Gary Sinise: How’s the Fire?
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That's 15% off at SaatchiArt.com. S-A-A-T-C-H-I-Art.com. Ever wish your favorite TV show had twice as many episodes? Everyone knows that feeling. And so does Discover. Everyone wants more of their favorites. That's why Discover doubles another favorite thing, cash back. That's right.

Discover automatically doubles the cash back earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with Cash Back Match. Now that's a real crowd pleaser. Everyone knows how it ends. Double the cash back. See terms at discover.com slash credit card. What's up, Gary? God, I miss you, brother. Good to see you, Rob. It's been too long. I know you're busy these days. Tell me what your most recent travel adventure was.

I did a couple of concerts. I did a concert down at Naval Medical Center in San Diego. So that's a little bit of a travel. It's not airplane travel or anything like that. And we do that every year with my foundation going back to

2012, I'll bring my band down there and we set up a stage and, you know, we bring food in and we bring moon bounces in and rock climbing walls and everything. We get the patients outside and we give them a day long festival with music. And it really is very, very helpful to the people that are at the hospital and going through a lot.

And then the following day, we went up to Vandenberg Air Force Base and played up there for everybody. Well, and, you know, for those of you who aren't aware, I mean, you know, Gary's Foundation, the Gary Sinise Foundation, each year raises over $30 million. $30 million each year.

Which benefits military veterans, you know, building smart homes. And I mean, my favorite thing are the smart sort of, they're not wheelchairs, but like that help some of the guys who can't walk anymore actually stand up. And we did that event at Paramount together. It's been a number of years.

And that technology is so great for them. The homes are incredible. Can I give you a new figure? You're probably looking at an old figure there. Give me a new one. Let's hear the drum roll. We've doubled that. So the foundation is crushing it. And we always need more help because we're doing...

a lot of incredible things, but we've expanded our programming in various areas for military and first responder support. The homes have all kinds of technology in them because we're dealing with quadruple amputees, triple amputees, dramatic brain injury, burns, blindness. I mean, it's

It's people that are paralyzed from the neck down. They need all kinds of special things put into these homes.

So we bring all kinds of technology into these homes to help their families. So that's costly, of course. And we have, you know, multiple programs. And because our fundraising continues to increase each year, we're able to expand those programs and do a lot more. It's pretty, pretty cool stuff. But if anybody would like to donate, where can they do that?

Yeah, you can go to GarySinniesFoundation.org. I always recommend that people go, you know, scroll around the website

the website and everything like that. But if you go down to the YouTube channel on the homepage and you click on that, you'll go and you'll see dozens of videos. In fact, you'll see videos of that event that we did at Paramount years ago are on there. So, I mean, there's dozens of videos that go back way, way back across the history of the foundation. And it shows our programs in action and it allows you to meet the people that we're helping.

It's so great. And you were honored recently. And I was a part of many amazing people who did a nice hello video to you that apparently they showed you and surprised you. Was that cool? Did you like it? I saw a little bit of it. It looked like it was amazing. That totally shocked me, Rob. I mean, I wasn't at all prepared for it. I know you're a writer. You've written some books and you go on these tours and

do some promotion and whatnot. So I was actually just starting my promotional tour. I was in New York. We were getting ready to head to the train station, take a train down to the DC and do some more publicity there. And they told my publicist and my trusty assistant told me to meet in my publicist's room and then we'd go downstairs. And I went in there and

And I said, what are you doing? Let's get going. And they made me sit down and they plopped this laptop in front of me. And it was all these wonderful friends and people, wonderful friends like you and people that I've known or worked with over the years. And then

Other people that I haven't worked with. Wow. And on the military side, in the Hollywood side, all that. And they were all just patting me on the back for doing a good job trying to help these folks out. And it was... By the end of it, I don't know if you saw my reaction video to watching it, but I was all choked up. And, you know, it was really...

It was really something. It really caught me off guard. I wasn't prepared for it at all. Well, listen, you deserve it. And again, folks out there, Gary has devoted his life to this, really. I mean, he still is a wonderful actor and has a huge Hollywood career. But this is I don't know. I mean, I know a lot of people who are activists. I don't know anybody who lives it and breathes it more than you do. I really don't.

Wow. And I just love it, and I love you so much. Thank you, buddy. Thank you. For doing it. You're going to make me blush and get all... I want to talk about a lot of stuff, but I didn't realize... So, Gary formed a legendary theater company called Steppenwolf. Steppenwolf, if you were a young actor coming up when I came up, it was like... They were like...

They were literally the Rolling Stones of acting. It was very rock and roll. It was super edgy. It was super cool and just badass motherfuckers in Chicago. And you formed it in 74? That has to be a typo in my notes. Did you really form it? No, that I got out of high school in 74 and

And so I was 18 and I write about this in my book actually, because I was really a bad student in high school. The only thing I could do was get on stage and learn the lines and spit them out. But academics, I was just terrible at. And so by the time it came to graduate with my class, they told me I didn't have enough credits because I had failed so many classes along the way. So

I had to go back for an extra semester. I should have graduated with a class of 73, but I ended up going back for another semester and graduating in January of 1974. And with high school being so challenging for me, I didn't have any...

desire to try to go to college. So what was I going to do? I got a job with my dad. He was a film editor in the city of Chicago, and I got a job slapping things around for him. And then we formed this... I got together with some kids that were still in high school, and we said, well, let's do a play. Let's find a place somewhere and do a play. And so we did find this

beautiful little church in Deerfield, Illinois, and they let us use it. And we did a play in there in, I think it opened in probably February of 74. And we called it Steppenwolf Theater. Then we did another play. We did another play. We eventually took over this

abandoned basement of a closed-down Catholic school that had this big basement in there, and we built an 88-seat theater in there, and that was the summer of 76 that we started in there, and John Malkovich was a part of that. Laurie Metcalf was a part of that. Jeff Perry was a part of that. Terry Kinney, the woman I met who became my wife, Moira Harris, and it was a group of nine of us in this basement,

And that's how Steppenwolf got started. And eventually we moved into the city. And if you go there now, I mean, look, 1974, that means Steppenwolf is 49 years old now.

And it's a massive multimillion dollar complex now that started with a bunch of kids with no money at all and nothing. And now it's this three theaters in there and all kinds of actors and writers and directors have come out of there. And the breakout moment was your production of True West, if I remember correctly.

Well, True West was the first time we took a play, we moved it to New York. We wanted to do something in New York. We had had some hits in Chicago and in the basement of the Catholic school, which happened to be in Highland Park, Illinois, where I grew up and went to high school. But

true West was kind of this small, uh, four person cast. It was easy, easy to move it. Um, and I was able to get some producers to bring some money in and get some investors. And, and, uh, I made this deal and, uh, Maldovich and I did it. And that was in 1982. We opened it off Broadway. Nobody knew who Steppenwolf was at that time. We were just some young guys, uh,

I was 27, Malkovich was 28, and we went to New York. We did the play, and it was a massive hit. Ran for a couple of years. We did it for six months. And then John went off and started doing movies after that. It was a big part for him, a real career changer for him. I remember that was sort of my first time being in New York as a young actor. And that was all anybody was talking about was that production. I mean, I remember it like it was yesterday. What was...

And you're right. If you would have hung around long enough, Rob, I would have probably cast you in the plate. I always talk to actors. I go, let's go do True West. I'm too old for it now.

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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. What do you think it was about Malkovich, particularly in that part that was so that popped him off like it did? Because I still hear people talk about seeing John in that part. I saw John and burned this later on. And it was, you know, extraordinary. Yeah. Him and Joan Allen, both members of Steppenwolf.

