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If the right thing comes along, maybe I'll jump in and do it. Who knows? Hey, everybody. Welcome to Literally. It's always a great day when I get my beloved, beloved buddy, Gary Sinise, back for a second appearance on Literally. He lost his son, Mac, recently to a heroic cancer battle and discovered this amazing music that he had been composing and has released an album of
of his son's music that is going to support the Gary Sinise Foundation, which is the leading foundation for our wounded warrior heroes and their families. So Gary is always doing God's work and he's obviously an amazing actor and just a great dude and always has a great perspective on life and happy to have him back here on Literally.
Gary, it's so good to see you, my brother. Love you so much, man. Thank you, bud. Great to see you as well. I'm sending you hugs over Zoom. Bro, Max Music, is it, it's, that video is,
is Bananas. Which one did you see, bud? The one that I saw is the one with the full orchestra. And you guys are recording it and he's there for the recording of it. Yeah, that's a piece called Arctic Circles. Is that the one? Yeah, Arctic Circles. That is...
I mean, we have so much to unpack here. First of all, I'm so sorry for your loss. And what a heroic struggle he had and you had as a family going through that kind of rare cancer. Good Lord. Oh, yeah. It's been a tough six years. A hard one to deal with. It's a very, very rare cancer called chordoma. And it really affects...
maybe 300 people in the US per year. I mean, that's very, very rare. And of course, they're not developing any drugs to fight it because it's so few people get it. And what Mac had, the metastatic chordoma, that's even more rare because quite often this starts in the spine and they can remove the tumor and they can cure it, you know, about 70% of the time. But
30% of the time it comes back and it spreads. And that's under 100 people per year have to deal with that. And so there's no pharmaceutical companies that are developing any drugs for it. You just throw what you can at it. He had surgeries and radiation and 25 different drugs over a four-year period. And it was just, you know, we...
We just dealt with it as best we could. I stopped acting in 2019 and just focused on the fight and trying to help him. And thankfully, some good success over the years allowed me to take that time off and just focus on Mac. Well, and the way to remember him with this album is just... It's very, very beautiful. And...
What a talent. Holy smokes. And I mean, in Arctic, the song that I heard, he wrote in USC. Is that right? Well, yeah. I mean, he started it. He wrote it. He went to USC Music School, the Thornton School of Music. He was in the pop program. They had like a pop program there where it was just songwriters recording rock tunes and
and learning the composition and all of that. He was a drummer. He went in as a drummer and just a fantastic drummer. But he wanted to do more, Rob. He wanted to write songs. He wanted to compose for film.
He had a lot in his toolbox and he started writing this piece. He wrote a piece called Waltz for Addicts, which is on that YouTube channel that you saw Arctic Circles on. And that was the first sort of big piece he wrote in college. And then after that, he started writing Arctic Circles and never finished it. And then last year,
He's in the throes of cancer. The cancer had disabled him. He was paralyzed from the chest down. He couldn't play drums anymore and picked up a harmonica because he could still hold it. But he said to me that he wanted to try to finish this piece of music from USC.
And, you know, he asked if I thought some of my band members would help him flesh it out a little bit. So he teamed up with them, then connected with a buddy from college named Oliver Schnee. And Oliver is a composer as well. And they went to work to finish Arctic Circles. And he went into the studio July of 2023.
Rob, I had not heard anything that they were working on. He hadn't played the piece for me at all. I didn't know what I was going to hear. I wheeled him in in the wheelchair. We sat down in the studio. The orchestra was there. And all of a sudden, they started playing that piece. And I was knocked out. It's such an emotional and beautiful piece. It was just...
I'm glad they caught it on camera because it's nice to have that video of the moment. I highly recommend anybody listening go and look this up because the piece of music is, it's so great and it sticks with you. I mean, it's a real, it's amazing. And your reaction as a father and it's just, it's a really beautiful three and a half minute, four minutes that you can spend. Very, very inspirational. And yeah,
And the new album is called Max and East Resurrection and Revival Part Two. All of the proceeds going to your amazing foundation, which I've loved forever, the Gary Sinise Foundation. You guys are at 300 million for wounded warriors, veterans, first responders, families. You've served over a million meals. Yes.
