.
44:00 – What Katy and Ben want the legacy of this film to be.
50:30 – What actions are taken every day to preserve Texas waters and Texas wildlife.
01:01:20 – Further plans for the outreach and film distribution.
01:09:00 – The role of writing, narration and music in the documentary.
Factual America uses documentary filmmaking to examine the American experience as well as universal topics that affect all Americans. Guests include Academy Award, Emmy, and Grammy-winning filmmakers and producers, their subjects, as well as experts on the American experience. We discuss true crime, music, burning social and political topics, history and arts with the creators of the latest and upcoming documentary films in theatres and on the most popular digital platforms. This podcast is produced by Alamo Pictures, a London- and Austin-based production company that makes documentaries about the US from a European perspective for international audiences.
Main Image: A still from Deep in the Heart narrated by Matthew McConaughey courtesy of Factual America
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