Jocko Podcast 217 w/ Gary Sinise: Gratitude and Service With Gary Sinise: Grateful American

2020-02-20T05:21:34Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @garysinise 0:00:00 - Opening 0:09:56 – Gary Sinise, "Grateful American" 4:13:19 – Final Thoughts and take-aways 4:18:30 – How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO STORE Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com/collections/men Jocko Supplements: https://originmaine.com/origin-labs/ Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Origin Gis: https://originmaine.com/bjj-mma-fit/ 4:33:46 – Closing Gratitude

AI summary of episode

well two things number one we covered her a pile on this podcast right here number 39 and if you don't know this about irney pile he was actually killed in action in the battle of okinawa and two i don't know what we can do to get the the recordings out of the library and into the interwebs but we should do that let's get them out there the the stuff that you you know again another example staff sergeant Jason Ross March 2011 during a second deployment to Afghanistan Jason lost both of his legs part of his pelvic bone where an ID exploded doctors gave him less than 2% chances survival but Jason never stopped fighting complication said in insurgents ended up needing to take more and more from his legs until eventually all his hips were gone to date he's undergone more than 240 surgeries basically the entire lower half of his body is no longer there we built a smart home for Jason and his family in San Diego when we handed over the keys to him in his ceremony his six-year-old daughter Stacy asked to speak my daddy is Jason Ross she said when i was little my daddy got hurt now Afghanistan he was in the hospital for a long time my daddy is strong and brave another thing you guys do you talk about here my my foundation's final program is called relief and resiliency outreach this is an umbrella program we simply try to help veterans and their family in any way possible including those recovering from trauma injury or loss within the umbrella is a mentoring program i've had a long relationship with a disabled american veterans d a v and no several wounded veterans who've lived with their injuries for decades so i thought of providing an opportunity to induce introduce some of our younger wounded veterans from i rack and afghanistan to veterans from previous wars i met with gym surzley the enom veteran triple amputee and former national commander of the d a v to gout to gage his interest and get his thoughts he responded positively and said he would love to be involved and that he would discuss it with the d a v leadership and if you want to know about more than more about gym surzley layers podcast 200 in here talking about his story which is which is incredible and you close this section out by saying the simple story is here that from its creation in 2011 the foundation is grown into a friendly giant we've gone from one donor just me in the beginning to a base of more than 45 thousand donors in a annual budget of nearly 30 million while we can never do enough to show our gratitude to our nation's defenders of veterans of first responders and the families who live serve alongside them and you have this little mantra, this little motto we can always do a little more and I think the idea of we can always do a little more is probably a good place to wrap even though it's not the last chapter the last chapter is actually called why i'm still on a mission and obviously there's an important message there but that also ties in with the motto we can always do a little bit more and I guess still have to buy the book to get that last and you don't have anything to worry about now you don't have to take care of the kids they're not there I've got them you focus on yourself and this issue and within a couple of days she took herself to Betty Ford clinic and checked herself in and that that's the last time she you know right before she went in there she had her final drink I had a friend who you know was had a lot of money it was very wealthy and lost his son to opioid overdose and you know he was kind of talking me through what had happened and one of the things he said to me he said you know I had unlimited resources unlimited resources I said him to every different rehab all kinds of different you know drugs psychologists therapists unlimited resources to try and get his son off of drugs and he said the only thing I do was was tough love is the term that he used which you know is what you you did here take the gloves off and I can't imagine how hard that's got to be to hold the line in those situations where you know when you're looking at your kid your wife you're looking at your kid and you're thinking and she said yes you know maybe someone struggling with this kind of thing will read it and find hope you know in it that hey maybe maybe I can overcome this particular demon myself you know during this period of time everything on the outside my career who did a damn ransom you know all these different things we're having winning awards I played Harry Truman I got that golden globe and then the sag awards and the amnes and you know all this stuff was happening there was all very positive and wonderful when everything and at home you know it was dark it was tough it was difficult we were struggling and the family was really going through some difficult things so nobody ever knew that we decided to tell that story because at a time where it looked like Gary Sunise was on the rise and all the all everything was rosy and everything we were struggling with some very serious issues at home and I got back about 11 o'clock at nine I get a phone call from the USO representative saying Tommy Franks general Tommy Franks is going up to Baghdad tomorrow he wants to take a small group of people and he wants you to come so I said absolutely so we went up to Baghdad and you know went into the palaces you know this this thing with Kid Rock and everything at the airport thousands of people it was pretty pretty amazing just to be there with so many soldiers we entertained them there in the hanger maybe 4,000 people in the hanger you know I got to see the palaces I got to meet a lot a lot of troops during this this trip it was it was an amazing trip and I kind of befriended Tommy Franks from that moment on we ended up going to do a long after that to the central command and we did some shows there and met a lot of people and it was amazing I was back in Iraq within six months again for another trip I'll say this too and when you like I said so all that took place I wouldn't even go into Iraq I was awaiting to go to Iraq when did you go out of the fall of 2003 so I could work in the movies I'd never been the kind of guy who sat around and talked or wondered or thought about stuff without doing something about it at least not for long my response had always been to take action and hopefully doing so would benefit other people along the way in those early months of 2003 and again I jumped ahead to get here I realized I'd never before the cost of freedom and I knew freedom needed to be defended I knew places that existed in our world without freedom and I knew that without freedom nothing of the good and fulfilling ways we in America aspire to live our lives would be possible this realization helped fuel me more than ever before it made me profoundly grateful for being an American able to live in this land of freedom able to make something of my life when it came to service I wanted to be all in all the time living out my calling every single day for the rest of my life I can almost I can say most certainly that what happened to our country on September 11th broke my heart and changed me forever it forced me to rethink everything what do I really believe how do I want to raise my kids what kind of example do I want to set for them what can I do to give this great country what can I do to give back to this great country I love how can I use my good fortune to help it was a turning point and mark the beginning of a new level of service I found that the more I gave the more I heal cold two months after watching the statues of Saddam Hussein being pulled down I was on a plane to Kuwait nothing would ever be the same you we kind of kicked off you know the name of this next chapter is but a bridge between worlds you know and and bridging this thing and you got this here if that guy's uh not a hero then i have no idea who is well he's an he's an amazing guy and he's doing something really positive with his circumstance and he's helping and fellow veterans uh with his own foundation Travis milk foundation obviously wrote a book there was a movie uh Travis is an ambassador for my foundation so he'll do things from time to time to help us uh do more and you know i've met just extraordinary people we've we've done over sixty or seventy of these houses now um for very very badly wounded folks you know in all branches of service and it's been a privilege because i've learned quite a bit from a number of them and uh have many many friends who you know are in the wounded community as i said i've been involved with a d a b for many many years and so like i have many wounded pals from a lot of different wars and they they they give me a lot of inspiration little a lot of motivation to keep doing more you go on here another busy you as planned for 2010 35 concerts and additional events and supportive our troops they were still out there fighting and i kept doing so much because it needed to be done I'll always remember that first visit meeting specialist bramannus and so many other seniors young man in a hospital bed missing three out of four limbs yet made a lasting impression on me and at one point some of your friends and some of the partners from operation international children they weren't able to go to Iraq so they went over they delivered supplies and they stopped at launch to win Germany on the way back and going back to the book here there they met a young soldier named Brendan Morocco just 22 years old the first United States service member ever to survive after losing all four limbs in an IED explosion the blast happened during the early hours of Easter Sunday while Brendan was returning from a night mission in the deserts of Iraq he was in bad shape in addition to loosing both arms and both legs Brendan's nose left eye socket and facial bones were broken he lost eight teeth from the bat blast and had taken sharp known as left eye and face his face and neck and bit burned his left carotid artery severed and his left ear drum pierced usually a soldier this severely wounded would die but army medics had been making remarkable strides in meeting bat in treating battlefield wounds and you go into some details here but a guy named Sal Cassano my saying that right he's the commissioner of the New York fire department and they wanted to raise money to build Brendan Morocco especially adapted smart technology home in Staten Island they asked if you would help you know raise funds going back to the book as we were planning a fundraising concert for Brendan to be held in Staten Island in August of 2010 I received another call in March 26th 2010 while leading a squad of Marines on a security patrol in Afghanistan corporal Todd nicely 26 headstep on an IED buried at the foot of a bridge his fellow Marines quickly wrapped turnic hits around his wounds and administered more a fine rescue helicopter arrived within six minutes he became the second US service member to survive her injuries as a quadruple amputee I met Todd in the hospital then simply said to the tunnel to towers guys which the guys that are running this um this charity he needs a house too let's do another concert even before we played Brendan's concert we received a third call on May 24th 2010 sergeant John Peck had just finished sweeping a compound with the metal detector checking for bombs when he stepped on an IED he became America's third surviving quadruple amputee we decided to raise funds to help build homes for all three quadruple amputees back before my foundation was created it was no simple matter to help raise about a half a million bucks for each home project it still isn't a simple matter today Moira ends up going to a church looking for an AA meeting she passes an elderly French woman a member of the parish going back to the book the woman said an thick French accent my dear you need to become a Catholic you need to convert and walk away that got Moira to thinking here she was playing this Irish woman because she was in a play at the time playing this Irish woman searching for strength and a play set in a tavern and in her own life she was searching for strength to help with her sobriety nothing was set or done immediately but Moira later told me she began to feel a quiet yearning for her own shooting star and that's a reference that you talk about earlier about recognizing that there are other forces bigger than ourselves and you you're moving around a bit but Moira turned to me quite out of the blue and said oh when we get back home I'm going to become a Catholic and our kids are going to go to Catholics that's right fast forward a bit Moira was Moira got confirmed Ella started third grade max started fourth and Sophie started sixth at the local Catholic school fast forward a bit Moira and Christmas Eve 2010 I told my wife and kids to get dressed up we were headed for a special family dinner at Morton's stay cows the place we all enjoyed on a way to dinner I suddenly pulled into the church parking lot a mast was underway and my family looked confused and that's a that program you know we're about to the foundation the Gary Sonny's foundation that was a that was an organization that was started and every year I would go back and play a concert for the kids and be a part of the event American Airlines supplies all the transportation to get all the kids from all over the country to the to the event and a couple of years ago we folded that particular thing into the Gary Sonny's foundation as a program and we moved the event from Dallas where it had been for nine years to Disney World so we take over a thousand kids to Disney World along with you know four five hundred surviving parent or guardian or who's who's ever with the kids and we give them a lot of joy right before Christmas time at that the happiest place on earth it's extraordinary and my band has played concerts for the last I don't know 13 years something like that awesome um going back to these um hospital visits back to the book after a bomb exploded and it was the stars you know the national anthem and and people were just singing with candles on the corner in Malibu just coming together people were in pain all over the place and everyone was looking for something and during the day that day we went to our little Catholic church I don't know if you remember but George Bush said he was going to make that Friday a national day of prayer for the nation and so the churches and houses of worship everywhere in the country were just jam packed with people trying to find some peace some like trying to understand what was going on and trying to find something and we got to our little Catholic church at the school that my kids went to and there was only standing room it was packed and we like um you got this we built a home for us on army ranger sergeant first class Michael slits who served as a rifleman of patoon sergeant southern i rack on February 27 2007 Mike and his crew were conducting road clearing mission near Baghdad when their vehicle struck a hidden ID and burst into flame his gunner sergeant Richard Sukhenka and medic sergeant Jonathan cadvara were killed instantly his driver corporal lorn Henry junior passed away shortly after the blast Mike wrote in the passenger seat in gulfed in flames he was thrown from the vehicle he lost both hands and the sightness left eye and sustained burns over 85% of his body early in mics recovery started going to a program at UCLA called operation men consisting of a team of sergeant who helped provide free surgeries to our severely wounded veterans when i first met Mike he was so severely burned he didn't have a nose and he talked through a hole in his throat we struck up a friendship over the years he's had multiple reconstructive surgeries to repair the damage to his eyelids mouth and nose and other parts of his body where the skin was burned having last lost both arms he now uses to prosthetic hooks Mike's living situation post innumerable challenges for him because the fragility of his skin Mike preferred colder temperatures and often needed to turn the air conditioner on full blast his mom robby in his full-time caregiver and she wore heavy coats to keep warm in the house direct sunlight is hard on mics eye so he preferred to keep all the shades drawn we built them a home with one section for mic and another for his mom with a temperature and light needs section the house could be individually governed Mike has a special shower and the gym that he can navigate by himself we helped restore mics independence and helped empower them both Mike is an amazing individual who's dedicating his life to honoring his fallen brothers through serving his fellow veterans and ambassador for my foundation he helps us with our veterans outreach as our military and veterans resource manager with our smart home program we work with each wounded service member to provide exactly what they need master sergeant john Mason is married and has three kids on October 16th 2010 while conducting village stability operations in can to hard province afghanistan john a medic with a 20th special forces group step on a hidden ID and lost both legs and his left arm due to the severity of his amputations he can't wear prosthetics and he's confined to a wheelchair the hallways in his house were too narrow for a wheelchair additionally he couldn't reach anything in the closets and the bathroom is too small for him to navigate alone but it's not about me it's about making these guys feel better I learned I learned a lot on those first trips the landstool was the first military hospital that I went to their fresh off the battlefield as you know you know and the the guys that I just literally hours I mean the hours off the battlefield and as soon as I got there the bus pulled up we we were just about ready to get out of the bus and a fresh batch of wounded were were they were just pulling a bus up the airplane had just gotten in they put them on the bus they brought them to the hospital entrance so we were going in and they were all of a sudden all these all these technicians and everybody started running out of the hospital and started unloading this bus which was just nothing but gurneys with wires and you know wounded wounded folks on these gurneys and I just sat there and watched them unload the bus of gurneys I mean there's no other way to put it but when I deployed there in 2003 2004 it if you would have asked me at the end of my deployment how much longer the war in Iraq was going to last I would have said oh probably another three four months you know there'll be less less combat operations and then you know it'll be you know I'm sure we'll still have some troops there but it'll be pretty settled down so you know I was wrong Hi Terry I said Gary are you watching TV right now I just got up buddy what's going on two planes have hit the world trade center the tops of both buildings are on fire Terry's words spilled out we're under attack Gary Terry's have classed airplanes into those buildings it's bad really bad every American alive and then remembers that moment and can answer the inevitable question to where were you when you first heard the news I stared in shock and disbelief along with the entire country the entire world has smoked port from the tops of both buildings horrified we watched on live TV as people left to their deaths from the upper floors of the trade center as soon as the reports soon arrived at a third airplane a crash to the Pentagon about 20 minutes later a fourth airplane crashed near Shanksville Pennsylvania we heard it was united flight 93 seemingly bound for the White House the target was ultimately determined by the 9-11 Commission report to be the capital building people on board flight 93 had discovered that terrorist were crashing planes into buildings in the passenger to courageously yet faithfully chosen to take back the plane we watched the South Tower collapse and crumble in a fury of dust and smoke then the north tower fell horror enveloped us all you say while driving through one of the canyons and this is on September 11th I clicked on the radio news news castors speculated that today's attacks were only the beginning of more attacks to come the reality of the morning sank and even deeper our country was under attack vulnerable thousands of innocent people have been killed that day more horror lay ahead I couldn't tell you exactly why did this perhaps in solidarity defiance tribute but I rolled down my window stuck out my arm and made a fist and held it high here's well-duped my eyes as I listened to the news for some time as I wrote along I held my arm out stretched as high as it would reach you're living in California at the time in LA Malibu in Malibu and even in Malibu they broke out the American flags and then you just get involved in all kinds of things in trepid fallen heroes found Fisher house foundation tragedy assistance program for survivors you end up doing something called the snowball express idea was simple going from the book they brought they brought the children of our fallen heroes to Disneyland just before Christmas to allow them to meet each other to see they were not alone in their grief and to bring them some joy and new happy memories to this special group of children who are experiencing so much sadness especially at Christmas and and and you go on talking about that I could not be prouder to be part of creating opportunities for joy friendship and communal healing by connecting family struggling with loss to one another together they share a common bond and can feel a bigger part of a bigger family the children meet and interact with others who understand what they've been through and each and help each other through this unique and terrible experience they cannot be overstated what an event like this can mean to a child who is lost a parent or in military service struggling with their grief can be overwhelming and you nighting together with hundreds of other children experience a similar tragic loss can be the magic that carries them throughout the year there's so much joy on their faces during these moments it's a blessing to interact with kids this way at the same time I'm always reminded of the celebrity embedded in these moments of the incredible cost represented in the faces of the children who come to this event last year one girl wore a t-shirt to the event with these words printed on the back in honor and memory of an underneath the words was a blank box where kids could write in the name of their fallen hero in black marker the girl had simply written my daddy so I mean that that's the purpose that we decided to share it in the book you know it's it's it's played a role in the in my service life because you know becoming a you know remember the Catholic Church and and the service aspect of the faith and and what not there was definitely a role that that that faith played in my turning from self to service there's no question about speaking of turning from self to service jumping ahead here a bit one morning September about 630 more as more to help the kids get ready for school our phone rang I was still sleeping Terry Kenny who lived in New York was on the line simultaneously more to turn on the TV yes I don't know if you had I don't know if you had that little dude with them or not I remember that the first time I saw my said this is unusual but I'll tell you like no kidding when I saw him for the first time I was like this this guy is this guy rocks I called it at control so you see that but I wanted to do everything I could do to help in time we built homes for all three quadruple amputees and this new initiative steam rolled from there the good news was that thanks to new sophisticated life saving techniques on the battlefield more soldiers started surviving these horrific injuries the bad news was that after Brendan Todd and John more soldiers were wounded similar similarly staff sergeant Travis Mills was our fourth quadruple amputee a highly capable and resilient squad leader he later joked at his injury in afghanistan was only a bad case of the Mondays like so many of the wounded service members of Matt Travis is one of my heroes and we remain close friends to this day and Travis was on this podcast number 90 if you want to if you want to realize what a hero sounds like go listen to that navy petty officer Taylor Morris a member of an explosive ordinance disposal team became our nation's fifth surviving quadruple amputee from the wars in Iraq and afghanistan immediately after the blast that took his four limbs Taylor lay on the afghan soil fully conscious bleeding to death but before medics attended him Taylor ordered them to wait and make sure the ground surrounding him was clear of ideas he didn't want any other service members getting wounded where do they find such men And you know what, actually, when I heard that, I was like, okay, you know what, I get it, you know, that they're trying to, you know, break down some barriers. so you never know you know a difficult difficult difficult period in your life can manifest itself into something that you never could have predicted would would be positive you know had had had another time you know You know, so that attitude, it's pretty cool that you guys had this attitude of, like, you know, you know, you're going to start a theater company. right leg I met Mark on my first visit to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland on September 11th 2003 where he was recovering he was the first wounded service member I visited on the first of many trips over the years to where to to the DC military hospitals he wanted to talk about Lieutenant Dan and we shared a few stories and I sat with him for a while before I went on to the next room that afternoon I was at Walter Reed for the first time I visited with so many wounded heroes that day including many of the first triple amputees I would meet in the coming years just 21 year old just 21 years old US Army Specialist hilarious bramannus was serving with the 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad on June 10th just 10 days before I would be in Baghdad myself specials bramannus and a fellow soldier came under attack while guarding a weapons turn in point a rocket propelled grenade killed his friend and took both bramannus's legs and his left hand as bramannus laying his bed as father stood by a side and told me what had happened and how hilarious video was from one of the tiny islands in the feathered states of micronesia three years earlier wanting to be an American soldier he'd gone to Guam to sign up for the US Army the week after my visit in a ceremony at Walter Reed on September 17th 2003 bramannus was awarded US citizenship powder form mix it up or you can take discipline ready to drink in a can ready to rock them all you may need so that can give you a little boost yes boost little boost you might need a boost of your protein and take if you need that cool we got you if you need dessert we got you because I know it's last two kind of the same thing dessert and protein dessert and protein moch moch all day by the way there is there is a thing that you can get on you can get on board it's called the moch train and then i was like you know right before i started the foundation i launched the foundation garyston use foundation 2011 so the chapter in the book called flurry of action kind of talks about 2009 2010 the two years leading up to the founding of the foundation because those year i was just ramping more more more and all the while i was i was shooting a television series right away at the same time so i was never home And each one of those things, by the way, you know, you, I mean, every one of those things, there's subcultures, you know, you can be in a music scene and be a total, you know, you can get sucked into drugs, rock and roll, right? so i thought let's capitalize on that in some way and and create an organization that can you know act as a reliable resource for people who want to support our veterans and military community and that's why i named it the gerryzonese foundation i mean people knew who i was at that point they knew i was in this for good i could have called it to help the troops foundation or something like that And you're right, you know, these guys that, and one thing that I've talked about, I talk about a lot of these manuals when we cover them, is, you know, I'll be saying, I'll be saying, whoever wrote that, like who wrote that part right there. yeah the fact that it's black is like it's black that's the cherry but it's also got it's got like the you know you ever use teacher you know and we hope it just keeps on going because it's a I think when I think is in some ways a little bit of a call to action I tried to tell a story of somebody who didn't see it coming but all of a sudden made a turn toward a service life which is basically that's what I do now you know I've done well in my acting career I was grateful that I had CSI New York as it gave me a lot of resources to do a lot of good things I I just felt you know on that first trip to the school I saw and watched the kids were loving the soldiers you know the soldiers rebuilt the school they came in there but windows in they did all kinds of stuff for the kids and the kids were very grateful the soldiers were just hugging the kids and it was a spirit that I thought was very important to preserve in some way but i can't go back in time Mikey the Dragons every kid is born afraid of things in the world they don't need to be they just need to read a simple book called Mikey the Dragons never realize how they can overcome those fears the disclinical freedom field manual two pages is a little dose that will propel you forward faster stronger and better that's a weird statement to make sounds like a big vault statement rig i'm telling you i wrote it it works on me i wrote the book i wrote the book if i read two pages on my car i'm gonna go a little bit harder i wrote it You know, John had a, you know, he rocketed, you know, he was nominated for an Oscar within two years of that play. i need to figure out some other way to do this and having been involved with so many military charities over the years and had established a good reputation within the support space you know that it's a you know people knew i was there for real I mean you can't you know you wait you know years from now you know Well, I, you know, I didn't know what the book was going to be called or exactly what it was going to be when I started. I was fearful that they were going to pull me out send me to like a juvenile home or something bus me really bus me and I begged the police officer to let me off the hook because I just discovered this new thing that I think you know is going to change my life and I will and it did. so we built john a house for him and his family that allows him to be independent and internal allows his wife and children to worry less about caring for him we built a home for captain Luis avila and his family Luis served five combat tours in afghanistan in Iraq on December 27, 2011 Luis's vehicle ran over an iED Luis lost his left leg then suffered two strokes and two heart attacks resulting in traumatic brain injury ultimately he was left almost completely paralyzed today he continues to heal while maintaining an incredibly positive attitude and sense of humor his wife kawty is his full-time caregiver and never leads leaves his side she is one of the fierce fighters for the needs of our wounded service members and reminds us of the importance of also supporting our caregivers each smart home is given to the veteran free of charge the mortgage for the house and land is completely underwritten the veteran can select what part of the country he or she wants to live in we built a home for police officer Michael Flamian from ballwin miserry you shot in the neck by an assailant during a routine traffic stop and his paralyzed from the neck down his wife is now his full-time caregiver and the home built specifically from Michael's challenges provide some much needed support and relief so gary like I said it's been for over four hours thank you so much for what you're doing thanks for coming on it's been an honor to meet you and look forward to you know having you back on here next time you get a spare month we can have you on here the talk it's good let me let me just say this too to you for your service to our country I'm one grateful america and I appreciate what you have done for our country and and I don't for one day take it for granted And the thing that when I was saying earlier that, like, I kind of, I don't know if we were recording yet, but the thing that I kind of relate, like when I was a kid, we all had bands. yeah that's how i got involved with the world war two museum you know over ten years ago they in tom hanks was one of the producers on that film and uh he invited me to play irney pile so i did the voice over for irney that started my relationship with the world war two museum now we've taken through my foundation and our soring vallar program we've taken hundreds of world war two veterans down to see them using him and we've recorded them on video telling their stories and those stories are preserved in the library at the museum We always deal with people's egos and I could see where this, this is a classic scenario where you could get mad and, you know, undermine him and do you know, do whatever, like all sorts of bad things can come from this. well I'm like I said as we started that chapter you know you said maybe someone will hear this and it'll help them I there's no maybe on that I promise you that people will hear that and and they will it will shed some light into their lives and help them get through to fight this this powerful powerful demon

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel podcast number 217 with echo Charles and me, Jockel willing. Good evening,
[00:00:07] echo. Good evening. The chaplain wanted me to visit one family in particular. They were
[00:00:18] caring for their severely wounded service member, a marine master sergeant named Eden Pearl,
[00:00:25] who had been part of the Marine Corps forces, special operation command marsawk.
[00:00:32] I've met a lot of severely wounded vets by then, but the severity and extent of Eden's wounds
[00:00:38] set him in a category by himself. His family, especially his wife, Alicia,
[00:00:46] remained some of the strongest, most courageous people I've ever met.
[00:00:52] Eden was muscular, tattooed, and once sported a bushy red beard, they called him the Viking.
[00:01:03] Other Marines knew him as an exemplary combat leader. He served in Kosovo from 1999 to 2001,
[00:01:13] helping to prevent ethnic cleansing. In 2003, he was one of the first Marines on the ground in Iraq.
[00:01:21] He redeployed to Iraq in 2004 and 2005, then deployed to Afghanistan in 2009.
[00:01:31] In August of 2009, Eden and his unit were involved in a massive gun battle against terrorists
[00:01:37] in the area surrounding a small Afghan village.
[00:01:42] The battle rage so intensely that the Marines made the difficult decision to leave the village
[00:01:48] so they could return it a more strategic time.
[00:01:53] As they left the Humvee that Eden wrote in, struck a hidden roadside, IED, exploded,
[00:02:02] and burst into flames. The interpreter and the driver, Army Corporal Nick Rausch,
[00:02:10] were killed immediately. The remaining four troops inside the vehicle received severe burns,
[00:02:17] but non-as-terrible as Eden.
[00:02:22] Here's the remarkable thing. Eden was finally pulled from the vehicle and placed under a burn blanket.
[00:02:30] Still coherent.
[00:02:35] The first thing he did was ask if his troops were okay.
[00:02:42] The family asked me if I'd go into the intensive care unit for a while to sit with Eden.
[00:02:48] I nodded and a nurse fitted me with a gown, gloves and booties and placed a nylon hat over my hair.
[00:02:58] The family stayed outside while the nurse led me in.
[00:03:03] All was quiet in the ICU. My footsteps made no sound as I approached the Marine in the bed.
[00:03:13] I stood for a moment, taking in what I saw.
[00:03:21] Eden was burned on more than 90% of his body and was covered by bandages.
[00:03:28] Burn gel covered any exposed area of his skin. His eyes were slightly open with burn gel covering his face.
[00:03:38] He'd suffered a traumatic brain injury and was missing both legs and one arm.
[00:03:45] I'd seen many, many badly wounded service members by then, but Eden was the most severely wounded I'd ever met.
[00:03:55] He did not move.
[00:04:00] The nurse whispered to me that they weren't exactly sure what Eden could hear or comprehend,
[00:04:05] but they were fairly sure some messages were getting through.
[00:04:11] I drew a closer to Eden and told him that he wasn't alone.
[00:04:17] That his family was there with him.
[00:04:20] That they loved him and cared for him deeply, and that as a country, we were immensely grateful to him for his service.
[00:04:32] After I finished speaking Eden's eyelids flickered, once twice, the only movement he'd made since I walked into the room.
[00:04:49] Over the next year, I would reach out to the hospital, Chaplin to receive updates about Eden.
[00:04:55] But the Chaplin eventually moved to another assignment, and I lost touch.
[00:05:01] Then in 2012, I did an event in Chicago for the Marine Corps, law enforcement foundation.
[00:05:08] A Chicago police officer started talking with me about a severely wounded Marine he knew.
[00:05:13] And before he named the man, I said, wait, I know who you're talking about, Eden Pearl.
[00:05:19] Please tell me what you know about him.
[00:05:21] Where is he?
[00:05:24] The police officer put me in touch with Eden as a battle buddy, Marine Phil Noblen, a Florida resident.
[00:05:31] I called Phil, and he explained how Eden had moved around the country from convalescent home to convalescent home, his family always with him.
[00:05:41] Phil put me in touch with Eden's wife, and we talked and caught up.
[00:05:46] I told her about the home building initiative for wounded veterans that we had going by then.
[00:05:53] We talked through a few specifics of the program, then I simply said, it would be in my honor if you would let us do that for you and Eden.
[00:06:05] Phil Noblen had raised some money to help, so I asked Phil to use those funds to purchase land in San Antonio, not far from the Brook Army Medical Center burn unit.
[00:06:15] And my foundation built Eden and his family, especially adapted smart technology home.
[00:06:22] To see part of the immense burden lifted off his wife and family was gratifying.
[00:06:28] Over the next few years in that place of respite his wife and family helped Eden live a quiet life as they wanted.
[00:06:40] Eden received all the help he could and never stop fighting.
[00:06:49] His sacrifices were enormous, and I respect Eden and his family tremendously.
[00:06:57] In 2015 at age 40, after a long six-year fight for healing, Eden Pearl passed away.
[00:07:16] He will never be forgotten.
[00:07:22] He will never be forgotten.
[00:07:32] 90% 90% of his body burned.
[00:07:46] He was lost in both legs, lost in one arm, traumatic brain injury and a brutal six-year battle.
[00:08:05] And it's hard to even call that.
[00:08:19] But the sacrifices family made.
[00:08:34] A sacrifice that we must never forget.
[00:08:45] Now, sometimes people ask me how they can serve if they were never in the military.
[00:08:58] Then I always tell people that there are countless ways to serve without actually being in the military.
[00:09:07] And I have one such person here who is not served in the military but does everything in his power to help our American service men and women.
[00:09:18] And first responders as well.
[00:09:20] And the piece that I just read about Eden Pearl is from his book.
[00:09:27] And the book is called Greatful American.
[00:09:30] And the man that wrote it is Gary Sunnis, an actor, founder of a world-renowned theater company, a bass player in a rock and roll band, and a true caring patriot.
[00:09:49] And we are lucky enough to have him here to tonight, to discuss his life and the lessons that he's learned in life with us.
[00:10:04] So, Gary, thank you for coming on by.
[00:10:08] That's great to be here, Jack.
[00:10:10] Thank you for having me.
[00:10:12] There's multiple stories that you tell in the book about some of these wounded warriors that you've had the honor of meeting and seeing in these horrible situations.
[00:10:25] And that one right there, when you start talking about somebody that, you know, when you get a burn on your finger.
[00:10:32] When you burn your finger on the stove and you have a tiny burn on your finger, that's painful and it's annoying.
[00:10:40] And you could say, okay, well, can you imagine if that was my whole finger or my whole hand?
[00:10:47] You get to a point where you're talking about 90% of your body. I mean, it's, it's, you cannot fathom that.
[00:10:54] You cannot fathom that.
[00:10:56] And that idea, you know, one of the most horrible things that these roadside bombs do is when they go off,
[00:11:09] they deform the vehicles because the explosion just, you know, the torques, the vehicles so hard.
[00:11:17] That a lot of times the vehicles, the doors, just like on a car door and a car accident, you hear about the, the fire fighters showing up and the doors don't work anymore.
[00:11:27] Well, the same thing happens in armored vehicles, except for you can't break the windows either because they're both approved.
[00:11:33] And then they catch on fire. It's a, it's a nightmare.
[00:11:38] Um, but yeah, so as I read through some of those things, man, it was, um, tough to read and definitely, I appreciate you sharing those stories of what you've seen up close and personal with everyone.
[00:11:58] So that everyone can kind of understand or at least not understand, but at least get some,
[00:12:03] some idea of the sacrifices that are made by our, our service members across the board.
[00:12:13] Well, thank you.
[00:12:16] Now, you're road to, you know, writing this book and actually the road of your life, the journey that you've been through has been,
[00:12:28] it's, I mean, um, it's very interesting. I'll just put it that way. It's very interesting.
[00:12:34] And, uh, I can imagine, um, that as you, as you started writing this book, you know, you're, you're thinking yourself, well,
[00:12:45] what's this stuff going to sound like? Now that you're writing it, you know, in the past, going back whatever 30, 40, 50 years in the past of when you were a kid,
[00:12:54] I talk a lot on this podcast about the dumb things I did as a kid.
[00:12:59] I, I haven't had the courage yet to document them as you have done here.
[00:13:05] And so, uh, I think it's interesting, but it's, but, but I think what's powerful about it is,
[00:13:12] look, anybody that didn't do dumb things when they were a kid, you know, they don't exist, I don't think, right?
[00:13:19] And, and so, but seeing, you know, how you grew and how you learned over those years, it's pretty, it's pretty impressive.
[00:13:27] Well, I, you know, I didn't know what the book was going to be called or exactly what it was going to be when I started.
[00:13:34] I knew I wanted, I was encouraged to, um, document, um, the, um, military support,
[00:13:46] because I've been all over the world and been, you know, engaged with our military for so long and been to so many places and everything,
[00:13:56] uh, some, some folks, agent and, and whatnot, and courage me to consider writing some of that down.
[00:14:05] And, and I eventually kind of accepted, well, them, you know, I, I could probably try to do that.
[00:14:13] But then I thought, you know, well, how did I get to that point where I'm doing all this stuff?
[00:14:18] What was, what were the steps along the way that kind of led to it?
[00:14:22] And, and, and, I couldn't have predicted that I would go all the way back before birth, you know,
[00:14:27] and, and, and, and, to, to getting to that, but I ended up doing that because I, I started to trace my own family history.
[00:14:34] And some of the, some of the things that had happened along the way for my own family, especially on my father's side of the family, the Italian side of the family.
[00:14:44] And, uh, coming over, you know, through Ellis Island and all of that settling in Chicago.
[00:14:50] And, uh, is this veto Sanisi?
[00:14:52] Is this veto Sanisi?
[00:14:53] Is this veto Sanisi?
[00:14:54] Yeah.
[00:14:55] My great grandfather.
[00:14:56] And, uh, the, the stories, and I didn't know, you know, I only knew so much.
[00:15:01] So I, I actually started researching my own family and it became kind of fascinating and interesting to me to kind of retrace those steps and learn about things.
[00:15:11] Um, and I wanted to, I wanted to set that up because my grandfather, my father's father was, uh, when I was younger, he, he had, uh, you know, he had served in World War I.
[00:15:23] And I remember as a kid seeing all the stuff in the basement, you know, but the kind of scary grandfather would never talk about any of that stuff or anything like that.
[00:15:34] And I was a little bit frightened from my big Italian gangster like grandfather.
[00:15:40] And it was later after he passed away and things that I talked to his sons, my dad a little bit more about him and learned about him.
[00:15:48] And he had three sons, they were all in the service to in World War II, uh, and my dad served in the Navy during Korea.
[00:15:56] And I just started thinking, okay, well, these, these individuals do play a part in my journey to this service work because, as I've gotten more into the service work, I've explored the veterans of my own family, a lot deeper.
[00:16:13] And things that I never knew as a kid or never even thought about considered, you know, by the time I was old enough to kind of absorb anything that they had done during their service years.
[00:16:26] They were well beyond those years, you know, my uncle was a banker and my other uncle, World War II uncle was a writer, living in Texas, and my dad was a film editor, and they, none of them ever talked about anything in the service.
[00:16:41] So I started wanting to know a lot more.
[00:16:44] And what, when was that? When did you start, was that when you started researching this book or this is just in your, no, no, it was, when he's, or 30, something like that?
[00:16:52] Well, it was actually, uh, probably when I really started to ramp up on supporting our veterans and that, I wanted to know more about the veterans and my own family.
[00:17:02] And both my son, the family and my wife, side of the family. So they play an important part in setting the stage for the book. And, and then I realize the book is a journey.
[00:17:13] It's a, it's a journey from this kind of self-focused, Gary focused on, you know, my theater company, my acting thing and wanting to become, you know, successful in all that.
[00:17:27] To this broader focus of service to others. And so that's why the subtitles are journey from self-to-service.
[00:17:36] You, you, you know, you're mentioning what your, what your, uncles did and your dad, but like, during World War II, going back to the book, during World War II,
[00:17:47] Uncle Jack flew 30 missions as a navigator and a B-17 bomber over Europe. While Uncle Jerry had just 18 years old served on a US Navy ship.
[00:17:54] In the Pacific arriving just after the battle for Okinawa ended in mid June 1945.
[00:18:00] I mean, first of all, being on a B-17 bomber over Europe, your chances of survival are not good.
[00:18:07] Not good. Not good.
[00:18:09] Yeah, we lost half the half the soldiers, half the service members were, that were lost in World War II were lost in the air.
[00:18:17] You know, a lot of times when I meet people that aren't in the military, they say, tell me, I grew up in a military family.
[00:18:22] Did you get that feeling or what is it so far in the past for your uncles and stuff that one was a banker and your dad was in film and they just didn't talk about it or did you feel it?
[00:18:32] No, I didn't. No, they never talked about it. I, I, I so wish my grandfather would have, you know, I would have been aware enough at the time to talk to him about World War I.
[00:18:43] And he drove an ambulance and during the battle of the Argonne in World War I, that's, that's, we've never lost as many service members in one battle as that.
[00:18:54] It was devastating and he was faring our wounded back and, you know, away from the front lines back to the rear and then go back again.
[00:19:02] And Germans would try to take out the ambulances and it was very dangerous.
[00:19:07] He survived that. He was like 17 years old, away was doing that. And yet I never talked to him about it.
[00:19:14] But I do remember trunks in the basement with stuff, you know, from World War I.
[00:19:20] Thankfully, the uncle that I mentioned who was in the Pacific, who became a writer and lived in Texas, he wrote about his dad.
[00:19:32] And he interviewed his dad and he tried to get his dad to talk about it. And he said he wouldn't talk much, but he shared certain things.
[00:19:39] And some of those things I got from my uncles writing that I'd put in the book about my grandfather.
[00:19:44] Yeah, I always have to make this disclaimer that although I read big chunks of the book, I don't read the whole book here.
[00:19:51] And so to get all those little details, you, you need to get the book. So go get the book.
[00:19:59] I mean, I mean, these are turbulent times, kind of the beginning of the turbulent times.
[00:20:06] Candidates killed, uh, 1964.
[00:20:12] Back to the book. For Christmas, I received my first guitar acoustic. I had no idea how to play, but I loved it.
[00:20:21] The Beach Boys had become my favorite band. My first record was Beach Boys concert, a live record, and as the songs, spawn on my record player.
[00:20:31] I love to hear the crowd cheering in the background. So you go out and you make your own band called the Beach Dweller's.
[00:20:40] Which I guess in Chicago, you got Beach in Chicago, I guess.
[00:20:43] Right, I like Michigan. Right.
[00:20:47] And I look like you focused on that pretty well, but on the other hand, we got this. Every report card, I brought home stunk.
[00:20:54] This has been going on since first grade reading and writing didn't come easy to me.
[00:21:00] Uh, you say, my future lay in either music or sports.
[00:21:04] I could have tossed a coin. I loved sports in Highland Park. I played baseball, he's spring, winters.
[00:21:10] They'd freeze over the parking lot of my school when we played hockey as a huge black hoax fan.
[00:21:15] And Bobby Hollis, my favorite player. I also love football. And moving for the bears.
[00:21:19] The bears.
[00:21:21] We organized a local football league for kids and played each other on the weekends.
[00:21:25] I was a fast runner, always the quarterback or one of the halfbacks.
[00:21:29] I usually got the kickoff return guy running for a touchdown.
[00:21:33] Every chance I got. I played football through eighth grade in Glen Allen, but I was an undisciplined kid.
[00:21:41] I never showed up for practice. So I never knew any of the plays. The coaches would just put me in to return the kickoff because of my speed.
[00:21:47] And nine times out of ten, I'd get a touchdown.
[00:21:49] When I reach high school at Glen Bard West in 1969, I tried out for the team, but realized every kid was twice as motivated as me.
[00:21:57] Twice as big and twice as big. So that end to my football career.
[00:22:02] That left me music and dreams of being a rock star.
[00:22:06] And I figured musicians all needed to be hard part of yours. Right? Woodstock, rock and roll.
[00:22:12] My parents like to entertain and kept a bar stock with various bottles of liquor.
[00:22:17] At the end of eighth grade, I decided to experiment. I had a metal box with a latch on it.
[00:22:21] So I gathered empty peanut butter jars with lids, cleaned them out, and stashed them in my box.
[00:22:26] When no one was looking, I sneaked small amounts of liquor out of my parents' bar.
[00:22:30] Whiskey into one jar, vodka into another.
[00:22:32] Vermouth into another.
[00:22:34] Always just a bit, so mom and dad didn't notice.
[00:22:37] One Saturday night, I decided it was time.
[00:22:40] Randy and I shared a bedroom, but there was a small attic room connected to our room.
[00:22:45] That was private where we kept some of my music gear.
[00:22:48] When Randy was asleep, I went to the attic room with my metal box full of jars.
[00:22:52] Shut the door behind me and taste it. The vodka, the whiskey, the vermouth, the gin, the wine.
[00:22:58] Next thing I knew I was plastered, sick as a dog, puking into my metal case.
[00:23:03] Everything I'd eaten for the past month.
[00:23:06] My head spun, and I wanted to lie down somewhere, but thought I'd be better to clean out the box.
[00:23:11] So no one would find out what I'd been up to. I bobbed and weaved down the front stairs, heard the TV on the other room.
[00:23:16] Fidget the coast was clear, crept into the kitchen, started dumping the vomit into the kitchen sink.
[00:23:20] I was dizzy and nauseous, and as I looked up, suddenly my mother was standing next to me.
[00:23:25] Her arm is folded. She looked puzzled and concerned and angry at the same time.
[00:23:29] Oh, hello, mother, I said in my sugary voice, I'm just cleaning out my box. It was a little messy. How are you this evening?
[00:23:35] The room started to go dark and I realized I was passing out.
[00:23:39] Next thing I knew, mom and dad were wiping off my mouth, putting me to bed.
[00:23:42] I was grounded for a week and no more box. You'd think I would have learned my lesson, but that was just the start for me.
[00:23:48] The times were changing and the drug culture began to rise.
[00:23:52] America was exploding in a million different directions just as I entered my teen years, and it felt like the entire country couldn't contain itself.
[00:24:01] We were at the peak of the Vietnam War, and it was going badly.
[00:24:04] We found ourselves in the age of revolution.
[00:24:09] Everybody was anti-authority, anti-establishment. I heard about Woodstock, the sexual revolution.
[00:24:17] The pop was everywhere, and by the end of eighth grade, although I was still on the football team, I felt copied between the athletes and the pot smokers.
[00:24:26] For a couple of years, I went crazy.
[00:24:30] So there you go. Get some. Young Gary.
[00:24:36] Yeah. So that's, so 1969, you're in eighth grade?
[00:24:41] Yeah. Eighth grade, and that was my freshman year as well. So you finished eighth grade?
[00:24:47] You were a little too young to be worried about the draft at that point.
[00:24:50] Or were you thinking about it? No.
[00:24:52] I'm worried about it.
[00:24:53] But this was the height of the Vietnam War.
[00:24:56] Oh yeah.
[00:24:57] For the eighth, 1969, and 70. So there was all the stuff was going on.
[00:25:02] All the protesting and all the riots on college campuses and all of that was going on.
[00:25:09] Yet I was still kind of on the young side.
[00:25:13] I do remember, and I write about in this book, they would have things like more atoriums and the more atoriums were on the high school campuses and college campuses and people would just not go to class and they'd sit around and somebody would speak and they'd wear black arm bands and somebody had a guitar and playing.
[00:25:33] And you were protesting the war.
[00:25:36] So I thought as a freshman, and if you told them you were doing that, you told your teacher you were doing that.
[00:25:45] You would be excused. They would give you a break.
[00:25:48] So I thought, well that's a good thing to do.
[00:25:51] I'm going to get out of class.
[00:25:53] That was a big political motivation.
[00:25:55] I went, my big political motivation was getting out of class and maybe there's some girls at the protest.
[00:26:01] So I went and sat there. I couldn't tell you what was said or anything like that.
[00:26:06] I was just out of class and I didn't have to go.
[00:26:09] In fact, I looked at the yearbook from those years and they had a picture of one of those protests.
[00:26:18] Everybody sitting around and guitars, playing and protesting the war with black arm bands.
[00:26:23] I'm probably in the crowd somewhere there. I couldn't find myself.
[00:26:27] But you weren't thinking about the draft really?
[00:26:29] No. No.
[00:26:32] I mean, I imagine when your eighth grade is like a 13, 14 years old.
[00:26:37] Three or four years away seems like the rest of the time it's like an eternity.
[00:26:42] Like you're never going to get there. So why would I be worried about what's going to happen in four years?
[00:26:45] I wasn't even though even the Vietnam war was on television all the time.
[00:26:49] It was on every night that the casualty reports were on all the time.
[00:26:55] I was happening. My parents were fearful that I was going to get drafted because they were drafted and everybody.
[00:27:04] And especially the kids who were failing in school.
[00:27:08] And that was me.
[00:27:09] Where I was here.
[00:27:10] And I thought, my mom was terribly frightened that I would probably get plucked out of school because I was so bad and go have to go to war or something.
[00:27:22] So I wasn't, you know, it was only later that I really started to analyze those years and how oblivious I was to what was happening to young people just slightly older than I was in the jungles of Vietnam.
[00:27:42] And then it hit me. You know, a lot of sort of guilt and shame for how oblivious I had been and how I wasn't really paying attention.
[00:27:53] So that I think was galvanizing in some way in terms of taking on, taking action, taking on the charge to help our veterans.
[00:28:07] Because I go back to the Vietnam War days. I graduated.
[00:28:14] My class was in 1973 and that was the end of the draft that year.
[00:28:21] So I remember having a register for a selective service, but the draft was over.
[00:28:27] So my parents, you know, breathes, I relieved and I wasn't going to get drafted.
[00:28:34] But it was only just a few years later that, you know, after I met the woman who would become my wife whose two brothers served in Vietnam and her sister joined the army met a Vietnam veteran who served in the army for 22 years.
[00:28:52] It was after I met them that things started to change for me. I started to really look back at those years and go, you know, I should have been more.
[00:29:03] Pay attention more to what was going on in the country with our service members. But I was a kid.
[00:29:10] Yeah, that's it's interesting too that you know, because even though you said you didn't feel like you were from a military family, even though you absolutely were from a military family.
[00:29:22] It's interesting that, you know, your parents.
[00:29:27] They're you didn't connect those dots, right? Like, hey, my uncle Jack was in the army he was using the army air core. He flew B-17s and a lot of those, you know, a lot of his friends must have died and wait a second. What's going on now? It's just.
[00:29:41] And never thought about it.
[00:29:43] Exactly. Exactly.
[00:29:45] But because they never talked about it.
[00:29:47] My uncle was a banker. He wasn't a world where two heroes, you know, until later.
[00:29:53] I really spent a lot of time in my uncle Jack and then he and then he talked and he would talk about his experiences a lot.
[00:30:01] I took him to the National War where two of museum.
[00:30:04] We recorded him on video where he's preserved at the World War II museum. I took him to Memorial Day in DC in this and that.
[00:30:14] I spent a lot of time with my uncle Jack in the last 10, 12 years of his life. And he talked a lot about his, his war days up to a point.
[00:30:24] And then then you knew like he wouldn't go beyond this place. He would never let him go into an emotional place.
[00:30:32] Never let himself go there.
[00:30:35] Because I could tell he was, he was getting close to something like this.
[00:30:39] I saw a lot of bad stuff. I mean, his own plane barely made it over the English channel one time. One engine and they were about 500 feet off the channel.
[00:30:49] And they crashed on the, you know, the in Britain and they all survived.
[00:30:57] But he saw he saw a lot of planes go down around him in flames and just crash in everywhere.
[00:31:05] And some bad stuff. He saw a lot of bad stuff up there. But he went up mission after mission after mission, you know, 30 missions survived.
[00:31:17] There's one story in the book where he swaps. He was an navigator and he swaps with a buddy.
[00:31:24] The buddy said, hey, you know, can you take this, this mission with my crew. I got to go do something.
[00:31:30] And I don't know for whatever reason they swam. And he was with a guy named Don Casey and so, and he was an navigator as well. So my uncle Jack said, sure, you go with this mission.
[00:31:44] Sure enough, plane gets shot down.
[00:31:47] All the guys, a band in ship and Don Casey gets captured and spends 18 months in a German prison camp until he escapes.
[00:31:57] And they were best friends and, you know, for their whole life. And Don always took the opportunity to remind me.
[00:32:08] I like he was a switch mission.
[00:32:11] You know, it was just as fate would have.
[00:32:15] Yeah. Well, it's interesting that with all that going on, how it just shows you how easy it is for, especially in America.
[00:32:23] So easy to disconnect from the realities of war, right? And for people to be, you know, going to Starbucks and drinking a coffee when there's guys that are fighting right right at this moment in time.
[00:32:36] And it's so easy in this country to be disconnected from that.
[00:32:39] It's one of the, it's one of the things, one of the things I like about your book is you bring that connection back together to explain to the people in the civilian world that, hey, just kind of FYI.
[00:32:50] This stuff's going on. You know, you know, jacco, that's, that's one of the ways I found that I can be useful. You know, I've got a public platform as an actor.
[00:33:05] There's, there's a, you know, a forum with which I can talk to people and tell them things that I've seen and whatnot.
[00:33:14] And I really want to, to do something to help. So I found the way that I can do that is to try to bridge that disconnect between the average citizen who doesn't may not have a military person in their family or know anybody who's even serving in the military.
[00:33:30] Try to help them understand what our military does.
[00:33:33] How exceptional they are, the sacrifices that are made, all those things. I just found that that was the way that I could help.
[00:33:40] Yeah, and it's huge, it's huge.
[00:33:43] And I'm glad that you ended up in this very nice place, but I'm going to take it right back to your juvenile delinquent child.
[00:33:50] You know, it is entertaining.
[00:33:54] I close out the last part saying for a couple of years, I went crazy and you just kind of, you know, you do and you talk about some of the crazy stuff you were doing.
[00:34:04] One of your buddies had a, some kind of a music store. You went in there. You know, he had the key. You guys stole some speakers.
[00:34:10] You brought him back to your house. I mean, just, and anyway, you described this. You say, I'd become a thief, an allire and a near-failing student and as a 14 year old, I couldn't care less about any of it.
[00:34:23] And that's kind of the setup for this next chapter that you roll into, which is, interestingly, it's called baptism.
[00:34:33] I'm going to, I'm going to go to the book here a little bit. I was a soft form played lead guitar in a new band and me the bass player and the drummer all slouched against the wall in the glass hall.
[00:34:45] Part of your school. We called ourselves half day road after stretch of highway that divided our two northern Chicago suburbs, Highland Park and Highwood.
[00:34:56] We thought we were the real stuff more than anything. I just wanted to fit in at this new school and jam with my new band.
[00:35:02] But the life I hoped for was all about the change. She walks straight toward us. A teacher named it Mrs. Barbara Patterson.
[00:35:11] She was a powerhouse of a gal, a tornado of a woman, blonde hair, set jaw, the power of poetry running through her veins. She slowed when she neared us stopped and gave a diminutive sniff.
[00:35:23] Our clothes were cool and raggy and my band makes an eye all wore scruffy jackets. I'd let my hair grow crazy and curly. It sprung out horizontally in a wild mass of thicket.
[00:35:34] Mrs. Patterson was the theater teacher. She looked at us and said, I'm directing west side story for the spring play. You guys look like you play gang members.
[00:35:45] Coming on edition for the play. It sounded like more of a dare than a request than she was often walking fast on a way down the hall. We shrugged and laughed at all in one of us scoffed. Who cares about please?
[00:35:56] You kind of end up just kind of doing it. I would say just out of, hey, we got nothing better to do. We'll go in and maybe you had some curiosity in the back of your head, but you sign up to do an audition.
[00:36:09] And they post the, I don't know what's it called. What's it called? What did they post the casting? The casting.
[00:36:19] So here we go. Next morning in the hallway near the drama department, a list was posted. Everyone crowded to look me too. I scan down the list way way down.
[00:36:31] I kept scanning but didn't recognize any of the names well who cares. I thought but kept reading my eyes kept scanning down scanning down toward the very end.
[00:36:40] When I saw this a soft light came on inside my soul.
[00:36:43] Peppy. Is that right. Peppy. Peppy.
[00:36:47] To be played by Gary Sinis.
[00:36:52] How many lines does Peppy have? Peppy has a couple of words. Okay. Yeah. No couple of words. I don't even call him lines. Okay. Well, that's something.
[00:37:01] But I was in the gang. I was, you know, it's the sharks and that sharks and that. Everybody knows West Side story.
[00:37:06] And I was one of the sharks. So you go on here. I'd come to high school and fall into a pattern of smoking dope, skipping class, smoking more dope.
[00:37:15] All the while trying to find friends just another kid caught up in the American craziness. There wasn't much going. There wasn't much to hold us together. And this is this I could go off tan generally on this forever.
[00:37:26] But you're talking about basically about America. There wasn't much to hold us together. Culture. That was changing morals. What were they? This was 1971 religion.
[00:37:37] My mom, my family stopped going to church when I was a little kid and we weren't raised with any sort of faith. Nothing to provide an anchor as a family as a nation. These were tough times.
[00:37:47] Most days I was floating on the open sea every evening images of the Vietnam war splashed across the TV screens.
[00:37:55] So yeah, it's kind of wild times. And you're at a party and there's some guy and it's it's I actually picked up on this immediately when I read it.
[00:38:07] You describe some guy that's in there and some guy at the party and you how do you describe it's actually kind of funny.
[00:38:15] He looks like he's older like someone's older brother and he wants to buy some pop from you and you sell it to him and as it turns out big surprise he's a cop.
[00:38:30] You get a call from one of your friends dude the police rated the party.
[00:38:34] I'm in with a real show of forest rounder everybody up what are you talking about. I said then it clicked the dog catcher wasn't lying about what he did for a living it was just slang he worked for the city alright police department and I'd sold pot to the dog catcher.
[00:38:45] I was the source of weed yeah my friend my friends voice dropped on the phone and they're looking for you.
[00:38:53] And you know what this is I mean pot is a crime I mean 10 years ago in America I mean we live in California maybe wasn't that big of a crime and but that you know it was a crime certainly in 1971.
[00:39:06] Oh yeah I mean that could be jail time without it that right yeah it was there there was a whole juvenile department at the police headquarters at the police station.
[00:39:21] But just to go after young kids that were abusing themselves with drugs and the head of that was a guy that I'm right about in here and that they called officer rash.
[00:39:36] And officer rash led this raid and the dog catcher said well the guy who sold me the pot left right before the rate. So but but all these people know who he is so they started asking everybody involved I was so scared.
[00:39:53] Can you imagine that now that this buddy calls me up and he says they've rated the house and they're looking for you and you're the you're the big drug poster you know and so I I ended up getting on a train.
[00:40:07] He had lived in the town Glen Allen the year before and then we moved back to this town Island park and the raid was in Island park so I got on the train and went out to Glen Allen to hide out I was on the land you know.
[00:40:23] Finally I came back and told my parents what happened and we they drove me to the police station and I turned myself in and turn myself in the lights were blaring you know.
[00:40:37] I was just crying and you know I cried and crying but the main thing there is I had just gotten into this play wet side story and I've got some words to deliver.
[00:40:53] I was fearful that they were going to pull me out send me to like a juvenile home or something bus me really bus me and I begged the police officer to let me off the hook because I just discovered this new thing that I think you know is going to change my life and I will and it did.
[00:41:15] I was going to turn everything around for me being in this play and all of a sudden you know I can't say that I didn't smoke pot anymore anything like that but.
[00:41:25] I found this thing that I was good at I was a terrible student as I said and I was struggling all the time and really. I was probably near being kicked out of school at the time at this thing and this incident with the police.
[00:41:41] Was that just a regular public school or was the private this is a regular public school.
[00:41:45] You know big school I mean like 2500 students at the high school so it was pretty big big school but it had a wonderful theater department and this this teacher that I mentioned there was just she changed my whole life.
[00:41:59] Barb Riches are standing in a hallway we've all had moments where something happens or an individual walks into our lives that we didn't see coming. And the course of our lives just changes you know and we go this way and that's what happened there standing in that hallway.
[00:42:17] She sent me right to the theater world and from that moment on I never stopped doing it.
[00:42:24] You guys you do four shows of west side story and the last show you know you obviously get better each time and the fourth show you know you guys crush it and here we go.
[00:42:38] Back to the book the lights came down the audience burst into applause as one of the sharks. I was part of the gang that carried Tony's dead body off stage. We sharks set the body down behind the curtain and Tony came to life again.
[00:42:51] That's just good old Jeff Perry a high school kid who is quickly becoming one of my best friends Jeff gave me a huge hug and I burst into tears.
[00:42:59] And in the glorious pandemonium off stage everybody was hugging and slapping each other on the back with no chance to blow away the snap because it was time for curtain call out in the auditorium the audience continued their applause cheering shouting whistling their congratulations and all the supporting players and chorus members came out on stage and a pack including me.
[00:43:17] And you know the the the ensemble and all the gang members kind of get their applause and then the leads go out the leads took their bows together I still hung far in the back sobbing harder than ever.
[00:43:29] My eyes scrunch tight against the tears then in the midst of all the commotion I felt the hand of my shoulder I opened my eyes.
[00:43:35] It was a hand of Jeff Mill Mill Voynes and I said that right Jeff Mill Voy.
[00:43:41] Jeff the senior Bernardo the shark he reached back grabbed me pulled me up toward the front of the pack where the six leads stood.
[00:43:49] He shouted in my ear to take a bow with all the leads so I did me the sophomore screw up still balling my eyes out.
[00:43:55] I stood out the front of the pack with any audience was still standing still applauding cheering for us.
[00:44:00] I took one long glorious look around trying to wipe my nose with my sleeve and we all bowed again all together and I suddenly realized I'd fallen in love with this new community of students.
[00:44:10] With this new life of theater who's almost too much to take in.
[00:44:14] The entire cast it's seen who I was before the plan what had happened to me during those five weeks.
[00:44:19] Now I had so many new friends it was powerful something had really changed for me.
[00:44:24] I was going forward again. I had been baptized.
[00:44:27] My life of purpose had begun.
[00:44:31] You were crying.
[00:44:34] What what emotion is that?
[00:44:36] Well it was it was it was very because the play was over.
[00:44:42] And I didn't want it to be over. I didn't want it to end. It had changed my life so completely.
[00:44:49] And introduced me to a new community in the school and I just wanted as much of it as I could get.
[00:44:57] And now it was over. The show was over.
[00:45:00] And my heart was kind of broken.
[00:45:03] And so I was sobbing at the end of the thing.
[00:45:08] And the whole cast kind of, you know, on this with my first play I never done it before.
[00:45:14] A lot of the kids have been in plays and part of the theater department.
[00:45:18] They were used to it and this and that.
[00:45:20] But here comes this kid who's just kind of messed up and really struggling.
[00:45:24] Nearly kicked out of school and I discovered this new world and they recognized that.
[00:45:31] And it was really emotional.
[00:45:34] That was really quite quite beautiful.
[00:45:36] And you know people ask me quite often, you know what what are some of the top things you've done in your career.
[00:45:43] And you know the movies and you know what are the pinnacles and everything like that.
[00:45:49] And they're several good good things that I've done.
[00:45:52] But among the top things I always this part with two words is always at the top of the world.
[00:46:00] Because it was the first thing, you know, it's the first moment that I discovered this thing that would be what I would do for my life.
[00:46:09] West Side Story 72 who wants something.
[00:46:13] Well, when I was reading this I was trying to, I'm trying to put what I'm reading into something in my own mind trying to relate it to things that I understand.
[00:46:23] And the other day we did a podcast about a guy, young British guy that was ended up in World War II, but in 1937 he joins the British army.
[00:46:34] And he goes in this little paragraph about how they went out and did parade.
[00:46:39] And they did the entire 20 minute presentation of of course order drill with no commands.
[00:46:46] So it's just silent until the last thing they give one command and everyone else keeps someone command.
[00:46:51] And you can, you know, he talks just a couple sentences about this incredible pride that he had.
[00:46:58] That he was part of this group, right, that had drilled and trained and practiced to get ready for this particular moment.
[00:47:08] And I was thinking, okay, well, that's what you have here, right?
[00:47:11] Well, that guy was a young kid that joined the army because the civilian life didn't have much to offer him as a 16 year old British kid in tough times.
[00:47:20] And here you are, tough times, young kid, and all of a sudden this group is there.
[00:47:26] And you've got to practice and train to get ready to do this presentation.
[00:47:31] Then you do it and the big difference is in this one, you're allowed to kind of express your emotions.
[00:47:36] And on top of that, the crowd can express their emotions.
[00:47:39] And so you get this whole thing and I started realizing, okay, so here's what that's what's going on.
[00:47:45] It's a very similar thing. You got, you became part of this for lack of a better word, but it opens up a whole new category of thinking.
[00:47:54] You became part of this gang, right?
[00:47:56] This gang of friends and just like this guy, red skirt, us became a part of this gang of troopers, soldiers.
[00:48:03] You became a part of this gang.
[00:48:05] The other thing that I realized about it, and it's what you say, you don't use the same words as I use because I spent my entire adult life in the military.
[00:48:14] But you all have a sudden to add a mission.
[00:48:18] You know, you had a mission. Like, oh, here's this thing.
[00:48:21] You know what happened to me when I was 18 years old?
[00:48:23] I joined the Navy.
[00:48:25] And that was became my mission.
[00:48:27] All of a sudden, all the dumb things that I did, which thankfully I haven't had to write about,
[00:48:31] all those dumb things didn't matter anymore.
[00:48:33] And all of a sudden I just had a mission.
[00:48:34] And I was part of now part of a gang.
[00:48:37] And then the more I stayed in the Navy and the further I went along,
[00:48:40] the tighter the gang got and the more focused I got on the mission.
[00:48:44] So I think there's some element of that when someone, you know,
[00:48:49] I always say to veterans when they get out.
[00:48:52] You know, because veterans going to get out, they can get lost.
[00:48:55] They lose their way because they don't have a mission anymore.
[00:48:57] And so I'm always saying, hey, find a new mission, find a new mission, find a new mission.
[00:49:01] But if you just take that to a 1314 year old kid, well 1314 year old kid,
[00:49:05] doesn't have a mission and the interesting thing is a 1314 year old kid.
[00:49:10] They might not have a mission but they have energy and they have talent and they have potential.
[00:49:15] And if you don't harness that stuff and point it somewhere,
[00:49:18] well then guess what it does.
[00:49:19] It steals booze from its parents.
[00:49:21] It steals speakers from its neighbors.
[00:49:23] And you know, that's what it does.
[00:49:25] You take that energy and if you can focus it somewhere, all of a sudden it turns good.
[00:49:29] And I got one more friend of mine named Scott.
[00:49:31] And you know, we were all raised in our kids kind of together.
[00:49:35] And you know, we'd be talking about what what it is, how you make your kid
[00:49:39] not stray off into the bad tendencies that people can go down.
[00:49:45] And he said, you know, I just want my kids to be really into something.
[00:49:49] And I thought that's a good point.
[00:49:51] And whether it's surfing or skateboarding or shooting bows or juditsu or acting,
[00:49:58] whatever it's going to be, if you get that kid with a mission,
[00:50:00] all of a sudden it keeps him on somewhat of a good path.
[00:50:04] Of course, something positive.
[00:50:06] Exactly. Exactly.
[00:50:08] And each one of those things, by the way, you know, you, I mean,
[00:50:11] every one of those things, there's subcultures, you know,
[00:50:14] you can be in a music scene and be a total, you know,
[00:50:16] you can get sucked into drugs, rock and roll, right?
[00:50:19] The acting scene I'm sure can suck you down that path.
[00:50:22] Surfing for sure, there's been, there's plenty of
[00:50:26] sad stories along the path of, of that course, right?
