Randall Wallace

29:54So we walk in and we sit down at the four seasons and we're sitting there. It's Mel, it's his partner. It's the chairman of the studio. It's Becky and it's me and Mel. And he's read the script. He's read the script. And he breaks the ice by saying, so William Wallace, Randall Wallace, are you guys related? That was the opening. And I go, well, it's sort of like saying, and you know, something causes cancer. If you can't prove it, you know? And I go, I can't prove I am, but nobody can prove I'm not. And he kind of laughed, Rick, in like two minutes, I'm like a tent revivalist, and I'm leaning across the table, and I'm pounding on it with my fist.

30:44And I go, listen, here's how it is, bottom line. Every movie has an underlying message. Whether it wants to or not, it has a message. And the message of most movies is the guy with the biggest biceps and the cutest dimples and the greenest money and the gluest eyes, he gets the girl. That's what most movies say. This movie says, if you're faithful to your heart, even if they cut it out of your chest, you prevail. That's the movie I want to make. That's the movie I want my sons to see. You want to make that movie? You need to say yes. You don't want to make that movie you need to say no. And everybody at the table kind of said back like, but Mel, being forward, and it's like, this dudes in.

31:34And nobody says anything else. It's like, well, I guess we better get back to the office and everybody's like that. And they all get more standing outside in the parking lot. And nobody's looking at me and nobody's talking to me. and I get my car comes and I'm driving away to my cell phone rings and if I just, what the hell did you say? And that's the start. Well, somebody had to talk and he goes, no, no, the chairman of the studio, Alan Ladd, just called me and he said, I want a double Randy Wallace's deal. And I want to make the next movie that he writes for us. He directs. That's incredible.

32:11He said, I don't know. Just from that first meeting. From that meeting. So the two scripts that I did for them, that's the, were Braveheart and Man in the Iron Mask. And I did them both for scale. It's like minimum. But the next script I wrote, Pearl Harbor, et cetera, I could for an original script sale. So you know how it's weird. Once you're getting paid, it's not like specifically tied to the thing. So Mel, I knew he was, but he wouldn't say yes. And it went on and on a month after a month, and he didn't say yes. So I said, okay, I'm going to go to Scotland. What do you think that was about him not saying yes?

32:53He wanted to direct. Had he ever directed before? He had directed one thing, and that was man without a face, which was a tiny little movie. But he really wanted to direct this. But he didn't want to say that. So he was on the fence like he's not saying no, but he's not saying yes because he wanted to get to the, he wanted to get to the place where he felt like he could make the argument to direct it. And you know, the studio was wanting a big budget movie, but a big budget director. You know, can we get really, it's God, can we get something like that? So nothing's happening and I decided, okay, if Mel doesn't do it, instead of getting $80 million, I might get $80 ,000, but I'm not going to not do this movie.

33:39Even if the battle scenes have to be just recounted over a campfire, I'm going to make this movie. So I go to Scotland and I find the guys who are battle reenactors on Highlander. They had had three broken noses after they yelled cut. I saw a lot of the other guys and I called them, you know, that British dial tone and the guy's name who is the leader of the clan Wallace's, Se -O -R -A -S Wallace. So I was unfamiliar with the names I called and said and somebody goes, Bluel, and I said, And I could, may I speak with C. O. Russ Wallace? And they go, ooh, and I go, theorist Wallace? Shut us. You'd be looking for shut us.

34:32Oh, yeah, shut us. Hey, any comes along. And I go, shut us. My name's Randall Wallace. And I've written a story about William Wallace. And I have a movie studio that I didn't mention now. Movie studio that wants to do it. And I'd like to come to Scotland and talk with you. I thought the line had gone dead and go, hello, hello. And he goes, I cannot speak. The house then, and up on the back of me, full -kin neck and so I go, then I go, he goes, what would you like? And I said, well, I want to come and tour the highlands and take pictures. He goes, oh, I, I said, I like to see you fight. He goes, oh, I, and I said, well, okay.

35:15I guess I'll see you in two weeks. And he goes, oh, Randall. And I go, yeah, he says, if anybody needs to die for this to happen, it's no problem.

35:27And Rick, wow. He wasn't kidding. Yeah, you went into the movie. He went, I went into the movie. Yeah. So I go to Scotland with my life. We tour the Highlands. We film these guys fighting. I went and bought a Nikon camera with a bunch of lenses to learn photography, which I knew nothing about really. And I made a slide show and I came back and I showed it to Alan Lad and Becky and Laddie goes, I want you to show this to Mel. So I went and went to Mel's office. We sat down and I shut in the pictures and laid them all out on the thing and I told him about these crazy battle reenactors and long paths and he looked down at the pictures and he didn't look up at me just looked down at the pictures and he went, I want to direct this.

36:14What would you think of that. And I went, oh my, oh man, man, be right there, whatever it takes, full sport. And then he calls the studio and says, I want to direct him. So. As then was the studio open to that right away or it took time? They were open to that, but Mel wanted to direct and not star in, because he really wanted to establish himself as a director. I see. So he was saying, I'll direct it, but I want And they were saying, you can direct it, but you must also start. And they worked that out, finally, in that course. You know, I don't think it could have possibly worked out better.

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38:31What do you remember about the shoot? Were you there for the majority of the shoot? I was there for some and there was a real time when I felt I felt like my father felt on my sister's wedding day. They were taking pictures and stuff and my sister there with her new husband and my father said sort of under his breath, sort of to me and sort of not. He said she's got another shoulder to cry on now. And I thought it was one of the most revealing things of father's love and how you have to let your children go and all of that. And I felt like, man, people would come in and ask a question. And I would do what?

39:16And then I... Not your job anymore. Not my job, yeah. Just got to do it. And we were having dinner in London just melding me. And this was really funny, too, for me, Rick. Because Mel was the biggest star on Earth at that point. And I was a totally unknown screenwriter. You know, it's my first movie being made. And it was really funny. because in England people would come up to you at a table and go, oh, excuse me, Mr. Gibbs, and I'm so tably, so I put my niece, just terribly fancy as you, and could you possibly give me an autograph and they would do that. In Scotland, a guy would come up with his wife and go, hey, man, kiss the wife.

