166. Writer of Braveheart | Randall Wallace

[0] Welcome to the J .B .P. Podcast, season four, episode 19, recorded March 9th, 2021.

[1] I'm Michaela Peterson.

[2] This episode features Jordan Peterson and Randall Wallace.

[3] Randall Wallace is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and songwriter best known for writing the historical drama Braveheart, which earned him a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

[4] He has since directed The Man in the Iron Mask, We Were Soldiers, Secretariat, and Heaven is for real.

[5] Mr. Wallace and Dad discussed the power of art, music, and story, Randall's stint writing songs, the influence of biblical stories on his work and thought, depression, sacrifice, the general development of his career as a writer and director, and his new action movie about the Pope.

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[18] I hope you enjoy this episode.

[19] Hello.

[20] If you have found the ideas I discuss interesting and useful, perhaps you might consider purchasing my recently released book, Beyond Order, 12 more Rules for Life, available from Penguin Random House, in print, or audio format.

[21] You could use the links we provide below or buy through Amazon or at your local bookstore.

[22] This new book, Beyond Order, provides what I hope is a productive and interesting walk through ideas that are both philosophically and sometimes spiritually meaningful, as well as being immediately implementable and practical.

[23] Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own, but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books, 12 Rules for Life, and before that, maps of meaning.

[24] Thanks for listening.

[25] and enjoy the podcast.

[26] I'm pleased today to be able to talk to Mr. Randall Wallace.

[27] He's an American novelist, screenwriter, director, producer, and songwriter, who came to exceptional prominence above his normal prominence, let's say, by writing the screenplay for the historical drama film Braveheart in 1995.

[28] His work on that film earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and a Writers Guild of America Award in the same category.

[29] He has since directed films such as The Man in the Iron Mask in 1998, We Were Soldiers 2002, Secretariat 2010, which I just watched with my wife last night.

[30] And Heaven is for real, 2014.

[31] He's also written seven novels, including the New York Times bestseller Pearl Harbor and has founded Hollywood for Habitat for Humanity.

[32] And one of the things I'd like to point out to everyone who's watching or listening to begin with is it's really easy to list off achievements in a row, novelist, screenwriter, director, producer, songwriter.

[33] But what's quite remarkable and worthy of note is that each of those is very difficult and unlikely.

[34] So it's very hard to be a novelist.

[35] to be able to write well and then you have to be fortunate and you have to have the right connections and you have to time the market properly and then to repeat that seven times is is is quite a spectacular and unlikely feat but then to combine that with success as a screenwriter which is perhaps if anything even more difficult than writing a novel that's successful because so many people have to participate in moving an idea from its initial inception through the screenwriting process to full production as a movie and then release.

[36] It's an unbelievably complicated and unlikely affair.

[37] Director, that's impossible producer and songwriter as well.

[38] And so the conjunction of all those things, the conjunction of seven rare events is an extraordinarily rare event.

[39] And one of the things that really made me interested in talking to Mr. Wallace today is I'm very curious about how he managed that, what his life, how his life has been set up so that that became possible.

[40] So, so welcome and thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me. Oh, thank you, Jordan.

[41] I'm absolutely thrilled to be with you.

[42] Thank you.

[43] Let me start by asking you what, what you're working on now?

[44] Everyone's locked down with COVID and what are your plans for now in the future?

[45] about two years ago because I'm a workaholic the the ism in my family is workaholism and and I I have that burden it produces a lot of help and advantage sometimes but it's also a burden and about two years ago I decided to take a sabbatical the first one of my life and go to Rome for five weeks.

[46] I wanted to see what it was like to be in a place long enough.

[47] I've lived in Paris for a while, but working on a film, which is 16 -hour days for months on end.

[48] And I've lived on a couple of different visited a number of foreign countries, but I wanted to be in a place with some room, with some time to reflect and get away.

[49] And I thought Rome would be perfect.

[50] and we went to Rome, and I have three sons, and at one time or another, all three were there.

[51] But we were sitting together on the piazza Navona, and looking at a fountain, and I said to one of my sons, wouldn't it be cool if the Pope could escape through some of the secret tunnels that we know were in the Vatican and get out and walk around Rome as a normal citizen?

[52] and one of my other son said, yeah, and maybe kick ass.

[53] And then my other son said, you mean the Pope is Batman?

[54] And I went, wait a second.

[55] And suddenly an idea was born.

[56] And out of a kind of a fun exchange, I had friends who are members of Opus Day, the ultra -Orthodox Catholic organization, and they took us through the Vatican and introduced us to the Swiss Guards.

[57] And I began to think about how profound an experience it is that a man would be deemed by his church to be the Holy Father, the representative of God on earth.

[58] What kind of crushing weight would that be?

[59] What kind of humility would it require?

[60] and a story began to spin its way into my life.

[61] I have a friend who's a devout Catholic, and he won't take communion because he can't make perfect contrition.

[62] I'm not a Catholic, by the way.

[63] I grew up a Baptist.

[64] But he can't fulfill the requirements to take communion because he can't honestly say he's going to refuse to stop living in sin with the woman he's with, who he has a child with.

[65] So he's cut off from communion.

[66] And no matter how much I say to him about the Protestant view of none of us deserve God's love, we're saved only by grace, it doesn't.

[67] penetrate his sense of obligation and requirement and insufficiency to take communion.

[68] And I began to think about what if you had a Pope who was absolutely committed to the reformation of the church, but he believed that maybe God was not going to bless his efforts unless he became a better man. And to become a better man, he had to own his own sins.

[69] And his deepest sin, his greatest guilt pertains to a young woman who was the child of one of the Swiss guards who tried to protect the popes.

[70] When John Paul, the second, was shot four times in the stomach in Vatican Square, other popes have died under mysterious circumstances.

[71] And the idea that these two people come together on the night when assassins stormed the Vatican, to kill the Pope, and they have to try to escape through the bowels of the Vatican while they're confronting their darkest secrets and their darkest fears and faith.

[72] That just sounded like the kind of movie I want to do.

[73] And for the first time in my career, I felt comfortable in saying to people who have the financial means to invest in movies that I was willing to let them invest.

[74] As one of my son said, I could never let friends invest in movies because it would destroy me the sense of responsibility to get their money back to them.

[75] But in this, I had every confidence that this was the kind of movie the audience throughout the world really wants to see.

[76] The kind of theme that pertains to everyone, that it would be the classic thing we want, a hit movie that really meant something.

[77] and that's the movie I'm preparing now planning to shoot in Rome in September, have an incredible team assembled, still assembling other people to do it.

[78] But that's what's right in my sights right now.

[79] Well, in a thousand years, that isn't a plot that I would have guessed.

[80] Well, Jordan, here's another thing that pertains, and it's another of the reasons I'm so enriched by your experience, by your journey, which I feel is just starting.

[81] And it's that when you start to direct, there's the metaphor for me is like you're crawling into a pipe and that pipe is 18 months long and you're going to crawl through sludge and sometimes even sewage and there's no turning around and it's it's all on your shoulders and you have to keep going and to stay connected with what i need to stay connected with to survive um which begins with my family it's extremely difficult the the you're in a war you're in you're in a battle and i've done a number of movies about fighting about men who lead other men in battle.

[82] And it's consuming.

[83] It's all consuming.

[84] General Moore, the man that we were soldiers, was about Mel Gibson portrayed him.

[85] He led the air cavalry in the largest battle in Vietnam.

[86] And he loved his family profoundly.

[87] But from the moment he left Fort Benning, Georgia, to go to Vietnam until the day he returned more than a year later, he never wrote a single letter except to one daughter.

[88] He wrote, he wrote her a letter back because she had written him.

[89] But other than that, he never called his wife.

[90] And he loved his wife with every fiber of his being.

[91] But he felt he had to keep every second focused on how he kept his men alive.

[92] And in that sense of how responsibility can crush us is profound for me. Well, I've suggested to people quite constantly, and generally, it's been a suggestion that people take to heart that the sustaining meaning in life is to be found through the adoption of responsibility, but that is the flip side of it, is that there's always the possibility that you pile on too much and that you don't manage to move forward under the load, and that's a danger.

[93] and I've seen people who are talented fall prey to that, talented and hardworking fall prey to that.

[94] And it is definitely a great advantage to be surrounded by people that love you and to have a family and all of that so that you can take some comfort when you have the opportunity to do that.

[95] So that screenplay that you're describing, that's going to be, you said that'll start filming in the fall, assuming that we defeat COVID and all of that.

[96] And so what drew you to the idea in some sense of putting the Pope in what sounds like an action movie?

[97] I mean, I have a friend who writes action novels, and he's quite interested in using all of the elements, plot development in particular, but also character development, that are part of mass entertainment.

[98] say in the thriller genre, which is very close to the superhero genre, I suppose, to investigate thoughtful matters in depth to marry what's entertaining and gripping, which always has an archetypal element, otherwise it wouldn't be entertaining and gripping, to something that's serious.

[99] And so it sounds like there's something like that.

[100] Well, I could see that thread running through all of your work, the marriage of mass attraction, which is certainly necessary for the success of a movie, but also the exploration of deeper themes and ethical themes.

[101] Yes, and I feel that one without the other is pale.

[102] An abstract discussion of values is interesting to me intellectually, but I want to know how it's defined in action.

[103] And an action movie in which no one learns anything and no one's required to grow and sacrifice is empty.

[104] I've been asked why I make war movies and I always say I don't.

[105] I make love stories.

[106] I want to know what you love enough to sacrifice your life for if necessary.

[107] It's funny, Jordan, in high school, of all the things, you know, when the seniors, at least in America, I assume in other places, but they're voted different superlatives.

[108] And I was voted most responsible.

[109] And I found that the least sexy title you could possibly have.

[110] I once said to a woman I was dating that in high school I was voted most responsible.

[111] And she laughed and said, I was voted best legs.

[112] And I thought, well, maybe that's the way it works.

[113] The most responsible guy is supposed to get the girl with the best legs.

[114] But for me, it's like, well, I'm sorry, this is sort of scattered, but whenever I'm listening to you, I'll find unexpected treasures.

[115] You'll say something in your lectures that will cause me to see some aspect of my life that I hadn't interpreted fully.

[116] And one for me was when I was in high school, I was younger than most of my classmates.

[117] and I saw a lot of bullying and I experienced some and when I went to college and there'd be incidents like a linebacker from the football team would get drunk and punch some some sort of scholarly student on the face and crush its jaw and I decided I was going to really learn to fight and I studied karate and I became a karate teacher and I won some championships And when I tried to, and I was also in, I was a religion major, and I went to seminary, and I put myself through seminary teaching karate.

[118] And that would make people laugh.

[119] And they'd think it's an anomaly, but I'd say, well, when you were talking about Nietzsche, saying, you know, if you make a moral choice, if you make a choice because you're afraid to make the other choice, it's not a moral choice.

[120] Now, I didn't know much about Nietzsche when I was in college.

[121] I just thought he was a German thinker who didn't know how to spell his last name.

[122] I mean, I didn't know what's this guy to do it?

[123] But it was that way for me. I thought if I walk away from a fight, I want to know as much as I could know that it's not because I'm being a coward, it's because I'm choosing to walk away, that I'm capable of hurting someone.

[124] And if I have to fight, I want to be capable of doing it.

[125] And that to me all ties in with the notion of the complexity of a choice.

[126] And we're entertained in a movie.

[127] We're captivated, I should say more, by seeing the connection between action and meaning.

[128] well meaning grounds out in action right something isn't meaningful as far as I can tell unless it has implications for action yes and or or the alternative is that it has implications for perception because something meaningful can change the way you look at something but the consequence of that is that the framework within which you act is going to change and so it grounds out in action and and I mean I've always been what would you fascinated I suppose by the the the uh parallelism between Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, because they thought along very similar lines.

[129] But Dostoevsky has the advantage over Nietzsche in some sense, because he can embody his philosophy and characters.

[130] And that actually allows him to go into more depth, I would say, than Nietzsche, which is really saying something, because Nietzsche went as far down in some ways as anyone I've ever had the misfortune or pleasure to have read.

[131] And it's so interesting how it works.

[132] In the brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky pits Ivan against Elyosha, and Ivan is handsome and debonair, and he's the warrior type that you just described.

[133] He's very atheistic, and he can put up a pretty good argument.

[134] You know, he tortures his brother, who's a monastic novitiate with stories of children locked in outhouses overnight and freezing to death.

[135] They were punished by their parents, which Dostoevsky took from a newspaper and said, I cannot possibly imagine how there could be a God who was omniscient and had all the other classic attributes of God who could create a universe where that was allowed to happen even once.

[136] And Ivan can out -debat Elyosha consistently, but Elyosha's character is such that he wins the argument.

[137] He loses all the battles in some sense, but wins the war.

[138] And that's something you can really portray when you clothe your ideas in characters, or when the characters are even more, I think, to the point, is when the characters are so profound that they're acting out ideas that you couldn't yet make explicit.

[139] No, and that is one of the things that narrative does is that it enables us to play out ideas that we're not yet intelligent enough to understand.

[140] And sometimes the gap between the narrative representation and the explicit understanding can be thousands and thousands of years.

[141] Because we're still unwrapping, well, we're certainly still unwrapping the Bible.

[142] We're still unwrapping Shakespeare.

[143] There's more depth there than we can understand explicitly.

[144] And so anything that uses character has that tremendously.

[145] advantage.

[146] And then it also, there's also this strange ability that some people have in spades to create fictional worlds that are of unbelievable profundity and power.

[147] And I mean, the greatest example of that in the last 30 years, in terms of sheer imaginative power, has got to be J .K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series, which, you know, gripped the imagination of the entire planet for, for a decade and produced untold wealth.

[148] spread literacy everywhere as well.

[149] She had a remarkably creative imagination and something quite mysterious.

[150] And so you're fortunate enough to work at the marriage of ideas and drama.

[151] Yes.

[152] And you know, it's really interesting when you've spoken about Dostoevsky and others in some of your lectures.

[153] I'm fascinated by him and all the Russians.

[154] I studied Russian for four years in college and read some of these in the original.

[155] My Russian wasn't fluent for me to really, I mean, I had to grind through them, but Tolstoy, Chekhov, who was a doctor, a medical doctor, as well as a writer, so that congruence of a commitment, not just in terms of literature, but that he used his profession as a doctor to also inform him as a writer.

[156] He famously said, medicine is my wife and literature is my mistress, and when I tire of one, I spend time with the other.

[157] And Pushkin, who would write stories that were full of thought, but the story itself was bigger than any thought he could put around it.

[158] It was more resonant.

[159] It carried more.

[160] By the way, when I listened to your biblical series, it caused me to decide to read through the whole Bible.

[161] and just start to finish.

[162] And I grew up Southern Baptist.

[163] So ever since I could read, I've read the Bible virtually every day of my life.

[164] But I'd never read the Bible start to finish.

[165] And there were some books that even when I was a religion major at university, I would get to some of the books and go, I can't stay awake for this book.

[166] I just got to move on.

[167] But when you really go through it and you see the, the Old Testament as this incredible saga of a people trying to find the rules that that kept them together as a people.

[168] And it felt if you disobey these rules, then it's going to end badly for us all.

[169] And the greatest violation is to erect altars to other guys.

[170] Right?

[171] Worship false idols, yeah.

[172] That's the worst.

[173] And then along comes Jesus, who is completely steeped in all that Old Testament.

[174] I mean, he is profound in his knowledge of it.

[175] And he lives and does and says these things.

[176] But it's not like it's a philosophy.

[177] It's a narrative, a narrative which I've studied a great deal, and I believe is largely historical, or I should say significant.

[178] historical.

[179] I believe these things did happen.

[180] And then you have St. Paul, who's trying to make sense of what happened.

[181] And it's mind -blowing to me. It's mind -blowing to read it as a whole and put it into perspective in that, having spent my life.

[182] Well, what's mind -blowing about it in part?

[183] I mean, to speak of the Bible, not from the perspective of a committed believer.

[184] And I have my reasons for that.

[185] I guess it's partly because I want to concentrate on what everyone can come to see as true, I suppose.

[186] Perhaps that's it.

[187] But it is remarkable that the Bible does, in fact, make a coherent narrative because we don't understand that.

[188] It was written by a very diverse range of people over a span of time that we can perhaps not even imagine.

[189] It's very difficult to tell how old the oldest stories in Genesis particular are, the story of the fall of Adam and Eve and Kane and Abel.

[190] They bear all the hallmarks of a previous oral tradition that would have existed in relatively unchanged form for tens of thousands of years and perhaps even longer than that.

[191] And so they're unbelievably ancient and then parts of it obviously are newer and the written parts are obviously newer than any tentative oral tradition.

[192] But you have a, you have at the bare minimum, an unbelievably deep psychological document that weaves itself over centuries into a coherent story.

[193] And Northrop Frye, I would, say he's a Canadian literary critic has did more for me than any other particular thinker to help me understand the nature of the narrative because Fry, I suppose he did the same thing, or I'm doing the same thing that he did because he preceded me also at the University of Toronto.

[194] He assessed the Bible as a work of literature as a narrative and that to me was never any denigration because narrative, a powerful narrative, and you talk about this when you talk about Braveheart, for example, because there isn't that much known about William Wallace historically, but you crafted a narrative that was true enough, let's say, to be unbelievably attractive to people and to motivate them very deeply, because it's an affecting movie.

[195] Well, and if it wasn't, it wouldn't have been so popular.

[196] and so there's a there's a truth in narrative that I think is even deeper than historical truth a true like a truly profound narrative truth is like the average of a whole variety of historical truths and so it's the essence of historical truth so it's even more true than his than what we would consider say eyewitness history because eyewitness history is just it's one battle you know and and there's maybe an epic theme in that battle but then imagine that you could look at a thousand battles and you could and you could extract out from that what was canonical about heroic victory across all 1 ,000 battles.

[197] You see something like that happening in the Old Testament and the narrative thread is really quite deep.

[198] The societies emerge, formulate, fall off the path, worship false idols, collapse.

[199] And then the same thing happens again and the collapse happens and the collapse happens because people become too prideful, the kings in particular.

[200] They don't listen to the voice of conscience.

[201] And a prophetic voice arises and says, you're wandering off the tried and true path and you're going to be punished terribly for that.

[202] And generally speaking, the kings ignore that and catastrophe breaks free.

[203] And you see, and in the Old Testament in particular, there's the promise of the ultimate state in some sense.

[204] There's utopian promises that run through it, the search for the promised land.

[205] And then so strangely, you see that transformed into something that's not really political in the New Testament.

[206] You see that the promised land becomes the nature of experience as a consequence of a particular form of moral being.

[207] And then perhaps that has political implications because people who acted like that would produce a particular state.

[208] But it's no longer the dream of establishing the state that will solve all problems.

[209] It's psychologically and it's unbelievably profound.

[210] And that's, I think you can derive all of that from the biblical writings without even starting to move on to classically religious.

[211] territory.

[212] And then that does beg the question, of course, is what does all that wisdom point to in the final analysis?

[213] And that's when the question start to become religious.

[214] Yes.

[215] And well, Jordan, that's the part to me that it takes it into a whole, whole different realm, as you say.

[216] There's a quote from Mary Oliver that a friend shared with me recently.

[217] it's keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

[218] And I find that in a great story or any great piece of art that surprise is the central currency of its power.

[219] There's an element of, if you will, of revelation, if you will.

[220] And I think it was Paul Tillick.

[221] I'm not sure who said that religion is man's way to God and it's always erroneous, but revelation is God's way to man. Maybe it was Carl Bart, it's God's way to man, and it's always perfect.

[222] Well, there's a revelatory aspect to any great story.

[223] When you're telling someone a story and they didn't see coming what just happened, that's what makes them awake.

[224] That's what stabs them broad awake.

[225] In Braveheart, so many people said to me, it was, it was when the woman that William Wallace loves, when her throat is cut, that's when suddenly they knew they were not in a typical action movie.

[226] Even to the very end of Braveheart, there would have been many people in Hollywood and were who thought, well, this movie needs to end with his friends swinging in on vines and saving him.

[227] We can't end an expensive historical epic movie with a guy beheaded and disemboweled, but that was where it had to end for me. But how we get there and what it says surprised me and surprised me and surprised the audience too.

[228] And in that, I would think, is how it becomes resonant.

[229] I was doing a charity screening of Braveheart a few years ago for the first time in, oh, two decades, to sit in a theater and actually see the movie screened, not on television, but projected in a theater and doing it for a charity in Austin, Texas.

[230] And at the end of the movie, I walked up onto the stage to do a Q &A.

[231] And the first person who stood up was a young woman in the front row, 19 years old.

[232] So she wasn't born when Braveheart had come out.

[233] And I was surprised that she stood up first.

[234] And she said, Mr. Wallace, I don't have a question.

[235] I just want to tell you something.

[236] My fiancé died six months ago.

[237] and before he died he told me he wanted me to watch braveheart so i would understand the way he loved me and i did i i had to stop i i couldn't go on for several minutes it um it it shocked me it moved me It surprised me. You said that you write love stories, and I guess she put her finger on that, hey?

[238] Yes.

[239] Profoundly.

[240] And the idea that men want to be courageous.

[241] They want to be willing to sacrifice themselves for what's worth sacrificing for.

[242] And women want a man like that.

[243] And women want to, and they want to be.

[244] participants in that story in that same journey for themselves and in to me it's narrative can give you that more than any abstract explanation of it I mean I don't mean to there's a lot to unpack in that I want to go back to your your discussion of surprise I mean among people who assess information theory there's a strong association between something that's informative and something that's surprising.

[245] If you can predict it, technically speaking, it doesn't contain any information.

[246] And so information always comes in the form of surprise, technically speaking.

[247] And we are wired to attend to what's informative because that's what updates and teaches us.

[248] And so then you said revelation comes in the form of surprise.

[249] And I would say that's virtually the case by definition, isn't it?

[250] Because imagine that you're viewing a narrative through a particular lens, you're in a cognitive perceptual structure, a frame of reference that you're using to track all the actions and to make sense of them and to make predictions.

[251] And if something unexpected happens, that means that you've just learned that that frame of reference is no longer applicable to the current circumstance.

[252] And so what that really does mean is that something transcendent, at least from the perspective of that current frame of reference has in fact occurred because so that's a mini miracle in some sense right because yes a miracle is something that doesn't obey the laws that you're currently following that that that that's one way of thinking about it and so a revel a surprising revelation is a mini miracle and maybe it's because of that it's it's what it's reminiscent of the fact of the miraculous generally speaking but i would also say you the narrative does something else if it's profound too.

[253] It doesn't just surprise you.

[254] It also gives you a new frame of reference instantly within which that surprise now makes sense.

[255] And if it doesn't, then you're left unsatisfied by the movie.

[256] You think, because I've seen that often, particularly in movies, it doesn't seem to happen quite so much in novels, where the director and the writer will throw a whole variety of things up in the air.

[257] and you have it's really compelling and then about three quarters of the way through the movie you think it'll be really something if all of that gets tied together and then it doesn't right it falls flat it it doesn't it doesn't end in a manner that that's that that does justice to what's being set up so yeah and you know that's that's that's that's a classic narrative structure right there's a stable state to begin with and then something that disrupts it and throws everything into a state of chaos temporarily and then the establishment of a new state.

[258] And a good story definitely does that for us and guides us through that and shows us that we're the thing that does that as well.

[259] Well, like if you take an Agatha Christie movie or story, there'll be all of these clues and then hercule perot or we have a term in screenwriting we call it irving the explainer will show up at the end of the movie to to explain everything and then it off it's to get in and the Sherlock Holmes movies will often be that way too to me they become much less fun then the fun is is when you don't yet know the answers but once it's explained it's no it no longer has any magic for me. An example would be when I was in college and I was a singer -songwriter and I worked with a friend who was a magician and we would entertain at different gatherings and he was great at sleight of hand with cards.

[260] He could do a trick right in front of your face with cards and you'd be gobsmacked.

[261] And he would show me how he was doing it and all of a sudden I'd go oh gee that's just so simple and how could I miss that and then he would do the same trick to someone else and I would be watching the trick and I would think oh he blew it he he slipped he showed them they can see how it's done and they were gobsmacked they didn't understand how it was done so they were amazed but that to me is a difference about a story like you say the agatha Christie or or they throw up a whole bunch of parts and they they never come together for a great story it's one that you're left it's it's vibrating in you and you can't fully explain it you just know what happened I hate to keep referencing Braveheart but but I wanted to make a movie and it was my first movie I I wanted to make a movie that would have people walk out of the theaters the way I walked out of theaters at different times in my life and would say my life will never be the same after what I just experienced there.

[262] I mean, that's always been what I was looked for.

[263] And that happened with Braveheart.

[264] I had a huge, tough Scott.

[265] I mean, a burly, brawling, head budding, Scott come up to me after a screaming of Braveheart and look at me with tears in his eyes and say, I will never forget that, not ever.

[266] And I think of like a story like Tolstoy wrote a tale called the Woodfelling or the Woodfelling Party.

[267] And it was about some Russian soldiers who were fighting, I believe they were fighting Afghan or Muslim troops in Azerbaijan or in the mountains.

[268] But they've been in this cold, forbidding place for a long, long time.

[269] They've seen all sorts of death.

[270] And they've gone out to cut wood and firewood and load into a wagon.

[271] And a sniper hits one of them in the leg and he's, or hits him in the body and he's bleeding to death.

[272] And he knows he's dying.

[273] And they load him on the wood wagon to carry him back while he's still alive.

[274] But he grabs the lieutenant by the collar and says, there are letters from my wife in my boot, take them and send them back to my wife, so she'll have them.

[275] And the officer says, yeah, yeah, I will.

[276] But the dying man knows he won't because he's seen many men die and just pitched into shallow graves.

[277] And there's just so much death.

[278] So he says, no, take them while I'm still alive.

[279] And then I know you'll do it.

[280] So the officer gives the order and they strip off the man's boot and cut through his pant and unwrap the wrappings around his leg that he's done to keep warm.

[281] And there are the letters, but what the officer sees for the first time in months and months, maybe years, is the bare flesh of a man's leg, this white, sunless flesh.

[282] And it's that that reminds him that this is a man's.

[283] a human being.

[284] And Tolstoy says he was struck with a terrible dread of the loss of life.

[285] And I thought, even I was 18 when I read that, that this is what an artist does.

[286] You hold up to us when we've become inured, immune to certain things like watching women.

[287] It's one time it's mini skirts, another time it's no bras, another time it's bare midrifts, another time it's something else but you get used to something so nothing makes you notice and the artist looks for well what can I do that will make people notice to say look here see what you see what's there rather than what you remember yes so there's that interplay with okay there's there is your perception in what you're looking at what you expect like the magic trick if you're expecting one thing and you don't see it or now you know the trick so now you perceive that's one part of it the other part of it is okay now i have experienced perceived something how do i make sense of that i mean another thing that i've been doing is working on the story for the resurrection which i've studied since well since i was in school the the resurrection has fascinated me more than anything else in part because I think it's N .T. Wright would say if you don't think the resurrection is preposterous, you're missing the point.

[288] The whole point is that this is beyond anything you could imagine.

[289] You said in a few weeks ago I was listening to your podcast and I was believe with that brilliant I think he's Canadian who makes the icons Jonathan Pazio Oh, mind -blowing Yeah, that was quite the conversation Yes, and Jonathan said that there's this outside of what we can imagine that is going on and you said, yes, you would have you would never you would never make this up if you're you'd make up make up this Jesus story.

[290] I even believe that.

[291] Well, that's part of the problem with Marx's theory that religion is the opiate of the masses.

[292] It's like, okay, fair enough.

[293] I get it.

[294] And it's actually a reasonably intelligent critique.

[295] You could say, well, if you wanted to enslave people and oppress them, then you could invent a story and you could use that as a manipulative technique.

[296] But then it seems to me that you'd want a story that was sort of maximally fantasy like and attractive.

[297] And so then you're stuck with, well, why invent hell, for example?

[298] And then you can say, well, that's where you put your enemies, you know, so that's kind of convenient.

[299] But if you take medieval experience seriously, it's quite obvious.

[300] There's a philosopher in Canada, Taylor, who wrote about this in a book called Sources of the Self.

[301] medieval people took the idea of hell extremely seriously and tortured themselves with it, believe that the fruits of immorality were infinitely terrible.

[302] Well, that isn't something that you use as a childish defense against the world.

[303] In fact, fear of hell is actually more intense, I would say, in some sense, than fear of death.

[304] And I believe that.

[305] I think there are things that are, if the thing you, if the thing you, most afraid of his death, you haven't been very afraid, because there are things that are far more terrifying than death, and certainly, well, hell is among those.

[306] And I suppose that's the place that you're eternally tortured for your own immorality, maybe perhaps even defined by your own conscience.

[307] Anyways, you wouldn't invent that as something attractive to the masses.

[308] And there's much of religious thinking that's like that.

[309] It doesn't have the aspect of, there's too much burden in it for it to be pure escapist fantasy.

[310] There's too much, and there's too much about it that's incomprehensible for it to be like, what would, a conspiratorial machination.

[311] No, it doesn't, it's not a hypothesis that fits the data well at all.

[312] Right.

[313] Well, it's a limit case, also in some sense, like you talked earlier about, you said something about sacrifice, you know, and that, well, people don't take the idea of sacrifice very seriously.

[314] I've looked at the development of the idea of sacrifice in the Old Testament.

[315] And one of the things I've come to realize is that one of the great human discoveries was actually that of sacrifice, because it was the discovery of the fact that you could modify the presence of the future was different.

[316] So it, it's signal.

[317] the discovery of the future by humanity, the idea of sacrifice, because you become consciously aware, perhaps after acting it out for God only knows how long, that you can give up something that you're deeply committed to in the present, something of extreme value, and obtain something of even more value in the future.

[318] And that's the discovery of an entire dimension, the temporal dimension.

[319] It's a cataclysmic discovery.

[320] It's on the same order as the emergence of self -consciousness.

[321] And then the, and then mysteries emerge out of that.

[322] Well, some sacrifices work better than others.

[323] Well, why?

[324] Well, the reaction of being to sacrifice seems to be reflective of the nature of being.

[325] And that's, that, that's definitely the case.

[326] Some sacrifices work and some don't, just like some games are playable and some aren't.

[327] And so sacrifice has value.

[328] Well, then the question starts to become, well, what's of the highest value that you should sacrifice for and what is the ultimate sacrifice?

[329] Well, you can give up something that you own, you can give up something that you love, you can die for something, or you can sacrifice your entire life to it.

[330] And it seems to me that in some sense, the latter, the last of those is the ultimate sacrifice to give up your entire life for the sake of the highest ideal.

[331] And that is the ideal of humanity.

[332] And then that is the ideal of humanity.

[333] And that is what everyone admires.

[334] And that's what we all look for in stories.

[335] That's what compels us.

[336] You said, well, it's the basis of romantic attraction.

[337] And I believe that to be the case that associated with generosity, right, to share the fruits of your sacrifice.

[338] And the question arises, well, what is the ultimate sacrifice and what would be the consequences of that?

[339] And that's obviously what's being investigated, let's say, in our religious thinking.

[340] And in, in, and the New Testament, there's no doubt that that's what's being investigated.

[341] Is there a cosmic significance to the idea of sacrifice?

[342] And I agree with that completely.

[343] And I believe that that's what is at play.

[344] When you're making the sacrifice, there's this other element of faith in it.

[345] Like the person making the sacrifice is instead of it just being a negotiation, central to the sacrifice, it seems to me, is a transforming commitment.

[346] The person is being transformed and what he is giving is transforming.

[347] It's like one of the most commonly quoted lines from Braveheart is every man dies, not every man really lives.

[348] And I didn't, by the way, it's pet peeve of mind.

[349] the other another line from Brave Art, besides just the scream of freedom that people do, that comes from the film, but is they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom.

[350] And that quote is on the wall of the United States Air Force Academy, but under it is the name William Wallace, although William Wallace never said that.

[351] And I keep wanting to write the English department there and say, hey, listen, guys.

[352] But the, but where that quote came, from was me thinking, okay, is it ego?

[353] Is it pride?

[354] Is it stubbornness that keeps William Wallace in the dungeon refusing to submit to the king, refusing to ask the king for mercy and maybe by time in his life so he can survive a while longer?

[355] And the queen, the future queen comes to him with that offer.

[356] And then she says you'll die.

[357] It'll be terrible.

[358] after he has said, if I submit to him, if I cry out for mercy, then everything that is me is dead already.

[359] And she said, you'll die, it'll be awful.

[360] And I was thinking, well, what can he answer to that?

[361] And that was, every man dies.

[362] Not every man really lives.

[363] And it became that And in thinking of, say, Jesus at Galgotha, that if you took a snapshot at Galgotha on the day Jesus was crucified and you said, who's the victor in this picture, you probably wouldn't be inclined to say the guy on the middle cross.

[364] But you might, if you stared at the picture long enough, you actually might see it.

[365] human beings may recognize that this one here in this way was doing something beyond all understanding.

[366] And to me, writing a story isn't just me going, what will surprise the audience, it's I am being surprised by the story as it's coming through to me. The most notable part of that in Braveheart was I reached the end of the story and I can see this clearly now, although it was more than 25 years ago, the axe is falling toward William Wallace's throat.

[367] And I wrote that on the page.

[368] And then I thought, well, we can't see the axe contact his throat and sever his head.

[369] What do we see now?

[370] And then I thought, well, what about to look at this from the point of view of him when he knows he has fractions of a second to live?

[371] What would he look for?

[372] Where would he turn his eyes?

[373] Would he look at the axe?

[374] What would he do?

[375] And he would know that his friends were there.

[376] So I wrote in the last instant of his life, William Wallace turns his eyes to his friends who were Stephen and Hamish.

[377] And I did not know Jordan until that.

[378] instant, there between them was her, the wife he had lost.

[379] And I wept.

[380] And I had no sense that anybody else was going to relate to that story.

[381] I have a friend named Jack Bernstein, who's a comedy writer.

[382] He wrote Ace Ventura, the original Ace Ventura.

[383] And Jack is different for me in almost every way, if you put our traits on paper word, just polar opposites.

[384] And he's the one I always take my first drafts to and say, I know this is a mess, but is there anything here?

[385] And he read Braveheart, and we sat down to have breakfast and for him to give me his notes.

[386] And he said, this is the best thing of yours I've ever read.

[387] And I was completely blindsided.

[388] I had had no sense that anybody would like it, that particularly him, that it had any value.

[389] But the story surprised me. And I think therefore that revelatory quality was love.

[390] I think it happens in music.

[391] What makes music magical is not that it's what we, if it's just the same beat, the same monotony, the same chord changes we've heard, the same lyrics we've heard, it doesn't open us up at all.

[392] But when it's just enough different that we notice the difference and are drawn into it.

[393] Now, if it's too different, you know, when I was in school and took music classes and they're telling us about atonal this and that and abstract, it had no life, no heart at all.

[394] But when I listen to Beethoven, I can just feel the swelling of his heart.

[395] art and in in here hundreds of years later yes well you hear something great and you follow it and then there's a move of genius and out of that greatness comes something that's even greater and you're so you're so satisfied by that because you can see what's greater emerge from what's great but you can also see that that's characteristic of humanity you're participating in that yes emergence of what's better in this surprising manner Yeah.

[396] One of your new rules is to take a room and make it beautiful.

[397] And I love that.

[398] I love that rule.

[399] I mean, that it seems so simple.

[400] But that is one of the richest ones for me. That's my favorite chapter of both books, I would say.

[401] I'm happiest with that one.

[402] Wow.

[403] Well, I had an incident a few years ago, and I got an infection, Mersa, and I was misdiagnosed and a doctor, a friend, and my doctor gave me two medicines, which actually caused it to inflame even more.

[404] And a week later, I was at the Mayo Clinic, and they were discussing amputation on my right hand.

[405] You write about that in this book.

[406] Yes.

[407] Deliving the Braveheart life.

[408] This is an autobiography or partly an autobiography.

[409] Yes.

[410] And I was trying to make sense of that experience for me. And one way I did was to say, I don't want to just like have a hand and do hand exercises.

[411] I want to celebrate having hands.

[412] And I decided I would learn to play the play the play.

[413] piano.

[414] I mean, learned to really play the piano.

[415] And I went out and made a kind of sacrifice and kind of a crazy thing.

[416] I bought a fabulous piano way, way beyond anything I deserve or my playing merits.

[417] But having that instrument.

[418] I did that with a suit when I went on tour.

[419] I spent like $8 ,000 on a suit.

[420] And it was more money than I'd ever spent on a car.

[421] Like, you know, know, I was just, it was horrified by it, but I thought, well, I'm going to put everything I have into this.

[422] And I'll start with this.

[423] And did you find that it was well worth it?

[424] It was definitely worth it.

[425] No doubt about it.

[426] And kind of goes with one of your very first rules about, you know, walk with your shoulders back and your chest out.

[427] And it's like you, when you, when you dress well, you're a different person.

[428] Well, I felt I owed it to my office.

[429] audience.

[430] It was like if they were going to come and see me, I was going to do everything I possibly could to set the stage properly.

[431] Yes.

[432] And, you know, it's all those little gestures matter.

[433] Well, they're not just little gestures.

[434] Right.

[435] So it's there, that was a, that was a mark of faith in some sense.

[436] It, it certainly violated my sense of fiscal propriety.

[437] Right.

[438] You know, and I, I, I wasn't sure how I could justify it.

[439] I guess partly the justification would be if the lectures were good, enough, you know, but I was at least moving in that direction.

[440] And like I said, I never regretted it at all.

[441] It was exactly the right thing to do.

[442] Well, there's funny to do it for yourself.

[443] I think it's easier to do it for a loved one than for yourself.

[444] And it calls to mind the New Testament incident of the woman breaking the the box of ointments and anointing Jesus' feet to say this will be remembered always and you always have the poor and you can always help the poor that this is something that will last and I thought of that is a very strange story that one isn't it it's one you think would have been edited out long ago yes absolutely the the editors would have said, no, no, maybe this is not one we should have.

[445] But when I was in Germany, I was in Germany the first time when I was about 26, and I was in a really rough time of life, I'd lost a job, I was very much lost, and I had thought I'd rather spend my last dollars to go to Europe than to sit alone and worry.

[446] So I'd taken a trip alone to Europe.

[447] And I went to see Noshwanstein in December, the castle that Mad King Ludwig II had built in Bavaria.

[448] And what I learned there was that it had nothing to do with the architecture of the day, the trends, the principles of sensible building.

[449] It was kind of a crazy indulgence based on his love of opera and in a grand romantic gestures and it nearly bankrupted the treasury to do it but almost from day one it became a huge financial success well that's one of the things that's so stunning about europe is that there isn't anything that's more valuable than beauty yes and i mean i mean that from the cold -hearted conservative um capitalist perspective.

[450] It's stunning how valuable beauty is.

[451] Like the most valuable artifacts in the world are paintings.

[452] You know, accepting things like chips to make or factories to make chips, but single artifacts, paintings are worth $150 million at the upper end and ancient manuscripts that are works of timeless art. And it looks like an investment in beauty is one that pays off.

[453] as long as the thing remains in existence.

[454] I mean, I don't know how much everything in Europe that's beautiful cost, but it was plenty, but it's paid back in spades and is only going to become increasingly more valuable as the past becomes more and more scarce, which is happening very, very rapidly.

[455] Yes.

[456] So, I mean, these countries have more tourists than people.

[457] Yes.

[458] And it's all a consequence of art and beauty.

[459] well in rome there are something like 150 cathedrals if you if you went to or it's enough that if you went to three or four a day in a month you couldn't visit them all and and everyone you walk in takes you to a different place which is exactly as they they were intended to do i thought your your podcast with juliet fogger program, yeah.

[460] It was fascinating to have the interplay between the writing and the, well, the depth of the thought that then connected with turn this into an actual visual image.

[461] I mean, that's hard.

[462] It's hard for me when I've written a character to accept a huge.

[463] human actor as being that character.

[464] They say that David Lean, when he was directing Dr. Chivago, didn't want to stay in the same hotel as some of his actors because he, like Julie Christie was his Laura and Dr. Chavago.

[465] He didn't want to see her with a martini in her hand smoking a cigarette.

[466] He wanted to direct the movie, sing her as this.

[467] pristine object of love, this woman, this subject of love.

[468] And I think it's hard for, I was fascinated to hear the process of the way you work together to create those images.

[469] And I thought the images were stunning and really resonant for, you know, when you're reading it, you look forward to seeing the next illustration to tee you up for the next chapter as you see it and then as you're reading you're starting to understand the image more and that that's incredibly rich yeah well i was hoping and i think it happened that that adds another dimension you know you have the explicit rules let's say that's the explicit philosophy and then you have the implicit philosophy which is the story but then you have something that's even more implicit which is the image and the the story is the story is richer than the explicit rule and the image is richer than the story but the image isn't as clear and neither is the story right so you you move from focused clarity but a rather narrow representation to what's extremely broad and all encompassing and you lose something when you move in either direction right but having all of it at the same time well it gives you the advantages of all three kinds of representation yes and that's that to me leads us back to the to the power and the resonance of art that any piece, a painting, a piece of music, a movie, a story resonates through all of it.

[470] When I was a child, my father was extremely frugal, but he loved music and he got, I guess he got a deal on one of the first stereo sets.

[471] It was a huge thing.

[472] Speakers were separated and had a turntable.

[473] And he bought a collection of classical records because they were basically giving it away.

[474] Nobody wanted it in Memphis, Tennessee.

[475] And he brought those records home.

[476] And one side of one LP was the 1812 overture.

[477] And I would turn that on and turn the volume up as loud until my mother would scream at me. And just be caught up in that I could say, see the battle.

[478] I could see the armies moving.

[479] I could feel the winner.

[480] I could, you know, here's Napoleon's coming and the cannons are going and the Russians are fighting back.

[481] And it had dimensions beyond the simple things of notes and what was audible.

[482] And I think that that's that's a big part of the uniqueness of your work.

[483] There's one thing.

[484] I'm sorry if this sounds like a fan club, but when I heard you speaking in the last several podcasts and read the preface of your new book and to look at all you've been through, all you've been through lately, it really spoke to me about what is required if you're going to go do something different.

[485] If you're going to bring in, if you just kept your mouth shut about anything outside of your own area, of course, you were, you know, in Toronto, you were speaking about, it didn't feel like it was outside your own area to say, wait a second, you're asking me to violate some things that I think are violations.

[486] you could have just been a good boy and sat in your seat.

[487] I could have been a good boy and tried to write an action -adventure movie set in the present day and not write something crazy, like something about somebody that was beheaded and disemboweled 700 years ago.

[488] Or this upcoming movie about the book.

[489] Yeah, it's going to set some people's hair on fire, no doubt.

[490] And I, you know, there's a part of me, well, I hope it's, it's important enough to do that.

[491] But you're combining, you're saying it, everything is relevant, that what these philosophers were talking about, what these artists were painting, what these musicians are doing, what filmmakers are doing, this is all something that's trying to get us that way.

[492] no that's what the cathedral represents you know it's it's it's it's an expression in stone of this yearning to to bring the material world into harmony with the spirit it's something like that and that's what music does as well and there's this this proclivity within us to strive upward and the cathedral i mean the cathedrals they're absolutely amazing these lattice like structures of stone there's something about the harmonious interplay of shadow and light that's key to it as well.

[493] It's like the opening up of dark matter to the light that pours in.

[494] That's all embodied in the architecture.

[495] And I can't say, and neither can anyone else, what that ultimately represents.

[496] And then to bring music into that space and tradition, it's all pointing upward to something, to the direction that we're supposed to go.

[497] It's so terrible to see these buildings empty out.

[498] I mean, thank God that they're being preserved in some sense by the tourists who come there driven by a sense of awe.

[499] But we can't inhabit them anymore the way that we used to.

[500] And that's a terrible thing.

[501] It means there's a kind of ideal that we're no longer, we're no longer pursuing.

[502] Perhaps we're no longer pursuing it.

[503] It seems like a catastrophe to me. No one really knows how to revitalize it, though, unfortunately.

[504] So, well, I think one of the problems to me when I was in Paris working on Man in the Iron Mask, I would want on a Sunday morning to go to a mass. And it was very difficult to find, well, for one thing, in a Baptist, we would, church would start at 11 o 'clock on a Sunday morning and masses aren't like that, but go into, say, the cathedral Saint -Germont, and there was no one there.

[505] It was a magnificent ancient cathedral and, you know, a few tourists and the place, the place didn't feel dead.

[506] The architecture was alive, but it was very difficult to have a congregation.

[507] And a congregation is what the church, of course, is supposed to be.

[508] it's a collection of people who are united and indifferent it's you know it's a collection of sinners acknowledging their sins and i think that that is a fascinating thing to me about how we keep well it's so surprising it's also so surprising that those hundreds of years ago when those buildings most of those buildings were built that those cultures would dedicate themselves to such great cost to produce these absolutely spectacular impossible buildings made out of stone or brick these these they're like a dance in stone that they're so magnificent and then to fill them with with the greatest of artworks and and to to bring the light in in the most colorful possible way and then to bring the music in, to set the scene, and then to have everyone come in and commit to at least not being as bad as they were, right?

[509] Like it was a joint moral enterprise that everyone was involved in.

[510] You can be as cynical about that as you want and talk about, you know, Sunday Christians and all of that.

[511] But an hour a week to contemplate how it is that you should be living your life or to become in tune with your conscience once again, at least the confession can offer that.

[512] And then to see that so much effort was poured into that, it's amazing that that over occurred.

[513] And then it's also equally amazing that we've stopped doing it.

[514] Because you might think, well, wouldn't we be interested in jointly coming together and saying, well, here's how we're inadequate.

[515] And here's how we're conceptualizing what would be ideal.

[516] and couldn't we move together toward that?

[517] And I was talking to Bishop Barron this week and about this issue, about the loss, especially in the Catholic Church of young people.

[518] And it seems that there's a great adventure there that isn't being communicated properly.

[519] And it's a terrible loss for all of us.

[520] What do we have to replace that?

[521] You know, I've talked to the new atheists, especially Sam Harris.

[522] And it's not like I don't understand their arguments.

[523] It's not like I don't have sympathy for them, for that matter.

[524] But there's nothing poetic or artistic or magnificent about the alternative.

[525] Yes.

[526] Right?

[527] It loses.

[528] It loses.

[529] There's something that just disappears.

[530] It's that artistic ineffability.

[531] There's no room.

[532] There's no obvious room for that in the, say, the Enlightenment worldview.

[533] I'm an admirer of Stephen Pinker, for example, and he falls into the Enlightenment rationalist camp.

[534] And in his book, The Language Instinct, he talks a little bit at the end about culture, philosophy, music, art, and all of that, religion, even for that matter, to some degree.

[535] But it's like a throwaway chapter at the end, whereas by my way of looking, that's the whole book, all of that.

[536] that artistic endeavor and that shades into the religious endeavor and that that's the sense that's not some side effect of human cognitive development quite the contrary it's the central feature and i agree but jordan when when you're speaking with julia the most recent podcast i heard the it reminded me her her description of her life reminded me of an experience i had in Russia was in St. Petersburg and we were doing a scout for a film I wrote called Love and Honor based on a novel that I wrote.

[537] And we were finished with the scout.

[538] We had seen everything that we were scheduled to see.

[539] And this young woman who was in her early 30s, a Russian woman, asked if there was anything else we'd like to see because we had some time.

[540] And I said, well, I'd love to see some of your churches.

[541] And she got quizzical look on her face.

[542] She was surprised that, I don't know, a Hollywood director would ask that.

[543] And she said, well, I'll take you to my church.

[544] And I said, you've got a church?

[545] And she said, oh, yes, I'm Christian.

[546] And I said, but you grew up when that was discouraged, even I'm illegal, or your parents Christian.

[547] And she said, no. their mother's confirmed atheist, her father was baptized as a child, but he's also an atheist.

[548] And so I said, well, how did you become Christian?

[549] And she said, there was no beauty.

[550] I was a young girl walking around and nothing was beautiful.

[551] And one day I passed the church and I could see candlelight in it and heard music coming out.

[552] And I went in and I kept going and I kept going.

[553] and I became a Christian.

[554] And that to me says so much.

[555] And people have no idea.

[556] They have no idea.

[557] That's why I wrote chapter 8.

[558] They have no idea how much they're starving for beauty.

[559] Yes.

[560] Like it's a hunger that goes far beyond, well, let's not say that.

[561] It doesn't have to go beyond material hunger.

[562] But no matter how well fed you are without some relationship to beauty, there's too much suffering in the world.

[563] for it to be viable.

[564] It's along with truth, it's the antidote to suffering.

[565] It's not optional.

[566] Right.

[567] It's crucial.

[568] And you can tell that by its economic value.

[569] For those who are hard -headed, it's like you can't point to anything with more economic value, period, the end.

[570] And so...

[571] Well, some weeks back, when you were, you were, I felt really working your way back that that work and engagement and in your calling is helping to heal and sustain you.

[572] You said something along the lines of that you wondered why in the Christian community and religious community that people were telling you that your work means so much, you know, why it's somewhat overwhelming to realize that so many people are drawing from you.

[573] And I think I can tell you.

[574] It is completely.

[575] It is.

[576] Today I was sitting on a bench with my friend who walks with me. And this kid came up to me. And he said, apologies for interrupting you but I was listening to your podcast while I was walking down the street and I saw you here he said and he started to tear up right away he said five years ago I was suicidal and I was I've been listening to your lectures on a regular basis he said an hour and a half a day which seems like an overdose to me he said he's invented prosthetic limbs and has helped all sorts of people and is on his way to MIT.

[577] It's like it's a random meeting on the street, you know?

[578] Yes.

[579] And thank God for that.

[580] It's too much.

[581] Yes, of course it is.

[582] But I tell you, like, I know you like to understand.

[583] You know, that's the something else you said a couple of weeks back about I want to I want to understand why.

[584] I want to understand why this story makes sense, and I do too.

[585] But the what of it all, to me gets at the why of it all, but the what of it all is that you speak to people like me and like others who know this experience of more, who know what it is to stand in awe, to feel the awe of a moment, and you combine all the different elements of perspective, of thought, of experience, and you validate or endorse that people who choose faith and who see courage and sacrifice as crucial divine values, are not idiots.

[586] It's, I think that that's - You know, it's no accident that crucial and cross are the same thing.

[587] Yes, yes, exactly.

[588] And, you know, we go through this thing of, well, you're just, you're choosing an opiate.

[589] And to me, it's like, well, the alternative is not attractive to, when I started working on the Pope's I came across a statement that, I believe, is one of the talk show guys, late -night talk show guys, had said, Conan O 'Brien, I believe it was, but he said that Pope Francis had made a pronouncement that he thought even atheists could go to heaven.

[590] And in gratitude, atheists have said that the Pope, when he dies, is welcome to enter their endless void of nothingness.

[591] Well, the problem with that worldview is, in some sense, that endless void of nothingness confronts us right here and now.

[592] Yes, exactly.

[593] I try to tell people, I'm not so much concerned about life after death as life after birth.

[594] Jesus said, come that you can have life and have it more abundantly.

[595] And I'm not trying in a movie to espouse my particular dog, I don't believe in my own dogma.

[596] My own dogma is limited and I'm not trying to think that when I was in school and I'd study systematic theologians.

[597] And I remember asking my mentor, who was the head of the department, what is really the point?

[598] What are they trying to do?

[599] And they're trying to have a system of understanding that holds up.

[600] from every angle.

[601] But, well, how is that working out for them?

[602] Because ultimately, you get into, do you have faith or not?

[603] When I write a story, it's, I've got to jump in and trust, and I don't know where they'll lead, but I know that to not jump in is death.

[604] And so for me, it's like, The Old Testament says, you know, I set before you life and death, choose life.

[605] And that to me is what I hope my work's about.

[606] And I'm damn sure it's what your work's about.

[607] I want to talk about your life as well, because it's, it's, I'm very curious to see how these things are managed.

[608] So you grew up in Tennessee, is that correct?

[609] Yes.

[610] And so tell, let's start there.

[611] And tell me, and you worked, you worked with an animal show in Florida?

[612] Oh, in Nashville.

[613] In Nashville, in Nashville.

[614] So, yeah, my father was from Lizard Lick, Tennessee.

[615] And the men in my father's family are Alton, Elton, Dalton, Lyman, Gleiman, Herman, Thurman, and Clyde.

[616] Thurman was my brother.

[617] It sounds like a group of names from Lizard Lick.

[618] Yeah, from Lizard Lick.

[619] And by the way, brilliant people.

[620] My father's cousin, Gleiman, was Verner von Braun's right -hand man at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

[621] He was a genius mechanical engineer building the rockets.

[622] And there wasn't a whole lot of education of previous generation.

[623] of his family, but they were brilliant men.

[624] And my mother skipped two grades in school and dreamed of being a writer, but she didn't tell me that until I was grown.

[625] My grandmother had a country store, one -room country store made of wood that my grandfather had salvaged from the wreck of a Tennessee Riverboat.

[626] And I sat in the back of that store on the desk I'd fashioned out of sacks of pig feed, and wrote my first story and I just always love to write when the other kids would groan when the teacher would say, okay, we're going to write, we're going to free write, write a passage, write a theme, write a story.

[627] And how did your parents respond to that interest of yours, that interest in writing?

[628] Well, so my parents, my mother was the artist.

[629] My father loved singing, but he was extremely, he had worked full -time since he's 14 years old while going to school.

[630] But he had full -time jobs during the Depression, and he scraped for every dollar.

[631] He was incredibly frugal.

[632] So it was his greatest dream that my sister and I could get an education, which he and my mother had not been able to get higher education, though they read everything.

[633] My mother read everything, particularly.

[634] my father was a great salesman if you sent my father to your enemies anywhere they'd call up and say I'm sorry I'm going to knock it off he was my father could just he loved people but he was afraid of me having an airy -fairy kind of career one that that would be impractical and when I was in college, I started a little record company and I had a local hit.

[635] I started my own record company.

[636] I sold the records.

[637] I went to the stores and went to the radio stations.

[638] And I had an encouraging hit.

[639] What kind of equipment did you use?

[640] It was just me and a guitar, but it was in the folk era.

[641] And I found a studio in, I went to school at Duke in Durham, North Carolina, and there was a studio in Greensboro and one in Winston -Salem, so I'd make the drive over there and make a recording, you know, save my money and have a three -hour session and make a couple of sides of a record and put it out.

[642] And I met Chris Christopherson, who is absolute genius song where I wrote me and Bobby McGee and many others.

[643] And he was a road scholar and an airborne ranger and a boxer and he was the kind of renaissance manly man that I aspired to be that I related to.

[644] And he came to Duke for a concert and I got to meet him backstage and I told him how much I loved writing and singing.

[645] And he said, man, you've got to go to Nashville.

[646] And he was thoroughly drunk at the time.

[647] But I thought, okay, and he didn't know me at all.

[648] but I seized on that advice.

[649] And I heard about a park, a theme park opening up called Opry Land.

[650] And they were looking for summer workers.

[651] And I went over and auditioned.

[652] And I did a comedy song that I'd written as a kind of a parody of a country song.

[653] Tammy Wynette had a hit about a couple who spell things so their children don't understand what's going on.

[654] and it was called D -I -V -O -R -C -A.

[655] I remember that, yeah.

[656] So you're from an area that they had country music.

[657] Oh, yes, definitely.

[658] Well, so I wrote a song called Me and the DoG.

[659] And they offered me a permanent job as manager of animal shows.

[660] And I had a piano playing pig named Pigarachi.

[661] And I had a duck that played the drum, and I named H. and Burt Back Quack, and had 8 ,000 people a day see that show.

[662] And I put it together.

[663] I hesitate to ask what the pig could play.

[664] The piano.

[665] He would play.

[666] Happy birthday.

[667] But the way we had it worked, there was a sequencer.

[668] It was the early days of the Moog synthesizer.

[669] And we had a sequencer so that wherever he hit on the keyboard are rooted.

[670] And I put a little sparkly bow tie on him.

[671] and he had a white chest and a black main body and white hooves.

[672] So he looked like he was in a tuxedo.

[673] See, this is one of the differences between Canada and the United States.

[674] That sort of thing happens in the United States.

[675] That would never happen here.

[676] Oh, it was awesome.

[677] Yes, it was awesome.

[678] And there's a theatrical element to the United States that always just stout.

[679] me when I go there, because it's almost completely lacking in Canada.

[680] And not to our advantage, I might also add.

[681] Well, I tell you, Jordan, when I went to Nashville and I left, I left Duke, I left, I had done one year at the seminary, I was head of the Religion Majors Committee.

[682] I was kind of a leader among students.

[683] And I was kind of, I hate to put it this way, but it was sort of the goal.

[684] olden child of my parents hopes that, you know, I was going to go be a doctor or lawyer and fulfilled.

[685] Right.

[686] The classic game of parents who want education for their children but aren't educated themselves.

[687] Yes.

[688] Of course.

[689] And I had actually spoken with my, my, my, the pastor of my home church, the one I grew up in.

[690] And, and he asked me if I felt the call to be a pastor when I was majoring in religion.

[691] And I, I just studied religion.

[692] because it fascinated me. And it seemed more relevant.

[693] And at that time, I hadn't settled on becoming a writer.

[694] And what year were you in university?

[695] When was this?

[696] What year was?

[697] I graduated in 71.

[698] I was in seminary until 72.

[699] So you were doing, you were studying religion right at the height of the hippie era, essentially.

[700] Oh, yeah.

[701] Absolutely.

[702] And did you have hippie leanings?

[703] Or were you buttoned down conservative type at that point?