I don't know. True West is a really funny play. It had been done in New York. First, it was done at the Magic Theater in San Francisco when it was first done. Sam Shepard had a relationship with a company up there, and they did a lot of his plays. They did True West there. And then Joe Papp produced it at the Public Theater, probably 1980. Yeah.

just a couple of years before we did it. And it did not do well. Sam Shepard was not happy with that production. It was, I don't know if you remember this, but Peter Boyle and Tommy Lee Jones played the brothers in that. Oh my God, that must have been unreal. There was a lot of controversy about it. Sam, you know, wasn't happy with the production, whatever. It didn't do...

do that well uh i always thought it was funny and i kept trying to get his agent to give me the play to do it in chicago she didn't know anything about steppenwolf so she kept saying no we're not going to give it to you we're waiting for the goodman the goodman to ask oh yeah of course of course yeah because the goodman was the theater that people knew and they were trying to get the goodman to do it and the goodman didn't do it and eventually i remember

being so excited i was on the phone with her i was the artistic director of this of steppenwolf at the time and i kept bugging her and finally she said okay i'll give you the rights and i ran down the stairs and told everybody we got the rights to true west and we did it we opened it in um 1982 um

In the spring of 1982, it was a big hit in Chicago, did really well. And then I was able to get the producers to come on board and put some money together. We did it in New York. It got tremendous attention, a lot of great reviews. Malkovich got all these...

sort of Marlon Brando-esque, you know, reviews and all this stuff. And a lot of people came to see it. And, you know, he just did really well. It was a really funny, crazy performance. You know, we banged each other's heads around for six months on stage. And John just did really well, just to really kind of tour de force one of those shows.

kind of roles that just gets a lot of attention. And then he went off and he left. We filmed it for PBS. Wow. I recast it. Other people went into it for the next 18 months. I kept recasting it. But John and I finished. And then we went into a studio and shot it for PBS series called American Playhouse. Yes, of course. And we shot it for four days.

And it's on YouTube. You can see it on YouTube. True West is on YouTube. And John went off. We finished. I remember we finished like at one in the morning, one night. We shot for four days, finished at one in the morning. The final scene, which is just chaos and ripping each other's hair out. We were totally exhausted. And he left like the following day to go to Thailand.

to shoot The Killing Fields that Roland Joffe was directing. And it was his first big movie. He hadn't really done anything. And then, you know, within just, you know, a couple of years, he was getting a lot of attention and all of that, you know, did really well, obviously. What an amazing story. And then you guys reunited for Of Mice and Men many years later. I love that production, incidentally. I think it's fantastic. I love that movie.

By the way, Gary directed these things, just to be clear. Gary's in them and also directed them to Gray. It's a great production. Well, John and I had done that on stage before we did True West together. We did Mice and Men on stage probably 1980, something like that. And then in 1988, Steppenwolf did a production of The Greats of Wrath. We got the rights to the book.

We did an adaptation. We did it in Chicago. We moved it to La Jolla, California, and then went over to London. And then we did it on Broadway for six months. And it won the Tony Award. And during that period of time, Elaine Steinbeck, who, you know, Elaine controlled all the rights to her husband's work. And she granted us the rights to do

The Grapes of Wrath. And I got to be friends with her and pretty close to her. And I remember we were shooting The Grapes of Wrath for American Playhouse after we finished it. And Elaine was there while we were shooting and I was standing with her and I said, will you give me the rights to Mites and Men to make a movie out of it? And she gave me the rights. She gave me the rights

for nothing. What? Yeah, I didn't have to pay. My deal with her was if I could set the movie up within a year at a studio,

then they would pay her. And then she would say, okay, well, in order to make a movie of it, you have to pay us. Sure. And so I, you know, when you have the rights to something, you're a producer. So all of a sudden I start, I went to one studio, MGM, which I had had a couple of development deals with on a couple of other things that never got made. And I had a relationship with them, Alan Ladd,

Junior running a studio at that. Alan Ladd Jr., the Ladd Company, made some of the greatest movies of their time. Laddy, as he was called, had some of the greatest taste as a producer of anybody who ever was a producer. I really liked him. I really liked him. I remember Sam Cohn. Of course. And ICM. So Sam is the one who really...

introduced me to Hollywood and everything. I was doing plays in New York, True West, and another one called Orphans, and one called Paul and Gilead, these other things that were big hits. By the way, all of these things, I'm having total flashbacks to like, and again, I know I've said it like five times in this podcast, but as a young actor, that was the

fucking center of the universe. That was, I mean, Obama and Gilead and orphans. Are you kidding me? I mean, I don't know if, I don't think anybody's doing anything like that anymore. I think, well, look, the business is so different. So it's an unfair comparison, but you don't hear

I mean, that just isn't really going on anymore. Well, I don't know. It's been so long since I've seen anything. I don't know. But at that time, it was very exciting. The early to mid 80s for Steppenwolf and up until 1990 when we brought the Grapes of Wrath, it was the time that Steppenwolf just kind of exploded. And we solidified ourselves because of those 80s years.

And the success that we have with those plays that we were talking about there, the success of The Grapes of Wrath on Broadway, we were able to raise the money and build our own building, which we did in Chicago. Now, as I said, we have this massive building. But regarding of Mice and Men, I remember Alan Ladd, Sam Cohn, bringing Alan Ladd to see The Grapes of Wrath.

And we went out to dinner afterwards. It was a very powerful, wonderful production. So Sinise and Steinbeck were sort of fresh in Alan Ladd's mind when I left New York, came back to Hollywood and went to MGM and said, how about giving me some money to make a Mice and Men into a film?

And, you know, as far as deals go, you know how long these deals can just drag on. It just takes forever to get something done and everything. I went to him. I finished The Grapes of Wrath in September of 1990. Went to Alan Ladd between, oh, September and December 2019.

They didn't have to read the book. Everybody knows the book, right? I said, I'll get Malkovich. I want to play George. I'll get Malkovich. We'll do it together. We've done it before. They said, okay. And then we hired Horton Foote to write the screenplay.

And, uh, Gordon went to work on it. I remember I was shooting one of the first movies, if not the first decent part I had in a movie, it was called, uh, a midnight clear, a small budget world war. Keith Gordon. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Keith.

And we were up in Utah and the Horton foot came up there while I was shooting and we were working on the script and then we got the script done. I was putting the production together that summer. And by September of 91, I was shooting the movie. So the whole, the whole thing from beginning to end, I mean, to get it, to get it into, you know, on where we were on set shooting was one year to, it just went very quickly. Yeah.

But great, great thing to work on. It was, it was, it was wonderful to work on and, and John and I had a good time doing it. We had a great cast, Sherilyn Fenn, Ray Walston. I mean, there, there was Richard Reilly. There was a great bunch of people on the Moog show.

Joe Morton. I mean, it was a great, great cast. And you obviously would reunite with Ray Walston with me in the stand. Well, there you go. We got to the stand. By the way, you know, they redid it.

um it's called the stand 2020 and they finally got whoopi goldberg to play mother abigail because remember we tried to get her and she she she did not do it we had the great ruby d um i haven't seen it but i'm told that they had the really brilliant idea to start it after the pandemic so like nobody gets sick in it they just well well i haven't seen it either rom but that

That seems kind of bizarre. I want to go, let me get this straight. So it's an iconic Stephen King book that everybody knows if they love Stephen King. Everybody has read the book. Maybe people still remember our thing because it was very successful. And now you want to do it. It's about a pandemic that decimates humanity, but you don't want to do the pandemic. Yeah.

I don't know. I know. Look, I could be getting this wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not it. You're making me curious now. I may have to look it up and go see what they did with it. I had so much fun on that. Didn't we? I love making that. We first of all, it was like how many episodes? Looking back, it was like like eight to our episode. It was so huge.

It was eight hours total. Yeah. I mean, it was four two-hour movies, really. Yeah. I think of Mice and Men, speaking of Mice and Men, that's the reason I got a call from Mick Garris and Stephen King, because they saw Mice and Men. And I think the stand was maybe the first thing I didn't have to audition for. Wow. I mean, they saw Mice and Men and asked me to play Stu in...

in the stand, which was cool because of Mice and Men did a lot of good things. I think the Forrest Gump people saw that as well and asked me to come in on that one. But we had such a fun time on the stand. I really love it. I remember we share a birthday. That's right. Yep. And I remember, Rob, I got to tell you, one of my favorite memories of you was at this, I don't know, some restaurant. We were having a kind of a birthday dinner

And you were doing Chris Walken imitations and you were just, you were busting me up. It was really super hilarious. Chris Walken in, I think the three sisters or the cherry orchard or something like that. Weren't you in that with him? Oh, bro. I mean, it was the most mental. It was Christopher Walken is for Sheenan. I was to Zen Bach.

Amy Irving was Irina. Masha was I mean, it was it was like this weird all star, super eclectic cast. And and Amy used to get irate that Chris would do his rhythms because it's Chekhov. You're not supposed to fuck around with Chekhov. But as you know, Chris had an output, though. Well, he takes the he takes the punctuation out of everything when he memorizes it. So he doesn't know when the sentences end and when they begin. He has no idea.

So, the line that I used to come to the wings to watch him, I would leave my dressing room, come to the wings every night to watch Chris Walken do his Chekhovian dialogue, because there was one line where the line as written was, well, there you have it, period. You know a lot of useless things. That's the line. And it's to Amy Irving, who's very serious.

And Chris would say, well, there you have it. You know, a lot of useless things. And she would just seethe.

And then the other thing that always made me laugh was, I guess, the village burns down at a certain point. Yeah, I remember this when you told me you wrote this script. Yes, yes. So the village burns down and we're all huddled in an attic hiding out. And somebody comes in and Chris wants to know what's going on in the outside world. And his line is, how's the fire?

And the way he said it used to make me laugh because it was I couldn't quite put my finger on why it was so funny to me and weird. It just how's the fire? And then I grabbed a script off the table backstage one day thinking it was mine and it was his. And it was opened to that scene. And I looked at that line, how's the fire? And Chris had crossed out the word fire and handwritten above it barbecue. Oh, my God.

And that's how he said it. How's the barbecue? Is the fire ready? How's the fire? Are the steaks coming? One more, one more that I remember that you told me that really cracked me up is that in some, some scene, he would never talk to the person on stage. He would always talk out there. Yes. He would go right down stage center and turn his back to the audience and

and talk like this to you. And you would hear the audience start to rumble. And finally people in the audience were like, "Weak, oh God! We can't hear you! We don't know!" And then you'd come off stage and Chris would go, "I love it when it becomes like a ball game."

And I go, well, like, why? Because, well, that they're so into it. I go, Chris, they were saying that they couldn't hear you. And he was like and he didn't say anything to me. He just kind of like contemplated. So I go back to my dressing room. Play is going on. Chris pops his head. He goes, why is it that we applaud the audience during curtain call?

I go, well, Niko Sakharopoulos, who ran the Williamstown Theater Festival, who directed the production, told us that it was traditional in the Russian theater for the actors to applaud the audience. We were doing a Russian play, so we did that. I told Chris that, reminded him of that. He goes, well, if they're yelling at me, I'm going to flip them the bird. Yeah.

And so I don't know if he ever did. I was too scared to look at him at the curtain call, but I adored acting with him. He had to be just from night to night. What's going to happen? You never, ever knew. I remember one other thing you told me about him saying his lines to the audience or something at one point.

And you asking him, Chris, why, why don't you, why don't you talk to the actors? You're, you're, do you remember that? I do. I thank you for reminding me of this. I'd forgotten this. He, um, so the direct, you know, you know, it's like in the theater, you, you rehearse it, you put it up on its feet, it plays, but then it's traditional for the director to come back, watch the production and give notes.

Because inevitably things start to go south and actors try to be more hammy, whatever. And the director kind of reels everybody back in and you just kind of remember what you were supposed to do in the first place. So that's what we're doing. And we're sitting there and Nikos, who talked to him, he's a little interesting man and he talked like this. And he says, Chris, Chris, you are doing this thing where you are talking to the audience. You're looking at them and you're talking to them and not the actors. You are breaking the fourth wall.

And Chris goes, well, they know I'm there. I know they're there. It would be rude to ignore them. That's classic. Right.

By the way, my walk-in impersonation is terrible. It used to be very good, but those stories are extraordinary stories. Ron, I remember that dinner so well. We just laughed all night. And on March 17th, we have our birthday coming up. I'll think of that again. I will be toasting you.

All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel.

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Meet the next generation of podcast stars with Sirius XM's Listen Next program, presented by State Farm. As part of their mission to help voices be heard, State Farm teamed up with Sirius XM to uplift diverse and emerging creators. Tune in to Stars and Stars with Issa as host Issa Nakazawa dives into birth charts of her celeb guests. This is just the start of a new wave of podcasting. Visit statefarm.com to find out how we can help prepare for your future.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. We've got to talk about Bob Z and Tom. I forgot how many movies you did with Tom. You've done Green Mile with Tom. You did Apollo 13 with Tom. You did, obviously, Forrest Gump. And he's one of my favorite people in the business. Yeah, we had a great time on all of those. And my friend Bill Packer.

How about this story? So God bless him. Our late, beloved Bill Paxton, who you did Apollo 13 with. Do you remember his Tonight Show appearance? No. Oh, bro. Here you go. I look it up then. This is this is up there with the Chris Walken stories. So he goes on Johnny Jay Leno to promote Apollo 13.

And for what he calls the trophy run, like that's the thing where all the actors for when the Oscar season comes, you can't, you can't get, you know, it's interview after interview after an interview. And Jay goes, so tell me, Apollo 13, what do you think about that movie? And Bill goes, well, God, I gotta tell you, I think the thing should win the Oscar. I think he should win the Academy Award. And he's like, he's like, well, yeah, it's a really good movie. Tom Hanks, really acclaimed it. Tell me why he goes,

Jay, it's called the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Bill Vaught, because there was science. Because it was NASA. It had a shoe in to win best picture. Is that on YouTube? Yeah, it's so good. I got to look it up. God bless him. Love Bill.

That's a great God. Those movies are also great. Lieutenant Dan, though, is I mean, you have the Lieutenant Dan band. I mean, that's the iconic it's it's is that your signature role? You've had so many. I look, it's for sure your most famous.

But you have so many, I'm unwilling to say it's your signature because you've had so many of them. Well, I mean, certainly that was, you know, I hadn't done that many films before that or anything. I had primarily been focused on the theater company almost exclusively with the exception of directing a film. I directed a film in the 80s, but I was focused

primarily focused on Steppenwolf all the way up to the 90s. In 90, I finished The Grapes of Wrath, then I got the rights to Of Mice and Men, started working on that. And then in 91, I did that film A Midnight Clear. I did a movie called Jack the Bear with Danny DeVito that year, and I did Of Mice and Men.

Then I did The Stand. I mean, and then Forrest Gump. So I hadn't really done that much in the movie business up until Lieutenant Dan. And along comes Lieutenant Dan. And it's, you know, it's a great script. It's a great director, a great star, Tom, a great cast. Just everything, everything clicked. And I got to play that part. And that, you know, obviously it's a classic and did really well. And

That was a career changer for sure. Things changed pretty dramatically after that. And then I remember you had some great movie with Ron Howard. Oh, Ransom. Yeah. Ransom. Oh, dude, I remember seeing Ransom in the theater and going, that is such a tight, perfect thriller.

It's a really good suspense movie. No question. Mel and Rene Russo. Yeah, really, really good film. Yeah, I mean... Got to play the bad guy in that, and that was good. It was super good. And then, of course, you go into one of the great television franchises of all time, into the CSI universe, as they would call it today. It's a universe. The CSI universe. I was in that universe, yes. You were in that universe, and...

You know, that is going from movies into that kind of grind. I always say to people,

that if you like a performance on a network television show, if you like an actor, work, that actor's amazing. That means that actor's great because it comes so fast and furious that the hours are such a gruel, such a grind. You have one or two takes. You're not finding it. You're not working it through. You're, it is, you just can't. And,

And if you're able to do work that, that, that reaches people on that, that's really saying something. Yeah. You're just, you're just happy if you can spit out the lion's scene after see, you know, and you don't want to screw it up because everybody wants to go home and you don't want to just, you know, you don't want to be the one who's just taken too much time with everything. You, there's too much to do on a television show. So you want to be prepared and,

I learned a lot. It was great. We did 197 episodes. How many episodes have you done right now? Well, here's the thing. On your show. So on Lone Star, 911 Lone Star, because in those days they would do 22. And maybe even they'd try to get 26 out of you if they could. We did a couple of years like that. Yeah. Now they don't do that. Like a big order now is 18. Like very, very few, if any, do 22 anymore.

And so our count is much, much lower. But let me lay this one on you. Gary, I have had a show on the air every single year without interruption since 1999. That's crazy. I spend more time with a slate in front of my face than I do brushing my teeth. Yeah.

But it gets in your it gets in your DNA. And I used to wonder, like, why do certain actors who were great as they get older, get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until finally the performance they're giving or caricatures of themselves? I'm not going to name any names, but everybody can probably figure out there are a lot of actors like that. And I think I know what it is now. I think it's you work so much and it becomes so in your DNA. It's like falling off of a log.

And, and, and so to feel the, the, the stretch, the push, the, the,

to make it not feel effortlessness to put some quote unquote work back into it. You just get bigger and bigger and bigger until finally you're saying, pull that car over. And like, you know, I don't think that really works. One of my did this with an Irish accent. Yes. You've always been in my school of acting and, uh, less is more. Don't ever get caught acting.

I never want to get caught at it, ever. Well, I've been fortunate. I've had some good opportunities, done some good things, was lucky to stumble into CSI, which gave me a security that I never imagined. And that allowed me to do a lot of incredible things. In my book, there's a CSI New York chapter in my book, and it's called Perfect Timing.

And the reason it's called Perfect Timing is because I was ramping up all this. This was just post 9-11 and the attacks on our country. I was going out for the USO and I was going overseas and doing all these things and volunteering to support a lot of military charities and nonprofits that were helping out. And along comes CSI New York and...

they handed it to me and i debated whether i should take it or not just simply because i hadn't been used to playing you know one character over multiple years but once i got over that it was the best decision the timing was great because all of a sudden i had this public platform every single week when you're on television every week you have this

There's this whole thing you have available to you, this public platform. You have people. There's all kinds of support. The studio is like you. You can go to them and ask them for things and blah, blah, blah. And I'm trying to do all this nonprofit work and help out the military who were reacting to the terrible attacks and

deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq. And I had this thing come along at the right time. And it gave me a lot of means financially to do a lot of cool things, to build a foundation and to support a lot of other things that I cared about. And it gave me this kind of more international recognition than I'd had with the movies.

because the movies, while I did some good ones and everything like that, you know, I was the lead in CSI New York. You know, I was the main guy, and that show was on television for nine years and sold in 200 markets around the world. And it gave me a thing that I was able to capitalize on and help a lot of people because of it. It's so great. And how much of your, on any given day,

How much of your time is foundation work?

And how much of it is that creative part of you that's an actor, producer, all the stuff that you've historically done? Well, I'll tell you, lately, Rob, more focus has been on the foundation work and whatnot. You know, I do this spinoff of Criminal Minds called Criminal Minds Beyond Borders. It went a couple of years and

That was a good thing to have and everything like that. But since then, I've just done a few little things and everything, primarily focusing on the foundation. We've moved the foundation central offices from LA to the Nashville area. So most of my team is in Nashville. I'm going to move there, move the rest of the family there eventually. I'm just kind of focused on that. I've played...

Probably upwards of 550 concerts in the last several years, you know, on these military bases all around the world and whatnot. And I really enjoy doing that. It's a great relief. And, you know, focusing primarily on just what the foundation is doing doesn't mean I've stopped acting or anything like that. But the right thing comes along, I'll definitely consider it.

Amazing. Well, I'd love to do something again with you acting wise. And, you know, I'm always available, you know, to help in any way I can with the foundation. I just love, like I said. Thank you, bud. I love what you do. I'd love to have you come to something. You bet. Yeah, for sure. One last question. In a battle of the bands between Lieutenant Dan Band and the Kevin Costner New West, who wins? Well.

Well, I'm trying to gin up a beef here. You want a battle of the bands between me and Kevin? I do. I do. I think America wants it. You probably have to get the Bacon Brothers in there. I get to throw the Bacon Brothers in a little bit. Isn't there another band called the Band From TV? And it's a bunch of television. Yes.

Yes. It's all like it's all people in the crew. What? It's just anybody who's ever worked in TV is who throws it. I would I. Why is that not like a festival thing?

An entire day at an outdoor festival. Because all the bands would be fighting for the final position of the night. That's right. You can't be doing Freebird. We're doing Freebird. And we're doing Free... Wait a minute. We're a cover band. I mean, we just do all kinds of... Okay, what's your throwdown, like, barn burner...

What's the, what is the, the song that's, that's your go-to killer? Long train running is always a really good one by the doobies. Yeah. Come on. And that's, that is a really hot arrangement that we do. Superstition, Stevie wonder. That's got great.

Great singers. We do country tunes. We do a lot of classics, and we just threw 25 or 624 into the set, which is fun because we have a big horn section in the band. So it's a pretty big band. I mean, there's 13 people in the band. We got five singers. We got a violin player. We do Dave Matthews, Ants Marching. That's a good one. A lot of fun. All right. You sold me. Don't Stop Believin' is always a...

A crowd pleaser. You truly do the hits. I love it. It's a great band. You can see us on YouTube and you can go to the Gary Sinise Foundation website and see what we're doing. Awesome. Gary, thank you so much for coming on. I was so excited that we made this happen. It's been long overdue that we got to touch base. Me too, bud. It's good to see you. Great to talk to you. Gary Sinise, ladies and germs. Yo!

All right. You know what time it is. It's time to check the lowdown line. Hello. You've reached literally in our lowdown line where you can get the lowdown on all things about me, Rob Lowe. 323-570-4551. So have at it. Here's the beep.

Hey, Rob. It's Marianne in St. Louis. Love your podcast and your storytelling. Read your books and waiting for that third one. I have two questions for you, one fun one and one serious one. So the fun one is I was listening to your interview with Michael Cera, and you guys started talking about movies to show your kids, and you mentioned that you had a list that you wanted to share with us.

You guys only got to talk about the first one, which was Land Before Time. So I was hoping that you could add some more for us. I've got two boys, age four and six, that I'd love to show some of your recommendations.

The serious question is, I appreciate all of the things you talk about with your journey through recovery. And we have addiction that runs in our family. And so I was wondering if you had any advice as I raised my two boys about

for how to talk about that, when to talk about that, to kind of help them navigate that as they grow up. Anyway, thanks so much. And I'm looking forward to watching that new Netflix show. Take care. Bye. Aw, you're so sweet. Thank you so much. Great questions. First question, Wizard of Oz, old school, my first favorite movie, great for kids.

Um, make sure they watch until it becomes color. Cause you know, kids hate watching anything in black and white. They hate it. Um, little mermaid lion King. I mean, those were of the era that I had small kids, but I still think they're just the absolute greatest Disney kids movies. Um, Oh, here's a deep cut and you may, I'll bet you haven't seen it. It's a movie called Bugsy Malone.

And it's all kids, like 10, 11, 12-year-old kids in a gangster musical directed by Alan Parker, who is one of the great directors of his time. And it stars a 12-year-old Jodie Foster. And it is spectacular. Total kid movie. Bad News Bears, another one. And the second part of your question about talking to your kids about drugs and alcohol is,

I think, you know, they'll start getting curious, like, mommy, what are you drinking? Daddy, what are you smoking? And I think just the more authentic parents can be and demystifying it, you know, it's, I think people are justifiably so fraught and scared. And I think the less mystery surrounding it and the more open everybody is,

certainly the better but that probably doesn't happen until they're they're teenagers and i think now unfortunately with this god-awful fentanyl it's really changed the rules and i don't think parents can be as laissez-faire as they used to be it used to be well everybody's going to do recreational drugs and it's part of growing up and you know maybe some people it's a phase whatever i

I just think now until this fentanyl thing is figured out, it's a no fly zone. There's no experimenting with that stuff with Coke or Molly or Adderall or any of it. In the old days, you could. Now you could get it wrong once and you could be dead. So hopefully that's not a conversation you have to have until there. I would have it at 11 or 12, though, for sure.

but it's all about the development of your own kid. Your kid may be way more behind or way more forward. Anyway, so that's that. Anyway, thank you so much for the call. Really, really thoughtful questions. Thank you. Until next week, this is me signing off and I will see you back at Literally.

You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Nick Liao, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar, research by Alyssa Graw. The podcast is executive produced by Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross and myself at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd, music by Devin Bryant. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally with Rob Lowe. This has been a Team Coco production.

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