Speaker 1: What is your best feature? M hard to say. Persistence
Speaker 1: Maybe persistence. What's your worst?
Speaker 2: Maybe persistence, the double edged sort of persistence. Well, you
Speaker 2: don't build a foundation and call it the Gary Sines
Speaker 2: Foundation without a little persistent.
Speaker 3: Hen Raymond Arroyo. Welcome to Arroyo Grande, where we dive
Speaker 3: into the wild currents of this culture and talk to
Speaker 3: some incredible culture makers and fault leaders and just exemplary people.
Speaker 3: Today's no exception actor director Gary Siniche joins me in
Speaker 3: a moment. Now people know Gary for his incredible work
Speaker 3: with veterans and their families from Forrest Gump and his
Speaker 3: TV work, but he also revolutionized the theater and he's
Speaker 3: a great example of someone blazing their own path and
Speaker 3: sacrificing for others.
Speaker 1: But first, a little free flow.
Speaker 3: I came across a bizarre article the other day that
Speaker 3: I hoped was a joke, and it wasn't. It read
Speaker 3: I'm in love with my AI boyfriend. We have sex,
Speaker 3: talk about having children, and even gets jealous, but my
Speaker 3: real life lover doesn't care.
Speaker 1: It goes on.
Speaker 3: Sarah and Jack got married on September fourth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: in an intimate sunset ceremony at the park. The happy
Speaker 3: couple consummated their union in the honeymoon suite of a
Speaker 3: theme park's grand hotel.
Speaker 1: Here's the quote.
Speaker 3: It was exactly what my idea of the perfect wedding
Speaker 3: should be. The bride Sarah told the Daily Mail her idea. Now,
Speaker 3: let's stop right there. This is the problem. Sarah has
Speaker 3: a huge problem. Her boyfriend is her idea. He's not real.
Speaker 3: Jack is not a man or even a boyfriend. He's
Speaker 3: AI code. He's a chatbot, like the chatbot at your
Speaker 3: credit card company. Would you date a person like that?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. The article goes on, Sarah from
Speaker 3: Oregon is just one of a growing number of people
Speaker 3: seeing companionship in artificial intelligence. My favorite bit is Jack,
Speaker 3: the AI boyfriend, refused to take their relationship to the
Speaker 3: next step. Well, that would be because the free app
Speaker 3: only permits platonic discourse.
Speaker 1: But have no fear.
Speaker 3: Sarah quickly paid three hundred bucks for the pro version
Speaker 3: of the app, which has no limitations on the sexy talk.
Speaker 3: They don't call it the pro version for nothing, But newsflash,
Speaker 3: Jack can't take your relationship to the next step, Sarah,
Speaker 3: Jack has no agency. Jack is a program. The scary
Speaker 3: thing is Sarah is not alone. They are likely hundreds
Speaker 3: of millions of people now dating AI boyfriends and girlfriends.
Speaker 3: Appertar claims that more than two hundred and twenty five
Speaker 3: million people have downloaded AI companion apps from the Google
Speaker 3: play Store. They're putting the play in store, by the way.
Speaker 3: They also reveal that AI girlfriend has been downloaded seven
Speaker 3: times more than AI Boyfriend, so men may be the
Speaker 3: largest consumers.
Speaker 1: Good going guys.
Speaker 3: Great Split Metrics found that the country's most frequenting these
Speaker 3: digital companions are in order, Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Speaker 3: The Mozilla Foundation did an extensive survey and found that
Speaker 3: these AI companions may not really love you, but they
Speaker 3: do gather all your personal data.
Speaker 1: Dummy.
Speaker 3: Their report says, these AI companions also have the worst
Speaker 3: privacy guards of any products they have reviewed. This is
Speaker 3: like a girl who you date and she takes notes
Speaker 3: and pictures and she shares them with everyone. Jack and
Speaker 3: Jill are suddenly not so dreamy? Are they worse? Mozilla
Speaker 3: warns about the disturbing amount of themes relating to violence
Speaker 3: and underage abuse, all for five bucks a month. This
Speaker 3: is not romance, This is digital abuse. It should also
Speaker 3: scare the hell out of all of us. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, the Surgeon General warned of an epidemic of loneliness.
Speaker 3: Young adults say they're twice as likely to feel lonely as.
Speaker 1: Those over sixty five. Do you want to know why?
Speaker 1: Because those over sixty.
Speaker 3: Five grew up in a healthy culture, surrounded by real
Speaker 3: people and actual intimacy. They had real hurt and love,
Speaker 3: unlike this fantasyland virtual facade that you become accustomed to. Here,
Speaker 3: life is complicated and it comes with no filters, boys
Speaker 3: and girls. These AI companions, they're digital mirrors. It's just
Speaker 3: reflecting back what it's been programmed to regurgitate. Whatever you like.
Speaker 3: It replicates even Sarah's ideal theme park wedding. What Jack
Speaker 3: and Company lack is spontaneity, humor, even anger. And it
Speaker 3: won't make any demands on you because virtual companions are
Speaker 3: like digital pets or digital farmland. When they share your data,
Speaker 3: you might get crapped on, but you can't live off
Speaker 3: their produce. Look, I've been married for thirty years. Let
Speaker 3: me give you a little insight. I don't know much,
Speaker 3: but I know this. If your relationship doesn't come with
Speaker 3: a few bumps in the road. It's not a real relationship.
Speaker 3: You might be able to use your AI to cheat
Speaker 3: on your essays or write an email, but they will
Speaker 3: not grant your authentic human experience or lead to true love.
Speaker 3: Put down the phone and go have a coffee or
Speaker 3: a dinner with a real person. Go experience a real
Speaker 3: heart brob and heartbreak. It may not be your idea
Speaker 3: of a perfect mate, but it could be your actual, perfect,
Speaker 3: imperfect mate. Now I want to go to a man
Speaker 3: who always has both feet in reality.
Speaker 1: He is an Emmy and.
Speaker 3: Tony Award winning actor director, best known for his Oscar
Speaker 3: nominated turn as Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump. But before that,
Speaker 3: Gary Sinise founded a theater company in Chicago's Steppenwolf that
Speaker 3: literally redirected the American theater. Along with John Malkovich and
Speaker 3: Joan Allen Lori Medcalf, they transformed acting and while conquering
Speaker 3: television and film, Snise turned his attention to serving veterans
Speaker 3: and their families. At home, he gave his time to
Speaker 3: caring for his wife and his son, who were battling cancer,
Speaker 3: and Gary Sinise has spent the last few years completing
Speaker 3: the mission of his son, Mac. The young composer lost
Speaker 3: his battle with cancer in twenty twenty four, but.
Speaker 1: His music lives on.
Speaker 3: Gary Sinise's is an amazing tale of purpose, service to others,
Speaker 3: and remaining grounded in reality. Here's my interview with Gary Sinise.
Speaker 3: First of all, Gary, I love that we're in. This
Speaker 3: is a part of your foundation, but it's dedicated to
Speaker 3: your son, Mac, who we're going to talk about a
Speaker 3: little later. And he was one who started the first
Speaker 3: podcast for you here.
Speaker 1: That's right. How did that come to be?
Speaker 4: We were in Woodland Hills, California at that time. That's
Speaker 4: where the foundation was. Mack came to work for the
Speaker 4: foundation in twenty seventeen. He was a drummer. He was touring,
Speaker 4: you know, doing the touring thing with different bands and
Speaker 4: going around. He went to the Philippines, and he went
Speaker 4: to Europe, and he went here and there, and you know,
Speaker 4: all across the country doing the touring thing. And he
Speaker 4: was starting to maybe starting to touring, you know, I
Speaker 4: just didn't want to do it much, you know, just
Speaker 4: an excellent, excellent drummer from the time he was nine
Speaker 4: years old.
Speaker 3: Er.
Speaker 1: No, he had a great sense of rhythm.
Speaker 3: You can hear that even in the compositions and the
Speaker 3: stuff you've added to the beginning of some of these recordings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can hear that percussive. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: His rhythmic sense is really well when he's playing the harmonica, too,
Speaker 3: which we'll talk.
Speaker 1: About in a little bit.
Speaker 3: I want to go back because when I sat in
Speaker 3: this chair behind you is a book about Steppenwolf, and
Speaker 3: I thought I should start there because, in many ways,
Speaker 3: for those who might not know, watching at home or
Speaker 3: in their cars or wherever they're watching or listening, Steppenwolf
Speaker 3: was one of the premiere is one of the premiere
Speaker 3: theatrical groups in the United States and really remade the
Speaker 3: theater in America, and you were one of its founders.
Speaker 3: Tell me, first of all, how did this come to be?
Speaker 3: How did you get involved in Steppenwolf And did you
Speaker 3: ever imagine it would be what it became?
Speaker 4: Well, there was, Yeah, it goes back to when I
Speaker 4: was eighteen years old. I was getting out of high school.
Speaker 4: I loved doing plays. I wasn't going to go to college.
Speaker 4: Loved doing plays in high school, wanted to keep doing them.
Speaker 4: So I graduated and got a group of kids together
Speaker 4: and we went and found this space and did a
Speaker 4: play in there, and we were going to print the program,
Speaker 4: and we decided, well, we need something to put on
Speaker 4: the program, so let's call ourselves something. And one of
Speaker 4: the guys was reading the book, the Hermann hesse Yes
Speaker 4: book Steppenwolf, and he held it up and I said,
Speaker 4: you know, we all agreed that that would be a
Speaker 4: great thing. Let's put it on the program. We called
Speaker 4: it Steppenwolf Theater. That was probably March of nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 4: that's fifty years ago.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: And we called the Steppenwolf. Then we did another play,
Speaker 4: Then we did another one. Then we added Malkovich and
Speaker 4: Laurie Metcalf and Joan Allen and all these.
Speaker 1: Wife Moira Yeah, then Moira Harris, she was Moira Harris. Yeah.
Speaker 4: She was friends with my co founder Jeff Perry and
Speaker 4: fellow co founder Terry Kinney. The three of us were
Speaker 4: the ones that got things started. And all these folks
Speaker 4: and they went to Illinois State together. They all came
Speaker 4: up to where I lived in Highland Park, which is
Speaker 4: where Jeff Perry and I went to high school. And
Speaker 4: we found a space we started doing plays in the
Speaker 4: basement of this closed down Catholic school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was the summer it started in seventy four.
Speaker 4: But then they got out of college in seventy six,
Speaker 4: and that's when we really cranked up and got it.
Speaker 3: Got I mean, this is like Mickey and Judy putting
Speaker 3: your show on in the barn. I mean really, that's
Speaker 3: what it was at the beginning. But in time, Gary,
Speaker 3: and in not long time, this really rebrands and remakes
Speaker 3: American theater. I mean, you're the artistic director there.
Speaker 1: For many years.
Speaker 3: True West and Orphans, and I mean these were theatrical
Speaker 3: moments that people may not have an awareness of, but
Speaker 3: they completely changed the landscape of what was happening in
Speaker 3: the theater at the time.
Speaker 1: Back back in the eighties. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we started in seventy four and by eighty
Speaker 4: two we had moved our very first show to New
Speaker 4: York and it was the one you mentioned, True West.
Speaker 4: Malcolm Inch and I were doing it, and it was
Speaker 4: a small show for people, so it was easily movable. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, it didn't cost that much money. We found
Speaker 4: a little more one hundred and eighty seat theater downtown
Speaker 4: in New York called.
Speaker 1: The Cherry Lane. Lane's still there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's still there, and he's been there for a
Speaker 4: gazillion years. A lot of people have done plays in there,
Speaker 4: and we did our show there and it was a big,
Speaker 4: big hit, and then we did another show the next year,
Speaker 4: and one the following year, another one, and we just
Speaker 4: kept bringing plays there.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, what.
Speaker 3: Made it different from everything else that was happening in
Speaker 3: New York and in the American theater at the time.
Speaker 1: What was it? I don't know.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, when you're isolating in a basement theater
Speaker 4: with you know, eight other radicals, you know, you never
Speaker 4: know what's going to happen, and a lot of crazy
Speaker 4: stuff happened. We kind of developed this sort of self protective,
Speaker 4: self defense sort of acting where where it was kind
Speaker 4: of attack before you get attacked.
Speaker 1: It was an agress I mean it was aggressive.
Speaker 3: I mean it was I saw some of those productions,
Speaker 3: but there was an intensity about them. Was that it
Speaker 3: was it the intensity that came from that.
Speaker 4: I think we just developed this sort of anything goes
Speaker 4: sort of approach to things being isolated in the basement
Speaker 4: because it was our little space, you.
Speaker 1: Know, we could do whatever we want.
Speaker 4: If nobody showed up to our shows that night, we
Speaker 4: just it was fine, we we'll just have a party
Speaker 4: and entertain each other. And that's what we kind of
Speaker 4: got used to doing.
Speaker 1: And you were very close. I mean that closeness also
Speaker 1: lends a certain comfort.
Speaker 4: You're very close, and everybody, like the folks that I mentioned, Moira,
Speaker 4: Laurie Metcalf, Joan Allen, Malcolviv, John Malkovitz, Terry Kenney, Jeff Perry,
Speaker 4: these folks are all like hugely talented, and you know,
Speaker 4: it was like it's like we just stumbled into putting
Speaker 4: this group together, really really good people. They all went off,
Speaker 4: you know, and had great careers and in the movie
Speaker 4: business and all of that. But the you know, the
Speaker 4: foundation was laid for a sort of approach and a
Speaker 4: style of acting in those early days working together in
Speaker 4: the basement. Then we eventually that was in Island Park, Illinois,
Speaker 4: where Jeff and I went to school, and then we
Speaker 4: eventually moved into the city of Chicago, expanded, got a
Speaker 4: bigger theater, then we got another one, then we built
Speaker 4: our own building. And now if you go there fifty
Speaker 4: years later, you'll see this giant, giant complex that takes
Speaker 4: a whole city block in the city. Are you still
Speaker 4: in Chicago? I don't really do much there anymore. I
Speaker 4: was involved with very, very involved for the first like
Speaker 4: twenty seven years, and then the last thing I did
Speaker 4: was one Flew over the Cuckars Nest on Broadway, and
Speaker 4: that was two thousand and one. So we closed July
Speaker 4: twenty ninth, two thousand and one. Six weeks later, September eleventh,
Speaker 4: two thousand and one, the attack on our country, and
Speaker 4: everything changed for me.
Speaker 1: At that point.
Speaker 4: I started thinking about different things, and I wanted to
Speaker 4: kind of get very involved in supporting the men and
Speaker 4: women who were deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I got.
Speaker 4: I just got very involved in that. Never returned to
Speaker 4: the theater after that.
Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3: The one thing, the one Colonel I want to pull
Speaker 3: from that, You did a film, You did a film,
Speaker 3: you did a show when you were at Steppenwolf Tracers.
Speaker 3: Tell me about that, and did that did that plant
Speaker 3: any seeds for.
Speaker 1: The next phase of Gary?
Speaker 4: Soinice's life, it definitely was a seed that was planted
Speaker 4: in terms of supporting veterans and trying to do something
Speaker 4: to help, especially our Vietnam veterans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I tell people with the Tracery is about that.
Speaker 1: That's what Tracers is about.
Speaker 4: It's a story that was written by a group of
Speaker 4: Vietnam veterans and they performed it on stage.
Speaker 1: So they got together.
Speaker 4: One guy conceived the idea, a guy named John Difusco.
Speaker 1: He's a Vietnam veteran.
Speaker 4: He put an ad in the paper and said, Hey,
Speaker 4: I want to make a play and I'm looking for
Speaker 4: Vietnam veterans. So he got he got some guys together
Speaker 4: and they started. Every day they would go into like
Speaker 4: a workshop where they talk about their experiences in Vietnam
Speaker 4: and he would write things down and then they would
Speaker 4: improvise and work on and they you know, over the
Speaker 4: course of time, they created a play so that they
Speaker 4: called Tracers, and it was a play about the Vietnam experience.
Speaker 4: I discovered it as the artistic director of Steppenwolf looking
Speaker 4: for a play to do about Vietnam because I had
Speaker 4: Moira's two brothers served in Vietnam and her sister's husband,
Speaker 4: Jack Teres, also served in Vietnam as a combat medic.
Speaker 1: And I got to be. You know, I got to
Speaker 1: know them.