39:57You know, and the woman would grab him, like, and you know, like, it was so it's really different. And we'd just gotten back from Scotland and we're talking, and Mel's telling me about, we're trying to cast a certain role. He says, I've found exactly the right guy to play. It's the key role. I don't want to say which one, because I don't say the tractor. But he said, I've found a perfect guy. He has no idea who he is. This guy's a terrible human being. He would ask, oh, why would you want him in the cast? And Mel said, look, Randy. And I think it melts super smart. And I think he could sense what I was feeling about everything.

40:41And he said, the truth is writers write, directors direct, actors act from their essence as a human being. And I want to cast people who are in their essence, the character I want them to play. And he said, this script is you. It is just bold and it's hard as right out there. It is you. You gave your all to it. I'm going to give my all to it in the same way. From the time that he agreed to do it until the shoot, did you have a lot of discussion with him? Did it evolve much? Or was it basically the script that he read? That's what got shot. It's really funny, Rick. It went through a journey. I had done a lot of TV, but TV is really different from a feature.

41:29And it was so wonderful to have this experience. We sit down and the first thing he asked me in our first sort of story discussion was, tell me everything he wrote and took out. That's interesting. Well, I had a great sort of thing. And we went through a couple of things where he was asking if it was possible for me to combine a couple of scenes. There were, for example, the scenes in which his wife appears to him in dreams were really evocative to me. And I'd put two of them, two dream sequences, actually three dream sequences before the final thing when he sees her as he's being executed, which to me was one of the best moments and when I wrote that I wept.

42:20I didn't see that coming. Yeah, and the writer you didn't see as a writer. I did not see it coming. Yeah, it's like I got to the end and I thought The axe is dropping toward his throat. I can't show the axe hit his throat So what do we show the audience at this point? I thought well What would he look at the last moment of his life? Oh? He knows his friends would be there So I wrote in the last moment of his life William Morris turns his eyes to Hamish and and Stephen, and between them, she is. I hadn't seen it coming out of the ball. I said it by desk, it I'd balled. And I got to jump ahead for a minute.

43:04A few years back, I was in Austin, Texas, doing a charity screening of Braveheart, and I hadn't seen it screened in a long time. And at the end of it, I stood up on stage, walked up to do a Q &A. And the first person who stood up 19 year old girl, woman. She stands up and she says, Mr. Wallace, I don't have a question. I just want to tell you something. My fiancé died six months ago and before he died he told me to watch Braveheart, so I would understand the way he loved me. So I'm like, okay, it probably took me five minutes before I could talk again. And just that sense of, I knew that for me it was, it was all of that.

43:53And I believed that it was that for me all too, but you don't know. You don't know, you know, as you go through the thing, and there are some ideas that feel, you know, out of place, and there's some that feel like they're extending it. So there's a process, I think. I think it would be fair to say for Mel, if I think of the times when I've had a script that's come to me and maybe I'm rewriting, but that I'm directing, is you got to take it all apart and put it back together again. And the fact that you've taken it all apart doesn't mean it's a different thing when you put it back together. But in the end, it's probably more verbatim than anything I've ever done, including the things I've directed myself.

44:37Do you think that by taking things apart, you get to understand them better? I don't know because there's a way of understanding is not the knowledge of every detail. Like when you're directing or when you're writing, like what's the story about? So every decision is in service to the bigger goal. That's what I think. Yes. Now, having said that, the paradox is, you find one twist in something that illuminates all these other things. Like, when I'm starting to write a story, I'm just looking for any place where I find fire. I'm just writing a scene until a character says something I didn't, I never said before.

45:27Yeah. Surprised as me with what they do. And all of I said, like, how is it that this character that I'm writing just surprised me and said something I didn't see or Muran appears at William Wallace's death? Where did that come from? You say inherent in all these other things? Yes and no. I didn't see it coming. Yeah. You think I would have seen it. If anyone would have seen it. If anyone would have seen it, yeah. You mentioned writing in a restaurant earlier. Is that a common practice? Yeah. Tell me about it. So there are many different seasons in a day of writing. I like to get up early and get pages done.

46:14Like when I'm doing that, and I've kind of started the day out that way. And it's a very isolated way of working. I like to go to a restaurant and sit with hard copy. Usually in the morning I'm working with a keyboard, but I like to have the pages in front of me and either make notes free form and I'll write fragments. It's in that context just having fragments is good. a few lines of dialogue here, there, something else happens. It's kind of unspooling in my head and I'm just writing down what is popping into my head. And - I think it has to do with there being other people in the space or what is it about it that's different than writing at home?

47:10I don't feel so lonely. Well, a teacher, my son who's the dyslexic one, really lit up when he found the right teachers and they would tell him, you got to take breaks. It's like you're part of the dyslexia as your mind is going so fast. It's like somebody who stutters, they're trying to get somebody out, it's locking up at the bottleneck. So be sure you get up and walk around and so at a restaurant that process happens automatically. And when somebody comes up and says, well some more iced tea, how you doing? and see people, I don't like it when it's, when people are coming up pitching me story ideas and things like that.

47:52Then I start looking for other things. Have you ever written anything based on someone else pitching you? Actually, I just this morning sold a project that happened because my youngest son was playing baseball, coach pitch baseball. So it was a little beyond T ball, but very young, maybe seven years old or something. And I was kind of dissatisfied with the whole program they were in and I heard this, these kids laughing as they were playing. And I looked down at their coach, was this big, strong guy throwing the ball, throwing the kids were just cracking them. Just they were doing great and they were laughing and having this.

48:32And I walked up to him and said, dude, I introduced myself as I'm Randy. I want you to be the coach of my son next year. And then I got a call from him, like a week later, so can we have coffee? And I thought that he wanted to talk about me being the assistant coach or something. And he had an idea about this football day and played for the San Francisco 49ers and Bill Walsh. And when he first started to tell me, I thought, oh, no, I just thought I was going to have a friend and you know, have a buddy and baseball coach and stuff like got and he was pitching me a movie idea. And I just got up and I went, dang, that is a really good idea.

49:19And they ended up writing it and we just sold it. That's great. How is writing a novel different than writing a script? It's fascinating for me, but a novel is consumed within the mind of the reader. And in a certain way that makes it a more intimate bang -bang. Any other art form I really know. And you only have the words to convey the story. Whereas with a screenplay, I actually find the screenplay as a more natural process for me. It's like when I started Braveheart, David Lean said, And a movie is really like three or four movie moments and all the rest is stringing them together. Well, you know, that's kind of true and kind of not.

50:14But I knew I wanted to have a scene on the battlefield when the Scots are outnumbered and they're all about to run and William Wallace comes in and says something. Yeah. And I know what it was he was going to say. But that structure... Do you remember writing what he was going to say? Oh yeah. Tell me about that. Well, I write toward an emotion. There's analysis, certainly. If you're used to the structure of songs and you go, well, I've got the verse and I've got the chorus and well, I need to repeat, you know, the verse with different lyrics and chorus will be the same and now we need to meddle in.

50:50You've got that kind of structure in your head and I knew there would be a situation of, we don't know who this guy is, why are we going to listen to you and that they're about to mutiny and what would make me stay. You know, what do I most want to know? And I was informed really by two specific moments. One was just that I'd never really seen in anything else, which was like all the rest you can run. I will not run. I will stay here. Where did that idea come from? That's a really cool idea. Honestly Rick, I don't know if it's the Jesus story struck me as being true. Even if you don't understand who I am or what I'm doing, even if I sometimes don't understand who I am or what I'm doing.

51:53This is what I'm going to do. That to me went, that's true. And there are things that I've had plenty of experience in my life when I get this isn't me and I'm going to walk away. A job, a relationship, whatever it is, like it's painful, it's hard, but you go. But the other things to go, this is where I will stand. It's commitment. It's commitment. It's commitment. And I've thought, well, I was fed that with my mother's milk, but also if there are things that I was fed from birth that I looked at and go, that's not for me or that's not who I am and others would this is who I am. So I was stirred up by the thing, the stories of people who have drawn a line somewhere in the sand and said, this is the Hill of Fighton.

52:53And I wanted William Wallace to get to there. I had seen this St. Christmas Day speech each of, in Shakespeare, when he sort of says men generations from now will think themselves beggars because they didn't get to be here on this day, how glorious this is. There was another thing in CS Lewis when the lion that he writes about in lion, the witch in the wardrobe, and the chronicles of Narnia's stories. He's hemmed up in a cave with a bear and a unicorn of the only ones left of all the people that have followed him and they're the last three survivors and this massive army of telmarines, they're called, and the story are there to kill them, but it's a cave, because it's tight, like they're mop -a -lite.

53:40They can't get out of them, and the lion, the bear, and the unicorn are just killing, you know, droves. So they send in a messenger, and they say, we don't want the bear and the unicorn. We just want the lion. Now, we'll let you guys live. We'll put chains on the bear, and he'll dance in the circus, and we'll cut the horn off the unicorn, and he'll pull a cart for the rest of his life, but you get to live, but you gotta give us the lion. And the lion looks at his friends and says, what are you gonna do? And they say, I'm all the desu, we gotta chose him, this is the one. Fuck you. That's great.

54:15That's like, I wanna be like, they may take our lives, they'll never take our freedom. And I mean, and that's where, like, say, every man dies, not every man really lives, came from too, because I thought, Well, while right in and put yourself in the hands of people that have already betrayed you. Yeah. And why wouldn't it just beg for mercy and live a little while longer?

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56:16Our writing and directing different jobs. The big thing is that writing is the most solitary, intimate thing you can do. And directing is all about getting other people all to move in the same way. And directing is profoundly connecting with other artists who are themselves vulnerable and afraid at times, whether they are actors, composers, said directors. So everybody on the set has an artistic spirit, and I want to both be artistically living in the right direction, but also directing the entire experience. My cinematographer, Dean Simmler, he was director of photography for dances with wolves, and he's an Aussie.

57:09And I never met an Aussie I didn't like. I mean, I never met one that I didn't like. And Dean was like really artistic and really gritty. And he said that George Martin taught him that there's a circle of grace around the camera. And you want to preserve that at all cost. when you're there in that space, that's the crucible. And I feel that the director more than anyone else has to set the tone for that. It's fun, but it's like, this is sacred space. And of course, that doesn't mean that it's not dancing and joy. I've heard that Quentin Tarantino loves to play music loudly as they're setting up shots, because he loves music so much and he wants to...

57:58And I love that. I've never been on one of his sets, but I love that, and I love doing that with versions of that with my group. But that to me is the essential difference is that you're creating everything that you can see alone onto the page. And when you are directing, you've got to get everybody art pulling together. And when you're writing, do you picture it? I'm saying it. You're seeing it. Well, I'm in the scene. You're the words? Mm -hmm. Yeah. I'm in the scene myself. Are you playing a character in the scene? Every character. Gabriel Bern was on a talk show right before Man in the Iron Mask and I think it was, you know, it was J.

58:48Leno. It said, who wanted you to choose this movie? And Gabe said, well, I love the script. and I think it's because Randall saw himself as every character including the queen. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Just a real Irishman's wit, right? But he was right. It's like you've got to stand in the position of every character. Would you say in some way everything you write is biographical? Yes. But I think you're also discovering... I think whatever rings, and you like that beautiful hummingbird guitar, when I was writing a national, some of the old national hands had this belief that a guitar had certain songs in it, and when you'd gotten them out, you needed to give it to someone else.

59:41They might find some songs in it where you weren't going to. Yeah, and my thought about that was it has a certain Poetry and it and when you hear you hear an open e -cord on that guitar that would sound different from some other guitar Yes, and that triggers for sure you go to a different place for sure And I I think that like you hear different overtones and different harmonics from any instrument Yes, and that can inspire different ways to play with it. Yeah, the smell of it. Yeah whether the strings are a little bit corroded, are there new and shiny, both of them have the different magic to it.

1:00:23Place has an effect as well. Absolutely. I got to work at Abbey Road, and you walk in Abbey Road, and you know, the Beatles recorded there, so it changes your feeling. Yes. It gets very serious when you're there, because you're getting to be in this place. Rick, the last three days of filming, we were soldiers. My father came out for the filming. When we were on our way back from Scotland, when I'd seen the William Wallace story, stopped off to visit my parents and my father took me on a drive and said, this writing thing isn't working out for you. And you've got to son of the way and you need to like, man up and get mature and do something to feed your family.

1:01:09Having said that, nobody was prouder of me than my dad. But he came out for the last three days of family night. They were the happiest days of his life. He was 78 years old. He was retired as a salesman. We went around and met everybody on the set. And he went back to Virginia and he had a heart attack. And he'd get open heart surgery and he got pneumonia. And I got the phone call to turn off the machines. And my dad had at least made the decision doable because he had said, you know, don't ever keep me alive. Artificial means. But when the doctor said he's not going to get better this way. And we make that call and I draw straight to the airport and get on a plane and land in Atlanta and change planes.

1:01:57And I'm in the air when the pilot comes on and says there's been an incident as a World Trade Center and all traffic has been ordered. It's 9 -11. Wow. So I didn't make it to my father's bedside before I got out. So we finally get the rest of the family out when they lift the travel bands and we have a funeral when I get back to LA and we're doing the, I go back to work right away because that's what he would want me to do. So we're doing the sound effects of the movie and the background voices, just the general chatter. And this Vietnamese guy who had played an enemy soldier was doing Vietnamese voices in this thing.

1:02:39This kind of sweetening we call it and he comes up to me on a break. And this is my first day back after my father's funeral. And he says, in this broken English, he says, Mr. Randall, I'm so sorry about your father. And I say, well, thank you. Let's get back to work. Because I don't want to get emotional. And he goes, I'm so sorry. And he goes, let's just get back to where he goes. No, listen to me. And what? And he says, last day on the set, your father came up and talked to me. And your father said to me, where's your father? And I said, well, my father died in Vietnam. And your father said to me, then I'll be your father.

1:03:18Yeah. So I, you know, go home. Now, I generally, when I tell the story, I say that I tell the guy, well, if you think and you're in line for an inheritance. You got nothing. But of course, I didn't say that. I just say that to get over the emotion, but a few days later, my editor... This is why you could never talk to anybody on the set. Oh, and... That's right. That's right. That's right. It's so funny. It's exactly what you didn't want. I mean, it's a beautiful story and you will have it forever. But there is work to do. Yes. And I was not going to get much done after that. Oh, no, it's disaster.

1:04:02So my editor says to me a few days later, we need a Requiem Hem for the end of the movie. And my composer, Nick Glynnie Smith, had written this beautiful score. So we took a little piece of it, and I picked up a legal pad, and in five minutes, wrote three verses, and never changed a word. And we recorded that at Abbey Road. We recorded this at... What's it called? of the Lord. Let's listen to it. Yeah.

1:06:27트 Lord Dreams In DaseATث F T ث F Beautiful. So George Harrison died the night before we recorded that. So when we walked into the studio, then to Abbey Road, the whole way was covered in flowers and candles. Wow. So for me, it's a hymn to my dad, but everyone else. We had just the music first, and I'm all choked up. I'm thinking it's just me, but Nick had invited this German composer, friend. And when that final swell, this guy stood up, and I heard him whisper, my God. But maybe it's not just me. So we had London session singers and then went to West Point and recorded the West Point. And like half a dozen of the people that sang on that died in combat in Iraq.

1:07:48Like the West Point Glee Club is not for you to get out of. They carried Ronald Reagan's body from the National Cathedral singing that song. That was the... Do you know how that came to be? I don't. I own the copyright. So I got a call saying Nancy Reagan would like your permission to use mansions of the Lord for the car. Absolutely. And I was away at a speaking engagement in Chicago. And somebody said to Reagan, Fjell's on now. And I ran to a TV. And they had a handle. and like Beethoven and Mark and you. And yeah, yeah. I called Nick Lennyshire, that's a Nick. And he said, in Nick's English, and he said, well, you know, boy, it's something of an all of it.

1:08:41All the others are dead. You know, like, can't, but we're not, you know. And so it was an experience for me of, you never know what will happen in all of the times of getting up at 4 .30 in the morning and just writing, just grinding through and grinding it was that discipline. I did spend a time in Nashville where I quit my job, saved my money, I slept on the floor, I did nothing all day long except writing, studying music, theory, practicing guitar, practicing singing, practicing piano, going back and forth all away. And I just went crazy. I absolutely went nuts. I was so depressed at the end of So like Jordan Peterson says, you find out what's too much.

1:09:28You find out that you need other people. You need to get up and walk around. You need to get out. How important is music in movies? I think it's the most important single element. Really? I do. I do. In fact, I think you could tell a whole story with just images and music. Now, of course, Disney, I think, tried that in Fantasia a bit, like without a given narrative. And it was more about the beauty of the images, rather than the emotional story. When I was a kid, my dad was always looking for a deal. And he bought a stereo. And he bought a, with it, a collection, like the great works of music.

1:10:15And the 1812 Olvich was there. And I would turn that thing on. I mean, I'm talking, I was eight years old or something. Just full blast and just standing there and listening to it and move my arms and like I was directing it. But you can feel the battle and the rise and fall and the surge of all that. And you turn the music off in a movie and it is absolutely dead, not nearly the same. How did you decide to make a Vietnam movie? How did you come to it? When Braveheart happened, it was kind of like getting shot out of the cannon. And this friend of mine had told me, it was trying to help me get started in my career.

1:10:51It was a TV guy, but he said, Randy, look, I know you're frustrated and you look at other people and you go, I think I'm writing better scripts than I'm reading from other people. And he said, it's kind of like those ball machines. If you go to a batting cage and a ball's in that rack and it just moves down just a little bit each time. But then it hits those spinning wheels and now you're going 90 miles an hour. And he said, I think that's going to be that way for you. Well, I'm sitting at home and I get a phone call from an executive at Warner Brothers who says, I nearly got fired over your movie.

1:11:27I know why, I think you know what I mean. Well, because Mel, he has an office at our studio and we're supposed to be feeding him material and getting him to do his movies at our studio. And Brave Art wasn't on our radar screen. And it wasn't their fault. They had never seen it or heard of it, just had gone through Becky's company, which is MGM at the time, and then it went to Paramount. I'm sitting there, and I get this phone call, and they say, Kevin Koster has now read Braveheart and says, he wishes you would send it to him, and he wants to talk to you. And can you fly over to Hawaii? He was shooting Waterworld.

