#144： Living the Braveheart Life With Randall Wallace
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, I interview the man who created the William Wallace that we know because of Braveheart, Randall Wallace Wallace, about his life before he became a writer, director, producer, and songwriter, and about the inspiration that led him to write the film Braveheart.
Transcript
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we're at mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well
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believe it or not we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie brave
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heart now if you're like a lot of men who grew up in the 90s this movie might have been a touchstone
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for you at least it was for me i remember when i played football on game days my buddies and i
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would get together to watch this movie to get pumped up watching william wallace rouse his troops the
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battle scenes watching the final scene where he yells out freedom before he gets executed it's
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just a movie that fills you with thumos and inspires you well today on the podcast i have the man who
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created the william wallace that we know because of braveheart his name is randall wallace he's a
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screenwriter director producer also a songwriter and he recently published a book called living
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the braveheart life finding the courage to follow your heart and it's the story of how his life led
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up to the creation of braveheart really powerful book it's a story of courage of passion of love
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of family of setbacks of faith and today on the podcast we discuss all these topics and the lessons
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we can learn from the film braveheart really powerful discussion one of my favorites i've had
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in a long time on the podcast so you think you're really gonna get a lot out of this so without further
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ado randall wallace living the braveheart life randall wallace welcome to the show great to be with you
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brad so you are a screenwriter producer director songwriter who's worked on a lot of touchstone
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films in american cinema and the one i think a lot of men particularly uh know you about and was sort
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of your breakthrough was braveheart and we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of it i guess it is the
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20th anniversary which is crazy it makes me feel kind of old um because i remember when it came out
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um and you gotta think it makes me feel i can't believe it's 20 years either yeah it's nuts um but
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along with this you come out with a book called living the braveheart life which is a really great
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book it's part memoir part uh you know insights on being an artist part insights into life and what i
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loved about it it seemed like the book living the braveheart life was really the story of how writing
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braveheart braveheart helped you write the story of your own life exactly um so i'm curious let's
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talk about that i mean what was your life like before braveheart and where did the inspiration come
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to write braveheart because what i understand that the story of william wallace there really isn't that
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much historic history about him we know little like fragments about him but you're able to develop
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this really enriching story about him and robert the bruce the the literal history of william
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wallace is uh known almost not at all um winston churchill in his series of books called a history
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of the english-speaking peoples mentions william wallace and says that almost nothing is known about him
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in terms of literal historical fact but his legends have inspired the scottish people for centuries
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um that's the way i came across the story i was looking for my own family heritage um my wife was
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pregnant with our first son and she knew her her lineage uh back on all sides to many generations because
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she has mormon ancestors and um so because she knew hers i wanted to have some balance and know mine and
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uh was looking for my roots in uh scotland and came across the statue of william wallace and
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and the fact that very little was known about him um but on a deeper level uh to go back to your
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question my life before braveheart um was in my view really rich um i grew up in the south i grew up in a
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really um staunch protestant family tent revivals um church all the time and in some ways that uh sounds
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like torture to people in some ways it was but i was exposed to the greatest literature uh the most
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magnificent music orators who could hold an audience for hours on end and um and you know of course far
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more important than that i was exposed to to christianity and and the the story of jesus of nazareth
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and that was always important to me um i i wanted to live my life for some purpose greater than my own
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appetites and um and i was inspired by by the story of jesus more than any other um but i was talking
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with my family pastor who asked me if i felt the call to be a minister and i said i don't though i know
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it's the greatest calling anyone could have and he said you're wrong the greatest calling you could
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have is the one god has for you and um that was as if i had been knighted brett it was um feeling that
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someone had released me to do everything i wanted to do in life or to try whatever i wanted to try
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and i um i was really successful at school i went to duke university i majored in religion and had minor
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studies in russian and creative writing i i had a time when i wanted to join the marine corps and their
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platoon leader corps and then the malai massacre happened and um i i i saw that war as being in a stage
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that was not something i wanted to go be a part of um but i really admired the people who had
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put their lives on the line for their country i struggled with being a songwriter um came to
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los angeles um i got into television writing and had a lot of success there uh then had some dark
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moments and it was in those dark moments that i came to write braveheart the the answer to why
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i i feel that this that writing braveheart was in some ways writing my own life is that the whole
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situation of my life boiled up into the story of braveheart um a man who has to stand on a battlefield
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and say i will live or die right here and living doesn't necessarily mean that my body survives
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this battle but i will really live and that's where every man dies not every man really lives came
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from and it's where the the whole trajectory of my life i believe was set in that decision to write
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what i wanted to see and stories that i wanted to hear myself and this kind of stories i wanted to tell
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my own sons and not what i thought hollywood wanted me to be or hollywood wanted to buy
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it's amazing um so i mean when you were saying that that line you know every man dies and not
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every man lives i mean i get chills you know every time i hear it um it's just so evocative and what i
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love about braveheart and i think why it resonates with so many people and particularly men um is because
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it hits on there's gore there's battles there's violence there's that but it hits on these really
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these deep visceral ideas that just get you to the bone um and you talk about this in the braveheart
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life and so for example you talk about how both braveheart and living a braveheart life
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is is a story or it's about fathers and sons and the relationship and in your book you talk about
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how your own father and his role in shaping you as a man can you tell us a bit about your dad and how
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he helped you become the man you are today yeah that's uh that's in some ways the richest question
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in life and red i love that you use the word visible um we we somehow want to make a separation
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between our minds and our bodies and our spirits um the word soul to some people means soul like soul
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music is is powerful and down to our core but other people use it as if there's some disembodied
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um thing this this ghosty mist that's somehow our being my father connected me to life and um
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um and the way we relate to our fathers i think is the as profound a relationship as we ever have
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it's a part of the way we relate to our sons the way we relate to our wives or daughters our friends
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um and the way we relate to ourselves our our dads give us um our first taste of our own identity
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especially as men what does it mean to be a man we look to our fathers my father was really different
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from me um on paper and if you you looked at us we seemed so different my father uh was
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a much more compact man than i am um i'm sort of long and slender and my father was was much shorter
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he was i i loved every sport there was if it was a ball or a bat or involved running into each other
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or punching something i wanted to do it my father saw absolutely no use in running up and down a field
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he couldn't see how that made money and my dad's whole life was about um how to survive because
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he was a child of the depression and of world war ii uh in my my parents generation the worst sins
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a person could commit were laziness and cowardice and that was understandable since the
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economic survival was so vital to them being children of the depression um and and my father
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at 14 years old went to work full time i was very smart but he had no one to encourage him to go to
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college and um his own father had died before he was born so my father would would take my sister and
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me when we were very young to a graveyard and we would stare at a um a monument uh a granite monument
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that said wallace on it and my father would say this is my father um and we we never met him we
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had not really even seen pictures of him so um it was in some ways mysterious to us why our father would
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want us to look at that that stone in some ways i think it's because he he was trying to to wrap his
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own mind around who his father was and the idea that this man who didn't have a father of his own not
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a father who was breathing when he took his first breath should become the greatest of fathers uh a
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caring i once said to somebody um my father may not have been a perfect man but you couldn't prove
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that by me in my mind he was because he never raised his voice to us he never raised his voice to my
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mother he never struck her he never drank he never embarrassed us we're always proud of our father
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um he was a salesman and i i have always felt if he were alive today and we were to send him
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to afghanistan or iraq those people would become our friends because he would he would go find
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something to like about them and he would and he would show that to the world and to himself as
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he would see any person and and recognize their their value um one of the most moving things my father
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died at the end of of uh our making of we were soldiers and the last time i saw him he was uh on the set of
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our movie the last time i saw him uh before he went to the hospital and got sick and um uh and when he
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passed away i wrote the lyrics to the hymn mansions of the lord about my father and um when i was back
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working on the the post-production of the movie um one of the vietnamese guys who worked on the movie
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came i tell the story in the book he came up to me and and in this broken english he said mr randy i
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i'm so sad about your father and i said thank you very much and he said i spoke with your father and
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i said yeah thank you let's get back to work because i didn't want to get emotional again it was only like
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a week after my father's funeral and um this young man said no you listen to me and i stopped and
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he said your father asked me where is your father and i said my father died in vietnam and your father
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said to me then i'll be your father um complete stranger um it you know it moves me now it i can barely
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tell the story um and i'm quick to add that i i told this guy very fast listen if you think that
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makes you an heir and you're gonna get any inheritance you can give that up you're not
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you're not getting any money but uh uh but that was the way my father was and um he didn't want me to
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be a writer um he wanted me to do something secure as every father wants to see their sons be safe
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and yet he was proud of me for going out into the battlefield of hollywood and no one was
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more proud of braveheart or anything else i did than my father and one thing about fathers and i think
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a lot of men have experienced this and women too with their parents is that you think they're
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superheroes right that they're invincible yes and but then there's always that moment something
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happens in their life and you see the chink in the armor for the first time and you see that
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they're vulnerable and that they're they're not super superheroes um and you had that experience
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with your dad and can you talk a little bit about that and how that even though it was his darkest
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moment how that how you became stronger how you became stronger from it that's the been in many
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ways the great mystery of my life and and it's something that i refer to in the book as the wound
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um that i realized as you as you say my father was wounded under his armor and he was bleeding there
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and and maybe had always been in part because he didn't have a father of his own in part because of
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what the loss of her young husband had done to my grandmother and the way she had been to raise him
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but when my father who had had a really meteoric rise in business in the 1950s he had gone from
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um being a an apprentice salesman trainee in a national candy company to being a divisional sales
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manager he was head of several states um the salesman in all those states um and then um
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and he and he had a swagger and he had a confidence he he was never overconfident it we um he lived
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really frugally uh far below our means uh as i would come to find out later but um he he was they the
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company was sold to a bunch of uh mbas who believed the way to increase profits was to fire all the old
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guys that were making high salaries and he was one of the old guys at 38 and they fired him
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and the idea that anybody would fire my father just broke him he couldn't he he'd never experienced
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anything like failure he had been trained by his mother to believe that he had to be perfect in
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everything and the idea that anybody would not want him on a company that he'd given his heart and soul
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to um really shattered him and i also think he felt he didn't have any safety net and he began to doubt
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his own strength his own confidence um i say in the book that that we're all have to see ourselves as
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fathers even if it's not biological father but you have to find a father and you have to be a father
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even if it's not your biological child you need to be a teacher and have a teacher you need to be a
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warrior and be in the company of warriors um and i believe my father lost his warrior spirit
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uh for a time and as you say it was it was devastating to him and devastating to us to see
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our father who who was always so confident always knew what to do and to see him have a nervous
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breakdown what it also did for me brett was it when when the time came when i thought this was about
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to happen to happen to me when i felt my own um confidence and my own nerves and even my own body
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rebelling when i felt so um desperate that uh my my career seemed to be unraveling and i'd always used
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work as my weapon determination uh when i started my career i said to myself i can't guarantee that i have
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the talent the talent to make it but what will never stop me will be a fear of failure or a lack
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of trying and uh and i found a time in my life when i was afraid and and couldn't even seem to get
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myself um out of this cramp of of emotion and um and my i remembered my father and the way he had
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he had hit the bottom and then he had worked his way back to the top and a top much higher than he'd
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ever thought and that's what happened with me i i i got down on my knees and prayed sincerely
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if i go down in this fight let me go down with my flag flying not worshiping a false idol of what
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hollywood says we should go after and be uh let me let me write the kind of story that is me that gives
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me goosebumps that brings tears to my eyes or or makes me laugh out loud i will do that and i'll take
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whatever the result is and had it not been for my father showing me the way a man is my father couldn't
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teach me to write but he could show me what a man was that's what a father is yeah i love that and
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you call those moments uh braveheart moments right those moments where you have to dig deep and really
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you know find out you know what you really believe in and then go for that yes exactly you've got to
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find out you sometimes you want to say i want to follow my beliefs but there are times come when you
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go i'm not sure what i believe yeah you're right that's part of a braveheart moment yeah um so
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besides fathers um friends and brothers and sisters plays a big role in living the braveheart life and
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you uh you talked about one of your friends in particular that i wanted to meet the guy after
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i read about him it's a bob from afghanistan can you tell us a little bit about bob and how he helped
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you maybe uncover braveheart or the braveheart life in your in yourself yes i met this guy um through a
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a funny uh circumstance that i described in the book um when i met him i i thought he was exactly
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the kind of guy that i would hate um he he's from afghanistan i i he looked like as i say in the book
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he looked kind of like a a middle eastern lounge lizard to me except that he was so strong and there
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was something different and when i say a lounge lizard i mean that he was wearing like gucci clothes
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and armani suits and you know when i was in shorts and a t-shirt and um uh i and he was just so elegant
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and i was so uh rough and country so i just thought here's a guy i'll have nothing in common with
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but i sat down across from him the first time we ever spoke and i liked him instantly he had
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first of all a huge manhood about him he was he was strong and tough and the kind of strength that
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makes a man look you right in the eye without without a kind of challenge just with a complete confidence
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in who he is and um just this great quick laugh of poetry in his soul and he turned out to be from
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afghanistan now i met him years and years before afghanistan became to us what it is today of uh
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a place where where we were bogged down in in war he his his father um was the head man of the helmand
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province which is today which would and it was then the way it is today this um uh hotbed of
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of rebels and independence uh but i'm there's a garbage truck outside and i'm going to pause for
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just a second shut the door sorry i don't you're fine i don't want to ruin the sound
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knowing that you can edit yep we're good um so bob from afghanistan
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came bob from afghanistan is the son of a man who was the the chief the head man the godfather if you
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will of the entire helmand province and the his mother was part of the royal family of afghanistan
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afghanistan and uh he had this incredibly um rich background in afghanistan but he had come to america
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with a few hundred dollars in his pocket knowing only a couple of words of english
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um he worked three or four jobs he was educated um his formal education here at a community college
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and he became a spectacularly successful businessman um but what he taught me
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was that here he was from the other side of the world from a culture radically different from mine
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um i grew up in a christian family he grew up with a mother who prayed multiple times a day and his
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father was head of this entire muslim culture um he does not himself uh practice islam and he and i've
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talked a great deal about my faith um but i must say i respect i respect his no matter what the label is
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that he puts on it um but i found that we were brothers that we were um we love the same things
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um and that all of the work and struggle that he has gone through in his life um where his all of his
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brothers except one have died um in many ways in the fight for independence uh for afghanistan um when the
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russians were there and in various other struggles um and all the all the the hard battles that he has fought
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in his life have not taken his spirit in fact he viewed them i think as um a chance to be what he is
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supposed to be those are the battles that a man must fight so he is a man and they're his battles and he
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fights them um and he he grieves deeply uh when he loses someone he loves i've seen that happen i saw him
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when he lost one of his brothers um but he he overcomes that he he is a man in full and the idea
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that here he is so different from me and yet we have this brotherhood in common um is one of the
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the clearest examples to me of of what it means to have a brother and how important it is what a rich
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treasure it is um i was once asked a question about um why i make movies about honor and and courage and
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sacrifice it was a a japanese writer who asked me and um i'd never been asked a question like that it
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was around my first movie man in the iron mask and i said well i suppose it's because the second
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greatest wealth any man can have in life is to have someone in his life who would die for him
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but the greatest wealth you can have is someone in your life you would die for
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the translator translated it um he says that you're a samurai and when you come to tokyo he wants to get
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drunk with you um and i think that a man in japan a man in afghanistan and a man in america
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we're all men and when when a man is a man uh when a man has that has that attitude of there's
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something greater than my own physical survival uh then you have a brotherhood and you found somebody
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that will inspire you and that's what bob does for me yeah that's amazing um and i think you're
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right i think across cultures men understand that they understand when when someone says you need to
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be a man some people will will inevitably fall on the sort of the tropes of masculinity that you know
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sort of shallow ones but i think most men deep down know no it means you got to be brave you have
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to have a sense of honor you have to have a sense of uh love like a deep like what would you call
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fraternity or brotherhood um yeah i think your movies do hit on that big time brett what you just
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said when we hear in our current culture you've got to be a man what that often connotes is the
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opposite of what being a man is being a man when when that said i thought it means you're supposed
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to ignore pain you're supposed to mask off your emotions you're supposed to stop being honest
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um now of course there are times when we say i've got a man up here meaning i've got to overcome these
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things but it doesn't mean let's ignore them let's pretend that we don't have them um and those men
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across cultures i think what you're describing here is we're recognizing in each other that the cost
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of um of caring of loving of having loyalty and honor there is a cost and you see in the other man
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this is the guy who pays that bill and that's a man that i want to be like
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yeah um so one of the things i love about braveheart i think a lot of men love about it is
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that it is like some people call it the manliest chick flick ever made um because in the end the
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movie is about love it's about the love of family the love of country the love of people the love of
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freedom and it seems like braveheart is the very the great incapulation of this idea that
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to be a man is to both cultivate hard and soft virtues um how do you think men and there are not
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talking about military guys just everyday guys can cultivate those sort of braveheart virtues that
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are both hard and soft wow that's such a great question and i i think that um on a practical level
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it's that we need to be in relationship with each other with other men and we need to to have
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relationships with women that you know i say in in the book that um a man who does not honor women can
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never live a braveheart life it doesn't mean we have to agree with them or do what women seem to try
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to get us to do and look i um i can't i can't claim i've been divorced for 15 years i can't claim that
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i'm an expert in in a male female relationships but i do believe that women will on the surface be trying
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to get us to stop being men and yet the last thing they want us to do is to stop being men
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they desperately need us to be men just as we need them to be women and there there are differences
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thank god i mean god made them difference made us different and um uh and for us to revel in those
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differences is is part of the the beauty of life um i think that to be a braveheart man
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means that you you face fears rather than run from them that's one of the first things you cannot
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i mean bravery means um uh being yourself in the face of danger or fear uh sometimes the danger isn't
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nearly as great as the fear is and the only way we can find that out is by looking the fear in the face
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um i i had a period of my life um and i still of course have it from time to time but um it was
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around the time of my divorce when i would get out of bed in the morning and get on my knees and pray
00:33:24.860
with all my heart for the strength to have to get through the day with courage and um and not be not
00:33:35.220
be dragged down in despair and that night when i would start to crawl back into bed i'd get down
00:33:41.580
on my knees again to say thank you i got through this day and and i realized i did have courage in
00:33:49.900
that day and the only way you can have courage is if there's something in your life that that is
00:33:56.440
dangerous to you we want to have the opportunity to be courageous and the only way we can do that
00:34:06.300
is by stepping forward into the arena where something is at risk our ego our finances our physical
00:34:18.720
comfort um comfort uh but that is the only place where courage is required and and a brave heart
00:34:29.120
feeds off of courage and courage uh only exists in the presence of fear so fear isn't a bad thing it's just a
00:34:40.160
factor um it's a reality of um of that dynamic of of the presence of courage
00:34:51.220
so it seems like i just remarked our talking that faith is a really big thing in your life an important
00:35:00.600
thing and when i was thinking about it last night uh about brave heart it is in a way not only a story
00:35:06.160
of love it is a story of faith in a lot of ways that william wallace had this belief in scotland that
00:35:13.020
he couldn't see but he believed in it and he thought it was true and he did all he could to make it work
00:35:18.980
so in a way it is it is a story of faith so i'm curious what role does faith fit into living the brave
00:35:25.920
heart life brett i i believe that these words that we use faith courage love hope are in many ways
00:35:42.800
the same thing yeah i know i know we use them in different contexts and and they have different
00:35:50.940
connotations to us but they all mean the same thing that william wallace
00:35:56.720
love the at least the william wallace that i wrote uh i have to you know i i tell the story in the
00:36:05.340
book that like on the wall of the air force academy are the words they may take our lives but they'll
00:36:12.240
never take our freedom and the attribution under them is william wallace well william wallace
00:36:17.320
didn't say that i but he said it now william wallace said it now that's right it's my ego
00:36:24.240
talk yeah but the william wallace that that i wrote um loved his country so much and i believe the real
00:36:34.560
one too by the way that that he loved his country so much that he thought the only way i can help
00:36:43.560
scotland be free i can contribute that i can i can allow that dream to to still breathe is if i am
00:36:54.160
willing to put myself in the hands of people who have already betrayed me um and this of course
00:37:04.140
the does not come from my reading the encyclopedia britannica about william wallace it comes from my
00:37:10.780
reading the new testament about jesus of nazareth uh that that is the that is the story that that
00:37:18.660
comes from but my um but i don't wrap my understanding in a given doctrine or our terms um when people
00:37:33.960
will ask me about uh you know say well can an atheist go to heaven or um you know i have these
00:37:40.920
wonderful discussions with various friends of mine um great writers who are um even greater friends and
00:37:50.940
um and some of them call themselves atheists or agnostics or various other forms of religion
00:37:58.180
and and i always tell them look there's a a passage in the bible something jesus said and i feel
00:38:06.500
absolutely certain that he said it very much exactly as we have it in the bible he tells a parable of a
00:38:15.760
a father says to his two sons go to work in my field and one son says i will and he doesn't and the
00:38:25.660
other son says i won't and he does and jesus says to the people he's teaching so which one did the will
00:38:33.980
of his father and i take that in terms of the labels we use for ourselves when we talk about faith
00:38:41.040
um you know there are people that say i'm a believer but you say well do you do the will of god
00:38:49.680
and there are other people say i don't believe in any of that but you look in their lives and you
00:38:55.600
think they manifest love and faith and courage and and i say to myself i don't judge i i thank heaven
00:39:06.260
i'm not the person who decides um where whether somebody is in heaven or not and uh and i i do believe
00:39:15.880
that heaven is here um and i think you know jesus taught heaven is all around us but i try not ever
00:39:25.240
to get wrapped up in arguing about labels i get wrapped up in are we doing the will of the spirit
00:39:34.780
that made us that made the universe the what what made the stars made us and um and i believe we're made
00:39:44.160
for our purpose uh and i believe that purpose is love and i believe that that courage is one of the
00:39:52.400
manifestations of that so that's all yeah that's my understanding of the moment sure and when you bring
00:40:00.180
that like following that will right however you want to describe it that can be a very scary thing
00:40:04.900
right like you you get this thing like you you get this feeling or this compulsion this is what i need
00:40:10.000
to do but then all around you you have these well no if i do that that i might lose my job uh my yes
00:40:17.240
friends might laugh at me yes it's it's it can be terrifying at times yes and i i very early on
00:40:25.040
um very early on i made the linkage of if i try something bold daring even reckless
00:40:36.740
i will feel better uh i will feel better about the result than if i never attempt something like
00:40:43.980
that i like myself better and i feel more myself when i'm doing something crazy like i'll write a
00:40:53.460
screenplay i'll write a novel i'll write a song i believe that writing is an act of faith is an act
00:41:01.060
of courage um i believe what you do is exactly the same i whenever you speak the very notion that you
00:41:09.560
have something to contribute um is certainly an act of courage listening his too of course um but
00:41:18.080
uh i think the very fact that we are on this planet we find ourselves uh as boys or girls
00:41:29.980
when we become aware okay i'm here i came from someplace i when i i've described this in the book that
00:41:39.540
i i watched a son being born i've seen all my sons be born and shortly after one of them was born
00:41:47.920
i watched my mother breathe her last breath and you look at a child coming into the world
00:41:56.000
and i cannot witness that without feeling i have just witnessed an overwhelming miracle
00:42:05.400
um and when i see someone that i love as dearly as we love our mothers breathe her last breath and i look
00:42:16.300
at what was once her body and now it looks like a husk i understand why human beings have always
00:42:24.700
grappled with this and had a sense of soul or spirit of look for a word because she was no longer there
00:42:32.960
um and um we whenever we have that experience when we find ourselves saying okay i am here i am in this
00:42:44.500
world i don't know where i came from i'm not sure what's on the other side of this life
00:42:49.980
but why am i here and you're either going to behave as if that was a random accident or you're going to
00:42:58.560
behave as if it's a gift then and you are given it for some reason and it's not yours forever and that's
00:43:08.400
why i believe every man dies but not every man really lives and our whole purpose is to find a way to be
00:43:19.380
really alive but we're going to end on that um because that's a great way to end randall wallace
00:43:25.800
thank you so much for your time this has been an absolute pleasure brad thank you so much can't
00:43:31.600
wait to do it again and i will anytime with you buddy this is wonderful thank you thank you my guest
00:43:37.760
today is randall wallace he's the author of the book living the brave heart life finding the courage
00:43:42.040
to follow your heart it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere go out and get it it's a
00:43:46.260
really great read well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for
00:43:54.080
more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com
00:43:58.260
and if you enjoy the podcast i'd really appreciate it if you'd give us a review on itunes or stitcher
00:44:02.580
help us out giving us some feedback on how we can improve it as well as getting the word out about
00:44:06.320
the podcast thanks again for your support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay