December 2, 2022 • 47 mins
Nate Boyer is an incredible American. He served in the Green Berets for 8 years, then decided to go to college at the University of Texas and then walked on the football team where he was the starting long snapper. Although he got a quick workout with the Seahawks, he has gone onto greater things.
He spent two years on a passion project creating MVP, the Movie. It reflects what he has done for athletes and ex military vets who are looking for true meaning and purpose after they are done either playing or serving. It's a great film.
He spent two years on a passion project creating MVP, the Movie. It reflects what he has done for athletes and ex military vets who are looking for true meaning and purpose after they are done either playing or serving. It's a great film.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
Hey everybody, it's Mark Pattison.I'm back again with another great episode of
Finding Your Summit, all about peopleovercome university in finding their way. Before
I get to today's a rock starguest, I've had them on before.
I just want to draw attention tomy website www dot Mark Pattison NFL dot
com. We've got two hundred andseventy plus episodes of really inspirational people doing
(00:35):
amazing things. I really urge peopleto go over there, check it out,
or check it out wherever you getyour podcasts. I will also urge
people to go into Apple and givesome love. Their ratings and review helps
elevate the popularity of the show.There's so many pods out there, and
people need to hear the people likeI have on today and their story because
we all need to be inspired,including myself. Also, you can you
(00:58):
can find the one full NFL filmSearching for the Summit, which won a
Best Picture Emmy Award last year,of my epic journey going up and down
Mount Everest and all the other dramathat took place with that. But there
was a button that magically takes youstraight to the NFL three sixty film which
is thirty minutes long. It's prettycool. And then finally we continue to
(01:21):
raise money for Emilia as Everest,which goes directly to Higher Ground, which
is a charity here in some valley, New York in LA about empowerment of
other people. We're going to getinto that today with my guest. He
knows a thing or two about that, but anyways, if you want to
make a donation, please go throughthere. One hundred percent of all proceeds
go directly to that organization, andmost of it, ironically goes to military
(01:45):
people who have had some pretty serioustraumatic injuries, not only trauma to the
head and PTSD, but also limbsbeing blown off and trying to recover from
that. So it's very important.Ironic. I want to jump into my
guests now. His name is NateBoy or Nate. How are you doing?
I'm good, Mark. How areyou doing? Brother? I'm doing
(02:07):
good. Last time I saw youwas at the Super Bowl. But the
reason why I said ironically is becauseof course you were a green beer brey
for a number of years, eightyears I think it was in Iraq and
Afghanistan. And we're going to leadup to this movie that you just got
done. It might have been yourfirst one. You've I know, you've
appeared in other other films, butthe first one that you wrote, you
directored, and you're really had alot of control over all this. But
(02:31):
but let's just go back to kindof where you sit today and the really
foundation of what you've become, startingwith probably trying to find yourself in some
way and then ending up with somestructure by being in the military. What
did that do for you? Imean, if you were to sum it
(02:53):
up in a paragraph, what wouldthat look like? Oh? Man,
I mean, you know, themilitary. It's funny, like I think
a lot of people, a lotof people assume, especially parents, you
know, I think think that maybetheir child needs this kind of structure or
(03:14):
direction. A lot of people thatserved before would maybe kind of recommend it
to a lot of people because ofwhat it did for them. I didn't
really have any of that. Like, not that my parents were anti military
or whatever, but they were verymuch like they weren't in the service themselves.
Both my grandfathers were in World WarTwo, but they weren't necessarily ever
(03:38):
pushing me in a certain direction orthought that I needed anything. I think
they were worried about me because inmy late teens early twenties, I didn't
go to college. I didn't reallyknow what I wanted to do. I
didn't really have since the direction.I was kind of just bouncing around odd
job to odd job, having agood time doing it, you know,
worked on a fishing boat, wentto fire ter school for a few months,
(04:00):
and then realized that wasn't for meyet to to kind of, you
know, grow up. I wasn'tquite ready. I mean, I was
eighteen nineteen when these things are happening, and then nine to eleven happened when
I was twenty. And even then, while a lot of people were joining
the military at that time, alot of people my age were, you
know, signing up leaving college,leading jobs. They had you know,
(04:25):
enlisting before their second semester of highschool or whatever. It was um so
that as soon as they graduated,they'd be off. For me, it
was like, I just I don'tknow yet. I see the I see
why, and I had that interest, but it didn't it didn't lead me
to that place quite yet, notuntil I was twenty three years old,
(04:47):
and I ended up doing some reliefwork over in in Africa in the Darfur
region between Chad and Sudan, andthat really changed my life that trip,
that that that opportu tunity to govolunteer, even though it was only for
you know, a couple of months. The perspective I gained and also the
appreciation for what we had here andthe realization that most people don't and will
(05:13):
probably never have that UM made mewant to fight for them, fight for
those that couldn't, that can't fightfor themselves, and sort of find a
sense of purpose and be meaningful andand feel like what I did on a
daily basis made a difference because Ididn't feel that way before. And then
once I went into the army andinto basic training, it's like structure is
(05:38):
from day one, it's all aboutthat, you know, it's all about
like attention to detail, all thelittle things UM matter. And if you
if you don't, if you don'tfold your if you don't if you can't
learn to fold your socks or youryou know, make your bed a certain
way, you're certainly not gonna You'reyou're certainly going to struggle with with when
(06:01):
their bullets are flying around you.Maintaining that that sort of military bearing um
though, the awareness um doing thelittle things to make sure that you're keeping
each other safe. Like, it'sall about those little things, which I
think relates in a lot of waysto preparation for anything that's that's a great
(06:24):
challenge, whether it be playing inthe NFL, summoning everest um, performing
brain surgery, you know, whateverit is. So like, I found
the value of that, of thatstructure and much you know, kind of
later in life and I didn't.I didn't. Of course, you sort
of hear those things before you join, but you don't really understand at what
level, at least for me,until I was sort of thrust into it.
(06:47):
So not only basic training, trainingto be you know, in the
Special Forces of Green Beret, allthat stuff. Um. It certainly was
not something I was prepared for,but I had a bit of an idea
of what I was going to beencountering and it and it helped me and
(07:08):
helped me throughout the rest of mylife. I mean, set a lot
of life left to live. Butbecause of that time, I prioritization and
responsibility and preparation all those things thatI didn't put a lot of stock in
there, Like the lifeblood of howI operate now, you know, yeah,
I do know, and I knowit because my athletic past playing at
(07:29):
the University Washington in a very structuralcoach and in the NFL, which has
led me into the business things thatI've I've been involved in and certainly with
mountain climbing around the world. Ittakes a certain discipline to be able to
take on those things and with actuallydaily discipline to have that commitment to the
detail that, like you said,is very applicable to other things you have
(07:49):
done. And again I don't wantto spend too much time on this because
we did this on one hundred episodesago. I think after we came off
Kilman heare out together. But youknow that and led to the and maybe
this is more a commentary on myside, has led to this, this
really interesting football career you ended uphaving late in your Twiny Hayes at the
University of Texas, he became thestarting long snapper. You played a lot,
(08:13):
lot which then led to this NFLexperience that you've had. And it's
just amazing to me to see howmuch you know that, how much just
you stepping into the fear and youstepping into things you really didn't know and
learning how to do things that youhadn't even done in high school that that
has had this long tail effect foryou and all these things that you have
done. So so then you andI we'll just touch on this for a
(08:37):
second, so you know, againcircling back into kind of this whole community
activation and understanding there's a there's ahigher cause why we're here on this earth.
And then you come together with Chrislong m my former teammate. How
we long who I know is inyour movie. We'll talk about that in
(08:58):
a minute, but how we onChris, You had a nice, great
phenomenal career really in the NFL.I want a couple of Super Bowls happen
to pick the right teams. Butyou two came together to create this this
this organization called Waterboys, which isreally kind of brain this whole, this
whole idea of military people together withformer NFL people, and at the end
(09:20):
of the day, we're both kindof looking for like what's next and how
do you evolve out of your careerwhen you've been doing something that you love
and you kind of drive off theend of the cliff. And so that
experience for me down to kill Mgaro. We happened to be in the first
class. This was back in liketwenty sixteen, seventeen something like that.
Here we are, yeah, andhere we are now, and you guys
are still going out at full steam. What is your involvement now with that?
(09:43):
Are you still going down there andclimbing every year? You know what?
I haven't since since eighteen, Soit's been a while. It's been
it'll be five years this year sinceI've done it. But I think I'm
gonna, depends on this schedule,I'm gonna try to do it again because
I miss it. I want totry. I want to get back up
there. I've got a couple everyyear, it seems, I've got a
(10:05):
couple of buddies that make it onthe roster, you know, and they're
like, are you coming? Yougotta go? Like, you know,
I need to, though, Idefinitely need to. I miss it.
I got into trail running a bitthis last year, ran my first fifty
k and so kind of got backout there. It's different than obviously,
you know, climbing it. You'renot in quite the elevation. But I
(10:28):
was actually signed up to do thelead bill one hundred this year and I
got I booked a job on thishost in this show that took about a
month to shoot, and we weredown in Panama and I just couldn't swing
it, unfortunately, so I missedout. But I'm because of all that.
It's like it's got me back onthe back on the trails, you
know, and Kilimanjaro is just alot longer trail, a lot steeper at
(10:50):
times, but it's still, youknow, same kind of ballpark. But
yeah, like like you said,you know, finding continued purpose was a
big part of that after the military, Like we talked about what led into
it, you know, and feelinglike I wanted to or we all want
to be a part of something makinga difference in other people's lives and all
that. But when you actually getthe opportunity to do it and you feel
(11:13):
purposeful, and you can also doit while pursuing passions and things that you're
you love to do and challenging yourself, it's just a great marriage. And
so getting that opportunity to meet Chrisfirst of all, Literally the day after
I got cut is when we gotconnected. I got a call from him.
(11:33):
Um, you know, I was. I was in training camp in
the preseason, went to Seahawks afterplaying at Texas and just played in one
preseason game and then the next roundof cuts came along. My number got
called and that was it and Uand it was it was all good.
I was grateful to get that shot. But immediately I'm like, all right,
now, what do I do?Like military's over, football's over,
(11:54):
I've lost my uniforms. What's next? And Chris called me and told me
about water Boys and what they weredoing to bring clean water to East Africa
through uh you know some of theseNFL players that were uh you know,
official water boys for these teams.And he was like, originally that goal
was thirty two wells to represent thethirty two teams. They've passed that long
(12:18):
ago, and now I don't knowwhat the new goal is, but it's
with Chris, they'll just keep onsetting them, which is great. But
he said, what can we doto bring in the veteran community to what
I'm doing here if that's something ofinterest to you? And I said,
man, well, I know welove a good challenge, and you know
we want to be a part ofcontinued service too. What if we get
together some NFL players current and formerand some veterans you know, and we'll
(12:43):
go climb Mount kill Him and drawtogether raise awareness for what's going on,
you know, nineteen thousand, threehundred and forty feet below where we'll be
where there's you know a lack ofclean water and resources and uh. And
he thought that was really cool.And um, that first year, I
went up just with one other veteranwho was an amputee, and we went
(13:05):
we went out there, um andyou know, that was the first time
I'd been there, and you know, got to climb and all that.
And then so that next year youwere in that first that that first big
class. No, I know,you you've already done Kill Him the Jar
before, right, so you hadthat experience as well under your belt.
And uh and I you know,I'd done it once and Chris had done
(13:26):
it once. But most of theother group, I think the rest of
the group was all their first time. But that was a really that was
a really special trip. And we'reyou know, we raised um a lot
of money, you know, Iknow, we were in the six figures
because we dedicated at least a coupleof wells, if not three wells from
that trip. Uh, and thenthey've done it every year since then and
it's been it's been quite a youknow, a really cool journey with that.
(13:48):
UM. But yeah, you touchedon something about um, you know,
uh, you briefly touched on itabout the you know, my time
in the military and then football andchallenges. But also like when I think
(14:09):
of what I'm doing now, Oh, you touched on it when you mentioned
Howie and you said the movie talkingabout the movie up like that's something that
I'm you know, working on nowand passionate about now. Storytelling and you
know, I'll tell you being arounda movie set, a film set,
you know, even in the narrativespace where it's scripted and it's a lot
more you have a lot more somewhatcontrol over the story and when you're shooting
(14:33):
and what you're shooting. It's alittle different than documentary. It's still in
some ways like a military training operation, not a combat operation. Of course,
nobody's shooting at you. But likethings change, whether affects what you're
doing. You have to be flexible. There's all these different departments and people
in charge and every different areas andyou have to be communicating effectively with them,
(14:58):
and as a director, you haveto communicate your vision appropriately and efficiently
to the rest of the crew andthen let them be creative, don't micromanage,
like let them take their piece ofthe pie and make the best thing
they can make. And then you'vegot to deal with you know, a
budget and sudden change, you know, and being flexible but also being authoritative.
(15:22):
It's it's really interesting, but it'ssomething that I've found helps me feel
like I'm climbing a mountain, soto speak, you know, where you
get that rush. I mean,not that being at the summit isn't an
unbelievable feeling, but for me,it's it really is the course of finding
that summit that I remember. It'sthe discovering what that thing is, the
(15:46):
new creative endeavor, and then pursuingit and learning it and failing at it
and like that whole journey. That'sthat's what makes me feel alive, you
know. I mean, I wouldimagine coming up Everest. I don't know,
but some of those moments where thatvoice in your head is telling you
to quit, or your body feelslike I don't know if I can continue
(16:07):
yet something in your spirit perseveres andjust keeps going and somehow you take that
next step and then you take thatnext step like that's that feeling of I
am not letting this defeat me likethat. Those are those are the moments
in life I'm trying to continually relivebecause they make me feel alive. You
know. Yeah, well this pictureright hears me on top of ever first
(16:30):
and that is probably at my worstmoment right here, when this should be
my best moment because of all thosethings. You know, I was nine
ten hours into it and I stillhad a you know, another nine ten
hours to go, and I knewI had some very very very difficult things
I still had to navigate and gogo through. But I think one of
the things that that makes you youknow who you are and why you've achieved,
(16:52):
Like the way you've achieved is becauseyou have the same called the power
of curiosity. To me, yeah, I've been around you. I've spent
time with you so super Bowl lastyear, but you know, really on
that Kilman Gerald trip, I've alsobeen up to your your gym with with
Glacier, which we'll talk about ina minute. But again, it's just
like you're you're you're taking a stepback and you're you're you're trying to see
a path, and you're asking yourself, why does this work? And how
(17:15):
do you do that? And goingthrough all those different things. And I
think when you really dig into thatand start and start going down and peeling
the layers, then these answers startto bubble up. And you know,
I prepared for two years for Everest, and all that preparation still didn't didn't
(17:36):
ligne me for every single thing thathappened up there. But you know,
when I was up there, itwas like, Okay, I figure it
out. Okay, zero agrees infor two months, Like how do you
deal with that? And how doyou get through that? And how do
you stay mentally focused? And allthese different things. And I think you
know, through this different training thatyou've done, plus just who you are
the combination of those two things,it's no surprise to me that you continue
(17:57):
to achieve. Now, after wecame back from Kilmagera, I was I
was living in LA at the timeand now in some valley, Idaho,
and you'd come together with Jay Glazierand he Glaciers got this workout studio and
you'd seen this again, this needof or this void where there's all these
military vets that were coming out ofout of the military with no purpose,
(18:21):
no direction, no structure, andmany of them suicidal and things like that.
And so you guys created this thisplace, this safe place where they
could go up, they could workout in this gym in Hollywood. And
also you invited former athletes. Iknow a lot of them were NFL players
(18:41):
because of Glacier's relationship with being onthe NFL on Fox and with your experience,
I was fortunate to be up therea couple of times and go through
kind of this cross training one hourthing and then afterwards us all sitting down
together in a big circle and I'mnot sure what you call the circle of
true or whatever, but people justfreely. You know, you could go
(19:02):
around the circle and share a storyor not share a story. But it
blew my mind away to listen tosome of these stories like they were just
happy to be there because three daysago they were ready to end it.
And I can only imagine the amountof stories and probably the inspiration for this
new movie MVP that we're going totalk about. Yeah, none of that,
(19:25):
you're exactly right. I mean weended up back when you came that
that initial time, we were stillpretty early on. We hadn't named the
circle, we didn't know what away, but organically it became the huddle,
which makes a ton of sense.Yeah, so you know, that's
what we call it. And man, as you said, yeah, we
know. We train for thirty fortyfive minutes, nothing too hard, just
(19:45):
get a sweat going, something thateverybody can do, but we got to
do it together and enough to kindof build a bit of a bond and
make people feel comfortable in the room. Hey, we all nobody quit here,
so we're all you know, weall, we all got through this
workout today and now we're huddling upand it's an open forum, you know,
(20:06):
peer to peer coaching session if youwant to call it. Kind of
like some of the conversations I'm sureyou had in the locker room at times.
You know, you get you getdone with the day of practice,
and you may have never talked tothis person before, but there are lockers
a few away from yours, andall of a sudden you're just shooting the
breeze about something and realize you gota lot in common and maybe somebody struggling
(20:30):
with something or whatever and you kindof talk through it. I mean,
it's it's probably it's different. Everylocker rooms different. It's different at every
level too. I mean college isvery different than the NFL and all that
stuff. But I noticed in myshort time playing football that a lot of
those conversations were very similar to theones I had around a fire pit on
a rooftop in Iraq. It's like, we're not talking about the battle we
(20:52):
just encountered. We're talking about lifeback home and dreams and you know,
what I want to do in thefuture, and what what I'm frustrated with,
you know, and what I can'tget past or whatever it is.
Because sometimes a lot of the thingsthat shared in that circle and that huddle
has nothing to do with post traumaticstress or you know, has nothing to
do with you know, feeling likeyou were a bust as a as an
(21:18):
athlete and it didn't work out orwhatever. That is so um, it's
really it's been it's really eye openingto kind of hear those stories and see
that. But there's just such amutual respect between athletes and UH and veterans.
Both of them have to sacrifice quitea bit to be elite. Of
course, you know, going towar and playing professional sports are very different
things, would never compare that,But losing that uniform and identity and trying
(21:42):
to find yourself and and you know, honestly find your next summit can be
really hard. You know, fora lot of people to feeling like I've
peeked and it'll never be great again. It's a very common thing. And
those are words that were literally spokenby Tony Gonzalez and one of our huddles,
probably the great tight end of alltime, if not one of them.
(22:03):
Seventeen year Hall of Fame career,and you know he retired and had
a broadcasting career in front of him. He's a good looking dude. You
know, he wants to work andhe wants to be an actor as well.
Kind of the world is his oystersituation. He's only thirty seven.
But what he felt inside was,yeah, maybe I've got all these things
outside, but I still I don'tbelieve that about myself, and I feel
(22:27):
like I've I've peaked, and andthat's that's like a scary feeling, you
know, And for him to sharethat in the huddle and to have these
veterans who many of them, likeyou said, have it, you know,
attempted suicide in the past or justreally struggle with letting go of the
past and kind of moving on.To hear someone like that that, you're
(22:49):
just you think, well, he'sgot it all. I mean, you
know, a beautiful family, plentyof money in the bank account. I
mean, this was you know,he's the he's the one percenter, one
percenter of the NFL um as faras the one he's the one percent of
the one percent exactly, exactly exactly, I mean added everything except a super
(23:11):
Bowl. You know, there's alwayssomething with all these guys, every every
single one of them. It's likeRandy Gatour's thing is he didn't make the
Olympic wrestling team, but he's thesix time heavyweight champion in the world,
you know. But to him,he's like, I'm a failure. You
know, that was my dream andit's like wow. So everybody feels that,
you know, and we're all connectedin that way. They're always We're
always going to have that thing.No matter how accomplished you are, that
(23:32):
you feel like you didn't you couldhave done more, you could have gave
more you could have done better.And I'll tell you a ton of veterans
feel that way. I mean,they'll never remember, um, how many
people they potentially saved, it's theones they lost and what they couldn't have,
what they failed in their mind,failed to do enough of or correctly.
