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Here's Randall Wallace with his own story. Music has always been the voice of God to me. Not the voice of intellectual understanding, but it feels to me that music is the language of God. That it speaks directly to your soul.
It comes from your soul. Real music does. Not intellectual intervals and notes and music theory, but the joy in it. And I just wanted to play music when I was, boy I got my first guitar when I was 12. And started playing songs like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and those heroes of Memphis. And went to college and wrote a song and started playing it for people and in coffee shops. And people liked it and I made a record and had a local hit.
And about that time Kris Kristofferson came to Duke and Kris Kristofferson epitomized, did then and still does, to me a kind of artist like I related to. Whenever I've been faced with a difficult decision, I do all the things I guess everyone else does of trying to weigh the pros and cons. But that never really seems to be how the decision happens. I seem to have a sense from the get-go of what I'm going to end up doing. I'm looking for ways to understand what I'm going to do. A friend of mine who's a psychotherapist said, I don't think we really think with our brains.
I think we use our brains to rationalize our emotions. And there's a lot of truth in that for me. Well, I wanted so badly to pursue a career in music and I would look for people who epitomized the kind of person I wanted to be. Kris Kristofferson was an airborne ranger. He was a Golden Gloves boxer. He was a Rhodes Scholar. And he wrote songs unlike anybody else that were just brilliant, songs that I love. So I thought, well, what did he do? And here this Rhodes Scholar, he didn't go to New York or L.A., he went to Nashville.
And I thought, well, maybe I should consider Nashville, even though I didn't really see myself as a country writer. So he came to do a concert at my school and I guess I could thank my father for this. I had just never been afraid to talk to a stranger. And I waited for a respectful moment. I was backstage before his concert.
And I saw him talking with a few people and just kind of casual, laughing, talking. And I walked up and said, excuse me. And he turned around, looked me right in the eye. I said, hey, man, how are you doing? And we shook hands. And I said, I really don't want to bother you, but I just want to ask you a question. He said, sure. And I said, I am a singer songwriter and I love to write songs.
And I had a little local hit here on a record that I made. And I'm not sure what to do. My parents really want me to go to law school or med school. And I'm having a struggle and I just love your thoughts. And he went, you've got to go to Nashville, man. You've got to go. You've got to go. I love to tell this story because here's a life strategy.
A stranger who doesn't know you at all and has never heard your music and is drunk, tells you to do something and you go, absolutely, man, sign me up. That's where I'm going. So I can't blame him or credit him too much, but I've run into him three different times since then. And that was a long time ago, decades ago. And each time I've thanked him and told him who I was. But he was so gracious and grateful when he heard it. That's great. That's so great.
And that's been a joy to me to in some ways get to pay him back. I was in Nashville in the early 1970s and I had gotten a job at a theme park there called Opryland USA. And I had auditioned with a comedy country song that I'd written because I didn't have a lot of sort of straight country material. And they'd given me a job as manager of animal shows and managed the Animal Opry, which was a live show in which trained barnyard animals played musical instruments.
Had a pig named Pigarachi who played the piano and a duck named Burt Backquack that played the drum. It was a great show. I loved this show.
8,000 people a day would see this show. And I was working there 80 hours a week at Opryland. But I was also writing songs and doing my best to write country songs.
And I got signed at Tree Music, which was a fabulous company, the largest BMI company at that time. And you're listening to Randall Wallace tell the story of his own life. He spent so much of his life telling the stories of other people's lives.
This time it's Randall on himself. Starting out as a young musician growing up in the Tennessee area, Memphis, and then spending a part of his young life in Nashville at the suggestion of a drunk songwriter who he admired named Chris Kristofferson, who knew nothing about Randall's musical proclivities or the styles or tastes of Randall Wallace as related to what kind of music he'd actually like to write. And there he finds himself in Nashville running the Animal Opry at Opryland and, of course, while they're landing a gig with one of the best publishing houses in Nashville. When we come back, more of Randall Wallace's story here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day we set out to tell the stories of Americans, past and present, from small towns to big cities and from all walks of life doing extraordinary things, but we truly can't do this show without you. Our shows are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and make a donation to keep the stories coming. That's OurAmericanStories.com.
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Exclusions apply. See Lisa.com for more details. And we continue with Al American Stories and the story of Randall Wallace as told by Randall himself. He's written and directed many of the movies we know and love. Braveheart, We Were Soldiers, Secretariat, Pearl Harbor, Man in the Iron Mask, Heaven is for Real is the author of seven novels. And also a terrific musician and songwriter, he wrote the lyrics to Mansions of the Lord, one of my favorites.
Let's pick up where we last left off. I was working there 80 hours a week at Opryland, but I was also writing songs and doing my best to write country songs. And I got signed at Tree Music, which was a fabulous company, the largest BMI company at that time. And there were great songwriters there like Bobby Braddock and John Hyatt and others.
And they wrote absolutely brilliant songs. I wrote songs that I felt were really good and they apparently thought my songs were good, but they didn't fit kind of in the country category. And a sort of country music legend named Wesley Rose sat down with me one day and listened to my songs and said, these are really good songs, but do you like country music?
And I said, well, I respect country music and I love it, but it's not quite my thing. And he said, don't sell your soul for a few pennies, like find the thing you love to do the most. And it's interesting that that echoed something that I had been told by my pastor of the church that I grew up in. When I decided to major in religion at school, my pastor said to me, do you feel the calling to be a pastor? And I said, honestly, I don't, but I know it's the greatest calling that anyone could have.
And he said, no, you're wrong. The greatest calling anyone can have is the one God has for you. And that bit of sharing from him allowed me to leave seminary, to leave school and head off to Nashville.
I wanted to be like Beethoven, like nothing but music all day long, every day. But what you find is Jordan Peterson talks about you find your limits, that you can't do that all the time. You need people, you need conversation, you need encounters, you need disagreement. You need the grinding points where soul is created.
You need those things. And I got really dark. I went through 14 days without a patch of sunshine. So I told my best friends, I need you to help me pack up my place, but I've got to get out of here. I was really depressed and drove to California alone, kept writing songs, but wasn't really getting anywhere. And I started dating a woman that I ultimately would marry. And on her coffee table was a stack of pages that were bound in an interesting way.
And I said, what's this? And she said, it's a screenplay written by my father. And he had been a prisoner of war in World War II and written an incredible story. And I picked it up and began to read it.
And I loved the format instantly because it was clear and it was powerful and it was unpretentious. You could only show the reader what you could see a character do and what you could hear the character say. You didn't have to go into explaining and expounding all of your literary references. You didn't have to show your erudition. Just what does the character do?
What does he say? And from the first line of doing it, I thought, this is my medium. Because all the training that I had in writing songs enabled me to write lyrics because every syllable is valuable. And I wrote dialogue in a lyrical way. I wrote it with a kind of musical and dare I say poetic rhythm to it because it was music that led me into screenwriting. But also the music was not divorced from the experience of screenwriting or later on in directing. A movie is like a symphony.
It's a whole piece and it has its quiet parts and it builds and it repeats and it interweaves. And I know that nothing that we do gets wasted. All things work together for good if you love God. And I don't mean as a reward.
I mean you love what is ultimate and significant and real. And you keep loving that and that makes everything you've done and everything you're doing have its place, have its value that you can draw from. I was in Los Angeles and was writing novels now and writing screenplays based on my novels and novels based on my screenplays. And I would go to the gym a lot and work out. And one day I was in a gym in Studio City, California near where I lived. And a guy was next to me helping a friend who was really out of shape. But this one guy who was in really great shape was talking the friend through it. And I thought, well, that's a great guy to do that for his buddy. And the guy in good shape was telling stories about Elvis Presley.
And I sort of chimed in and said, my father saw Elvis Presley sing at a supermarket opening in Memphis. And the guy went, really? And we started talking and we just talked about working out.
And I was working out a lot and he said something about me being in good shape. And he said, do you run any? And I go, not for a long time. I ran in college, but I haven't run any. And he goes, well, I'm in a running group. Why don't you come run with us on Saturday mornings early at six o'clock? And I went, great.
OK, super. I had very few friends. I was in an isolated kind of mode. And he introduced him and said, I'm Mike Post. And I said, I'm Randall.
Wait, what? Mike who? Mike Post. And I go, the music Mike Post? Because I knew he had had a hit with classical gas. And I knew some of his other.
I mean, Mike Post is musical genius. And he said, yeah, yeah, that's me. And I started I went with this running group and was running all for a couple of years with them. And and Mike said, what are you doing to get your career going?
I said, I'm all I know to do is write stories and sort of show them what I can. And he went, well, I work for Steve Cannell. And I think Cannell would really like you. You're you're kind of his kind of guy. And well, man, Steve Cannell was then king of television.
A team was his biggest, but Hunter, all sorts of shows. And Mike said, give me a minute. I'm going to get back to you. So he talked with Steve about me and Steve said, I get I I'll hear about him if I'm supposed to hear about him. I don't want to read, read any of his work. So Mike came back and said, I want you to write a spec script for every episode that Cannell has. And he had six different shows on television. So he was telling me, write six different shows for which you will not be paid.
But just write six episodes and you're going to you're going to demonstrate how willing you are to work. And I did that. And Steve didn't read any of them. But Mike was not going to give up. And Steve was doing a show called J.J. Starbuck about a country guy. And I wrote Steve a letter and I said, I know everyone in his brother's trying to get in to see you. I just want to tell you a story about why I would be the guy to work on this show. And you're listening to screenwriter, director, author and musician Randall Wallace share his story, his journey from Nashville and the East Coast to the West and how he just knocked around for a bit and had some really great breaks. And to be able to bump into a guy like Mike Post, a legend in the business, and then make his way into this really difficult business to crack into, which is TV production with a monster talent like Stephen Cannell is just an opportunity of a lifetime. And also bumping into that thing called a screenplay, sitting on the desk of his future bride's place, reading it, seeing it and knowing that the screenplay was the medium for him. And also that insight that he stumbled upon from his pastor.
The greatest calling anyone can have is the calling God has for you. When we come back, more of Randall Wallace's story here on Our American Stories. DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the NFL playoffs, is bringing you an offer that will help you make the playoffs electrifying. New customers can bet five bucks on any game and get 200 instantly in bonus bets. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now. Use the code BOBBYSPORTS. New customers can bet just five bucks to get 200 instantly in bonus bets with the code BOBBYSPORTS. You've got to put in the code BOBBYSPORTS. It helps us.
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We were soldiers secretariat. Heaven is for Real is the author of seven novels and also a terrific musician and songwriter. He wrote the lyrics to Mansions of the Lord, one of my favorite songs.
Let's return to Randall Wallace with the story of how he went from songwriting to working for Stephen Kennel, one of the great TV producers of the 1980s and 90s. During the Depression, my grandfather started a country store and he built a store out of wood he salvaged. And he didn't have enough money to to buy the stock that he needed to to sell in the store.
And the only place that paid cash in the town was an ice factory where they would freeze huge blocks of ice and men would sling them onto wagons so that the farms without electricity could keep their milk and their meat cold. And my grandfather went to work on that crew. And the first day the foreman came up to him and said, listen, I want to let you know that I cuss at the men to get them to work. And if I call you a son of a bitch, don't pay me no mind. I don't mean nothing by it's just the way I am. And my grandfather said, I understand completely. And I just want you to know that if you do happen to call me a son of a bitch and I hit you in the face with a claw hammer. Don't pay me no mind. I don't mean nothing by it's just the way I am. Those are my people.
Those are the people that I know. I think I could write your show for you. I got a call not from Steve, but from one of his producers saying, OK, we're going to give you a shot. And I wrote the script. And the next day, Steve came in and said, I want you to be on staff.
And the next script I wrote, they made me a story editor and the next script I wrote, they made me a producer. So Steve became my mentor and one of his greatest qualities, other than being incredibly talented. I mean, a genius. But he had a quality of he loved what he did. He never lost enthusiasm for anything that he did.
Steve died of melanoma. The day he died, he still got out of bed to map out a story, a new story that he wanted to write. He loved what he did and he loved sharing it and he loved teaching it. And he was he was a powerful mentor in my life.
But none of that would have ever happened without Mike Post. I was on quite a trajectory in television. I, I went from a freelancer to being a producer in a really short time, maybe six months or so. And I also realized that I had to have ambitions beyond just the television world. And I don't mean in any sense to demean that world. Television is incredibly lucrative.
It's incredibly influential. But I also felt that I didn't want to be a cog in a big wheel and that I always would be if I was grinding out episodic television. And and I was writing feature scripts and I was writing novels and is still writing songs.
And in trying to look outside the world that I was in, I realized there was kind of a glass ceiling for me there. And I remember packing up my office and and I had gone from having no money at all to having a really good income. And I quit. And I remember going down to pack up my office and my son, Andrew, was then only seven years old or something. And I took him down on a Sunday to clean out my office with me and we're packing up in. And I was knotted up.
I was I knew I was facing like total unknown. And Andrew said, Daddy, how are we going to eat? And and it was quite a moment.
And just the two of us in that office and with all my stuff packed into boxes and I sat down in the chair, put him in my lap. And I said, son, that's a really good question. And this is a really scary time. And I've been working for the last four years to make Mr. Cannell wealthier man and make him better known and to make us some money. And now what I'm going to try to do and I am going to do is make us more money and let us have a reputation to let us stand on our own. And it's going to be scary. And that's what we're going to do. And he went, got it. OK. And in his courage, his love and his trust in me was.
Profoundly important to me. So cut to it's it's a year or so later and I can't even get an appointment. I can't get a pitch meeting because the business was treating me like, well, you were Steve Cannell's protege. You were on the ascendancy. Now you're out of that company. You must have screwed up some way.
We don't even want to talk to you. That was literally the way it was. And there were, I think, people from Steve's company who had maybe poisoned the well for me a little bit. And I know Steve hadn't. He was too good a man and too proud a man to talk down on my abilities.
But I think, you know, that there's just that kind of front runner bandwagon mentality in Hollywood. I was so tense. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep.
And I certainly couldn't write. And I felt that I was going to put my sons through the same thing that I had gone through when my father had a breakdown. And I got on my knees, which was the only place I had to go. And I said a prayer. And the prayer was what really concerns me now that my primary responsibility is my sons. And maybe they'll become better men if they don't live in a big house in California with a swimming pool and tennis courts and fancy cars in the driveway.
Maybe they'll learn more if they live in a house, even one without indoor plumbing, the way my sister and I lived when our father lost his way. But if that's what God wants, if that's best for my sons, then please bring that on and help me bear it. But if I go down in this fight, let me go down, not worshiping Hollywood, but standing up with my flag flying, fighting for what I believe.
And I stood up and I went back to my desk. And without that moment, I would have never written, they may take our lives, they'll never take our freedom. What will you do without freedom? Will you fight? Right? Against that? No! We will run and we will live. Aye? Fight and you may die.
Run and you'll live at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom? And you've been listening to Randall Wallace share with us a very personal story about in the end where some of the language for Braveheart came from. And a lot of it had to do with his own existential struggles with his own life, with risk taking, with fear. And that prayer he prayed for his son was a simple one that we've all prayed.
Maybe, Lord, your plan for them is to have less, not more, and for us to be true to you and not to our own calling. And Randall had this fervent prayer and out comes that scene from Braveheart. And that's what you were just listening to in Mel Gibson's epic speech as William Wallace.
When we come back, more of the remarkable life story of Randall Wallace, the connection between creativity and courage, love and fear, and so much more here on Our American Stories. The star-studded AFC vs. NFC flag football finale at Camping World Stadium. Be there live for an action-packed weekend. The Pro Bowl Games, presented by Verizon, Sunday, February 4th.
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It helps you. The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit www.1-800-GAMBLER.net. In New York, call 877-8 HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY 467369. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org.
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See lisa.com for more details. And we continue with our American stories and with Randall Wallace. Let's pick up where he last left off. I said a prayer, and the prayer was, if I go down in this fight, let me go down not worshiping Hollywood, but standing up with my flag flying, fighting for what I believe.
And I stood up and I went back to my desk. And without that moment, that would have never written, every man dies, not every man really lives. For the day, it will be awful.
Every man dies, not every man really lives. I'd never have written freedom. It can all end right now. Peace. Just say it.
Cry out. Mercy. Mercy!
Just say it. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.
Jesus knows it. The prisoner wishes to say a word. Freedom!
Never written that. And I had to be in that moment. God had to put me in that moment to mold me into this new direction. I say in my book, Living the Brave Heart Life, it's more powerful to believe than to know, because we never fully know anything.
So science, you listen to a great scientist, the whole notion of science is, we think this and this seems to explain everything for now, but there's all this stuff that we don't know. We were having a negotiation, my wife and I, about having children. And she said, look, I'm really not eager to have them, but I know you want to. So if you get me pregnant, you've got to agree to take me to Europe.
And I went, done. And we got pregnant. We went to Europe. And we were in London. I said, you know, I would love to be able to tell, we knew we were going to have a son.
I'd love to be able to tell him some part of my ancestry, like you know all of yours back hundreds and hundreds of years. And I hear there are Wallaces in Scotland. Let's go up there and poke around a little. And she went, sure, why not? It's an adventure. Let's go to Scotland.
She was four months pregnant. We went to Edinburgh. We walked into Edinburgh Castle.
And as we walked into the castle, my eye fell on a statue on one side of the castle. And it's William Wallace. And there's the name Wallace. And I went, what Wallace?
And the other side was Bruce, Robert the Bruce. And I grabbed a member of the Black Watch, a guard there, a tough little guy on a kilt, and said, who is this Wallace? And he said, it's William Wallace. It's our greatest hero.
And I went, greatest hero, honey, greatest hero. And I knew about Robert the Bruce from a Robert Burns poem of Scots which have with Wallace bled. And that was how I knew that there must be Wallaces in Scotland. And I said, was William Wallace an ally of Robert the Bruce in fighting the English?
And this guard said, well, no one will ever know for sure, which of course are magic words to a writer. What our legends say, more magic words to a writer, that Robert the Bruce may have been one of those who betrayed William Wallace into the hands of the English to clear the way for himself to become the king. Now, I knew none of that history, but it was as if I had heard that St. Peter and Judas were the same person. In that instant, the tumblers all tripped into my head and I thought, how does Robert the Bruce be someone who could do such a terrible thing, betray the hero of his country? But he becomes the country's greatest, most courageous king.
How does that happen? What if there was something so noble in the life and death of William Wallace that that's what transformed Robert the Bruce? I knew in that moment it was an incredible story that I wanted to write, and I didn't feel I was yet ready to.
For one thing, I had a baby on the way and I had to find a way to feed him. So I went into television and focused on television first, but in television I gained the skills and didn't know when the time would come until that moment when I got on my knees to say the prayer of, I'm not going to worship Hollywood, I'm going to stand up and fight to write the kind of movie I want my sons to see. And that's what William Wallace means to me. And people will say, oh, well, you're not a relative. And I go, you can't prove that.
And I can't prove that I am, but you can't prove that I'm not. I had a meeting with Mel Gibson once when we were doing Braveheart, and Mel was the biggest star in the world, and I was a completely unknown screenwriter. Hollywood was starting to hear about me because suddenly this script that they had never seen was getting made. But Mel and I were at dinner, just the two of us in London, and he was talking about a role that he was thinking to cast, and I was questioning the casting choice a bit. He said something absolutely stunning to me. He said, look, the truth is writers write, directors direct, actors act from their essence as a human being. He said, this script is you. It is right out of your soul.
It is you. He said, I'm going to bring everything I have to directing it. A few years ago, I did a charity screening of Braveheart in Austin, Texas. And at the end of the movie, I was in a theater, a small theater, into the movie, I walked up on the stage to do a question and answer with the audience.
And the first person who stood up was a 19-year-old woman on the front row. And she stood up and said, Mr. Wallace, I don't have a question. I just want to tell you something. My fiancé died six months ago. And before he died, he told me he wanted me to watch Braveheart so I would understand the way he loved me.
It took me a couple of minutes to compose myself enough to speak after that. It confirmed for me what I always have said, that it's not war stories that I write. It's that until you find who in your life you would give your life for, you're not really alive yet. That's when, you know, I think Mark Twain said something like, the man who is fully ready to die is the one who is living.
He said it better than that. But that's the thought. And I think kind of animal instinct for survival is powerful, but it's not particularly admirable in that it's just inherent.
It is what it is. It exists in everything from, I guess, from ants to angels. But the notion of finding something that you put above yourself is where I think you really, for me, it's where I began to find actual meaning. I'm living for someone else. But to me, faith has to do with standing in awe and in accepting that there is a God and it's not me. And that I try to listen to what God has to say.
That's where I find the most meaning. And a terrific job on the production and editing by our own Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Randall Wallace for sharing his story with us. His one man show, The Brave Heart of Creativity, is touring the country.
To find out where it's playing or find out how to bring it to your town, go to WallaceEntertainment.com. I love what he said about his movies, particularly the war movies. It's not war stories I write. They're love stories until you find who in your life you would give your life for. You're not really alive.
You also talked about putting things above himself, that that's when you find real meaning in your life. And of course, faith is such a big part of Randall's life, standing in awe that there is a God and it's not me. Randall Wallace's story, here on Our American Story. With the league's biggest star players and you. The reimagined spectacle features skills competitions, NFL legends and unforgettable player moments. All leading up to Sunday's star-studded AFC vs. NFC flag football finale at Camping World Stadium. Be there live for an action-packed weekend. The Pro Bowl Games, presented by Verizon, Sunday, February 4th. Tickets start at just $30. Go to ProBowl.com slash tickets to get yours today.
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