Yeah. It's insane, man. But you've been doing it a long time. You've been at this a very long time. Remember that event that you came to at Paramount? Of course I do. That was over 10 years ago. It's insane. For your listeners, I had an event where we called it Hollywood Salutes Heroes, and we brought in about 55 to 60 wounded folks, and we took them to Disneyland, and we took them over to Paramount.
And Rob came, you were there and all the Hollywood, you know, I wanted Hollywood to show up to salute the heroes. And that was a great, great event early on in my foundation. Let's do that again. Let's do another one. We're doing them all the time. I mean, all over the country. But eventually I'll get back, you know, I moved to Nashville. So eventually I'll get back
And we'll do another one in California where we bring everybody in. We do them in, you know, little small events where we're bringing folks in. And Mac worked for the foundation. He went to work for the foundation in 2017. One of the things I asked him to do was to write some music for...
some of our videos. We have a lot of videos that we produce to show our programs in action and show the people that we're helping and all that kind of thing. And they always need music. So I asked him to write some music for it. So after he died, Rob, he had just finished Resurrection and Revival Part One. He designed the front cover and the back cover. He designed everything for the vinyl cover.
And he never got to actually see it. You know, it went to press the week that he died. But after he died, I started searching his laptop and I found all this other music, including some of the music that he wrote for some of these videos. But then I found all this other stuff that he'd written that is just stunning and beautiful. And stuff going all the way back to USC. I mean, there's a lot. So I decided to produce another record for him, Resurrection and Revival Part II.
And that's the one that's on our Gary Sinise Foundation website right now. Some of the videos are on Max Sinise YouTube where you saw Arctic Circles. And I'm just trying to get the word out. It's really a very, very special gift that he left to us. And I'm trying to share it with folks because...
He was an exceptional musician, so the music is great. And, you know, I'm not just a dad who's proud of his son for writing some songs. I mean, I'm a player as well, and I know good music. So I'm happy and thrilled to be able to share this music with everybody. Oh, it's stunning. It's stunning. It's...
I was blown away. I mean, listen, I'm predisposed to love you and Mac. And I was like... I was down to begin with. But then I heard it. I was like, oh, my God, this is fantastic. Yeah. So, I mean, Lieutenant Dan Band. I mean, you've been playing in that band now for...
It's got to be at least 10 years. How many years has Lieutenant Dan Band been touring? It's over 20 now. Yeah, we started... The first concerts I did for the troops was back in 2003. And then I started doing regular tours in 2004. And now we've played...
I don't know, over 575 concerts over the years on military bases and hospitals and you name it. I mean, we played everywhere. Do you have a particular concert or a particular venue or a particular country that you, that stands out? Like, man, in Afghanistan, those people, they really get down. Like, like, like,
Well, as I said, there's 570 some concerts over the years. It's hard to remember all of them, but there are, yeah, there are standouts. I mean, you mentioned Afghanistan. We were in Kandahar. So in Kandahar, there's this big military base there. We had a military base there and they built this sort of boardwalk in the center of the base.
where they had all these fast food restaurants, like Tim Hortons and Subway. No way! You know, all these fast food, yeah. You know, like we were shipping fast food over there, and they had all these little restaurants. And on the boardwalk, we could set up the band. And so we set up the band on the boardwalk, surrounded by all these fast food restaurants, and all the troops came out that were serving in Canada are there.
And that was a great show. There was another one over there that we played at a place called Camp Leatherneck. And it was the dustiest, dirtiest kind of marine base, you know, that you can imagine. The dust was really thick. And we set up on the back of this, on like the bed of these two trawlers.
that they put together and we just set up on there. And everybody, you know, all the Marines came out there and we were rocking for them and all that. That was a great tour back in 2009. What is your set list with Lieutenant Dan? Is it originals, covers, mixes? You know, the only originals in the set are two songs that Mac wrote.
No way. After I discovered all this music, I found one beautiful instrumental piece that he wrote in college called Angel's Theme that features a violin solo. And we have a great violin player in the band. Wow. It's a beautiful song. So we're doing that one now. And then the last song he wrote is actually on that YouTube channel, Max and East YouTube. It's called Quasi Love. And he wrote it in his hospital bed.
And he was fleshing it out with my violin player. And after he died, I didn't know anything about it, that he was working on it at all. I found it. I found some charts. I found the lyrics. I found a voice memo that Mac had sang the chorus of the song into his phone while he was fleshing it out and working on it.
So I found all that and I asked my violin player, what is this? Were you guys working on something? He said, yeah, Mac had this idea. He was fleshing it out. I was trying to help him. I said, well, finish the song. We're going to put it on the record. And so it's on Resurrection and Revival Part 2. The video is at Max and E's YouTube and
That voice memo that I found, I put it on the recording. It starts the recording and ends the recording. So you can hear Max singing into his phone, and then the band jumps in and starts pounding the song. And it's a really great rock tune. It's really fun. And what's cool about the video that you'll see on his YouTube channel
is, he had, you know, as I said, he went to music school at USC, and he had three drumming roommates. There were four drummers in a, you know, in an apartment together. Jesus. And then two guitar players that he played with way back. I flew them all out to Nashville and asked them to play on this last song that Mac wrote. So they're all featured in the video. And it's really, it was beautiful to have them, um,
you know, I mean, just, uh, you know, and, and so my band is playing that song as well. Those are the only originals we play. And then the rest are covers of, you know, anywhere from Springsteen to Stevie Wonder to, you know, Shawn Mendes to, yeah, I mean, we, we're all over the map with contemporary and classics and pop rock blues country. You know, it's all over the place. In the pantheon of movie star, uh,
centric bands lieutenant dan band is in its own level but let's talk who who else i saw costner's band play by the way since we've last spoken did you i did he he play his band he and his band played a um a charity for our first responders in santa barbara you know we had these terrible mudslides and yeah terrible yeah and like 23 people died and um
So it was for the 805 Foundation. That's Santa Barbara, and they support the first responders. So God bless Kevin. He did a great job. His band was great. They were great. I think we need to get you guys on a double bill tour. And we'll get Quaid. We'll get Dennis Quaid to rock it. Yes, and the Bacon Brothers. All the old hippies are now playing rock music and country music. And by the way, Jeff Bridges also played.
I mean, dude, I can't be the first person to think of this. Movie stars only festival. There you go. We can raise money for the Gary Sinise Foundation. I love it. I mean, that would be kind of sick. That would really be good. Are you in need of a tropical vacation?
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to come back to acting on any level? You know, it all depends. I mean, I'm very, very busy with the mission of the foundation. We're operating all over the place. You mentioned an amount of money that we've raised. It's actually over $500 million in the last 14 years. Oh my God, $500 million. Yeah, we've deployed that all over. We have multiple programs at the foundation. I'm still doing...
quite a few concerts on military bases here and there and events and that kind of thing. So the mission of the foundation is very broad and we're doing a lot of great stuff. We're just about to take over a thousand children down to Disney World in Orlando where we do an annual event there every year for the children of our fallen heroes. We now, we take military kids there
over a thousand kids. So that's about 650 families.
We take over a hotel at Disney World. Hundreds and hundreds of volunteers, many corporate sponsors come in. We have all kinds of things going. And we do that for military kids. And then the following week, we bring in children of our fallen first responders and do an event for them. My band plays. And those are usually the last concerts of the year for me. So I'm quite busy.
busy with the foundation. It doesn't mean that I won't go back to acting in something if the right thing comes along. But, you know, we've both been blessed, Rob, with great success in the business and it's allowed us to do a lot of great things. And it certainly allowed me to, you know, it allowed me to take the time off to help Mac and to try to fight the cancer alongside him.
It's helped me to serve a lot of folks out there who need help. And so I have great affection for the business, for sure, because it gave me a lot of opportunities. If the right thing comes along, maybe I'll jump in and do it. Who knows? Because you're so damn talented, both as a writer, director, and actor, I hope that you do. But I love...
what you're doing is gotta be, I don't want to say it's, is it more fulfilling for you or is that just too easy to say it's, it's fulfilling in a different way? Yeah, it's fulfilling in a different way and it wouldn't exist had I not had a good career in the movie and TV business there. You know, uh, I was able to take resources from, from the success in the business and deploy them, you know, all over the place and, and build a foundation, uh,
If I was plugging away in the theater world and everything like that, I may not have been able to have the success at building a foundation that I've had. So I'm grateful for all that success in the business. I had a lot of great opportunities. One was with you. I really enjoyed our time on the stand all those years ago and so many great opportunities along the way that I've had.