And you know, I zigged whenI should have zagged, And they'll
(23:53):
just hang onto that forever, andit's unfair to themselves. Um. And
it's uh, and it's it's it'schallenging, and it's just something we have
to learn to sort of live withand recognize and not let us not let
it get the best of us,because it's always I feel like some of
those things are just going to alwaysbe there at some level, and that's
(24:15):
okay. But if we're aware ofit, you know, and we're aware
that this is it's not the realityof who I am. It's just something
I feel sometimes, and we canmove past it, you know, and
and probably help it propel us intogreater things, because you know, when
we at least with me, whenI feel like I didn't win, you
(24:36):
know, or I didn't succeed atthe level I wanted to, it just
motivates me to push that much harderinto the next thing and and find another
way to um to succeed or win. You know, yeah, I know
I love that. And you know, going back to Tony Kanzals, you
know this this uh for you peoplelooking at watching this on on YouTube right
(24:56):
now, this is my you can'treally see it, but this is a
picture of me on stage accepting theEmmy for this Best Picture of Searching for
the Summit. And it really hasnothing to do with me climbing the mountains.
Yes, I was on Mount Everestand there's a lot of scenes and
footage, but it's really about mebeing in the rut and finding my way
out, you know, kind ofkind of to your whole point, right
(25:18):
what that was all about. So, you know, so I'm researching this
movie. I knew it was comingout. You know, you're a buddy,
you're a friend. We've climbed together, and I was so happy to
see how you kind of emerge inthese two worlds to create this film,
which is so important. And thenI think, correct me if I'm if
I'm not right or wrong here,but I think Sylvester Stallone is the executive
(25:40):
producer, which I don't even knowexactly what that means. But somehow or
another, he's involved in this wholefilm that you were able to write and
directing everything else and get all theseother actors involved. But how in the
heck did you ever? How doesthat work? I mean, how do
you pull you know, slam ofthis sun? Yeah? Well he so,
stallone, I've been to an MVPsession. So MVP, you know,
(26:03):
as you said, stands for MergingVets and Players. I co founded
it with Jay Glazer back in twentyfifteen and now we've got eight chapters around
the country. So we're about tohave our seventh anniversary. We're in La
Vegas, Chicago, Atlanta, andNew York, Seattle, Dallas, and
Phoenix. Vets and Players dot Orgas the website if anybody wants to check
that out further. But Sly hadcome to Jay's Jim Unbreakable, which you've
(26:26):
been to, and he trained therefor six months or something like that.
He was preparing for something. Andbefore this is before he moved he moved
out to Miami now, but heused to live out here and Jay was
always telling him about MVP. Gotcheck out MVP. You know, this
is charity and Sly I was like, oh, you know, of course,
I'm sure he gets hit up alot from a lot of organizations,
you know. And he was likefinally, he was like, one of
(26:48):
these nights. Yeah, I'll comein. I'll come in to night.
You know, don't don't go tellinga bunch of people because I don't want
to you know, I don't wantto match people showing up just because I'm
there. Well, of course wordgot out and there's like, you know,
normal session, We've got thirty,forty sometimes fifty people. There's like
one hundred people there. It's asmall it's a small space. It's a
(27:08):
small gym. Yeah, yeah,it's suits about I mean from a training
aspect, you got thirty people inthere, you're you're plentyful. Yeah.
And so he's in there, everyone'sworking out and he's not working out with
us, but he's hanging out,you know, kind of watching everybody and
um. And then afterwards we movedto the huddle and you know, to
(27:30):
kick things off, Jay you know, asks if I wanted to say anything,
and he's like, nah, I'lljust you know, I want to
hear you guys. And so hesit there and listen to a lot of
these stories and these people talking andbeing as vulnerable as they were and just
as open as they were. Hewas kind of blown away, like,
wow, this is this is crazy, you know. So he went into
this thing with the with them,I guess the misunderstanding that he was gonna
(27:52):
go there and kind of give aspeech, you know, and instead he's
like hearing this stuff and he's like, oh, I'm not I don't need
to give a speech at all.And eventually one of the vests just said,
you know, slide, I justwant to say, like, thank
you for coming. I mean,you know, when I was a kid,
that's one of the reasons I wantedto be in the military was Rambo.
I know this maybe sounds cheesy,but like that was you. It
(28:15):
was that character is one of myheroes, you know, and Salone says,
let me tell you a quick storyabout Rambo. You know, in
the book First Blood, Rambo dies. He's actually sort of put down almost
like a you know, like adog at the end of this, and
it's a you know, he's aVietnam veteran that struggles with pothematic stress and
coming home and disrespected and just feelslike he can never you know, he's
(28:40):
not going to fit in anymore andkind of goes off the deep end.
And and he was pitched this.This is after the success of Rocky.
He's pitched this character in this movie. And he's like, well, look,
I think it's an important story totell, but there's no hope in
it, you know. He justhe's just killed at the end. And
he's like, if you guys,change it, you're willing to change it
(29:00):
and let let the man live atleast have a glimmer of hope there,
I'll consider it. And so theydid. They change the script so that
Rambo lives at the end, andof course to make four more Rambo,
so for the studio was a goodbusiness decision as well. But he was
like, I wanted to play aGreen Beret so bad, and I wanted
(29:21):
to play this character in this Vietnamveteran story. I thought it was so
important. But I also just thoughtit was important that this person had a
chance. You know, we believedin this person moving forward to them,
there was going to be a futureafterwards. And now I'm sitting here listening
to you guys, and it's likethis, this is this is the A
lot of this is the story thefeelings that that that the character John Rambo
(29:44):
had, you know, and Ihad become friends with his producing partner,
a guy named Brandon after good.I used to work at Peter Berg's production
company where I interned Peter Friday NightLights and Lone Survivor. Yeah he loved
those shows. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, And so I'd gotten no
Braden, and as luck would haveit, Braden and Stallone came together to
create Balboa Productions, and I wasin contact with Braden. I said,
(30:07):
hey, look, Slide's been toMVP before, and just so you know,
I'm working on a script. Iwant to tell the story of how
we started. And he said,we'll send it to me. So he
sent it to me. He sentback a ton of notes and said it
needs a lot of work, butI think there's some promise here. And
and so I worked through it andeventually Stallone just said, hey, like,
(30:30):
you know, put my name onit. Like I got a lot
going on. I won't have itdone a band with here, but if
if my name is gonna help thisthing get made, then take then use
it. And he hasn't asked foranything, you know, it's been amazing
just to see that. But buthe did. I mean, and that's
a lot of the reason that alot of these people read it, some
of the other actors involved and allthat was because it had Stollone's name on
(30:52):
it. And once they read it, they were like, Oh, wow,
this is actually something I I'm passionateabout and can get behind. And
I think it's really important you guyswere telling your own stories because we've got
I mean, every veteran portrayed onscreen is played by a VET. Most
of them are MV team members.All the athletes or many of the athletes,
as you mentioned Tony Gonzalez, Randycoutour straight hand and how he long
(31:14):
have a cameo. Jared Bunch,first round draft picked by the Giants,
played fullback for about four years foran injury I ended his career. He's
in the film. Rich Eisen andJay Glazer are in the film, you
know, playing themselves. So allthat sort of came together and with that
authenticity and we just we made thisthing. We shot it in the middle
(31:34):
of COVID figured it out with verylimited resources budget wise, but a lot
of passion and support from the leagueand from just countless others around the Los
Angeles area. We filmed on locationin the gym and the Veterans Homeless shelter
where a lot of these vets wereliving. It's just it's a very like
(31:56):
real product and something that took mea long time to appreciate. I was
so afraid throughout the whole process thatI was screwing this thing up, doing
our story justice. But the firsttime I watched it in the theater was
at the Super Bowl this year.That week we had a screening and to
see the vets and the athletes,you know, Kenny Maine and and Sean
(32:19):
o'harack walked out of the theater intears, and I was like, all
right, like this is it resonateswith the people that it matters to me,
you know, the mainly it's theit's the members of MVP and the
people that understand our story and kindof where we come from. That's who
I really wanted it to hit with. And unfortunately that you know, we're
out now and anybody can watch it. It's on Amazon Prime and Apple TV,
(32:43):
others streaming video on demand services,and yeah, so I encourage anybody
to watch it, share about it, learn more about MVP through vets and
players dot Org. But really sharingthis movie and getting it out there is
important, you know. It's it'sit tells our stories how it all started.
It's about a homeless marine and anNFL player for sure out of the
(33:04):
league, who meet and realize they'regoing through the same things and kind of
bring this MVP idea into existence.So yeah, now, so again,
let's go back to this film becauseI want to relate it to which you
just went through. I'm not awriter, I'm not a director, I'm
not a producer, I'm not anactor like all the things you are.
I'm not right. I just happenedto meet the fascination of NFL films that
(33:30):
they wanted to do this the storyon me. They came over here really
not knowing other than just there's Mark'sgoing to try to take on Mount Everson
tried to become the first NFL playerto do this, right, That was
really the only notion, and somany other things came out of it.
And the thing that blew me awayafter seeing the final product was that I
(33:51):
had no clue about you know,we'd go up and we'd shoot for hours
on this Ridgeline and I was climbingand I was doing this, and Jim
more I was also involved in someof it, and you know, being
interviewed, and it what it ultimatelygot down to is that the way that
they were able to um to havea vision in mind and what the story
(34:12):
was going to be about, andthen edit it in a way that made
sense and it was compelling. Andthen the music, there were so many
elements. I had no clue thatwhen they were here in January of two
thousand and twenty one, the filmdidn't come out till September of twenty one.
And in between that time they putthis whole masterpiece together, Like what
they were filming at the time couldhave any end result of what ultimately came
(34:37):
out, which was the best picture, you know, it just I had
it just did not connect. Andso it just what I'm trying to say
is that so much of the filmhappened once that the actual footage was in
the can, and then the people, as you know, because you've been
through it, you know on theyou know, the cutting room and the
music and the sound and having achesfor every single scene that is in there.
(35:02):
I mean so much and trying tocome up with this finite time.
In my case, you know,it was twenty nine minutes or something,
you know, just under the thirtyminute o'clock. In your case, you
go on it for a couple ofhours. I think an hour fifty two
or something is your film. Somaking it, I'm sure you like,
if you could have had you away, it could have been four hours,
because there's so many amazing stories totell, right, first first cut was
(35:23):
about two hours and forty eight minutes, and it was yeah, yeah,
so there there's the point, right. So so that so the discipline of
continuing to whittle and whittle and whittleand whittle, and so making sure that
every scene just again has those highstakes which ultimately come together and bring something
which Kenny Maine can walk out ofa theater crying because it's so compelled at
(35:45):
what you've created. Yeah. No, I appreciate that, man, I
mean you get it. You definitelyget it. And it's like it's hard
to make those to make those cutsbecause you've you know, when it's your
story or you feel so connect didto it, you're like, well that's
an important piece of it too,and it is. It's not to say,
it's not, um, but it'sit's a matter of like what is
(36:07):
the most important you know, anddoes does this part of the story serve
the greater story in the best waybecause making sure that, um, just
like the mission in the military,the mission always has to come first.
Making sure that the movie always comesfirst, no matter what you know,
and and that that comes with toughdecisions, and it comes with sometimes it
(36:30):
comes with cutting your niece and nephewout of the movie, which I had
to do, you know what Imean, and some other great actors,
and it wasn't anything to do withtheir performance at all. It just wasn't
you know, it wasn't serving theultimate story final cut that we ended up
with. UM, But yeah,what's important, most important is, yeah,
(36:50):
the movie and the audience and makingsure that you captivate them and keep
them and they're interested in they're they'reconnected to it, and they don't wanna
you know, they don't want tocheck out and at their phone, you
know or whatever that is, Likehow do you keep them fully engaged?
It's really hard and UM, Imean the editing of this, a lot
of it was we just because wejust didn't have the resources and the money.
But it took months and months andmonths because when people were available,
(37:15):
because they weren't working on a biggerproject that was paying them a lot better.
I had to take those two weekshere, three weeks there, get
in the room with them and like, let's just hammer this out for as
much time as we can because Iknow you've got to jump on this other
project next. And but it was, you know, throughout that whole thing,
from the sound you know, thefinal sound mix and everything, the
(37:37):
people, the level of people thatwere working on it because of the story,
and that we're you know, doingit at such a cut rate for
what they normally get. It wasawesome. I mean it was. We
were very lucky to have all that. It's the only way we could have
got it done. I definitely don'twant to make another one at that level,
not that I need, not thatI need tens of millions of dollars,
(37:58):
but like you, when you're dealingwith just hundreds of thousands of dollars
and not many of them, it'stough. I'bvious leave it at that.
It makes it infinitely harder to youknow, just stretch that, to stretch
what you got every day. Sofrom the beginning of filming it to its
final release was a two year toyear process. You know, that's a
(38:20):
long time. So how how doyou finance that? Like, you know,
again there's a lot of people outthere. I think one of the
things you've done really smartly is youwant to be an actor. And so
it seems to me at least likeespecially with how many levels of access you
know, from the Amazon Prime toNetflix to all these other streaming services,
that if you want to be anactor, the best way to do is
(38:43):
to try to can do everything youcan to control that, right, which
is what you did, which isbasically be the actor to the director of
the executive. You know, you'veyou were were in fifteen different hats,
but then you control the project,right, So like in this case,
does a studio back you on thisor do a group of investors back you
on this? Or how does thatwhole thing work? I mean, yeah,
(39:05):
it depends on the project. Imean, this is an independent project.
You know, if it's a studiofilm, it's no longer really independent.
That's sort of the defining characteristic.I think independently financed. Two individuals
specifically and myself kind of put upthe put up the funds, and like
I said, it wasn't a tonso for them it was lower risk.
It was you know, hey,both of these people that jumped in with
(39:28):
me just we're passionate about MVP theorganization or like tell a good story,
tell it right, do the bestthat you can. If I see a
return, great, but I'm notstressed on that, and that packs a
lot of pressure off me and everybody. But then also like to wear all
those hats. Part of it wasyeah, like we definitely wanted to be
(39:49):
able to dictate the narrative, butalso I don't have to pay myself to
produce, to cote, to direct, to act, so we're saving so
much and it just goes back intothe film, you know, and being
able to use that in other places. Because all these other people as well,
like that, all those names welisted before, they all worked for
scale, which is very low,you know, in the hundreds of dollars
(40:14):
to work on this thing. Likethey didn't they didn't ask for more,
they didn't need more. They justwere like, I'm I'm in because of
what it is, and thankfully you'reonly asking for two or three days of
my time. So it's not toocrazy, and there's not a ton going
on right now in October twenty twentywith GOVID and whatnot, So I'm in
let's go and and that's how thatsort of came to fruition. But every
(40:37):
movie is different. I mean it'stough. I get pitched a lot of
bigger ideas, you know at alot of action based stuff that's you know,
military stories, which I think aresuper important to tell accurately. But
for me, like that's a littlethat's a little tougher to get done because
then you're looking at it's an eightdigit movie, you know, not a
(41:00):
not a six digit movie, andthose are just completely different worlds, and
um, to do that right,you need those resources, and um,
it's just it's it is a greaterrisk. I think one day I'd like
to to get to that place,to be able to tell films stories like
that. I mean, one ofmy favorite directors is a veteran himself.
His name is David Ayer. Hemade Fury. I don't know if you
(41:22):
ever saw Fury, but it's ato me, it's a it's a it's
a really good it's a really goodmovie. It's heavy, it's a World
War two film, you know,yeah, Brad Pitt, John Burnthal and
others, and it's great, Um, but you know that takes that's a
huge process to get to that pointand to feel like you're ready to take
(41:43):
on and endeavor such as that.Completely different than this movie where I felt
I think the independent world for memakes sense right now, um, where
it's a little the stories are morecontained. There's something I can absolutely relate
to and I'm kind of living insome ways right now. And I'll tell
you next time I direct something,I definitely don't want to play one of
(42:05):
the leads. That was a greatchallenge to be on both sides of that.
There's just your juggling chainsaws every dayand it just feels a bit overwhelming
at times. But I think itwas necessary for this project at the level
we were at. Um. Butyeah, I'm just I mean, I
mean, this is my new forme, this is my new mission.
Like the storytelling piece is really importantand I'm passionate about it. Yeah.
(42:28):
Well, I mean, look,it's like you don't go from from literal
league to the NFL in one jump, right, You do that iterations and
that's what you're what you're talking aboutright now, and that's been on the
podcast. Um is Tom Arnold?Tom was in your film? What rule
did he have in your piece thatyou did? I haven't seen it.
I actually want to know what youryour your movie tonight now because I know
(42:52):
because I know it was in thetheaters and I live in a small town,
so we don't we didn't have ithere. But now that you just
you know, letting us know thatyou can see it on MVP on Prime
Amazon. Um, I will downloadthat tonight and watch it. But what
what role did Tom have with thefilm? So Tom, I've met Tom
a few years prior, UM andyou know, he's Tom's got a very
(43:15):
interesting story. First of all,you know he's he's from Iowa, a
small town guy himself. But alsohe you know, he lost a nephew
of his m to suicide and hewas a veteran, and so when that
happened in his life, he's alwayskind of had a a you know,
great respect for the military and veterans, and a lot of people do,
(43:37):
but it was a difference. Itwas a much closer connection for him,
and he was just like kind ofstruck by that and then understanding how common
and often that happens. Unfortunately.UM, it's roughly twenty to twenty two
veterans a day across the country losethat battle back home and uh. And
he became very connected to that,and in our story in the MVP film,
(43:59):
UM, that's a big part ofit because this unit that this marine
who was living in the shelter,the unit that he was in his second
Battalion, seventh Marines, on backto back deployments in twenty and seventoousand and
eight, they lost twenty nine guysto combat and since then, since coming
home in O nine, they've lostfifty six now to suicide. And that
battalion is maybe a thousand guys atthe most. It's not that big.
(44:22):
So to put it in that perspective, you know, to think that,
gosh, you know, over fivepercent of our unit has has gone one
out of twenty or more than thatof those people have taken their own life
back home is staggering, you knowwhat I mean. Staggering. And so
(44:45):
he just he was so connected toit because of that story and losing his
nephew and understanding what that was,you know, was like for the family,
how it affected him and his family. He just wanted to be a
part of it, and he's hewas great. He was like he literally
was like, whatever role you wantme to play, I'll help. I
got you. He's like you youknow you can, and so we ended
(45:06):
up um as you'll see, youknow. He uh. He's kind of
a perfect role for him because he'svery funny and it's sort of a bit
of a comedic levity in the inthe middle of the movie. Um and
he's like a fantasy football analystic,you know, at NFL Network and the
lead, the lead actor Moe McCrae, who plays Will Phillips, who's he's
(45:30):
first year out of the league andhe's trying to find his footing and they're
all of a sudden there's this opportunityto to get into broadcasting potentially, and
he's excited about that opportunity, onlyto find out it's in the fantasy football
world, which he has no interestin. You know. He's like,
well, I know, I knowreal football. I want to talk real
football. I don't want to dothis. And so these guys, you
know, collide and it's just anotheranother one of these getting your hopes up
(45:55):
situations and it's just not panning outhow you expect it, and that's that's
the story of a lot of us, you know, as we're transitioning and
trying to find our footing. Yeahno, I love that, all right,
buddy, Listen, Let's just makesure everybody's clear. Where can people
find you? Number one, I'mon a website, Nate Boyer dot com,
but also at Nate Boyer thirty seven, on Twitter and Instagram and MVP
(46:20):
merging Vets and Players. You canfind us at Vets and Players dot org.
If you have veterans or athletes inyour world that you think could utilize
our program or have any ideas onhow you want to help us continue to
grow, that would be great.And then the movie At MVP, the
movie is our social media, butyou can also see the film and you
should see the film on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, pretty much anywhere else
(46:45):
that streaming video on demand. You'reable to watch that. Now, love
that, love that. Proud ofyou too, man. You've come a
long way and it's been fun tosee your journey. So it's really cool
and that I can do to helpyou at any time, you just let
me know. But on that note, thanks, for coming on and sharing
your story and continued success, andnext time you have a film, if
(47:05):
you do something crazy, I willhave you back on the show. So
totally appreciate you, of course,brother, appreciate you to I love you,
man, and I can't wait tosee you again. I'm sure i'll
see you down in Phoenix this year. Right on, right, okay,
all right, everybody there. Heis the one, the only Nate Boyer.
Thank you.
Hey everybody, it's Mark Pattison.I'm back again with another great episode of
Finding Your Summit, all about peopleovercome university in finding their way. Before
I get to today's a rock starguest, I've had them on before.
I just want to draw attention tomy website www dot Mark Pattison NFL dot
com. We've got two hundred andseventy plus episodes of really inspirational people doing
(00:35):
amazing things. I really urge peopleto go over there, check it out,
or check it out wherever you getyour podcasts. I will also urge
people to go into Apple and givesome love. Their ratings and review helps
elevate the popularity of the show.There's so many pods out there, and
people need to hear the people likeI have on today and their story because
we all need to be inspired,including myself. Also, you can you
(00:58):
can find the one full NFL filmSearching for the Summit, which won a
Best Picture Emmy Award last year,of my epic journey going up and down
Mount Everest and all the other dramathat took place with that. But there
was a button that magically takes youstraight to the NFL three sixty film which
is thirty minutes long. It's prettycool. And then finally we continue to
(01:21):
raise money for Emilia as Everest,which goes directly to Higher Ground, which
is a charity here in some valley, New York in LA about empowerment of
other people. We're going to getinto that today with my guest. He
knows a thing or two about that, but anyways, if you want to
make a donation, please go throughthere. One hundred percent of all proceeds
go directly to that organization, andmost of it, ironically goes to military
(01:45):
people who have had some pretty serioustraumatic injuries, not only trauma to the
head and PTSD, but also limbsbeing blown off and trying to recover from
that. So it's very important.Ironic. I want to jump into my
guests now. His name is NateBoy or Nate. How are you doing?
I'm good, Mark. How areyou doing? Brother? I'm doing
(02:07):
good. Last time I saw youwas at the Super Bowl. But the
reason why I said ironically is becauseof course you were a green beer brey
for a number of years, eightyears I think it was in Iraq and
Afghanistan. And we're going to leadup to this movie that you just got
done. It might have been yourfirst one. You've I know, you've
appeared in other other films, butthe first one that you wrote, you
directored, and you're really had alot of control over all this. But
(02:31):
but let's just go back to kindof where you sit today and the really
foundation of what you've become, startingwith probably trying to find yourself in some
way and then ending up with somestructure by being in the military. What
did that do for you? Imean, if you were to sum it
(02:53):
up in a paragraph, what wouldthat look like? Oh? Man,
I mean, you know, themilitary. It's funny, like I think
a lot of people, a lotof people assume, especially parents, you
know, I think think that maybetheir child needs this kind of structure or
(03:14):
direction. A lot of people thatserved before would maybe kind of recommend it
to a lot of people because ofwhat it did for them. I didn't
really have any of that. Like, not that my parents were anti military
or whatever, but they were verymuch like they weren't in the service themselves.
Both my grandfathers were in World WarTwo, but they weren't necessarily ever
(03:38):
pushing me in a certain direction orthought that I needed anything. I think
they were worried about me because inmy late teens early twenties, I didn't
go to college. I didn't reallyknow what I wanted to do. I
didn't really have since the direction.I was kind of just bouncing around odd
job to odd job, having agood time doing it, you know,
worked on a fishing boat, wentto fire ter school for a few months,
(04:00):
and then realized that wasn't for meyet to to kind of, you
know, grow up. I wasn'tquite ready. I mean, I was
eighteen nineteen when these things are happening, and then nine to eleven happened when
I was twenty. And even then, while a lot of people were joining
the military at that time, alot of people my age were, you
know, signing up leaving college,leading jobs. They had you know,
(04:25):
enlisting before their second semester of highschool or whatever. It was um so
that as soon as they graduated,they'd be off. For me, it
was like, I just I don'tknow yet. I see the I see
why, and I had that interest, but it didn't it didn't lead me
to that place quite yet, notuntil I was twenty three years old,
(04:47):
and I ended up doing some reliefwork over in in Africa in the Darfur
region between Chad and Sudan, andthat really changed my life that trip,
that that that opportu tunity to govolunteer, even though it was only for
you know, a couple of months. The perspective I gained and also the
appreciation for what we had here andthe realization that most people don't and will
(05:13):
probably never have that UM made mewant to fight for them, fight for
those that couldn't, that can't fightfor themselves, and sort of find a
sense of purpose and be meaningful andand feel like what I did on a
daily basis made a difference because Ididn't feel that way before. And then
once I went into the army andinto basic training, it's like structure is
(05:38):
from day one, it's all aboutthat, you know, it's all about
like attention to detail, all thelittle things UM matter. And if you
if you don't, if you don'tfold your if you don't if you can't
learn to fold your socks or youryou know, make your bed a certain
way, you're certainly not gonna You'reyou're certainly going to struggle with with when
(06:01):
their bullets are flying around you.Maintaining that that sort of military bearing um
though, the awareness um doing thelittle things to make sure that you're keeping
each other safe. Like, it'sall about those little things, which I
think relates in a lot of waysto preparation for anything that's that's a great
(06:24):
challenge, whether it be playing inthe NFL, summoning everest um, performing
brain surgery, you know, whateverit is. So like, I found
the value of that, of thatstructure and much you know, kind of
later in life and I didn't.I didn't. Of course, you sort
of hear those things before you join, but you don't really understand at what
level, at least for me,until I was sort of thrust into it.
(06:47):
So not only basic training, trainingto be you know, in the
Special Forces of Green Beret, allthat stuff. Um. It certainly was
not something I was prepared for,but I had a bit of an idea
of what I was going to beencountering and it and it helped me and
(07:08):
helped me throughout the rest of mylife. I mean, set a lot
of life left to live. Butbecause of that time, I prioritization and
responsibility and preparation all those things thatI didn't put a lot of stock in
there, Like the lifeblood of howI operate now, you know, yeah,
I do know, and I knowit because my athletic past playing at
(07:29):
the University Washington in a very structuralcoach and in the NFL, which has
led me into the business things thatI've I've been involved in and certainly with
mountain climbing around the world. Ittakes a certain discipline to be able to
take on those things and with actuallydaily discipline to have that commitment to the
detail that, like you said,is very applicable to other things you have
(07:49):
done. And again I don't wantto spend too much time on this because
we did this on one hundred episodesago. I think after we came off
Kilman heare out together. But youknow that and led to the and maybe
this is more a commentary on myside, has led to this, this
really interesting football career you ended uphaving late in your Twiny Hayes at the
University of Texas, he became thestarting long snapper. You played a lot,
(08:13):
lot which then led to this NFLexperience that you've had. And it's
just amazing to me to see howmuch you know that, how much just
you stepping into the fear and youstepping into things you really didn't know and
learning how to do things that youhadn't even done in high school that that
has had this long tail effect foryou and all these things that you have
done. So so then you andI we'll just touch on this for a
(08:37):
second, so you know, againcircling back into kind of this whole community
activation and understanding there's a there's ahigher cause why we're here on this earth.
And then you come together with Chrislong m my former teammate. How
we long who I know is inyour movie. We'll talk about that in
(08:58):
a minute, but how we onChris, You had a nice, great
phenomenal career really in the NFL.I want a couple of Super Bowls happen
to pick the right teams. Butyou two came together to create this this
this organization called Waterboys, which isreally kind of brain this whole, this
whole idea of military people together withformer NFL people, and at the end
(09:20):
of the day, we're both kindof looking for like what's next and how
do you evolve out of your careerwhen you've been doing something that you love
and you kind of drive off theend of the cliff. And so that
experience for me down to kill Mgaro. We happened to be in the first
class. This was back in liketwenty sixteen, seventeen something like that.
Here we are, yeah, andhere we are now, and you guys
are still going out at full steam. What is your involvement now with that?
(09:43):
Are you still going down there andclimbing every year? You know what?
I haven't since since eighteen, Soit's been a while. It's been
it'll be five years this year sinceI've done it. But I think I'm
gonna, depends on this schedule,I'm gonna try to do it again because
I miss it. I want totry. I want to get back up
there. I've got a couple everyyear, it seems, I've got a
(10:05):
couple of buddies that make it onthe roster, you know, and they're
like, are you coming? Yougotta go? Like, you know,
I need to, though, Idefinitely need to. I miss it.
I got into trail running a bitthis last year, ran my first fifty
k and so kind of got backout there. It's different than obviously,
you know, climbing it. You'renot in quite the elevation. But I
(10:28):
was actually signed up to do thelead bill one hundred this year and I
got I booked a job on thishost in this show that took about a
month to shoot, and we weredown in Panama and I just couldn't swing
it, unfortunately, so I missedout. But I'm because of all that.
It's like it's got me back onthe back on the trails, you
know, and Kilimanjaro is just alot longer trail, a lot steeper at
(10:50):
times, but it's still, youknow, same kind of ballpark. But
yeah, like like you said,you know, finding continued purpose was a
big part of that after the military, Like we talked about what led into
it, you know, and feelinglike I wanted to or we all want
to be a part of something makinga difference in other people's lives and all
that. But when you actually getthe opportunity to do it and you feel
(11:13):
purposeful, and you can also doit while pursuing passions and things that you're
you love to do and challenging yourself, it's just a great marriage. And
so getting that opportunity to meet Chrisfirst of all, Literally the day after
I got cut is when we gotconnected. I got a call from him.
(11:33):
Um, you know, I was. I was in training camp in
the preseason, went to Seahawks afterplaying at Texas and just played in one
preseason game and then the next roundof cuts came along. My number got
called and that was it and Uand it was it was all good.
I was grateful to get that shot. But immediately I'm like, all right,
now, what do I do?Like military's over, football's over,
(11:54):
I've lost my uniforms. What's next? And Chris called me and told me
about water Boys and what they weredoing to bring clean water to East Africa
through uh you know some of theseNFL players that were uh you know,
official water boys for these teams.And he was like, originally that goal
was thirty two wells to represent thethirty two teams. They've passed that long
(12:18):
ago, and now I don't knowwhat the new goal is, but it's
with Chris, they'll just keep onsetting them, which is great. But
he said, what can we doto bring in the veteran community to what
I'm doing here if that's something ofinterest to you? And I said,
man, well, I know welove a good challenge, and you know
we want to be a part ofcontinued service too. What if we get
together some NFL players current and formerand some veterans you know, and we'll
(12:43):
go climb Mount kill Him and drawtogether raise awareness for what's going on,
you know, nineteen thousand, threehundred and forty feet below where we'll be
where there's you know a lack ofclean water and resources and uh. And
he thought that was really cool.And um, that first year, I
went up just with one other veteranwho was an amputee, and we went
(13:05):
we went out there, um andyou know, that was the first time
I'd been there, and you know, got to climb and all that.
And then so that next year youwere in that first that that first big
class. No, I know,you you've already done Kill Him the Jar
before, right, so you hadthat experience as well under your belt.
And uh and I you know,I'd done it once and Chris had done
(13:26):
it once. But most of theother group, I think the rest of
the group was all their first time. But that was a really that was
a really special trip. And we'reyou know, we raised um a lot
of money, you know, Iknow, we were in the six figures
because we dedicated at least a coupleof wells, if not three wells from
that trip. Uh, and thenthey've done it every year since then and
it's been it's been quite a youknow, a really cool journey with that.
(13:48):
UM. But yeah, you touchedon something about um, you know,
uh, you briefly touched on itabout the you know, my time
in the military and then football andchallenges. But also like when I think
(14:09):
of what I'm doing now, Oh, you touched on it when you mentioned
Howie and you said the movie talkingabout the movie up like that's something that
I'm you know, working on nowand passionate about now. Storytelling and you
know, I'll tell you being arounda movie set, a film set,
you know, even in the narrativespace where it's scripted and it's a lot
more you have a lot more somewhatcontrol over the story and when you're shooting
(14:33):
and what you're shooting. It's alittle different than documentary. It's still in
some ways like a military training operation, not a combat operation. Of course,
nobody's shooting at you. But likethings change, whether affects what you're
doing. You have to be flexible. There's all these different departments and people
in charge and every different areas andyou have to be communicating effectively with them,
(14:58):
and as a director, you haveto communicate your vision appropriately and efficiently
to the rest of the crew andthen let them be creative, don't micromanage,
like let them take their piece ofthe pie and make the best thing
they can make. And then you'vegot to deal with you know, a
budget and sudden change, you know, and being flexible but also being authoritative.
(15:22):
It's it's really interesting, but it'ssomething that I've found helps me feel
like I'm climbing a mountain, soto speak, you know, where you
get that rush. I mean,not that being at the summit isn't an
unbelievable feeling, but for me,it's it really is the course of finding
that summit that I remember. It'sthe discovering what that thing is, the
(15:46):
new creative endeavor, and then pursuingit and learning it and failing at it
and like that whole journey. That'sthat's what makes me feel alive, you
know. I mean, I wouldimagine coming up Everest. I don't know,
but some of those moments where thatvoice in your head is telling you
to quit, or your body feelslike I don't know if I can continue
(16:07):
yet something in your spirit perseveres andjust keeps going and somehow you take that
next step and then you take thatnext step like that's that feeling of I
am not letting this defeat me likethat. Those are those are the moments
in life I'm trying to continually relivebecause they make me feel alive. You
know. Yeah, well this pictureright hears me on top of ever first
(16:30):
and that is probably at my worstmoment right here, when this should be
my best moment because of all thosethings. You know, I was nine
ten hours into it and I stillhad a you know, another nine ten
hours to go, and I knewI had some very very very difficult things
I still had to navigate and gogo through. But I think one of
the things that that makes you youknow who you are and why you've achieved,
(16:52):
Like the way you've achieved is becauseyou have the same called the power
of curiosity. To me, yeah, I've been around you. I've spent
time with you so super Bowl lastyear, but you know, really on
that Kilman Gerald trip, I've alsobeen up to your your gym with with
Glacier, which we'll talk about ina minute. But again, it's just
like you're you're you're taking a stepback and you're you're you're trying to see
a path, and you're asking yourself, why does this work? And how
(17:15):
do you do that? And goingthrough all those different things. And I
think when you really dig into thatand start and start going down and peeling
the layers, then these answers startto bubble up. And you know,
I prepared for two years for Everest, and all that preparation still didn't didn't
(17:36):
ligne me for every single thing thathappened up there. But you know,
when I was up there, itwas like, Okay, I figure it
out. Okay, zero agrees infor two months, Like how do you
deal with that? And how doyou get through that? And how do
you stay mentally focused? And allthese different things. And I think you
know, through this different training thatyou've done, plus just who you are
the combination of those two things,it's no surprise to me that you continue
(17:57):
to achieve. Now, after wecame back from Kilmagera, I was I
was living in LA at the timeand now in some valley, Idaho,
and you'd come together with Jay Glazierand he Glaciers got this workout studio and
you'd seen this again, this needof or this void where there's all these
military vets that were coming out ofout of the military with no purpose,
(18:21):
no direction, no structure, andmany of them suicidal and things like that.
And so you guys created this thisplace, this safe place where they
could go up, they could workout in this gym in Hollywood. And
also you invited former athletes. Iknow a lot of them were NFL players
(18:41):
because of Glacier's relationship with being onthe NFL on Fox and with your experience,
I was fortunate to be up therea couple of times and go through
kind of this cross training one hourthing and then afterwards us all sitting down
together in a big circle and I'mnot sure what you call the circle of
true or whatever, but people justfreely. You know, you could go
(19:02):
around the circle and share a storyor not share a story. But it
blew my mind away to listen tosome of these stories like they were just
happy to be there because three daysago they were ready to end it.
And I can only imagine the amountof stories and probably the inspiration for this
new movie MVP that we're going totalk about. Yeah, none of that,
(19:25):
you're exactly right. I mean weended up back when you came that
that initial time, we were stillpretty early on. We hadn't named the
circle, we didn't know what away, but organically it became the huddle,
which makes a ton of sense.Yeah, so you know, that's
what we call it. And man, as you said, yeah, we
know. We train for thirty fortyfive minutes, nothing too hard, just
(19:45):
get a sweat going, something thateverybody can do, but we got to
do it together and enough to kindof build a bit of a bond and
make people feel comfortable in the room. Hey, we all nobody quit here,
so we're all you know, weall, we all got through this
workout today and now we're huddling upand it's an open forum, you know,
(20:06):
peer to peer coaching session if youwant to call it. Kind of
like some of the conversations I'm sureyou had in the locker room at times.
You know, you get you getdone with the day of practice,
and you may have never talked tothis person before, but there are lockers
a few away from yours, andall of a sudden you're just shooting the
breeze about something and realize you gota lot in common and maybe somebody struggling
(20:30):
with something or whatever and you kindof talk through it. I mean,
it's it's probably it's different. Everylocker rooms different. It's different at every
level too. I mean college isvery different than the NFL and all that
stuff. But I noticed in myshort time playing football that a lot of
those conversations were very similar to theones I had around a fire pit on
a rooftop in Iraq. It's like, we're not talking about the battle we
(20:52):
just encountered. We're talking about lifeback home and dreams and you know,
what I want to do in thefuture, and what what I'm frustrated with,
you know, and what I can'tget past or whatever it is.
Because sometimes a lot of the thingsthat shared in that circle and that huddle
has nothing to do with post traumaticstress or you know, has nothing to
do with you know, feeling likeyou were a bust as a as an
(21:18):
athlete and it didn't work out orwhatever. That is so um, it's
really it's been it's really eye openingto kind of hear those stories and see
that. But there's just such amutual respect between athletes and UH and veterans.
Both of them have to sacrifice quitea bit to be elite. Of
course, you know, going towar and playing professional sports are very different
things, would never compare that,But losing that uniform and identity and trying
(21:42):
to find yourself and and you know, honestly find your next summit can be
really hard. You know, fora lot of people to feeling like I've
peeked and it'll never be great again. It's a very common thing. And
those are words that were literally spokenby Tony Gonzalez and one of our huddles,
probably the great tight end of alltime, if not one of them.
(22:03):
Seventeen year Hall of Fame career,and you know he retired and had
a broadcasting career in front of him. He's a good looking dude. You
know, he wants to work andhe wants to be an actor as well.
Kind of the world is his oystersituation. He's only thirty seven.
But what he felt inside was,yeah, maybe I've got all these things
outside, but I still I don'tbelieve that about myself, and I feel
(22:27):
like I've I've peaked, and andthat's that's like a scary feeling, you
know, And for him to sharethat in the huddle and to have these
veterans who many of them, likeyou said, have it, you know,
attempted suicide in the past or justreally struggle with letting go of the
past and kind of moving on.To hear someone like that that, you're
(22:49):
just you think, well, he'sgot it all. I mean, you
know, a beautiful family, plentyof money in the bank account. I
mean, this was you know,he's the he's the one percenter, one
percenter of the NFL um as faras the one he's the one percent of
the one percent exactly, exactly exactly, I mean added everything except a super
(23:11):
Bowl. You know, there's alwayssomething with all these guys, every every
single one of them. It's likeRandy Gatour's thing is he didn't make the
Olympic wrestling team, but he's thesix time heavyweight champion in the world,
you know. But to him,he's like, I'm a failure. You
know, that was my dream andit's like wow. So everybody feels that,
you know, and we're all connectedin that way. They're always We're
always going to have that thing.No matter how accomplished you are, that
(23:32):
you feel like you didn't you couldhave done more, you could have gave
more you could have done better.And I'll tell you a ton of veterans
feel that way. I mean,they'll never remember, um, how many
people they potentially saved, it's theones they lost and what they couldn't have,
what they failed in their mind,failed to do enough of or correctly.
And you know, I zigged whenI should have zagged, And they'll
(23:53):
just hang onto that forever, andit's unfair to themselves. Um. And
it's uh, and it's it's it'schallenging, and it's just something we have
to learn to sort of live withand recognize and not let us not let
it get the best of us,because it's always I feel like some of
those things are just going to alwaysbe there at some level, and that's
(24:15):
okay. But if we're aware ofit, you know, and we're aware
that this is it's not the realityof who I am. It's just something
I feel sometimes, and we canmove past it, you know, and
and probably help it propel us intogreater things, because you know, when
we at least with me, whenI feel like I didn't win, you
(24:36):
know, or I didn't succeed atthe level I wanted to, it just
motivates me to push that much harderinto the next thing and and find another
way to um to succeed or win. You know, yeah, I know
I love that. And you know, going back to Tony Kanzals, you
know this this uh for you peoplelooking at watching this on on YouTube right
(24:56):
now, this is my you can'treally see it, but this is a
picture of me on stage accepting theEmmy for this Best Picture of Searching for
the Summit. And it really hasnothing to do with me climbing the mountains.
Yes, I was on Mount Everestand there's a lot of scenes and
footage, but it's really about mebeing in the rut and finding my way
out, you know, kind ofkind of to your whole point, right
(25:18):
what that was all about. So, you know, so I'm researching this
movie. I knew it was comingout. You know, you're a buddy,
you're a friend. We've climbed together, and I was so happy to
see how you kind of emerge inthese two worlds to create this film,
which is so important. And thenI think, correct me if I'm if
I'm not right or wrong here,but I think Sylvester Stallone is the executive
(25:40):
producer, which I don't even knowexactly what that means. But somehow or
another, he's involved in this wholefilm that you were able to write and
directing everything else and get all theseother actors involved. But how in the
heck did you ever? How doesthat work? I mean, how do
you pull you know, slam ofthis sun? Yeah? Well he so,
stallone, I've been to an MVPsession. So MVP, you know,
(26:03):
as you said, stands for MergingVets and Players. I co founded
it with Jay Glazer back in twentyfifteen and now we've got eight chapters around
the country. So we're about tohave our seventh anniversary. We're in La
Vegas, Chicago, Atlanta, andNew York, Seattle, Dallas, and
Phoenix. Vets and Players dot Orgas the website if anybody wants to check
that out further. But Sly hadcome to Jay's Jim Unbreakable, which you've
(26:26):
been to, and he trained therefor six months or something like that.
He was preparing for something. Andbefore this is before he moved he moved
out to Miami now, but heused to live out here and Jay was
always telling him about MVP. Gotcheck out MVP. You know, this
is charity and Sly I was like, oh, you know, of course,
I'm sure he gets hit up alot from a lot of organizations,
you know. And he was likefinally, he was like, one of
(26:48):
these nights. Yeah, I'll comein. I'll come in to night.
You know, don't don't go tellinga bunch of people because I don't want
to you know, I don't wantto match people showing up just because I'm
there. Well, of course wordgot out and there's like, you know,
normal session, We've got thirty,forty sometimes fifty people. There's like
one hundred people there. It's asmall it's a small space. It's a
(27:08):
small gym. Yeah, yeah,it's suits about I mean from a training
aspect, you got thirty people inthere, you're you're plentyful. Yeah.
And so he's in there, everyone'sworking out and he's not working out with
us, but he's hanging out,you know, kind of watching everybody and
um. And then afterwards we movedto the huddle and you know, to
(27:30):
kick things off, Jay you know, asks if I wanted to say anything,
and he's like, nah, I'lljust you know, I want to
hear you guys. And so hesit there and listen to a lot of
these stories and these people talking andbeing as vulnerable as they were and just
as open as they were. Hewas kind of blown away, like,
wow, this is this is crazy, you know. So he went into
this thing with the with them,I guess the misunderstanding that he was gonna
(27:52):
go there and kind of give aspeech, you know, and instead he's
like hearing this stuff and he's like, oh, I'm not I don't need
to give a speech at all.And eventually one of the vests just said,
you know, slide, I justwant to say, like, thank
you for coming. I mean,you know, when I was a kid,
that's one of the reasons I wantedto be in the military was Rambo.
I know this maybe sounds cheesy,but like that was you. It
(28:15):
was that character is one of myheroes, you know, and Salone says,
let me tell you a quick storyabout Rambo. You know, in
the book First Blood, Rambo dies. He's actually sort of put down almost
like a you know, like adog at the end of this, and
it's a you know, he's aVietnam veteran that struggles with pothematic stress and
coming home and disrespected and just feelslike he can never you know, he's
(28:40):
not going to fit in anymore andkind of goes off the deep end.
And and he was pitched this.This is after the success of Rocky.
He's pitched this character in this movie. And he's like, well, look,
I think it's an important story totell, but there's no hope in
it, you know. He justhe's just killed at the end. And
he's like, if you guys,change it, you're willing to change it
(29:00):
and let let the man live atleast have a glimmer of hope there,
I'll consider it. And so theydid. They change the script so that
Rambo lives at the end, andof course to make four more Rambo,
so for the studio was a goodbusiness decision as well. But he was
like, I wanted to play aGreen Beret so bad, and I wanted
(29:21):
to play this character in this Vietnamveteran story. I thought it was so
important. But I also just thoughtit was important that this person had a
chance. You know, we believedin this person moving forward to them,
there was going to be a futureafterwards. And now I'm sitting here listening
to you guys, and it's likethis, this is this is the A
lot of this is the story thefeelings that that that the character John Rambo
(29:44):
had, you know, and Ihad become friends with his producing partner,
a guy named Brandon after good.I used to work at Peter Berg's production
company where I interned Peter Friday NightLights and Lone Survivor. Yeah he loved
those shows. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, And so I'd gotten no
Braden, and as luck would haveit, Braden and Stallone came together to
create Balboa Productions, and I wasin contact with Braden. I said,
(30:07):
hey, look, Slide's been toMVP before, and just so you know,
I'm working on a script. Iwant to tell the story of how
we started. And he said,we'll send it to me. So he
sent it to me. He sentback a ton of notes and said it
needs a lot of work, butI think there's some promise here. And
and so I worked through it andeventually Stallone just said, hey, like,
(30:30):
you know, put my name onit. Like I got a lot
going on. I won't have itdone a band with here, but if
if my name is gonna help thisthing get made, then take then use
it. And he hasn't asked foranything, you know, it's been amazing
just to see that. But buthe did. I mean, and that's
a lot of the reason that alot of these people read it, some
of the other actors involved and allthat was because it had Stollone's name on
(30:52):
it. And once they read it, they were like, Oh, wow,
this is actually something I I'm passionateabout and can get behind. And
I think it's really important you guyswere telling your own stories because we've got
I mean, every veteran portrayed onscreen is played by a VET. Most
of them are MV team members.All the athletes or many of the athletes,
as you mentioned Tony Gonzalez, Randycoutour straight hand and how he long
(31:14):
have a cameo. Jared Bunch,first round draft picked by the Giants,
played fullback for about four years foran injury I ended his career. He's
in the film. Rich Eisen andJay Glazer are in the film, you
know, playing themselves. So allthat sort of came together and with that
authenticity and we just we made thisthing. We shot it in the middle
(31:34):
of COVID figured it out with verylimited resources budget wise, but a lot
of passion and support from the leagueand from just countless others around the Los
Angeles area. We filmed on locationin the gym and the Veterans Homeless shelter
where a lot of these vets wereliving. It's just it's a very like
(31:56):
real product and something that took mea long time to appreciate. I was
so afraid throughout the whole process thatI was screwing this thing up, doing
our story justice. But the firsttime I watched it in the theater was
at the Super Bowl this year.That week we had a screening and to
see the vets and the athletes,you know, Kenny Maine and and Sean
(32:19):
o'harack walked out of the theater intears, and I was like, all
right, like this is it resonateswith the people that it matters to me,
you know, the mainly it's theit's the members of MVP and the
people that understand our story and kindof where we come from. That's who
I really wanted it to hit with. And unfortunately that you know, we're
out now and anybody can watch it. It's on Amazon Prime and Apple TV,
(32:43):
others streaming video on demand services,and yeah, so I encourage anybody
to watch it, share about it, learn more about MVP through vets and
players dot Org. But really sharingthis movie and getting it out there is
important, you know. It's it'sit tells our stories how it all started.
It's about a homeless marine and anNFL player for sure out of the
(33:04):
league, who meet and realize they'regoing through the same things and kind of
bring this MVP idea into existence.So yeah, now, so again,
let's go back to this film becauseI want to relate it to which you
just went through. I'm not awriter, I'm not a director, I'm
not a producer, I'm not anactor like all the things you are.
I'm not right. I just happenedto meet the fascination of NFL films that
(33:30):
they wanted to do this the storyon me. They came over here really
not knowing other than just there's Mark'sgoing to try to take on Mount Everson
tried to become the first NFL playerto do this, right, That was
really the only notion, and somany other things came out of it.
And the thing that blew me awayafter seeing the final product was that I
(33:51):
had no clue about you know,we'd go up and we'd shoot for hours
on this Ridgeline and I was climbingand I was doing this, and Jim
more I was also involved in someof it, and you know, being
interviewed, and it what it ultimatelygot down to is that the way that
they were able to um to havea vision in mind and what the story
(34:12):
was going to be about, andthen edit it in a way that made
sense and it was compelling. Andthen the music, there were so many
elements. I had no clue thatwhen they were here in January of two
thousand and twenty one, the filmdidn't come out till September of twenty one.
And in between that time they putthis whole masterpiece together, Like what
they were filming at the time couldhave any end result of what ultimately came
(34:37):
out, which was the best picture, you know, it just I had
it just did not connect. Andso it just what I'm trying to say
is that so much of the filmhappened once that the actual footage was in
the can, and then the people, as you know, because you've been
through it, you know on theyou know, the cutting room and the
music and the sound and having achesfor every single scene that is in there.
(35:02):
I mean so much and trying tocome up with this finite time.
In my case, you know,it was twenty nine minutes or something,
you know, just under the thirtyminute o'clock. In your case, you
go on it for a couple ofhours. I think an hour fifty two
or something is your film. Somaking it, I'm sure you like,
if you could have had you away, it could have been four hours,
because there's so many amazing stories totell, right, first first cut was
(35:23):
about two hours and forty eight minutes, and it was yeah, yeah,
so there there's the point, right. So so that so the discipline of
continuing to whittle and whittle and whittleand whittle, and so making sure that
every scene just again has those highstakes which ultimately come together and bring something
which Kenny Maine can walk out ofa theater crying because it's so compelled at
(35:45):
what you've created. Yeah. No, I appreciate that, man, I
mean you get it. You definitelyget it. And it's like it's hard
to make those to make those cutsbecause you've you know, when it's your
story or you feel so connect didto it, you're like, well that's
an important piece of it too,and it is. It's not to say,
it's not, um, but it'sit's a matter of like what is
(36:07):
the most important you know, anddoes does this part of the story serve
the greater story in the best waybecause making sure that, um, just
like the mission in the military,the mission always has to come first.
Making sure that the movie always comesfirst, no matter what you know,
and and that that comes with toughdecisions, and it comes with sometimes it
(36:30):
comes with cutting your niece and nephewout of the movie, which I had
to do, you know what Imean, and some other great actors,
and it wasn't anything to do withtheir performance at all. It just wasn't
you know, it wasn't serving theultimate story final cut that we ended up
with. UM, But yeah,what's important, most important is, yeah,
(36:50):
the movie and the audience and makingsure that you captivate them and keep
them and they're interested in they're they'reconnected to it, and they don't wanna
you know, they don't want tocheck out and at their phone, you
know or whatever that is, Likehow do you keep them fully engaged?
It's really hard and UM, Imean the editing of this, a lot
of it was we just because wejust didn't have the resources and the money.
But it took months and months andmonths because when people were available,
(37:15):
because they weren't working on a biggerproject that was paying them a lot better.
I had to take those two weekshere, three weeks there, get
in the room with them and like, let's just hammer this out for as
much time as we can because Iknow you've got to jump on this other
project next. And but it was, you know, throughout that whole thing,
from the sound you know, thefinal sound mix and everything, the
(37:37):
people, the level of people thatwere working on it because of the story,
and that we're you know, doingit at such a cut rate for
what they normally get. It wasawesome. I mean it was. We
were very lucky to have all that. It's the only way we could have
got it done. I definitely don'twant to make another one at that level,
not that I need, not thatI need tens of millions of dollars,
(37:58):
but like you, when you're dealingwith just hundreds of thousands of dollars
and not many of them, it'stough. I'bvious leave it at that.
It makes it infinitely harder to youknow, just stretch that, to stretch
what you got every day. Sofrom the beginning of filming it to its
final release was a two year toyear process. You know, that's a
(38:20):
long time. So how how doyou finance that? Like, you know,
again there's a lot of people outthere. I think one of the
things you've done really smartly is youwant to be an actor. And so
it seems to me at least likeespecially with how many levels of access you
know, from the Amazon Prime toNetflix to all these other streaming services,
that if you want to be anactor, the best way to do is
(38:43):
to try to can do everything youcan to control that, right, which
is what you did, which isbasically be the actor to the director of
the executive. You know, you'veyou were were in fifteen different hats,
but then you control the project,right, So like in this case,
does a studio back you on thisor do a group of investors back you
on this? Or how does thatwhole thing work? I mean, yeah,
(39:05):
it depends on the project. Imean, this is an independent project.
You know, if it's a studiofilm, it's no longer really independent.
That's sort of the defining characteristic.I think independently financed. Two individuals
specifically and myself kind of put upthe put up the funds, and like
I said, it wasn't a tonso for them it was lower risk.
It was you know, hey,both of these people that jumped in with
(39:28):
me just we're passionate about MVP theorganization or like tell a good story,
tell it right, do the bestthat you can. If I see a
return, great, but I'm notstressed on that, and that packs a
lot of pressure off me and everybody. But then also like to wear all
those hats. Part of it wasyeah, like we definitely wanted to be
(39:49):
able to dictate the narrative, butalso I don't have to pay myself to
produce, to cote, to direct, to act, so we're saving so
much and it just goes back intothe film, you know, and being
able to use that in other places. Because all these other people as well,
like that, all those names welisted before, they all worked for
scale, which is very low,you know, in the hundreds of dollars
(40:14):
to work on this thing. Likethey didn't they didn't ask for more,
they didn't need more. They justwere like, I'm I'm in because of
what it is, and thankfully you'reonly asking for two or three days of
my time. So it's not toocrazy, and there's not a ton going
on right now in October twenty twentywith GOVID and whatnot, So I'm in
let's go and and that's how thatsort of came to fruition. But every
(40:37):
movie is different. I mean it'stough. I get pitched a lot of
bigger ideas, you know at alot of action based stuff that's you know,
military stories, which I think aresuper important to tell accurately. But
for me, like that's a littlethat's a little tougher to get done because
then you're looking at it's an eightdigit movie, you know, not a
(41:00):
not a six digit movie, andthose are just completely different worlds, and
um, to do that right,you need those resources, and um,
it's just it's it is a greaterrisk. I think one day I'd like
to to get to that place,to be able to tell films stories like
that. I mean, one ofmy favorite directors is a veteran himself.
His name is David Ayer. Hemade Fury. I don't know if you
(41:22):
ever saw Fury, but it's ato me, it's a it's a it's
a really good it's a really goodmovie. It's heavy, it's a World
War two film, you know,yeah, Brad Pitt, John Burnthal and
others, and it's great, Um, but you know that takes that's a
huge process to get to that pointand to feel like you're ready to take
(41:43):
on and endeavor such as that.Completely different than this movie where I felt
I think the independent world for memakes sense right now, um, where
it's a little the stories are morecontained. There's something I can absolutely relate
to and I'm kind of living insome ways right now. And I'll tell
you next time I direct something,I definitely don't want to play one of
(42:05):
the leads. That was a greatchallenge to be on both sides of that.
There's just your juggling chainsaws every dayand it just feels a bit overwhelming
at times. But I think itwas necessary for this project at the level
we were at. Um. Butyeah, I'm just I mean, I
mean, this is my new forme, this is my new mission.
Like the storytelling piece is really importantand I'm passionate about it. Yeah.
(42:28):
Well, I mean, look,it's like you don't go from from literal
league to the NFL in one jump, right, You do that iterations and
that's what you're what you're talking aboutright now, and that's been on the
podcast. Um is Tom Arnold?Tom was in your film? What rule
did he have in your piece thatyou did? I haven't seen it.
I actually want to know what youryour your movie tonight now because I know
(42:52):
because I know it was in thetheaters and I live in a small town,
so we don't we didn't have ithere. But now that you just
you know, letting us know thatyou can see it on MVP on Prime
Amazon. Um, I will downloadthat tonight and watch it. But what
what role did Tom have with thefilm? So Tom, I've met Tom
a few years prior, UM andyou know, he's Tom's got a very
(43:15):
interesting story. First of all,you know he's he's from Iowa, a
small town guy himself. But alsohe you know, he lost a nephew
of his m to suicide and hewas a veteran, and so when that
happened in his life, he's alwayskind of had a a you know,
great respect for the military and veterans, and a lot of people do,
(43:37):
but it was a difference. Itwas a much closer connection for him,
and he was just like kind ofstruck by that and then understanding how common
and often that happens. Unfortunately.UM, it's roughly twenty to twenty two
veterans a day across the country losethat battle back home and uh. And
he became very connected to that,and in our story in the MVP film,
(43:59):
UM, that's a big part ofit because this unit that this marine
who was living in the shelter,the unit that he was in his second
Battalion, seventh Marines, on backto back deployments in twenty and seventoousand and
eight, they lost twenty nine guysto combat and since then, since coming
home in O nine, they've lostfifty six now to suicide. And that
battalion is maybe a thousand guys atthe most. It's not that big.
(44:22):
So to put it in that perspective, you know, to think that,
gosh, you know, over fivepercent of our unit has has gone one
out of twenty or more than thatof those people have taken their own life
back home is staggering, you knowwhat I mean. Staggering. And so
(44:45):
he just he was so connected toit because of that story and losing his
nephew and understanding what that was,you know, was like for the family,
how it affected him and his family. He just wanted to be a
part of it, and he's hewas great. He was like he literally
was like, whatever role you wantme to play, I'll help. I
got you. He's like you youknow you can, and so we ended
(45:06):
up um as you'll see, youknow. He uh. He's kind of
a perfect role for him because he'svery funny and it's sort of a bit
of a comedic levity in the inthe middle of the movie. Um and
he's like a fantasy football analystic,you know, at NFL Network and the
lead, the lead actor Moe McCrae, who plays Will Phillips, who's he's
(45:30):
first year out of the league andhe's trying to find his footing and they're
all of a sudden there's this opportunityto to get into broadcasting potentially, and
he's excited about that opportunity, onlyto find out it's in the fantasy football
world, which he has no interestin. You know. He's like,
well, I know, I knowreal football. I want to talk real
football. I don't want to dothis. And so these guys, you
know, collide and it's just anotheranother one of these getting your hopes up
(45:55):
situations and it's just not panning outhow you expect it, and that's that's
the story of a lot of us, you know, as we're transitioning and
trying to find our footing. Yeahno, I love that, all right,
buddy, Listen, Let's just makesure everybody's clear. Where can people
find you? Number one, I'mon a website, Nate Boyer dot com,
but also at Nate Boyer thirty seven, on Twitter and Instagram and MVP
(46:20):
merging Vets and Players. You canfind us at Vets and Players dot org.
If you have veterans or athletes inyour world that you think could utilize
our program or have any ideas onhow you want to help us continue to
grow, that would be great.And then the movie At MVP, the
movie is our social media, butyou can also see the film and you
should see the film on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, pretty much anywhere else
(46:45):
that streaming video on demand. You'reable to watch that. Now, love
that, love that. Proud ofyou too, man. You've come a
long way and it's been fun tosee your journey. So it's really cool
and that I can do to helpyou at any time, you just let
me know. But on that note, thanks, for coming on and sharing
your story and continued success, andnext time you have a film, if
(47:05):
you do something crazy, I willhave you back on the show. So
totally appreciate you, of course,brother, appreciate you to I love you,
man, and I can't wait tosee you again. I'm sure i'll
see you down in Phoenix this year. Right on, right, okay,
all right, everybody there. Heis the one, the only Nate Boyer.
Thank you.
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