The Ben Shapiro Show - Gary Sinise | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 37

00:00:00.000 One of the things I was going to do in Germany was go to Landstuhl Medical Center, which is the main hospital in Germany where people come right off the battlefield and they go to the hospital.

00:00:09.000 I walked in and I had a USO hat on and I didn't know what to say or how to start it.

00:00:14.000 And somebody looked at me and he said, Lieutenant Dan.

00:00:16.000 Hello and welcome to the Sunday Specialist.

00:00:26.000 Our special guest today is Gary Sinise.

00:00:27.000 He has a brand new book out.

00:00:28.000 We're going to be talking with him about his journey in acting, his journey in service, his work with the military.

00:00:34.000 We'll get to all of that.

00:00:35.000 But first, with only days left until Valentine's, it seems like everybody is selling bouquets.

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00:01:39.000 Now, I'll also remind you, you need to subscribe over at dailywire.com to hear the final question that we'll be asking Gary today, because that question is going to be so monumentally interesting that you're going to want to get behind that paywall.

00:01:50.000 So go check us out.

00:01:51.000 Go subscribe over at dailywire.com.

00:01:52.000 Gary, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:01:54.000 I really appreciate it.

00:01:54.000 Good to see you.

00:01:55.000 So, he has a brand new book.

00:01:57.000 The book is Grateful American, A Journey from Self to Service, and it really is an inspiring book.

00:02:02.000 We're living in a really divided time, obviously, Gary, and it's really, I think, a difficult time for most Americans, but it's a really uniting story.

00:02:08.000 So, let's start from the beginning.

00:02:10.000 How did you get into acting?

00:02:12.000 You were telling me earlier that you grew up on the south side of Chicago.

00:02:15.000 How do you go from there to world-famous movie star?

00:02:18.000 Well, it's a bit of a long journey, but there's a story in the book where I talk about that.

00:02:26.000 Just a circumstance.

00:02:28.000 I stumbled into it, really, or somebody stumbled into me when I was in high school.

00:02:32.000 I was kind of a rock and roller.

00:02:35.000 I had bands.

00:02:36.000 I played in bands from the time I was like fifth, sixth grade or something like that.

00:02:42.000 I had guitars and played in rock bands.

00:02:44.000 Then I did that in junior high school.

00:02:46.000 Then I got into high school and I had a lot of trouble in high school.

00:02:50.000 Academically, I was really struggling.

00:02:53.000 This was in the late 60s and early 70s.

00:02:56.000 It was a time that crazy things were going on.

00:02:59.000 The Vietnam War was happening during this time.

00:03:01.000 I got caught up in some mischief there during my high school years, and I was struggling.

00:03:09.000 I was having a lot of trouble.

00:03:11.000 You know, one of the things I did to escape was play music and play in bands, and I was standing in this hallway one time when I was a sophomore in high school.

00:03:21.000 This is Highland Park High School in Illinois, on the north side of Chicago, north suburbs.

00:03:27.000 I'm standing in a hallway, and this little lady, this little blonde lady comes blowing down. 1.00

00:03:32.000 I mean, she was like a Hurricane or typhoon or something, just whipping by.

00:03:37.000 And I'm standing here with my rock and roll pals, you know, looking pretty scrubby and, you know, grungy and everything.

00:03:45.000 She turns around, she goes, she goes, have you ever been in a play?

00:03:50.000 And I said, no, no, no, we're rockers, you know.

00:03:54.000 And she said, well, I'm directing West Side Story and you look perfect for one of the gang members.

00:03:59.000 So come and audition for the play.

00:04:00.000 And she blew off down the hall. 0.99

00:04:03.000 And we kind of looked at each other and laughed and everything like that.

00:04:05.000 But the year before, when I was a freshman, I went to another high school in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

00:04:13.000 And it was Glenbard West.

00:04:15.000 And they had done West Side Story at the school when I was a freshman.

00:04:18.000 And I went to see it.

00:04:19.000 And I thought it would be fun to get on stage and play gang member and dance and rumble and all this stuff.

00:04:28.000 So I thought about it a little bit.

00:04:31.000 And after school, there was the audition.

00:04:33.000 And I decided, well, let me just go down there and just see what's going on.

00:04:36.000 So I was standing outside the audition.

00:04:38.000 All the pretty girls were going in. 1.00

00:04:40.000 We didn't have to audition.

00:04:41.000 I'm just thinking about it.

00:04:43.000 So I turned to my bass player who was in my band.

00:04:45.000 I said, let's go in.

00:04:47.000 And we went in, and they handed me a script.

00:04:49.000 I didn't know what I was doing or anything like that.

00:04:52.000 And I got up there.

00:04:53.000 I started stumbling around, making jokes.

00:04:56.000 People were laughing.

00:04:57.000 And she put me in the play.

00:04:58.000 And that was the beginning of my acting.

00:05:00.000 After that, it changed my whole life.

00:05:02.000 I mean, I was really a struggling kid.

00:05:05.000 I was having a lot of trouble.

00:05:08.000 And I write about that in the book, and I think young people might be able to connect to that.

00:05:14.000 I was just not, academically, I had a lot of trouble.

00:05:18.000 I never learned how to read and write properly.

00:05:22.000 And, you know, those fundamentals you learn in first, second, third grade, I just wasn't paying attention at all.

00:05:28.000 I could barely read.

00:05:30.000 So when I got up there and auditioned for the play, and then I got in the play, and then I found this community of people that kind of really, I just felt comfortable in it.

00:05:41.000 And then I just wanted to do it over and over and over.

00:05:43.000 And all through high school, I kept acting in plays, and I ended up being one of the You know, one of the top guys in the theater department.

00:05:54.000 And because I was such a screw-up, you know, early in high school, I didn't have enough credits to graduate on time with my class, so I had to go back to high school for a final semester.

00:06:06.000 So I was supposed to graduate in 1973, and we say in the book that I graduated in 1973 and a half.

00:06:11.000 That's when I graduated.

00:06:17.000 But I kept doing it, and I met one of my best friends in high school, who's remained one of my best friends for years, Jeff Perry, who's a well-known actor here in town, and then he was in the play, West Side Story, and Jeff and I became fast friends, best friends, did a lot of work together in high school.

00:06:36.000 He went off to college, and then I started Steppenwolf Theatre, and he came and worked with us in one play, and then we founded What has become a theatre that's lasted for 45 years now.

00:06:49.000 Can you talk a little bit about Steppenwolf Theatre?

00:06:51.000 So for folks who don't know Steppenwolf Theatre is now one of the most storied theatres in the country.

00:06:54.000 And you were obviously a founder of it.

00:06:57.000 What was the original idea of it and what do you think the legacy of it has been?

00:07:01.000 Well, the original idea was just kids wanting to do plays.

00:07:04.000 That was it.

00:07:04.000 We just wanted to, you know, kind of in that Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, let's put on a play kind of thing.

00:07:10.000 And we did that.

00:07:11.000 And we found a church kind of that would let us use the church during the week.

00:07:17.000 And we would rehearse our plays and perform them on the, you know, on Friday and Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights.

00:07:26.000 That became the foundation of Steppenwolf Theatre.

00:07:28.000 You know, it was really started by 18-year-old kids.

00:07:33.000 17, 18-year-old kids.

00:07:34.000 And now this theatre, as I said, it's... I mean, this was 1974 we got this going, so it's 45 years old now.

00:07:41.000 We own four buildings.

00:07:43.000 We're building another one.

00:07:44.000 I mean, it's kind of crazy when you look back at it.

00:07:48.000 And you see what teenagers with a passion and a dream and a desire and enough energy and kind of this you don't know what you don't know kind of attitude gets you.

00:07:59.000 And it laid the groundwork for something that we built as we moved from Highland Park, Illinois into the city of Chicago.

00:08:08.000 Renovated another space that David Mamet had originally started.

00:08:13.000 We took that over.

00:08:14.000 We were in there for eight years, and then we built a building from the ground up, and now we own three or four buildings in the same area.

00:08:21.000 I mean, it is a pretty amazing American story, and something that probably could only happen in America, that a high school screw-up could be doing this sort of stuff.

00:08:29.000 You know, through sheer willpower and creativity, because we now live in a time when people tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how victimized they are, how difficult they've had it.

00:08:39.000 You sound like you didn't come from a background where you were significantly privileged beyond sort of the normal privilege of living in the United States.

00:08:45.000 My dad, and I write about the family in the book, my dad was a film editor in Chicago.

00:08:50.000 He started learning the film business when he was in the Navy.

00:08:54.000 He processed film He was in the Navy during the Korean War.

00:09:00.000 At one point they said, do you want to go on a ship or do you want a camera?

00:09:04.000 And he took the camera and he started taking pictures.

00:09:07.000 Then they put him in the lab at the Pentagon, you know, in Anacostia.

00:09:13.000 It's a naval base right there.

00:09:16.000 In D.C.

00:09:16.000 and they put him in there and he was receiving the top-secret film that was coming back from the front in Korea and he had top-secret clearance and he would process this film and take it over to the Pentagon and they would analyze the war footage to help them with their battle plans and things like that.

00:09:33.000 So he learned the film business.

00:09:36.000 He was editing things and all that and then when he got out of the Navy he went back to Chicago and started his own film company.

00:09:44.000 It was, he made a modest living, it wasn't the, you know, the tremendous living, but he moved, he moved us from the south side, where I grew up in, I was born in Blue Island, Illinois, lived in Harvey, Illinois, and then we moved up to the northern suburbs of Highland Park, and that's where I went to school, that's where I got into acting, that's where I met Jeff Perry, that's where Steppenwolf started, and it was really, it was, it just, I was kind of a kid who was always kind of aimless.

00:10:11.000 My dad was working all the time.

00:10:13.000 I describe it in the book.

00:10:15.000 And I was sort of on my own.

00:10:16.000 My mom had her hands full dealing with my sister and my brother and her mother and her sister. 0.92

00:10:22.000 And I was just kind of crazy out there learning things on my own, trying to figure it all out.

00:10:27.000 So at an early age, I think I learned this sort of do it yourself, go at it.

00:10:34.000 If you can think it, you can do it sort of attitude.

00:10:36.000 You know, don't wait around for somebody to hand you something.

00:10:39.000 And so that's where all that came from.

00:10:44.000 And, you know, I continued to do that as time went on.

00:10:47.000 So how did you get from Chicago out to Hollywood?

00:10:49.000 So my own parents, my dad and Bob are both from Chicago.

00:10:52.000 They ended up in Hollywood because my dad wanted to do scoring for films.

00:10:56.000 That was a dream that never worked out for him.

00:10:58.000 How did you end up out here?

00:11:01.000 Well, it's a combination of things.

00:11:03.000 You know, I started Steppenwolf with my buddies, Jeff Perry and Terry Kinney.

00:11:07.000 And then my parents in 1977, they moved to LA from Chicago because my dad was a film editor.

00:11:17.000 He had a business in Chicago.

00:11:19.000 They wanted to open a West Coast office.

00:11:21.000 So he opened that office out here in 1977.

00:11:24.000 in 1977.

00:11:25.000 In 1979, I took a little break and came out here, took a little break from Steppenwolf, came out here, lived with my parents to try to get in the movie business.

00:11:35.000 I, I, There's some funny stories about some of the things I did back then.

00:11:40.000 But it didn't work out.

00:11:42.000 I just really struggled.

00:11:44.000 I couldn't get in the door.

00:11:45.000 I was trying to sneak onto lots.

00:11:47.000 I was trying to audition for things.

00:11:49.000 I couldn't get a job.

00:11:50.000 I couldn't get an agent, you know.

00:11:51.000 It was just a terrible time.

00:11:53.000 They kept telling me to go to get acting lessons.

00:11:57.000 I had this theater company in Chicago that I worked with, and I would tell them about that, and they said, well, I never heard of it.

00:12:05.000 Go get some lessons.

00:12:06.000 And so it was really frustrating, frustrating time.

00:12:10.000 So I went back to Chicago, went back to my theater company, ended up being the artistic director, started directing a lot, and directing plays.

00:12:21.000 And some of the plays that I was doing just hit.

00:12:25.000 One of them was called True West by Sam Shepard.

00:12:30.000 John Malkovich and I were in that together and we moved it to New York.

00:12:35.000 It was the first play that we moved to New York from Steppenwolf.

00:12:40.000 Malkovich was an early member of the company.

00:12:44.000 We worked together a lot and did that play And it was just a big hit.

00:12:52.000 It was huge.

00:12:53.000 It was a big hit for us.

00:12:54.000 We moved it to New York.

00:12:55.000 First thing there, Malkovich became a movie star after doing that play.

00:13:01.000 And I kept directing.

00:13:02.000 Went back to Chicago, kept directing.

00:13:04.000 Ended up doing some plays that were really doing well.

00:13:07.000 One of those plays was called Orphans, that John Mahoney, rest his soul, was in along with Kevin Anderson and Terry Kinney.

00:13:17.000 We did it off-Broadway, it was a big hit.

00:13:21.000 And I was offered a movie deal by David Putnam.

00:13:26.000 He produced Chariots of Fire, he produced Mission he produced killing the killing fields. 1.00

00:13:34.000 He was a big producer and they gave him a job running Columbia Pictures and he came to see that play and Eventually, they offered me a directing deal at Columbia Pictures And I was running Steppenwolf and doing things at Steppenwolf and I felt well it was time to kind of break away do some other things so I came out here and took that deal and Was with Columbia Pictures for a couple years trying to find something to direct for them.

00:14:00.000 That was our deal It was a first look deal.

00:14:03.000 So they got the first look at anything that I wanted to do.

00:14:07.000 I never found anything that they wanted to do, but I found another project that I ended up doing for another studio.

00:14:14.000 And that was the first movie I directed, called Miles From Home, with Richard Gere and Kevin Anderson, Brian Dennehy, Helen Hunt, Penelope Ann Miller, a bunch of people were in that.

00:14:28.000 And it was a good first try.

00:14:32.000 Eventually, I think my second movie was much better.

00:14:34.000 It was Of Mice and Men.

00:14:36.000 I knew that story very, very well.

00:14:38.000 Malkovich and I had done it on stage, you know, like 10 or 12 years before I directed the movie.

00:14:43.000 So I was able to get the rights from Elaine Steinbeck to make that into a movie.

00:14:48.000 And I was a little more sure-handed, I think, at that one.

00:14:51.000 But it was 87, 1987, when I moved to Hollywood.

00:14:55.000 And then after Of Mice and Men, Forrest Gump came along and, you know, There you go.

00:15:02.000 Well, in a second I'm going to ask you about the differences between directing and acting and how it is to be behind the camera as opposed to in front of the camera.

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00:16:09.000 All right, so back to your directing career.

00:16:12.000 So you came out here as a director, and yet I think most people know you more as an actor than they do as a director.

00:16:19.000 What is the difference for you between being behind the camera and in front of the camera?

00:16:22.000 Which do you prefer?

00:16:23.000 And did it help you as an actor to be a director in theater?

00:16:28.000 Uh, it helped me as a director to be an actor.

00:16:32.000 I would say.

00:16:33.000 Because most of what I know as a director is from working with other actors and being an actor myself.

00:16:38.000 So I always, when I would direct, I would direct from an actor's point of view.

00:16:46.000 How can we make this, you know, dramatically viable in the story.

00:16:53.000 How can we punch up this energy here?

00:16:55.000 How can we do that?

00:16:57.000 How would I play it?

00:16:58.000 I think maybe I can have some ideas about that and impart those to other people.

00:17:04.000 But, and how do you shape the story to have it be compelling?

00:17:10.000 So I'm always looking at that.

00:17:12.000 And what I know about directing movies, which I've only done a couple of, is what I know about acting and directing plays.

00:17:21.000 I didn't study all that.

00:17:24.000 I just kind of, you know, I didn't study all that.

00:17:26.000 I went to high school.

00:17:28.000 I didn't go to college.

00:17:29.000 I just went right into founding Steppenwolf Theater and working in this basement of a Catholic school, actually, is where the original Steppenwolf was in Highland Park.

00:17:43.000 And there was this big, empty basement at this closed-down Catholic school, and we asked the priest if he'd let us use it, and he did.

00:17:54.000 And we paid him like $1 a year for a tax write-off.

00:17:58.000 And so in there, we developed our skills.

00:18:01.000 We were isolated.

00:18:03.000 We weren't in the city of Chicago, where there's a lot of other theater there.

00:18:07.000 We were in Highland Park, Illinois.

00:18:08.000 There's only one little theater there, and it was us.

00:18:11.000 So we weren't distracted by a lot of other things and we stayed in the basement and just worked on our skills, worked on our work, kind of tuned up the way we approached things.

00:18:22.000 Our whole ensemble approach was developed in those early days when we were kids.

00:18:27.000 And I've carried that through all these years of directing and acting, carried it.

00:18:33.000 All those fundamentals that we learned as kids, you know, stay there.

00:18:38.000 And we learned it together, really.

00:18:40.000 So you've done theater and you've done film and you've also done a lot of TV.

00:18:43.000 I mean, I want to ask you about the transition from film to TV.

00:18:46.000 So now, TV is not considered a step down.

00:18:49.000 For a long time there, it was like if you were in the films and then you went to TV, That was considered a step down.

00:18:54.000 Now you're seeing all sorts of mainstream actors, big actors, for whom it's a step up to move to TV.

00:18:58.000 You were really one of the pioneers in that, actually.

00:19:01.000 What was it like to move from the big screen to the small screen?

00:19:04.000 Was that a bit of a culture shock, or how did that work?

00:19:06.000 It was a little bit.

00:19:08.000 I remember being a little hesitant about it.

00:19:10.000 I mean, I was offered a television series in 2004.

00:19:20.000 And I had done a few little television things prior to that.

00:19:23.000 I did a television movie with James Woods in 1989 called My Name is Bill W. Played a good supporting role in that.

00:19:31.000 Had a couple episodic roles, but nothing.

00:19:35.000 I was always looking for the big movie part or the big part on stage or something like that.

00:19:40.000 Never considered settling down into a television series.

00:19:44.000 Until it was presenting itself to me, and then, you know, it was CSI New York, and it was already a successful franchise.

00:19:52.000 They had done CSI Vegas, and then there was CSI Miami, and now they were going to spin off the third show within four years or something like that.

00:20:02.000 I mean, CSI Vegas came out two years later.

00:20:07.000 They had another show in Miami, and two years after that, they had another show they were putting up in In New York, CSI New York.

00:20:15.000 So, I mean, they spun this franchise off very quickly.

00:20:19.000 And I knew they had a lot invested in this franchise.

00:20:22.000 CBS was going to put a lot into it.

00:20:26.000 I met with Anthony Zeicher, who created the CSI franchise.

00:20:31.000 I had a good meeting with him.

00:20:33.000 We had a good talk.

00:20:34.000 And I was, you know, at that time, I was very focused on supporting our military.

00:20:38.000 It was post-September 11th.

00:20:41.000 I was working with veterans.

00:20:43.000 I was supporting FDNY in New York and Fire Family Transport Foundation and 9-11 family members who had been affected by that terrible tragedy.

00:20:56.000 Anthony wanted my character to To be somebody who was affected personally by September 11th.

00:21:02.000 Lost his wife on September 11th.

00:21:04.000 He's also a police officer.

00:21:06.000 I knew a lot of veterans and police officers who were personally affected by that.

00:21:12.000 So I connected to the idea of playing a 9-11 family member and a first responder Pretty quickly, because I had been supporting them.

00:21:21.000 And once I got through the idea, the question of what will it be like to play the same guy week after week after week after week.

00:21:32.000 Once I got through that, you know, all the other things were staring me in the face.

00:21:38.000 Steady work, staying home, a good franchise, paycheck, all these things.

00:21:45.000 And if it's successful, it would be, you know, very rewarding personally and financially, which it was.

00:21:54.000 So, it was the right thing at the right time to go from You know, what I was doing to television.

00:22:02.000 And after the first year of struggling through figuring out what the show was and everything like that, I really embraced the idea that I was playing the same guy every week and had this steady job.

00:22:14.000 And during that period, and I write about it in the book, all the things I was doing to help the military and to support various military charities and all this stuff, The fact that I had that steady work and had that job gave me a means to support many things that I believed in that I never dreamed about.

00:22:41.000 And it really was... The chapter in the book where I talk about this is called Perfect Timing.

00:22:48.000 And the timing could not have been better with what I was doing on my charitable side So you've worked on the stage, you've worked on the big screen, you've worked on the small screen.

00:23:02.000 Which did you prefer and why?

00:23:03.000 Because you see people who are sometimes successful on stage who can't make the transition to film, people who are successful on film who can't make the transition to stage.

00:23:11.000 You've done all three.

00:23:12.000 Which did you prefer and what were sort of the upsides and downsides?

00:23:14.000 You know, I prefer employment.

00:23:20.000 That's what I would say there.

00:23:21.000 And I like being involved in things that kind of make sense to me.

00:23:29.000 That's it.

00:23:30.000 I've directed, I've acted in all the mediums.

00:23:35.000 You know, the parts that I've done on stage have been very rewarding generally, you know.

00:23:42.000 What I've done in film and television has generally been rewarding and valuable and I don't feel like I spend time...

00:23:51.000 unwell spent.

00:23:53.000 So it's hard to say, Ben, you know, that I prefer one over the other.

00:23:58.000 Each one has given me something special.

00:24:01.000 And, you know, I've done what I think is good work in all those mediums.

00:24:07.000 Well, the book also obviously goes into deep detail and I think necessary detail about your relationship with the U.S. military.

00:24:12.000 military.

00:24:13.000 So, when did you first start getting involved with all of your outreach efforts on behalf of the military, with first responders, with police across the country?

00:24:22.000 Did it start with Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump or were you doing work with the military before that?

00:24:26.000 Well, that was certainly part of it.

00:24:28.000 You know, the Forrest Gump character was a wounded veteran, lost both his legs, and suffering terribly from post-traumatic stress.

00:24:39.000 And playing that part led me to start working with our wounded 25 years ago.

00:24:47.000 I mean, Forrest Gump came out 25 years ago this year.

00:24:50.000 So June 6th, this summer, it'll be 25 years.

00:24:57.000 That was certainly a part of getting involved with our wounded.

00:25:01.000 But prior to that, actually, I began supporting Vietnam veterans groups in the Chicago area, getting involved with supporting them back in the early 80s.

00:25:12.000 My wife's two brothers served in Vietnam, and her sister's husband also was a combat medic in Vietnam.

00:25:21.000 So when I met her in 1970, really we started dating and we got married in 81.

00:25:26.000 We started dating in 76.

00:25:28.000 She was a part of the early history of Steppenwolf, the early ensemble.

00:25:33.000 She introduced me to her brothers and her sister's husband and I asked them about Vietnam.

00:25:40.000 I started talking to them.

00:25:42.000 I was 18 years old in 1973.

00:25:45.000 It was the last year of combat operations in Vietnam.

00:25:48.000 The draft was over in 1983.

00:25:51.000 I recall registering for Selective Service, but the draft was over.

00:26:00.000 And I remember during high school, I'm doing all those plays, I'm playing in my rock band, I'm chasing those girls into the auditions and everything like that, and every night On television, during that time, there are casualty reports, there are terrible stories about Vietnam, and my mom is watching the television like this, and I'm calling my girlfriend and figuring out what the set list is going to be, and I wasn't really paying attention all that much.

00:26:27.000 But when I met those family members of my wife, and they started Talking to me about what it was like for them to be in Vietnam and then what it was like for them to come home from Vietnam to a nation that had turned its back on our military and had rejected the Vietnam veteran.

00:26:48.000 Something happened to me.

00:26:49.000 I just started thinking about that a lot.

00:26:51.000 And I remember taking over as artistic director for Steppenwolf.

00:26:56.000 And one of the things I wanted to do was find some material That I could do that was focused on the stories of Vietnam veterans.

00:27:06.000 And I read this.

00:27:08.000 So as artistic director, you're always looking for plays and you get all these publications from different cities that have the list of plays that are going on in those cities and what's going on.

00:27:17.000 So I, I would do that.

00:27:19.000 And I got one thing that was from LA called the drama log.

00:27:22.000 It was kind of what's going on in sort of The small theaters in L.A.

00:27:29.000 And I read this story about a play that was written by a group of Vietnam veterans and where they were actually performing the play that they wrote.

00:27:38.000 So every night, these guys would recreate their own stories of what happened to them in Vietnam on stage.

00:27:45.000 And it got very good reviews.

00:27:47.000 It was a big hit.

00:27:48.000 It sounded very powerful.

00:27:49.000 I immediately got on an airplane and flew out to see it.

00:27:55.000 It's 1980 and I was just knocked out.

00:27:59.000 I went back the next night and saw it again.

00:28:01.000 And I went home to Chicago and I wrote to the guys that did it and I said, would you consider letting me do this play to tell your stories That you're telling yourselves on stage every night, would you let me do that?

00:28:17.000 And they said, no.

00:28:20.000 It should only be performed by veterans. 1.00

00:28:22.000 We don't want anybody to do it but veterans.

00:28:25.000 Eventually the play closed in Los Angeles and I just kept asking them, you know, what are you going to do with it?

00:28:31.000 Well, no, no, no.

00:28:33.000 And eventually we were doing a play in Chicago that Malkovich had directed.

00:28:38.000 And it was called Baum and Gilead by Lanford Wilson, and it was high performance.

00:28:45.000 It took place in a diner, like a seedy diner in New York. 0.91

00:28:49.000 So it's got all the night people out there, the hookers and the pimps and the drug addicts and the junkies and the crazy people running around. 0.96

00:28:59.000 It was like 38 people on stage, all just being crazy, you know? 0.82

00:29:04.000 And it was very high energy, and we put Springsteen music in it, we put Tom Waits music in it, we put Riggie Lee Jones.

00:29:11.000 It was just very, you know, very Steppenwolf.

00:29:13.000 That was kind of our thing.

00:29:15.000 And so I said to this guy, John DeFusco, who had created this play, Tracers, about these Vietnam veterans.

00:29:23.000 I said, come see it.

00:29:25.000 So he flew out, he saw it, and he loved it.

00:29:29.000 And then he gave me the rights to do the play.

00:29:31.000 I did it there.

00:29:33.000 Veterans from all over the area came to see the play.

00:29:36.000 A lot of Vietnam veterans.

00:29:38.000 And this is 1984.

00:29:40.000 So this was, you know, the Vietnam veteran wall had just opened in 1982.

00:29:45.000 So this was still a time where Vietnam veterans were just not used to coming out of the shadows and telling their stories.

00:29:53.000 But our play became this rallying point and veterans would come from all over and we ended up creating a night at Steppenwolf every week that was just simply for the veterans.

00:30:06.000 And that began a series of events and things that laid the bedrock for my veterans work going into the 90s and then post-September 11th.

00:30:18.000 So in just a second, I'm going to ask you about Lieutenant Dan, how it was to play that part, and your work with the USO, and generally what people don't get about the military.

00:30:25.000 But first, let's talk about your impending doom.

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00:31:23.000 All righty, so let's talk a little bit about Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan and how that changed your perspective on the military situation.

00:31:28.000 So obviously you were already incredibly pro-military, you already wanted to tell the stories of people who had served and done that amazing work.

00:31:36.000 What changed your perspective about playing Lieutenant Dan?

00:31:39.000 I remember when I... I did have mice and men.

00:31:43.000 And that, I think, got the attention a little bit of the producers of Forrest Gump.

00:31:48.000 At least it got me an audition.

00:31:50.000 Here's a guy who directed and produced and is one of the two main guys in the movie.

00:31:57.000 That got the attention of the producers and the director, Robert Zemeckis, so I got an audition.

00:32:04.000 And I read it, and I was going to audition to play a Vietnam veteran.

00:32:08.000 And here I was.

00:32:09.000 I had been supporting Vietnam veterans for 10, 12 years at that point, in various ways.

00:32:19.000 Very much wanted to play that part.

00:32:22.000 I directed that play, Tracers.

00:32:25.000 I had a cast of guys that were just amazing in it, all playing the Vietnam veterans.

00:32:30.000 I wanted to be them.

00:32:31.000 I wanted to be up there doing that myself, but I was the director and it was my passion project.

00:32:37.000 Now here's an opportunity for me to play a Vietnam veteran.

00:32:42.000 In a way to honor my wife's two brothers and her sister's husband and all the many Vietnam veterans that I had met.

00:32:50.000 It was a great story.

00:32:51.000 A story of a Vietnam veteran that actually ends well.

00:32:55.000 Up until that point, you know, they started making movies about Vietnam about 1978.

00:33:00.000 about 1978, three years after the fall of Saigon.

00:33:06.000 And there was the deer hunter and coming home and casualties of war.

00:33:11.000 And these various movies started...

00:33:13.000 But you always wondered, at the end of those films, if the Vietnam veterans was going to be okay.

00:33:22.000 At the end of every one of those movies, you're just not sure if he's gonna be okay.

00:33:27.000 At the end of Coming Home, one of them kills himself, you know?

00:33:31.000 And at the end of The Deer Hunter.

00:33:32.000 And at the end of The Deer Hunter, you're just like... It was always tragic, and you just didn't see any way for the Vietnam veteran to be okay.

00:33:44.000 Along comes Forrest Gump, and he goes through all that same despair and anguish and heartbreak and...

00:33:52.000 Loneliness and anger and all these things.

00:33:55.000 But what happens at the end of that story?

00:33:58.000 He's successful.

00:33:59.000 He's wealthy.

00:34:00.000 He's married.

00:34:01.000 He's moving on with life.

00:34:03.000 He's standing up on new legs.

00:34:05.000 He's moving on.

00:34:06.000 And it's a happy ending for a Vietnam veteran.

00:34:08.000 We hadn't seen that movie, that story.

00:34:10.000 But yet, that story was the story of many Vietnam veterans.

00:34:15.000 It just hadn't been told.

00:34:16.000 There were many Vietnam veterans who came back.

00:34:19.000 And while there are many that Struggled for many, many years.

00:34:23.000 There were also many that were able to put their service years behind them and move on in business and be okay.

00:34:31.000 And here along comes Lieutenant Dan and that's his story.

00:34:34.000 So I very much wanted to play that part.

00:34:38.000 I was lucky to get it.

00:34:40.000 It introduced me to an organization called the DAV, Disabled American Veterans, which I've supported now for 25 years because You know, almost 25 years ago, about a month after the movie opened, they invited me to come to their national convention.

00:34:57.000 I tell this story in the book.

00:34:59.000 And they gave me an award for playing Lieutenant Dan.

00:35:03.000 And they wanted to honor me for playing Lieutenant Dan in what they thought was an honest portrayal of a catastrophically injured soldier.

00:35:14.000 And they just felt it was so many of the members of the DAV, or Vietnam Veterans themselves, they just wanted to recognize that work.

00:35:23.000 And that began Our relationship, as I said, has lasted 25 years.

00:35:30.000 Every year I go to their national convention, I play concerts for them, I've done PSAs, I've done fundraising, different things for them, many friends within the DAV.

00:35:40.000 We have a program at my foundation that's in partnership with the DAV.

00:35:45.000 That really started me focusing on our wounded.

00:35:50.000 Then along comes September 11th.

00:35:53.000 And we deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

00:35:58.000 Our folks started getting hurt, started getting killed.

00:36:01.000 And I just could not sit by and do nothing.

00:36:10.000 That was such a devastating attack on our country.

00:36:15.000 And now we were deploying in reaction to that.

00:36:19.000 And it also became kind of a divisive time because, as you recall, during the Iraq war, after we went into Iraq in 2003, then 2004, 5, 6, 7, things started getting worse there.

00:36:34.000 An insurgency, there was Abu Ghraib, there was all these things.

00:36:38.000 During those years, you could just see it.

00:36:41.000 I mean, what was happening in the coverage of it was Very similar to what had happened in the Vietnam War.

00:36:50.000 Things were just not going well.

00:36:52.000 And, you know, I just pictured our guys sitting over there watching television thinking, gosh, things are not going well and I'm sitting right here.

00:37:01.000 They're saying it on the news every night.

00:37:04.000 And I didn't want our folks deploying in reaction to that terrible event, people that were signing up because of those airplanes going into those buildings, I didn't want them To feel that they were being neglected or that the country was going to turn its back on them or something.

00:37:22.000 And it was a divided time, if you recall.

00:37:24.000 Some people supported George Bush and the efforts to go into Iraq and Afghanistan.

00:37:30.000 Some people didn't.

00:37:31.000 And it was being... It was a very divided time.

00:37:37.000 And I wanted to help.

00:37:39.000 You know, I wanted to help our service members get through it.

00:37:42.000 So... And, you know, just personally, and I say this in the book, my heart was just broken after that terrible day.

00:37:51.000 It was broken, and I needed to do something to help heal that.

00:37:55.000 And I felt, having been involved with Vietnam veterans, Wounded veterans through the DAV in the 80s and 90s.

00:38:04.000 My role now would be to support the active duty folks that were responding to that attack.

00:38:10.000 Yeah, you know, you toured plenty with members of the military, meeting members of the military.

00:38:15.000 And do you have any sort of memories that stick out of that time?

00:38:18.000 Because you've obviously done a ton of it and met an enormous number of members of the armed services.

00:38:24.000 Yeah, just all throughout all the travels and everything.

00:38:30.000 You know, a number of stories in the book about that have affected me and that have galvanized my passion for making sure that we don't forget what our defenders do for us on a daily basis.

00:38:48.000 And some of those stories are in the book.

00:38:50.000 And I remember, you know, I tell a story about As a kid, I remember when my grandmother passed away.

00:39:01.000 And she was in her 60s, and she was a heavy smoker.

00:39:07.000 And she just wasted away in the hospital. 1.00

00:39:14.000 And I went to see her, and I loved my grandmother.

00:39:19.000 And I was just heartbroken, seeing her just Laying in the bed.

00:39:23.000 And it was terrible.

00:39:24.000 And I just ran out of the hospital.

00:39:26.000 And I never wanted to go back to a hospital.

00:39:28.000 Unless I was on a gurney.

00:39:32.000 And when I started doing USO, my first trip was to Iraq in June of 2003.

00:39:38.000 Then I came back.

00:39:40.000 Then I went in July.

00:39:43.000 Three weeks later, I went to Italy, visited troops there.

00:39:45.000 And then about a month later, in August, I was in Germany, visiting troops there.

00:39:53.000 I just went, boom, boom, boom.

00:39:55.000 I was going.

00:39:57.000 Didn't have a job at the time.

00:39:59.000 And one of the things I was going to do in Germany was go to Landstuhl Medical Center, which is the main hospital in Germany where people come right off the battlefield and they go to the hospital.

00:40:10.000 And they're stabilized in Germany and then they're sent home to the States, to one of the hospitals here.

00:40:16.000 And I was very apprehensive about going.

00:40:18.000 I didn't... I... You know, I was just like, what's it going to be like?

00:40:22.000 You know, hospitals, I can't stand the thought of it.

00:40:26.000 And I remember my grandmother withering away and it's just...

00:40:29.000 Just, it was bad.

00:40:31.000 And I thought, now I'm going to see guys that have been blown up, shot at, and burned up.

00:40:37.000 I was very nervous about it, I remember.

00:40:40.000 I can remember sitting on the bus as the bus approached the hospital and we pull in this little van and we pull up and just as we pull up, a big bus pulls up and a whole bunch of people run out of the hospital and they start unloading gurneys that have just come off the airplane from the battlefield, sent back to the hospital.

00:41:04.000 Wires and tubes and, you know, IVs and, you know, everything.

00:41:10.000 And they're, you know, these guys are all stabilized, but they got to get in there because they got surgery right away, as soon as they get to the hospital.

00:41:17.000 And that team ran out so professionally, getting them out of that, out of those buses quickly.

00:41:23.000 And I just stood there and watched.

00:41:24.000 This was the first thing I saw at the hospital.

00:41:28.000 Seven or eight wounded guys being carried into the hospital on gurneys, all with wires and missing legs and all this.

00:41:35.000 I was just like, okay, take a deep breath here, you know.

00:41:40.000 And they first took me into a room that had about 30 guys in it.

00:41:46.000 And these were all guys that were banged up.

00:41:49.000 Cuts, bruises, gunshot wounds, whatever it was.

00:41:53.000 But they were going to get patched up and sent back to the battlefield.

00:41:58.000 And they were all in there and they were waiting, you know, gel on their face from burns or whatever, you know, they were going to get fixed up and sent back to the war zone.

00:42:10.000 I walked in and I had a USO hat on and I'm like, this is, you know, remember this is before CSI New York, so I was Lieutenant Dan but, you know, I hadn't done much else.

00:42:23.000 So, I didn't know what to say or how to start it and somebody looked at me and he said, And he burst into a smile.

00:42:33.000 And they all had these thousand-yard stares.

00:42:37.000 They were quiet in there.

00:42:38.000 It was quiet.

00:42:39.000 Nobody was saying anything.

00:42:40.000 And then one guy just lit up and started smiling and calling me Lieutenant Dan.

00:42:45.000 Then everybody started coming around and laughing and taking pictures.

00:42:49.000 And all of a sudden, the whole mood in the room just completely changed.

00:42:53.000 Nobody knew what my real name was.

00:42:56.000 They just saw me from the movie.

00:43:00.000 And they wanted to talk about the movie and I thought, gosh.

00:43:03.000 And then I left that room after being in there for 90 minutes or so, shaking hands and taking pictures, signing autographs, to go upstairs to the hospital rooms.

00:43:14.000 But I knew when I left that room, gosh, I just brought something into that room that was really, really positive.

00:43:21.000 It changed the whole mood in the room.

00:43:24.000 Just showing up.

00:43:26.000 So I went upstairs and that's when I saw a lot of Really badly wounded people.

00:43:30.000 Some didn't even know I was there.

00:43:33.000 But their family members had flown from the States to Germany and they were standing over hospital beds of amputees and waiting for them to wake up.

00:43:41.000 And I changed their mood just by showing up.

00:43:45.000 I'll never forget that because it started a whole journey of trying to support our wounded that I've been on ever since.

00:43:52.000 Well, it's an amazing thing.

00:43:53.000 And it's also, I would imagine, something that keeps you grounded.

00:43:56.000 I mean, I've lived in Hollywood my entire life.

00:43:57.000 You've been out here longer than I've been alive.

00:44:00.000 But the fact is that... Don't remind me.

00:44:03.000 But the fact is that you see so many people who, you know, are very wealthy and very famous who seem to have lost their grounding in reality.

00:44:11.000 And you haven't.

00:44:12.000 Do you think that you're, you know, both between your family life and your work with the troops, that's what's helped keep you grounded and on solid ground?

00:44:20.000 Partially.

00:44:20.000 And partially my, just the background from working in a basement.

00:44:26.000 You know, for all those years, you know, with actors.

00:44:31.000 You know, a lot of the actors that were with us in those early days, Joan Allen, Laurie Metcalf, as I said, Malkovich, Jeff Perry, you know, a lot of folks, Gary Cole, a lot of folks are all just sort of grounded in this Illinois thing that we had at that time.

00:44:50.000 And they remember the days where we all worked for free, we didn't get any money, and everybody was just doing it for the love of it.

00:44:58.000 That gave us a lot of, I think, good fundamentals, you know, when we moved away from that into something that we had all had to struggle for.

00:45:08.000 You know, nobody came out here, you know, and just got handed stuff right away.

00:45:13.000 I mean, everybody kind of You know, work their way up.

00:45:17.000 You know, Malkovich was a little bit different because we went, he started, we went to New York, he started doing movies after that.

00:45:24.000 But, you know, everybody had a pretty good grounding, I think, once we started moving into the movie business already.

00:45:34.000 And just simply because we remember, you know, it wasn't always You know, glamorous and all that.

00:45:42.000 There was a struggle for a lot of folks to get there.

00:45:47.000 And I remember that.

00:45:48.000 And certainly, you know, when you go to the war zones, and you see how people are living in the war zones, and you live with them that way for a little bit, and you eat what they eat, and you sleep on what they sleep on, and all of that, and you continue to do that, it gives you a... It's a reality check, for sure.

00:46:09.000 So I know that right now you're spending an awful lot of time on touring, and I want to hear about what happens after the tour is over.

00:46:15.000 What are your plans for the future?

00:46:16.000 To have that question answered, however, you need to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:46:21.000 That's the only way you're going to get to hear the answer to that question and more behind the paywall.

00:46:25.000 It's $9.99 a month, and we provide you all sorts of goodies.

00:46:27.000 I mean, it's not just the rest of this show.

00:46:29.000 It's also the rest of my daily show, which means two additional hours per day.

00:46:32.000 All sorts of great stuff.

00:46:33.000 Go check it out over at dailywire.com.

00:46:35.000 All right.

00:46:36.000 Gary's book is Grateful American, A Journey from Self to Service.

00:46:38.000 Everybody should go check it out.

00:46:40.000 And Gary, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:46:41.000 I really appreciate your time.

00:46:42.000 It's my pleasure, bud.

00:46:43.000 Thank you.

00:46:53.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:46:55.000 Associate producer Mathis Glover.

00:46:56.000 Edited by Donovan Fowler.

00:46:58.000 Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.

00:46:59.000 Hair and makeup is by Jeswa Olvera.

00:47:01.000 Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

00:47:03.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 10, 2019

Gary Sinise | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 37

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