And to be able to take that success and kind of turn it into something that's making a difference in people's lives, you know, who serve our country and protect and defend us, that's a great reward. It's just a – gives life extra purpose for sure, you know. I always like to ask people who have had a big body of work and a diverse body of work like yours, you know,
What, A, two things, A, when people recognize you in the street, what is the project they usually recognize you from? I'm guessing it's CSI. The other would be of all of your things, what is the one you are not our most proud of? Because that's too broad, but like, is there one thing
that maybe got missed that you wish people would go back and revisit? Because that's an easy one for me. Like I would go, oh, not a lot of people saw whatever. What do you think? Yeah. You know, one project that I poured my heart and soul into, directing, producing, and acting, was Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Oh, it's great. It's so good. I did that one, and that was fantastic.
1991, we shot it. It came out in 92. So it's quite a few years ago that we did it. It didn't do all that well in the theater. You know, I'll tell you what happened. Redford's River Runs Through It came out the following week.
And Brad Pitt, of course, was stealing all the oxygen out of everything back then. Still is. Still is. God damn him. He got, you know, there was a lot of attention going to that movie. Kind of a, not a similar story, but it was a, you know, a country story and all that kind of thing. Of Mice and Men was produced by MGM. MGM did it. Yeah.
And they had kind of, here's how much we're going to spend on marketing, and then we're not going to do any more. And River Runs Through, I think that was Columbia, and Columbia was dumping all kinds of money into that. And so Mice and Men didn't do all that well at the box office, but because it's a classic...
you know, it's a classic and, and they read it in high schools. I, you know, for years, I've gotten letters from high school kids that have seen it and all, all of that. Uh, so I'm, look, that, that was a, I got to take that to the Cannes Film Festival. It got a massive standing ovation, like for 15 minutes, they were screaming and yelling and
my producing partner turned to me during that ovation and he said, I think we just made a French pill. And I said, well, that's okay. You know, they're loving it. And it was great. Alan Ladd Jr. was there for that screening and
It was just a great, great moment. I had some great moments with that. And it caught the attention of the producers of Forrest Gump. And so they asked me to come in and audition for Gump about a year after that movie came out. So it was a great calling card, you know, and that one...
You know, I wish a lot more people had seen it, but... I'm glad I asked you this. I'm glad because I've seen it multiple times, and it's fantastic. Thank you, bud. And, of course, John Malkovich is in it with you. You guys go way, way back to Steppenwolf. Yeah, we actually did it on stage together. We did the play of that. I feel like, did you do it in New York ever? No, we didn't do that, but we did The Grapes of Wrath. Okay. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we did the Grapes of Wrath. And that was a great experience because I got to be very good friends with Elaine Steinbeck, who was John Steinbeck's, she was married to John Steinbeck and she controlled all the rights to all his books. And so we had to get the rights from her for the Grapes of Wrath.
to turn that into a play. We got the rights in about 85. We put it up in 88 in Chicago. Then we put it up again in 89, reworked it, put it up at the La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla. And then we went to London with it in 89. Then we went to Broadway with it in 1990 and it won the Tony Award. So it was a big, big success. And I got, during that whole thing, I got to be very close with her and she was
And I remember standing on the stage. The Grapes of Wrath ran six months on Broadway. It won the Tony, but it was so expensive. And, you know, that in our contracts were up at the end of six months. They didn't want to, you know, recast it and do that whole thing. So we closed it. And then PBS came in with cameras and set them up in the theater. And we shot it for PBS. Wow.
And when I was standing backstage with Elaine, you know, we were going to be over with this Grapes of Wrath experience in the next couple of days. We're going to shoot that and then everybody go home. I was living in California and I said to her backstage, I said, would you give me the rights to have mice and men to try to make a movie of it?
And she said, well, it's been a film, you know, it's already been a film like two or three times. I remember Randy Quaid and Robert Blake did a television version of it. And then, of course, the classic with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. back in 1939.
But I said, hey, I'd like to take a crack at it if you give me the chance. And she gave me the rights for one year for free. I didn't have to pay her. Wow. So she said, yeah, basically the deal that we made was if you can set it up somewhere within the first year, we'll give it to you to try to do that. And so I had developed a few things with Alan Ladd over at MGM, things that didn't get made.
So I had a little relationship with them. Remember Sam Cohn over at ICM? Of course. Yes. Sam had introduced me to Alan and a bunch of different folks. They had come to see the Grapes of Wrath. Alan had come and we went out to dinner afterwards. So when I got back with the rights to have mice and men, I went to them. And of course...
The story goes is, of course, they didn't need to read it to find out what it was. You know, I said, I said, I'll get Malkovich to come and do this with me. And they said, OK, great. And they gave me a little budget and we went to work on it. A year later, I was shooting it. So it just it just went like boom, boom, boom.
And I'm always very grateful to MGM for giving me the money to do it. They basically let me just go make it. And, you know, now it's, you know, it's still out there. Was it an official Ladd Company movie? Because Alan Ladd, for those of you who aren't familiar for our business, I did a movie for Laddy as well, they called him. The Ladd Company movies that they made, every one of them is un-fucking-believable.
I mean, he had great, great, great taste. He did have great taste. Obviously, he chose Of Mice and Men because he thought it was going to be a big, big hit. Well, it's a great movie. I mean, and it's funny because
The Outsiders, which I did as 18, is similar in that it's in the curriculum of schools. So you get every year a crop of young students who are learning about Steinbeck or reading S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. And it's a whole opportunity for us as aging dudes to
to reconnect with a young audience. To look at that stuff, yeah. And it's great stuff. I remember The Outsiders, but that was awesome. I just had Coppola on the podcast. Oh my gosh. It was unbelievable. I was so nervous, Gary. It was like, I've talked to all kinds of people on the podcast, but there's something about, you know, I hadn't seen Francis since I was...
what I haven't seen him since I was 17 years old or not 18 years old so you're kind of like stuck in that relationship still do you know what I mean I still felt like the 18 year old actor who'd never done anything talking to the great Francis Coppola it was it was really you got to work with Coppola how cool is that yeah well and listen you've you've had great great ones as as well it feels like there are fewer and fewer great ones me I don't know why why that is but like
to hear him talk about what it was like and why he did The Outsiders. It's like, it was amazing. So if you're so inclined, you can listen to it. It's out now, but it was awesome. I'm going to look that one up and listen to it. ♪
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Have you seen Bob Z's movie? I haven't seen it yet. The one with Bob Zemeckis he worked with on Forrest Gump. Bob Z is another genius and he's got the movie with Tom out now. It's all in one angle, right? You know this is all in one angle. Is it? What do you mean? So it's the story of a house, right? So it's just like one shot? It's one angle.
For the entire, isn't it just sound like, I just think we should do it and just like, how about if we save ourselves some time and just set the camera? It's fun. I love working with people like that. I get to do a little, I did like a week on contact with them, which is, I think an under really underrated movie.
And when people talk about what they think the universe might be and what space travel is really like, when you talk to the real scientists, they will point to two movies that they say got it right. One is Interstellar and the other is Contact. Oh, awesome. It's funny, these directors who are also as interested as they are in story, they're also as interested and sometimes more interested in finding technologies to tell the stories that have never been used before.
You know, James Cameron, Bob Z. That's Bob. Yeah. Right. No kidding. I remember when he called me up with the idea of how they were going to take my legs off, you know, for the film because Lieutenant Dan, you know, gets blown up and loses his legs. Yeah. And we had discussed that. Yeah.
Like, how are we going to do that? Because there have been those other movies where people just kind of bend their legs underneath them and sit in a chair. Right. Stuff like that. He didn't want to do that. So he came up with, hey, we're going to take them off in the computer. We're going to figure out. So I just wore blue screen socks on my legs and they went in and removed the blue color and my legs were gone. It's the earliest...
the earliest iteration of doing, which is now commonly done. People go, we'll take it out in post. Yeah, it's no...
That was kind of the beginning. I mean, Bob was really at the forefront of developing technologies that developed into all the computer graphics and all that. You know, now you can, anything you can think of now, they can do. And Forrest Gump putting Tom in the middle of very famous archival footage. Yeah. And then on Contact, he went the other way and took a famous person and put them in the movie when they weren't there. He put Bill Clinton in.
in a scene at the White House where we were all talking to the president. I'll have to revisit that. I don't remember that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Listen, by the way, I'm so capable of misremembering things now. I don't know if it's my age or what the fuck. I will literally sometimes tell a story and go, wait a minute, did that really happen? I did have a moment with Coppola where I said, Francis, I've been telling a story for years.
And you know how you, when it's an old story, but you've been telling it for years, you begin to doubt that it ever happened. Yeah. I said, did you, do you know what I mean? I go, I go, did I remember you directing me while you were on the phone with your wife who was hiding from a process server who was trying to throw you guys out of the winery and
Because you'd lost all the money on Zotrop Studios. And you were going, just hide. Just don't answer the gate. Oh, sorry. Hang on one second. And action. And of all of the stories that I have that I go, that probably was bullshit. I probably misheard. He goes, oh, no, I absolutely remember that.
I was like, okay. It was true. Great. I'm not crazy. That's a good one to retell and retell again. Oh, it's too good. Literally. Okay. That's amazing. So how's Nashville treating you? Are you as happy as you thought you'd be when you pulled up stakes? Yeah. We moved September of last year. Yeah. I moved my foundation here in 2021. So-
The foundation came, both our daughters' husbands worked for the foundation. So they all ended up coming out here much earlier than we did. I wanted, I was just hesitant. Mac was in the Santa Monica medical system at St. John's working with an oncologist there who was
very experimental and willing to try anything. And with a rare orphan cancer like Mac was fighting, you need somebody who's just going to continue to provide hope for you. Right. And not somebody who just goes, I don't know what to do, you know? Right. And he said to Mac, as long as you are willing to try things, I'm willing to try to find things to try.
And so we stuck there and I was just hesitant to pull Mac out of it. But his sisters were here and we knew we had to get here, you know, and so I started that ball rolling and it took a while to get all the planning. I had to get medical transport, you know, he was, you know, he was paralyzed from the chest down and all of that. He couldn't travel commercially. And so I had to arrange all that.
And we finally got here in September of last year, 2023. And our daughters had settled in really well. And everybody at the foundation had settled in really well. And everybody was loving it. And I have friends here in the music business and different pals that have moved out here. And I've been coming here for several years to do concerts for the military at Fort Campbell and
you know, different things like that. So I liked it, but, you know, I hadn't lived here or anything like that. Now, the last year and a half, the first, you know, when we first got here, unfortunately, you know, my wife had to go into the hospital. Mac was struggling. He died like three months after we got here. And...
So there were all these medical complications that were taking up all the oxygen and taking up all my time and, you know, kind of, you know, enjoying Nashville and enjoying living here wasn't anything I was focused on. Sure. The past several months, I've been focused on producing Resurrection and Revival Part Two. The studios here that we recorded in are gorgeous and wonderful and
Um, you know, when we got here with Mac September 29th, uh, by November 5th, he was back in the studio, uh, in Nashville, um,
a place called Ocean Way, which is an old church that's been converted into a studio. And then November 10th, on his birthday, we were back in the studio again, a very, very famous studio called Blackbird, where every country person is recorded in there. And then he finished all the recording for Resurrection and Revival Part 1,
And so that was it. And then things started getting complicated the next month and he ended up back in the hospital and died six days later. So then you've got all the funeral stuff and you got all the things that are going on with grief and trying to manage all that. So getting around to Nashville for the first part of this year, I just wasn't doing much. I was
focused on just trying to take care of the family and get through it. But lately, I mean, last summer, you know, last summer, July 6th was the 30th anniversary of Forrest Gump opening in the theaters. And I had started to befriend some of the folks over at the Grand Ole Opry. And, you know, because we send, you know, we'll do events here where we bring in
spouses of our fallen heroes or children or whatever. And we do things with them here in Nashville. We call them Nashville adventures, you know, kind of like what we did with the Hollywood Salutes Heroes, where we bring people in and do things with them. So developed a pretty good relationship with the Opry. And I can't remember whose idea what it was, but, you know, we started investigating like, is Paramount going to do
anything for the 30th anniversary, because the event that you attended at Paramount that day, where we had all the wounded folks come out, that was focused around the 30th anniversary of, or the 20th anniversary of Forrest Gump. That was, you know, that was the 20th anniversary year. And for the Oscars that year, they did kind of an Oscar special that focused on the
the Forrest Gump anniversary. And part of it was the event that we did at Paramount that day. Right. Yeah. So I was wondering, like, what's Paramount going to do for the 30th? And they weren't going to do anything. But the Opry, I don't know who came up with the idea, but the Opry said, we want to do something. So we want to do the Opry celebrates 30 years of Forrest Gump.
And we want the Lieutenant Dan Band to play. Amazing. All these other artists. And they got all these other great artists like Gary LaVox, who he's the lead singer from Rascal Flatts. I know Gary and asked him to come and sing a few songs. Jamie Johnson came and sang. We had the Gatlin brothers singing on the bill. I mean, it was a great it was a great night.
And then my band comes out at the end and plays four songs. And one of the
One of the key things that they wanted everybody to do, Rob, was everybody do a song, at least one song from the soundtrack of Forrest Gump. Whoa. So it was this great nostalgia night. You know, in the lobby, they had shrimp and they had chocolates and they had the bench, the park bench there where you could get your picture taken. And I mean, people were dressing up like Forrest Gump and showing up. It was a completely sold out show. Yeah.
with Gump fans and Opry fans and Lieutenant Dan fans and all that stuff. And it was just so much fun. I had Michael T. Williamson, who played Bubba. He came. Wow. And he plays harmonica, so we threw him out there with my band and played Sweet Home Alabama. And then Wendy Feinerman, who was the producer, she came, introduced one of the acts.
Remember the young guy who played Young Forrest, who had the braces on his legs and everything? His name is Michael Connor Humphreys. He came and introduced one of the acts. So it was just a great night. And kind of one of the first things that I'd actually done here to just have some fun in Nashville. And so I'm really enjoying it. It's a beautiful place.
We have a nice place out in the country, and it's very, very nice and a great place to raise the kids. What's the Opry like? What is that? Do you walk in, and is it like walking into old Yankee Stadium or Fenway or Wrigley or any of those cultural Hollywood Bowl? Yeah, the old...
The old Opry is at the Ryman Theater, and the Ryman is about 2,500 seats, and then they built the new Opry quite a while ago. I mean, it's been around long, and it's got over 4,000 seats in there. So it's a pretty big venue. But you know what? Even as big as it is, it feels very intimate in there when you're on stage. Like the audience is close to you in the balconies and everything. You feel like the audience is right up there with you, and
Just being on the legendary Opry stage where so many just amazing artists have played was just the biggest thrill. I got to tell you, we played four songs. And that's basically, you know, the Opry shows are like that. They have like eight artists on the bill. They each played two or three songs. And then the next one comes on and the next one and everything. Congrats.
I mean, Resurrection and Revival, baby. Part two. Go out and buy it if you're listening and support Gary and his foundation and Mac's memory. Right now, Resurrection and Revival part two is available on vinyl.
For part one, Mac wanted to make some vinyls. Amazing. Good. This is even better because I am way into vinyl right now. That's my thing. So that's great. You know what? Go to the Gary Sinise Foundation website. There's a deluxe package of part one and part two.
And you can buy the vinyl. The first record, part one, is out on digital on Spotify and iTunes and all of that. The second one will be out on digital after the first of the year. All the proceeds from the vinyl, as Mac wanted,
Go to the Gary Sinise Foundation to help us with our mission at the foundation. He loved the foundation. And you can go to Max Sinise YouTube to see some of the videos from both the first album and the second album. And we're also going to be watching Of Mice and Men, if we haven't seen it.
which I have. And the outsiders. And the outsiders. Oh, and that was the other thing, just really quickly, because I famously got cut out of the movie that came out. And so all these years I've been wondering, like, why did they do that? Like, the original movie has nothing to do with the book.
And without even any prompting, Francis was, you know, I just didn't understand certain plot elements. And so I cut out of the movie and I made a horrible mistake. And I was like, thank you. Thank you. At least he fessed up. Yeah. And he said, that's why the new version is, he kept saying, it is the official version. I've never heard of the official version, but.
The Outsider is the complete novel. So that was, if you're going to watch The Outsiders, make sure it's the official version. Mr. Sinise, love you. And this was great. It was great having you, as always. Thanks so much for having me, Rob. And thanks for helping to get the word out on Mac's album and
and the music. It's beautiful stuff. And it's helping our veterans for sure. He's still helping us with the mission. Love it. Eternal. Appreciate you, man. God bless you, bud. Thank you. Love you, buddy. Bye.
Oh, thank you guys so much. Always feel so good spending time with Gary. Just always fills my heart. And I'm glad you guys were here for it. Next week, we've got more interesting stuff going on here. Don't forget, we're on YouTube now. Hopefully you're watching as well as listening and subscribing. And spread the word. And I'll see you next week here on Literally.
You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Sean Doherty, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar and research by Alyssa Grau. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross for Team Coco, and Colin Anderson for Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd. Music by Devin Bryant.
Special thanks to Hidden City Studios. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally.
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