Randall Wallace: Braveheart at 30 - The Lessons and the Legacy

On this episode of Arroyo Grande, Raymond Arroyo sits down with Randall Wallace, the acclaimed screenwriter and director behind Braveheart, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Oscar-winning film. Wallace reveals how the story of William Wallace came to life, the surprising origins of its most famous line—“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom”—and the personal, spiritual, and historical lessons that shaped the screenplay.

They explore the enduring legacy of Braveheart, Wallace’s creative process, his collaboration with Mel Gibson, and what the film still has to teach us about courage, sacrifice, and faith. This conversation offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at one of the most iconic films of the last century.

Watch the full interview to hear how one of Hollywood’s most powerful stories was born—and why it still resonates today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom.
That line from Braveheart was uttered by William Wallace, but
it was created by Randall Wallace, the screenwriter and director.
As the landmark film turns thirty, Randy joins me to
reveal the secrets of its origins and the life lessons
he collected along the way. All on this edition of
the Arroyo Grande Show. Come on, I'm Raymond Arroyo. Welcome

(00:36):
to Arroyo Grande. Go subscribe to the show. Now, go ahead,
do it. Turn the notifications on. We've got some great
interviews coming up in commentary, and we'd so appreciate a
like just so others can enjoy the show too. Now
to our deep dive. This year marks the thirtieth anniversary
of Braveheart, the beloved Academy Award winning film. It was

(00:56):
Randy Wallace who first discovered the story and wrote the screenplay.
He would go on to write and direct, Did The
Man in the Iron Mask Secretariat, We Were Soldiers, and
many more. I talked with him about how he came
to write Braveheart at one of the darkest points in
his life, and how we can all live the Brave
Heart Life Watch. I'm going to start with the question

(01:19):
that I'm sure is on everybody's mind, and it was
on my mind. Where did Brave Heart originate? I know
you were on a trip to Scotland and you see
this statue of William Wallace and you know and think what.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I was looking for my heritage and this had a
particular value. There was a real drive in this quest
because we were expecting our first son, and his mother

(01:56):
knew all of her ancestry because she has ancestors who
were Latter day Saints, so they had studied ancestry back
and forth and they knew it back hundreds and hundreds
of years, and I knew nothing about mine. So part
of it was trying to connect with a kind of history.
I mean, all of us go back to Adam and Eve, right,

(02:18):
But the sense that I wanted to know to give
him a sense of his heritage, that was a big
part of it. But it wasn't just what is your
physical genetic heritage? What is your spiritual emotional heritage. That's
what I was looking for, and that's the moment that

(02:41):
I came across William Wallace.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
And we don't know a lot about William Wallace. We
know nothing of what he said, right, nothing nothing.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
In fact, it's really a funny thing on the Air
Force Academy. On the wall of the Air Force Academy
is a plaque that says, they may take our lives,
but they'll never take our freedom. And under it William
Wallace and William Wallas didn't say that.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Is that kind of that has to kind of you
have to smile when you see that, because everything we
know of William Wallace really comes through your pen.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, I tell you there is a thing about it too,
and that I feel that his story spoke to me,
but it wasn't mine. I mean, as I wrote Braveheart,
I had no outline, I had no I had no
historical records to draw from. I just sat down and wrote,

(03:39):
and the story told itself to me.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Robert the Bruce, all of that was fabricate.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
So I sat down and I wrote the story without
any historical records to refer to. After I was in
about draft five or six, I discovered a book that
is in rhyming Scottish verse and purports to be an

(04:08):
epic poem about William Wallace. It was told by a
man named Blind Harry, who was not blind and probably
not named Harry, probably, and he traveled the Scottish Highlands,
and he told this story in rhyming couplets, which enabled
him to remember this epic, epic poem. And I was already,

(04:31):
you know, five or six drafts into Braveheart when I
read that book, and there were elements in that book
that I had written in my screenplay.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Wait a minute, yes, which were they?

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Do you remember William Wallace encounters Robert the Bruce on
the battlefield and discovers that the man that he has
put the most trust in has betrayed him. Yes, absolutely, And.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
You had no contact with him in those five drafts.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Robert William Wallace meets the princess, who historically was was
far younger, but actually in the and I had that
he meets the princess in my story. In the actual
Blind Harry story, he meets the wife of Edward Longshanks,
who was in fact the appropriate age. But I kept

(05:23):
my version of the story because I had two hours
in which to tell the story. So in a sense,
all of history is an impressionistic work. But I felt
that what I was telling was the truth. I always
say don't let the facts get in the way of
the truth.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Of a good story.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
A good story.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Now, you say, if I'm remembering this right, that you
had a brave heart.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Moment when you were working on the script.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yes, And what that is, in your fashioning is a
desperate moment, a kind of rock bottom yest check moment. Yes,
tell me about that moment, and why do you describe
it that way?

Speaker 2 (06:03):
So, when I was about eleven, my father, who was
the strongest and bravest man I ever knew, had a
nervous breakdown. His father was dead before he was born.
My father's father died of typhoid fever eight and a
half months before my father was born. So I'm not

(06:26):
even sure that my grandmother, In fact, I'm pretty sure
she did not know that she was pregnant when her
husband died, so she was a widow before she was
a mother. And my father grew up without a father.
And his grandfather was a wonderful man and raised him,
but he grew up without a dad, which was another
reason that I had lost the Wallace chain in your

(06:51):
heritage did heritage? When my father was in his thirties,
the company that he worked for, he had worked full
time since he was fourteen.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
A salesman.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
A salesman, and the bunch of guys bought the company
that he worked for, which was the Curtis Candy Company.
They made baby roots and butterfingers, and they decided they
were going to flip the company and they would increase
their profits by firing all the old guys who were
making higher salaries. And my father was one of the

(07:23):
old guys. He was thirty eight, the only time he
had ever lost a job, and it just crushed it.
He really had a struggle with that and he had
a nervous breakdown. Now he put his life back together.
The last sale he made for the Curtis Candy Company
was for ninety thousand dollars. Now, that was in nineteen

(07:47):
sixty one. Ninety thousand dollars was close to a million
dollars now. The next sale he made was for ninety cents.
But he worked his way back into enormous success, and
I got to see that, but also had the experience
of my father falling apart and the terror. My sister

(08:07):
and I were farmed out to relatives at that point.
Our mother was very courageous and so it was our
father that it was real upheaval. We lived in a
house with no indoor plumbing for a while, and so
cut to my career has begun. I was making a

(08:27):
lot of money in television. My career kept expanding, expanding,
and then there was a huge writers strike and I
had a falling out with my mentor both at the
same time. When the strike was over, my job was gone.
The company that I worked for it was beginning to evaporate.
I'd had a long term contract, but the Writer's Guild

(08:50):
had been going on strike allowed companies to suspend the contracts.
I'd spent all my savings on buying a new home
for my and our children to grow up in, and
suddenly here's a strike, and I'm out of money, I'm
out of prospects. I can't even get a job. I

(09:10):
can't even get an opportunity to pitch a story. All
the doors were shut and I was all knighted up,
and I thought I was about to put my sons
through the same horror that I had gone through. I
thought I was going to come apart, and the only
place I could go was on my knees. And I
said a prayer, and the prayer was Maybe the best

(09:34):
thing for my sons is not that they grow up
in a house with a bunch of bedrooms and a
tennis court and swimming pool and German cars in the driveway.
Maybe the best thing for them is they live in
a little house away my sister and I did, and
they have an outhouse, they have no end of plumbing.
Maybe they'll be better men. And if that's what God

(09:55):
wants from my sons, then please bring it on and
help me bear it. But if I go down in
this fight, helped me go down, not on my knees
to Hollywood, but standing up, fighting for what I believe,
with my flag flying, writing what I wanted my sons
to see, and that led directly to Braveheart.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
How long did it take you to write?

Speaker 2 (10:17):
And actually very quick, From when I first heard the
story to when I sat down to write, it was
ten years because I didn't feel I mean, when I
saw this statue of William Wallace standing next to a
statue of Robert the Bruce, and as you say, I
had not heard of William Wallace. So I asked a
member of the Black Watch, Scottish guards there at the

(10:39):
Edinburgh Castle who he was, and the guard said, he's
our greatest hero. And I'm thinking, now, how can he
be the greatest hero of Scotland? And I share his name,
and I love history, and I've never heard of him.
How could that be? And so I said, well, he

(11:00):
and Robert the Bruce. I knew of Robert the Bruce
Scotland's greatest king, so they must have been allies fighting
against the English. And this guard said, well, no one
will ever know for sure, which, of course, is the
magic words.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
For a that's right, open the door.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
But our legends say that Robert the Bruce may have
been among those who betrayed William Wallace into the hands
of the English to clear the way for himself to
become the king. And that was when the lightning bolt
struck me. It's like, I thought, this may be the
greatest story that I've ever heard, because it's like being

(11:38):
told Saint Peter and Judas were the same person. What
if there was something so noble in the life and
death of William Wallace that it transformed Robert the Bruce
from a man who would betray his country's greatest hero
to becoming his country's greatest king. And that was okay,

(11:59):
This is huge, but I'm not ready to do it yet.
I've got a baby coming. I need to find a
way to feed him, a reliable way. I need to
grow as a writer so that I'm capable of handling
this kind of inspiration. But I probably wouldn't have sat
down to do it had not been at a point of.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
If you had all that other work, he wouldn't have done.
There's something to be said about burning the boats.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yes, yes, yes, you know.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Where that's your one path. This is the only option,
that's right.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Everything was stripped away. I had no.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Choice, you know.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Mel recently told me the story on this show about
finding the script. He had read the script, he had
read Rave Heart, but it was at a different studio.
I guess Alan Ladd had this, yes, or that studio did,
and Mel was kept repeating it in his head. He
told me he kept seeing the scenes and what was happening.

(12:52):
And later he was looking for I guess a project
and he asked them to pull it out of storage,
which they did, and he read it. It was very
different from what he was imagining in his head. But
he asked Alan Ladd if he could have it, did
you is that the story is that how you remember.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
It well, so everyone has their you know, the experience
of where they were when it was happening. I wrote
it with no producers involved at all, only with Rebecca Pollack,
who worked for Alan Ladd. She's the daughter of Sydney
Pollack and she inherited her father's genius. I mean, Sydney

(13:30):
Pollack was one of the great filmmakers of all time.
And Becky really has his instincts. And I pitched the
story to her in about ten minutes and she went,
my god, go write that. And I wrote it. And
then she said, Okay, we've never seen this happen before.

(13:51):
We xerox the script and send it to all the
department heads to read, and their assistants read it first.
And they're all sitting out in the area where all
the assistants sit and they're all weeping. And I've never
seen this happen. So who can play William Wallace? And
I said, there's only one person. There's only one actor

(14:11):
in the world that I think can do it, and
that's mel Gibson. So we got to go after him.
If he says no, I don't know what we do.
We have to go after him and we did have
the experience where we sent it and didn't get didn't here,
didn't here, didn't hear. And then I got a phone
call from my agent saying are you sitting down? I said, no,
well sit down, Well what is it? And he goes, well,

(14:33):
Mel Gibson wants to meet you for breakfast. And we
met at the Four Seasons and we're sitting there and
I had said a prayer that I would not kiss
his butt, you know, I You know, Raymond, you know
how when people are around powerful people, that there's a

(14:57):
valance of that where people to try to say whatever
they think that person wants to hear. And that, to
me is the way to help, like you have to
My only value to myself, to my family, to Mail,
to God was telling the truth. So we sat down

(15:17):
and everybody was really nervous. And Mail broke the ice
in that meeting. He looked across the table and he said,
and we're sitting across just like you and me. And
he said, so William Wallace, Randall Wallace or you guys
like relatives or what. And that was a great icebreaker,
you know, because I got to say, well, I can't
prove I am, but nobody can prove it. I'm not,

(15:38):
you know so. But in five minutes, I was like
a tent revivalist, and I was leaning across the table
and I was beating on the table with my fists,
and I said, here's the way it is. Every movie
has a message, has its underlying message, and the underlying
message of most movies the subtext is if you have

(15:59):
the guy with the bluest eyes and the cutest dimples
and the biggest biceps and the most charming smile, he's
the one that gets the girl. This movie says, if
you're faithful to your heart, even if they cut it
out of your chest, you prevail. Now that's the movie
I want my sons to see. That's the movie I
want the world to see. You want to make that movie.

(16:21):
You need to say yes. You don't want to make
that movie, you need to say no. And he said
and he and nobody said anything. Everybody at the table
went except Mel. And he leaned forward and I think
this guy and I are gon we're going to go.
And so nobody else says any. They won't look at me.

(16:43):
Nobody says anything. And Mel is massively aware of his
surroundings without looking at them. It's kind of a spooky thing.
But he didn't look at me. Nobody did we go out,
We get our cars. You know they're all in expensive cars.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Well that was it.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
He didn't agree to him at the table. Noh, and
we go. We were riding away. Mysel phone rings. It's
my agent and he goes, what the heck did you say?
And I think he's angry, and I go, well, somebody
had to talk. Nobody's talking. I just like and he said, no, no,
that Alan Ladd just called and he said, I want

(17:21):
to double Randy Wallace's deal. Instead of one more script
from him, I want two more and I want him
to direct the next thing he writes for us. And
he said, I don't know what you said, but whatever
it was, you know, keep doing it. Well Neil doesn't
say yes. He doesn't say yes, and I don't know
what the hang up is. So I went to Scotland

(17:43):
on my own or actually with my wife on my
own dime, and I found the Battley enactors who were
who were in Highlander, and they were called the Clan Wallace.
A friend of mine who worked on Highlander said, there
these crazy Scotts. He said, we had three broken noses

(18:04):
after he yelled, cut those guys. So went over there,
took pictures of him, took a slide show, took video
of them fighting, which was easy to find because they fought.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
All the time.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
And I came back and showed him to Alan Ladd.
He said, you got to show this to Meil and
we sat down and I showed him to Mail and
he looked at it all silently like it was his
eyes like this, and then he looked up at me
and said, I want to direct this. What would you
think of that? And that was what his I believe
that was his. The thing that he took a long
time to come to is that he knew in his

(18:43):
heart that he could just knock this ball like this
was him. But it was also huge. He had done
Man Without a Face, which was an animal film in
pense movie. This was this. So when he said that,
I went, I will support that one, and we were
off to the races and.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
The rest was history.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Amazing when you wrote it, I mean, look, for so
many you talked about the Air Force Academy, They've got
the quote on the wall. For so many men, in particular,
it embodies a masculine ideal and the sacrificial Savior.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yes, I'm sure you were aware of those themes as
you wrote this.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Well, it's funny. People have said to me, you know,
you must have done a lot of research, and I say, yeah,
I did. I read the New Testament. And the interesting
thing about it, Raymond, is that Mel, among all the
actors who we could have gone to, got that instantly.
And I mean, oh, this is a garden of casemone, Oh, this.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Is hell, saw it all.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
And so that was a that was a bond that
that we found that we had together and persists to
this day. But the weird thing is God's plan is
better than your plan. So when something surprises you, you
know you don't see it coming. I mean, one of

(20:09):
the first things Mel said to me in our first
meeting was tell me all the things you wrote and
took out. Now, by my way of thinking, that's genius. No, no,
I've never heard anybody else say that to a writer.
But it was an interesting creative approach. It was a
it's almost like a uniquely brave and wild approach to filmmaking,

(20:35):
which which I think characterizes him. M hm.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
No, Well he told me, he said I was reading it,
he said, I read it. I said, oh no, not no,
And he said, I couldn't get it out of my head.
He said, but and I was in visionary. I could
see the scenes. Yeah, and he said, and.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Then the leader I went.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
And that's why I think he wanted to direct it,
because he saw things. Yeah, he saw things that you
had suggested. He saw things he wanted to deepen. He
saw things that and that's probably why he asked the question.
He was looking for your discards to see what he
could reanimate.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Probably, yeah, give me a sense of I mean, looking
back now, it's easy to see, but the path had
to be difficult. I mean, when you're broke, when you
when you when you're you don't know where your next
meal is coming from, where nobody's buying.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
That's a rough moment to be in as a writer
or creative. Yes, how did you get through that? I
mean besides falling on your knees?

Speaker 2 (21:34):
I think there's not much besides that. Actually, I mean
you can have you can have wonderful people in your life,
as I certainly did and do, who are there for
you in every possible way. They can be there for you.
And I had plenty of them. Yeah, but uh, you

(21:56):
know there's a there's an old spiritual from the South.
You got to walk that lonesome, lonesome valley. You got
to walk it by yourself and nobody else can walk
it for you. And there was that element for me
of Okay, I've done everything I know to do. Now

(22:16):
just fall into the arms of God and let it go.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
But you had fallen into the arms of God a
little earlier actually, because you go to do to study divinity.
I mean, you're you're studying religion. Yes, what did your
father the salesman? What did thurman think of that? Thank
you for calling my father's name. It always makes me smile.

Speaker 2 (22:43):
My father. I think at a sense that my calling
was not in the clergy I had been, and I
actually never felt that I was, And you know, in
in sort of evangelical circles, and that's that's where I

(23:07):
come out of and still am. The there's a sense
that the God called you that you have, you know, vocation.
There's there's this calling and uh, and God calls you
in in sometimes general ways and sometimes overwhelming ways, but
you've got to you got to listen to the call.

(23:28):
And I loved the study of religion, but I never
imagined that I would be a pastor. But I had
no idea what I would be.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
So, when I was majoring in religion and I was
about to graduate and had I was thinking I would
do one more year in seminary to try to get
even deeper, and I wanted to study the Resurrection. I
wanted to do all those things, and I wanted to
explore being a writer, and I thought that this would
give me a chance to have the room to do

(23:58):
that as as a seminarian. My pastor, the pastor of
the church I grew up in, said to me, do
you feel the call to be a pastor? And I said, honestly,
I don't, but I know it's the greatest calling anyone
can ever have. And he said, well, you're wrong. The

(24:18):
greatest calling you can have is the one God has
for you. And that was one of the most powerful
moments and one of the most beautiful moments. I have
to say, where a man that I respected. He was
a fantastic pastor, but he wasn't trying to herd me
into his path. It was like follow your own path.

(24:40):
That was It's like what a father, I think should
say too, And.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
How did that training prepare you as a writer, because
I know you're interested in music at this point, so
you're writing music, not the written word, but it's a
written soul. That's right, and you can clarify the story.
But Chris Christopher's and is coming to Duke, Yes, and
you connived to get close to him.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yes, So he's a Rhodes scholar, he's an airborne ranger,
he's a Golden Gloves boxer, and and he writes these
incredibly brilliant songs. So that's kind of my decision making
formula is find someone that you admire and relate to
and see what they do. And I had seen that

(25:26):
Chris Christopherson had gone to Nashville, which I didn't feel
was my natural place. I was writing more like say
Kat Stevens or Neil Diamond pop music, pop music, more
pop music, and less kind of country music. But Christopherson

(25:47):
had brought this poetry and this masculine energy into a
context that was quite poetic and really embraced. I mean,
country music is mainly lyrics, and it's adult lyrics and stories. Yeah,

(26:09):
the bubblegum thing, you know. I'm fourteen, and I just
saw a girl. That is a very pop music kind
of thing. But I'm a man. I'm struggling how to be,
how to be a father, a husband in all of
my brokenness and my mistakes and what made Milwaukee famous

(26:30):
made a loser out of me. That's country news. And
Christofferson brought that and I got to meet him. My
dad felt the same way about the seminary as he
felt about me being a writer, which is he thought
neither one of those was safe. And he wanted me

(26:51):
to be a lawyer. I had crushed the law school
admissions test. I had like, I like, I had a
chance to have scholarships and everything else. And I'd always
sort of thought I would be a lawyer, but it
didn't feel it wasn't calling to me. The way creating

(27:11):
things was, writing was, and music did.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
So. So you're in Nashville, what happens in Nashville.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
So in Nashville, I was working at a theme part
called opry Land, working eighty hours a week. I loved it,
but I was getting up at four point thirty every
morning to write songs. And I got signed as a
songwriter to a company called Tree Music. There's a funny thing. Raymond.
I shared this story with Jordan Peterson when I I

(27:41):
was talking with him that I had decided that I
wasn't as committed as I needed to be. And I
got that impression from two things. One, I wasn't selling
songs in Nashville, and I felt, Okay, I'm not being
disciplined enough about being productive enough finding my mind. I

(28:04):
wrote more songs than anybody at Tree was writing at
the time, but they were writing better songs. Like a
guy that Bobby Braddock was there. He wrote he stopped
loving her today.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
And I just thought of that earlier when you were
talking about heartbreak, and you know, it's that your great song, that's.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
One of the greatest songs ever written. And so those guys,
I were thinking, Okay, I've got to really up my
game to keep up with these guys. But there's also
the you know, not trying to keep up with other people.
What's the best randal I can be? And I had
a picture of Beethoven. It's a classic Beethoven picture of

(28:41):
him holding a manuscript and he's kind of frowning up
and so intense, and I thought, I'm going to try
to be that guy. And I quit my job. I'd
saved up money. I was sleeping on the floor. I
spent no money for furniture or he had just paid rent,
rent and food was all I had. And and I
spent all day long, writing, practicing, studying music, and not

(29:06):
seeing anybody. And at the end of about three or
four months, I was nearly insane. I was there. There
was a day in Nashville when I realized the sun
had not come out in fourteen days, and if I
didn't see some sunshine, I was afraid I was going
to kill myself. And I've got to I've got to
get I've got to get out of here. I've got

(29:27):
to go. And I packed up everything I could carry
in my little car and I drove to California alone.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
And that was it.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
That was it.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
How did you get involved with Stephen Cannell, which is
now you're writing, I mean you segue into writing TV.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
He was the big TV producer.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, he was a writer, awesome, I mean, a massive
mentor and friend. I mean, he was an amazing human being.
I met him because having nothing to do except write,
I couldn't write all day. I'd learned in Nashville that
if I wrote, if I tried to write all day,

(30:07):
I would drive myself insane and I needed to be
around other people. But I wanted something healthy to do,
and I found well, okay, a gym membership is the
cheapest thing you could do. I went to the gym
every single day and worked out, and we worked out
like a madman. And I've always loved working out. But
I was in the gym one day and there was
a guy helping a friend. He was real strong guy,

(30:31):
and he was helping a sort of out of shape friend,
trying to encourage him to lift and be healthier. And
they were clearly musicians because they were talking about music,
and this guy was telling stories about Elvis, and I
piped up and said, hey, you know, I grew up
in Memphis and my father saw Elvis and get paid

(30:52):
fifty bucks to open a supermarket, you know, saying while
the supermarket was And we start talking, and the guy
got do you run? And I said, oh, you know,
I ran in college, but I don't run. My Sae
and Heid, well, we've got a running group every weekend.
Come out and run with us, and okay, great, and
we exchanged names and I said I'm Randy Wallace, and
he goes, I'm Mike Post and wait, Mike posts music.

(31:16):
Mike Post. He goes, yeah, that's me. I mean, total
down to earth guy, but the most successful and probably
most brilliant TV composer like ever. And and Mike made
it his business to get Steve to read my scripts.
And Steve kept saying, you know, it's like there are

(31:36):
thousands of guys trying to get me to read the scripts.
And Mike was was would not take no for an answer,
and then got me into to see Steve. And Steve
was doing a show about country people, and I told
him a story about my grandfather that made him laugh
and he said, well, we'll give you a shot, and

(31:59):
that was it.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Was it.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, I became his protege.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
How long were you there?

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Four years?

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Four years?

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (32:06):
And then then you run up into this this brave
Heart moment.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
You've said, Brave Heart could not have been written except
for my mother.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Why.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Well, so my father was a salesman, and I, like
I've said, I never knew anybody who had more charisma
and charm and great than my dad, with the exception

(32:38):
of my mother. Probably that my mother had my father
had the attitude that every person had a value and
was due respect. So when he went into a company,
and he went into hundreds and hundreds of them, he

(32:58):
knew the name of the president that he knew the
name of the person that answered the phone for the president.
But he knew the name of the guy that swept
the floors every single place. He knew, he knew that
guy's children, he knew where the guy lived, he knew
what the guy loved to do. And it wasn't a tactic.
He just actually loved people like that. Now, my mother

(33:19):
had a different sort of take on it. She believed
that everybody could be loved by God, but she didn't
have to love everybody because you might be unlovable. And
her attitude was if everyone likes you, you're probably doing
something wrong. In fact, to jump ahead for a moment,

(33:40):
when we had made we were soldiers and my father
had just passed away. My father died on nine to eleven,
and that was how I came to write the hymn Mansions.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Of the Lord. The Lord.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, and I was calling my mother every day in
those days to you know, just check in on her.
And of course I guess I needed to hear her
voice as much as she needed to hear mine. But
we were about to do the first test screening. You
know that you have you show the movie and then
you show it to the audience, and no matter how

(34:14):
confident you are, you got a real you know, you're
not in your summer. And I was talking with my mother.
I said, how are you doing, mom? And she said
I'm fine.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
How are you?

Speaker 2 (34:23):
And I said, well, I'm nervous today And she goes
why And I said, well, we're having a and she's
from Tendessee, right farm girl. And I said, well, we're
having the first test screening of We Were Soldiers. And
she said, well, why would that make you nervous? And
I said, well, mamma, you know you put your blood,
your sweat, your tears, and your money into a movie.

(34:46):
And you know there are going to be some people
that really have their knives out. They just want to
they just want to tear you down. And my mother goes, well, honey,
if they crucified Jesus Christ, there's going to be some
people that don't like you.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Get over it.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
It's like that's right, It's like, yes, some people will not,
but do what you believe doing and that that thing
in Brave Heart, like when it comes to every man dies,
not every man really lives. We certainly think of that
kind of line about our fathers and he says man
in it, but it's it's certainly as true about every

(35:29):
For you, it was your.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Mother, my mother?

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Wow, Why did the Three Musketeers still appeal to you?
The Man in the Iron Mask one of my favorite
movies ever, And I've told you before. My boys and
I used to watch it.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
They loved that movie because it's it's filled with adventure.
It has the same heart and soul and whole DNA
that Braveheart has.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
Frankly, what was the appeal there? Guys?

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Raymond? It's funny. No one's ever asked me this, and
I'm so excited to get to say this. So Braveheart
is my first produced feature and it becomes this worldwide station.
And I realized that if what I tried to do

(36:15):
was copy that again and again that I had, that
I was over that. I had to actually trust that
what brought me to Braveheart was going to bring me
to other things. And I had to be willing to
let go and not say well, I'm going to just
repeat this now. Hollywood likes repetition because it makes it

(36:41):
feel more predictable and understandable. Okay, we've put you in
this historical box. But what happened with Manny ron Mask
is Becky Pollock again, like you know, her dad made
Jeremiah Johnson Three Days of the Condor and all these
other great movies with those two were my particular favorite.

(37:04):
And she called me up and said, man in the
Iron Mask, what do you think? And I had loved
that story since I was a boy. I mean, the
mysterious nature of it, right, who is he? Why is
he in the Iron Mask?

Speaker 3 (37:19):
All of that.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
So I called her and said, I'm in you know,
I want to do it. But what really appealed to
me was that the thematics of that story were that
these musketeers, the four of them, actually like you know,
the three then plus d'Artagnan, those guys were in a

(37:42):
certain way past their prime in that they had been
famous in their twenties. Now they were sort of retired.
One's a jesuit, one's a dad, one's in dissipation. And
then d'Artagnan is the captain of the King's right, and
and that story was the same thing that I faced of. Okay,

(38:07):
if you've done something that the world is now the
world didn't know me, then you mail but they didn't.
They didn't. They didn't know much about me. That wasn't
the point. The point was I could keep trying to
live in the past, or I could say, what brought
me here has something else for me to do. And

(38:27):
that's where Man in the Iron Man. That was the
theme really of Man in the Iron And you directed
it too, I did, which is I mean, that's the
first movie you directed. R Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Wow, it's such a great movie. It still holds up.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
I watched it recently, Thank you. It's it's but I
see the same themes, but it's not.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
The same movie. You're right now, It's very different. It's
a lot of fun too. I mean, I think it's
a it's hilarious and a delightful movie. Do you outline No,
not at all.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
No, No, I don't believe in it.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
You just launch you and write it actively.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Disagree with outlining why because the way you determine whether
an outline is good or bad, it's whether it sounds
like something you've seen before.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
That's true. That's true.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
I'm trying to find a story that I have not
ever heard before. It's not I'm not trying to replicate.
I don't want to be copying. So again, like you say,
take Braveheart, if it hadn't been someone like mel who
was who had who had bitten hard on on the

(39:35):
bait of Braveheart, if some other actor had come in
and said, oh, well this, I loved the story, but
but my friends should swing in on vines and save
me in the end, I can't die, then the studio
would have gone, yes, sure.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Absolutely, we need a happy ending. What are you? What
the hell are you doing exactly?

Speaker 2 (39:56):
So it's like you got to find the thing or
say Murans throat being cut. Nobody did things like that,
and it wasn't me trying to be different. It was
the story told itself to me in that way. And
I want to listen to what the story is telling

(40:16):
me in real time. In real time now, while I'm writing,
I'll get a projection of oh, down the line, this
will happen.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
Yeah, and you make that.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
I'll just I'll write those. I write a little dialogue
that I know is coming, but that's just to jog
my memory, but I do not outline.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
You do say a prayer though every day? Oh yeah,
what is that prayer?

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Well, okay, I can tell you exactly what it is.
So to prepare to write, I start with, I thank
God for now and for this work, and I asked
him to bless me in it and others through it.
However it is his will. I pray to offer the

(41:03):
work to him as he offers it to me, in
faith and hope and love. And then I say the
prayer of Jabez Lord. I pray that you would bless me,
bless me indeed, increase my territory, and that the hand
be upon me to keep me from evil, and that
I cause no pain. And I thank God that God

(41:25):
is God, almighty and Lord of all creation, and that
I'm part of his creativity too, and for that I
give thanks and I rejoice. And that's the way I start.
I have to say that first.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Huh, you see yourself in every character? Oh yeah, yeah,
you're playing all the parts. Yes, yeah, I thought that
was just me. I didn't realized you did that too. Well,
but it's I guess we're the instrument you have to
kind of. I mean, you only have one heart and
one soul.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
And one mind. I mean you just sort of bend them,
I guess to the character in the moment.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Yeah, I think that that there is something in all
of us that recognizes the potential to do, to do

(42:24):
incredible evil and transcendent good. I think that that is
the nature of our lives.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Tell me about we were soldiers speaking of transcendent good. Yeah,
I knew Lieutenant Hallmore, Lieutenant Colonel Hollmore.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
He was such a heroic and great man.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
How did you come across the story you read?

Speaker 3 (42:48):
You read the book, I imagine, yes, and your thoughts
on that film looking back and who he was, the
type of man he was, And of course it's your
reunion artistically with Mel.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yes, I was sitting in my office, the same office
at the Home office that I was sitting in when
I wrote Braveheart, and I started to work on Man
in the Iron Mask, and the phone rang and it
was an executive at Warner Brothers who said, I nearly

(43:25):
lost my job over Braveheart. And how's that? And she said, well,
where Mel is at Warner Brothers. He's on the studio
a lot with his company, and we're supposed to keep
track of everything. And suddenly he announces he's doing this
thing Braveheart, and we weren't even aware of it. And

(43:46):
I said, well, you know, he could have been I
suppose he had just met but she said no, no,
I'm not not angry. But Kevin Costner has read Brave
Heart and he wishes you had send it to him,
and he would like to meet you. And I took
a moment and I said, I wish my father was

(44:06):
here to hear me say this. I would love to
go to Hawaii to meet with Kevin Costner, but I
can't because I need to go to England to help
mel Gibson. She laughed and said, no, Kevin understands, but
he's working on a movie called water World. And yeah,
but he would like to see you and we want

(44:28):
to fly you over. So I went to the bookstore
and was looking. I love to read nonfiction. It informs me,
I think more than even though I love fiction, I
write fiction. And here's this book, We were Soldiers Once
and Young, and there's a picture on the cover of

(44:48):
a young lieutenant platoon leader with his bayonet fixed, leading
his men into the brush. Guy's name was Rick Riscola.
You may know of Rick Chris Gola, one of the
great heroes of all time and the guy I want
to write about. But I picked up that book and
I opened it on the plane and did not put

(45:11):
it down the whole flight to Hawaii, and I came
across in the preface, Hollywood has gotten the story of
the Vietnam veteran wrong every damn time, wedding the knives
of twisted politics on the bones of our dead brothers.
And I was like, Okay, I am in now I
get to the actual People don't believe this, but are

(45:37):
surprised by it. The scene that really put the nail
in the coffin for me was a letter from a
woman named Barbara Gaigin, who was the wife of the guy,
who was a devout Catholic. He and Barbara had gone
to Africa and Catholic release services. He had postponed his

(45:58):
Vietnam deployment he could go be a missionary in Africa.
He had been killed trying to draw up pick up
one of his wounded men and carry him off the battlefield.
He had been killed too, and Barbara wrote a letter
to how about her experience. When he came to visit her,

(46:24):
and it moved me to the core of my being.
I got off the plane and I called my agent
and I said, somebody has got to own the movie
rights to this book. You tell them I'll kill a
relative to get to write this story. And he said,
I'll get right back to you. So he calls me
the next day and says they won't sell the movie

(46:45):
rights because they're afraid Oliver Stone will end up with them,
or it'll be it'll be it'll be turned into you
guys were baby killers and all of that, and so
I said, okay, give me their number, and I called them.
I got Joe Galloway, the journalist himself, and I said,
you don't know me. I've written a script called Braveheart.

(47:09):
I'm going to send it to you. It's currently in production,
but you've never heard of my name. But you read
it and then if you like it, call me. So
next day he calls it goes okay, let's talk. So
I said, I can go to a studio based on
the success of Braveheart, and I can get them to

(47:31):
but they will own it and then they'll do anything
they want to with it if you will let me
buy it with my own money. I'll pay you my
own money to buy the movie rights, and I'll write
you a deal that you'll make more money and success
than you would have ever made from the studio. And
if you don't like what I do, you'll know who

(47:52):
to come shoot. And they went in. And then Hal
proceeded to become one of the great mentors of my life.
He was he was like a second dad.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Great man. So yeah, great great man.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Every year I went with him a couple of times
when he would go to the Vietnam Memorial with his
with his rangers, and every year.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
There would be less of them.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Yeah, it was very moving. It was very moving. Ye,
incredible man.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
I went to the renaming ceremony when they renamed Fort
Benning and uh and named it Fort Julie and hal Moore,
and I had to say, I appreciate and in fact,
I'm troubled by the destruction of history, you know, the

(48:42):
taking down of statutes, whether you love them or hate them.
You know, history is history, and heritage is heritage, and
and many of those things are there for us to
be provoked by. But I loved that they named that
fort Fort howl and juli More and no one ever
deserved it or was more exemplary the values that you want,

(49:06):
you want not only the soldiers but their families to have.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Are you?

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Are you amazed culturally the way it seems I could
be overstating that masculinity is back. Young guys are finding
their voice again. They're showing up, not always in comfortable
or well dressed or mannered ways, but they're willing to

(49:33):
allow their voices to be Amen.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Amen, I agree with you. It is. It is amazing
how it's happening. And I'll tell you just my personal
reaction about that. So again, I grew up not only
with an amazing, amazingly gentle and powerful father, but an

(49:59):
amazing tough and elegant mother. She was very much liked,
Julie Moore, and I always grew up with the belief
that a man respecting women was the most masculine man
there could be. I was doing a charity screening A

(50:19):
Brave Heart in Austin, Texas about ten fifteen years ago.
It was the first first time I'd seen the movie
screened in a decade or more we had and I
watched it as an audience member, and then I went
up on the stage to do a Q and A
with the audience. I walk up there and I was

(50:40):
moved by the movie, you know, to see it in
that way. And the first one to stand up was
a nineteen year old woman right on the front row.
And she stood up and said, mister Wallace, I don't
have a question. I just want to tell you something.
My fiance died six months ago, and before he died,
he told me he wanted me to watch Braveheart so

(51:02):
I would understand the way he loved me. And I
had to. I couldn't talk for about five minutes. It
was such a powerful example to me that strong women
want strong men, and strong men want strong women. Strong

(51:22):
doesn't mean overly macho. It doesn't mean trying to prove yourself.
But to this day and I always will, and I
have taught my sons you open doors for ladies not
because they're weak, because you're telling them you're honoring them,
and that's what you do, and they hear that. My

(51:45):
youngest son has picked up a habit for me that
when I meet a woman that I think is due honor,
I will kiss her hand and invariably it makes them glow.
And he does it, and I was like, yeah, that's
how you treat a woman. So yeah, I want to

(52:06):
see men valued and no society that doesn't see a
man as an honorable creature. And not that a man
has to be like a woman, but a man has

(52:28):
to share the heart of a woman, like the tenderness.
So you know, a gentle tender father is one of
the most powerful things in.

Speaker 3 (52:37):
The world man in the world do And so.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
That's the thing that I am just I am thrilled
to see that happening all over.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
I'm intrigued about when Mel approached you about the resurrection?

Speaker 3 (52:52):
Was this twenty sixteen? Was it Hacksaw Ridge time? Was
that yesty?

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Mel didn't approach me. I approached him, actually all and
that's a it's a Now, this is not to say
that over the years he hadn't thought many times about
the resurrection. In fact, in the original, in the original
Passion of the Christ, the original cut, he didn't have

(53:19):
the resurrection scenior u and that so so he was
getting feedback I think from people that we really want
to see that. So so he shut a little kind
of coda in that. So again I'm not trying to
take credit for this, but having studied the Resurrection and

(53:43):
being so consumed by it. I had thought about it
many times, and I didn't have anything to do with
Passion the Christ. When we were flying back to Washington,
d C. For a screening of We Were Soldiers, it
was the the first movie to be screened at the
Bush White House, Mel was telling us the story of

(54:08):
the Passion that he wanted to do in a real
animated way, But all I did was just listen. I
didn't have any input on that. But when we were
promoting Hacksaw Ridge and we were sitting there talking and
about our lives, and that's one of the really awesome

(54:28):
things to me about getting to know Mel. We've had
some moments when it was just the two of us.
We once talked in a hallway at Fort Benning in
a sort of barracks all the way at two in
the morning when neither of us could sleep, when we
were prepping We Were Soldiers, were bump into each other
walking allways and talked for hours. And we've had a

(54:53):
lot of great conversations in those moments. And we were
having dinner while we were promoting all Riche and I said, look,
you know the story that you really need to tell
it's the resurrection. And there was this long pause and
he said something profoundly beautiful. He said, if we do this,

(55:17):
it can't be for the money, and it can't be
for to get back at people that you know that
have have hated us or wronged us, or or or
are been unhappy with us. And I said, you know,
amen to that. And then he said, you know Satan's
going to come after you. And I said, well, you know,

(55:43):
Satan doesn't really care about Baptists. It's really good when
Satan can get a Catholic.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
But Baptis Sir Doma doesn't.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
And and and of course you know I was being facetious,
but I was also thinking that what if he's right, Well.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
That's what I would be thinking. What if he's right.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Well, we had a beautiful conversation about grace and uh.
And what I said was, first of all, thank you
you have a mass said for me. I appreciate it
in my soul. What about you? You know, what should
what should we do for you? And we had this

(56:25):
great conversation about grace that that we in you know,
in Catholicism you have the duties of the rituals, that
these are important it's not to say I I don't
believe it. It would be accurate to say that that

(56:46):
Catholics believe that the given ritual itself is the thing
that does the has the efficacy, but it's.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
A vehicle of grace. The sacrament is a vehicle.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
A vehicle of grace. And now protestantsor without the formalities
of it, but we believe in the same grace and
that that God loves us. While we don't deserve it,
we can't come to deserve it. We do our best

(57:17):
to live in in the honoring of the love that
God gave us before we deserved it, and we never
will deserve it. So we had this great conversation about that,
and and that was that was the way we started.
And I said, look, I knew that that he had
written the Passion, was very much, deeply involved in the

(57:40):
writing of it. And I said, well, look, let's partner
up and I'll write a draft, give it to you.
Then we'll start, you know, tearing it up, go through it.
You do your thing, I'll do my well, we'll work together,
we'll work apart. So so we started that way, and
and then it's really you know, he he has brought.

(58:03):
It's somewhat different than the way Braveheart was, and that
I wrote the script, took it to him, but he
had to take it apart in his head and put
it back together in his head to direct it. And
we were soldiers, he acted, and it was I wrote it,
I directed it, I produced it. Then in this it's like, Okay,

(58:27):
his unique vision of the spiritual realm is uh is
really special? And UH and the you know, the interesting
thing is that while in some ways the Ultimate Movie,

(58:49):
I want to keep it all secret about what's going
to happen, but the Ultimate Movie in some ways will
have elements that people have never seen before. H And
in fact, in many ways it'll be stuff nobody's ever seen.
And yet I believe it will be in a certain way,
the most orthodox telling. It will be the most consistent

(59:14):
telling of the overall belief, the awe, and the mystery
that that Christians experience when they experience the Resurrection.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
What is the hardest part of this process?

Speaker 1 (59:30):
What is the most difficult, what's the what's the hardest
blockades that you've encountered? Because you are dealing with a
story that has so many unknown surrounding them, you know
Jesus shows it walks to the wall. I mean, you
know he's on the road to a mais Well, why.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
Don't they wreck?

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Yes exactly, yes, why don't they know it's yes?

Speaker 3 (59:59):
But how do you trade that on camera?

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
I think that the first internal challenge. I'm not sure
how Mel would answer this question. To be fascinating to
see how he does. I'm sure you're going to talk
with him. But there's a universal kind of truth about
this and every other story. It's getting out of the way,

(01:00:24):
getting yourself out of the way, and the other is
getting in the way. That as in when I first
wrote Braveheart, I didn't believe anybody was going to like it.
I thought I would, but I didn't believe it really nobody.
People have said to me, you had to know that
people are going to love it, like no, I did not.

(01:00:46):
In fact, I believe no one was going to love it.
It was I wanted to write what was true for me.
That gets back to my mother. The other people saying
that somebody else did it, it is no excuse saying
that standard was high enough for them. That's good, that's
high enough for them, It's not high enough for us.

(01:01:08):
We have a different we have a different standard. So
I think there's the thing of does it move you?
And and that's one of the things I would say
about Mel in particular, that you see, you see that
his heart and his vulnerability are in or in his work,

(01:01:32):
and they're certainly in mind. When I'm directing and the
actors do something that brings tears to my eyes, I
do not wipe them away. I go up to them
and I get in their face and I let them
see that they just moved me. I need them to know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
And if import insight though, he and you have that
that vulnerability which people don't necessarily see, but that's that's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
At the heart of his art and yours.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Yeah, and that's the part that I think they Again
I'm not here to speak for Mel, but I think
it's something that people really miss about him is how
incredibly tender and generous hearted, and that he really wants

(01:02:25):
to live in the right way. And he certainly has
his challenges as we all do to doing that. But
but yeah, I've seen multiple cases in which he felt
he had to settle directly with a person, and he
doesn't do it through like if he's got a problem

(01:02:47):
with somebody. I've seen him go up and say, please
forgive me, I'm sorry, And people don't see that that side,
but it's it's quite real.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
You said something I came across the other day that
actually you told it to me years ago. I went
through an old interview again me and you said this.
I'm thought of as the author of Brave Heart, but
this tale is the author of me. Yeah, explain that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Well. I think that there's something that happens when you
speak the truth, as you know it is that it
is not a one way flow. It is a it
is a loop.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
It is a.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Divine loop, and that by standing up and saying what
you truly believe, then that actually creates it again in you.
It's like taking a vow. Yeah. You know. I wrote
a song once and I have thought of it recently

(01:03:52):
because some relationships are changing in my life and one
in particular, and and I wrote a song that had
the lyric what will it take if I follow my dream?
Will it be just a little or everything? What will

(01:04:15):
it mean if I give my all to a glorious
climb or an endless fall? If I stood up and shouted,
if I prayed on my knees. If I swore in defiance,
if I said pretty please, would it all be the same.
If I come to the end with no promise to
keep and no vow to defend, I will stand my ground.

(01:04:36):
I will kneel and pray. I won't wait for tomorrow.
I'll do it today. I'll die in the dirt, but
my heart will be clean when I say yes to
heaven and follow my dream. And that's what I believe.
I believe that I wrote that some years back, just
came across it recently.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
And went, huh, there it is there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
It is what out then spoke to me then and
speaks to me in a different way. Now, what you
do creates you as well as you create it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
And now you're touring the country which I love, and
you're you're you wrote a book called Living the Brave
Heart Life. Yes, now you're kind of you're really traveling.
You're the traveling evangelist for the Brave Heart Life. Let's
face it. Yeah, what is it? Tell me what those
appearances are like, why you're doing that? Why are you
going town to town telling these stories? Your music?

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
Tell me what it is and why you decided to
undertake it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
I wanted I was. I was really offended during the pandemic.
I was offended by the fear that was prevalent and
among all of us, and particularly among our leaders, UH
to separate people. Diseases are dangerous, they kill people all
the time. I know we were uncertain how the pandemic

(01:06:03):
was going to play out, but I didn't think it
was going to wipe out the human race. I didn't
think that we were designed to be that frail. And
I wanted to get out in front of people. I
decided that that reaching people just through social media wasn't
the way to reach people or to be reached by people.

(01:06:23):
I wanted to have the experience like I had with
that girl that stood up and gave me a gift
that I never imagined getting to tell me, this is
the power that Braveheart had for women. That so I
have got to get out of my comfort zone and
Friendomen had gone back to doing music because I had

(01:06:46):
this experience that I had Mercia in my right hand
and the doctors had decided they're going to amputate my hand,
Oh my gosh. And I mean they had already decided.
It was Mayo clinic. They one of the physical therapists
told me they had already had the meeting of what
my post amputation therapy was going to be. With this

(01:07:08):
one doctor wouldn't give up and he had a plan,
and he found a way to save my hand, which
involved taking an artery and a vein and a nerve
out of my leg and weaving it into my hand.
I went to bed one night thinking the next day
they're going to amputate my hand. But I had a

(01:07:29):
dream and in the dream I saw the Wallace family crest,
which is a night holding a sword cock to strike.
And in this dream I was the Knight, but instead
of holding a sword, my fingers were pointing toward heaven
and they were the ones that were going to start
the amputation with. And I woke up going, God's not

(01:07:51):
going to take my hand. And when I came out
of that, I decided I'm going to instead of just
like squeeze rubber balls and springs and things, going to
learn to play the piano. I bought a beautiful piano
again to practice every day. And a friend of mine said,
if you want to be a musician, you have to
play in front of people. So I wrote a show

(01:08:11):
and the show has clips from my movies and the
stories about how I came to write those scenes. I
tell some of the stories that we've shared today and
music that I wrote for my movies, or about the
themes that the movies are in. So it's a ninety
minute almost Broadway like I think Bruce Springsteen on Broadway.

(01:08:34):
Of course he's Bruce Springsteen and I'm not. But I
have movies that that people relate to and families could
see together and draw from. So I particularly loved to
go to schools. I went to Belmont University in Nashville. Yeah,
it was an incredible experience. And so we're touring around

(01:08:56):
the country.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
I love that. I love it well. I also love
that it's full circle for you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
Yeah, because you're bringing the.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Music, your stories as well as the movies. It's really
and yourself and you. And there's something.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
About live performance that, yes, is your replacement.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
Let's talk before I go. There's an a royal Grande
questionnaire I asked everybody, so forgive me, but this is
rapid fire. Okay, who's the person you most admire.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
Besides Jesus Davy Crockett? Why a common man who who
had enormous challenges. Was illiterate, raised by an alcoholic father
who beat him and sold him into slavery when he

(01:09:43):
was a child. Became a famed Indian fighter and then
fought for the Indians. He was the only Tennessee and
in Congress who refused to vote for the removal of
the Indians. And and he had wit and courage, and

(01:10:04):
he walked through the world alone and great and character.
And I see that, and then having my dad was
from Lizard Lick, Tennessee. I relate to Davy Crockett. But yeah,
Davy Crockett.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
That should be your next movie. It is, Oh, it is?

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Are you working I'm working on. I'm working on right now,
a movie on the Swiss Guards. Huh, which we may
shoot simultaneously in Rome with with some other movie, some
other little movie.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
It made yeah interesting. Yeah, I'm getting all kinds of
news today. Okay, what is your best feature?

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
My best personal feature?

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
Feature could be personal, could be physical, I don't care.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
My best feature is my willingness to make a fool
of myself.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
Huh. Favorite book and last book you read?

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
My favorite book is well Charles Dickens. Probably great Expectations
or David Copperfield. I love Dickens. The most recent book
that I read is Rick Rubins on Creativity.

Speaker 3 (01:11:14):
Oh that's a great book.

Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
Great boy, he's a great guy. What do you fear?

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
I fear fear. I fear listening to the fear is natural.
Ernie Savage who was one of the heroes from We
Were Soldiers, he went through an incredible physical horrors during
the battle and I asked him how he functioned amid
all the terror, and he said, well, fear is your friend.

(01:11:45):
Without fear, we have never survived. It makes you alert,
it makes you motivated. Fear's your friend. I know it
can be. I know it also can eat you up.
And I fear listening too much fear. One of part
of my daily mantra, I call it the daily prayers

(01:12:06):
I say, is that I abandoned fear.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
I know it's there, but I walk away from it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
What do you know that others don't that no one
else does? I know that's a crafty and wicked question.
That is such a but it's a good one. That's
such a good one.

Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
What do you know that others don't?

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
I know that within every one of us is a
little boy or a little girl who needs to be
embraced and loved, and and there are other people that
say those exact same words. It's just, you know, how

(01:12:52):
does it manifest? It's it's one of the reasons that
like say, if I meet a woman in her nineties,
I will kiss her hand. Okay, it's not the old
woman whose hand is being kissed, it's that little girl.
And then that's something I know that other people don't
sing to.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
I love that. What's your biggest regret?

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Do you have one regret? You know, it's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
I have.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
Moments that I regret the pain that something took but
to happen, you know, a transition, a journey. I regret
the pain that that's something that I might have been

(01:13:46):
going through cost of other people, particularly the ones that
I love the most. And at the same time, I
really believe in the in the phrase in the fullness
of time, and that God's plan is better than mine.
And so some of the things that I thought were
the worst things that could happen proved to be the

(01:14:09):
greatest blessings I could have. So so I try to
leave my regrets behind in the same way I try
to leave fear behind.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
What's the best piece of advice you ever received.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
I yeah, one of the one of the most striking,
other than my pastor saying, you know, the greatest calling
you could have is the one God has for you.
One was how more, how would say over and over
follow your instincts? When I was directing we were soldiers,

(01:14:47):
I was having a I'm sorry without a man in
the unmask. I was having a real challenge and I
knew how. I knew how then, but I was having
a real challenge. I was the first time director, and
all sorts of things were wrong. My marriage was in trouble.
I was exhausted. I was the writer and director and

(01:15:08):
producer of that movie. And any one of those jobs
is enough to exhaust you and give you a nervous breakdown,
But do all three at once, and that's hard. And
then I had all these movie stars on the same
movie and it's my first job and all that, And
I had some rebellions within the ranks because some of
the people I felt resented they had been in the

(01:15:31):
movie business for thirty years, wanted to direct movies and
they had never gotten an opportunity. And I've written one movie.
The fact that it was Braveheart didn't impress them. And
now I'm directing Leonardo DiCaprio and John Malkovich and all
the early and I wrote how and I said, what
do you do when the people under you? You know,

(01:15:54):
I can hang some people from the yard arm, but
if a captain hangs to me any of the crew,
sooner or later people start to think, well, maybe the
problem is the captain. What should I do? And Hal
wrote me back and said, the job of any leader,
the first job is to grab your own morale by

(01:16:15):
the scruff of the neck and lift it out of
the mud. So stop complaining and start leading. That was
pretty powerful advice.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
And that's what you did. That's what I did, created a.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
Heck of a movie by thank you, Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
What happens when this is over? Wow?

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
I don't even think of about it. I really don't.
I I think and it's that I'll die in the dirt,
but my heart will be clean and I'm prepared to
die in the dirt. So wow, yeah, I'm prepared.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):
I so enjoyed this.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Thank you, Thank you your joy always to see us.
Thank you to your brother, Thank.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
You, so many revelations in that interview, I will never
hear every man dies, but not every man really lives
without thinking of Randy Wallace's mother. And I loved that
line from Colonel Halmore, whom I knew a leader's first
job is to grab your own morale by the scruff
of the neck and lift it out of the mud.

(01:17:16):
So stop complaining and start leading. And the prayer Randy
says before he writes it is so important, But I
do hate that he doesn't outline anything.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
Maybe that's why he's praying.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
And finally abandon fear. It is the only true path
to creativity. Arroyo Grande Travel is sponsored by our partners
at Corporate Travel, celebrating sixty years facilitating exceptional faith education,
music and family travel. This is their website at ctscentral

(01:17:48):
dot net. I hope you'll come back to a Royal
Grande soon. Why live a dry, constricted life when if
you fill it with good things, it can flow into
a broad, driving Arroyo Grande.

Speaker 3 (01:17:58):
I'm Raymond Arroyo.

Speaker 1 (01:17:59):
Make sure you subscribe like this episode, Thanks for diving in,
and we'll see you next time. A Roo Grande is
produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. And is available on
the iHeartRadio, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts.