Gary Sinise has a brand new book out called Grateful American: A Journey From Self-Away to Service about his journey in acting, his service in the military, and how he became a rock and roll hero. He tells the story of how he went from a small town kid in Illinois to a star in Hollywood. He also talks about how he almost died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, and the moment he realized he was destined for stardom. Today s guest is Gary Sinise, an actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and screenwriter who has been in the entertainment business for almost 40 years. He s also a veteran of the U.S. military and served as a lieutenant in the elite United States Army Medical Corps and the United States Air Force Medical Corps. He s been married to his long-term partner, actress, and wife, Jillian, for almost 30 years. They have two grown children, a son and a daughter, and a son-in-to-be. Gary and Jillian Sinise have three grown children and a step-son, also named Gary, who lives with them in Los Angeles, California. He is an avid horseback rider and horseback riding enthusiast, and an avid dog-riding enthusiast. Go check out his book, Grateful American, A Journey from Self Aroad, on Amazon, wherever you get your bookshelf, and subscribe to Dailywire to get all the latest news and updates on the latest happenings in the world of entertainment and business. Enjoy this episode of The Sunday Specialist! Subscribe to the Sunday Specialist on all things Sunday Specialist. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices and become a supporter of the show on iTunes Connect with your favorite podcasting platform. Subscribe on PODCAST.fm Become a Friend of the or wherever else you re listening to the Sunday Specialist Podcasts are listening to The Specialist Subscribe On Itunes Subscribe on Itunes Connect with Like, Share On Social Media and Subscribe on itunes Learn more About The Learn More About Me? Connect with Me on Social Media? Subscribe To Learn More about Meghan McElroy And More Like Us On The Vineyard Like Him On The Same Day v=aPodcasts And Subscribe On This Podcasts And Share It On Insta-Friendship
00:00:00.000One 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.
00:00:09.000I walked in and I had a USO hat on and I didn't know what to say or how to start it.
00:00:14.000And somebody looked at me and he said, Lieutenant Dan.
00:00:16.000Hello and welcome to the Sunday Specialist.
00:00:26.000Our special guest today is Gary Sinise.
00:01:21.000When it comes to Valentines, I don't settle for anything less than my rose authority, 1-800-Flowers.com.
00:01:27.000Again, to order 18 Red Roses for $29.99 or upgrade it to 24 Assorted Roses plus that vase for $10 more, go to 1-800-Flowers.com slash Shapiro.
00:01:39.000Now, 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.
00:01:57.000The book is Grateful American, A Journey from Self to Service, and it really is an inspiring book.
00:02:02.000We'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.
00:03:11.000You 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.
00:03:21.000This is Highland Park High School in Illinois, on the north side of Chicago, north suburbs.
00:03:27.000I'm standing in a hallway, and this little lady, this little blonde lady comes blowing down.
00:03:32.000I mean, she was like a Hurricane or typhoon or something, just whipping by.
00:03:37.000And I'm standing here with my rock and roll pals, you know, looking pretty scrubby and, you know, grungy and everything.
00:03:45.000She turns around, she goes, she goes, have you ever been in a play?
00:03:50.000And I said, no, no, no, we're rockers, you know.
00:03:54.000And she said, well, I'm directing West Side Story and you look perfect for one of the gang members.
00:05:30.000So 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.
00:05:41.000And then I just wanted to do it over and over and over.
00:05:43.000And 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.
00:05:54.000And 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.
00:06:06.000So I was supposed to graduate in 1973, and we say in the book that I graduated in 1973 and a half.
00:06:17.000But 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.
00:06:36.000He 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.
00:06:49.000Can you talk a little bit about Steppenwolf Theatre?
00:06:51.000So for folks who don't know Steppenwolf Theatre is now one of the most storied theatres in the country.
00:06:54.000And you were obviously a founder of it.
00:06:57.000What was the original idea of it and what do you think the legacy of it has been?
00:07:01.000Well, the original idea was just kids wanting to do plays.
00:07:44.000I mean, it's kind of crazy when you look back at it.
00:07:48.000And 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.
00:07:59.000And it laid the groundwork for something that we built as we moved from Highland Park, Illinois into the city of Chicago.
00:08:08.000Renovated another space that David Mamet had originally started.
00:08:14.000We 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.
00:08:21.000I 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.
00:08:29.000You 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.
00:08:39.000You 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.
00:08:45.000My dad, and I write about the family in the book, my dad was a film editor in Chicago.
00:08:50.000He started learning the film business when he was in the Navy.
00:08:54.000He processed film He was in the Navy during the Korean War.
00:09:00.000At one point they said, do you want to go on a ship or do you want a camera?
00:09:04.000And he took the camera and he started taking pictures.
00:09:07.000Then they put him in the lab at the Pentagon, you know, in Anacostia.
00:09:16.000and 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.
00:09:36.000He 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.
00:09:44.000It 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.
00:11:25.000In 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.
00:11:35.000I, I, There's some funny stories about some of the things I did back then.
00:12:06.000And so it was really frustrating, frustrating time.
00:12:10.000So I went back to Chicago, went back to my theater company, ended up being the artistic director, started directing a lot, and directing plays.
00:12:21.000And some of the plays that I was doing just hit.
00:12:25.000One of them was called True West by Sam Shepard.
00:12:30.000John Malkovich and I were in that together and we moved it to New York.
00:12:35.000It was the first play that we moved to New York from Steppenwolf.
00:12:40.000Malkovich was an early member of the company.
00:12:44.000We worked together a lot and did that play And it was just a big hit.
00:13:04.000Ended up doing some plays that were really doing well.
00:13:07.000One of those plays was called Orphans, that John Mahoney, rest his soul, was in along with Kevin Anderson and Terry Kinney.
00:13:17.000We did it off-Broadway, it was a big hit.
00:13:21.000And I was offered a movie deal by David Putnam.
00:13:26.000He produced Chariots of Fire, he produced Mission he produced killing the killing fields.
00:13:34.000He 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.
00:14:00.000That was our deal It was a first look deal.
00:14:03.000So they got the first look at anything that I wanted to do.
00:14:07.000I never found anything that they wanted to do, but I found another project that I ended up doing for another studio.
00:14:14.000And 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.
00:14:38.000Malkovich and I had done it on stage, you know, like 10 or 12 years before I directed the movie.
00:14:43.000So I was able to get the rights from Elaine Steinbeck to make that into a movie.
00:14:48.000And I was a little more sure-handed, I think, at that one.
00:14:51.000But it was 87, 1987, when I moved to Hollywood.
00:14:55.000And then after Of Mice and Men, Forrest Gump came along and, you know, There you go.
00:15:02.000Well, 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.
00:15:09.000But first, let's talk about making your business more efficient.
00:15:13.000You post a job to several online job boards only to get tons of the wrong resumes.
00:15:16.000Then, you have to sort through all those resumes just to find a few people with the right skills and experience.
00:15:20.000Those job sites that overwhelm you with the wrong resumes, they're not smart.
00:15:24.000That's why you should do the smart thing and go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Ben Guest.
00:15:28.000Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter finds qualified candidates for you.
00:15:31.000Its powerful matching technology scans thousands of resumes to identify people with the right skills, education, and experience, and then actively invites them to apply for your job.
00:17:29.000I 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.
00:17:43.000And 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.
00:17:54.000And we paid him like $1 a year for a tax write-off.
00:17:58.000And so in there, we developed our skills.
00:18:08.000There's only one little theater there, and it was us.
00:18:11.000So 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.
00:18:22.000Our whole ensemble approach was developed in those early days when we were kids.
00:18:27.000And I've carried that through all these years of directing and acting, carried it.
00:18:33.000All those fundamentals that we learned as kids, you know, stay there.
00:19:08.000I remember being a little hesitant about it.
00:19:10.000I mean, I was offered a television series in 2004.
00:19:20.000And I had done a few little television things prior to that.
00:19:23.000I did a television movie with James Woods in 1989 called My Name is Bill W. Played a good supporting role in that.
00:19:31.000Had a couple episodic roles, but nothing.
00:19:35.000I was always looking for the big movie part or the big part on stage or something like that.
00:19:40.000Never considered settling down into a television series.
00:19:44.000Until it was presenting itself to me, and then, you know, it was CSI New York, and it was already a successful franchise.
00:19:52.000They 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.
00:20:02.000I mean, CSI Vegas came out two years later.
00:20:07.000They 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.
00:20:15.000So, I mean, they spun this franchise off very quickly.
00:20:19.000And I knew they had a lot invested in this franchise.
00:20:43.000I was supporting FDNY in New York and Fire Family Transport Foundation and 9-11 family members who had been affected by that terrible tragedy.
00:20:56.000Anthony wanted my character to To be somebody who was affected personally by September 11th.
00:21:06.000I knew a lot of veterans and police officers who were personally affected by that.
00:21:12.000So I connected to the idea of playing a 9-11 family member and a first responder Pretty quickly, because I had been supporting them.
00:21:21.000And 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.
00:21:32.000Once I got through that, you know, all the other things were staring me in the face.
00:21:38.000Steady work, staying home, a good franchise, paycheck, all these things.
00:21:45.000And if it's successful, it would be, you know, very rewarding personally and financially, which it was.
00:21:54.000So, it was the right thing at the right time to go from You know, what I was doing to television.
00:22:02.000And 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.
00:22:14.000And 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.
00:22:41.000And it really was... The chapter in the book where I talk about this is called Perfect Timing.
00:22:48.000And 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.
00:23:03.000Because 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.
00:24:13.000So, 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?
00:24:22.000Did it start with Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump or were you doing work with the military before that?
00:24:28.000You know, the Forrest Gump character was a wounded veteran, lost both his legs, and suffering terribly from post-traumatic stress.
00:24:39.000And playing that part led me to start working with our wounded 25 years ago.
00:24:47.000I mean, Forrest Gump came out 25 years ago this year.
00:24:50.000So June 6th, this summer, it'll be 25 years.
00:24:57.000That was certainly a part of getting involved with our wounded.
00:25:01.000But prior to that, actually, I began supporting Vietnam veterans groups in the Chicago area, getting involved with supporting them back in the early 80s.
00:25:12.000My wife's two brothers served in Vietnam, and her sister's husband also was a combat medic in Vietnam.
00:25:21.000So when I met her in 1970, really we started dating and we got married in 81.
00:25:51.000I recall registering for Selective Service, but the draft was over.
00:26:00.000And 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.
00:26:27.000But 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.
00:27:08.000So 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.
00:27:19.000And I got one thing that was from LA called the drama log.
00:27:22.000It was kind of what's going on in sort of The small theaters in L.A.
00:27:29.000And 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.
00:27:38.000So every night, these guys would recreate their own stories of what happened to them in Vietnam on stage.
00:27:59.000I went back the next night and saw it again.
00:28:01.000And 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?
00:28:33.000And eventually we were doing a play in Chicago that Malkovich had directed.
00:28:38.000And it was called Baum and Gilead by Lanford Wilson, and it was high performance.
00:28:45.000It took place in a diner, like a seedy diner in New York.
00:28:49.000So 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.
00:28:59.000It was like 38 people on stage, all just being crazy, you know?
00:29:04.000And it was very high energy, and we put Springsteen music in it, we put Tom Waits music in it, we put Riggie Lee Jones.
00:29:11.000It was just very, you know, very Steppenwolf.
00:29:40.000So this was, you know, the Vietnam veteran wall had just opened in 1982.
00:29:45.000So this was still a time where Vietnam veterans were just not used to coming out of the shadows and telling their stories.
00:29:53.000But 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.
00:30:06.000And 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.
00:30:18.000So 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.
00:30:25.000But first, let's talk about your impending doom.
00:30:27.000Life insurance is one of these topics that everybody knows a little bit about, but do you understand it well enough to feel comfortable buying life insurance?
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00:31:23.000All righty, so let's talk a little bit about Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan and how that changed your perspective on the military situation.
00:31:28.000So obviously you were already incredibly pro-military, you already wanted to tell the stories of people who had served and done that amazing work.
00:31:36.000What changed your perspective about playing Lieutenant Dan?
00:31:39.000I remember when I... I did have mice and men.
00:31:43.000And that, I think, got the attention a little bit of the producers of Forrest Gump.
00:33:32.000And 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.
00:33:44.000Along comes Forrest Gump, and he goes through all that same despair and anguish and heartbreak and...
00:33:52.000Loneliness and anger and all these things.
00:33:55.000But what happens at the end of that story?
00:34:40.000It 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.
00:34:59.000And they gave me an award for playing Lieutenant Dan.
00:35:03.000And they wanted to honor me for playing Lieutenant Dan in what they thought was an honest portrayal of a catastrophically injured soldier.
00:35:14.000And they just felt it was so many of the members of the DAV, or Vietnam Veterans themselves, they just wanted to recognize that work.
00:35:23.000And that began Our relationship, as I said, has lasted 25 years.
00:35:30.000Every 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.
00:35:40.000We have a program at my foundation that's in partnership with the DAV.
00:35:45.000That really started me focusing on our wounded.
00:35:53.000And we deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:35:58.000Our folks started getting hurt, started getting killed.
00:36:01.000And I just could not sit by and do nothing.
00:36:10.000That was such a devastating attack on our country.
00:36:15.000And now we were deploying in reaction to that.
00:36:19.000And 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.
00:36:34.000An insurgency, there was Abu Ghraib, there was all these things.
00:36:38.000During those years, you could just see it.
00:36:41.000I mean, what was happening in the coverage of it was Very similar to what had happened in the Vietnam War.
00:36:52.000And, 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.
00:37:01.000They're saying it on the news every night.
00:37:04.000And 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.
00:37:22.000And it was a divided time, if you recall.
00:37:24.000Some people supported George Bush and the efforts to go into Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:37:39.000You know, I wanted to help our service members get through it.
00:37:42.000So... And, you know, just personally, and I say this in the book, my heart was just broken after that terrible day.
00:37:51.000It was broken, and I needed to do something to help heal that.
00:37:55.000And I felt, having been involved with Vietnam veterans, Wounded veterans through the DAV in the 80s and 90s.
00:38:04.000My role now would be to support the active duty folks that were responding to that attack.
00:38:10.000Yeah, you know, you toured plenty with members of the military, meeting members of the military.
00:38:15.000And do you have any sort of memories that stick out of that time?
00:38:18.000Because you've obviously done a ton of it and met an enormous number of members of the armed services.
00:38:24.000Yeah, just all throughout all the travels and everything.
00:38:30.000You 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.
00:38:48.000And some of those stories are in the book.
00:38:50.000And I remember, you know, I tell a story about As a kid, I remember when my grandmother passed away.
00:39:01.000And she was in her 60s, and she was a heavy smoker.
00:39:07.000And she just wasted away in the hospital.
00:39:14.000And I went to see her, and I loved my grandmother.
00:39:19.000And I was just heartbroken, seeing her just Laying in the bed.
00:39:59.000And 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.
00:40:10.000And they're stabilized in Germany and then they're sent home to the States, to one of the hospitals here.
00:40:16.000And I was very apprehensive about going.
00:40:18.000I didn't... I... You know, I was just like, what's it going to be like?
00:40:22.000You know, hospitals, I can't stand the thought of it.
00:40:26.000And I remember my grandmother withering away and it's just...
00:40:31.000And I thought, now I'm going to see guys that have been blown up, shot at, and burned up.
00:40:37.000I was very nervous about it, I remember.
00:40:40.000I 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.
00:41:04.000Wires and tubes and, you know, IVs and, you know, everything.
00:41:10.000And 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.
00:41:17.000And that team ran out so professionally, getting them out of that, out of those buses quickly.
00:41:24.000This was the first thing I saw at the hospital.
00:41:28.000Seven or eight wounded guys being carried into the hospital on gurneys, all with wires and missing legs and all this.
00:41:35.000I was just like, okay, take a deep breath here, you know.
00:41:40.000And they first took me into a room that had about 30 guys in it.
00:41:46.000And these were all guys that were banged up.
00:41:49.000Cuts, bruises, gunshot wounds, whatever it was.
00:41:53.000But they were going to get patched up and sent back to the battlefield.
00:41:58.000And 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.
00:42:10.000I 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.
00:42:23.000So, 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.
00:42:33.000And they all had these thousand-yard stares.
00:43:00.000And they wanted to talk about the movie and I thought, gosh.
00:43:03.000And 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.
00:43:14.000But I knew when I left that room, gosh, I just brought something into that room that was really, really positive.
00:43:21.000It changed the whole mood in the room.
00:43:33.000But 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.
00:43:41.000And I changed their mood just by showing up.
00:43:45.000I'll never forget that because it started a whole journey of trying to support our wounded that I've been on ever since.
00:43:53.000And it's also, I would imagine, something that keeps you grounded.
00:43:56.000I mean, I've lived in Hollywood my entire life.
00:43:57.000You've been out here longer than I've been alive.
00:44:00.000But the fact is that... Don't remind me.
00:44:03.000But 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.
00:44:12.000Do 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?
00:44:20.000And partially my, just the background from working in a basement.
00:44:26.000You know, for all those years, you know, with actors.
00:44:31.000You 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.
00:44:50.000And 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.
00:44:58.000That 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.
00:45:08.000You know, nobody came out here, you know, and just got handed stuff right away.
00:45:13.000I mean, everybody kind of You know, work their way up.
00:45:17.000You know, Malkovich was a little bit different because we went, he started, we went to New York, he started doing movies after that.
00:45:24.000But, you know, everybody had a pretty good grounding, I think, once we started moving into the movie business already.
00:45:34.000And just simply because we remember, you know, it wasn't always You know, glamorous and all that.
00:45:42.000There was a struggle for a lot of folks to get there.
00:45:48.000And 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.
00:46:09.000So 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.