1:12:11And I said, boy, I wish my father were here to hear this. I would love to fly to Hawaii to help Kevin, but I've got to fly to London to help Mel. I'm like, man, I got me. I guess I'm in the movie business now. And they said, that's fine, that's fine. When you get back, we'll fly you to Hawaii. This is before Braveheart even came out. It came out, that's right. It was in production at that point. So I'm going to fly to Hawaii. I go to a bookstore to get some books to read on the plane. And there was a cover, a cover, we were soldiers once and young. And the title was so poetic and beautiful. That grabbed me.

1:12:55And it was a young lieutenant with a fixed bayonet, which in Vietnam, which was really rare. I have a fixed bayonet. And when you got an M -60. It seems like an ancient device. Yes. Yeah. That combination of like up close and personal, as we would say, where the metal meets the meat. Wow. Like, man, I got to read this. So I pick up the book. I have it in my bag on the plane. I start reading it. The preface says, Hollywood has gotten the story of the Vietnam veteran wrong every damn time, wetting the knives of twisted politics on the bones of our dead brothers. Wow. That's a book for you. I get off the plane.

1:13:37I go to a pay phone and I call my agent. and I said, somebody has got to own the movie rights to this. You tell them, I'll kill a relative to write this story. And it goes, I'll get back to you. Today's later he calls and says, they won't sell the movie rights. They're afraid that if they sell them, that they'll give them to somebody that will home their twisted politics on the bond with it, they will not sell them. So I said, find a number. So I call the guy. I didn't get general more. I got Joe Galloway, the journalist. And I said, look, you've never heard of me. I've written a story called Braveheart.

1:14:14I'm going to send you the script. You read that, and if you like it, call me. If you don't, no harm, no foul. In fact, two days later, they call me. Let's talk. And again, do you believe in heroes? I said, did you read? I said, and so I said, look, I have the juice now, right now, the heat to call a studio and say, buy this for me and we'll make it. But if we do that, they will be in control. No matter what they say, they'll own it. If you let me buy it with my own money, I will pay you less than they would pay you up front. But I'll make you a deal that in success you'll make more money than you ever would have made with them.

1:15:00And the control, they can trust you, they can't trust them. Exactly. Yeah. I said, And if you don't like what I do, you'll know who to come shoot. Yeah, yeah. And they went and deal. Yeah. And then from that day on, they were just right in my corner. So when Braveheart came out, how was it received? Funny thing. Braveheart did in a day when a movie might open it, early or $40 million, it opened to like eight or maybe 12. So it didn't explode. And mainly because of its running time. How was the press reaction to it? The initial reaction was they lumped it as an action movie. They treated it like it was Leith weapon 7 or something.

1:15:50Which it's not. And it was reviewed in time or newsweek, one of them had a review. they lumped it in with like die hard too, under the heading it's summer, let the Mayhem begin. But if then the audience reaction that started to cause, then the reviewers were going, no, you need to take a look at this movie, it has substance. But it's initial thing. Well, it's all just hacking and stuff like that. And how long do it take to really get going? So they released it and it was out for about three weeks and the studio pulled the release. They pulled it off the market. Why is that? Because they felt that it wasn't getting the traction that it ought to have.

1:16:36They knew from the audience reactions and their own reactions that people were sitting outside the theaters discussing it and women were gathered and like I want a man like that But it wasn't building in audience. They pulled it off and what happened? And they came out again with it. They thought, okay, we're at the wrong time. It's not a summer movie. It's a winter movie. It's a more thoughtful. So they came out again right around Thanksgiving. So how many months between the three weeks are then coming back out? Well from the end of May to a Thanksgiving. So I never heard of that happening before.

1:17:13Is that a common practice? I know, not common. And they brought it out again in the winter and it... So they re -released the movie? Re -released it the second time and it did okay again. You know, one of the problems was, say you've got a thousand theaters. Yeah. And you've got a two hour movie then you can have four showings or even five a day. But with a three hour movie, then you're really getting two a day. I see. So we're only getting half the return from each... I see. the same amount of time. Yeah, same number of days, only half as many screenings, because the movie's twice as long. Exactly.

1:17:52I understand. Exactly. So it's tricky on the box office because it looks like you're doing half as good for the same number of people going to see the movie. That's right. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah, I understand. And the word of mouth was just phenomenal. Yeah. But they weren't, it wasn't reflecting in the number of screens on the box office that we're getting. So they came out with a second time in the winter of 95 and then when it got all the nominations for awards, they released it again the third time. So the total... I've never heard of anything like this before. True story. Yeah, that's wild.

1:18:31The domestic box Max's office was for Braveheart. Yeah. Was around 50 or 60. It was not. The international was massive. Like 300 or something. Wow. So how did it go from mediocre theatrical success to being such a culturally significant movie and how did that happen? My take on it is, and of course, on bias. But yeah, is that it was the the depth of its penetration into people watching it Wasn't like I like this movie It wasn't even like I love this movie. It was like this I feel this feel this man. Yeah and How didn't know feel about it all He had given so much I once met a woman that I think it was Clint Eastwood's first wife.

1:19:31They had long since divorced, but I asked her about Clint's process and things like that. And she said, when he's directed and acted, that for the first month or so when he comes home, he can barely speak. He's just so depleted. And Mel had just, he had given all of that. But I think he felt the wave of reaction happening. People were calling, like Ridley Scott, you know, people like that that you, you know, you look up to and you're going, I mean, this is a great, I think he was starting to feel that. But we all were thinking the box office would be way bigger than we were seeing so far. So it took a while to get going.

1:20:19And they had one best picture. Oh yeah, yeah. One best picture. That's amazing. Yeah, amazing. Amazing story. And then the DVD, how they were massive. Yeah. Do you write for a particular audience? Yeah, actually I do. So I had a knuckle -laughten. They called him Uncle Toad. But he was a big, strong handsome, intense guy. I, a lot of people were afraid of him, but he had it just enormously soft heart. And I remember when I was in school, and the first week I was at college, and I was getting to go to college when my parents had always dreamed of having an education, but hadn't been able to have one.

1:21:08So their dream was to save their money so my sister and I could go to college. And the first week I'm there, this guy in orientation said, your education is going to separate you from all the people back home. They won't have the sophistication, they won't have the... And I remember thinking, what kind of education is that? Maybe they don't use bigger words than they need to use. Maybe they don't make references to German philosophical theology, but that doesn't mean they don't know more. They didn't mean they're not. And I'm going to write for them. It's like for everybody. Yeah, that's right.

1:21:47It's for everybody. Yeah. How would you describe the part of you that's unchanging that's always been there since childhood? There's a way in which I feel I'm exactly the same person. I look out at the world and think I look to the world the way I've always been. Like when I look in a mirror and go, what are you? You're older than me. My mother was an extraordinarily beautiful woman and one of my cousins told me that when my father first took her to a Wallace family reunion and she was maybe 19, he said, I saw your mother and I said, that's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. And it was really funny because my mother was really uncomfortable with being attractive.

1:22:40There'd been a family scandal where all the shame had been brought on the family by her grandmother had her father out of wedlock. And she was shunned from the moment of her pregnancy reveals she never went into public again. So now my mother comes along and she's just this extraordinary beauty and just wants to hide it in any way she can, well, suppress it. You're not supposed to be magnetic and attractive. Certainly not erotic. Those things are out of the question. That was in the water in which I swam. And I was never even aware of it, how tyrannical my upbringing was. But even in that context, I was still me.

1:23:28The artist's part of, this is who I am, I'm not like anybody else. I'm not going to have other people decide who I am for me. When I met Steve Cannell, he became my first mentor in writing. He said, you don't let them grade your paper. Yeah. Yeah. Are you always writing? Would you say? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I'm never not writing. If I always have multiple pins because they're like ammo, I got friends in Mississippi that carry, always carry a couple of weapons and several clips of ammo. And I go, you know, you know, it ain't not like a lot of birds. Do you write longhand? Is that how you write?

1:24:15Sometimes. I've got the pins so I can, I write on napkins. That's the greatest when it happens when you're out in the world. Yeah. So I got to get this down. I got to get this. And then with my phone, I use the voice memos. When you get something, would it be a line, or will it be a story idea? What would be some of the things you might know down? It's generally a situation, a scene, and that scene implies a whole story. And once I start with a scene, thinking about that, you know, like one of those sci -fi movies for the plants that eat the house. I'll say, I can't hear it just comes up and goes in that direction.

1:24:58I should say everything you've written started with a scene. Was there a concept before a scene? There's a concept, but the concept for me is emotional. So when I was a kid growing up in church, we really sang. It was huge. Music was a bigger part than the sermons were. And I remember my childhood was both the just grittiest tent revival and real kind of high church, not like Episcopal, you know, Horye -Tority high church, not to dump on Episcopalius. But we were informal, but we had stained glass windows in the church and on the organ and when we would be singing Bach and Beethoven and Handel and the organ would be as loud as it could go and the base which is roaring and you could feel it in your chest.

1:25:53And everybody in the church is standing up singing joyful, joyful, we adore thee, which is Beethoven's melody. Man, and I would go, this is the feeling I want in this movie, for example. I'm always trying to get to that kind of ecstatic. Exactly the word ecstasy. You want to be singing well, but your voice is blended with so many others. it's not your voice, it's not about you. That was union with God to me. And that's the feeling that I'm looking for in a movie when I've had moments when I was praying. And I realized in the prayer that I had not written the words that the prayer that was in me was the deepest part of myself expressing itself, but it became a very simple question, but not like asking for something.

1:26:54Like what do you want me to do as a father? And air came into me in Genesis 1 -1, how like when God breathes into it, it's spirit and breath are the same word. And And that happened to me. Without me thinking about it, I hadn't thought of that concept in like 30 years, but I had a, like God had breathed into me. That's one of the scariest and most ecstatic, kind of like, I never did heroin, but when I've heard the descriptions of it, people say, well, you do it, you understand why people throw their lives away to get that again. and they can never get that again. This is an out of body. This is a bigger than me.

1:27:45Is a divine experience? Was it scary? In a way. In a way it was scary and in a way it wasn't. It was like I've become fascinated with angels, the concept of angels. And the first thing they say is, don't be afraid. And that implies to me that meeting them is frightening. You know, your first experiences. And I've had those moments in this maybe war times in my life when I felt like I was in the presence of something divine. Now it's not unlike holding your baby for the first time or thousands of time and smelling their breath and feeling their warmth. And I feel then I'm in the presence of the divine and when when I'm feeling real love, that is divinity to me.

1:28:42But this is like something has connected me to the power of God. And you better take that really seriously. It's like, I want this, but I don't feel like I can stay in this moment. That's, it's a mystery. Do you remember the four times? Tell me. Okay. The first time was, I was about a year into divorce. I thought it was just the most devastating personal failure. I had had other experiences when I was 11 years old. My father had an nervous breakdown. My father was the best man I ever knew. And I knew it. So I always smelled like old spice. I always had a crisp shirt on a botany 500 suit. His old mobile was perfect, you know, and and he knew the names of the guys that swept the floors as well as the name of the president.

1:29:45He was that guy. And he loved everybody. And he had a nervous breakdown. And that was terrifying. Do you know why he had a nervous breakdown? Yeah. At least my narrative of it. His father had died before he was born. And his mother was a widow, I think, before she even knew she was going to be a mother. Wow. Yeah. That's wild. Yes. My father was born eight, like eight months in a week after his father died. His father got typhoid fever. Wow. The medical practice of the time killed him. Wow. They gave him Ipa -Cach to make him vomit. And he got so dehydrated, they had to stop. And he began to improve.

1:30:29And they said he's improved enough to resume the treatment. And they killed him. Which says to me a lot about what we think we know, in any field. I don't care science, religion, or anything. So my father grew up very much on his own. And in the depression, started working full time when he was 14. And he was so good at being a salesman because he could just connect with anybody. If we had my father here today, they could send him to, you know, like, a psalm had been bought and they would call up and say, we're so cheap in my credit. Yeah, we're done. Yeah. Okay, so I just send Thurman over, we're all good.

1:31:09You know, I mean, he was, he was really amazing. Yeah. And his confidence was just impeccable. But he worked for a company called Curtis Candy Company, which was a, they made baby He roost and butter fingers. And he just rose and rose and rose in that. And then the company got sold to some sort of flippers, Harvard Business School guys that, okay, well, we'll increase the profitability by firing all the old guys. My father was 38. And it was making more money, you know, than most everybody else was because he was a great salesman. Well, we'll replace him with a salary guy, well, did blah, blah, blah.

1:31:47and he had never been fired from anything. And he just destroyed him. I was with him actually. The last sale he made for Curtis in 1961 was for $90 ,000, which was a tractor trailer truckload of candy. The next sale he made was for $0 .90. But he ended up rebuilding and becoming extremely successful. How old were you at that time? 11. But I didn't have the personal guilt about my guilt then was I need to be the man of the family. I've tried to analyze this in light of my recent experience with feeling the responsibilities like my friend Buddy that said to me, you know, a relationship's two people.

1:32:34You can't take 100 % of the responsibility, but I did. And my marriage had fallen apart. I would wake up every morning and pray to just get through the day without coming apart. And at the end of the day, if I always got through the day and I would think, well, I actually got to have faith the day and courage and I wouldn't have had to have it if it weren't for these challenges to that. So I was going through that and I was at a gathering of guys that were discussing a book and I was talking with the guy who were in the book, quoted Braveheart seven times, but he said in the book, William Wallace said this and William Wallace said that.

1:33:20So I went up to him and I told him, he said, hey dude, I'm really flattered that you quote, but William Wallace never said any of that. But you never mentioned me. I mean, I pointed it out to it. But he had given me some fabulous advice in that time. I said to him that in his book, he asserted that it's a man's duty to rescue the woman if she is depressed or whatever else she is, that it's a man's duty to rescue her. and I had said to him, I'm divorced. And what I took from your book was that I was even more condemnation of my failure because I should have any stop. And I said, if you took that, I'm really sorry.

1:34:10Because if you look in the Bible, King David is the greatest warrior in the Bible. But there are passages where David is hiding. He's maneuvering. He's making alliances. like, I would soldier only knows to attack, but a warrior knows some hills can't be taken by frontal assault and you have to. So you saying King David was more like Rick Flair? Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha. Nobody was like Rick Flair. David was good, but he was no Rick Flair. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh man, yeah. In the case of you telling me before the four experiences. So that night he had said in his lecture, if you want to do something scary, go home, get on your knees and ask God to tell you what he thinks of you, and then listen.

1:35:10I had never heard anybody suggest something like that. And I never thought of God as like the Oracle of Delphi, But I thought I would do it and I went home and I got down on my knees by myself and And I thought well before I ask God that question or warm up and say What do you want me to do about Andrew who was who is my oldest son and He was about to go off to college and Immediately I got an answer Rick the answer It's not that I heard it with my ears, but it was crystal clear, trust him. And it was so clear and powerful I started to argue with it. And really, I mean it's ridiculous. That's really funny.

1:35:57And I'm sitting there on my knee, it's going, what do you mean, trust it? Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. And nobody trusted Son Money. And it's like, nobody has some more trust for these sons and not trusted more than anybody. And I don't know what do you mean, And then I thought, well, I sure am arguing. So I better pause for a moment. And then I thought, I don't trust him. Because everything I say to him is he's getting ready to go off to college. Now remember, now watch out for. Now, you know, there's people really good for you. And all those questions are saying to my son, I don't think you're ready.

1:36:38And what I need to say to him now is a trust in you got it. And then said, what about Colin, who was about 12, was like, include him. You know, include him. Include him. What do you mean? And all of these things that have been going on is like, oh, he's the baby of the family. We don't need to sit down and explain to him, like, oh, yeah, we do. He knows more that's going on than anybody. So then I go, well, what do you think of me? And I get, I love you. And I bald like a baby. And then I was sitting there and like, that's what God is telling me. And then it was like, so like God has come. But he hasn't told me what he wants me to do.

1:37:26And I was telling a friend who's in Opus Day, you know, like the old wood Catholic. And he's a tie -in. So as I'm describing, I'm thinking, and he's nodding his head. And I'm thinking, is he nodding because he understands the English? Because the English is his first language, or just like, he's nodding in sympathy, or he's nodding because he understands the experience. And so I said, well, you know, I really feel like God was telling me, he's got something for me to do. But he hasn't told me what it is that he wants me to do. And this guy goes, oh, he will. Like he was way down the line with having experiences like that.

1:38:07So, how old were you at the time of this story? Probably 52. Okay, here's what's interesting to me. You're 52. You were raised in a religious family. You went to seminary. Yeah. Your whole life you were taught that God loves you. that God is love. And at 52, when God tells you He loves you, it makes you cry and you can't believe it. It's interesting because it's not... Yes. It's not divergent from anything you've heard your whole life. There's no surprise in that message. And I had never thought of that. And as you say that, I wonder... I wonder about the dynamic there. Like, what is it that, along with being told that you're loved?

1:39:05You know, somebody can be saying, I love you, I love you. Just like, I can be saying, to my son, I trust you, I trust you, but the very way I'm doing it is that I don't. And if it's, well, but what I'm really, as a parent, is I'm afraid. So, I want you afraid. Be careful, those people out there, people out there that want to hurt you. And there are. I mean, there are. When I took my middle son, Cullen, to Scotland, right before he went off to college, and we wore kilts and ran around the highlands with a bunch of the battle reenactors from Braveheart, many of whom are criminals. I mean, like, open criminals.

1:39:43And one of the things I wanted to say is, Cullen, there are people who will want to knock your teeth out because you have teeth. These guys? That's exactly... Now, we're with them and they would fight for us. Yes. But just, that's how they look. That's how they smell. That's how they talk. That's how they walk. You know, and they taught him a lot of lessons in that trip. But is the spirit that you're getting, the spirit of love, the spirit of faith, or the spirit of fear, or the spirit of distrust, which I suppose is the kind of fear? Or maybe it's intelligent to have it? I don't know, but it is right.

1:40:25It's like I had been told and I certainly had the experience of being loved. But I think I didn't love myself was a big part of it. I felt torn apart in divorce, actually, because I felt that there was a part of me that that when Randy, you love your family, you just don't know how to fix this. You even love your wife, you love everybody involved. You don't know how to, is it better that you feel guilty? Oh yeah. Yeah, like I felt inadequate. I felt like I couldn't, I just couldn't find a way to fix it. And that if I stayed, I was gonna die. Wow. I mean, that's what I thought. Yeah. And I even had those kinds of thoughts of, I'm not doing any good to anybody if I die.

1:41:25This won't help anybody, no matter whose matter, whose hurt or whose like, if I'm not here, that's not good. So it was dark, it was a dark time. And sort of being reminded that just as I loved my sons, that I was saying those prayers because I loved my songs. Then I was in that mode. And the next time I was having a movie come out, and every time I have a movie come out, there's this enormous fear that I'm going to be crushed by whatever happens, good or bad. That's interesting. That if it's a huge hit, then I can spiral into the wrong thing. Not like, I've never been afraid of drugs or wild women have a certain fascination with certain things.

1:42:21But I've never had that as a feeling of liability that I was going to try. I didn't even have tastes alcohol until I was in mid -20s. But a huge success that then makes everyone say, okay, that's what you do. Do that for the rest of your life. would be artistic death for me. Yeah. And at the same time, the fear that, well, if everybody hates it, then, you know, it might not get to do it again. It may not get to do it again, and then how will I feel about myself and all those things. So I say this prayer of, help me not make God out of what other people think. Beautiful. And that's a good one. For you, please help me remember.

1:43:07How did you get to that? Growing up in a real evangelical background, the 10 commandments were big. And the very first one is you have no other gods before me and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said that. Those are the two really that you focus on. Down through the years in all the various ways that I've looked into other people's understanding of God. Even like friends of mine who are AA people, they go, well, one of the first things they tell you is there is a God, it's not you. And the surrender to that seemed crucial. But the perversion of that, you know, I thought when I first moved to California, that you could tell a lot about a place by who God is there.

1:43:54And my sense was in Los Angeles as celebrity as God. It doesn't matter what you did to get your money or your fame, but if you're famous, then everybody's fascinated by you. In New York, it's money. You might have done some horrific things, but you've got to pile of money, then you're the center of attention. The South, it's more like pride and honor, which isn't better. I mean, it's It's not better, but it's just different. But you make those things God, instead of recognizing that there's a transcendence, and accepting that I don't have all the answers gives me the sort of humility to go, this other person is worth listening to and loving.

1:44:41So secretariat was about to come out in the night before I got down on my knees. But this is our story. I just got out of the shower and I was just getting ready to get in bed, but I was naked. But I got down on my knees and it was, it was odd to be like praying naked, but I was living in a place that nobody could see my balcony and it looked out over the ocean. And I walked out and thought, I'm going to pray outside. And instead of like lowering my head, I'm going to look up at the stars. and I walked out and I spread my arms and I started to say the prayer and said me, just went, there it was again.

1:45:23And then I went, this is God telling me, not in like a bigger than a specific, bigger than go to Memphis and you know, you get this street corner. And it wasn't that. It was a bigger thing that words couldn't even hold. And that was God. And as soon as that thought went, then it happened again. Twice in the same way. And then it happened again recently. I have a window stained glass that I had made after I had the adventure with my hand. And the doctor was going to amputate my right hand. And I got to keep my hand and involved in that whole thing was a dream. I'd gone to sleep thinking they were going to cut my hand off the next morning.

1:46:17And I had this dream of the Wallace family crest, which is a hand holding a sword cock to strike a night, you know, and under it is pro -Libur -Tate, which is Latin for freedom, right? But in my dream, I dreamed I was the night and instead of holding a sword, it was a finger pointed toward heaven. And that was where they were going to begin. It was that finger that was going to start cutting off. And I woke up and like, God's not going to take my hand. And they rolled me in the next morning and put me under and when I came out, my sons were grinning. Just like you do right now, my sons were smiling and my hand was still there.

1:47:02And so I decided, well, I'm going to, I went and bought a bow centaur for piano. So I'm going to play piano every day. It's just squeezing a rubber ball. And I'm going to get some, I can just, to be on it, like, like, play Beethoven and do those like it. So every day, I,

1:47:21every And in the middle is the Celtic cross that's over my parents' grave. I try to pray for gratitude. Because, you know, there's all that thing that you go, well, please watch over my sons, please watch over this person, please help this person heal or me. But I don't want that to be my last thought of the day. I want my last thought of the day to be. Thank you for all of the great things in the morning. I'll pray for what? But here's what I hope and help me find my way, what I can do to help these things happen. There was a church in Rome that was a pagan temple. When they converted into Christianity, they adapted some of their culture and they didn't pray, hunched over with their hands together.

1:48:11They prayed with their arms open out wide. And I began to pray that way and found that I felt more vulnerable and more open. It's very beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful idea. And so I was on my knees, but like that. Hands wide. Hands wide. Beautiful. And I had like a vision of this terrifying being. It was in heaven on my knees in front of the throne of God. But this being was between me. I couldn't see beyond them and it was surrounded by like warrior angels And this guy felt like he was the king of the warrior angels and He looked at another sounds like I know probably I've never done mushrooms No, I never does psychedelics psychedelics, but it really was like there was so much like sober clarity to it There's no intoxication feeling of this and he looked at me me.

1:49:12And he did a motion with his hand and this thing shot out like a bolt of plasma lightning about a foot long it felt like. And I didn't see this with my eyes, right? I saw this between my ears, but that thing hit me and I felt it hit me. I physically felt it hit me in the chest this thing. And I know this sounds like wild ranting. I'm from Tennessee, I go to Cracker Barrel, that's my favorite place. What do you think that was about? I think it was being told two things. It was, you have a mission and you've got to do it. But again, like not what it's going to be, but there was an identity piece of it.

1:50:02Like, you have been knighted by the angels. And that's the most, and that comes out of my mouth. I haven't said this to anybody. It sounds like the most grandiose, I had up my butt, thing that a person could say, but it felt like that was the experience. That was the experience. And I honestly do feel that everybody has that, that bolt of life that we are given and it's our mission. And our mission isn't limited by, you know, go to the mailbox and drop in a quarter or something. It's a bigger thing, like, be alive. He fully alive.

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