[00:50:31] So anything you can get sidetracked on, especially
[00:50:34] that comes with a little taste of, of fame, right?
[00:50:37] Famine ego.
[00:50:39] So you get on this path, though.
[00:50:42] And you get, you don't do great in school.
[00:50:47] And by the time, here we go back to the book.
[00:50:49] There I was class of 73, the end of my senior year,
[00:50:52] all my friends graduated except me.
[00:50:54] I didn't have enough credits. I'd ace all my theater classes,
[00:50:57] but bombed everything else, so I needed to return
[00:50:59] September for one additional semester.
[00:51:02] I felt like a failure.
[00:51:05] So, you know, that's, that's got a suck.
[00:51:10] I remember that was hard.
[00:51:12] Yeah.
[00:51:13] And then you say this in January 1974, I finally graduated from high school.
[00:51:17] Today if people ask, I just laugh and tell them I was part of the class of
[00:51:21] 1973 and a half. College was not my radar.
[00:51:24] I just wanted to keep doing plays with these pals of mine.
[00:51:27] So with two friends who were still in high school, Rick,
[00:51:31] Argosh, Rick Argosh and Leslie Wilson.
[00:51:35] We gathered some other kids.
[00:51:37] We got to know, we knew and we got read to do a show.
[00:51:40] My parents knew the architects of the unitarian church and
[00:51:43] deer field with a big open space.
[00:51:45] I asked them to ask the church folks if they would let us do a play down there.
[00:51:48] And they said, yes, we started rehearsing a play called
[00:51:50] and miss Reardon drinks a little.
[00:51:53] A complex comedy about three middle-aged sisters who face their problems
[00:51:57] after the death of their mother.
[00:51:59] Since everyone was still in school except me,
[00:52:02] we rehearsed after school hours and into the night.
[00:52:04] It felt great to be working on a play again in our own little space
[00:52:07] and idea that was almost all our own doing.
[00:52:09] During rehearsals, we got ready to print programs.
[00:52:12] And I said, okay, we need to call this out fit something.
[00:52:16] We threw out all kinds of names.
[00:52:18] Rick was reading a Herman Hass novel called Stepan Wolf.
[00:52:21] And while everyone was making suggestions,
[00:52:24] he didn't say anything.
[00:52:25] He just held up his novel and pointed to it and said,
[00:52:29] and I said, great, Rick, let's put that on the program.
[00:52:32] I hadn't read it, but it sounded good.
[00:52:34] Stepan Wolf theater company.
[00:52:36] We needed to print programs.
[00:52:37] Quickly, so Stepan Wolf it was.
[00:52:39] I felt so hopeful about what we were doing.
[00:52:42] Excited to think we're creating a company.
[00:52:45] I pulled a few books together,
[00:52:48] boxed together to buy a rubber stamp with Stepan Wolf and described on it.
[00:52:52] And stamped our name everywhere we could.
[00:52:54] Stamp, stepan Wolf, stamp, stepan Wolf, stamp, stepan Wolf.
[00:52:59] None of us grasped yet.
[00:53:03] What none of us grasped yet was the magnitude of the moment
[00:53:06] when Stepan Wolf was named.
[00:53:08] We couldn't see what we couldn't see was a bigger future
[00:53:11] than any of us could imagine.
[00:53:13] Something that would last for decades and is still going strong today.
[00:53:16] The Stepan Wolf theater company of Chicago.
[00:53:20] Pretty big moment.
[00:53:23] Pretty big branding moment.
[00:53:27] Now did you guys, did you know the band Stepan Wolf you had to?
[00:53:30] Yes, I played some of their songs.
[00:53:32] And you didn't think that was kind of encroaching on their style?
[00:53:38] Like I said, we were looking at the book.
[00:53:40] We weren't thinking about the band. We just looked at the book.
[00:53:44] And it's the book.
[00:53:49] It's like the conflict.
[00:53:53] It's the dichotomy.
[00:53:55] Right?
[00:53:56] dichotomy.
[00:53:57] Yes, the dichotomy.
[00:53:59] People always accuse me and rightfully self
[00:54:01] that being possibly my favorite word.
[00:54:03] Yes, the dichotomy of the kind of spiritual high-minded part of the world.
[00:54:09] Part of you as a human being.
[00:54:12] And then the other part, which is the wolf of the Step, which is on in German,
[00:54:17] does Step in Wolf.
[00:54:21] But that's kind of cool because this is what's kind of talking at humans.
[00:54:25] Right?
[00:54:26] And the thing that when I was saying earlier that, like, I kind of,
[00:54:30] I don't know if we were recording yet, but the thing that I kind of relate,
[00:54:34] like when I was a kid, we all had bands.
[00:54:36] And it was just a hard-corn punk rock.
[00:54:39] And it was everything was kind of DIY.
[00:54:41] That was the mindset.
[00:54:44] The mindset was, we're doing this ourselves.
[00:54:46] Like, oh, the man doesn't want to support us cool.
[00:54:49] We'll do what we're doing this ourselves.
[00:54:50] I still have that attitude.
[00:54:51] I started my own publishing company.
[00:54:52] Why?
[00:54:53] Because I didn't like what my publisher said about something.
[00:54:55] I was like, cool.
[00:54:56] I got this.
[00:54:57] Watch this.
[00:54:58] If I had my own publishing company.
[00:54:59] You know, so that attitude, it's pretty cool that you guys had this attitude of,
[00:55:04] like, you know, you know, you're going to start a theater company.
[00:55:07] We're going to, you know, there you go.
[00:55:08] You make the name and you start getting it out there.
[00:55:10] And it's been around now for however many years, 40, almost 50 years.
[00:55:14] Is that it?
[00:55:15] Well, it's 46 years.
[00:55:17] Yeah.
[00:55:19] Yeah.
[00:55:20] And, you know, we own several buildings that we built from the ground up.
[00:55:24] We're building another one right now.
[00:55:26] It's, it really is a great American dream story where you,
[00:55:32] where you, you start off with just some kids with kind of a passionate desire to do something.
[00:55:38] And it, you know, 46 years later, it's, it's a multi-million-dollar gigantic place.
[00:55:45] And lots of great actors come out of there.
[00:55:48] And it's, you know, when you, we, we walk in.
[00:55:51] I always think about the 18-year-old kid who's in high school who walks in that place.
[00:55:55] And it looks at all the, you know, all the pictures and everything.
[00:56:00] And it's a giant theater. There's three or four theaters in there, restaurants, everything like that.
[00:56:05] And then you can see this picture of 18-year-old kids up there on the wall.
[00:56:10] And they, they're like me, you know, they built this thing.
[00:56:15] You know, it, it really is an inspirational sort of theater story, I think.
[00:56:21] Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not just, it's inspirational theater stories.
[00:56:25] It's an inspirational story of what, what human beings, free human beings are capable of executing if they, if they put their mind to it.
[00:56:35] Yeah. And in the book, I write about a lot of the early years.
[00:56:39] Oh, yeah.
[00:56:40] All the struggles, all the ups and downs, all the crazy stuff that happened.
[00:56:43] I was going to get away with not talking about it.
[00:56:45] I don't know if you want to go through there.
[00:56:48] But you see, here eventually we ended up with a total of nine people for our new step in Wolfen's Bay.
[00:56:52] Nine are sometimes referred to as the original members, even though the name step in Wolfen already been used since 1974.
[00:56:58] The nine original members were John Malkovich, Moira Harris, Nancy Evans, H.E.
[00:57:04] Boccus, is that right?
[00:57:07] Lori Metcalf, Al Wilder, and the three founders, which is Terry Kinney, Jeffrey Perry, and you Gary Sinese.
[00:57:17] And again, just kind of what you were just referring to in the summer of 1976, not everything was so neatly resolved.
[00:57:27] As our ensemble was getting wild, trying to get along and learn to work together in those first months of step in Wolfen, things quickly grew messy and complicated as personal life and theater life intertwined.
[00:57:39] Moira Harris had particularly caught my eye. She was a brilliant young actor, beautiful passionate full of fire.
[00:57:45] I convinced her to date me. We soon fell in love. She was unlike anyone I never met, but I love her.
[00:57:50] Wasn't without its ups and downs. We were all over the place in our relationship to passionate personalities on again,
[00:57:58] off again, in love, out of love, clinging to each other, mad at each other, breaking up, making up.
[00:58:03] You know, I work with business all the time. I believe she had been sold in company.
[00:58:07] And getting grown adult educated human beings to resolve problems is challenging. Having these, you know, whatever, nine, 18, 19, 20, 21 year old kids, all of them, you know, with these fiery personalities and passion, it must have been crazy.
[00:58:32] Not to mention, you mix in, you know, chemicals and whatnot and it gets really crazy.
[00:58:38] You go here at one point Terry decided to leave again. And again, I skip a bunch here.
[00:58:43] Some of the things that you're talking about, about the craziness, so I skip some of that, but that's why people need to get the book.
[00:58:48] At one point Terry decided to leave again, then he wanted back in again. This time we held a meeting to decide if Terry could rejoin.
[00:58:54] We all argued and shouted about standing on our principles and being fully committed.
[00:59:01] Moira was there and we were still dating. Although, out, really, although a relationship was constantly up and down, often on, her father was dying of cancer then and all the chaos and stress, the meeting prompted Moira to boil over her passion turned to fury and she lost it.
[00:59:16] I mean, absolutely lost it, started yelling, how can we not let our friend back in the company? My father is dying and all this is so stupid.
[00:59:22] If we're a company, then we're a company and we should stay together no matter what. She ran out of the basement into the grassy yard of the school yelling at the top of her lungs. We all ran out in the yard after her.
[00:59:31] Her logic made sense. Terry was our friend. Moira's dad was dying. Terry wanted back in the company. Why do we care so passion about something so trivial in life and death issues were all around us?
[00:59:40] Moira was still screaming and crying. We grabbed hold of her and hung on neighbors.
[00:59:44] Poke their head out of doorways. She screamed and screamed and the commotion grew so loud the police showed up. Moira calm down. The police left. We all felt bad for Moira, bad for Terry and we ended the meeting. Of course Terry was back in the company.
[00:59:57] He was a founder in our friend and those early days, the drama wasn't limited to the stage.
[01:00:03] I don't think any of us knew exactly what we were doing. The basement cocoon we've created.
[01:00:08] Gave us a foundation to try anything, do anything, become anything in the freedom of the space allowed us to ultimately to glimpse the world through a wider lens.
[01:00:16] All of us were committed to becoming better at what we were doing. And we often mixed and mingled our directing and performing directing.
[01:00:22] One play acting in the next, sometimes doing both in those early days, we didn't talk about going to Hollywood or New York or into the be in the movies.
[01:00:28] We wanted to do our own thing there in Chicago land.
[01:00:32] And I think by being there in the basement isolated, we developed the chip on our shoulder necessary to survive.
[01:00:39] We felt like we had a lot of emerging talent and we wanted our work to feel real and raw and fearless.
[01:00:44] And we worked hard to keep it deeply rooted in the sheer grit that we had on stage together.
[01:00:49] Whether it was true or not, we needed to somehow believe our work was different, unique, special.
[01:00:53] It would take some time and effort before anyone tried to branch out beyond our city.
[01:00:57] But I think those early days we all felt like we were getting better and stronger and more confident as artists and the sky could be the limit eventually.
[01:01:06] What I know today is that our theater benefited from a larger institution, the United States of America.
[01:01:14] The country of our birth allowed us any number of freedoms that we subconsciously used and enjoyed and benefited from even though we didn't realize it.
[01:01:23] We had freedom of speech at step-in-law.
[01:01:27] We could express our thoughts and ideas about anything in public or private.
[01:01:30] The people around us might disagree or debate or push back.
[01:01:33] But when they thought we were being stupid, when they thought we were being stupid, but by no means were we ever stifled in what we said or thought.
[01:01:40] We exercised freedom to assemble.
[01:01:42] We used this sort of freedom of religion, although nothing we did was religious, which was a freedom all its own.
[01:01:49] No one forces to address a certain way or talk a certain way, because of their beliefs.
[01:01:54] We were free to live or travel anywhere we wanted and we were free to work and he job we wanted so we played in bands and created our own theater and worked in sewers where we found baby raccoons.
[01:02:05] We were free to educate ourselves by any means, possible, formal, apractical, and all this freedom led to something.
[01:02:11] It allowed us to create and innovate. It allowed us to dream big.
[01:02:16] Greatfully it allowed us to be us.
[01:02:20] Awesome.
[01:02:24] The baby raccoons thing. That's a reference to a job that one of our buddies had.
[01:02:30] So because we all worked in those early days and I'm describing there, everyone worked day jobs.
[01:02:38] And then we would go to the theater. We had this little basement of a Catholic school that the Catholics, it was a closed-down Catholic school.
[01:02:47] And they had a basement there that they had used for a teen center.
[01:02:53] And some of the guy at the Chamber of Commerce, I went to the Chamber of Commerce and I said,
[01:02:59] Did you know any place that the kids could make a theater? He said, well sure. Let's go over here. It was basement in the Catholic school.
[01:03:08] And it was perfect. And we built an 88-seat theater in there. So we were in there in this basement.
[01:03:15] But we weren't making any money. We were just trying to get people to come see the shows for whatever.
[01:03:22] And so everybody had day jobs. And the raccoon, the guy worked in the sewer. He was actually kind of a technical guy never did a acting with the company.
[01:03:35] But I worked on the loading dock at Neiman Marcus on pack and boxes and kind of the shipping clerk type stuff.
[01:03:46] And the guy in the house was a man in the house. And he was a school bus driver for a summer camp.
[01:03:55] So I always had to move you to the road.
[01:03:57] I always worry about those children. They turned out all right.
[01:04:02] And everybody had different jobs. We worked in the day.
[01:04:06] And we would go to the theater at night and work into the wee hours in the morning. Everybody go home and get up. Go to their job. Go back to the theater at night. And that's how we did it in those early days.
[01:04:19] And the thing that I think is, when you say like you guys weren't thinking about New York, you weren't thinking about Hollywood. You're just thinking about just doing this thing as to the best of your ability.
[01:04:30] Yeah, I think the founders of the theater, two of the guys, Jeff Perry and Terry Kenny, they met each other at Illinois State University.
[01:04:39] Jeff Perry, as I mentioned, was in West Side Story with me and we became best friends. And then he went to college and I went back to high school.
[01:04:47] And he met Terry Kenny and they became best friends. Another great actor.
[01:04:52] And so the three of us kind of galvanized our plans to start the theater company and to get the theater company going.
[01:05:01] And then that's in Malca, which went to Illinois State University, more of a hair as all those other people that were in that you mentioned there in the original group went to Illinois State.
[01:05:11] And then they all moved up to Highland Park, which is where I found the basement of the Catholic school. And we started doing plays in there.
[01:05:18] We continued to continue on here a little bit forward. But back to the book more. And I got together as a couple a year after the Vietnam War ended in 1975.
[01:05:29] And I started to meet her family members who had served in the US Army.
[01:05:33] Moiris, brother, Arthur Harris was a helicopter pilot having flown 800 combat hours in Vietnam.
[01:05:40] Moiris oldest brother, boy, Makana. Can I say that right? Makana, Mac Harris had been the Vietnam twice. First is Lieutenant and Platoon leader.
[01:05:50] And second is a captain and company commander. He'd received the Silver Star for Galantry and Combat.
[01:05:56] Moiris sister Amy went through ROTC in college and went into the Army herself after graduation. She met married a great guy, Jack Triss, who served as a combat medic with the 101st Airborne Division of Vietnam.
[01:06:09] Jack earned two bronze stars and two purple hearts. When Arthur came home from Vietnam, he withdrew from things.
[01:06:18] And I would see him only on rare occasions when Moiris and I would visit her mother. But from time to time, Mack, Jack and Amy came to visit us in Chicago and would see our plays.
[01:06:29] I didn't spend a ton of time with these veterans at first, but any time we got together, we talked about deeper matters.
[01:06:35] And as I slowly learned more and more about the people who protected our freedoms, I began to look for ways to give back. In 1976 and 1977, Mack came to see a few of our basement plays.
[01:06:46] Whenever he was on lead from assignment as a tactical officer at West Point, I was a pretty ragged kid then with torn up jeans and a t-shirt and lots of hair.
[01:06:56] He was spit-shined, strong as an at strong as Atlas and had a deep powerful voice.
[01:07:02] He, what are your goals? Mack asked me one day after a show. He wasn't grilling me. I sensed kindness within his roughness.
[01:07:10] He was interested in other people's lives and genuinely wanted to know about my goals, but I wasn't sure if he was asking about my goals in life or my designs on his sister.
[01:07:20] Possibly he wanted to know where we wanted to go as a theater company. So I described my goals for stepping in what I wanted to make it as big as possible.
[01:07:28] I had a conversation, a real conversation. This elite former company commander and me, along here, a American 20 year old with big dreams of all things we connected on the subject of leadership.
[01:07:39] In high school at the height of the war, I'd been oblivious to so much of what was happening in Vietnam, yet in the early years of stepping in what I began to form genuine friendships with these military veterans.
[01:07:50] They began to open my eyes so much more. The war, I knew the war hadn't gone well.
[01:07:54] I remembered casualty reports on the news and knew the reports were grim. But now I was meeting actual veterans who lived there, served there, fought there.
[01:08:02] And I knew that many of the Vietnam veterans who returned home hadn't been honored for their service.
[01:08:09] I didn't know what to do yet about this, if anything. But I felt something stirring inside of me.
[01:08:14] I wanted to be honored needed to be granted. Respect was due. A simple thanks needed to be said. It would take a few years before I figured out any sort of next step. But in the meantime, I had a theater and my was family members and I knew something in our country desperately needed to change.
[01:08:30] I would start where I could with step-in-wolf.
[01:08:33] And without being able to articulate it in this way yet, I would begin to do my part to give back.
[01:08:41] So what I really liked about that, not to say that I'm anything close to a guy like Mac, but when I meet people, right?
[01:08:54] Like I'll meet some friend of my daughters or some friend of my sisters, some people that are, whatever.
[01:09:02] They're clearly pretty close to a long-haired Gary Sineason, 1975 or whatever.
[01:09:08] And I can feel that they're looking at me thinking this some stereotypical image of what I'm going to be like.
[01:09:19] And I'll just have a genuine conversation with him.
[01:09:22] Because I am genuinely, oh, what do you do? So where are you heading in life?
[01:09:27] And I think it's the same way you said, hey, this was what you call this elite former company commander.
[01:09:35] And you're having a normal conversation with him. And there's a revelation that, oh, this guy is a person.
[01:09:43] This guy is just an on person that, yeah, he's got spit shine and yeah, he's got a high in tight.
[01:09:48] But he's just a person. And he's going to come and watch our freaking crazy plays in our theater, which, which the plays are kind of crazy.
[01:09:57] Some of them are really crazy. I forget, is the one where everyone's naked on stage yet?
[01:10:02] Does that one happen yet at this point?
[01:10:03] A little bit later. Yeah, that was, yeah, one of the, one of the plays that you guys do is about what are they native proviens?
[01:10:13] Is it proviens? What country?
[01:10:14] Yeah, down in South America, and it's a small, small tribe living, you know, very remote area of the jungle.
[01:10:23] So you guys put 25 actors on stage naked.
[01:10:28] Don't blame it on me. I didn't. That's what the mountain is. So mouth of its decides 25.
[01:10:34] And you know what, actually, when I heard that, I was like, okay, you know what, I get it, you know, that they're trying to, you know, break down some barriers.
[01:10:40] But then what got me was, you go into the details of that. The fact that this place is really small, it's hot.
[01:10:47] And all of a sudden, you're sitting in a small room. And there's only 88 seats. So you got 88 people in the bleachers or whatever in the seats.
[01:10:55] And there's 30 people make it on stage. You're almost outnumbered by sweaty naked people.
[01:11:01] It wasn't the biggest hit. It wasn't the biggest hit of our early day.
[01:11:05] But I can see Mac rolling in there from West Point.
[01:11:08] Go, what is my sister doing?
[01:11:11] Yeah, no, he didn't see that.
[01:11:13] Thank you. Thank you.
[01:11:14] Thank you.
[01:11:16] Thank you.
[01:11:18] So we're going to, I cut you off.
[01:11:22] No, no, no, no.
[01:11:23] That, uh, Mac was an interesting guy. Let me just talk to you about, you know, he passed away in 1983 of cancer.
[01:11:33] And, uh, but he made a very big impression on me.
[01:11:37] And some, you know, I'd never met anyone like him before.
[01:11:40] As I said, I had veterans in my own family, but I never really met, you know, West Point graduate,
[01:11:47] and I was a two-tour Vietnam veteran. In fact, you know, General Vick Vince Brooks.
[01:11:54] I know, I don't know him, but General Mike Scaperotty, right?
[01:11:59] These are two, they're newly retired, but they're friends of mine.
[01:12:04] And I met them. I met Mike when he was a two star, and I met Vince when he was a one star.
[01:12:10] They both went on to earn four stars.
[01:12:13] They retired, their final jobs, Vince's last assignment was running Korea, and Scaperotty's was the Supreme Hall I'd Commander in Europe, right?
[01:12:24] So both of these guys were at West Point when Mac was there.
[01:12:28] And that's why I'm close with them, because when I met them early, early, early on in their star,
[01:12:34] they said they went to West Point. I said, well, did you happen to know Mac Harris?
[01:12:42] And both of them, when I met each of them, their faces lit up, and they started gushing about my brother-in-law.
[01:12:49] And how much of an influence he had on them when he was a tack officer at West Point?
[01:12:55] So he was a really significant guy, and they actually just about four years ago, 2016, they inducted Mac, and this is 30 years after his death, into the 4th, 11th Hall of Fame.
[01:13:11] And you know, Omar Bradley and General Patton, all those kind of people are in the 4th, 11th Hall of Fame.
[01:13:18] Because he revolutionized some things in the Army back in the day, back in 1976, 77, and into, you know, 81, 82, 83 when he was final assignment was at 11th, where he rewrote the leadership manual.
[01:13:35] And that manual still taught today, and principles that he championed, and he came up with.
[01:13:41] And so they thought it was a significant contribution to today's Army, so they put him in the 4th, 11th Hall of Fame.
[01:13:47] And this is the guy who came, and, you know, I was a little bit scared of him and everything, but then I got to know him, and he was a lovely, lovely guy.
[01:13:56] Just unlike anyone I'd ever met, and he made a big impression on me, and I went to his funeral.
[01:14:02] You know, I went to his military funeral.
[01:14:05] When he died in 1983, and that was very, very powerful.
[01:14:12] And so when, you know, 10 years later when I started working with our wounded and getting more involved in everything like that, all those memories of spending time with this particular individual came flooding back and some pretty significant ways.
[01:14:28] And that's why I write about him in the book.
[01:14:31] Well, I mentioned to Echo Charles before we started recording before you got here today.
[01:14:35] So there's, you're going to see some layers today, because Echo likes to talk about layers, the way things are connected.
[01:14:40] We often infuse layers intentionally into things, but we record, we do podcasts about a lot of podcasts about military stuff, and we've covered dozens of military manuals on this podcast.
[01:14:57] And I think podcast 172.
[01:15:00] We cover FM field manual 22.
[01:15:06] You tack 10, which is an earlier edition written in 1951 of leadership for the Army.
[01:15:18] So now we get to go back and I will, I will get the newer version.
[01:15:23] I'll get the one that Mac wrote, and I'll compare the two and see what things, what lessons he brought, because if you think about it, the reason I picked 1951 was, is post World War II.
[01:15:34] So we're talking immediately after World War II.
[01:15:36] These are the guys that sat down and said, hey, here's what we should be teaching.
[01:15:39] So I don't even think they revised it after Korea, but now Macs will be post Vietnam.
[01:15:46] So it'll be an interesting study.
[01:15:50] And you're right, you know, these guys that, and one thing that I've talked about, I talk about a lot of these manuals when we cover them, is, you know, I'll be saying,
[01:16:00] I'll be saying, whoever wrote that, like who wrote that part right there.
[01:16:04] That, that right there is solid.
[01:16:06] That one, and you know, I was used, I sometimes I joke about it being a committee in there that's, there's one guy that's really good and, and, and, and Lieutenant Colonel Pog or Colonel Pog is on the other side saying that we can't say that type of thing.
[01:16:17] That'll be offensive to, you know, whatever.
[01:16:19] There's always that guy and then there's like the combat vet that's putting it straight.
[01:16:24] So now I got a name to go with the combat guy that's putting it straight.
[01:16:28] His name is Mac Harris.
[01:16:30] Yeah, and, you know, just so you know, he got, he was, his last assignment was, was to rewrite the leadership manual at 11 worth.
[01:16:39] That's, and he got a lot of pushback from, from top folks who didn't want to go in the direction that he was taking it.
[01:16:49] And he wanted to tell, he wanted to talk about leadership through very personal stories of his,
[01:16:57] of history.
[01:16:59] And those leadership manuals can be very sort of dry and a little bit technical and just sort of blah, blah, blah.
[01:17:06] And Mac tells stories about little wrong top and pick it's charge and all this stuff in there.
[01:17:12] And he was getting a lot of pushback on people, but he pushed back himself.
[01:17:16] And they, they made, they, you know, publish the leadership manual about a month after he passed away.
[01:17:23] And it was finally published and brought to light and they're still using it today at West Point and throughout the army.
[01:17:32] Yeah, that's awesome.
[01:17:34] Um,
[01:17:36] We're going to jump forward a little bit here.
[01:17:41] Moira and I made a decision to break from step and wolf move out to Los Angeles.
[01:17:46] Your parents had moved out there and live with my parents for a while.
[01:17:49] We decided we also decided to get married.
[01:17:52] I was going to build and jump in a wedding planning with Moira.
[01:17:55] But I could tell something was churning in Moira's mind.
[01:17:59] One day shortly and again, I'm skipping around because I can't read this whole book.
[01:18:02] People got a bite of book.
[01:18:05] One day shortly before the wedding date, Moira told me she planned to fly home to Illinois to spend some time with her mom before coming back for the wedding.
[01:18:12] A couple of days after she landed in Chicago, the phone rang Gary, I don't want to get married.
[01:18:16] Moira said, I'm not coming back.
[01:18:19] What? What? I said she paused and added, I can't do it.
[01:18:23] Wait, invitations have gone out. We've got all the food ordered.
[01:18:26] I know, but I'm not going to do it. I can't. I just can't.
[01:18:32] So that's kind of.
[01:18:36] And you, I mean, that's, uh, that's got to be a big hit.
[01:18:40] Oh, you nervous about it too and enough to be like, oh, I guess we're good.
[01:18:44] Well, because how will we do it?
[01:18:49] There was some, I was more afraid of my mom who was spending the money on the napkins and the tablecloths and things like that than, okay, I accepted it.
[01:18:57] You know, I was disappointed, but then I accepted it and we kind of went our separate ways for about a year and a half.
[01:19:05] And here we are all these years later back together and we put a married many, many years.
[01:19:12] Um, I, I had to talk about this.
[01:19:17] And late summer 1979, I found out that Robert Redford was making a big movie called Ordinary People.
[01:19:24] And I landed in an audition, but didn't get called back.
[01:19:29] How could that be? I was perfect for this role, I thought.
[01:19:32] Mr. Redford didn't know what he was missing.
[01:19:35] The story takes place in Lake Forest, Illinois, right next to Harlan, Highland Park where I grew up.
[01:19:40] This is me. I already know this character inside and out. I should be playing this part.
[01:19:45] I'd heard all these Hollywood urban myths, like the one where Steven Spielberg climbs over the fence at Universal Studios and gets his start in the film industry.
[01:19:53] I thought, hey, I can do that too.
[01:19:56] As soon as he sees me, Mr. Redford will cast me.
[01:20:00] All I need is for him to see me face to face.
[01:20:03] So I sneaked into the Warner Bros. Lot planted myself down in the couch in the office of the casting director Penny Perry and informed the receptionist that I wouldn't leave until I could have an audition with Mr. Redford himself.
[01:20:15] The receptionist asked if I had an appointment.
[01:20:18] I said, no, but explain the story.
[01:20:20] The receptionist went and told Penny and Penny came out and asked in a kind, but very flat voice, Gary, what are you doing?
[01:20:28] I know I wasn't cast, I said, but I grew up in Highland Park.
[01:20:33] I'm perfect for this movie. I need to see Robert Redford.
[01:20:36] She's side. Sorry. You are not going to see Robert Redford.
[01:20:41] Well, I'm not leaving. I'm going to sit right on this couch until I do.
[01:20:45] She crossed her arms. Gary, don't do this.
[01:20:49] If you don't get off the couch, I'm going to have to call security.
[01:20:52] Please, I grew up right there.
[01:20:55] Penny's eyebrows lowered. You auditioned? You didn't get called back.
[01:21:00] Leave the building or you will be taken off the lock.
[01:21:04] I stared back at her. Sign the hang dog.
[01:21:08] Reluctantly, I accepted the fact that Robert Redford would not be meeting Gary Sunnis that afternoon.
[01:21:14] I slowly got up utterly defeated left the office and walked out the front of a gate of the studios.
[01:21:20] I wasn't doing very well in this town, but thought of heading back to Chicago sounded better and better.
[01:21:25] On the way home, I came to the conclusion that had been brewing in me for a while now.
[01:21:29] Hollywood hates me.
[01:21:31] Timothy Hutton landed the park.
[01:21:34] It was his first acting gig since playing a bit role in a movie when he was a kid, plus a few small TV slots on Disney.
[01:21:41] Tim had never lived anywhere close to Highland Park, but for his performance in ordinary people, he ended up winning an Oscar.
[01:21:49] He was only 20 when he won the youngest male actor to win an Academy Award for best supporting actor.
[01:21:55] And I had to admit it.
[01:21:58] He was really good.
[01:22:00] That's how it goes in Hollywood.
[01:22:02] And nope, to this day, I've never met Robert Redford.
[01:22:09] Having decided to Hollywood, hey, did me. I started packing up to go in.
[01:22:12] So that's a great story of rejection.
[01:22:15] Well, that's, that's, you have to learn to live with rejection if you're going to be an actor.
[01:22:22] Because it's, you're going to be rejected more often than accepted.
[01:22:27] There's more actors than parts.
[01:22:31] So how many actors go up for a part?
[01:22:34] For one part, hundreds of actors go up and try to get one part.
[01:22:38] I went to, uh, I was working with a company up in LA, and I went up to speak to them, and they were located around the corner from a casting, whatever place.
[01:22:47] And there's, I, I got show up there, and there's, call it 400 10-year-old kids in this line with their parents.
[01:22:57] And I, you know, I go to talk to the company that I'm talking to.
[01:23:01] And I'm just talking to executives.
[01:23:02] And as a show up there, I'm like, hey, what are we all these people doing here?
[01:23:05] And they said, yeah, there's a casting call.
[01:23:07] For, you know, obviously for some kids, movie or TV showers or a commercial.
[01:23:14] You know, who knows?
[01:23:16] So yeah, I was going to say there's more actors than there are people in LA.
[01:23:21] Oh, I was rejected a lot in the early days of the Hollywood thing.
[01:23:26] You know, that was when I was living in California, more of an I had come out.
[01:23:31] We broke up, but I stayed for a while and kept trying to audition and get parts.
[01:23:37] And whatnot, I was there for about a year and a half.
[01:23:40] Never got anything until I made a decision to leave and go back to Chicago, then I landed one little part.
[01:23:47] I'm not landing.
[01:23:49] The, you know, people always hear what do they call it?
[01:23:54] What's the bias echo?
[01:23:55] I need your help on bias.
[01:23:57] Survival bias?
[01:23:58] Survival bias?
[01:23:59] I always hear about survival shit bias.
[01:24:01] You always hear about the person that went in stormed into the office and I need to audition for this role.
[01:24:06] And then they got it and then everything's cool.
[01:24:08] You don't hear this one.
[01:24:09] We're like, you storm in, you're committed until you're believing in yourself.
[01:24:13] And you stand there and say, no, I need to talk to Robert Redford.
[01:24:16] I'm here.
[01:24:17] Gary Sunnis is in the house.
[01:24:20] And he's like, cool.
[01:24:23] Get out.
[01:24:24] Call it security.
[01:24:26] You don't get to, that's why I like this story because because people think, hey, they think if they do that, whatever that thing is, that it's going to work.
[01:24:35] And it done, it's work.
[01:24:36] That's not always, I got, I remember times where I auditioned for something in Hollywood.
[01:24:43] And I remember, at the end of the audition, the casting director goes to me.
[01:24:48] Where did you study?
[01:24:51] And I said, well, I didn't study.
[01:24:53] My own theater company. I've been working with my own theater company.
[01:24:56] I did acting in high school and, well, don't you think you should study a little bit?
[01:25:01] And I said, well, I have my own theater company.
[01:25:04] We've been doing really well.
[01:25:05] And I mean, I want to, I think you should come back here after you've studied.
[01:25:10] And she was telling me to go get acting lessons, you know, because I wasn't good enough.
[01:25:15] And I never forgot that.
[01:25:18] I never forgot that.
[01:25:19] So I went back to Chicago and did my theater company.
[01:25:22] And I came in the back door.
[01:25:24] I was going to say, don't you think if there's someone in Hollywood?
[01:25:30] That had to pay their little dues.
[01:25:32] They had to go to their acting.
[01:25:34] They had to do all these things.
[01:25:35] And then you show up trying to sneak in the back door that they kind of hold that against you?
[01:25:39] Well, you know, what, what I mean by sneak in the back door is,
[01:25:46] I focused on the theater company and building the theater company in Chicago.
[01:25:51] And doing our work, we eventually moved some of that work to New York City,
[01:25:57] where it became very, very popular.
[01:26:01] So now we're doing shows in New York and all the casting directors and producers and people from Hollywood
[01:26:08] are going to New York and they're seeing our shows.
[01:26:11] And next thing I know, people know who I am.
[01:26:14] I can get the audition if I want.
[01:26:16] And it's just because we were able to show our work, show what we do.
[01:26:20] And so what we do on stage, when you go in an audition, you're sitting in a room like this,
[01:26:25] and you got two guys like that, and they're looking at you and you're emoting,
[01:26:30] you know, or you're doing whatever you're doing.
[01:26:32] Somebody's reading, you know, reading the other part,
[01:26:35] and they're kind of flat, and you're supposed to act with them and all that stuff.
[01:26:39] It's really, you know, are you in a hotel room and you're doing that?
[01:26:43] It's really, it's not, it's no fun.
[01:26:46] I prefer to just go back to Chicago, do our work, and show what we do.
[01:26:52] And that ended up working.
[01:26:54] Yeah, that's the DIY.
[01:26:55] That's the punk rock mentality.
[01:26:57] I know that you are basically too old to be part of that scene,
[01:27:03] but that's pretty punk rock to say, oh, you know what?
[01:27:05] Okay, I'm not going to play your game.
[01:27:07] I'll be over here building an empire.
[01:27:10] What do you got?
[01:27:11] Yeah, you talk about that.
[01:27:15] But just before I left Hollywood, my agent landed me in audition for a bit.
[01:27:18] Part on prime time, evening soap opera, not landing.
[01:27:21] Playing a teenager, doing some underage drinking at a party on the beach.
[01:27:25] Well, at least you were kind of, you know, that wasn't really a stretch.
[01:27:28] My wheelhouse.
[01:27:29] I got the part.
[01:27:31] My character's name was Lee Maddix, and had a couple of lines,
[01:27:35] and a make-out scene with a girl while sitting beside a campfire.
[01:27:38] My very first time acting film.
[01:27:41] Let's just say it wasn't from here to eternity.
[01:27:43] Certainly, not enough to keep me in Los Angeles any longer.
[01:27:46] Step and we'll open the 1980 season in March.
[01:27:51] I moved back with no place to live.
[01:27:53] I just showed up with my bags and said hi, I'm back.
[01:27:55] Well, can I do stepping wolf folded me into the company immediately?
[01:27:58] Although our current season was already underway,
[01:28:00] so I had no former roles to play.
[01:28:02] Then you did some stand-ins when guys were sick or whatever.
[01:28:06] Step and wolf wasn't rolling in dough,
[01:28:09] but we could finally pay our actors a bit.
[01:28:12] That's a big step.
[01:28:14] You did a play called Getting Out.
[01:28:20] I received my first award nomination called The Joseph Jefferson Award.
[01:28:24] The nomination was for Best Supporting Actor and I won.
[01:28:27] I loved Chicago, and Hollywood, I was a dopey disco dancer in the background
[01:28:31] with Luke and Laura.
[01:28:32] I was a loser guy on the beach, and I'd been thrown out the lot
[01:28:35] in Warner Bros.
[01:28:36] and told by a casting director come back when I had some acting lessons.
[01:28:40] I couldn't get ahead no matter how hard I tried, but back in Chicago.
[01:28:43] I went to work as an actor almost right away.
[01:28:45] I got paid for it and won a recognized award all within six months.
[01:28:49] Meanwhile, this is going on.
[01:28:52] I'm more of a finished nursing schooling California.
[01:28:55] Yet she never worked as a nurse. She moved back in Chicago in 1981.
[01:28:58] I rejoined the company, and we formally rekindled our relationship.
[01:29:01] Somewhere in the middle of the revival production of
[01:29:04] BOM of, how do you say this, BOM in Gilliat, BOM in Gilliat, Moyra and I
[01:29:10] took a good look at each other shrugged and said to each other, hey, let's get married.
[01:29:16] So you're back in the game.
[01:29:19] H.E. Baccus.
[01:29:22] Baccus.
[01:29:23] Baccus.
[01:29:24] H.E. Baccus was the artistic director.
[01:29:26] He quits.
[01:29:28] And then it's between you and Malkovitch being suggested to be the AD artistic director.
[01:29:33] You like that echo, Charles?
[01:29:35] Yes.
[01:29:36] He's kind of a Hollywood guy.
[01:29:38] The ensemble voted.
[01:29:41] And you landed the position.
[01:29:43] You thought Malkovitch was relieved.
[01:29:46] And this is where I sense Mac Harris.
[01:29:50] I was convinced.
[01:29:52] So now you're taking over as the artistic director.
[01:29:54] Which, so what does that mean?
[01:29:56] You're picking the place?
[01:29:57] Yeah, run the company.
[01:29:59] Yeah.
[01:29:59] Basically, there's a managing director of deals with the business, the artistic director
[01:30:04] kind of deals with the season and how the players are going to work and the casting and all that kind of stuff.
[01:30:09] Are you allowed to veto some weird directing ideas?
[01:30:13] Yeah.
[01:30:14] Okay.
[01:30:15] So you're kind of the man.
[01:30:16] Decision maker.
[01:30:17] Check.
[01:30:18] So you take over as AD.
[01:30:20] Although, can I say one thing?
[01:30:22] Yeah.
[01:30:23] H.E. Baccus when he was the artistic director.
[01:30:26] We appointed him in the first season.
[01:30:29] Nobody wanted to do it, so we made him do it.
[01:30:32] And H.E.E. was very diplomatic and easy-going.
[01:30:35] Very, you know, he listen to everybody and everything like that.
[01:30:39] So people were kind of used to a little bit more free flowing whatever.
[01:30:44] Let's do this and do that.
[01:30:46] I came in and I had a very different style.
[01:30:49] Yeah.
[01:30:50] It's interesting that even this group, so I'll work with companies where they,
[01:30:57] I've worked with companies where they, they have literally a flat organization, meaning no one's in charge.
[01:31:02] And they're very, they're always very proud of this.
[01:31:05] Doesn't usually work great.
[01:31:07] So I find it interesting that even you guys this group of, you know, crazy actors and actresses
[01:31:13] says, hey, you know what, we need, we need somebody to be in charge of this ship, right?
[01:31:18] It's, it's just very interesting from a leadership perspective.
[01:31:21] Even if the leader is a guy like H.E.E. who's laid back and not really, you know,
[01:31:27] a heavy leadership presence on every decision, but he's, he's at least got some oversight of the deal.
[01:31:33] Yeah, and he's smart and people respect him.
[01:31:36] Yeah, and he's, he's staring at, right?
[01:31:38] Somewhat, even if he's staring at suddenly.
[01:31:40] So in groups we need leaders, just kind of making that point.
[01:31:45] So you roll in, roll in in hot, as they say.
[01:31:49] I was convinced we needed to approach our work more like a business.
[01:31:52] The following Monday I came in with a new set of rules.
[01:31:55] High on the list was all staff members in my 9 a.m. every day.
[01:31:59] I made several other changes and even fired someone.
[01:32:02] Good Lord, the new rules and approach came as a shock to the ensemble, sort of like general patented just walked in.
[01:32:08] While we still maintain our collaborative approach to the direction we wanted to go as company
[01:32:13] as AD I felt it was time to approach things a bit differently to step up our game and allow the artistic director to lead in a new way.
[01:32:21] One rule I implemented was the now infamous at least among the company No Pot rule.
[01:32:26] No Pot could be smoked or eaten anywhere around the theater until after show time.
[01:32:33] No beer either. Everyone fought the No Pot rule as hilarious coming from a guy who openly part took from time to time,
[01:32:38] but for the most part everyone will along with it.
[01:32:40] So what I find interesting about this is I wrote another book here.
[01:32:46] The book is called Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual.
[01:32:49] And what I find interesting about this is I'm often explaining to companies that you as an individual human being.
[01:32:57] If you want to have freedom then you need to have discipline.
[01:33:00] And I explained to companies that as a company as a business.
[01:33:04] If you want to have freedom you have to have discipline.
[01:33:07] You have to become a public standard operating procedures. You have to do things like everyone get to work by night.
[01:33:12] So I find it interesting that you recognize these things.
[01:33:18] You obviously saw that hey we're doing okay right now, but if we're going to really step up our game,
[01:33:23] I'm going to need to impose some discipline here.
[01:33:25] Well yeah, that's what it was.
[01:33:28] At that time, it's people will just show up and we rehearsed our plays.
[01:33:33] We are very serious on stage.
[01:33:35] Yeah, everybody loved acting.
[01:33:37] We loved doing the work on stage.
[01:33:40] But it was a little undisciplined, you know, as a business.
[01:33:46] And we were raising money.
[01:33:49] We were, we had a board of directors.
[01:33:51] We were trying to sell subscriptions now at this point.
[01:33:54] What theater were you guys in at this point?
[01:33:56] Now we had moved from Highland Park into the city of Chicago.
[01:34:00] And so we're in about a hundred and thirty four seed theater that was already built.
[01:34:04] We just rented it.
[01:34:06] And we, you know, we were building our board all that.
[01:34:09] So I wanted to improve all of those things.
[01:34:12] And I really kind of saw us eventually taking one of our shows and moving it to New York to get international
[01:34:19] and national recognition and exposure.
[01:34:22] And I thought that would help us grow in the city of Chicago.
[01:34:26] You know, I had ideas about how I wanted to lead the company.
[01:34:30] And sometimes they worked with everybody.
[01:34:32] Sometimes they didn't work with everybody.
[01:34:34] And we'd have to have to do it out a little better,
[01:34:37] vote on things, you know, and stuff.
[01:34:39] But but eventually, you know, people got used to just the fact that now somebody was making real serious hard decisions
[01:34:46] and change in the way we did.
[01:34:48] Another thing that I talk about, it sounds like there's a little bit of this somewhere.
[01:34:52] And it's actually a bunch of it in this new book I really should try to contact.
[01:34:56] Is when there is a void of leadership, when there's a leadership vacuum.
[01:35:01] People, people can sense it and they kind of know it.
[01:35:04] And if someone steps into that vacuum and starts making decisions, everyone's kind of relieved that it finally happened.
[01:35:09] People are like, okay, cool.
[01:35:10] This guy's actually going to move us and look, it might not be the perfect direction,
[01:35:14] but we're all going to move there together and that's good enough.
[01:35:16] So it sounds like maybe there was some of that as well.
[01:35:19] I bet if you had jumped in there a few years earlier with this, where there was a little bit more ego.
[01:35:24] It might have been resisted more.
[01:35:27] Yeah, you may be right, because we're again, I described in the book that we were all trying to find each other and find ourselves and find our working relationships and people were breaking up.
[01:35:38] And, you know, there's a lot of personal stuff going on.
[01:35:41] It was a little crazy, but once we moved into the Chicago, once that decision was made to move the company away from the suburb.
[01:35:48] Of Highland Park into the city, where there were other theaters and theater community going on and to become a part of that.
[01:35:56] We, you know, we found ourselves needing some a little more discipline and whatnot.
[01:36:01] So I just came in and did it the way and believe me.
[01:36:05] I don't know where that all came from.
[01:36:08] You know, I just, as a kid, I think I was the guy to organize the baseball game in the neighborhood or, you know,
[01:36:16] who guy who come up with a set list for the band or whatever.
[01:36:20] I always sort of led a little bit like that.
[01:36:23] So, but I never led a theater company before.
[01:36:27] I, this was all new.
[01:36:28] I hate to jump into like trying to figure some of this out, but you got 134 seat theater in Chicago.
[01:36:35] How many shows do you do a week?
[01:36:38] We were doing about eight shows a week.
[01:36:40] Oh, so you're doing like a show every night and two on Sunday or something like that or two on Saturday?
[01:36:44] Yeah, Monday was the day off.
[01:36:47] And then, oh, sort of like two on Friday or two on Saturday, two on Sunday, something like that?
[01:36:51] Yeah, stuff like that.
[01:36:52] And are you feeling that thing up?
[01:36:54] No.
[01:36:55] No.
[01:36:56] You know, from time to time.
[01:36:58] Okay.
[01:36:59] I mean, that the play, for example, that you mentioned Balmond Gillia, that ended up being one of our massive hits.
[01:37:05] And it sold out every night.
[01:37:10] So, it all depended on word of mouth and the reviews and all that kind of thing.
[01:37:16] The play that I talked about, uh, sab, the called savages with a naked people and everything that we, we barely had.
[01:37:23] We had more people on stage than we're in the audience for that one.
[01:37:27] So, you are, is, is 125 people, do you need microphones in that size?
[01:37:33] Like on the, on the, on the 134 seats?
[01:37:35] Yeah.
[01:37:36] Sorry.
[01:37:37] 134 seats.
[01:37:38] We had like three rows on the floor.
[01:37:42] And then there was a little balcony that had two rows that went around.
[01:37:45] It was, it was like a three quarter theater.
[01:37:49] Okay.
[01:37:50] So, so you had audience here, audience here and audience here on three sides.
[01:37:55] And then the play was right here in the middle.
[01:37:57] So, no microphones ever could just hear you and it's super raw.
[01:38:01] Yeah.
[01:38:02] And if there's 25 naked people at stage, it's super uncomfortable.
[01:38:05] Yeah.
[01:38:06] It was, it was really raw.
[01:38:07] Yeah.
[01:38:08] And these were all, they were playing Brazilian, you know,
[01:38:17] uh, proving, uh, a tribe.
[01:38:22] And so these were all like most of the people that were in that,
[01:38:27] and playing this, this tribe, like from Northwestern students.
[01:38:32] So, you know, as white as you can be, right?
[01:38:36] So, they used a very tan makeup on their bodies and everything.
[01:38:41] And then after the show, they'd have to go to the showers.
[01:38:44] And there was, there was also a gym with a locker room in this place that we had this theater.
[01:38:50] And so, the entire cast, 25 people going to the showers and hit the showers after the show.
[01:38:57] Luckily, I wasn't in this show.
[01:38:59] I was just the artistic director who made the decision to do it.
[01:39:02] Well, I hate to say this, but you got to take ownership of that.
[01:39:05] And you know, at the guy in charge, you have to own those 25 naked sweaty people on stage.
[01:39:10] I do, but I blame John Malkovich, so.
[01:39:12] All right.
[01:39:13] Well, you all let you have to go to the Goods for a minute.
[01:39:16] It's a fun memory for everybody, you know, a misguided show, but we all get a kick out.
[01:39:21] So, even though you're paying your actors, everyone still have the day jobs at this point.
[01:39:26] Some people did.
[01:39:28] Yeah.
[01:39:29] As artistic director, now I was drawing a little bit of a salary.
[01:39:32] So, so I...
[01:39:33] And that didn't create any hostilities?
[01:39:35] No, no, no.
[01:39:36] Because we were able to pay certain key people that needed to be there all the time.
[01:39:41] The artistic director, the managing director, stage manager, people like that.
[01:39:46] You know, we were able to, you know, our construction folks.
[01:39:49] We were able to, you know, we were building our board.
[01:39:52] We were selling more tickets.
[01:39:54] We were selling subscriptions now.
[01:39:57] Subscription means you can come any night of the week.
[01:40:00] No, a subscription will mean you pay a certain price.
[01:40:04] And you're buying all, let's say we have five plays in a season.
[01:40:08] You're buying all five plays and you get a discount because you're buying all five.
[01:40:12] And it's a subscription to this season.
[01:40:15] Okay.
[01:40:16] And we're making enough money with paying people.
[01:40:19] All right.
[01:40:22] At this point, you know, you delve into a little bit about your talking about Mac.
[01:40:27] And you're talking about the impression that they made on you and we kind of already talked about that now.
[01:40:31] But there's a play that you hear about.
[01:40:35] And it's, it's a play called Tracers, which is written and performed by Vietnam veterans about their experiences before during and after the war.
[01:40:43] A light bulb clicked on.
[01:40:44] This is exactly what I was looking for on February 20, 1981.
[01:40:48] I typed a two page letter to address.
[01:40:51] To the entire Tracers ensemble in care of director John DeFusco.
[01:40:58] The Vietnam vet who conceived the play, co-wrote it and owned the rights to it.
[01:41:02] John DeFusco had never heard of Stepan Wolf, wrote back and said, no, sorry.
[01:41:06] It's a play written in both written and performed by veterans.
[01:41:09] And we fail.
[01:41:10] It should be done always that way.
[01:41:13] So we're not letting anybody out anybody else do it.
[01:41:15] So you waited.
[01:41:17] Time pass. Eventually you invite him to Chicago to see one of your shows.
[01:41:22] Ballman Gillian.
[01:41:23] Okay. So he sees that place is crowded.
[01:41:26] And he sees that there's, what does he say?
[01:41:29] You say gives it guest credibility.
[01:41:31] Yeah. The play was very, very, very powerful.
[01:41:34] So he could see that we were a real thing in a company at that point.
[01:41:38] And he didn't know anything about us at that point.
[01:41:40] And then you guys, you finally, he says you can do it.
[01:41:45] And I'll go to the book here. I talked to my brother Mac about my brother and
[01:41:50] Mom Mac about what he thought about putting on the play.
[01:41:52] He liked the idea and informed me about certain details.
[01:41:54] I need to make sure I got right.
[01:41:55] More than anything, I wanted him to come see the play.
[01:41:59] But in August 1983, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
[01:42:02] Max, manual for the Army was published in October 1983.
[01:42:07] And that same month, his promise and career in life were cut short.
[01:42:12] He passed away at age 39, leaving behind his wife and three year old daughter Katie.
[01:42:20] You talk about going to the funeral, the honor guard, the flag draped coffin, the 21 gun salute.
[01:42:27] I've never forgotten it.
[01:42:28] Mac was laid to rest beside his father in the cemetery across the street from where he grew up.
[01:42:33] We took a Colonel, boy, Makana, Mac Harris, truly lived a life of service to others.
[01:42:38] And his passing only put the cap in my commitment to do the play right.
[01:42:43] I want to trace her, trace her as to honor the Vietnam veterans, such as Mac Harris,
[01:42:48] and help them tell their stories.
[01:42:53] And then as that's happening, October 23, 1983 suicide bomber drives a truck in the building in Bay Route.
[01:43:03] So you've got that happening and you're your desire to really do a great production.
[01:43:12] Gross even stronger.
[01:43:21] You guys, you guys, you guys, you're riding like a boot camp.
[01:43:27] Sort of to get ready for it.
[01:43:29] You guys go out in the field and play little war games to try and get in the minds of the soldiers,
[01:43:38] which I know they do that all the time now.
[01:43:40] It seems when people are doing movies, they always put some kind of a military boot camp thing together for it.
[01:43:45] Have you ever heard of that before?
[01:43:47] Did you just kind of think we need to do it?
[01:43:49] I don't know why because I remember a couple years later, this is 1983 that we're starting to work on this play.
[01:43:58] And remember the movie Platoon, Charlie Sheen, and Affirmative?
[01:44:06] Oliver Stone directed it.
[01:44:08] So that came out about three years later and they did a whole boot camp thing and they lived in the jungle for two weeks and trained these guys and everything like that.
[01:44:16] But three years early, I took this cast out and we did something similar in a way,
[01:44:23] kind of our own little mini version of boot camp and I'm not sure where that idea came from.
[01:44:29] I think it was just the desire to isolate my cast away from everything.
[01:44:35] And somebody I knew was involved with a summer camp in Michigan that was closed down.
[01:44:44] And so this is winter time now that we're rehearsing this play.
[01:44:48] And they said they could arrange for me to go to the closed down summer camp.
[01:44:55] And you know, stay in the in the cabins and I would just have it all of myself and they arranged that.
[01:45:04] So I took my cast to this closed down summer camp in the winter and the snow is like this.
[01:45:11] And we're playing Vietnam guys out in the snow.
[01:45:14] And we had remember Dennis Farina the actor.
[01:45:18] What was he? What would he be? He was in get shorty and he was in the.
[01:45:22] Tell which echo.
[01:45:24] Okay. Yeah. If I remember him.
[01:45:26] Yeah, he was in a lot of stuff. You recognize him.
[01:45:30] He's a Vietnam veteran himself and he was just getting into acting and I cast him as the drill instructor.
[01:45:36] And so I told Dennis, you're going to be the drill instructor up at the summer camp with us.
[01:45:41] And so I want you to wake us up in three in the morning banging on things and make everybody go out and the snow and do push ups.
[01:45:48] So we did we did a whole thing up there for four or five days.
[01:45:52] And just and it was it was.
[01:45:56] It was just so galvanizing for the cast to come together in this isolated play.
[01:46:01] Nobody was around is we're out in the middle of the woods.
[01:46:04] And nobody's around and we were just there doing our sort of military thing together and bonding as a cast.
[01:46:13] I directed the play. I wasn't in it, but I did everything that they were doing.
[01:46:17] And you know, when I was snow and did the whole thing.
[01:46:20] And it was it was an ingredient in the preparation of the play that was really I think just super debondless cast together.
[01:46:29] I was very very committed because of the Vietnam veterans and my own family to telling these stories properly and having seen the original production twice and watching all these Vietnam veterans.
[01:46:45] They were only two of them in that original cast that wrote this play that had done any acting before all the rest of them were veterans.
[01:46:55] And they just came together and over a six month period they exercised their demons into a script and wrote a play based on their experiences in Vietnam.
[01:47:07] What it was like to be there, serve their, come home from there, all that stuff and they put it into this play.
[01:47:15] And I saw it. It was very powerful and they were all veterans performing their own stories.
[01:47:21] And I thought, I got out. I'm going to do my best to live up to that.
[01:47:27] They are entrusting me with their script, you know, and they're not given it to anybody else and they're entrusting me with the script.
[01:47:36] And for them and the Vietnam veterans and my own family, I want to make sure that my cast really gets this thing. Why we're doing it, the importance of it.
[01:47:45] And this is 1983. So the wall was opened, you know, just prior to that, right?
[01:47:53] The Vietnam veteran really hadn't been welcome home. You know, if you, I don't know if you're younger than I am, but in 8485 all of a sudden there were some welcome home parades for the Vietnam veteran.
[01:48:07] The, the parades that they never got when they came home, the welcome home experience that they were denied. And this play,
[01:48:17] Tracers was happening right around the same time. So something was changing. And I remember the cast was so powerful. They really got what I was trying to do.
[01:48:30] We rehearsed the play. We put it on its feet. And I want veterans to come see it. It was very important to me that veterans would come see this show.
[01:48:43] So we made Tuesday night free for veterans. And the word spread throughout the community in Chicago and veterans, especially Vietnam veterans were coming in droves.
[01:48:58] And some nights, some of those Tuesday nights, we would have nothing but veterans almost in the audience.
[01:49:05] At this point, we were in a new theater, another new theater that had 220 seats. And can you imagine that?
[01:49:14] You know, veterans coming with their own family members, and they've never talked about their own experiences.
[01:49:20] And now their family members are watching these actors on stage kind of relive some of the things that they'd gone through. And we would have discussions after the show.
[01:49:29] And people would ask questions and the veterans would talk and they would talk about their experience and their wife is sitting right next to him.
[01:49:36] And she's going, he never said any of this to me before. It was a real cathartic healing thing that happened with Tracers and it changed my life.
[01:49:48] And Galvanized something in me that would take root very deeply in the coming years.
[01:49:55] You say in here about it, after each performance we received a standing ovation, the crowd cheered wildly.
[01:50:07] The reviews came back positive. We decided to provide a free performance which you go into.
[01:50:15] And then you say this today, people often ask me about the highlights of my career. Tracers is one an incredibly meaningful, absolutely extraordinary experience.
[01:50:25] As we did this play, I could see that the veterans felt like something was happening for them.
[01:50:31] They've been stuck in the shadows, discredited and abused or simply ignored. And now they were watching these actors honor them and bring their stories out of the shadows.
[01:50:40] I will always be grateful to John DeFusco and the cast of Tracers for the opportunity to work on this life changing play.
[01:50:47] For the first time I felt like I was giving back by honoring our veterans, by not letting them fall through the cracks, by not letting them feel unappreciated or forgotten.
[01:50:56] I met many Vietnam veterans who attended our free performances.
[01:51:00] And in the early 1990s, I was asked to help raise funds to build the Lansing Lansing Veterans Memorial in Lansing, Illinois.
[01:51:09] Vietnam veteran who had seen Tracers, Tom Lubaerta, Lubaerta, organized the creation of the memorial. It features the names of our fallen heroes on a black granite wall with a giant UH1 Huehe helicopter mounted overhead,
[01:51:23] while a statue of a soldier carrying a wounded comrade to the waiting chopper stands as a reminder to never leave anyone behind.
[01:51:30] I was honored to play some small part in helping Tom and the veterans realize their dream.
[01:51:37] And to say thanks for my involvement, they put my brother-in-law's name on the wall.
[01:51:44] Lieutenant Colonel Boyd Makana Harris, US Army, 19th Infantry Division, a Marical Division, Vietnam.
[01:52:09] When here I'm going to perhaps reveal my own personal lack of culture, which is not very hard to uncover.
[01:52:20] I'm not a very cultured person, right?
[01:52:23] I grew up in the military, I didn't go to museums or go to see plays or whatever.
[01:52:32] When you do this, when you do plays, who? Theatre, right?
[01:52:40] Do you ever feel like, hey, it's gone? Like, you know, we're sitting here talking about Tracers, I want to watch it.
[01:52:47] You know, I want to go watch it. And you know, you can't. Do you feel like that?
[01:52:52] Or is that something that kind of provides some of the magic to it? Because it's something that's fleeting?
[01:52:59] Yeah, it's a living kind of thing that when it's over, it's over.
[01:53:04] Unless you've got something like, you know, cats or something.
[01:53:10] Which is, you know, a fan of the opera that never over.
[01:53:14] And it's fourth decade, and it's continuing on.
[01:53:18] You know, that's the thing about theater.
[01:53:22] You know, sometimes I've been in things that were over and then restarted again, and then we did it again, and then we did it again.
[01:53:29] And, you know, because there was more blood to suck out of it.
[01:53:35] But it usually was because it was something really positive, something really good, something creative, and something that we wanted to keep alive a little bit more.
[01:53:45] The grapes of wrath was kind of like that. When we put the grapes of wrath on stage, we had 650 page book, and we adapted it for the stage, and we put it on stage in Chicago and 88, then we put it back up again.
[01:53:58] We took it to La Jolla, California, and London in 89, and then we moved it to Broadway in 1990, and at one, one, the Tony Award.
[01:54:07] That was an ongoing sort of, we kept working on it and kept refining it, kept making it better and everything.
[01:54:14] Sometimes you get those kind of projects that have a big life.
[01:54:20] But generally, when you're doing a season of plays, you're doing five plays, you know, you wrap it up after five weeks, and it's done. You go on to the next play.
[01:54:30] I just did these live gigs. I did six of them.
[01:54:35] And each one of them was different. So, yeah, each one of them was different. Like I would, as a matter of fact, the one I did, and I was writing them right before I'd do them.
[01:54:47] And it was interesting because like when we do the podcast, right, it's recorded. It's there for, for all practical purposes.
[01:54:56] It's going to be there for a long time, right? It's on the interwebs. Those, those live gigs were one shot, and that made it very interesting for me, because I knew that I was just going to do this one time.
[01:55:15] The other thing is I got the feeling of what it was like to have a bunch of people sitting right there, because in the podcast, right?
[01:55:23] It's just echo sitting there or whoever the guest is sitting there and we're talking about something, but you forget that there's a million people out there, right?
[01:55:30] Where you don't forget it, but it's not, it's different.
[01:55:33] Right. The impact of having these people, you know, having people sitting there with you in the room is there's a little, I started thinking about it.
[01:55:44] But as you were describing this, I'm like, oh, that's, that's that thing. That's why, because let's face it. If you look at it from a pragmatic perspective, go to a movie, right?
[01:55:56] From a pragmatic perspective, hey, you don't need to get a bunch of human beings on a weird stage somewhere and do all these lights and have them try and remember there are little lines.
[01:56:05] No, you go and see a movie, but there's a reason why the theater still exists, and that's because there's this, there's this thing of going live.
[01:56:14] It's same thing with seeing a live rock concert, right? Hey, why not just watch a DVD of the band playing their hits, right?
[01:56:24] You could say that that's a pragmatic solution, right? From, you know, from just a practical sense, oh, I'll just put on the DVD.
[01:56:33] Go into see a fight. Hey, go into a see a fight. You see, you get a much better view when you're sitting at home on your 87 inch flat screen television.
[01:56:44] And you can record it. And you can, you can rewind it, right? You can replay it, but when you're there in the Coliseum, there's something going on.
[01:56:55] So I guess that's what I was trying to figure out if you ever felt like, oh, hold on a second, how do we capture this? And I guess part of the magic is that you can't fully capture it. You have to do it live from night tonight.
[01:57:11] It's going to change too. I mean, the blueprint is the same, but because the audience is reacting differently from night to night, the actors are just too.
[01:57:22] And you discover things along the way. The play is never the same at the end of the run as it is at the beginning of the run, because it evolves.
[01:57:31] Once you factor in the audience and their participation with you and the interaction that they have with you, while they're watching the play, things evolve. You learn things along the way, things change.
[01:57:43] I remember we recorded, we did a play, me and Malkovitch called True West.
[01:57:51] And the two of us played brothers and it was a long run. And we were off Broadway. It was the first thing we did in New York and the thing that kind of put us sort of on a national map.
[01:58:04] And that play evolved quite a bit. We were improvising, we were changing things. This was written by Sam Shepherd.
[01:58:13] And it very, very well written play. A lot of people have done it. But by the end of the run for us, you know, it had gone into a whole other thing.
[01:58:24] And it was simply because John and I are the kinds of actors that are going to give and take and bounce around. He's going to do something different from night to night.
[01:58:32] So I'll react differently or vice versa or whatever. And therefore, you know, if it works, you keep it. And so that the play evolves as time goes on.
[01:58:43] It's really a neat experience live life theater performed. But it's also endurance. You know, it's, you know, eight shows a week. If you're doing a play like True West, which is two brothers fighting on stage, beating each other up, you know, going crazy, screaming and yelling blah, blah, blah, blah.
[01:59:01] Night after night after night, you know, it's an endurance test. I couldn't do that particular thing as I'm 64 now. You know, I'd like the, I'd play the psychiatrist.
[01:59:15] I said, sit and ask questions in the chair, you know.
[01:59:19] I had this weird. So again, I'm only just diving into this a little bit because I have an actual professional here.
[01:59:28] I was doing these live gigs. And as I was going to do them. So I know a bunch of comedians and not a bunch, but I know a few comedians.
[01:59:38] And some of them are really good like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn.
[01:59:43] And I saw I've, I have some relationships with some of these guys. And I kind of listened to them talk about being a comedian and one of the things that they talk about is when you're making a show.
[01:59:54] They go out to like a small club and they do like their routine. And then they, they do it a little bit better and they change something. They add something.
[02:00:02] They take something away. They add something else. And until they get it and this is what made me think of this. You're talking about how you hear the audience react and you go, okay, that's good. I'll add to that.
[02:00:09] And you hear the audience react differently. I'll remove that.
[02:00:13] And eventually they get to a point where they go, okay, now I can take this thing out on the road and they do, they do. They go on tour with it.
[02:00:22] And I like on my second show because now I'm changed. I was doing something different. And I was like, hey, I don't take any lessons learned from the last one.
[02:00:33] And I have no idea what everyone's going to think of this one I'm doing tonight, which was kind of not it might not be smart, but that's what I did.
[02:00:42] Doesn't seem like a smart thing to do.
[02:00:45] When you took that show to New York, not everyone was on board. When you took true West to New York. So there's a little leadership challenge that you faced.
[02:00:54] And in fact, when you took that show to New York, when you took true, true West to New York, they told you guys, you, this isn't step and wolf, right?
[02:01:03] That's, that's how it went down.
[02:01:05] Well, what happened was I wanted to, to move the, the show.
[02:01:10] And we're in this 134th seat theater where we did true West originally. And we had the opportunity to take over another theater that had more seats that had been kind of closed down for a while.
[02:01:23] And it was sitting there waiting to be rented.
[02:01:25] And we needed to add more seats.
[02:01:27] We were building our subscribers, our audience is getting stronger.
[02:01:30] We wanted more seats. So we wanted to go from 134 to the 220 in this building.
[02:01:36] And this, this, you know, David Mammot. So, will you make to may see actors like that?
[02:01:43] They started this theater company called St. Nicholas. They went bankrupt and this building was just sitting there.
[02:01:49] And so we wanted to take it over. We had the, at the same time, we had the opportunity to open that new theater.
[02:01:56] We had the opportunity to move true West to New York.
[02:02:01] Most of the company said they didn't want to go to New York and do that.
[02:02:06] And we had a focus on opening this new theater. I said as our district director, I think we have to do both.
[02:02:13] And it was my show. I wanted to move it. I brought the producers in. I wanted John was in it.
[02:02:19] You know, I want, and they said, and two of the actors that were in it. There's four actors total.
[02:02:25] John and I were the only ones who wanted to do it.
[02:02:29] The other actors didn't want to do it and go. So I said, well, okay, we'll recast those parts in New York.
[02:02:35] Well, that didn't go over well with the theater company at all. So they said, well, if you're going to do that, then you can't call it a step-in-law show.
[02:02:44] And so we moved it to New York, John and I, I recast the other parts.
[02:02:49] And we opened the show without calling it step-in-law. But, and there was a lot of tension between John and me and the other,
[02:02:58] and the other people in the company. And they just didn't agree with it. And we went and made the decision to do it.
[02:03:04] But in our bios in the program, all the credits we had were step-in-law.
[02:03:11] It's a Gary Sunise's the artistic director of a step-in-multi-in-or-John Malk, which has done all these plays.
[02:03:17] It's step-in-multi and Chicago. So all the critics were reading those bios.
[02:03:23] Who are these guys from Chicago and they read about step-in-multi? So step-in-multi is now getting all kinds of attention.
[02:03:30] Because true West ended up being a big hit. And it was a giant hit. And people were coming from all over all over the country really to see it.
[02:03:40] Because it was so popular. And it put step-in-multi into a more nationally recognized position.
[02:03:49] And we were getting a lot of attention from the New York media. Great reviews. Lots of people were coming to see it.
[02:03:56] And it really turned everything around. After that, the company said,
[02:04:01] Oh, that's great. Let's do more in New York. And we started bringing a lot of plays to New York after that.
[02:04:06] But somebody has to be the first one to go over the hill.
[02:04:10] And we did. John and I took it and we were successful. We did okay. And we moved forward from there.
[02:04:18] You talk about kind of how you give the reviews. You guys get these great reviews. Everyone's fired up.
[02:04:26] You say this. John's performances especially getting a lot of attention. And his star began to rise during the run.
[02:04:32] He was doing media interviews and photo sessions for magazine covers.
[02:04:36] And you say John was so powerful in the show and getting press, comparing him to Marlon Brando.
[02:04:42] The week after we opened, John told me he'd been approached by William Morris Town on Agent Johnny Planco.
[02:04:49] Planko. And it's signed with him. But after two or three months of running the show, no agents had approached me.
[02:04:57] I was happy. I was happy for my friend. He's a great actor. And it was clear to me that he was going to launch into the movie business after we concluded our run of the show.
[02:05:06] And I couldn't help but wondering if a movie role might be in the cards for me also.
[02:05:15] Is there like ego involved in this scenario as it's unfolding? Are you just stoked for your friend?
[02:05:22] No, both. I mean, yeah. You know, we were on stage together the whole time. Two guys.
[02:05:29] One of the parts is very, very flashy. It's a great part. The part that John played.
[02:05:37] The older of the two brothers. And he's like this desert rat. He disappears into the desert and comes out.
[02:05:44] And the other one is a screenwriter. Kind of a little cricket guy. And he's typing and writing. They're very opposite.
[02:05:52] But they sort of during the course of the play. They sort of exchange roles in a way. The screenwriter gets crazier and crazier.
[02:06:01] So the two guys are two great parts. They're both on stage the whole time.
[02:06:06] And I thought, well, and John's coming in and he's saying, you know, I went out with Antonio and last night and Robert Duball and John Casabetti.
[02:06:14] And Gene Hackman was here. Did you see him? I went out with him. And I went to the Greek restaurant by myself.
[02:06:23] It was kind of like that. And a lot of great things were happening for John. It was very exciting. It's a flashy part.
[02:06:31] And he got a lot of attention. I thought maybe, you know, I something like that was in the cards for me. It wasn't.
[02:06:40] But I decided to take some initiative. So I went to the box office and I said, can you give me a list of all the like agents and casting directors, people like that who have been to see the show and they keep tabs on that kind of stuff.
[02:06:55] So they gave me the, the list and I decided to make those calls myself there. They weren't coming to me.
[02:07:02] So I made a call to some agents and I ended up getting an agent in New York and, you know, that would change things a little bit.
[02:07:12] You know, John had a, you know, he rocketed, you know, he was nominated for an Oscar within two years of that play.
[02:07:20] Yeah, that's, I was reading now. I was like, man, this is, I could see where, you know, obviously working with a bunch of companies all the time.
[02:07:28] We always deal with people's egos and I could see where this, this is a classic scenario where you could get mad and, you know, undermine him and do you know, do whatever, like all sorts of bad things can come from this.
[02:07:41] Or you can have a great attitude to be like, hey, awesome for him. That's great.
[02:07:46] No factor move on.
[02:07:49] We, you know, we ended up taping the show at the end of our run. The show ran two years. We did it for the first six months and then I recast it. I was the director too.
[02:07:59] So I recast it with a bunch of different people.
[02:08:02] And we taped it for PBS and an, an erodon PBS. You can see it on the internet. It's called True West. It's kind of Malgavich and Sonies.
[02:08:12] And we taped it and we took four days to shoot it. And then right after that, John went off to Thailand to do his first movie.
[02:08:22] It was called the killing fields and great movie. And he went off played a part in that within, within a couple years. He was in a movie called Places in the Art and got nominated for an Oscar.
[02:08:37] And when he left to go there, I went back to Chicago and eventually took to go over again as artistic director of the company.
[02:08:47] I think that's what you're talking about here from 1982 to 1997. We produced even more shows in Chicago.
[02:08:55] And took more to New York.
[02:08:57] And then in 1990, we opened the grapes of wrath on Broadway.
[02:09:02] That production won us another Tony. And I forget which one won you the first Tony. This time for Best Play.
[02:09:08] And is the Tony is the best thing you can get in theater?
[02:09:12] In New York, it's the big, big award that you can get in. The reason I say another one is in 1985, just a couple years after True West went and we were taking other shows there.
[02:09:23] They gave us an honorary Tony award for Best Regional Theater within a couple years of taking True West then there. And then in 1990 we won for Best Play.
[02:09:40] And that kind of precipitates what's going on here. In 1990 we realized another dream when Steppenwolf broke ground at 1650 North,
[02:09:48] how stood street and built their own multi-million dollar building. We designed our own theater from the ground up and opened the doors not long afterward.
[02:09:56] The land of our birth had allowed us to pursue our dreams, Steppenwolf had truly arrived.
[02:10:01] So you guys were big time now. I mean, if you're building the building, you're doing some good stuff, obviously.
[02:10:08] Yeah, so 82 to 90, right? So during that period in the 80s we became an internationally recognized theater.
[02:10:18] We took shows to London. We took shows to New York. We were getting great press from the international media.
[02:10:28] We went from a local theater that nobody knew about outside of Chicago to an internationally recognized theater which allowed us to attract stronger board members.
[02:10:41] So, you know, reach a wider audience and eventually raise the money to build our own theater from the ground up.
[02:10:53] How many seats did you guys put in the new theater? 520. And now we're building another one right next door.
[02:11:00] Right now adding another theater in the round. Still on the move.
[02:11:05] You get Sam, who's Sam Hollywood guy?
[02:11:12] My be Sam Cohen, who was my agent.
[02:11:16] He introduced you a Hollywood producer named David Putnam. Sam called me and said that David wanted to offer you a direct and deal in Hollywood at Columbia.
[02:11:27] David would pay me to move to California. He called David and he was asking you about like how much how much do you think you should get.
[02:11:35] He called David then called back and said David thinks you should get 70,000, 75,000 dollars a year. Okay, by you. I was speechless. 60,000 sounded like a fortune to be much less 75.
[02:11:46] They gave me an office on the back lot of Warner Brothers where Columbia Pictures was based at the time.
[02:11:51] The same lot incidentally that I'd been thrown out of a few years earlier when I tried so hard to see Robert Redford.
[02:11:58] At the time I was still at the time I made the deal. I was still artistic director at Stepan Wolf turned over the reins to Jeff Perry and Randy Arney.
[02:12:08] So now you go out and you're there basically paying you to look for a movie to make. Is that is that what it is?
[02:12:14] That's what the first look deal is. If I find a movie that I want to direct, I give it to them first to see it. They can say yes or no.
[02:12:25] Got it. And the movie that you finally come up with is called Farm of the Year.
[02:12:30] Yeah, another studio had that. So I had to go to David Putnam and say look, I found a movie I want to do, but it's at another studio.
[02:12:40] And he said go make it make it great. They had me under contract there and they wanted me to make movies.
[02:12:48] They weren't going to have me hang around and do nothing. I had a movie I wanted to make and it just had to have been to be at a small studio.
[02:12:56] So, Sina Calm?
[02:12:59] Yeah, that was the company.
[02:13:01] They said they're going to put 5 million up to make the movie.
[02:13:04] We shot the movie and see the rapids. I found my transition from theater directing to film directing a little more difficult than I had anticipated.
[02:13:13] Again, I got to skip through some of this. You talk about like some of the challenges you come across. Some of it being that's your first movie and you're not quite a hundred percent sure what you're doing.
[02:13:25] As you're going through all that to add to the pressure in the middle of all this confusion. I received a call from the producers who said the selection committee at cans film festival wanted to see a cut of the movie cans.
[02:13:36] The rap cans means red carpet and paparazzi big movie starts chauffeur to the front door in limousines.
[02:13:44] Echo getting fired up over there.
[02:13:46] Every filmmaker dreams of being in competition to cans. A great reception there can really help a movie out.
[02:13:52] So, that's looking good. The studio execs, execs, decided to fiddle with the title of film changing it from the farm of the year two miles from home.
[02:14:03] So, miles from home comes out and you say here, never found its audience at fell flat earning a grand total of $188,000.
[02:14:14] That's falling flat.
[02:14:18] Yeah. And that's out of a five million dollar investment.
[02:14:21] The experience wasn't all bad for me anyway. Although I'm sure the studio wasn't thrilled. I learned many great lessons.
[02:14:29] I just need to find the right movie. And by the way, our first baby was due just after miles from home closed and theaters.
[02:14:35] The due date was November 8, 1988, Election Day, the year George H. W. Bush ran against Michael Duke Caucus on November 9th.
[02:14:43] We named her Sofia Anna Sanise and called her Sophie.
[02:14:50] In 1990, Moira discovered she was pregnant again this time with a boy. That summer I was acting on Broadway in the grapes of rats and Moira.
[02:15:00] Now six months pregnant was in Chicago doing a play with Stephen Wolf called Love Letters. She's just getting after it.
[02:15:07] In multiple phone calls we discussed what we should name our son one day. The name became clear to me. I called up Moira.
[02:15:15] We should call him Mac after your brother. Moira was thrilled. Boyd, McKenna Mac Harris, the Vietnam vet, Silverstar recipient, West Point instructor passed away in 1983 of cancer.
[02:15:24] We all thought of him regularly when our son was born on November 10th, 1990, almost two years to the day after Sophie.
[02:15:31] We named him McKenna Anthony Sanise Mac for short. The Irish and Italian influences surrounded us and sounded very Americany.
[02:15:42] After Mac is born, you know, I'm not going to read this part because people should read it from themselves.
[02:15:51] But you kind of talk about just how everything kind of hits you that you got these two beautiful children.
[02:15:56] You're doing well in life. You've got the beautiful family.
[02:16:02] And you say here, you know, you're driving while this is happening and you're getting emotional. You say as I brush away the tears at the stoplight, I think I whispered a semblance of my first prayer.
[02:16:16] The prayer was hazy, but the intention was clear.
[02:16:19] Called a longing perhaps. The first toinge is a belief two words layered with more than one meaning.
[02:16:25] Thank you.
[02:16:34] You wrap up grapes of wrath on stage.
[02:16:38] And you say here, I searched for what to do next. I knew I wanted to do something epic.
[02:16:42] Something that moved people, preferably another movie. But what? Then a lane-stime back and you talk about where you developed this relationship with her.
[02:16:52] And she was married a John Steinbeck, his widow. She controlled all the rights to his material.
[02:16:58] And you knew her, would you know her from from from working on the grapes of wrath? She gave us the rights to do it.
[02:17:04] And she loved the production. So she we became friends.
[02:17:07] And so a lane had become a real champion of step-in-law. She'd seen that we could take on her husband's novels and handle the stories really well.
[02:17:14] On the last day of shooting the PBS version of grapes of wrath, I stood with a lane during a break out by the theaters back steps.
[02:17:20] I thought about the box car image swallowed sucked up by my courage and said, a lane would you give me the rights to of my son men?
[02:17:27] I'd like to try and make a movie out of it. I paused and added tentatively. I'd need your help too because I don't have any money.
[02:17:34] She chuckled quietly, smiled her beautiful delight, dignified smile and said, well honey, it's already been a film. Three times.
[02:17:43] I got a kick out of that. You end up making the deal. She eventually gives it to you. She gives it to you free of charge by the way, which is shows you that she wasn't pressed with you.
[02:17:54] What you guys had done with her other husband's other material.
[02:18:00] You start you make this movie. You're doing that and actually the day the LA riots touched off.
[02:18:08] I was mixing the sound for of my cemented Sony studios in Culver City. One of the technicians called me into the office and their on STV all hell was breaking loose.
[02:18:17] For the next five days while the riots raged, I tried to work at home while watching the city burn on television. Those are of course the Rodney King riots.
[02:18:29] You get another, another invite to cans.
[02:18:36] It's can. Okay. Sorry. I just talked about me being uncultured. It's calm. It's French.
[02:18:45] All right. So you get another invite to cans. You say how you want to say. Hey, I'm a man.
[02:18:52] There's an ass on the end of it. So you get another invite to con.
[02:18:57] There you go. And on the way on the way from the hotel to the theater, the streets were lined with cheering people at the theater. The red carpet was packed with paparazzi and journalist. Everybody wore tuxedo's or ball gowns flash bulbs popped everywhere.
[02:19:12] As a filmmaker when your movie is being shown, you can't stand in the back and pace, which is what I nervously felt like doing.
[02:19:18] You must sit in the middle of the theater along with the production team in the middle of a gigantic crowd.
[02:19:24] You hope the crowd enjoys the show. If they don't, then you sit there and take your punishment.
[02:19:31] Even if you get booed, and this is my first film as a producer. My second as a director. Only my third as an actor.
[02:19:38] The crowd and I watched the movie. It started just as I envisioned it on a train inside a box car.
[02:19:44] We heard the click at a crack called the train going across the tracks. The story progressed. The movie finished.
[02:19:50] The credits rolled with the lights still down. The plot concludes tragically. Not triumphantly.
[02:19:55] And it's not a movie where you walk away feeling happy. Still the story is deeply moving in powerful.
[02:20:00] And my hope was that after seeing the film viewers might be motivated to do a little more and make sure people aren't alone.
[02:20:05] Abandoned, marginalized, or left on the fringes.
[02:20:08] When the credits began to roll, a little low kept and crept into the auditorium. A tense moment of silence.
[02:20:15] Sometimes the audience waits until the very end of the credits to show their feelings. Sometimes they make their decision with the credits still rolling.
[02:20:24] I felt my skin crawl. Will the audience clap? Will they boo?
[02:20:29] I held my breath waiting for the response. And then it happened. A damn burst. The entire room erupted into applause.
[02:20:39] Huge applause. When the credits still rolling, the audience clapped and clapped.
[02:20:42] One person stood at another. The entire feet are rose to their feet. A standing ovation.
[02:20:46] The team and I stayed in the middle of the crowd. And they brought the house lights up and shine to spotlight on us.
[02:20:51] The crowd continued to count. Clap wildly. They cheered through the entire credits.
[02:20:56] MelcoVitch and I stood and took a bow and wave. The credits ended.
[02:20:59] And nothing appeared on the screen. The audience continued to clap and cheer.
[02:21:02] MelcoVitch and I sat down and took a few moments. The audience continued to clap and cheer.
[02:21:06] Then rushed John and I stood and I saw Tom Selich standing off to one side of the crowd.
[02:21:11] I had to leave this in their foreco Charles.
[02:21:14] I saw Tom Selich standing off to one side of the crowd. Claping cheering.
[02:21:17] I didn't know him personally, but I could put out his familiar face anywhere.
[02:21:20] He wore a white toxin as I glanced over Tom caught my eye and smiled and nodded.
[02:21:25] It is only Magnum PI could do. The standing ovation went on and on.
[02:21:29] The noise in the room was deafening. Someone said later, the elvation lasted a full 10 minutes.
[02:21:34] Finally, the clapping wound down and I stood again and the cloud.
[02:21:37] To the crowd, thank you. Thank you so much. Tears filled my eyes.
[02:21:41] I was a wave of emotion. Nearly choked me. We had worked hard.
[02:21:45] This was our moment of truth. It felt spectacular.
[02:21:48] There's a little, I'm not going to go into the full thing, but there's a rush with you.
[02:21:52] And rush was a coper news.
[02:21:54] And rush says, wow. I'm so glad the MGM executives are here to see this.
[02:22:00] It will be really good for the film.
[02:22:02] Or is that you said I said that?
[02:22:03] Okay, so you said, oh yeah, yeah, I looked over a rust and quipped the wow. I'm so glad the MGM executives are here to see this.
[02:22:08] It will be really good for the film.
[02:22:10] And then he says back either that, or I think we just made a French film.
[02:22:16] Which means that's like an artistic film.
[02:22:20] Art house film, which is cool, but not super what profitable.
[02:22:26] Not a lot of people are going to see it.
[02:22:29] I'm sorry.
[02:22:32] Sounds like you were kind of right.
[02:22:35] Kind of?
[02:22:36] I love you.
[02:22:37] You were right.
[02:22:39] Going here, the execs, I mean, this is what company made this, what, what, what, what?
[02:22:43] The execs, the MGM execs considered it an artistic success, but I think this is
[02:22:49] Spectamoo. He wasn't going to make much money. So they weren't going to spend much to market it.
[02:22:53] Columbia's a river runs through it, starring Brad Pitt and directed by Robert Redford.
[02:22:58] He started to get hostile towards that.
[02:23:01] I know, man.
[02:23:02] It came out seven days after of Myson Men, and although the stories were different, the heart
[02:23:07] Lentone was similar. A river runs through it went on to win an Oscar and earn 43 million
[02:23:14] of Myson Men receive a 10-minute standing ovation at Khan.
[02:23:19] But gross just over 5 million.
[02:23:21] So yeah, better sweet.
[02:23:25] But I'll tell you, I say in the book, I have no, I was disappointed. Obviously, I wanted
[02:23:33] them to put full page ads in the paper and do a lot more promotion on it.
[02:23:38] But the bottom line is that they gave me $8.8 million to make that movie, to make a Myson
[02:23:45] Nobody thought of Myson Men was going to be a big blockbuster, anything like that.
[02:23:49] But they gave me the money to make it, and they left me alone pretty much when I was
[02:23:53] making it, to make my own decisions and do what I want.
[02:23:56] So I'm very grateful to the IM and Alan Layad and the people there who supported it,
[02:24:01] even though it wasn't a big hit.
[02:24:04] When you see the movie now, you made the movie that you wanted to make, right?
[02:24:09] Yeah.
[02:24:10] You don't look at it now and go, I should have done this, I should have done that.
[02:24:14] Now, you know, I haven't seen it for quite a long time, but the last time I saw
[02:24:20] was with a small group of folks and I felt like the movie holds up.
[02:24:25] It's just sort of a timeless story, you know?
[02:24:28] And the way it's made is not, there's no filmmaking technique that happened to be
[02:24:34] the the the the the the the the the the the time and or anything like that.
[02:24:39] It's shot very straightforward.
[02:24:41] It's pretty to look at the it's about the acting and the story is good.
[02:24:45] And so for that reason, I think it holds up and I've I've received countless letters from high school kids all over the country for the last 30 years.
[02:24:55] Because they they study of my son men in school and then they watch the movie.
[02:25:00] And so more kids have seen that movie than ever saw in the theater when it opened.
[02:25:06] Where can people see it right now?
[02:25:08] Because on Netflix, it probably is and DVDs and that kind of thing.
[02:25:13] Yeah, Netflix. They still make it DVDs echo.
[02:25:16] I don't don't think I have those.
[02:25:18] You don't know anything about that thing.
[02:25:20] You know what that is.
[02:25:21] That thing better be a well people are going to watch it now.
[02:25:24] It's a good movie and Malcolm it's is isn't it.
[02:25:28] We play George and landing in it's a good man.
[02:25:31] I'm proud of it.
[02:25:33] Six weeks before the opening of my son men our third child was due born August 20th, 1992.
[02:25:39] Ella was our smallest baby and two weeks after the after her birth we sat at an appointment with our pediatrician.
[02:25:46] She listened to Ella's little heart and said I want you to go see a cardiologist right away.
[02:25:50] There's something odd in Ella's heartbeat.
[02:25:54] I tell you when a pediatrician says that your life clouds with fear.
[02:26:00] So you guys take her to the cardiologist and all kinds of tests.
[02:26:03] They find out that she's got some issues.
[02:26:06] And they say that they want to see what happens over time.
[02:26:11] She got some holes in her heart.
[02:26:14] But sometimes the holes close up on their own and they want to see what's going to happen.
[02:26:18] And when I say they want to see what's going to happen to say years that they want to wait.
[02:26:21] Yeah.
[02:26:22] Are you sweating the entire time?
[02:26:24] Are you constantly in fear?
[02:26:27] No because we would have regular appointments with the cardiologist.
[02:26:32] And he would just listen and see eventually and they would take pictures and look at what happened.
[02:26:40] Eventually when she was five years old there were three holes when she was born in her heart.
[02:26:47] Two of them closed up by the time she was five years old.
[02:26:51] And the last one, the biggest of the three, they said it's not going to close on its own.
[02:26:58] We're going to have to do surgery on it.
[02:27:02] So that now we're dealing with our little five year old having heart surgery.
[02:27:07] And that then it was scary.
[02:27:11] Yeah.
[02:27:12] But these heart surgeons are very remarkable.
[02:27:16] And we had a remarkable heart surgeon who took very good care of her.
[02:27:20] And she was home within two days, I think of the surgery.
[02:27:24] You know, she's perfect.
[02:27:28] About five years later, we had to take her to the cardiologist.
[02:27:32] He kept checking.
[02:27:33] Five years later we went in.
[02:27:35] She's about ten years old and he said I've got good news and bad news.
[02:27:37] The good news is everything's good.
[02:27:40] Your heart's great.
[02:27:41] The bad news is you don't have to see me anymore.
[02:27:44] So we stopped taking her and she's a beautiful, beautiful girl married now.
[02:27:51] Her little baby.
[02:27:56] Yeah, on the back drop of that, I couldn't, I couldn't not read this part.
[02:28:04] In the fall of 1992, my agent set up a general meeting for me to sit down with Steven Spielberg,
[02:28:09] as a director and producer, Steven Spielberg was already legendary having pulled off a string of blockbusters, including jaws.
[02:28:16] Which I could just stop right there.
[02:28:18] Does anybody that knows me? He knows that when I was a kid, videotape machines had just come out.
[02:28:23] And my dad got a videotape machine and we had, so like we probably had three movies on videotape.
[02:28:33] A one of them is jaws.
[02:28:35] We watched that continually for years.
[02:28:40] We call them VCRs.
[02:28:42] We don't say video tape machines.
[02:28:44] Okay.
[02:28:45] We don't say that video cassette recorder.
[02:28:47] VCR.
[02:28:48] So we had that.
[02:28:50] So jaws close in counters of the third kind.
[02:28:53] Raiders of the large, lost arc.
[02:28:55] E.T.
[02:28:56] The extra terrestrial.
[02:28:57] Steven asked me what I was doing.
[02:28:58] I told him about of my cement.
[02:29:00] He said, I'd love to see it.
[02:29:01] Will you show it to me?
[02:29:02] Just bring it over to my house.
[02:29:03] I've got a screening room there.
[02:29:04] We'll watch it together.
[02:29:05] And I said, of course.
[02:29:07] We set up the screening.
[02:29:09] Just outside the theater and Steven's house.
[02:29:11] He had a little lobby with a popcorn machine and a candy counter.
[02:29:15] His wife Kate Capshaw joined us and we all grabbed some popcorn and sodas and sat down to watch of mice and men together.
[02:29:23] They was surreal.
[02:29:24] Steven and Kate were both very gracious.
[02:29:25] They love the movie.
[02:29:27] Afterwards, we stood outside their home, saying,
[02:29:29] I'm going to take Kate and me a little hug and Steven turned to me while I racked my brain.
[02:29:34] Think Gary, think.
[02:29:35] I was desperate to ask Steven one brilliant question.
[02:29:39] But all I could muster was Steven.
[02:29:42] How do you know where to put the camera?
[02:29:44] He chuckled and said, I just watched a lot of movies.
[02:29:49] So simple, so profound to become a great filmmaker.
[02:29:54] You must study the greats.
[02:29:56] You learn to steal.
[02:29:57] You learn to steal from people you admire.
[02:29:59] Over the years, I'd endlessly studied actors I admired Al Pacino.
[02:30:02] Jack Nicholson, Jean Hackman, De Niro, Void, Duval, Hoffman, Brando, many others.
[02:30:09] Steven took this last sip of soda and added, oh, and Gary, based on what I just saw in my
[02:30:14] Submen, you should definitely keep directing.
[02:30:19] Directing.
[02:30:20] Now, you go on a little bit for these that I couldn't have known was just over the horizon.
[02:30:24] It was an amazing opportunity for me when I would open a new world,
[02:30:27] and not only enacting incidentally, after completing of my Submen, I haven't directed a movie since.
[02:30:34] Yeah.
[02:30:36] That was it.
[02:30:37] Yeah.
[02:30:38] You know, I often tell the story that like I the reason I started a podcast was because Tim Ferris,
[02:30:42] who was a very popular podcaster in Joe Rogan, who's a very popular podcaster, both told me to
[02:30:47] start a podcast.
[02:30:48] I listened to them.
[02:30:50] If Steven, see, will work, would it told me to direct more?
[02:30:53] I might listen.
[02:30:54] No offense, Gary.
[02:30:56] Well, what happened?
[02:30:58] You know, it's a...
[02:31:00] Kept me away from direct because what happened next.
[02:31:04] Yeah.
[02:31:05] But the Steven King, you get a role, a big role in that Steven King.
[02:31:15] What, many series?
[02:31:16] It was a...
[02:31:17] Yeah, it was like a...
[02:31:20] Four-night mini series.
[02:31:22] Yeah.
[02:31:23] And this is bad hours worth.
[02:31:24] This is back in the day where they would...
[02:31:26] When they would do that, they'd play them like four nights in a row.
[02:31:28] That's right.
[02:31:29] Yeah.
[02:31:30] Get America.
[02:31:31] It was a huge rating.
[02:31:32] I mean, millions and millions of people watched it.
[02:31:35] Yeah.
[02:31:36] You know, overnight I was a recognizable guy.
[02:31:40] That was a huge deal.
[02:31:42] Yeah.
[02:31:43] Yeah.
[02:31:44] This year, this particular year, 1994, when the Stan came out, was...
[02:31:50] Turned the whole career into a different thing.
[02:31:53] And especially for my acting, as I said.
[02:31:57] I never... I was never a frustrated... I was acting.
[02:32:03] But I really wanted to be directing.
[02:32:05] It wasn't anything like that.
[02:32:07] The directing I did because I loved acting.
[02:32:10] I wanted to put myself in a...
[02:32:12] I think Mel Gibson.
[02:32:15] Sure.
[02:32:16] Did he win an Academy Award for...
[02:32:19] Braveheart?
[02:32:20] Yeah.
[02:32:21] He directed it, right?
[02:32:22] Yeah.
[02:32:23] And I think I saw a clip of his speech when he won the Academy Award for directing that movie.
[02:32:31] And he said something along the lines of,
[02:32:33] Now I'm going to go back to doing what all directors want to do.
[02:32:37] Act.
[02:32:39] Pretty clever.
[02:32:41] The Stan cost more than $28 million to produce was well promoted, received good reviews,
[02:32:47] and ended up winning a few Emmy Awards.
[02:32:50] We finished shooting in June and returned to California, then another call came.
[02:32:53] This one, an addition in a Paramount picture to play the part of a wounded Vietnam veteran.
[02:32:58] The movie's working title was simply the name of the main character, forest gump.
[02:33:03] From the start, I wanted this role.
[02:33:05] Any project that that would be a nom or an interesting me.
[02:33:08] Due to the work I'd done in the 1980s with Vietnam vets,
[02:33:10] in addition to my close connection with Vietnam vets and my family.
[02:33:13] The innovative director, Robert, how do you say his name?
[02:33:17] Is it mechus?
[02:33:18] The mechus?
[02:33:20] Is it mechus?
[02:33:21] The mechus?
[02:33:22] There you go.
[02:33:24] Roger RAMIN.
[02:33:25] Just kind of FYI, I echoed scene in most movies I haven't.
[02:33:29] Oh here we go.
[02:33:33] You call the Daqa.
[02:33:35] He'd had a string of hits, including back to the future.
[02:33:38] Romance in the stone, who framed Roger Rhabbert, Rabbit?
[02:33:42] Would have held in the film.
[02:33:44] at the right patient on a 1986 novel by Vietnam veteran, Winston at Grume, was set to start
[02:33:50] Tom Hanks and the screenplay adapted by Eric Roth and other wonderful writer.
[02:33:55] I knew it stood a chance of being a terrific project all around, but I didn't get the
[02:33:59] role at first.
[02:34:02] So why didn't you get the role at first?
[02:34:05] Well, I didn't hear about it for quite a while.
[02:34:09] I auditioned.
[02:34:10] You still don't know.
[02:34:15] And then I kept asking my agency a no, did they say anything?
[02:34:18] Did they cast it?
[02:34:19] No, they haven't casted, they haven't made up of their mind yet.
[02:34:19] So you know, you gotta go forward.
[02:34:21] I can't wait around to find out.
[02:34:24] I didn't get the part.
[02:34:25] So I started auditioning for other things.
[02:34:27] So you auditioned for Little Buddha?
[02:34:30] You auditioned for Why It Up?
[02:34:33] You auditioned for a Disney movie called Tall Tale.
[02:34:37] Then you're all set to say yes to Tall Tale back to the book when the phone rang.
[02:34:42] I landed the role of Lieutenant Dan Taylor in Forest Gump.
[02:34:46] It would mean I'd need to turn down the Disney movie.
[02:34:49] Did I still want Forest Gump?
[02:34:51] Moira and I talked it over.
[02:34:52] We decided I needed to place my bets with Forest Gump.
[02:34:55] Plus I really wanted to play the role of a Vietnam veteran while she took the role of the
[02:35:00] mother in a Tall Tale.
[02:35:02] Yeah, we auditioned together for Tall Tale.
[02:35:05] She got the part of the mother and I got the part of the father.
[02:35:09] But then Lieutenant Dan came along and I had to say, honey, I think I should do this one.
[02:35:14] You go to that one and that's what we did.
[02:35:17] That's a smart move, kind of hedging your bets a little bit.
[02:35:20] I think it was a right moment.
[02:35:25] You say here, I wanted to give all to my character of the wounded Vietnam veteran.
[02:35:31] So I began reading the 1992 Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography, Fortune at Sonne, by Lewis
[02:35:36] Polar, Jr., United States Marine Corps officer who had been severely injured when he stepped
[02:35:41] on a booby trap bomb.
[02:35:43] Both his legs were vaporized and he lost his left hand and nearly all of his fingers
[02:35:46] on his right.
[02:35:50] Polar was the son of the most decorated Marine officer in the history of the Marine Corps.
[02:35:55] Chesty Polar.
[02:35:57] If you are listening to this and you don't know that story, then you should immediately
[02:36:02] go and listen to podcast number 121, 122 and 123.
[02:36:09] And that's all I'm going to say about that.
[02:36:14] So obviously you picked a heavy book to try and figure out what kind of emotions, what
[02:36:23] kind of person Lieutenant Dan was going to be.
[02:36:29] Now you do your little boot camp thing.
[02:36:31] This is sort of an official military movie thing nowadays.
[02:36:34] That if you're going to do a military movie, you're going to do some kind of military boot camp.
[02:36:38] You guys head back to the book, headed into the woods for four days with other actors in
[02:36:43] Lieutenant Dan's Paltoon to train with Techno Wood Advisor named Dale Die, a decorated
[02:36:47] Vietnam veteran who I've been playing tag with to come on the podcast.
[02:36:52] Captain Die at certainly United States Marine Corps and trained the actors for Paltoon as well
[02:36:55] as serving as a tech advisor for many other military movies over the years.
[02:36:58] He put us through our paces, sound like he ran you guys through some good training.
[02:37:03] Oh yeah.
[02:37:04] You guys had a good time?
[02:37:06] No, yeah.
[02:37:07] I learned a lot from Dale.
[02:37:08] It was important.
[02:37:11] And he pushed me.
[02:37:12] He pushed me as Lieutenant Dan.
[02:37:15] So the military part of the character really was, you know, I kind of thought about my
[02:37:20] brother-in-law Mac quite a bit leading a Platoon in Vietnam, which he did.
[02:37:27] And Dale sort of pulled that Lieutenant leader out of me and helped me sort of galvanize
[02:37:34] that soldier part of the character.
[02:37:36] This is a couple of different parts of the character.
[02:37:38] There's the soldier, everything pre-injury and then there's Lieutenant Dan in the
[02:37:44] throws of despair and kind of withdrawing from life and all of that kind of different
[02:37:52] long air and the beer stuff.
[02:37:57] It's, you decided that he went to VMI.
[02:38:02] Is that this character?
[02:38:03] Yeah.
[02:38:04] Instead of West Point.
[02:38:05] Why'd you pick VMI instead of West Point?
[02:38:06] I wanted a little bit of an accent.
[02:38:09] I don't know.
[02:38:10] Okay.
[02:38:11] I mean, I could have gone to West Point, but then, well, why do you sound like this?
[02:38:17] I had a little bit of a little bit of a drone as Lieutenant Dan.
[02:38:22] And I just decided, let's have him be sort of from that part of the country.
[02:38:28] You talk here, Lieutenant Dan meets Bubba and Forests and gives them a few lessons on how
[02:38:33] to be able to feel the meeting is the first image viewer see of Lieutenant Dan.
[02:38:37] He's on the way to the outhouse toilet paper in hand wearing only boxer shorts and flip
[02:38:42] flops.
[02:38:43] The shot was made strategically because we wanted viewers to first see Lieutenant Dan standing
[02:38:48] on two good legs.
[02:38:49] Those legs would soon be gone.
[02:38:51] During the shooting of the Vietnam scenes, I invited my brother and log jacked tree.
[02:38:55] So, you'd been a combat medic and Vietnam.
[02:38:58] The costume designer had issued me a set of dog tags, but when Jack was in Vietnam, he'd
[02:39:02] made a set of rosary beads out of string and rope and hung his dog tags on it.
[02:39:07] Let me wear his actual dog tags and rosary in the movie.
[02:39:10] Jack wasn't Catholic, but he told me that Vietnam, he wanted all the help he could get.
[02:39:17] That's awesome.
[02:39:21] I wish I had those.
[02:39:22] I lost him along the way.
[02:39:25] I have the original ones that they issued me that the designers issued me, that I never
[02:39:31] wore and they were hanging in my office.
[02:39:34] But he lost the dang rosary beads.
[02:39:37] That's nice to see you.
[02:39:38] You're a long way.
[02:39:39] I wish I had him.
[02:39:42] You can see him.
[02:39:43] They were his and Vietnam.
[02:39:44] He was just glad because you can see the movie and you can see him.
[02:39:49] When you mentioned that, I was like, oh wow.
[02:39:54] I think that's such an iconic role and everybody sees the dog tags all the time in every
[02:40:00] warm movie and then you see those dog tags and they're different and they stand out.
[02:40:05] It's a part of the role.
[02:40:10] You talk a lot more about the movie and how the behind the scenes and people should
[02:40:18] get the book to read those.
[02:40:19] I'm going to skip through some of that forest gump came out on July 6, 1994, was an instant
[02:40:24] box office smash hit.
[02:40:25] I couldn't tell you exactly why the film worked to the degree it did but it played to a lot
[02:40:30] of different emotions covered a lot of territory, had level of characters at the center
[02:40:33] of it anchored by Tom as forest and Sally Fields as his mom.
[02:40:38] When forest gump crossed a hundred million mark, Paramount sent gifts to the cast and producers
[02:40:44] an Apple computer each, a nod to the scene where forest invests in some kind of fruit
[02:40:50] company.
[02:40:51] And the movie crossed 200 million mark, Paramount sent another gift.
[02:40:55] I forgot what it was now when it crossed the 300 million dollar mark Bob Zemeckis and
[02:41:01] called and said Steven Spielberg wanted to take Moira, me, Tom and Tom's wife read a
[02:41:06] Wilson out to dinner to celebrate it wasn't.
[02:41:09] I wasn't typically piling around with high-powered Hollywood rollers so it felt good to
[02:41:14] be included.
[02:41:15] A couple of days later Paramount sent another gift, a giant replica of a park bench of the
[02:41:19] park bench featured in the film.
[02:41:21] The base was made from concrete, it must have weighed 450 pounds.
[02:41:27] Forest gump garnered along list of awards including 13 Academy Award nominations and six
[02:41:32] wins including a win for best picture I received an Oscar nomination for best supporting
[02:41:37] actor.
[02:41:42] Were you now big time?
[02:41:47] Things had changed.
[02:41:50] I was in the biggest many series of the year and two months later, Forest Gump came
[02:41:54] out and it was the biggest movie of the year.
[02:41:56] And got a lot of recognition from that and that all 10 to change a career.
[02:42:02] Had a lot of good opportunities happen, good roles came along after that over the next
[02:42:09] several years.
[02:42:11] Apollo 13 up next, this was an interesting part as this as the words coming out about
[02:42:19] Apollo 13 being made, who's a being made by Ron Howard.
[02:42:24] And you say I usually need to get a call back from an audition but Tom had vouched for
[02:42:31] me and when Ron came to the premiere of Forest Gump he met me in the lobby and said, really
[02:42:35] great job.
[02:42:36] I'm glad I cast you and just like that I was set to be in Apollo 13.
[02:42:40] Yeah, I just met Ron shortly before the premiere of Forest Gump and he put me in the movie
[02:42:47] and it was going to be Tom's next movie and he came to the premiere and he said, well,
[02:42:54] I'm glad you were.
[02:42:56] Because he obviously liked Lieutenant Dan and the job I did in the movie.
[02:43:01] Apollo 13 came out on June 30, 1995 as a big hit garnering, stellar reviews and eventually
[02:43:06] bringing more than 350 million worldwide, it was nominated for nine Oscars, including
[02:43:11] Best Picture and one, two along with the host of other awards.
[02:43:15] Ron Howard's next movie was a crime thriller called Ransom.
[02:43:21] Ron asked me to play the villain detective gone bad named Jimmy Shaker, who kidnapped
[02:43:26] some Mel Gibson's young son and holds him for Ransom.
[02:43:31] And the end, Ransom was a big hit.
[02:43:36] Critics like the movie, very different film for Ron Howard, a tense, a sensible drama
[02:43:38] that ended up burning more than 309 million dollars at the box office.
[02:43:41] And again, you're going to a lot of details, really interesting stuff that I'm skipping
[02:43:47] through because I don't want this to be a 14-hour podcast.
[02:43:51] Yeah, you don't want to go through my whole career.
[02:43:54] Every thing I've done, you, and a lot of movies in there.
[02:44:03] No, it's you are on a roll though.
[02:44:07] What I was thinking about is, if you're in that Hollywood scene, let's face it, when you
[02:44:16] go and apply to be Lieutenant Dan, there's got to be a hundred people that could play
[02:44:22] that role.
[02:44:24] And maybe then wouldn't do it exactly the same as you, but maybe it wouldn't be quite
[02:44:27] as good, maybe it'd be a little better, maybe a little bit of a worse, but the chances
[02:44:30] of you getting a roll have got to be microscopic.
[02:44:34] Well, you know, that's, I think that's one of the reasons I didn't tell me right away
[02:44:40] that I got it.
[02:44:41] It was two or three weeks because they were seeing a lot of different people.
[02:44:44] And they were, I heard that Bruce Willis was toying with the idea of doing the part at
[02:44:51] one point in there, they were probably going through a list of should we get recognizable
[02:44:56] actors to play this role.
[02:44:59] And they decided to, you know, I did a good audition for it.
[02:45:03] They decided to go with a newcomer.
[02:45:05] I mean, I don't only done a few, a few parts, but I did have, you know, I did have
[02:45:11] of Myson Men, and they could see that I was kind of a serious guy.
[02:45:16] I produced the movie.
[02:45:17] I acted in it and I directed it.
[02:45:20] So I think that, that, that caught their attention a little bit.
[02:45:25] Tough business.
[02:45:26] No, yeah.
[02:45:27] No.
[02:45:28] Because there's a thousand people that would want to play in that movie.
[02:45:32] They didn't get it.
[02:45:33] There's only one person that gets it crazy.
[02:45:35] I was lucky to get it.
[02:45:37] Good fortune.
[02:45:38] Uh, you jump into this next chapter.
[02:45:44] It's called Darkness and Light.
[02:45:46] It's the name of the chapter.
[02:45:51] Very common theme on this podcast.
[02:45:52] Part of part in getting into the chapter a little bit.
[02:45:54] You say back in the mid 1970s, a young, incredibly talented theater student joined us at
[02:45:59] those early meetings held at Illinois State University to discuss the creation of Step
[02:46:03] and Wolf.
[02:46:04] As one of the meetings was winding down, she pulled the fifth, the scotch out of her
[02:46:09] person and now it's come on everyone, let's go.
[02:46:11] Everybody laughed.
[02:46:12] We were all in a partying, pottenbus were always available on college campuses and the fact
[02:46:17] that this young theater student kept a bottle of whiskey and her purse didn't seem unusual
[02:46:21] to any of us.
[02:46:23] That student was Moira before I knew her very well and I drank and partyed right
[02:46:28] along with her and the rest of our friends in those days.
[02:46:32] Over the years, I've known many wonderful performers who are explosive and funny on stage,
[02:46:36] but who are shy, fearful, reserved and even a bit awkward in daily life.
[02:46:41] Being gives them the confidence and feeling of self-worth.
[02:46:45] Sometimes they will add a little alcohol on top of that and Moira wrestled with self-confidence
[02:46:51] and fear performing in alcohol and alcohol helped quiet those feelings.
[02:46:57] One night and again I'm jumping through some type of stuff.
[02:47:01] I kind of jump over some of that and maybe just a...
[02:47:06] This is kind of a difficult chapter and my ten not to go through it too much, but Cliff's
[02:47:16] notes maybe.
[02:47:18] Yeah.
[02:47:22] It's definitely a tough chapter.
[02:47:24] Yeah, it was a hard one to write.
[02:47:26] That's true.
[02:47:27] Take this chapter in view because it's very personal and difficult story, family story for our family.
[02:47:33] But it's a hopeful story as well and that's why we wanted to include it.
[02:47:38] Yeah, and what I liked about reading it was, look, I hear from people all the time that
[02:47:45] are caught in this trap and this is the story of that this trap doesn't have to keep you
[02:47:53] that you can get out of it.
[02:47:58] And that's what you get into.
[02:47:59] So as time went on going back to the book I began to see that it was a big deal.
[02:48:04] As life and Moira is drinking, I got scarier and scarier at one point about 1995 or so,
[02:48:08] I simply stopped drinking with her.
[02:48:10] I figured if she didn't have me as a drinking buddy anymore, then that would help and
[02:48:14] maybe she would stop.
[02:48:15] But that was wishful thinking.
[02:48:17] Alcohol is consuming Moira by then and sometimes she would drink so much she'd pass
[02:48:21] out as time went on.
[02:48:22] I had to be careful what I said and how I said it because when she drinks you would react
[02:48:26] unpredictably and kind of crazy.
[02:48:29] She started to hide her drinking from me and the family.
[02:48:32] I'd get rid of booze all the booze in the house but I'd find an open cabinet.
[02:48:36] I'd find a top cabinet with a bottle tucked far away in the back.
[02:48:40] I'd sometimes find a bottle hidden in the tank of the toilet.
[02:48:44] At times when I came home she'd a week of perfume and mouthwash and effort to hide her
[02:48:48] drinking from me.
[02:48:52] At this point you had signed on to do a show called George Wallace was that a movie?
[02:49:00] It was a TNT mini-series thing about the governor of Alabama.
[02:49:08] And by this time alcohol had taken control of Moira.
[02:49:13] It was as if she had two personalities when she was drinking, she was a beautiful self
[02:49:18] respectable doctor, Dr. Jekyll but when she drank she turned into an out of control and
[02:49:22] scary Mr. Hyde.
[02:49:24] Sophie was nine years old at the worst of Moira's drinking.
[02:49:28] Mac was six, Ella was five.
[02:49:30] Moira was always a great mom and tried her best but because of her drinking at times I felt
[02:49:34] afraid for our children.
[02:49:35] Each night Moira would drink.
[02:49:37] Then each morning she'd feel guilty and apologized.
[02:49:40] I'd tell her she simply couldn't keep doing this and she'd say yes you're right I'll
[02:49:44] stop.
[02:49:45] But the next night she'd do it again.
[02:49:47] She couldn't help it.
[02:49:48] So many good things were happening with my acting career.
[02:49:53] I'd start rehearsing for George Wallace with John Frick and Hymer and was trying to focus
[02:49:58] on my role but night after night when I came home from rehearsals our home turned into
[02:50:02] a battlefield.
[02:50:12] You say here jumping ahead finally it became clear that Moira had no ability to stop
[02:50:16] or drinking I didn't know where to turn.
[02:50:18] I started going to Alonon family groups for people worried about someone with a drinking
[02:50:23] problem.
[02:50:24] I started seeing a psychologist who specialized in alcoholism and helping families through
[02:50:27] difficult challenges.
[02:50:28] I learned that family members must become tough in their love.
[02:50:31] I need to become ruthless in combating this addiction for the sake of my wife but it was
[02:50:35] very hard to do.
[02:50:36] You want to plead and beg and appeal to the wonderful loving person you know is deep down
[02:50:41] inside.
[02:50:42] If that person has been consumed swallowed up and cannot hear you and you kind of get
[02:50:50] to your your wits end about this and you talked to John Frick and Hymer was either director
[02:50:58] of George Wallace and you finally opened up to him and you tell him what's going on and
[02:51:06] back to the book.
[02:51:07] And so for more than 25 years and was a serious attendee of alcoholics anonymous he was a
[02:51:13] hardcore A.A. warrior and told me what I needed to do I needed to take Moira to rehab.
[02:51:18] I needed to do it right away.
[02:51:24] So you you you take her you take her to rehab.
[02:51:31] She's freaks out on the way there you compare her to Linda Blair in the extra sister
[02:51:38] in terms of her behavior on the way there and you're asking yourself like who who is this
[02:51:44] person and what's happening.
[02:51:52] Fast forward a bit here you say an average stay in rehab is 28 days my wife stayed in rehab
[02:51:57] for seven weeks.
[02:51:58] She was there the entire time I was shooting the movie.
[02:52:01] I received a call from a facility at one point and a rehab supervisor indicated they
[02:52:05] were having a hard time getting Moira to admit she had a problem.
[02:52:11] She thought she was fine and then everybody there was messed up that meant trouble.
[02:52:17] If you never admit you have a problem you'll never get better.
[02:52:26] When they were telling you that she didn't she wasn't admitting to her she wasn't owning
[02:52:31] the problem that you kind of knew this is not good.
[02:52:36] Yeah yeah that was that was not surprising because I knew she was kind of deep in the
[02:52:47] throws of the devil at his hands around her neck and we had to come up with try to come
[02:52:55] up with some additional ways to get her to admit it and to face it and she wasn't going
[02:53:03] to get better if she didn't realize what her issue was and that it was real.
[02:53:09] So rehab after seven weeks I brought her home and within gosh prompy within four months
[02:53:25] she had fallen again and had to go to rehab again and that's when things began to get
[02:53:32] better and change after the second time.
[02:53:37] Yeah it seemed like that was a point where you described finding out that she's basically
[02:53:48] you're on the road you're doing another thing.
[02:53:51] Snake eyes and you're on the road doing that you get a call from your daughter basically
[02:53:57] saying mom still drinking.
[02:54:02] You say here in the book I wanted to be the loving husband the gentle husband I wanted
[02:54:05] to ask more a nicely please don't drink again but with the vicious enemy of alcohol
[02:54:11] taking over the life of the woman I loved I learned that you could show no mercy fighting
[02:54:16] this enemy.
[02:54:19] I called John Frankenheimer and said more it has relapsed.
[02:54:23] I'm heading back to Los Angeles but I don't know what I'm going to do.
[02:54:26] John said it's time to take the gloves off and he told me exactly what I needed to do.
[02:54:31] When I arrived home the next day more to open the door and I spotted it right away
[02:54:34] she'd been drinking again.
[02:54:36] I came in the house gave the kid her and the kids a hug acted as if everything was
[02:54:39] normal and fine.
[02:54:40] After a short while I said to Moira honey you look tired why don't you go down and
[02:54:44] take a nap.
[02:54:45] She said you know I am kind of tired I think I will.
[02:54:47] She went to lie down in the back bedroom 20 minutes later I checked on her.
[02:54:50] She was out like a light.
[02:54:53] I packed three suitcases called a card a pick us up and wrote Moira the hardest letter
[02:54:58] I've ever had to write.
[02:55:00] I explained we'd reached a point of decision she couldn't have our family and still have
[02:55:05] alcohol.
[02:55:06] She needed to choose between us and she needed to get serious about her choice because
[02:55:11] I was finished.
[02:55:13] I told her I loved her so much and I wanted her to be okay.
[02:55:16] What I wanted most in life was for her to be sober and happy and for us to be together
[02:55:19] again as a family.
[02:55:21] But we couldn't do that if she continued to drink.
[02:55:26] I was taking the kids.
[02:55:30] And that's you know that's a kind of easy thing to do.
[02:55:39] You always want to you know I remember you know because I started seeing counselors myself
[02:55:46] to help me with this issue.
[02:55:48] I started seeing a counselor who was focused on dealing with alcoholism and problems and
[02:55:57] I started going to Alonon and doing you know where can I turn to get some help here.
[02:56:05] And you know you keep one day you know the next day after a bender the night before
[02:56:12] you see the sweet person she's apologizing and you know you're hugging and everything
[02:56:18] and you just want that person to stay there you know and so you kind of you go okay okay
[02:56:25] you know and you're you believe them when they say they're going to stop or when they
[02:56:32] know they misbehaved you know but then it happens again and then it happens again and
[02:56:38] the same thing over and over and over and at a certain point you do have to get as vicious
[02:56:44] as the as the demon is you know it's like it really is wrestling a demon and so I did
[02:56:53] what we had to do which is something to shock her into reality that there was no continuing
[02:57:05] in this cycle anymore for for us and if she and and it did it she she's a loving wonderful
[02:57:16] person who loves her kids and fighting for her kids knowing I had taken them back to Montreal
[02:57:24] with me and they were going to be with me while I made this movie and you don't have anything
[02:57:30] to worry about now you don't have to take care of the kids they're not there I've got them
[02:57:36] you focus on yourself and this issue and within a couple of days she took herself to
[02:57:45] Betty Ford clinic and checked herself in and that that's the last time she you know right before
[02:57:51] she went in there she had her final drink I had a friend who you know was had a lot of money
[02:58:01] it was very wealthy and lost his son to opioid overdose and you know he was kind of
[02:58:12] talking me through what had happened and one of the things he said to me he said you know I had
[02:58:19] unlimited resources unlimited resources I said him to every different rehab all kinds of different
[02:58:27] you know drugs psychologists therapists unlimited resources to try and get his son off of drugs
[02:58:36] and he said the only thing I do was was tough love is the term that he used which you know
[02:58:47] is what you you did here take the gloves off and I can't imagine how hard that's got to be
[02:58:57] to hold the line in those situations where you know when you're looking at your kid your wife
[02:59:02] you're looking at your kid and you're thinking okay I'm not going to give you any more money
[02:59:06] because that's the other thing like not only was this guy investing sending me to a psychologist
[02:59:11] it was also hey dad can I get a hundred bucks to go out to eat well all that money is going to
[02:59:15] drugs hey dad can I go to see a concert well all that money is going to drugs and oh by the way my
[02:59:21] credit card's missing by the way there's a 80 bucks missing from my wallet so he's enabling this
[02:59:25] behavior the whole time and the only way to stop it is okay you know what you're getting nothing
[02:59:30] from me that means you can't stay in my house you can't get food from me and that's the sort of
[02:59:35] extreme measures when you're fighting against these extreme demons that it's seen then again I'm
[02:59:40] I'm not a professional obviously but it seems like when you're going against something that's
[02:59:45] as powerful as drugs or alcohol you have to you have to take extreme measures you do there's no
[02:59:53] question about it and I you know as I said John Frankenheimer was came into my life at the right time
[03:00:01] because he was a hardcore 25 years sober guy and this is a very very well-known
[03:00:08] Hollywood director he directed the Manchurian candidate seven days in May the French connection to
[03:00:15] Grand Prix Black Sunday all these all these great movies and he's directing me and we became friends
[03:00:25] and he shared his story very personal story that where he basically destroyed his career because
[03:00:32] he wouldn't give up drinking when he finally did that he had to go through a lot of soul searching
[03:00:37] and everything before he found his way back into directing again and now he was sober for 25 years and
[03:00:45] he knew what it took for him because he was stubborn as hell just like my wife and he was not going to
[03:00:52] go quietly and give up the booze until there was some hard decisions and some people took the gloves off with them
[03:01:02] well good news you ended up winning an Emmy for your role in George Wallace did a bunch of other
[03:01:17] movies the championships season the green mile it's the rage Bruno imposter mission of Mars
[03:01:25] reindeer games all still career going you know solid working yeah
[03:01:34] Moira ends up going to a church looking for an AA meeting she passes an elderly French woman
[03:01:45] a member of the parish going back to the book the woman said an thick French accent my dear you
[03:01:49] need to become a Catholic you need to convert and walk away that got Moira to thinking here she was
[03:01:56] playing this Irish woman because she was in a play at the time playing this Irish woman
[03:02:00] searching for strength and a play set in a tavern and in her own life she was searching for strength
[03:02:06] to help with her sobriety nothing was set or done immediately but Moira later told me she
[03:02:11] began to feel a quiet yearning for her own shooting star and that's a reference that you talk about earlier
[03:02:18] about recognizing that there are other forces bigger than ourselves and you you're moving around a bit
[03:02:29] but Moira turned to me quite out of the blue and said oh when we get back home I'm going to
[03:02:34] become a Catholic and our kids are going to go to Catholics that's right fast forward a bit Moira
[03:02:42] was Moira got confirmed Ella started third grade max started fourth and Sophie started sixth
[03:02:47] at the local Catholic school fast forward a bit Moira and Christmas Eve 2010 I told my wife and
[03:02:54] kids to get dressed up we were headed for a special family dinner at Morton's stay cows the place
[03:02:59] we all enjoyed on a way to dinner I suddenly pulled into the church parking lot a mast was underway
[03:03:03] and my family looked confused it was too late to attend mass what we were doing what we were doing there
[03:03:08] without any family members knowing I had been attending private sessions to be officially confirmed
[03:03:13] into the church our priest was expecting us and in a small quiet ceremony on Christmas Eve surrounded
[03:03:18] by the family I love and cherished dearly I was officially confirmed into the Catholic church it was a
[03:03:22] very special night no lives Moira was so touched she'd come a long way our family had come a long
[03:03:29] way and I wanted a belong to the faith as Moira did it meant so much to me to her to all of us
[03:03:36] you know I had the obviously this was a difficult story to tell this chapter chapter nine and
[03:03:42] I wanted Moira's full consent you know should I should I tell the story in the book what we went
[03:03:50] through the darkness and light of it and how it it plays into us into our lives and
[03:04:00] she said yes you know maybe someone struggling with this kind of thing will read it and find hope
[03:04:07] you know in it that hey maybe maybe I can overcome this particular demon myself
[03:04:16] you know during this period of time everything on the outside my career
[03:04:21] who did a damn ransom you know all these different things we're having winning awards I played
[03:04:27] Harry Truman I got that golden globe and then the sag awards and the amnes and you know all this
[03:04:33] stuff was happening there was all very positive and wonderful when everything and at home you know
[03:04:40] it was dark it was tough it was difficult we were struggling and the family was really going through
[03:04:46] some difficult things so nobody ever knew that we decided to tell that story because at a time
[03:04:53] where it looked like Gary Sunise was on the rise and all the all everything was rosy and everything
[03:04:58] we were struggling with some very serious issues at home but we came through it and some very
[03:05:06] very positive things happened because of it so you never know you know a difficult difficult
[03:05:14] difficult period in your life can manifest itself into something that you never could have
[03:05:21] predicted would would be positive you know had had had another time you know I mean you can't you know you
[03:05:28] wait you know years from now you know I know you're going through this right now but it's down the road
[03:05:35] everything's going to be better and when you're going through that you can't see that you know you just
[03:05:41] can't see so many might tell you that but you you can't see it I couldn't picture getting out of this
[03:05:47] and how it was got I didn't want my relationship to be destroyed because of alcohol or my wife to
[03:05:57] go down that road I was so so blessed that she kind of it it worked taking the kids and go on
[03:06:07] leaving her by herself to confront this demon did did the trick and she's been sober 22 years now
[03:06:20] yeah well I'm like I said as we started that chapter you know you said maybe someone will hear this
[03:06:26] and it'll help them I there's no maybe on that I promise you that people will hear that and and they will
[03:06:33] it will shed some light into their lives and help them get through to fight this this powerful
[03:06:41] powerful demon I guarantee it all right I hope so I mean that that's the purpose that we decided to
[03:06:49] share it in the book you know it's it's it's played a role in the in my service life because you know
[03:07:00] becoming a you know remember the Catholic Church and and the service aspect of the faith and and what
[03:07:09] not there was definitely a role that that that faith played in my turning from self to service there's
[03:07:21] no question about speaking of turning from self to service jumping ahead here a bit one morning
[03:07:31] September about 630 more as more to help the kids get ready for school our phone rang I was still
[03:07:36] sleeping Terry Kenny who lived in New York was on the line simultaneously more to turn on the TV
[03:07:42] Hi Terry I said Gary are you watching TV right now I just got up buddy what's going on
[03:07:48] two planes have hit the world trade center the tops of both buildings are on fire
[03:07:54] Terry's words spilled out we're under attack Gary Terry's have classed airplanes into those buildings
[03:07:59] it's bad really bad every American alive and then remembers that moment and can answer
[03:08:04] the inevitable question to where were you when you first heard the news I stared in shock and
[03:08:08] disbelief along with the entire country the entire world has smoked port from the tops of both buildings
[03:08:14] horrified we watched on live TV as people left to their deaths from the upper floors of the trade
[03:08:19] center as soon as the reports soon arrived at a third airplane a crash to the Pentagon
[03:08:24] about 20 minutes later a fourth airplane crashed near Shanksville Pennsylvania
[03:08:28] we heard it was united flight 93 seemingly bound for the White House the target was ultimately
[03:08:35] determined by the 9-11 Commission report to be the capital building people on board flight 93
[03:08:41] had discovered that terrorist were crashing planes into buildings in the passenger to courageously
[03:08:44] yet faithfully chosen to take back the plane we watched the South Tower collapse and crumble
[03:08:49] in a fury of dust and smoke then the north tower fell horror enveloped us all you say while driving
[03:09:01] through one of the canyons and this is on September 11th I clicked on the radio news news
[03:09:05] castors speculated that today's attacks were only the beginning of more attacks to come the reality
[03:09:10] of the morning sank and even deeper our country was under attack vulnerable thousands of
[03:09:14] innocent people have been killed that day more horror lay ahead I couldn't tell you exactly why
[03:09:19] did this perhaps in solidarity defiance tribute but I rolled down my window stuck out my arm
[03:09:24] and made a fist and held it high here's well-duped my eyes as I listened to the news
[03:09:30] for some time as I wrote along I held my arm out stretched as high as it would reach
[03:09:36] you're living in California at the time in LA Malibu in Malibu and even in Malibu they broke out
[03:09:54] the American flags yeah yeah on Friday night so it was a Tuesday and they were candlelight
[03:10:04] vigils all over the place if you remember and we heard about something going on on one of the
[03:10:12] corners in our neighborhood so I grabbed I grabbed an American flag that I had hanging by my front door
[03:10:23] and we walked down the street with the kids and we went and all the neighbors were gathering around
[03:10:29] and people were singing and at one point everybody I had my flag up and at one point everyone
[03:10:37] turned and said the pledge of allegiance and it was God bless America and it was America the
[03:10:43] beautiful and it was the stars you know the national anthem and and people were just singing
[03:10:49] with candles on the corner in Malibu just coming together people were in pain all over the
[03:10:55] place and everyone was looking for something and during the day that day we went to our little
[03:11:01] Catholic church I don't know if you remember but George Bush said he was going to make
[03:11:07] that Friday a national day of prayer for the nation and so the churches and houses of worship
[03:11:16] everywhere in the country were just jam packed with people trying to find some peace some
[03:11:24] like trying to understand what was going on and trying to find something and we got to our
[03:11:30] little Catholic church at the school that my kids went to and there was only standing room
[03:11:38] it was packed and we ended up standing off to the side leaning against the wall and I remember the
[03:11:47] priest he and his first thing he said I don't remember everything he said but he said this is
[03:11:52] been a tough week and everybody was just you know and at the end of the the mass and
[03:12:03] we sang God bless America and the church and I couldn't even get the words out I mean it's just
[03:12:09] tears rollin down my face everything changed for me at that point the chapter in the book that
[03:12:14] kind of explores that is called turning point and it was you know the the things we talked about in
[03:12:21] the 80s with regards to the Vietnam veterans and my family and tracers and all these Vietnam
[03:12:26] veterans things and Lieutenant Dan comes along and I I start working with our wounded after that
[03:12:31] with the disabled American veterans organization they contacted me and asked me to come to
[03:12:36] their national convention they gave him a word for playing Lieutenant Dan and there was a sea of
[03:12:42] wheelchairs and wounded veterans from going back to World War II and they were all applauding me
[03:12:48] and everything I was very moved by that state involved with them tried to support the DAV for
[03:12:54] a number of years and then along comes September 11th and the seeds that have been planted in those
[03:13:00] 80s years with the veterans and my family Vietnam veterans and then working in support of the
[03:13:06] DAV some that all kind of grew into this thing after September 11th and I turned never
[03:13:16] to return to business as usual I turned towards service in a very not a very active way and it just
[03:13:28] got more and more and more and I I wanted to help our veterans the men and women who were responding
[03:13:35] to those attacks and deploying to Afghanistan or Iraq and elsewhere and I wanted to support them
[03:13:40] one of the things that you say here around that is throughout my entire life I'd always been
[03:13:49] the type of person who chose to act on the theater sense of the way word although I did a lot of
[03:13:55] that but I mean take action whether we're starting a band that lip synced for a living room
[03:14:00] full neighborhood kids or working with my fellow high school students to fashion our own theater
[03:14:04] company or taking a great production to New York or moving out to Los Angeles so I could work in
[03:14:08] the movies I'd never been the kind of guy who sat around and talked or wondered or thought about
[03:14:13] stuff without doing something about it at least not for long my response had always been to take