[704] Well, I would say I was more conservative, but school was a time for me to try to be open.

[705] Like when you talk about the personality traits of openness.

[706] Yeah, well, you're very open.

[707] Well, I hope I am.

[708] Well, it shows.

[709] You wouldn't be driven to create that way, and you wouldn't have attained this level of success across these multiple disciplines.

[710] And the diverse range of your activities, that's all emblematic.

[711] of high, high levels of trade openness, right?

[712] So multiple interests, interest in philosophy, interest in fiction, interest in art, the capacity for aesthetic experience, all of that is deeply biologically rooted, all of that.

[713] It's a real, it's a really fundamental trait.

[714] Oh, well, the, the reason I, I wonder about the very, the various interplays of my traits, is that at that time, I was also considering going into the Marine Corps and being a platoon leader in Vietnam, which is the...

[715] Are you an orderly person?

[716] Yes.

[717] Oh, yes.

[718] Okay.

[719] And a hard worker.

[720] You said that right at the beginning.

[721] So you're very high in conscientiousness.

[722] That's orderliness and industriousness and very high in openness.

[723] And that makes you a complex personality because openness tilts people towards liberalism and radicalism, but conscientiousness tilts them towards traditionalism and conservatism.

[724] And so you have to marry those two opposites, rare combination of traits.

[725] Like the extreme levels in any traits are rare, but if you take the extremes of two traits and bring them together, that's particularly rare.

[726] Yes.

[727] And conscientiousness and openness fight to some degree, because if you're creative, you like to break things, but if you're orderly, you don't really like the mess.

[728] Yes, absolutely.

[729] In fact, Jordan, I think that that conflict within me has been the source of a lot of distress and depression.

[730] I felt I started to get depressed when I was in Nashville, and part of it was that I felt very alone.

[731] I didn't have many peers.

[732] I didn't have people with whom I could, that I shared musical interests with.

[733] that I could have a conversation about Kierkegaard.

[734] My, I have a, I have three sons and my youngest is named Soren after Kierkegaard.

[735] Nobody that I was around had any idea of what Soren meant or was, or although I had named him that then.

[736] But when I went to Nashville, I knew that I was, I was flying in the face of what my parents had sacrificed me. mightily for me to have.

[737] And it was really distressing for me. And I made a vow that two things wouldn't hold me back, a lack of effort or a fear of failure.

[738] So I would plunge in and wherever I had an opportunity, I would do the best I could.

[739] I was working 60, 70 hours a week at the animal show at the theme part.

[740] But I got up every morning at 4 .30 and would write a song every day.

[741] Okay, so that's, okay, so that's the first thing I'd like to highlight because I am interested in what's made you successful across these multiple domains.

[742] And part of it is, well, the marriage of openness and conscientiousness, there's a paradox there, but that capacity for dedicated work and discipline, conjoined with creativity, that can make both of them move very, very rapidly.

[743] Yes.

[744] Well, I got signed to Nashville's biggest music publisher, and they considered me really prolific.

[745] A song a day.

[746] And did you decide you were going to do that?

[747] You were going to get up at 4 .30 in the morning.

[748] You're going to write a song.

[749] So how did you, because are you waiting around for inspiration, or do you just write the damn song?

[750] If I dragged my butt out of bed at 4 .30 in the morning, I was going to write a damn song.

[751] Yes.

[752] And I actually learned later that that was too much, but I didn't know it then.

[753] I felt I have to...

[754] You have to do too much before you figure out how much is enough.

[755] Exactly.

[756] To be, when you're young, that's the time to figure out what's too much because you can actually tolerate it.

[757] Yeah.

[758] You can overload yourself and then pull back.

[759] Well, I was living in a one -bedroom apartment in a nice apartment building.

[760] I mean, it was clean, it was safe, but I had no furniture.

[761] I was sleeping on the floor.

[762] I didn't want to spend any money on furniture.

[763] And I saved my money.

[764] And after about two years, I felt I wasn't getting anywhere.

[765] I wasn't having any songs recorded.

[766] You know, I was making a little money with this publishing company, but not much.

[767] And I was making a pretty good salary at the theme part, but I'd saved my money.

[768] And I decided I was not being successful because I wasn't committed enough.

[769] I had a picture of Beethoven, which is a. rather iconic picture of him holding a notepad and frowning up at the sky and and I thought okay I'm going to be like Beethoven I'm going to commit completely and I um I quit my job and I spent all day every day alone in my apartment I almost never went out no friends no social life at all just writing, studying, practicing all day, every day.

[770] And after about four or five months of that, I had a breakdown.

[771] And, I mean, really, like, panic attacks, couldn't eat, debilitating depression.

[772] Are you extroverted?

[773] Yes.

[774] Yes.

[775] So that would have been very hard on you, that isolation.

[776] Yeah.

[777] I mean, I'm like my father.

[778] I'll go into a restaurant and I'll get to know the bus boys and I hug everybody and COVID's been bad on me. But it was raining every single day.

[779] There'd been 14 straight days without a patch of blue sky and I decided if I don't see some blue sky, I'm going to kill myself.

[780] And I loaded everything I could carry in a Toyota and I drove to California by myself and got at a day.

[781] here and kept trying to write songs, ultimately got a job because I was still running my own little music company, and that impressed some people in the music business that I could walk into an office without a calling card, without a company name, talk to the secretary, get past the receptionist, get my songs to the producers, and they were impressed with that.

[782] and they offered me a job.

[783] I was at a major music publisher for about a year, and then they had to cut back.

[784] Had you graduated from Duke at that point?

[785] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[786] How old were you when you went out to California?

[787] 25.

[788] Okay, okay.

[789] And then.

[790] And why California, apart from the sun?

[791] I mean, were you going there because it was Hollywood?

[792] Because it was, did you go to L .A.?

[793] Yeah, I went to L .A. But they had a music scene in LA that, so it was, music was either London, which I didn't have the money to go to, and New York, which I thought, they're going to hate me up there.

[794] I'm just, I'm a Southern Christian, they're going to hate me. And Nashville was, I didn't really love country music.

[795] One brilliant music publisher listened to my songs once, and he was so elegant.

[796] thoughtful.

[797] And he looked at me and he said, do you love country music?

[798] And I said, well, I really respect it.

[799] And he went, no, it's not what I asked you.

[800] He said, if you don't love it, it's not going to work here.

[801] And don't sell your soul for pennies.

[802] And I thought, well, L .A. is the only place where the kind of music that I seem to like besides London is happening and I'll go out and try it out there.

[803] And what did you like at that point?

[804] Who were you listening to?

[805] Guys like Cat Stevens.

[806] I thought he was an incredible blend of surprising music and ethereal, powerful lyrics.

[807] I also love Neil Diamond, who to a lot of my friends seemed real cheesy, but I thought...

[808] Do you know the Taproot manuscript?

[809] Oh, gosh.

[810] God, that's a great album.

[811] That was my favorite album ever.

[812] That's head and shoulders above anything else he ever made, and it's arranged so brilliantly.

[813] It's got one pop song on it, which really doesn't belong.

[814] But the rest of it is, it's really quite brilliant that.

[815] Oh, Suleiman is just incredible.

[816] And it works very well as an album, as a totality.

[817] It's great.

[818] My wife loved that when she was a kid, grade five, and I listened to it through her.

[819] And I've listened to it, you know, from time to time ever since.

[820] It's brilliantly arranged, too.

[821] Yes.

[822] Which is quite striking.

[823] Absolutely.

[824] That was my favorite album.

[825] ever, probably.

[826] Cool.

[827] Well, lots of people who are watching this won't have heard of that, so I would, regardless of your opinion of Neil Diamond, you should listen to Taproot Manuscript, because we did a lot of things in there that Paul Simon did about 20 years later, bringing in the African music and so brilliantly.

[828] It was very creative that album.

[829] Absolutely.

[830] And so that's so cool that that's your favorite album.

[831] Yeah.

[832] Who else?

[833] So Cat Steven.

[834] So you liked the, those were, very melodic, very lyric -based.

[835] Who else were you listening to?

[836] Van Morrison.

[837] I really loved Van Morrison.

[838] And of course, I like the Beatles, but I really like the Rolling Stones, too.

[839] And I thought they were not underrated.

[840] How could you say they were underrated?

[841] But if you listen to sympathy for the devil in the line, I wrote a tank in the general's rank when the Blitzkrieg raged and the body stank.

[842] Yeah, that's a killer song, that.

[843] I defy anybody, show me a lyricist that writes with more power than that.

[844] Yeah, he was somewhere else when he wrote that.

[845] That's a pretty dark song.

[846] It's a great song.

[847] I wasn't in a band, and I wasn't, it felt, that I was trying to get my arms around too much, that I didn't know how to go from sitting in a, I lived in, in Los Angeles, I lived in an attic over a garage.

[848] It was built in.

[849] It was a, it was nicely built in, but I could only, I'm six foot two.

[850] I could only stand upright in the very center of the apartment because the roof was so slanted.

[851] But I had a piano and I, I worked all day and on songs, but I just, I wasn't, I wasn't having any success then.

[852] And I met a woman who became my wife.

[853] And her father was absolutely brilliant.

[854] He had been a prisoner of war in World War II.

[855] He was a bombardier navigator and he was shot down in 1942 or early 43.

[856] So he's a prisoner war for a couple of years, Stalaglift 3, and he'd written a screenplay about his experiences.

[857] He was close friends with William Peter Bladdy.

[858] They had been, they had worked in the...

[859] Exorcist.

[860] Yes, and Bladdy was also a genius, and they had worked as an intelligence unit, a counterintelligence unit during the Korean War, and they were friends, and Blatty's success with Exorcist kind of inspired my father -in -law, and he'd written the screenplay, and I'd never seen one.

[861] And when I picked it up, it was on her coffee table.

[862] And the form lit me up, Jordan, because it didn't have the sort of pompous nature of so much modern fiction when the writer's trying to show off his knowledge it it it it it had there was an essential nature like when you talk about how to write and all the the editing to get down to the essence screenplays have to do that they were like songs and that every word has to count and all you can really portray effectively in a screenplay is what you're you see the character do and what you hear the character say.

[863] So what that character is thinking has to come through in what, which gets us back to that, how is thought manifest in, in the concrete world.

[864] And I decided to try that.

[865] And how are you, how are you surviving at that point?

[866] You were writing music.

[867] Were you, were you employed by this, this, this, this, the offices that you had walked into?

[868] Yeah, I had a job for a, for a year, and that they paid me well, and I was extremely frugal so that, I mean, I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I didn't, I didn't eat out, you know, I made beans and stuff.

[869] And so I was able to, I was able to get along and once in a while my mother would send me a little money and my father would call me and say don't miss any meals but he wanted me to not suffer but he wanted me to under to undergo the cost of my choices yeah well it's really hard when you're a parent to know how much to help your kids you know gosh it's you can easily overhelp them yeah oh yeah it's a real problem oh it's a it's it's such a hard question is you you steal from them if you take their problems away right you deprive them of deprivation yes you do you put it yes and do you deprive them of the of the of the solution that they might come to on their own too well i i landed a job with architectural digest the phone rang out of the blue one day that i i wrote a novel and got it published over the transom by a publisher called G .P. Putnam Sons.

[870] Oh, it's a great publisher.

[871] You must have been thrilled.

[872] Oh, gosh, I was over the moon.

[873] And my thought was, I didn't have an agent, but I thought I want to write my own novel before I take a class on novel writing or, you know, I don't want somebody who's failing at something, tell me how to do it.

[874] And I want to discover what is in me to do.

[875] what is my way?

[876] What is my style of doing this?

[877] And if I write the novel, then as well, it's Vince Lombardi, I believe was the one who said it.

[878] The more you sacrifice, the harder it is to surrender.

[879] If I write the novel, then I will be willing to fight my way through the rejections that will inevitably come to see it through.

[880] And I went to the library and got down a bunch of novels and copy the addresses of the publishers out and had 15 New York publishers, and I wrote 15 letters and described my new novel and asked if they would like to see it.

[881] And the very first one was G .P. Putnam's Sons, and they said, send us the first three chapters.

[882] I did.

[883] They called it a week later and said, we'd like to see the rest of it.

[884] Right.

[885] That never happens.

[886] And then I got 14 rejection letters, some of which I got after the book was published.

[887] And along in there, I got married and my wife got pregnant and my wife got pregnant.

[888] We got pregnant.

[889] And she had Mormon ancestors.

[890] and she knew because of them she knew the entire genealogy of her family back as far as it could be traced and all I knew was that we were Tennesseans I didn't know about Scott's Irish I didn't know about any of that you know we spoke English so I was like I guess we're English and but she had said to me I never really imagine being a mother, but if you get me pregnant, you have to promise to take me to Europe because she loved to travel.

[891] And she was a dancer, worked, made money, was very successful at it.

[892] And I was saving my money and I was writing for Architectural Digest at the time.

[893] I wrote eight or nine articles for Architectural Digest, which was interesting because I'd been living in an attic over a garage.

[894] It was really, you know, multi -million dollar homes.

[895] and well you probably appreciated the more oh yeah oh yeah and my my my my my gimmick jordan was most people who are reading this magazine don't have the money that the people who are living in these homes have but there must be some principle of making a place beautiful that is applicable and if i can share that with them and the way the the the person who's building the home both the the architect, designer, and the, and the owner, the way their personalities, what is driving their process, and all this could be interesting to the buyers of the magazine, who would read my article, and that seemed to resonate.

[896] So I would make nice money doing that and would save it.

[897] So we went to Europe, and I had heard that there were Wallace's in Scotland.

[898] So we were in London, and I suggested a detour to Scotland and we were walking into Edinburgh Castle and there was a statue of a man named William Wallace.

[899] And on the other side of the door, flanking the door with him was the statue of Robert the Bruce.

[900] And I knew Robert the Bruce from a Bobby Burns poem, which of course you quote the would send, you know, the gifted geists to see ourselves as others see us in your new book.

[901] I knew from Scots, which had with Wallace Bled, I knew the reference to Wallace from that Robert the Bruce poem about Robert the Bruce.

[902] So I asked a guard there, who is this William Wallace?

[903] And he said, he's our greatest hero.

[904] And I'm elbowing my pregnant wife going, greatest hero, I didn't hear that Wallace, greatest hero.

[905] And I said to the Blackwatch guard there, well, was he an ally of Robert de Bruce in fighting the English.

[906] And the guard said the magic words that every writer loves to hear.

[907] He said, no one will ever know for sure.

[908] But our legends say that Robert the Bruce may have been in on the betrayal of William Wallace to clear the way for himself to become the king.

[909] Well, I didn't know that William Wallace had been betrayed.

[910] But that statement was like hearing that Judas Iscariate and St. Peter were the same person.

[911] It made me wonder, what if there was something so powerful and profound in the life and death of William Wallace that it transformed Robert de Bruce from a person who would betray his country's greatest hero into this country's greatest king?

[912] And I thought, this is.

[913] is a mind -blowing story, but I had a pregnant wife and I had to find a way to feed her to feed her and my new baby.

[914] And I didn't feel ready to write that story.

[915] So we came back to Los Angeles and I got a job working in television.

[916] And television is an incredible grind.

[917] It's like running in front of freight trains.

[918] Yes, it's insatiable.

[919] Insatiable.

[920] And in those days, and in these days, like if you're on the Netflix series, it might be 10 episodes a year.

[921] year?

[922] Well, in those days, it was 22 episodes a year.

[923] And my mentor was a guy named Steve Cannell, and he taught me tremendous stuff.

[924] And, but one thing was - So how did you get a job in television?

[925] I had written a screenplay, and a friend of mine, I was working out at a gym, and I love to work out.

[926] In fact, it keeps me, it keeps me sane, and I just, I enjoy it.

[927] I enjoy it.

[928] I enjoy being in gems.

[929] And there was a guy there who was working out really ferociously as well.

[930] And he was telling another friend there stories about Elvis Presley.

[931] And my father had seen Elvis when he was the truck driver and was getting paid like $50 to sing at a supermarket opening.

[932] and I told him that story that my father saw Elvis at a supermarket opening getting 50 bucks and we started chatting and that guy that I was talking with was Mike Post who is the most successful television composer probably ever absolutely brilliant guy and we hit it off and became friends and one day he said to me how are you how are you making money you know what do you do and I said well I'm you know I write screenplays and I that's that's what I'm doing now.

[933] I'm a writer and and he said you ought to meet Steve Cannell and he was doing Mike was doing the music for Steve Cannell so Mike made it his business to get Steve to read one of my scripts and eventually a sample of my writing got there what attracted them was they were doing a show about a guy from Texas who's basically a well dare I say a shit kicker and and I was telling him lizard lick stories right right and they immediately and you know once I told him about the piano playing pig they were like give this guy an assignment and from my first assignment yeah that's definitely a door opening story that one yeah and so I got I and I became he became my mentor and we had a we had a really fabulous relationship for about three years and then we started to get sideways in and I guess it's an old story that you know a mentor and the mentee the protege you know the protege starts thinking he knows what he's doing and the mentor maybe you know has mixed feelings about it and and I realized I had to leave and and I did and what shows did you work on then Well, the first one I worked on was called Hunter, which was a long -running cop drama, also created, co -created with Steve by my friend Frank Lupo, who just passed away about a week ago.

[934] And they had done A -Team, and Frank and Steve had done A -Team.

[935] So I worked on a show called Hunter and this show called J .J. Starbuck and another show called Sunny Spoon, none of which became big hits, but they were all on for a show.

[936] about a season.

[937] And I made a lot of money doing it.

[938] I mean, I had a beautiful home and German cars in the driveway and a tennis court in the front and a swimming pool.

[939] Yes, you said you're a car.

[940] You said in your book that you're a car aficionado.

[941] I'm a hillbilly, Jordan.

[942] It's like Elvis.

[943] I love them.

[944] And so.

[945] Yeah, well, they were in the 60s and 70s, 50s as well.

[946] They were still simple enough so that you could kind of understand.

[947] understand them and have an affinity for them, you know.

[948] They've got so sophisticated now and so abstract that it's hard to, it's hard to fall in love with them.

[949] They're great.

[950] New cars are so good.

[951] But they're so good, they're kind of not interesting anymore.

[952] That's right.

[953] That's right.

[954] And all my relatives could fix them and tear them apart.

[955] And my oldest son restores cars.

[956] He'll take a junk, like 65 Mustang.

[957] And a year later, it looks brand new.

[958] He's he's incredibly gifted with that but deeply satisfying work that yes absolutely but um when i left when i left kennel it was terrifying in a sense because i had gone from having no idea where my next dollar would come from to my salary doubling every year for four years and then suddenly having no idea where my next dollar would come from.

[959] And I couldn't, having been Steve's protege and then getting sideways with him, I couldn't even get a meeting to pitch an idea at a network.

[960] And I went to features almost in desperation and decided that I would write that story that.

[961] So that was still lurking in the back of your mind.

[962] Oh, yeah.

[963] Yeah.

[964] And but there's a a watershed moment in this.

[965] I was, I felt the, the, the dark voices clutching at my insides, you know, in screaming through my head and my stomach was nodding up and my hands were trembling and I found I couldn't write.

[966] And, and I started to get really afraid then because I'd always been able to will myself through.

[967] That was, it was my most remarkable trait It was just that sort of Scottish stubbornness.

[968] No matter what the pain is, I can take it longer than you can dish it out.

[969] And I was finding that I felt I was betraying my sons.

[970] And I had...

[971] That's a terrible feeling that.

[972] Oh.

[973] You were getting depressed?

[974] Was that what was happening?

[975] Yes.

[976] Yeah, well, the problem with depression is that it actually saps that will.

[977] Like, not only is it painful beyond description.

[978] often, but it goes after the very thing that you would use to fight it.

[979] Yes, exactly.

[980] And my sons were the same age I was when my father had lost his job and had a complete breakdown, I mean, hospitalized and everything.

[981] And I just, I felt that lurking, and I got on my knees, and I said a prayer.

[982] And I, I mean, I had nowhere else to go.

[983] and I got on my knees and I prayed what matters most to me right now is my sons.

[984] Yep.

[985] And maybe the best thing for them is not that they grow up in private schools and German cars and, you know, nannies and everything.

[986] Maybe it would be best for them if they lived in a house, even one without indoor plumbing, the way.

[987] I lived when my father had his breakdown.

[988] But my father also showed me how a man gets up.

[989] And he did get up.

[990] And he came back to tremendous success.

[991] And I thought, if that's what you want me to show my sons, then please bring it on and please help me bear it.

[992] But if I go down in this fight, I pray, I go down not on my knees to Hollywood, but standing up with my flag flying, fighting for what I believe in.

[993] And I stood up, and I wrote the screenplay for love and honor.

[994] And that got me into the office of a young woman named Rebecca Pollock, who's Sidney Pollock's daughter, Sidney Pollock directed out of Africa, Jeremiah Johnson, three days of the Condor.

[995] And I told her the story of Braveheart in about 10 minutes.

[996] And she went, my God, go write that.

[997] And I said, do you want an outline or something?

[998] and she went, what, I'm going to tell you how to write act too.

[999] Go write that.

[1000] And that led me into...

[1001] What do you think it was about you that made doors open for you like that?

[1002] It's quite a remarkable theme.

[1003] I mean, these are all very difficult enterprises to gain a foothold in.

[1004] And you tell stories over and over about people offering you the chance.

[1005] Was that the salesman?

[1006] the salesman skill that your father had?

[1007] Do you think?

[1008] What was it?

[1009] I have to guess, Jordan, because to see ourselves as others see us is clearly the hard thing.

[1010] But I do think I am incredibly blessed that I had this salesman father whose heart was as big as the ocean and I had this brilliant mother who was who was absolute steel inside and and tender I mean she was she was an iron iron hand and a velvet glove and um but makes sense because you think well you need the creativity and you've got that and you need the discipline to work and you've got that but that's not enough you have to be able to market you have to be able to make contact with people you have to be able to communicate with them about your material because otherwise you languish but you have that too yes but i i think there's i think there's something and look you know whenever anyone says oh this was it you know thank goodness i have this gift of god is so self -aggrandizing like you're elevating your your gifts but but i think there was there is a a thing that i didn't create but i have chosen to follow which is there's something about being bold and being willing to take the punch, to be able to walk in.

[1011] It's like when I decided I would write my screenplay first, I like writing original screenplays without going to a company and saying, like it was an original screenplay, what we call a spec screenplay that got me into Rebecca's office in the first place, that got her to listen about Braveheart.

[1012] And there's an element of tremendous daring to say, I don't have to have your endorsement or your money to sit down and write this.

[1013] And in fact, I like the equation of it to say, if I write this, and I've made this choice a dozen times in my career, if I write it and it doesn't sell, I will live with that.

[1014] But I will have written what I believe I will have written what I want.

[1015] I will have written the movie I want to make.

[1016] And if you say you don't want to buy it, the next guy might, and then you're going to look like an idiot.

[1017] And that equation...

[1018] That theme comes out quite strongly in Secretariat.

[1019] Yes, yes, it does.

[1020] Because she pursues that investment in her horse, in that famous, remarkable horse, single -mindedly.

[1021] And at high risk.

[1022] Yes.

[1023] And I feel that there's something, and obviously we can be projecting this onto the horse.

[1024] But the metaphor of the movie for me was, actually, I wrote the song of the end credits called It's Who You Are.

[1025] It's not the prize.

[1026] It's not the game.

[1027] It's not the score.

[1028] It's not the fame when every road looks way too far.

[1029] It's not what you have.

[1030] It's who you are.

[1031] And in that you choose your race and then you run.

[1032] And I'll say that to myself over and over.

[1033] I say it to myself daily.

[1034] Don't miss the chance to live this day.

[1035] And when I'm divorced and it was the most wrenching horrific thing, of my life.

[1036] And I would, I would get out of bed in the morning and drop straight down to my knees and pray for the strength to get through the day.

[1037] And at the end of the day, when I would get down on my knees to say thanks, I would think, well, I did have faith today.

[1038] I did get through the day and at least enough to get through the day.

[1039] And, and if that catapult you into depression as well?

[1040] Oh, yeah.

[1041] Oh, yeah.

[1042] I mean, it sounds like it from what you're relating.

[1043] And that came through in your book too that that, I mean, you don't talk about it much, but when you touch on it, it's quite clear that that was an experience that, you know, took the slats out from underneath you.

[1044] Yes.

[1045] And that, and I don't, I don't talk about it too much because, you know, there are other people involved, but, you know, it's my family.

[1046] and it was wrenching for all of us but it may be the depression also contributed to the it was highly probable it's very difficult to live with someone who has a predisposition to depression yeah it's hard and so yeah it certainly it certainly was the fight and within me but at the same time there was something beautiful I mean, there were many beautiful things that come out of such darkness.

[1047] One was I was putting up Christmas lights that the house I had moved to to try to rebuild my life.

[1048] And my sons, I would see my sons three days a week, and that was very strained.

[1049] And I was trying to make my home look beautiful, and I was putting up Christmas lights, and I was getting really depressed.

[1050] And I was talking with my therapist as a brilliant guy.

[1051] And I told him about that.

[1052] And I said, you know, I can't really date anybody.

[1053] And I, you know, I'm not seeing my sons enough.

[1054] And my neighbors don't celebrate Christmas.

[1055] And I'm putting up Christmas lights and I'm getting more depressed doing it.

[1056] And he said, well, how about this?

[1057] You don't put your Christmas lights up for your neighbors to sit.

[1058] you don't put them up for someone you're dating to see you don't even put them up for your children to see god sees your christmas lights put your christmas lights up for god to see what a great way to think of everything we do in our lives like here's here's what it is most if i if i labor in an anonymity if nobody knows it um but i've done it so that god sees it then that's better than if I did something I don't believe in that everybody applauded me for.

[1059] And so that that's just been a, it's a choice I continually have to make and struggle with to affirm.

[1060] But it's the one I really believe in.

[1061] I don't think that people would create anything that was truly original if they didn't think like that.

[1062] you know because if it's original and surprising there's no track record for it there's no proof that it's valid right you have to you there's just no option but to take the risk and so if that line of thinking didn't exist then there'd be no way that you would take the risk exactly i mean i was always the kid that maybe that's why creativity and religion religious thinking are aligned so tightly It's that you have to make that leap of faith to produce something that's original, virtually by definition.

[1063] Yes.

[1064] And despite, you see that again, that theme sort of playing out in Secretariat because all the advice that is given to the Chenery, Chenery is her name, right?

[1065] Ms. Chenery, she owns this horse, remarkable horse, and anyone sensible would have sold him because she was going to lose everything.

[1066] including credibility.

[1067] Yes.

[1068] But she didn't.

[1069] And she was right, but there was no proof of that to begin with.

[1070] That was a leap of faith.

[1071] And I really don't see how you can do something original without that leap of faith.

[1072] Because just as I said, there's no track record.

[1073] Well, Jordan, I hadn't thought of this at all before this conversation, but it strikes me that there's something, as you mentioned that in common with you and her and when I say how isolating it is to take that leap I got to know Penny I've I've had the opportunity to make several movies about people who are still living when the movie's being made and every time I do it I swear I won't do it again because I'd rather be free to yes yes but I got to know Penny and boy there was fire in that woman and she was well into her 90s when we started making Secretariat and she was incredibly attractive the her eyes were so full of life and were so direct and when we went to the Kentucky Derby together right after the movie was made, which was certainly a magical moment.

[1074] You know, we just made the movie, and now we're going to, it's the next running of the Kentucky Derby.

[1075] And I got to go with Penny.

[1076] And of course, Penny is at Churchill Downs.

[1077] She was a rock star.

[1078] And, you know, everybody knew we were making the movie.

[1079] Disney movie is going to be seen by a lot of people.

[1080] and we saw the race together and everything builds up at the Kentucky Derby to the Derby itself.

[1081] The Derby is like the eighth race of eighth or ninth race of a whole day of racing.

[1082] So, and then there are races after the Derby.

[1083] So when the Derby was over, it builds this crescendo.

[1084] Everybody walked back into the party rooms and forgot us.

[1085] and I was left out on a balcony, just Penny and me. And we're standing there together, and I thought, okay, this is a sacred moment.

[1086] And this is probably going to be the last time I see her.

[1087] And she looked down at the horse that had just won.

[1088] They had taken the saddle off the horse and were kind of cooling him down.

[1089] And she looked down and said, that's a well -bred horse.

[1090] just casual comment, and I looked at it and said, Penny, we've come to the end of this movie process.

[1091] And now it won't be in the movie.

[1092] But tell me, what did you not tell me?

[1093] What did you want to say that it's never been told?

[1094] What have you kept from me?

[1095] And she paused and she looked down at the box seats where she would sit as an owner.

[1096] And she said, I sat down there alone every day, alone.

[1097] The other owners would tolerate me, but they never accepted me. And I just thought about that there's that cost of stepping out there, of leaping out there alone.

[1098] And the thing to me about it is, like there's a rather than you have to believe it's worth doing for itself.

[1099] Yeah, exactly.

[1100] And in a way, you hope it's worth doing, but you don't know.

[1101] I have a friend here who's a rabbi named Mordecai Finley.

[1102] And, you know, for anybody as Gentile as me, it's always fun when I say he's my rabbi.

[1103] And Rabbi Finley was a Marine.

[1104] He's a brilliant thinker.

[1105] And a friend named Steve Presfield, who's an incredible writer, wrote a book called The War of Art. which you'd be very interested in, I think.

[1106] But Steve Presfield was investigating his own faith.

[1107] He had decided to look into spiritual matters.

[1108] And he asked me to go along with him to Rabbi Finley's lectures at the University of Judaism.

[1109] And Rabbi Finley is a very practical guy.

[1110] He's got a son in the Marine Corps, has got a daughter of Israeli intelligence.

[1111] And he's a tough guy.

[1112] And he said, you know, people say, follow your heart instead of your head.

[1113] Well, your heart's the only thing less reliable than your head.

[1114] So that statement sort of sat for a minute and somebody raised their hand and said, well, then how do we know what to do?

[1115] And Rabbi Finley paused for a long time, as you do, by the way, when like you're considering the question of fresh.

[1116] It's not like, oh, here's my pat answer.

[1117] It's like, well, let me find what's the true answer right now?

[1118] And he paused like that.

[1119] And he said, a couple of times in my life, I've been hanging by my fingernails over the abyss.

[1120] And I let go because I couldn't hang on anymore.

[1121] And I fell into the arms of God.

[1122] And he said, I didn't know it would be the arms of God when I let go.

[1123] if I had known it, it wouldn't truly have been letting go.

[1124] And I was sitting there in this crowd of people going, and he looked at me and pointed at me and he goes, Christians know this.

[1125] Christians know grace.

[1126] In our tradition, we have to sort of look for that concept.

[1127] It's there, but we have to look for it.

[1128] But he said, it's grace.

[1129] And I think about that, it's, it's, I, don't know every time when I sit down that I'm not wasting my time, that I'm not just going to ruin a ream of paper or that I'm not going to beggar my children, or I'm not going to write something that somebody is going to hate.

[1130] But my mother had a saying she gave me when we had just made we were soldiers and my father died as it's written in my book about at the end of we were soldiers my father passed away he died on 9 -11 and and we after after his funeral and I was back to work I was calling my mother every day and and I called her and said how are you doing and she said well I'm doing I'm doing okay how are you doing and I said well I'm nervous today and she said why?

[1131] And I said, well, you know, we're testing the movie tonight.

[1132] We're going to have its first public test.

[1133] And she said, well, why does that make you nervous?

[1134] And I said, well, there are a lot of people that come to these things intentionally just to be snarky, just to, you know, to sling mud at you.

[1135] And when you've put your blood and your sweat and your tears and your money into a work, and you know people are going to do that.

[1136] It kind of makes you nervous.

[1137] I would say so.

[1138] And my mother said, well, honey, if they crucified Jesus Christ, they're going to be some people that don't like you.

[1139] So, Jordan, if they crucified Jesus Christ, they're going to be some people that don't like you.

[1140] You know, I would like to talk to you for another three hours.

[1141] hours.

[1142] But I think that's a really good place to stop, I think.

[1143] Great.

[1144] And I really enjoyed that.

[1145] And it was delightful to hear your stories and to talk to you.

[1146] And I'm so happy that you decided that you'd participate in this podcast.

[1147] I think people will find it quite interesting.

[1148] So I should ask you what you asked, Penny, is there any?

[1149] anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to let people know about?

[1150] You know, Jordan, I think the big thing I'm trying to figure out right now.

[1151] And I, again, I draw inspiration from you in this, to, you know, to be a teaching professor and to start to lecture and to start to use media and to find an audience in different ways.

[1152] I love making movies and it's it's my calling.

[1153] I love music too and I and I'm and I'm trying to figure out how to to get it all out, how to just do it and to let people know it exists.

[1154] And I'm not sure the proper way in anticipation of doing this I made a little website for that new song I wrote called Praise You the Lord because I think an affirmation right now is what we really need to do.

[1155] Look at all that we have going for us instead of being listening to fear.

[1156] So I'm trying to figure that notion out.

[1157] So I'm really going to be watching you to learn from how to do that.

[1158] And what the best way, because there's a part part of me, too, that goes, I really want to be left alone.

[1159] I don't want to be recognized.

[1160] I don't want to be, I don't want to be noticed.

[1161] But I also, as the Bible says, you don't take a candle and put it under a, you know, a table or under a bushel.

[1162] You know, you try to show it.

[1163] That's a very unfocused thing to say.

[1164] But that's what I'm trying to figure out.

[1165] Between you and me personally, that's the, that's the thing I'm trying to figure out at this stage of my life is what do I do with all the things that I'm doing I don't know the answer I think it's really helpful to let people see into your life a bit you know people are so fascinated with what goes on and in Hollywood what goes on with people who are creative to to say what it's been like to talk about that that's interesting and compelling and so and so we managed to do some of that today.

[1166] And so hooray for that.

[1167] And I'm looking, I tell you, I'm very much looking forward to this new movie.

[1168] Do you have a title for it?

[1169] The Swiss Guard.

[1170] And how about a proposed release date?

[1171] Any idea?

[1172] It would probably be 2022.

[1173] And I try to make the kind of movie that I would want to see, you know, that I would want my sons to see that I want the people that I love to see.

[1174] So it amazes me that you and your wife watched Secretariat, and that thrills me. So I hope this is a movie that would be worthy of your time to sit down and watch it.

[1175] I'm very much looking forward to it.

[1176] I hope we get to talk again.

[1177] Me too, Jordan.

[1178] All right.

[1179] Let's stay in touch.

[1180] Thank you, my friend.

[1181] All right.

[1182] Thank you.

[1183] God bless you.