[03:14:17] action and hopefully doing so would benefit other people along the way in those early months of
[03:14:22] 2003 and again I jumped ahead to get here I realized I'd never before the cost of freedom and I
[03:14:29] knew freedom needed to be defended I knew places that existed in our world without freedom
[03:14:34] and I knew that without freedom nothing of the good and fulfilling ways we in America aspire
[03:14:39] to live our lives would be possible this realization helped fuel me more than ever before it
[03:14:44] made me profoundly grateful for being an American able to live in this land of freedom able to
[03:14:49] make something of my life when it came to service I wanted to be all in all the time living
[03:14:54] out my calling every single day for the rest of my life I can almost I can say most certainly
[03:15:00] that what happened to our country on September 11th broke my heart and changed me forever
[03:15:05] it forced me to rethink everything what do I really believe how do I want to raise my kids what kind
[03:15:10] of example do I want to set for them what can I do to give this great country what can I do to give
[03:15:17] back to this great country I love how can I use my good fortune to help it was a turning point
[03:15:23] and mark the beginning of a new level of service I found that the more I gave the more I heal
[03:15:30] cold two months after watching the statues of Saddam Hussein being pulled down I was on a plane
[03:15:36] to Kuwait nothing would ever be the same you we kind of kicked off you know the name of this
[03:15:45] next chapter is but a bridge between worlds you know and and bridging this thing and you got
[03:15:51] this here hi I'm Gary Sinis and I'd like to go on a USO tour please call me back I left my number
[03:15:57] on the voicemail a couple of weeks went by all I heard was crickets I concluded the USO must receive
[03:16:02] a large bond that calls with similar requests as mine so I called to get an left to second message
[03:16:08] hi this is Gary Sinis and I'd like to go on a USO tour to support the troops please get back to me
[03:16:14] chirp chirp those crickets were deafening now you get tactical and you say I called to get in
[03:16:20] May and left a third message this time more strategic hi this is Gary Sinis calling again I'd
[03:16:24] like to go on a USO tour I want to do as much as I can to support the troops please call me back
[03:16:30] oh by the way I'm the guy who played Lieutenant Dan and Forest Compton representative from the
[03:16:36] USO return my call the very next day yeah I wasn't a recognized little name but Lieutenant Dan
[03:16:45] Dan is everybody so that's that starts it you go to Camp Doha you go to Campudari
[03:16:52] um you end up at one of these bases USO representative motion for us to follow him and let us to the
[03:17:00] big tent near the center of camp the tent had an entrance on each side generators working over time
[03:17:04] to pump an air conditioning we headed for one door and at the other side a line of at least
[03:17:08] a thousand troops waited in the heat to get in as we headed in they started to applaud the
[03:17:13] atmosphere inside crackled maybe another thousand uniform troops already inside the tent broken
[03:17:18] to applause when we came into the tent I took a deep breath what have we done they deserve the
[03:17:24] applause not us but wow this is amazing even with a little air even with a little air conditioning
[03:17:28] it was hot as hell in there nobody seemed to care we lined up and the troops lined up and
[03:17:32] started to file past us we smiled and shook hands and posed for pictures and everything happened
[03:17:37] quite quickly the very first soldier I met said hey Lieutenant Dan you got legs
[03:17:44] and then each one down the line just kept calling me Lieutenant Dan over and over
[03:17:47] I realized they didn't know my real name so I went with it I tried to look each person the
[03:17:52] I tried to ask each soldier where he or she was from tried to ask how things were going
[03:17:56] but nothing I did felt very deep because we had to keep the line moving there are so many people
[03:18:00] and then you guys have to leave and you kind of you kind of ask yourself that we do any good
[03:18:08] now you're traveling around you're getting ready for a next
[03:18:10] um a next trip I think you're heading into Baghdad you say this the man to the right
[03:18:17] of me wore a button on his shirt bearing the photo of two young men a New York City police officer
[03:18:21] and the other a firefighter with the FD NY we struck up a struck up quite a conversation and I learned
[03:18:28] he wasn't an entertainer the two young men were his sons and both sons a died on 911
[03:18:34] he was there because he wanted the troops overseas to knew no that America supported them
[03:18:39] the man was maybe in his mid sixties and spoke with a low rasp scars ran across his neck
[03:18:44] and later I found out he'd survive throat cancer the man carried a chunk of rock concrete made
[03:18:50] maybe he showed it to me then passed in my direction so I could feel it too I ran my hands over
[03:18:55] its rough surface it felt like an old piece of rubble puzzle asked him what it was all about
[03:19:00] why he was carrying all this extra weight he swallowed once twice then his eyes grew wet
[03:19:07] he whispered more horsely than before it's a piece of the world trade center
[03:19:20] you guys land at the uh saddam international airport well what was formally the saddam international
[03:19:27] airport which by this time was called the Baghdad International Airport and by the way I wanted to mention
[03:19:32] this it was still a little soft I was going to tell you that you beat me to Iraq
[03:19:40] because you went to Iraq for the first time in June of 2003 I didn't get to Iraq until
[03:19:47] I think it was late September early October 2003 so I was on point yeah I was a new guy
[03:19:55] setting the stage always it's Sherry boy yeah but I got to leave after five days yeah that's a
[03:20:03] little bit different yeah yeah that's but that's impressive that you got in there that quick
[03:20:08] I would have really liked to have joined you now you're landing there when we clattered down the
[03:20:16] car goes uh planes the planes ramp I can only shake my head and dip disbelief in front of us waiting
[03:20:23] in two long rows of uniforms stood American soldiers thousand strong lining our route all the
[03:20:28] way to the cargo from the cargo plane to the hangar like a happy government we simply walk forward
[03:20:32] and show cans on a way to the destination soldier after soldier marine after marine say what
[03:20:37] after sailor airman after airman smile after smile I felt choked up inside happy to be
[03:20:42] they're honored grateful so incredibly grateful we were here for them but they had our backs
[03:20:48] they weren't gonna let anything happen to us they were here for us
[03:20:51] then you guys make your way to the stage this was this was the first USO tour after the statue came
[03:21:02] down so the statue came down in April and in June now this was the first big entertainment tour
[03:21:09] Northwest Airlines gave us a 747 there were 180 people on the plane kid rock was there
[03:21:16] with his band Leanne Wal-Mack Robert De Niro I mean it was an enlice of celebrities and people
[03:21:25] that were going over there the basketball players football players cheer leaders from the Dallas
[03:21:31] cowboy cheer leaders were there I mean it was Paul Rodriguez I mean it was a lot of entertainers
[03:21:36] that were going on this this trip so it was the first entertainment tour to a rack and they split
[03:21:42] us up into a lot of groups and I remember getting back from Kuwait we went out to Udari
[03:21:50] which it was called Udari at the time it was renamed camp burying later on but Udari
[03:21:57] we flew back that's with the tent and all the sweaty people in the thousand in there and everything
[03:22:02] we flew back and I got back about 11 o'clock at nine I get a phone call from the USO representative
[03:22:08] saying Tommy Franks general Tommy Franks is going up to Baghdad tomorrow he wants to take a small
[03:22:16] group of people and he wants you to come so I said absolutely so we went up to Baghdad and
[03:22:26] you know went into the palaces you know this this thing with Kid Rock and everything at the
[03:22:32] airport thousands of people it was pretty pretty amazing just to be there with so many soldiers
[03:22:40] we entertained them there in the hanger maybe 4,000 people in the hanger you know I got to see
[03:22:47] the palaces I got to meet a lot a lot of troops during this this trip it was it was an amazing trip
[03:22:55] and I kind of befriended Tommy Franks from that moment on we ended up going to do a
[03:23:01] long after that to the central command and we did some shows there and met a lot of people and
[03:23:09] it was amazing I was back in Iraq within six months again for another trip
[03:23:14] I'll say this too and when you like I said so all that took place I wouldn't even go into Iraq
[03:23:21] I was awaiting to go to Iraq when did you go out of the fall of 2003 so I was I was back in November
[03:23:27] back in November but I'll say this at this time that early like the war had a different feel to it
[03:23:40] no question we were kind of just winning you know hey look we're taking some casualties for sure
[03:23:50] but there was there was no insurgency yet there was some former regime elements were running around
[03:23:56] we had the deck of cards we were going after we were doing pretty good we were we didn't get
[03:24:03] some sedum until later that later that year but I was there when we got sedum not we me but
[03:24:10] American forces got sedum but but still it was the it was still seemed like everything was going pretty
[03:24:23] good I mean there's no other way to put it but when I deployed there in 2003 2004
[03:24:29] it if you would have asked me at the end of my deployment how much longer the war in Iraq was
[03:24:34] going to last I would have said oh probably another three four months you know there'll be less
[03:24:39] less combat operations and then you know it'll be you know I'm sure we'll still have some troops there
[03:24:45] but it'll be pretty settled down so you know I was wrong and we were wrong as a country because
[03:24:52] it was it wasn't even getting started yet and so that's why when I picture all these celebrities
[03:24:59] rolling in there you know thinking back to the glory days of Bob Hope like oh yeah this is kind
[03:25:06] of hey that's what that's what I've said this before that's what us young guys that hadn't been
[03:25:11] a combat before we were like we want to go we want to make sure we do you know we want to do our part
[03:25:16] and I could see you know everyone thinking we want to do our part we want to help out and it seemed
[03:25:22] like for lack of a better word it seemed like things were going really well and this wasn't going
[03:25:26] to last too long and we'd all come home and have a big victory parade and be done
[03:25:33] well it would be it would be four years before I went back so during those intervening four
[03:25:40] years oh yeah things got really bad so what did you go back what what was seven oh yeah yeah
[03:25:45] and it was calming down a little bit yeah we were up in the remoddy and you know the surge and
[03:25:50] happened and all of that yeah the time period in between you know well oh five oh six was was
[03:25:58] not good and and I went back again in in a way and I went back a couple years ago
[03:26:08] what year did you go back most recently this 2017 okay well you got more trips to Iraq than I do
[03:26:17] what's up with that you know they're shorter they're much shorter jump it back to the book here
[03:26:28] on September 11th 2003 two years after the attacks on our country I walked into Walter Reed Army
[03:26:33] medical center and national naval medical center but thesa for the first time meeting wounded troops
[03:26:38] in both hospitals in one day Walter Reed at Walter Reed I met a soldier wheeling himself down
[03:26:45] the hallway who went in two weeks earlier at long stool back in Germany he was fresh off the line
[03:26:50] unable to get out of bed now back in Washington DC he was able to get around in a wheelchair it was good to
[03:26:55] see progress and then you say you know you you did six trips and six months I mean going and you
[03:27:07] know your family sticking by you um yeah two of those trips were uh Iraq June and November and
[03:27:15] then in between I went to Germany and I went to Italy and you know they were all troop trips I'd
[03:27:21] come home and say send me send me someplace else and I didn't have a job at the time so I
[03:27:27] had a lot of time and I said you know let's make use of it right now uh then you start talking
[03:27:34] about the hospitals more then here you go into long stool in Germany always quite a first somber
[03:27:42] like it's Melby and Deceptic feel the harshness of the fluorescent lights a lot of these soldiers had
[03:27:46] thousand yard stairs I wore a USO baseball cap and just stood there at first not knowing how to get
[03:27:51] started the silence felt uneasy awkward but I knew I needed to dive in I needed to go to someone
[03:27:56] to introduce myself and just say hello just then one of the soldiers one of the wounded soldiers looked
[03:28:02] up he looked straight into my face and broke out in a big grin and exclaimed lieutenant dance
[03:28:10] a damn broke all the other guys looked at me and rouse themselves the ones who could walk
[03:28:14] crowd around me in the whole mood in the room changed soldier after soldier introduced himself they
[03:28:19] asked me questions about force company told them some funny stories a USO rep had a polaroid
[03:28:23] camera and started taking pictures of me with the guys so I signed the backs of the polaroids
[03:28:27] and handed them out maybe half hour pass not long but when I left that room I couldn't help
[03:28:32] but noticed how the mood felt different now there was laughter joy I knew and I knew I had changed
[03:28:40] a change occurred in me too this first room full of banged up service members had forced me to get
[03:28:46] outside of myself they helped me focused on who I was truly therefore them not me it was a reminder
[03:28:55] that this trip was about lifting them up and not about my own fears so I walked into the next
[03:28:59] word word I told myself to stop thinking about how I felt and focused instead on how the troops felt
[03:29:07] my job was to help relieve their pain to give them something else to think about to help them heal
[03:29:13] to spread a bit at you and you know that became you know like you said part of your mission
[03:29:24] and and what you were doing was trying to try to help these guys give something else think about
[03:29:30] yeah and and lift spirits you know that's that's the more point of you know why am I going just
[03:29:38] to see stuff for to do something yeah and I love your perspective and actually like the closing of
[03:29:44] this book leadership strategy and tactics the basically the close the closing chapter
[03:29:50] is called it's it's all on you but not about you right like you're responsible but it's not
[03:29:57] about you leadership isn't about you and that's this this mental note that you make of hey look
[03:30:03] it's hard to go into these rooms but it's not about me it's about making these guys feel better
[03:30:10] I learned I learned a lot on those first trips the landstool was the first military hospital
[03:30:14] that I went to their fresh off the battlefield as you know you know and the the guys that I just
[03:30:21] literally hours I mean the hours off the battlefield and as soon as I got there the bus pulled up
[03:30:29] we we were just about ready to get out of the bus and a fresh batch of wounded were were
[03:30:37] they were just pulling a bus up the airplane had just gotten in they put them on the bus they brought
[03:30:43] them to the hospital entrance so we were going in and they were all of a sudden all these
[03:30:48] all these technicians and everybody started running out of the hospital and started unloading
[03:30:54] this bus which was just nothing but gurneys with wires and you know wounded wounded folks on these
[03:31:01] gurneys and I just sat there and watched them unload the bus of gurneys and then I had
[03:31:07] they go in and I was apprehensive about it tell you the truth I didn't know how he's going to react
[03:31:12] to see and somebody with their legs gone or any of that kind of thing so but I learned a lot on that
[03:31:19] first trip and within two weeks I was at Bethesda and Walter Reed now he's doing that
[03:31:28] at one point you see kid rock doing what kid rock does which is delivering the justice of rock
[03:31:38] at all and I was watching MTV with my wife and on MTV this was 2019 or 1998 or 1999 or 2000
[03:31:55] I don't know what I was in Virginia Beach and kid rock this person no one had ever heard of was playing
[03:32:00] the spring break special at on MTV and he played ball with a ball whatever that song is he played
[03:32:12] that song and I looked at my wife and I said this guy is going to be huge and sure enough kid rock
[03:32:18] I called it I called it yes I don't know if you had I don't know if you had that little dude
[03:32:26] with them or not I remember that the first time I saw my said this is unusual but I'll tell you
[03:32:33] like no kidding when I saw him for the first time I was like this this guy is this guy rocks
[03:32:40] I called it at control so you see that and of course you know despite you doing this acting
[03:32:49] and directing whatever what's your true what your true desires to be a rock and roll star so you
[03:32:57] say to the USO people hey I'd like to you know I put I got a band because you done that you
[03:33:02] done a little gig with your friends and so now you say hey I'd like to go on tour as well
[03:33:07] and they kind of shine you on yeah a little bit I'm an actor with a band is not an interesting
[03:33:12] but you drive on and you put together the the Lieutenant Dan band and your first show is
[03:33:24] at Diego Garcia which only someone in the military could laugh at because Diego Garcia is an island
[03:33:30] in the middle of the Pacific it's as far away as you can move remote place in the world they're like
[03:33:35] oh you want to go into a cool start with Diego Garcia well here's here's the thing about that
[03:33:41] Jacob they you know I bugged them over and over I went on six tours that year and every time I'd
[03:33:48] go on a tour I would bug them you know I got musicians I played with I want to entertain the
[03:33:53] troops I know I'm just shaking hands and taking pictures finally after six tours they knew I was
[03:33:58] serious and they said okay we'll set up a tour for you they didn't ask me for a CD
[03:34:04] to even hear if the band was any good so what they did was just send us as far away as possible
[03:34:12] yes they did and nobody would ever hear about it I guess and you end up playing 30, 40, 50
[03:34:20] shows here we've the first stuff we did was in O3 the first place we played was a great
[03:34:28] lace naval base which was right near where I grew up and we played there in November of O3
[03:34:36] right before my second tour to Iraq handshake tour and then they set up the tour to Korea
[03:34:43] Diego Garcia Singapore in February of O4 and I haven't stopped since now my foundation produces
[03:34:52] most of our shows I do only a few with the USO each year but I think from 2003 to now we're almost
[03:35:02] near nearing 500 shows for the military in that 16 year period impressive and that's the only
[03:35:12] reason I have the band I don't I don't play for money I play for free I have to pay the band
[03:35:17] and everything but I play for free I make my living as an actor so this the band is a part of my
[03:35:24] foundation and people donate to the USO you know they're gonna send entertainment you donate to the
[03:35:31] Gary Sinese Foundation and one of the things that we do is we provide this this entertainment piece
[03:35:37] and I've played on bases all over the world with this band and now we continue to do a couple of days
[03:35:43] we're at naval medical center doing one of our festivals so we continue to get out there and get at it
[03:35:51] another thing you do is you pick up the lead role in CSI New York that's a huge deal that happens
[03:36:04] kind of this is another little layer if you will as you're as you're figuring out the character
[03:36:09] um you want them to be a vet the character's original name was Rick Carlucci and you didn't write
[03:36:18] you really like that you were with Anthony who's Anthony the writer Anthony's writer created CSI
[03:36:25] got it and so you say hey can we change the name Anthony asked me for ideas for a new name I gave
[03:36:30] Melissa suggestions for both the first and last name the name I like most was Mac for obvious reasons
[03:36:36] for the last name I suggested the surname of Lieutenant Dan Anthony wrestled around with his
[03:36:42] suggestions along with some others before coming to me and saying let's do it right away I felt
[03:36:46] gun-ho from my characters new name Mac Taylor yeah that's uh good layer we'll say
[03:36:59] and then just about the about the CSI New York from 2004 until 2013 nine seasons a hundred and
[03:37:09] 97 original episodes I portrayed um detective Mac Taylor on CSI New York the show ranked as
[03:37:16] high as number 17 on Neilson and evened out to about 10 million viewers per episode considered
[03:37:22] quite good today it's been shown in more than 200 markets all over the world it continues to run
[03:37:25] in syndication eventually comic books novels a video game and even a slot machine in Vegas came out
[03:37:31] based on the show although at first I didn't didn't see what a blessing it would be the series
[03:37:36] became one of the greatest gifts ever handed to me nine seasons on television is this tremendous
[03:37:40] success it gave me resources I could never have imagined it allowed me the financial and logistical
[03:37:45] freedom to take good care of my family and continue my mission of supporting the troops
[03:37:49] I will always be proud to have portrayed US Marine Corps veteran at 9-11 family member
[03:37:55] detective Mac Taylor on CSI New York does that what's the role that you get recognized for the
[03:38:03] most still lieutenant damn um could could be yeah but uh CSI New York when you're on television
[03:38:12] every week you know five minutes for a decade yeah you know it it changed and then I did another
[03:38:18] series criminal minds beyond borders for a couple of seasons after that so you know primarily
[03:38:24] uh I think it's it's probably between Mac Taylor and and lieutenant Dan but you know and when
[03:38:32] I'm when I'm went overseas you know one time I'm up on the DMZ and Korea right and I'm doing a tour
[03:38:39] with the band over in Korea we we go up to the DMZ to look around and get a tour up there and I'm in
[03:38:46] the gift shop there's a gift shop on the DMZ you know you gotta go buy some DMZ stuff and a group
[03:38:52] of Asian tourists but tour bus pulled up the Asian tourists come out they come into the
[03:38:58] into the uh into the gift shop and there's 50 it's packed in there with the tourists and they're
[03:39:04] looking at stuff and so all of a sudden one sees me and you will muck Taylor and all of a sudden
[03:39:11] the whole place goes nuts and here I am on the DMZ in a gift shop with all the tourists
[03:39:18] screaming about CSI New York it was completely surreal but it was it's because it internationally
[03:39:25] it was it was very popular in certain places it was very popular in South Korea that's crazy
[03:39:33] uh next section that you talk about is um you're back in Iraq we screwed up in helmets and both
[03:39:43] prove vests and drove out uh in a convoy of homies to visit one of the Iraqi elementary schools
[03:39:48] that U.S. troops had been working to improve who's November 2003 my second tour of Iraq
[03:39:53] with the U.S.L. the school itself wasn't considered dangerous but the roads to the school and back
[03:39:57] were always suspect particularly when traveling with U.S. military so you roll into this school I
[03:40:03] couldn't help but notice how many children sat at each desk the desks look longer than typical
[03:40:08] American school desks perhaps built to see too comfortably yet three to four children how to
[03:40:13] did each desk each little group would share one pencil stub pass get back and forth among themselves
[03:40:19] working on just a few sheets of paper these desks and pencils were the only school equipment I saw
[03:40:24] when I asked why the Iraqi children didn't have more supplies the surprising answer came back because we
[03:40:29] can't get them skipping forward here as we headed back to base in our convoy and idea
[03:40:36] started to percolate in the back of my mind but I didn't say anything at first it was wasn't a big
[03:40:41] idea initially it was just simply reflecting the phrase that was digging deep into my heart I can do more
[03:40:47] and then you start going and gathering up school supplies for Iraqi children and that
[03:40:54] becomes your next it's your next tactical mission was getting these getting kids school supplies over there
[03:41:01] you hook up with Laura Heldonbrand who wrote C. Biscuit and Unbroken and you start this this thing
[03:41:11] operation Iraqi children which eventually becomes operation international children and you guys
[03:41:18] just supply supply all this all this gear to these kids well the the important part of that was
[03:41:29] that we wanted to give it to the troops to give to the kids got it so our our little motto was helping
[03:41:35] soldiers help children I I just felt you know on that first trip to the school I saw and
[03:41:41] watched the kids were loving the soldiers you know the soldiers rebuilt the school they came in
[03:41:47] there but windows in they did all kinds of stuff for the kids and the kids were very grateful the
[03:41:52] soldiers were just hugging the kids and it was a spirit that I thought was very important to preserve in
[03:41:58] some way and so I thought well maybe we can collect some school supplies and send them to those
[03:42:05] troops and they can take them out to the school and give them to the kids and that's what we did we
[03:42:10] collected stuff at my kid school and we shipped it over to that base and they took it out gave
[03:42:15] to the kids and it turned into a program that lasted nine years and we sent hundreds of thousands
[03:42:22] of schools to apply kids soccer balls shoes all kinds of stuff but to not only Iraq but
[03:42:30] Afghanistan Haiti all these different places yeah that's that's a that's a strategic move too because
[03:42:36] as these young kids see the American soldiers what do they see of them right they see guys with
[03:42:41] guns they see guys kicking indoors and that can obviously give a real negative impression but
[03:42:47] then when they see the kid I mean they see a soldier and he's given them crayons and soccer balls
[03:42:52] and whatnot all of a sudden they realize oh these guys are these guys are here to help
[03:42:57] which is sometimes not obvious that that was the important part of what we're trying to do
[03:43:03] I knew I couldn't keep running over to Iraq every month you know but I wanted to do something
[03:43:08] from home and so supplying the troops was something that gives the kids was a way that we could do that
[03:43:15] and then you just get involved in all kinds of things in trepid fallen heroes found
[03:43:19] Fisher house foundation tragedy assistance program for survivors you end up doing something called
[03:43:25] the snowball express idea was simple going from the book they brought they brought the children of
[03:43:31] our fallen heroes to Disneyland just before Christmas to allow them to meet each other to see they
[03:43:35] were not alone in their grief and to bring them some joy and new happy memories to this special
[03:43:40] group of children who are experiencing so much sadness especially at Christmas and and and you go on
[03:43:49] talking about that I could not be prouder to be part of creating opportunities for joy friendship
[03:43:55] and communal healing by connecting family struggling with loss to one another together they share
[03:44:00] a common bond and can feel a bigger part of a bigger family the children meet and interact with
[03:44:05] others who understand what they've been through and each and help each other through this unique
[03:44:10] and terrible experience they cannot be overstated what an event like this can mean to a child who is
[03:44:16] lost a parent or in military service struggling with their grief can be overwhelming and
[03:44:22] you nighting together with hundreds of other children experience a similar tragic loss can be the
[03:44:26] magic that carries them throughout the year there's so much joy on their faces during these moments
[03:44:33] it's a blessing to interact with kids this way at the same time I'm always reminded of the
[03:44:39] celebrity embedded in these moments of the incredible cost represented in the faces of the children
[03:44:46] who come to this event last year one girl wore a t-shirt to the event with these words printed on the
[03:44:54] back in honor and memory of an underneath the words was a blank box where kids could write in the
[03:45:01] name of their fallen hero in black marker the girl had simply written my daddy and that's a
[03:45:18] that program you know we're about to the foundation the Gary Sonny's foundation that was a
[03:45:28] that was an organization that was started and every year I would go back and play a concert for the kids
[03:45:34] and be a part of the event American Airlines supplies all the transportation to get all the kids from
[03:45:40] all over the country to the to the event and a couple of years ago we folded that particular
[03:45:49] thing into the Gary Sonny's foundation as a program and we moved the event from Dallas where it had been
[03:45:56] for nine years to Disney World so we take over a thousand kids to Disney World along with you know
[03:46:04] four five hundred surviving parent or guardian or who's who's ever with the kids and we give them a
[03:46:11] lot of joy right before Christmas time at that the happiest place on earth it's extraordinary
[03:46:17] and my band has played concerts for the last I don't know 13 years something like that
[03:46:24] awesome
[03:46:24] um
[03:46:33] going back to these um hospital visits
[03:46:42] back to the book after a bomb exploded and I rack in July of 2003 Marine Staff Sergeant Mark
[03:46:47] Gronke he said that right lost an eye hand fingers thumb and right leg I met Mark on my first
[03:46:55] visit to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland on September 11th 2003 where he was
[03:47:02] recovering he was the first wounded service member I visited on the first of many trips over the
[03:47:06] years to where to to the DC military hospitals he wanted to talk about Lieutenant Dan
[03:47:12] and we shared a few stories and I sat with him for a while before I went on to the next room
[03:47:19] that afternoon I was at Walter Reed for the first time I visited with so many wounded heroes that
[03:47:24] day including many of the first triple amputees I would meet in the coming years just 21 year old
[03:47:31] just 21 years old US Army Specialist hilarious bramannus was serving with the 82nd Airborne
[03:47:39] Division in Baghdad on June 10th just 10 days before I would be in Baghdad myself specials
[03:47:44] bramannus and a fellow soldier came under attack while guarding a weapons turn in point a rocket
[03:47:51] propelled grenade killed his friend and took both bramannus's legs and his left hand as bramannus
[03:47:57] laying his bed as father stood by a side and told me what had happened and how hilarious
[03:48:01] video was from one of the tiny islands in the feathered states of micronesia three years earlier
[03:48:10] wanting to be an American soldier he'd gone to Guam to sign up for the US Army
[03:48:15] the week after my visit in a ceremony at Walter Reed on September 17th 2003 bramannus was awarded
[03:48:21] US citizenship I'll always remember that first visit meeting specialist bramannus
[03:48:28] and so many other seniors young man in a hospital bed missing three out of four limbs
[03:48:35] yet made a lasting impression on me
[03:48:44] and at one point some of your friends and some of the partners from operation international
[03:48:49] children they weren't able to go to Iraq so they went over they delivered supplies
[03:48:53] and they stopped at launch to win Germany on the way back and going back to the book here
[03:48:57] there they met a young soldier named Brendan Morocco just 22 years old the first United
[03:49:03] States service member ever to survive after losing all four limbs in an IED explosion
[03:49:09] the blast happened during the early hours of Easter Sunday while Brendan was returning
[03:49:14] from a night mission in the deserts of Iraq he was in bad shape in addition to loosing both arms
[03:49:20] and both legs Brendan's nose left eye socket and facial bones were broken
[03:49:25] he lost eight teeth from the bat blast and had taken sharp known as left eye and face
[03:49:33] his face and neck and bit burned his left carotid artery severed and his left ear drum pierced
[03:49:42] usually a soldier this severely wounded would die but army medics had been making remarkable
[03:49:48] strides in meeting bat in treating battlefield wounds and you go into some details here but
[03:49:59] a guy named Sal Cassano my saying that right he's the commissioner of the New York fire department
[03:50:06] and they wanted to raise money to build Brendan Morocco especially adapted smart technology home
[03:50:13] in Staten Island they asked if you would help you know raise funds going back to the book as we
[03:50:18] were planning a fundraising concert for Brendan to be held in Staten Island in August of 2010
[03:50:23] I received another call in March 26th 2010 while leading a squad of Marines on a security patrol
[03:50:28] in Afghanistan corporal Todd nicely 26 headstep on an IED buried at the foot of a bridge
[03:50:37] his fellow Marines quickly wrapped turnic hits around his wounds and administered more
[03:50:41] a fine rescue helicopter arrived within six minutes he became the second US service member to survive
[03:50:48] her injuries as a quadruple amputee I met Todd in the hospital then simply said to the tunnel
[03:50:56] to towers guys which the guys that are running this um this charity he needs a house too let's do
[03:51:01] another concert even before we played Brendan's concert we received a third call on May 24th
[03:51:07] 2010 sergeant John Peck had just finished sweeping a compound with the metal detector checking
[03:51:13] for bombs when he stepped on an IED he became America's third surviving quadruple amputee
[03:51:20] we decided to raise funds to help build homes for all three quadruple amputees
[03:51:25] back before my foundation was created it was no simple matter to help
[03:51:30] raise about a half a million bucks for each home project it still isn't a simple matter today
[03:51:36] but I wanted to do everything I could do to help in time we built homes for all three quadruple
[03:51:43] amputees and this new initiative steam rolled from there the good news was that thanks to new
[03:51:49] sophisticated life saving techniques on the battlefield more soldiers started surviving these horrific
[03:51:54] injuries the bad news was that after Brendan Todd and John more soldiers were wounded similar
[03:52:00] similarly staff sergeant Travis Mills was our fourth quadruple amputee a highly capable and
[03:52:09] resilient squad leader he later joked at his injury in afghanistan was only a bad case of the
[03:52:15] Mondays like so many of the wounded service members of Matt Travis is one of my heroes
[03:52:21] and we remain close friends to this day and Travis was on this podcast number 90 if you want to
[03:52:32] if you want to realize what a hero sounds like go listen to that navy petty officer
[03:52:39] Taylor Morris a member of an explosive ordinance disposal team became our nation's fifth surviving
[03:52:44] quadruple amputee from the wars in Iraq and afghanistan immediately after the blast that took
[03:52:49] his four limbs Taylor lay on the afghan soil fully conscious bleeding to death but before
[03:52:55] medics attended him Taylor ordered them to wait and make sure the ground surrounding him was
[03:53:00] clear of ideas he didn't want any other service members getting wounded where do they find such men
[03:53:09] yeah that's um i mean uh haven't spent a decent amount of time with Travis
[03:53:23] uh yeah if that guy's uh not a hero then i have no idea who is
[03:53:42] well he's an he's an amazing guy and he's doing something really positive with his circumstance and
[03:53:48] he's helping and fellow veterans uh with his own foundation Travis milk foundation obviously wrote a
[03:53:55] book there was a movie uh Travis is an ambassador for my foundation so he'll do things from time to time to
[03:54:02] help us uh do more and you know i've met just extraordinary people we've we've done
[03:54:10] over sixty or seventy of these houses now um for very very badly wounded folks you know in all
[03:54:20] branches of service and it's been a privilege because i've learned quite a bit from a number of them
[03:54:25] and uh have many many friends who you know are in the wounded community as i said i've been
[03:54:33] involved with a d a b for many many years and so like i have many wounded pals from a lot of different
[03:54:39] wars and they they they give me a lot of inspiration little a lot of motivation to keep doing more
[03:54:56] you go on here another busy you as planned for 2010 35 concerts
[03:55:01] and additional events and supportive our troops they were still out there fighting
[03:55:05] and i kept doing so much because it needed to be done but i was tired i was wondering how long
[03:55:12] i could keep up this pace what i'd be able to continue like this or what i'd burn out yet i
[03:55:17] envisioned a future doing still more and i wanted to figure out a way to ramp up not pull back
[03:55:22] my work since i could see the positive efforts we were having the question was how i began to consider
[03:55:29] consolidating my mission under one umbrella continuing to work while focusing my priorities in the
[03:55:36] most effective way possible having teamed up with many organizations and efforts in the military
[03:55:41] support space i learned a great deal about many different areas of need i could strategically harness
[03:55:46] the incredible power of the many volunteers who worked alongside me over the years and could help
[03:55:51] serve them our military veterans and first responder communities more effectively too
[03:55:55] i could still point donors in a good direction and courage generosity of the american people to
[03:56:01] support quality projects i was involved in but i could do it more consistently under this one umbrella
[03:56:07] thinking through all that the solution became clear my own foundation
[03:56:13] and you called it out here i've been involved in so many different types of initiatives at this
[03:56:17] point and even though i was consolidating efforts i still wanted to keep the mission statement
[03:56:22] broad reflecting the support work i don't over the years and so we could always adapt to changing
[03:56:27] needs of our veterans we came up with this mission statement at the garyf synise foundation
[03:56:32] we serve our nation by honoring our defenders veterans first responders their families and those in need
[03:56:40] we do this by creating and supporting unique programs designed to entertain, educate, inspire,
[03:56:45] strengthen and build communities yeah you got to a point where you had to kind of consolidate
[03:56:57] your efforts yeah i in the in the back of the book there there's there's a list of maybe 30 different
[03:57:04] charities that i was supporting and you know in various ways i would i wanted to do a lot for
[03:57:11] uh as many veterans as possible so i chose to do that initially by not only doing us oh tours but
[03:57:20] supporting non-profit organizations that were really doing a good job in the military support space
[03:57:27] so i would do PSA for them i would fundraise for them i would lend my name i'd be on their honorary
[03:57:34] advisory boards i would but it would it it went on and on and on and then i was like you know
[03:57:42] right before i started the foundation i launched the foundation garyston use foundation 2011 so
[03:57:48] the chapter in the book called flurry of action kind of talks about 2009 2010 the two years
[03:57:55] leading up to the founding of the foundation because those year i was just ramping more more more
[03:58:02] and all the while i was i was shooting a television series right away at the same time so i was never
[03:58:08] home i was shooting the show or gone on the weekends doing something helping some organization out
[03:58:14] and i thought this is you know i need to figure out some other way to do this and having been involved
[03:58:20] with so many military charities over the years and had established a good reputation within the
[03:58:29] support space you know that it's a you know people knew i was there for real and i kept coming back
[03:58:34] and i'm you know wasn't something i did once and and i was i was ongoing it was part of my life
[03:58:42] so i thought let's capitalize on that in some way and and create an organization that can you know
[03:58:50] act as a reliable resource for people who want to support our veterans and military community
[03:58:56] and that's why i named it the gerryzonese foundation i mean people knew who i was at that point
[03:59:02] they knew i was in this for good i could have called it to help the troops foundation or something
[03:59:07] like that but i decided to put my name on it because i had you know i'd taken action
[03:59:13] and uh and people were supporting that so i thought a lot the the whole purpose of having
[03:59:20] foundations to raise money so that you can do more and i wanted to raise a lot of money to do a lot
[03:59:26] more and that's what we're doing well just like any brand when you know the brand and you know
[03:59:31] it's quality because let's face it i mean the charitable organizations there's good ones and there's
[03:59:36] bad ones and so if you have a good reputation inside of a brand that people know that you're doing the
[03:59:41] right thing then why not like you said capitalize on that and and make it obvious
[03:59:46] yeah because i made a decision that this is look i'm this isn't something i'm going to stop
[03:59:53] doing i'm going to keep doing it so let's let's figure out the best way to do it in the most
[03:59:59] effective way that you know will will be there for a long time i hope to create a foundation and
[04:00:05] and i think we're well on our way to doing that uh that that that is here for the long term
[04:00:11] that hopefully it will survive me and go on and keep helping people in the spirit of
[04:00:18] personal touches that i've tried to give it and it will be there you know and last you know
[04:00:27] in for decades that's that's what i hope i'm i'm in it for good it's a meaningful mission
[04:00:35] service has been a great thing for my life and i think you know we're helping a lot of people
[04:00:44] now and i can see that that what we've you know the building blocks that we've laid here over this
[04:00:50] time are solid and people trusted and want to support it well some of the work that you're doing
[04:00:56] is incredible and we like um you got this we built a home for us on army ranger sergeant first
[04:01:04] class Michael slits who served as a rifleman of patoon sergeant southern i rack on February 27
[04:01:11] 2007 Mike and his crew were conducting road clearing mission near Baghdad when their vehicle struck
[04:01:16] a hidden ID and burst into flame his gunner sergeant Richard Sukhenka and medic sergeant
[04:01:25] Jonathan cadvara were killed instantly his driver corporal lorn Henry junior
[04:01:33] passed away shortly after the blast Mike wrote in the passenger seat in gulfed in flames
[04:01:39] he was thrown from the vehicle he lost both hands and the sightness left eye and sustained burns
[04:01:43] over 85% of his body early in mics recovery started going to a program at UCLA
[04:01:51] called operation men consisting of a team of sergeant who helped provide free surgeries
[04:01:56] to our severely wounded veterans when i first met Mike he was so severely burned he didn't have a
[04:02:01] nose and he talked through a hole in his throat we struck up a friendship over the years he's
[04:02:09] had multiple reconstructive surgeries to repair the damage to his eyelids mouth and nose and
[04:02:15] other parts of his body where the skin was burned having last lost both arms he now uses to
[04:02:21] prosthetic hooks Mike's living situation post innumerable challenges for him because the
[04:02:27] fragility of his skin Mike preferred colder temperatures and often needed to turn the air conditioner
[04:02:32] on full blast his mom robby in his full-time caregiver and she wore heavy coats to keep warm in
[04:02:40] the house direct sunlight is hard on mics eye so he preferred to keep all the shades drawn
[04:02:46] we built them a home with one section for mic and another for his mom with a temperature and
[04:02:51] light needs section the house could be individually governed Mike has a special shower and the
[04:02:55] gym that he can navigate by himself we helped restore mics independence and helped empower them both
[04:03:02] Mike is an amazing individual who's dedicating his life to honoring his fallen brothers
[04:03:06] through serving his fellow veterans and ambassador for my foundation he helps us with our veterans
[04:03:12] outreach as our military and veterans resource manager with our smart home program we work with each
[04:03:20] wounded service member to provide exactly what they need master sergeant john Mason
[04:03:27] is married and has three kids on October 16th 2010 while conducting village stability operations
[04:03:33] in can to hard province afghanistan john a medic with a 20th special forces group step on a hidden
[04:03:38] ID and lost both legs and his left arm due to the severity of his amputations he can't wear
[04:03:46] prosthetics and he's confined to a wheelchair the hallways in his house were too narrow for a wheelchair
[04:03:51] additionally he couldn't reach anything in the closets and the bathroom is too small for him to navigate
[04:03:55] alone so we built john a house for him and his family that allows him to be independent and
[04:04:02] internal allows his wife and children to worry less about caring for him we built a home for captain
[04:04:08] Luis avila and his family Luis served five combat tours in afghanistan in Iraq on December 27,
[04:04:20] 2011 Luis's vehicle ran over an iED Luis lost his left leg then suffered two strokes and two
[04:04:28] heart attacks resulting in traumatic brain injury ultimately he was left almost completely paralyzed
[04:04:33] today he continues to heal while maintaining an incredibly positive attitude and sense of humor
[04:04:40] his wife kawty is his full-time caregiver and never leads leaves his side she is one of the
[04:04:45] fierce fighters for the needs of our wounded service members and reminds us of the importance of also
[04:04:51] supporting our caregivers each smart home is given to the veteran free of charge
[04:04:57] the mortgage for the house and land is completely underwritten the veteran can select what part of
[04:05:05] the country he or she wants to live in we built a home for police officer Michael Flamian
[04:05:15] from ballwin miserry you shot in the neck by an assailant during a routine traffic stop and his
[04:05:20] paralyzed from the neck down his wife is now his full-time caregiver and the home built specifically
[04:05:27] from Michael's challenges provide some much needed support and relief
[04:05:38] so i mean those if you if you can listen to those and recognize what you're doing i mean that's just
[04:05:44] phenomenal phenomenal and you know we we already talked about this but i'll i'll add this little thing
[04:05:52] you got a program called soring vallar and one of the things you did with the navy with the
[04:06:00] national world more to me is amonyor leans is uh made a film you did the you did the voice over for the
[04:06:05] film and in the film you the voice you you use or the the person you're you're uh what is it acting
[04:06:12] portraying portraying is irney pile the famous war correspondent who wrote dispatches from the
[04:06:20] war zones in europe and asia and yeah that's how i got involved with the world war two museum
[04:06:28] you know over ten years ago they in tom hanks was one of the producers on that film
[04:06:35] and uh he invited me to play irney pile so i did the voice over for irney that started my relationship
[04:06:41] with the world war two museum now we've taken through my foundation and our soring vallar program
[04:06:47] we've taken hundreds of world war two veterans down to see them using him and we've recorded them
[04:06:54] on video telling their stories and those stories are preserved in the library at the museum
[04:07:02] well two things number one we covered her a pile on this podcast right here number 39
[04:07:08] and if you don't know this about irney pile he was actually killed in action in the battle of
[04:07:13] okinawa and two i don't know what we can do to get the the recordings out of the library and into
[04:07:20] the interwebs but we should do that let's get them out there
[04:07:30] the the stuff that you you know again another example
[04:07:33] staff sergeant Jason Ross March 2011 during a second deployment to Afghanistan Jason
[04:07:39] lost both of his legs part of his pelvic bone where an ID exploded doctors gave him
[04:07:44] less than 2% chances survival but Jason never stopped fighting complication said in
[04:07:49] insurgents ended up needing to take more and more from his legs until eventually all his hips were gone
[04:07:54] to date he's undergone more than 240 surgeries basically the entire lower half of his body is no longer
[04:08:05] there we built a smart home for Jason and his family in San Diego when we handed over the keys to
[04:08:11] him in his ceremony his six-year-old daughter Stacy asked to speak my daddy is Jason Ross she said
[04:08:19] when i was little my daddy got hurt now Afghanistan he was in the hospital for a long time
[04:08:27] my daddy is strong and brave
[04:08:41] another thing you guys do you talk about here my my foundation's final program is called relief
[04:08:47] and resiliency outreach this is an umbrella program we simply try to help veterans and their family
[04:08:52] in any way possible including those recovering from trauma injury or loss within the umbrella
[04:08:58] is a mentoring program i've had a long relationship with a disabled american veterans d a v and no
[04:09:02] several wounded veterans who've lived with their injuries for decades so i thought of providing
[04:09:07] an opportunity to induce introduce some of our younger wounded veterans from i rack and afghanistan
[04:09:12] to veterans from previous wars i met with gym surzley the enom veteran triple amputee
[04:09:20] and former national commander of the d a v to gout to gage his interest and get his thoughts
[04:09:24] he responded positively and said he would love to be involved and that he would discuss it with
[04:09:28] the d a v leadership and if you want to know about more than more about gym surzley layers podcast
[04:09:35] 200 in here talking about his story which is which is incredible
[04:09:46] and you close this section out by saying the simple story is here that from its creation in 2011
[04:09:52] the foundation is grown into a friendly giant we've gone from one donor just me in the beginning
[04:09:58] to a base of more than 45 thousand donors in a annual budget of nearly 30 million
[04:10:02] while we can never do enough to show our gratitude to our nation's defenders of veterans
[04:10:08] of first responders and the families who live serve alongside them and you have this little
[04:10:15] mantra, this little motto we can always do a little more and
[04:10:23] I think the idea of we can always do a little more is probably a good place to wrap even though
[04:10:36] it's not the last chapter the last chapter is actually called why i'm still on a mission
[04:10:41] and obviously there's an important message there but that also ties in with the motto we can
[04:10:46] always do a little bit more and I guess still have to buy the book to get that last
[04:10:52] yes indeed and the book contains a lot of reasons why we all still need to stay on mission
[04:11:02] and as I was preparing to do this podcast I knew that I would be reading your words
[04:11:10] and then I fought back to a time when you actually read some of my words when
[04:11:15] when Mikey Montsour was killed and I racked I gave a speech at his
[04:11:23] memorial service in Ramadi and the theme of that speech was Roger that
[04:11:35] because I told the story where I had told Mike and the rest of the new guys in the task unit
[04:11:43] that when the instructor cadre from the training attachment came and told them to do something
[04:11:49] or corrected them or yelled at them the only thing they were allowed to say back was Roger that
[04:11:57] and so a couple days went by and one of the master chiefs who was a friend of mine
[04:12:03] he came up to me and he said okay what that was up with this Montsour guy and I said what he
[04:12:07] mean he says every time I every time I tell him to do something fix something he just looks at me
[04:12:11] and he means his Roger that and I said hey man that's exactly what I told him to say
[04:12:18] and and that actually became Mikey's attitude and no matter what he was asked to do no matter
[04:12:22] how hard the task his response was always Roger that including when a grenade was thrown
[04:12:29] that threatened the lives of three of her other teammates
[04:12:33] then only one person could save them was Mikey and in order to do so he had to smother that grenade
[04:12:42] with his own body and sacrifice his life
[04:12:49] for his friends and in that moment of truth
[04:12:57] his response was the same
[04:12:59] Roger that
[04:13:07] and a few years later at the Republican National Convention there was a tribute to Mikey
[04:13:15] and it was rooted in the same fan theme and clearly it had been taken from the ulog that I delivered
[04:13:21] in the dusty hanger with a broken heart and a mighty Iraq just after Mikey was killed and that
[04:13:30] theme was Roger that and the tribute for Mikey was delivered by none other than Gary Sinese
[04:13:40] and it was a fitting tribute fit for a hero such as Mikey
[04:13:58] who continues every day to inspire us all to do a little more
[04:14:06] and to live our lives as grateful Americans
[04:14:29] so I thank you for doing that Gary
[04:14:30] and welcome it was a privilege I didn't know that came from New Jacko that's amazing
[04:14:40] I looked it up recently I told you I want to do something on the one-year anniversary of
[04:14:48] the commissioning of Mike's ship and so I posted something on my social media
[04:14:56] and I found that video somehow that somebody had kind of filmed of their TV and it was of
[04:15:04] that of that video that they showed that I narrated and included that and then I wanted to look
[04:15:11] up some more and I found I found the piece that you wrote after the ship was commissioned
[04:15:18] and included it there but did not know that some of those words that I said and that
[04:15:24] that beautiful piece and I thought they did a very good job with it and I didn't know that they
[04:15:30] came from you that I bless you it was not over to here and well I told you I wasn't sure how long
[04:15:39] this was going to take but it's been over four hours thank you I mean for coming on
[04:15:49] it's you know thank you obviously for what you're doing for the truth and thanks for
[04:15:52] swinging by thanks for coming on I'm sorry I can't make your gig tomorrow night
[04:16:08] you have any um you have any closing thoughts before we take off I look I'm I'm I'm thankful that
[04:16:17] you you had me on you gave me some time to to talk and that you were interested in the book
[04:16:26] the book came out a year ago it's done it's done very very well and we hope it just keeps on going
[04:16:33] because it's a I think when I think is in some ways a little bit of a call to action
[04:16:42] I tried to tell a story of somebody who didn't see it coming but all of a sudden
[04:16:51] made a turn toward a service life which is basically that's what I do now you know I've done
[04:16:58] well in my acting career I was grateful that I had CSI New York as it gave me a lot of resources
[04:17:05] to do a lot of good things and now I'm focusing primarily on the mission of the Giorgio
[04:17:10] Astonese Foundation what we're doing and and the book kind of tells a story if I got there
[04:17:17] if people want to support the Giorgio Astonese Foundation they can go to garystonesefoundation.org
[04:17:26] also on Twitter on Instagram and on Facebook those are all also
[04:17:34] garystonese foundation at garystonese foundation and then gary himself
[04:17:42] is on Twitter and on Facebook at garystonese and then on Instagram at garystonese official
[04:17:50] if you want to check out the social
[04:17:55] what is it called media
[04:17:56] yeah the social media yeah so gary like I said it's been for over four hours
[04:18:05] thank you so much for what you're doing thanks for coming on
[04:18:08] it's been an honor to meet you and look forward to you know having you back on here next time
[04:18:15] you get a spare month we can have you on here the talk it's good let me let me just say this too
[04:18:20] to you for your service to our country I'm one grateful america and I appreciate what you
[04:18:26] have done for our country and and I don't for one day take it for granted so I hope you know by
[04:18:32] spreading the word about what we're doing at the garystonese foundation we can help more of your fellow
[04:18:37] service members and take care of them and their families
[04:18:40] there was an honor to serve thank you thanks for coming on you bet but
[04:18:46] and with that gary has left the building yes we have a brief message for you when it comes
[04:18:55] to supporting right we want to do more of all lives I think that's pretty straightforward
[04:19:04] are you here echo Charles sir you've been relatively quiet today we are grateful for that
[04:19:10] yeah if you notice you didn't ask me oh echo you got anything else because I had a whole list
[04:19:16] of movie questions oh so yeah glad I didn't know that the bullet on that I know for that one
[04:19:22] what can we do do more be better what can we do okay okay so work out take extreme
[04:19:28] ownership take responsibility don't complain and also do you get to so various reasons for this
[04:19:38] obviously and you know I don't have to go from I will let me do it's been over four hours
[04:19:46] how about we just accept the fact that we're going to do you get to yes so idea what idea okay so
[04:19:52] you need a geek when you do geek you rush garden you're going to do no need one but you
[04:19:58] you want to get one for sure hundred percent for a geek you do need a geek so you get an origin
[04:20:02] geek this is why factually the best in the world many options made in America hundred percent
[04:20:09] those are the the front running reasons really no expensive needed those are all kind of
[04:20:15] speak for themselves yes best key in the world many different options made in America hundred percent
[04:20:22] close we're going on that yeah what else can we get from origin how about some supplements
[04:20:29] some of the best big time oh are you going to say jeans well probably what you're thinking well
[04:20:33] you get jeans too jack or you don't necessarily need to be a jeanicky yeah that necessarily
[04:20:38] but yes so jean okay yeah you brought it up jeans yes I was going to say that at some point
[04:20:42] okay so yes jeans same deal best in the world factually multiple we'll say more than one option
[04:20:51] more than one that's multiple right yeah more technically and more than one and made in
[04:20:57] America hundred percent boom jeans by the way I say it was American denim yeah that's what it is yes it's
[04:21:03] American made up for some also supplements so it didn't supplements yeah supplements that you should take
[04:21:11] there's no other two ways around it so take joint warfare for you take scrile oil all the time
[04:21:17] that's just a daily discipline is scrile oil super krill and joint warfare get on that and then
[04:21:23] you've got some other options if you need a little you need to get up on step a little bit just cool
[04:21:30] take discipline you can take discipline go pill you can take this discipline go powder form mix it up
[04:21:36] or you can take discipline ready to drink in a can ready to rock them all you may need so that
[04:21:44] can give you a little boost yes boost little boost you might need a boost of your protein and
[04:21:50] take if you need that cool we got you if you need dessert we got you because I know it's last
[04:22:00] two kind of the same thing dessert and protein dessert and protein moch moch all day by the way there
[04:22:10] is there is a thing that you can get on you can get on board it's called the moch train
[04:22:16] oh yeah you know stay on 100% on it stay on it not the split hairs discipline go is not the
[04:22:21] powder oh yes discipline yes that's the original of the original hey let's make a powder drink that I
[04:22:28] can drink to get my yes then hey you know what sometimes I don't have time to mix up a drink how
[04:22:32] what we make a little pill I can take cool great by the way yeah then sometimes oh sometimes I want to
[04:22:40] have a little bit and I want it like right now I don't want to mix it up just want it to can
[04:22:46] discipline go RDD and it can boom that's then that's just sort of separate you know like I said
[04:22:51] not split hairs but hey you know these are details that aren't unimportant right you can see you
[04:22:56] know yes also where you're kid milk back to the malt train where you kid more for the kids
[04:23:01] a little bit more engineered towards a kid but let's face it you're gonna get into that that's
[04:23:06] a place oh yeah there's no doubt that I've drank much I've been on the moch Thomas the tank and
[04:23:14] is it Thomas the tank Thomas the tank and yeah yeah that's the little kids moch train okay
[04:23:19] a lot of a lot of people call it the little kids moch train the warrior kid moch train get your kids
[04:23:25] on Thomas the tank and warrior kid moch train and don't forget about jocco white tea organic
[04:23:32] sort of fine because because it actually really likes that part of it yeah and by the way everything
[04:23:36] that we just talked about that's a supplement you can get it at the vitamin shop nationwide USA
[04:23:43] America to you also if you're not walking into the vitamin shop nationwide in America just go to
[04:23:50] originmain.com so you get it and we can get all this stuff yes all of it oh yeah yeah the
[04:23:56] geese as well this is everything everything we just talked about originmain.com also if you want to get
[04:24:06] your copy of great full American by Gary Sinis aka lieutenant dan aka Mac Taylor
[04:24:15] don't worry I got you go to jocco podcast.com go click on the top where it says books from
[04:24:20] the episodes boom it'll be right there where you click on there and then go to that page boom
[04:24:23] right there along with all the other books all the other books that we recover on this podcast also
[04:24:30] jocco is a story it's called jocco store and this is where you can get rash guards
[04:24:34] tea shirts, tea shirts big that's a big one you want to represent every day let's face it we're
[04:24:39] wearing t-shirts every single day yes that's not everybody everybody yeah
[04:24:43] you're even if you're in the snow whatever let's face it also rash guards more rash guards
[04:24:49] hoodies if you're in the snow anyway a lot of good stuff on there that are representative of the path
[04:24:55] represent while you're on the just just clinical freedom good you know good attitude is a good attitude
[04:25:02] tab yeah by the way you're talking about um sometimes we see fakes right so when you said good there's
[04:25:10] like other good quote t-shirts out there yeah actually there's a good t-shirt out there that has the
[04:25:15] entire good speech yes yes there it does and you can get it on on whatever a website yeah like one
[04:25:24] of those you can but you are not supporting just a kind of FYI yeah and I get you know like cool
[04:25:31] I'm happy that you're trying to be in the game yeah what are you're actually giving money to a thief
[04:25:37] and the liar yeah is that one of the plagiarism right it's called something else called
[04:25:42] Steve like copyright or it's called stealing yeah yeah don't do it and that's what you yes
[04:25:46] that's true and official go to jacquistore.com yes just be good and a lot of these knockoffs
[04:25:52] don't have the layers like for real layers yeah they mean get the font right no don't get
[04:25:57] the font right now but now you know what they're getting the font right now all right so they're
[04:26:01] out there watch out you and usually they're a substandard that's for sure yeah like you get one of
[04:26:06] those cheap like knockoffs when you get it you're like okay I'm represented the path in your
[04:26:10] mind you know I'm right but I don't know how much I know where there's maybe a way at the first time
[04:26:14] when I watch it no it sucks when I read a bad review on one of those and they say like I can't
[04:26:19] believe jacquist put his name on it so I didn't you know it's like bitter sweet though he seems
[04:26:23] seen I know but it's not real hard that's the histore.jacquistore.com and it's your good
[04:26:28] you you will be supporting when you do that yes also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already
[04:26:34] on iTunes Google Stitcher or sorry Google Play Stitcher you know leave a review if you're in the mood
[04:26:40] in the mood leave a review I think it could it could move. Don't forget that we also have the
[04:26:44] grounded podcast we have the warrior kid podcast and from the warrior kid podcast we also have
[04:26:52] warrior kid soap did you get killer soap yet? I'm not yet I'm gonna check them out though. I will say this
[04:26:58] it's del it's legit yeah the fact that it's black is like it's black that's the cherry
[04:27:04] but it's also got it's got like the you know you ever use teacher you know yes sometimes it's
[04:27:10] way powerful like a little too much this is totally perfect like you can you know it and it's just
[04:27:16] you feel like you feel like when you use this soap so the warrior kid soap from irishote
[04:27:22] ranch.com you feel like when you've used this soap you can stay clean. I feel the same way. Yes irish
[04:27:33] oakswrench.com that's it that's where you get it also we have a youtube channel for the video
[04:27:38] version of this podcast you're gonna watch it on your smart TE while you're working out or why
[04:27:43] you're not working out maybe in your office I don't know but you want to watch it the video version
[04:27:47] yes we have a youtube channel so subscribe if you haven't done that you know if you want also got
[04:27:54] some excerpts on there too so there's more benefits to the youtube channel as it were.
[04:27:59] Got psychological order warfare if you need a little psychological hitter you can proceed there
[04:28:08] and that little that little hitter that you need it's gonna help you get through that moment of
[04:28:13] weakness get psychological warfare it's on iTunes it's on google play amazon music any MP3 platform
[04:28:20] you can set it for your alarm so we can wake you up in the morning to my soothing voice
[04:28:26] and no forget if you need a visual representation of the path you can go to flipsidecampus.com
[04:28:34] Dakota Meyer by the way no big deal just Dakota Meyer
[04:28:37] he owns that company and he's making really cool graphic designs so go to flipsidecampus.com
[04:28:46] to support that for books yes we have grateful american written by Gary Sinese lots of powerful
[04:28:53] stories in there you can pick that up you got leadership strategy in tactics field manual
[04:29:01] is it still hot off the presses the technical specs you know what it's been out for a month
[04:29:07] I'm considering it warm off the press of the world i'll tell you this if you don't have it yet
[04:29:12] you're definitely wrong feedback what's the feedback hundred percent approval rating yeah
[04:29:17] and look i'm not gonna see here and say your other books weren't like good i'm not gonna say that but
[04:29:23] my favorite if i can choose a favorite i'm leaning heavily towards this leadership strategy
[04:29:30] tactics i like the way all of them that's a good kids books yes oh wow here's the thing no
[04:29:37] you know i am thinking of myself you seem saying like that even the typical but the kids book has
[04:29:44] legs more legs because it's you know extends to the kids so i dig it i dig it but still i said
[04:29:50] i said what i said okay so we're going with it let's get it leadership strategy in tactics
[04:29:54] one of those here's the deal you're in some random group of people it's a team it's a business
[04:29:59] it's a company people are maneuvering people are trying to stab each other in the back
[04:30:04] they're not supporting each other they're doing all the things that these that happens inside of
[04:30:08] a team get them this book get them this book there you go get them this book and you will see
[04:30:14] people start to do the right thing because they'll understand leadership they'll understand human nature
[04:30:20] it will help them leadership strategy in tactics field manual the warrior kid books one two and three
[04:30:25] i wish i had those books when i was a kid but i can't go back in time
[04:30:35] Mikey the Dragons every kid is born afraid of things in the world they don't need to be
[04:30:42] they just need to read a simple book called Mikey the Dragons never realize how they can overcome
[04:30:47] those fears the disclinical freedom field manual two pages is a little dose that will
[04:30:57] propel you forward faster stronger and better that's a weird statement to make sounds like a big
[04:31:06] vault statement rig i'm telling you i wrote it it works on me i wrote the book i wrote the book if i
[04:31:13] read two pages on my car i'm gonna go a little bit harder i wrote it i already know it you
[04:31:19] should i'm saying this is strange yeah i can see it i wrote it i know it i wrote every word in
[04:31:25] there i wrote i opened up read two pages and my game goes up my discipline increases
[04:31:33] factually if you want to audio version of that it's not unautable because it was unautable you
[04:31:38] couldn't use it as an alarm clock to wake you up instead it's on i tuned amazon music google play
[04:31:42] other mp3 platforms and then of course we got extreme ownership and then i caught a me of leadership
[04:31:49] which i wrote with my brother lathe babden funnip metals of leadership we also have a leadership
[04:31:56] consultancy it's called national on front and what we do is solve problems through leadership we have
[04:32:02] leadership training online called the f-online because leadership training is not an
[04:32:08] occupation you'll get a one time and now you go no you gotta do repetitive training you got
[04:32:14] a drill it in from other angles there the other angles are on the f-online we have the muster
[04:32:22] live
[04:32:25] events about leadership we're doing one in or land a one in Dallas one in Phoenix
[04:32:34] that's the schedule for 2020 every event that we have done of any kind has sold out if you
[04:32:42] want to come go register and then we have you have overwatch an ef legion if you're a military
[04:32:50] individual and your transitioning civilian sector go there put your information in and we can
[04:32:57] move you in the right direction for employment for your next mission and if you're a civilian company
[04:33:03] and you want leaders at every level inside your company go there to those ef overwatching the
[04:33:10] ef legion fill out the appropriate boxes and we'll get you in the game and let's say you just
[04:33:20] haven't gotten enough of my hyper dramatic reading you haven't heard enough of my
[04:33:33] moments of silence maybe you need more of that you want more maybe you want to hear a ridiculous
[04:33:45] story from echo Charles about the grocery store if you need that still well we're on the interwebs
[04:33:55] on twitter instagram and el fiezen bookie echo's at echo Charles nine matchau
[04:34:01] com and one's again garyson is foundation dot org and the foundation is on twitter instagram
[04:34:09] facebook at garyson is foundation gary himself is on twitter and facebook at garyson is and he's on
[04:34:16] what echo calls the gram at garyson is official and with that once again thanks to
[04:34:31] gary for for coming on for sharing his story and more important thanks to garyson is
[04:34:39] for what he is doing and continuing to doing and has done to support the veterans and first responders
[04:34:45] of our great nation because for many the war doesn't end when the battles over
[04:34:55] there is a war that can continue physically mentally spiritually and gary is doing a lot to support
[04:35:10] America's heroes through that transition and to the heroes that are out there listening
[04:35:18] to those that are serving and those that have served thank you for protecting our way of life
[04:35:23] and yes we are grateful and the same goes to our police law enforcement fire fighters,
[04:35:31] paramedics, gmt's dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service
[04:35:39] you protect us here at home and yes we are grateful for that as well and to everyone else out there
[04:35:49] when we talk about being grateful we're not just talking about being grateful for our heroes
[04:35:58] in the military and our first responders I'm talking about being grateful for life
[04:36:07] because it's here and it's now and there are so many men and women that have sacrificed so much
[04:36:14] for us that we can be here in a world that is overflowing with opportunity
[04:36:26] so be grateful for that and then show gratitude
[04:36:34] show gratitude to those that have served not just by saying thank you
[04:36:39] show gratitude not just with your words but by going out and taking action
[04:36:47] making things happen show them gratitude by going out there in the world
[04:36:56] and getting after it
[04:36:59] and until next time
[04:37:00] this is echo and jockel out