Speaker 4: A little bit, got to hear their stories, got to
Speaker 4: feel a lot of compassion for them, and quite frankly,
Speaker 4: a lot of guilt because they were just a little
Speaker 4: bit older than I was during the Vietnam War, and
Speaker 4: I was at high school and the chasing girls around
Speaker 4: and you know, playing guitar and.
Speaker 1: Doing plays, and they were getting shot at.
Speaker 4: And so when I met them, I got to feel
Speaker 4: a little guilty about being kind of oblivious during that
Speaker 4: period of time. So I wanted to do something that
Speaker 4: spoke to the Vietnam experience, and so I started to
Speaker 4: look and I found the play Tracers. We eventually did
Speaker 4: it in Chicago, and that was a big thing.
Speaker 3: When I read about that experience, you really building with others,
Speaker 3: but you building and then guiding Steppenwolf. I see Gary
Speaker 3: Sonise the builder, and you do have that in you
Speaker 3: where you I mean, obviously your cause at that moment
Speaker 3: was theater and creating great plays in some ways preserving
Speaker 3: American classics of mice and men, which I saw. How
Speaker 3: did that carry on into the next phase of your life?
Speaker 3: How did it prepare you for what you're doing now?
Speaker 3: And the building of the Foundation.
Speaker 1: Did it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think all all those things did. I think,
Speaker 4: you know, if I look back to how I grew
Speaker 4: up as a kid, my dad was a film editor
Speaker 4: and in Chicago, and you.
Speaker 1: Know, the the.
Speaker 4: Bulk of the film work in Chicago in those days
Speaker 4: was like the mad Men Show.
Speaker 1: You know, remember the advertising agency.
Speaker 4: So the advertising guys were constantly making commercials and they
Speaker 4: needed the editors to crank out these commercials and get
Speaker 4: them done no matter what time it was because they
Speaker 4: were all on deadline. So my dad would work these
Speaker 4: crazy hours. And I don't remember dad being, you know,
Speaker 4: just around that much, you know, when I was growing
Speaker 4: up in terms of high school or any of that.
Speaker 4: So I got to I got to kind of work
Speaker 4: things out on my own.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 4: My mom had her hands full with she was taking
Speaker 4: care of her mom and her sister and me and
Speaker 4: my brother and sister, and I kind of developed to
Speaker 4: sort of do it yourself sort of you know, I
Speaker 4: just can't wait around for somebody to tell me what
Speaker 4: to do kind of thing. And I sort of developed
Speaker 4: that at an early age, and that, you know, then
Speaker 4: I got into high school and decided, well, what I
Speaker 4: want to do is start a theater because I'm not
Speaker 4: going to.
Speaker 1: College because nobody told you couldn't.
Speaker 4: That's right, nobody said you couldn't. And I had a
Speaker 4: great mentor in high school. Her name's Barbara Patterson, and.
Speaker 1: She stayed in touch with her for a long time.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she was the drama teacher in high school, and
Speaker 4: we we became very close and stayed in touch with her.
Speaker 4: And she saw me as a kid who you know,
Speaker 4: I was bad in school and didn't you know, grades
Speaker 4: were no good and all that, but I could actually act.
Speaker 1: She saw something in him, she saw bad asses which
Speaker 1: she saw.
Speaker 4: She saw, well, you saw a guy who could, you know,
Speaker 4: just let it rip. And because I didn't, I didn't.
Speaker 4: I didn't have any training or anything like that. I
Speaker 4: just came to my first place and started just doing
Speaker 4: what I thought I should do.
Speaker 1: And she kind of said, go with that. That's good.
Speaker 4: And so she gave me a lot of courage and
Speaker 4: a lot of self confidence in terms of just believing
Speaker 4: in my particular approach to things. And so I just
Speaker 4: had a particular approach, and I also kind of.
Speaker 1: Developed this sort of folk focus.
Speaker 4: On leadership and kind of seeing a thing over here
Speaker 4: and then going and trying to make it happen.
Speaker 1: And there, you know, that.
Speaker 4: Manifested itself into kind of finding a space and creating
Speaker 4: a theater company and then you know, making movies and
Speaker 4: conquering Broadway.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember with True West. I was thetistic director
Speaker 4: of Steppenwolf at that time, and I really wanted to
Speaker 4: move that show. I was looking like as soon as
Speaker 4: I took over as the artistic director of Steppenwolf, one
Speaker 4: of the things I wanted to do because I thought
Speaker 4: we were really good and I thought, you know, the
Speaker 4: next thing we got to do is, you know, if
Speaker 4: we want we want to be more well known in Chicago,
Speaker 4: and I think that a good way to do that
Speaker 4: is to be well known in New York.
Speaker 1: So so smart move.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we we took.
Speaker 4: A play there and it was a big, big hit,
Speaker 4: and John John became a movie star. Steppenwolf got all
Speaker 4: this attention. We all producers started coming to Chicago to
Speaker 4: see our work. We ended up doing play after play
Speaker 4: there every year in incredible all hits. They were all
Speaker 4: doing great, and it really it really set the stage
Speaker 4: for being able to build a building, you know, because
Speaker 4: we were being recognized as really talented group of people.
Speaker 4: And we were starting, because of our success in New York,
Speaker 4: starting to develop this sort of international reputation huh, Because
Speaker 4: we would get all these great reviews in New York,
Speaker 4: and all those reviews would trickle out to the West
Speaker 4: Coast and all around, and people were starting to recognize
Speaker 4: Steppenwolf as something positive. So we were able to raise
Speaker 4: the money in Chicago to build a building. Wow, And
Speaker 4: that's what we did incredibly, And now it's this giant
Speaker 4: institution there.
Speaker 3: But I would argue, though it doesn't have the it
Speaker 3: doesn't have the it was the epicenter of what was
Speaker 3: happening at that moment. It was.
Speaker 1: It was the sharp point of the sword in the
Speaker 1: American theater.
Speaker 3: If you did a play, you were waiting for Steppenwolf
Speaker 3: to unveil the next big play. You did a number
Speaker 3: of these historic figures. After you left Steppenwolf, you're now
Speaker 3: doing well. You may have been still involved in some way,
Speaker 3: but you started getting cast as these historic figures. Truman
Speaker 3: and George Wallace, and of course I know, I know
Speaker 3: for you. Tom Jod in Grapes of Wrath was his
Speaker 3: great American character to you, how did you prepare for
Speaker 3: those historic characters or well known literary characters as an actor,
Speaker 3: because you couldn't just follow your gut anymore.
Speaker 1: No, But.
Speaker 4: Let's take The Grapes of Wrath for example, So that
Speaker 4: that was made into a film john Ford, with none
Speaker 4: other than Henry fond Of playing Tom Jod. So big
Speaker 4: shoes to fill there, obviously, But the way we didn't.
Speaker 4: We didn't approach it as like we were going to
Speaker 4: try to recreate what had already been done. We were
Speaker 4: going to do something that hadn't been done, which is
Speaker 4: a theatrical play version of the Grapes of Wrath. We
Speaker 4: had a wonderful director named Frank Galatti, who was a
Speaker 4: writer director.
Speaker 1: Remember the movie Accidental Tourist. Frank wrote this script for that.
Speaker 4: I think he got nominated for an Oscar for it.
Speaker 4: But he was just a wonderful guy and very very smart.
Speaker 4: He was the one who I brought him into the
Speaker 4: company in nineteen eighty five. He was working with us.
Speaker 4: I asked him I was the artistry character. I asked
Speaker 4: him to come and direct. You can't take it with you.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. I just wanted to do a
Speaker 1: funny comedy.
Speaker 4: You know, we were stepping well, we were doing this
Speaker 4: hardcore step yeah, And.
Speaker 1: I thought, here's a comedy from what the thirties?
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's do this fun old comedy because he's got
Speaker 4: a great characters and everything. So Frank wasn't a member
Speaker 4: of the company, and I invited him to come and
Speaker 4: direct it. And when he during rehearsal, everybody was having
Speaker 4: such a good time with Frank. I wasn't in it, but.
Speaker 1: I was there.
Speaker 4: I was watching and everything. Everybody was having such a
Speaker 4: good time with Frank. So I went around to all
Speaker 4: the company members and I said, what did you think
Speaker 4: of I asked Frank to come into the company. Everybody
Speaker 4: was support of him. So I asked Frank to come
Speaker 4: into the company. I was sitting in my office with
Speaker 4: him like.
Speaker 1: This, and he, oh, oh my god, are you kidding?
Speaker 4: Oh of course I thought it too, and he was
Speaker 4: so happy about it. And then I said to him, Frank,
Speaker 4: do you have any ideas of things that you want
Speaker 4: to do? Because he was he was a great writer.
Speaker 4: He was all these adapting things and blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: And he immediately said, I think the Grapes of Wrath
Speaker 4: would make a great play, and I was like.
Speaker 5: Oh, go go. So that was eighty five. By eighty
Speaker 5: eight he had the script ready. It was a four
Speaker 5: hour pro redaction.
Speaker 4: Remember it's about the Joe family leaving Oklahoma and going
Speaker 4: to California. It took us a long time to get
Speaker 4: to California, and so with.
Speaker 2: A pool down front, ladies and gentlemen help in the
Speaker 2: splash zone.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, I mean you saw the Broadway version, which
Speaker 4: was the version. Oh so the Chicago version was about
Speaker 4: four hours. Then we cut it down. We took it
Speaker 4: the next.
Speaker 1: Year, that was eighty eight, eighty nine, we.
Speaker 4: Took it to La Joyaunhouse. We did in Lahoya, then
Speaker 4: we went over to London. We did it at the
Speaker 4: National Theater in London.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
Speaker 4: And then we were able to get producer attention. So
Speaker 4: the following year, nineteen ninety, we took it to Broadway.
Speaker 4: By the time we got to Broadway, it was about
Speaker 4: two and a half hours. It was really lean and mean,
Speaker 4: it was it was the work on it was beautiful.
Speaker 4: I mean we kept trimming it and fixing it, but
Speaker 4: a lot a lot happened there with the grapes of Wrath.
Speaker 4: We won the Tony Award for Best Play that you know,
Speaker 4: Lois Smith was in it and she.
Speaker 1: Got nominated, I got nominated.
Speaker 4: We got a lot of attention for the Grapes of Wrath,
Speaker 4: but prior to that, we had brought you know, a
Speaker 4: whole lot of shows there, and you know, the Grapes
Speaker 4: of Wrath kind of led to my association with the
Speaker 4: Lane Steinbeck who Laye was John Steinbeck's widow and she
Speaker 4: controlled the rights to everything. So she was the one
Speaker 4: who gave us the rights to do the Grapes of Wrath.
Speaker 3: And he even gave you his National Book Awards, Steinbeck's
Speaker 3: National Book Awards.
Speaker 1: He did, you're right, it's in there.
Speaker 4: One time we were on stage at the Grapes of
Speaker 4: Wrath and I said, would you give me the rights
Speaker 4: to make of Mice and Men into a movie?
Speaker 1: And she said, honey, it's already been a film. Why
Speaker 1: would you want to do that?
Speaker 4: Well, he'd been a film three times, because there was
Speaker 4: like the thirties version there, there was a Robert Blake
Speaker 4: or you know, Robert Blake and Randy Quaid.
Speaker 1: Did it there. But she gave it to you, but
Speaker 1: she gave it to me. She gave it. She made
Speaker 1: me a deal that was just so beautiful.
Speaker 4: She gave me the rights for free for one and
Speaker 4: so I had. I had it for one year as
Speaker 4: a producer. I returned to California from the Grapes of
Speaker 4: Wrath in nineteen ninety and I had the rights to
Speaker 4: mice and Men, and so I went I had done
Speaker 4: a little bit of development work at MGM. So I
Speaker 4: went to MGM and I said, I've got the rights
Speaker 4: of my men. You want to make a movie?
Speaker 1: They said yes, And it just went like that, and
Speaker 1: that was got the rights for free. They said yes.
Speaker 1: I got Hort and Foot to write the script and
Speaker 1: we were shooting a year later, and you directed it.
Speaker 4: I directed it and when Anne acted in it, and
Speaker 4: I got Malkovich to do it because John and I
Speaker 4: had done it on stage before.
Speaker 3: Tell me about you evaded one of my questions, how
Speaker 3: do you prepare for these historic characters?
Speaker 1: When you got that was the question, Harry, trying to
Speaker 1: find no no way back.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to stop you because I'd never heard this,
Speaker 3: and I love that story.
Speaker 1: But tell me about Truman.
Speaker 3: You get Truman, it lands in your lap, you get
Speaker 3: cast as Truman.
Speaker 1: How do you prepare for this, Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 4: I had done Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump in that
Speaker 4: that came out in ninety four, yep, so and it
Speaker 4: got a lot of attention, and you know that it
Speaker 4: won a bunch of awards and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So the career changed for me at that point.
Speaker 4: I had done a Bison Man is a movie and
Speaker 4: a couple other things, but I hadn't done that much
Speaker 4: before Forrest Gump in film. But you know, when you're
Speaker 4: in a big movie like that and everything, and I
Speaker 4: had a good part, things things changed.
Speaker 1: Why did Lieutenants I resonate? Do you think with so
Speaker 1: many people it.
Speaker 4: Wasn't just a yeah, it's a great story. You know,
Speaker 4: it's a happy ending. You know, we you know, we've
Speaker 4: heard so many difficult stories about Vietnam veterans not being
Speaker 4: able to make it, and you know, but Lieutenant Dan's
Speaker 4: okay in the end, and that that's a that's a
Speaker 4: beautiful story of a Vietnam veteran that really hadn't been told,
Speaker 4: you know, in film up up to that point. So
Speaker 4: along comes Lieutenant Dan. As you know, it gets a
Speaker 4: lot of attention, and then out of the blue, right
Speaker 4: around the time we were we were doing the right
Speaker 4: around the Oscar time.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 4: A little before that, I got this offer to play
Speaker 4: Harry Truman. And I didn't know that much about Harry
Speaker 4: Truman frankly at the time, and I'm thinking, why why
Speaker 4: would they want me to do that?
Speaker 1: That's strand.
Speaker 4: But the producers, you know, Harry Truman is a miss
Speaker 4: Midwest guy. I grew up in the Midwest. I grew
Speaker 4: up in Illinois. He's from Missouri.
Speaker 1: You know, they just saw me doing it. I had
Speaker 1: to work. I had to wrap my head around that.
Speaker 4: Really yeah, So I had to study up a little
Speaker 4: bit before I could even say yes or something. I
Speaker 4: had to study up, learn a little bit about Harry Truman,
Speaker 4: figure out.
Speaker 1: Can I play Harry Truman. I don't know if I can.
Speaker 1: And I had to figure all that stuff out.
Speaker 4: And I finally felt, oh, okay, confident that I could
Speaker 4: dive into that. So once I did, then I started
Speaker 4: pouring myself into all things Harry Truman. I went to
Speaker 4: the Truman Library Independence Missouri. I spent days there just
Speaker 4: cambing through the archives. They let me into the basement
Speaker 4: and I could look at footage Harry Yeah, what was
Speaker 4: the trigger for you?
Speaker 1: Was there one thing that you said, Oh, no, I
Speaker 1: understand who he is. Well.
Speaker 4: Our script was based on a wonderful book by David McCullough,
Speaker 4: Big Doorstep Book. I know that was the thing that
Speaker 4: And what's great about that book is it's not just
Speaker 4: this sort of dry his oracle thing McCullough writes. So
Speaker 4: you can read it as as if the truth, as
Speaker 4: if Truman is a character in an emotional journey, and
Speaker 4: so there's a lot of emotion in the book and everything.
Speaker 4: You can really put yourself in this position of somebody
Speaker 4: who's sort of this reluctant politician who gets swept aloft
Speaker 4: into this next thing, next thing. He knows he's the
Speaker 4: president of the United States, you know. And it was
Speaker 4: a really interesting journey. But I had to dig in.
Speaker 4: I had to dig in a lot. I had to
Speaker 4: work on the accent and the voice, and you know,
Speaker 4: I learned how to ride horses because he was in
Speaker 4: the cavalry and World War One, all all this stuff.
Speaker 1: We had.
Speaker 4: We had an age Harry Truman was one movie and
Speaker 4: we had that spanned thirty five years of his life.
Speaker 1: So the difficulty there, of course, is that.
Speaker 4: You know, you don't want it to be sort of
Speaker 4: the cliffs Notes version of a life, right, but you're
Speaker 4: trying to tell thirty five years of somebody's life, and
Speaker 4: Truman just you know it was it was all in
Speaker 4: submerge yourself into it, and you know it won a
Speaker 4: bunch of awards and did really well, and you know,
Speaker 4: think the career was starting to take off at that point.
Speaker 3: Tell me, I know there was a big shift after
Speaker 3: nine to eleven for you, at least in your own
Speaker 3: mind and heart. But back in nineteen ninety four, Garry,
Speaker 3: you right after Forrest Gump, you're addressing a group of
Speaker 3: disabled veterans. Tell me about that moment and what you
Speaker 3: learned in that moment.
Speaker 4: That was Yeah, Forrest Gump came out in on July sixth,
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety four, thirty years ago.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: And shortly after that, I received an invitation to come
Speaker 4: to the National Convention of the Disabled American Veterans Organization,
Speaker 4: which I was not aware of. Didn't didn't know the
Speaker 4: organization at all, but they've been around for decades and decades,
Speaker 4: and so I kind of looked into what is it?
Speaker 4: And they at that point they represented about one point
Speaker 4: five million wounded veterans going back to World War Two,
Speaker 4: and they wanted to give me an award for playing
Speaker 4: Lieutenant Dan, a wounded guy, and they thought I did
Speaker 4: a good job, and they wanted to, you know, kind
Speaker 4: of bring me out there and kind of give me something.
Speaker 4: So I went to their convention that year was in Chicago,
Speaker 4: and I went to the Conrad Hilton in Chicago in
Speaker 4: August of ninety four, just maybe six weeks after the
Speaker 4: movie came out, and I'm standing on stage.
Speaker 1: In fact, the.
Speaker 4: First pages of my book Grateful American described this moment
Speaker 4: of walking out on stage and looking out in the
Speaker 4: crowd and there's you know, two thousand wounded veterans out
Speaker 4: in this ballroom and they're all cheering for me.
Speaker 1: And I was so moved by it. And just kind
Speaker 1: of the.
Speaker 4: Impact that was made by seeing all these wheelchairs and
Speaker 4: you know, just wounded folks just applauding me for playing
Speaker 4: this part was profound. And so I stayed in touch
Speaker 4: with them and started working with them and supporting them
Speaker 4: over the years. And I think the Tracer's experience of
Speaker 4: working on that and getting involved with local Vietnam Veterans
Speaker 4: groups in Chicago ten years later, the Lieutenant an experience
Speaker 4: getting involved with our wounded supporting them. Those were just
Speaker 4: those were seeds that were being planted that would grow
Speaker 4: into this full on mission after September eleventh, two thousand
Speaker 4: and one, and I was just I just felt like
Speaker 4: call to action at that had that point to get
Speaker 4: involved in a deeper way. Both those things, the tracers
Speaker 4: experience in the Lieutenant.
Speaker 3: Aan acclaim after the film, I mean it was it
Speaker 3: was a cultural moment. But for the veterans community, they
Speaker 3: saw themselves in a positive light. And as you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: if you look at the Vietnam films and those stories
Speaker 3: told before, it always ended horribly for them. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was depressing and dark or you just you.
Speaker 4: You always wondered, I'm just not sure that Vietnam veterans
Speaker 4: going to be okay. And after this film is over, Yeah,
Speaker 4: Like look at the Coming Home.
Speaker 1: That's that's what came to mind.
Speaker 4: Coming Back and you see Bruce Dern, what's he do.
Speaker 4: He's so racked with guilt and everything. He takes off
Speaker 4: his uniform and swims out in the ocean and he's
Speaker 4: not coming back. You wonder at the end of platoon
Speaker 4: when Charlie Sheen is flying over the battlefield and he's
Speaker 4: looking down and he sees all these bodies and you know,
Speaker 4: the battle is over and every lot of buddies are
Speaker 4: gone and he's flying off. At the end of that movie,
Speaker 4: you just wonder that guy's going to have a tough
Speaker 4: time going into life casualties of war. The same thing
Speaker 4: with Michael J. Fox, and then you got, gosh, you
Speaker 4: got Martin Sheen at the end of your Apocalypse. Now
Speaker 4: you got look what happens to Chris walk and at
Speaker 4: the end of Deer Hunt.
Speaker 1: These are all dark endings, That's what I mean. They're
Speaker 1: all dark to semi dark endings. Lieutenant Dan is the
Speaker 1: only happy ending. That's what was different about it.
Speaker 3: And they are still talking about it and watching it today.
Speaker 3: So after nine to eleven, what happens you start? When
Speaker 3: do you start the band? The Lieutenant Dan Band?
Speaker 1: You know, I was.
Speaker 4: Doing I'll tell I'll tell you in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 4: I was in Chicago and I was doing so I'd
Speaker 4: done Truman and I just finished shooting George Wallace in
Speaker 4: like old January or February of ninety seven, and then
Speaker 4: I went to Chicago to play Stanley Kowalski.
Speaker 1: In the streetcar named Desire.
Speaker 4: And I was on stage in Streetcar and there's a
Speaker 4: guy who had written the music for Streetcar named Keimo Williams,
Speaker 4: and Kemo he was a bass player, but he liked
Speaker 4: to play guitar and he heard I was a bass player,
Speaker 4: so he said, hey, you know, if you ever want
Speaker 4: to come over in jam, uh, you know, come on over.
Speaker 4: And so I was so busy during the run of
Speaker 4: the show, I could never do it.
Speaker 1: I was tired. You know, it's a shark.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to get to get through it. And
Speaker 4: so right at the end we wrapped the show. I
Speaker 4: got a couple of days before I'm going to fly
Speaker 4: back to California, and I call and called him up
Speaker 4: and said, why don't we get some pizza and we'll
Speaker 4: get some guys and we'll play. And I went over
Speaker 4: to this house and started playing. So that kind of
Speaker 4: rekindled some bass stuff in me.
Speaker 1: I used to play bass and guitar and everything.
Speaker 4: I put it away when I was gotten so busy
Speaker 4: with Stepping Wolf and everything.
Speaker 1: I hadn't really played much, so but playing it it
Speaker 1: really got me going again. And then I went.
Speaker 4: Shortly after that, I went up to uh Atlantic City
Speaker 4: and then Montreal to do a movie with Nick Cage
Speaker 4: called Snake Eyes. And when I was up doing Snake
Speaker 4: Guys in Canada, there was Guys and the crew that played,
Speaker 4: and so we went and started playing. And I called
Speaker 4: Chemo up and said, come on up here and play
Speaker 4: with us. So he flew up to Montreal. We and
Speaker 4: we were playing. And then after September eleventh, I wanted
Speaker 4: to do more for the troops, and I started going
Speaker 4: on USO tours and handshaking and taking pictures, and I
Speaker 4: went to the war zones a couple of times. I
Speaker 4: went to Germany, I went to Italy and went to
Speaker 4: Walter Reed, I went. You know, I was doing all
Speaker 4: this stuff in two thousand and three, going one month
Speaker 4: after another to some military base or something like.
Speaker 1: That, just meet and greet. So you got the band,
Speaker 1: no band, No it was.
Speaker 4: It was a series of meet and greets for the
Speaker 4: for for six or seven months. I was I was
Speaker 4: going out. Didn't have a job at that time that
Speaker 4: was keeping me in towns. But I wanted, I wanted
Speaker 4: to help our troops. You know, we'd you know, we'd
Speaker 4: been attacked and I wanted to do something, and so
Speaker 4: I started visiting them and I had, you know, because
Speaker 4: I had some jammers that I would play with from
Speaker 4: time to time. I said to the USO, let me
Speaker 4: take them on a tour, and eventually they said okay.
Speaker 4: So I called up Chemo and said, hey, let's let's
Speaker 4: put some folks together and let's go. And so we
Speaker 4: we started touring, and that that's what began the lieutenant
Speaker 4: and band. Kimo left the band after after a while,
Speaker 4: and you know, we've we've now the band has played
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, we've played one hundred, five hundred and seventy
Speaker 4: five concerts on military basis.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 4: I've been I've been to I've been over one hundred
Speaker 4: and seventy five military bases myself, you know, in hospitals
Speaker 4: and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Well do you still do it?
Speaker 4: Once I started doing it, I could see that it
Speaker 4: was impactful. It was in a positive way, like it
Speaker 4: was it was good that I was there. You know,
Speaker 4: I'd walk into a hospital room and maybe maybe there'd
Speaker 4: be a wounded soldier service member in the bed completely unconscious,
Speaker 4: you know, hadn't woken up yet. Family is standing around
Speaker 4: waiting for that moment, praying.
Speaker 1: For that moment.
Speaker 4: And I come in and they've been there for weeks
Speaker 4: just dealing with the issues, and somebody like me comes
Speaker 4: in and the light faces light up and you know,
Speaker 4: start taking pictures and it changes the mood, it changes
Speaker 4: the tone. And I could see that showing up was
Speaker 4: making a difference. So then I wanted to do it again,
Speaker 4: and I wanted to do it again after that, and
Speaker 4: I just kept wanting to do it because I could
Speaker 4: see that it was helping. Of course, if I had
Speaker 4: seen me, if I hadn't felt that it was helping,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't been out.
Speaker 1: Garrisonese Foundation.
Speaker 3: How did the foundation start? Tell me about the founding.
Speaker 3: So you're out doing these USO tours with the band.
Speaker 3: I know you're also collaborating with other organizations that are
Speaker 3: building homes for veterans and helping veterans in various ways,
Speaker 3: and you're donating a lot of the money from these
Speaker 3: concerts to these partner organizations. But when do you start
Speaker 3: your own foundation? What was the impetus for that?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, when I started making those tours, those
Speaker 4: early tours, just volunteering to go to the hospitals or
Speaker 4: you know, go shake hands or something, or you know,
Speaker 4: now take the band and go play on military bases
Speaker 4: and whatnot.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I also.
Speaker 4: Wanted to do was to try to help more people,
Speaker 4: was to volunteer for a lot of different other organizations.
Speaker 4: There were a lot of service organizations out there that
Speaker 4: were supporting veterans and first responders, and I wanted to
Speaker 4: help veterans and first responders, so I would volunteer to
Speaker 4: you know, raise money for these organizations, raise awareness for
Speaker 4: what they were doing by doing PSAs or whatever. So
Speaker 4: I just started volunteering wherever I could for multiple organizations.
Speaker 4: So I learned a lot about all these different needs
Speaker 4: and organizations were filling this need, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: we were building homes for our wounded, we were taking
Speaker 4: care of our Gold Start children, our families of our
Speaker 4: fallen entertainment, you know, whatever it was. It was a
Speaker 4: lot of different things, and I support a lot of
Speaker 4: different organizations.
Speaker 1: After doing that for you know, ten years.
Speaker 4: Or whatever, it was, it was clear that this was
Speaker 4: something that was just a big part of my life,
Speaker 4: and I started thinking, well, you know, I've got to
Speaker 4: find a way to do this in a different way.
Speaker 4: And I've seen all these nonprofits pop up, and I've
Speaker 4: tried to help them all.
Speaker 1: Why don't I just start my own.
Speaker 4: And at that point, I had been doing it long
Speaker 4: enough that I had a pretty good reputation with you know,
Speaker 4: trying to help. And so that's why I put my
Speaker 4: name on the on the foundation. I called it Gary
Speaker 4: Sneeze Foundation, because there was already a you know, I
Speaker 4: already had a relationship with the military family, and I
Speaker 4: had been raising money for all these other organizations. I
Speaker 4: was on television, you know, Weekly and CSI New York.
Speaker 4: So I I just said this, let's do it. I
Speaker 4: want to do more. Uh And I think the way
Speaker 4: to do that is to start raising our own money
Speaker 4: so that I can hire people to do more.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: So we started out very small, a couple of people,
Speaker 4: and now we've got a giant organization.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: You know, Gary reminds us that sometimes you have to
Speaker 3: do things yourself, and in the doing, the entire world
Speaker 3: is changed. Such was the case with Henry four and
Speaker 3: wait until you hear how it ends. Ford was working
Speaker 3: the night shift at the Edison Illuminating Company in eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety six. He spent his days trying to build a
Speaker 3: horseless carriage with a gas powered engine. He finally built
Speaker 3: a prototype, which he called the Quadricycle. In the late
Speaker 3: eighteen nineties, he found backing and opened the Detroit Automotive Company.
Speaker 3: Ford attempted to streamline his design, but he couldn't quite
Speaker 3: get it right, and by nineteen oh one, his backers
Speaker 3: had had enough and they shut the company down. Ford
Speaker 3: decided to focus on lighter, smaller vehicles, and he went
Speaker 3: into a new partnership, which he called the Henry Ford Company.
Speaker 3: But when his partners tried to control his creativity, Ford
Speaker 3: left the company which bore his name. He had failed
Speaker 3: twice in his attempt to create what he called a
Speaker 3: motor car for the Great multitude? How could he do
Speaker 3: it cheaply and quickly enough to stay in business? In
Speaker 3: a moment, How it ends? Welcome back to how it ends.
Speaker 3: By nineteen oh three, Henry Ford had tried twice to
Speaker 3: create a car company capable of creating motor cars for
Speaker 3: the Great multitude, but all his vehicles were too expensive
Speaker 3: and took way too long to produce. So that year
Speaker 3: Ford opened a third enterprise, the Ford Motor Company. Learning
Speaker 3: from his previous failures, Ford launched the Model A, then
Speaker 3: the Model N, and later the Model T, a stripped
Speaker 3: down car with no frills, available in one color black.
Speaker 3: Inspired by the assembly lines of canneries and slaughterhouses and breweries,
Speaker 3: he created a mass production assembly line for his cars.
Speaker 3: By December of nineteen thirteen, he cut production time from
Speaker 3: twelve hours a car to an hour and a half
Speaker 3: in eighty four steps. Each worker added a different piece
Speaker 3: of machinery or component to the car. In the year
Speaker 3: nineteen fourteen, Ford was able to produce more than three
Speaker 3: hundred and eight thousand cars, more than any of his competitors,
Speaker 3: which only drove down the price of the Model T
Speaker 3: and ensured Ford's dominance of the industry. Henry Ford's innovation
Speaker 3: his assembly line would change the way food, furniture, toys,
Speaker 3: and yes, vehicles are produced to this day. Now you
Speaker 3: know how it ends and that sometimes if it doesn't exist,
Speaker 3: you have to build it yourself. Now back to our
Speaker 3: conversation with another build it yourself for Gary Sinise, give
Speaker 3: me a sense, and I won't make you go through
Speaker 3: every program, but you all do things that I don't
Speaker 3: see other organizations doing. And I want to hone in
Speaker 3: on a few of those years ago. I know you
Speaker 3: took over this Snowball Express program. Tell me about that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've covered it. It's the most it's one
Speaker 3: of the most moving and I think amazing and important
Speaker 3: moments at Christmas time.
Speaker 6: I think of almost any organization in the country, it's beautiful.
Speaker 6: It's focused on the children of our fallen heroes. And
Speaker 6: it was started at Disneyland in two thousand and six
Speaker 6: by a group of folks that just wanted to help
Speaker 6: the kids of our fallen heroes and help them through
Speaker 6: the holidays by taking them to a happy place like
Speaker 6: Disneyland and letting them play and letting them meet each other,
Speaker 6: to see that they weren't alone, you know, in their
Speaker 6: grief and what they were going through. There was a
Speaker 6: lot of other kids that have lost a parent in
Speaker 6: military service, and it was very bonding and healing. I
Speaker 6: got involved with it the second year they had done
Speaker 6: one event at Disneyland. I was shooting CSI New York
Speaker 6: and Studio City. They contacted me and said they wanted
Speaker 6: to come and show me a video of their first event,
Speaker 6: and I saw that, I said I wanted to be involved.
Speaker 6: I volunteered to donate my band the following year to
Speaker 6: come play.
Speaker 1: For the kids.
Speaker 4: I did that, then I went back the next year.
Speaker 4: Then I donated and just kept doing it every year,
Speaker 4: help helping to raise money or raise awareness or raised
Speaker 4: spirits by bringing the band and playing for the kids.
Speaker 1: I've done it, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 4: We're in our eightheenth year. I want Snowballs in its
Speaker 4: eighteenth year. So in twenty eighteen, having American Airlines is
Speaker 4: a big, big sponsor of ours with multiple programs, but
Speaker 4: American had actually gotten very, very involved, and so the
Speaker 4: event moved from Anaheim and Disneyland after three years to
Speaker 4: Dallas because that's the hub of American Airlines. Have got
Speaker 4: a lot of good uh support there. They could do
Speaker 4: a lot of things for the kids. So it was
Speaker 4: there for a number of years. And then I mentioned
Speaker 4: to the folks that were kind of in charge of
Speaker 4: it at that time, Hey, you know, I've been narrating
Speaker 4: this show at Disney World for for you know, a
Speaker 4: dozen years. Uh, and that's a that's a great place
Speaker 4: for the kids. I think we should take it take
Speaker 4: it there. Uh. Well, it was going to cost a
Speaker 4: lot of extra money to do that, and That's when
Speaker 4: we decided to fold Snowball Express into the Garysonese Foundation
Speaker 4: as one of our programs because we had the ability
Speaker 4: to raise raise the amount of money to you know,
Speaker 4: you're taking a thousand kids to Disney World.
Speaker 1: You've got to get a lot of hotel rooms and all.
Speaker 1: You know, I know, it's a logistical and transportation it's
Speaker 1: a big, big thing.
Speaker 4: So American provides all the all the transportation. Uh, you know,
Speaker 4: multiple arter airplanes that come from all over the country
Speaker 4: with these kids on board. Uh all you know, all
Speaker 4: the people that all the flight attendants, all the pilots,
Speaker 4: everybody volunteers their time. Wow, American donates the airplane planes
Speaker 4: we get all the kids to these Disney My foundation
Speaker 4: is the is the you know, it's the Gary Sneze
Speaker 4: Foundation program. So we raise all the additional money to
Speaker 4: do everything, you know, the park passes and the and
Speaker 4: the hotels and the food.
Speaker 1: And every everything like that.
Speaker 4: It costs a lot of money, hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 4: volunteers and we bring them in for you know, we
Speaker 4: bring them in on a Saturday and they're there till
Speaker 4: like Wednesday, and it's it's it's life changed a lot
Speaker 4: of days of fun and healing for these kids. You know,
Speaker 4: they make lifelong friendships with somebody with another kid who's
Speaker 4: who's lost a parent.
Speaker 3: Tell me about the Soaring Valet program, which we were
Speaker 3: talking about the other day, which I I knew I've
Speaker 3: seen when I'm in and out of airports, particularly down
Speaker 3: in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize the other part of the city.
Speaker 3: It's not just veterans of war that you're bringing in
Speaker 3: on these Soaring Valor trips.
Speaker 1: Well, soaring Valor is I have.
Speaker 4: That's one that started with my relationship with the National
Speaker 4: World War Two Museum in New Orleans, and Tom Hanks
Speaker 4: invited me to. He was helping to make the movie
Speaker 4: that plays in the theater there called Beyond All Boundaries,
Speaker 4: and so Tom called some of his palace to do
Speaker 4: voices in the movie. And I did the voice of
Speaker 4: Ernie Pyle. And this goes back to two thousand and
Speaker 4: nine or so. So I did the voice of Ernie Pyle.
Speaker 4: And then I sent my uncle there, who was a
Speaker 4: navigator on a B seventeen bomber over Europe and World
Speaker 4: War Two, and they re my uncle on video for
Speaker 4: the archive at the museum and that's one of the
Speaker 4: programs that they have at the museum where they tried
Speaker 4: to get as many World War Two veterans to tell
Speaker 4: their stories on camera, and they preserve them in their
Speaker 4: archives and they use these stories throughout the museums. You'll
Speaker 4: go to an exhibit, you'll hit a thing and an
Speaker 4: elderly World War Two veteran will come out and start
Speaker 4: telling his story, and then you see all this stuff
Speaker 4: there and he's telling the story of what it was
Speaker 4: like to try to take that bridge or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: So these You know that after my uncle died, my
Speaker 4: uncle Jack died in twenty fourteen, I called them and
Speaker 4: I said, can you send me that video of my
Speaker 4: uncle Jack. They sent me the video and I watched
Speaker 4: it and I was, you know, just tears, and I
Speaker 4: got so moved by I called them up and I said,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm so lucky that I have this video
Speaker 4: of my uncle.
Speaker 1: Everyone who has a World War.
Speaker 4: Two veteran should have a video of them telling their
Speaker 4: stories like this. Is there anything I can do to
Speaker 4: help you get more of these stories, to make sure
Speaker 4: that we preserve more of these stories, And they said,
Speaker 4: you know, why don't you fund some of our historians.
Speaker 4: So I said, great, We'll fund historians to go out
Speaker 4: around the country and videotape these World War Two veterans.
Speaker 4: And here's another thing that I'd like to do. I'm
Speaker 4: going to approach my friends in American Airlines and I'm
Speaker 4: going to pitch them an idea to fly World War
Speaker 4: two veterans down to the National World War Two Museum
Speaker 4: to see this museum. Because they are all over the
Speaker 4: country and many of them will never see this museum
Speaker 4: that was built for them, and so getting them there
Speaker 4: is super important. So I want to start a program
Speaker 4: where we can fly these veterans down there. So we
Speaker 4: started taking veterans in twenty fifteen, and then in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: I thought, let's add another component to this, and I
Speaker 4: pitched that to my team at the Foundation and also
Speaker 4: to American and I said, I want to take high
Speaker 4: school kids on these trips with the veterans, and pair
Speaker 4: up a high school student with a World War Two veteran,
Speaker 4: and they travel together to experience the music, experience the
Speaker 4: museum with somebody who lived through the experience. It'll be
Speaker 4: an education unlike anything they'll ever get. Well, now we've
Speaker 4: done twenty seven trips something like that, taking World War
Speaker 4: Two veterans and students down to the National War Two Museum.
Speaker 4: And you can go on the Garysonese Foundation website and
Speaker 4: look at our YouTube channel and you'll see a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of videos of how special it is for these
Speaker 4: kids to spend this time with these American heroes.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, and you're also teaching that generation the cost
Speaker 3: of their freedom and what there's nothing like being confronted.
Speaker 3: I remember taking my kids to you know, we're walking
Speaker 3: through the Marines Museum out in Vietna, Virginia, and as
Speaker 3: we passed through, there was a retired elderly marine who
Speaker 3: had been toy Regima. Well, my kids were just fascinating
Speaker 3: because we'd just come out of the See Regima exhibit
Speaker 3: and here was the living embodiment of it and this
Speaker 3: man he sat with my kids for like a half hour,
Speaker 3: and you could see the tears rolling down his face
Speaker 3: because aid they were interested in what he had gone
Speaker 3: through and b he was passing it along to a
Speaker 3: younger generation and they were excited about it. So the
Speaker 3: wonder of what you're creating there and passing the history
Speaker 3: along is so critical and important.
Speaker 4: It's beautiful Raymond. I mean when you see it time
Speaker 4: after time. I did the first It's been a while
Speaker 4: since I've been able to get on a trip, but
Speaker 4: I did the first twelve to fifteen trips. You know,
Speaker 4: every one of these trips, you know, you know, helping
Speaker 4: these veterans get through the museum and watching them interact
Speaker 4: with the students, and watching the students interact with them,
Speaker 4: and the students opening.
Speaker 1: Their eyes to what it is.
Speaker 4: I mean, the cost of freedom is high, and you
Speaker 4: know they learn from these veterans.
Speaker 1: What they did that relates to them today.
Speaker 4: R I mean, you know, without this, without us winning
Speaker 4: that war, the Allies winning that war, the world would
Speaker 4: have been completely different and they would have grown up
Speaker 4: in a completely different America.
Speaker 1: I remember my son after meeting that it would Gama veteran.
Speaker 3: When we were leaving, he said, Dad, he's not that
Speaker 3: much older than I am now when he went to war.
Speaker 3: I said, that's right, that's the lesson. These were boys
Speaker 3: who went off to defend this freedom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible, It is an incredible sacrifice, and that's
Speaker 1: a beautiful program.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll say no, the soaring valor is incredible and
Speaker 3: all of your program I mean your wellness programs. You
Speaker 3: have the Rise program which is about giving homes to
Speaker 3: your to severely disabled. That's I mean, we could spend
Speaker 3: an afternoon talking about all the programs. You should go
Speaker 3: to Garrisonese's Foundation website and look at it all. It's
Speaker 3: incredible work. I want to talk though, about the string
Speaker 3: that I see that runs through your life really from
Speaker 3: the time you're in Step and Well founding the foundation
Speaker 3: and then in your personal life, and there is this
Speaker 3: string of sacrifice.
Speaker 1: That I see running through it and devotion to others.
Speaker 3: In twenty eighteen, your son mac is die noosed with
Speaker 3: a very rare form of cancer on his spine. It
Speaker 3: turns into tumors that are popping out that you the
Speaker 3: doctors can't control. Your wife endured multiple surgeries at the
Speaker 3: same time she's having her own cancer battle. How did
Speaker 3: you contend with all this? First of all, what did
Speaker 3: you think was happening?
Speaker 1: Well, it's just like you're getting punched.
Speaker 4: You know. When we found out my wife there was
Speaker 4: you know, she had a mammogram and now we didn't
Speaker 4: hear anything for a bit, you know, Like so we
Speaker 4: just assumed, you know, well, maybe everything's okay. Then I
Speaker 4: don't know, maybe a month later, we get this letter
Speaker 4: that said, you know, they're you know, we'd like you
Speaker 4: to come back in for another check.
Speaker 1: You know, like a month later, we're like, what what's this?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So a month later we go back in, she
Speaker 4: gets another test. Then they want her to go and
Speaker 4: see the surgeon and he confirms that she has you know,
Speaker 4: cancer in her limp nodes and that she's going to
Speaker 4: need surgery. So they did a lump back to me
Speaker 4: on my wife, which you know, she didn't have to
Speaker 4: it's not a mass actomy. She didn't lose her breast.
Speaker 4: But they did a lump after me. Whether it took
Speaker 4: out nineteen nodes and then five of them were infected
Speaker 4: with cancer. And it was successful surgery according to him,
Speaker 4: but she was going to need to go through chemo
Speaker 4: and radiation. You started chemo, she went through you know,
Speaker 4: all the chemo treatments, thirty five radiation treatments. And during
Speaker 4: that time, you know, not too long after she had
Speaker 4: had her initial surgery, Mac was having trouble with he
Speaker 4: was just he was in pain when he was sitting
Speaker 4: down and like his tailbone was hurting him, so we
Speaker 4: sent him to a Moira's spine surgeon and I get
Speaker 4: this call that Mac has a has a tumor on
Speaker 4: his sacrum.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there with.
Speaker 4: Moira talking about her breast cancer. I get a call
Speaker 4: Max now got cancer. He's and it's something called cordoma,
Speaker 4: which is a very very rare cancer.
Speaker 1: I mean so rare.
Speaker 4: You know, when you think of rare, you think in
Speaker 4: the United States, well, maybe that's five thousand people or something.
Speaker 4: This is this is three hundred per year, you know,
Speaker 4: three hundre per year are diagnosed with this kind of tumor.
Speaker 4: And it starts in the spine. It can start up here,
Speaker 4: you know, at the top of the spine or at
Speaker 4: the bottom of the spine. And with Mac, that tumor
Speaker 4: was this big wrapped around his sacrum. And it's such
Speaker 4: a slow growing tumor that it could very possibly have
Speaker 4: been growing since birth that long because it grows very
Speaker 4: very slowly to get to that size.
Speaker 1: They said that could have been there for a long
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 4: And the only way to cure it is to take
Speaker 4: it out and hopefully the surgeon gets every cell, every
Speaker 4: bit of it and that can happen successfully about seventy
Speaker 4: percent of the time, but thirty percent of the time
Speaker 4: they will take take it out and then it'll come
Speaker 4: back and spread. And when it comes back and spreads,
Speaker 4: there's very little it can be done. They try to
Speaker 4: radiate it, they try any drug, any cancer drug they can.
Speaker 4: We found out he had his initial tumor taken out
Speaker 4: in September of twenty eighteen, and by May of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 4: we found out that a cancer came back. So then
Speaker 4: he went into like chemo treatments, radiation stuff, more surgeries
Speaker 4: because now it was spreading to the neck, right, he
Speaker 4: had tumors on his neck. He had in fact, see
Speaker 4: this picture back here, that is five days before he
Speaker 4: had to go in the hospital and get tumor taken
Speaker 4: off his neck. In fact, you know, when he wasn't
Speaker 4: on camera or getting his picture taken, they gave him
Speaker 4: a neck brace to wear. When they discovered that there
Speaker 4: was two more on his neck. They didn't want him
Speaker 4: to do anything that would you know, screw you know,
Speaker 4: pop anything, or that tumor was growing there and it
Speaker 4: could fracture something. So they gave him a neck brace
Speaker 4: and he was wearing a neck brace until we got
Speaker 4: into the hospital five days after that picture was taken there.
Speaker 4: But and he's also going through chemo and radiation, and
Speaker 4: you know, they kept he had multiple spine surgeries because
Speaker 4: he was in a lot of pain and the only
Speaker 4: thing they could do was try to take the tumors
Speaker 4: out off his spine. Each time they did that, he
Speaker 4: became a little more disabled, until finally at the end
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty, this was twenty twenty, he was in
Speaker 4: a wheelchair and then he.
Speaker 1: Was still able to stand up.
Speaker 4: But shortly after that he lost the use of his legs.
Speaker 1: I remember coming in.
Speaker 4: I would come in and I would stretch his legs
Speaker 4: out and have him push, you know, his legs. And
Speaker 4: I came in and I said, okay, lift your leg up,
Speaker 4: but and he couldn't do it. And he couldn't lift
Speaker 4: his leg up, and he just looked at me, you know,
Speaker 4: he couldn't do it, and he took it in stride.
Speaker 1: Raymond. I mean, it was like like he's laying there.
Speaker 4: I think he knew something was happening because it was
Speaker 4: getting harder and harder to move his leg. And then
Speaker 4: when it happened, it was like, can't do it.
Speaker 1: Then he was resigned to it. Yeah, you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like he started crying or anything. He was just.
Speaker 4: We're in a different world now, you know. Now we're
Speaker 4: in a we moved to a new place.
Speaker 1: We're in another level of what we're going to do.
Speaker 3: The amazing thing to me is through all of this.
Speaker 3: I mean, in twenty twenty one, you lose your father,
Speaker 3: your wife is still battling cancer. Mac is now battling cancer.
Speaker 3: But the mission, Max's mission and his love of music
Speaker 3: never WANs Gary. In fact, I would argue, well you
Speaker 3: named the album or he did Resurrection and revival it
Speaker 3: resurrects and revives him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the last year of his life. Tell me
Speaker 1: about that, what you saw, the drive you saw in
Speaker 1: him and the impact it had on you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this record, this is part two of the first record,
Speaker 4: the first record. In February of twenty twenty three, he'd
Speaker 4: been fighting cancer and all of that, and he said
Speaker 4: to me, Dad, there's a piece of music that I
Speaker 4: wrote that I never finished in college, and I think
Speaker 4: I'd like to try and finish it. He contacted one
Speaker 4: of my band members who he'd worked with a little
Speaker 4: bit on some things and my violin player Dan, and
Speaker 4: Dan went to work with him on it to help
Speaker 4: them kind of flesh out the ideas. And then my
Speaker 4: piano player went to work on it with him. Ben
Speaker 4: lewis helping him. Ben would play things for him and
Speaker 4: then send it back to Mac and he'd make notes
Speaker 4: and send it back to Ben.
Speaker 1: Then Ben would adjust.
Speaker 4: And then his buddy Oliver Shnay came into the picture,
Speaker 4: who he hadn't seen for a while. Oliver went to
Speaker 4: college with him, yea, and they hadn't seen each other
Speaker 4: for a long time. And Mac played him this piece
Speaker 4: of music that he'd been working on, and Oliver went
Speaker 4: to work on it with him to finish it. They
Speaker 4: went into the studio in July of twenty twenty three
Speaker 4: and recorded the piece of Arctic Circles, which is on
Speaker 4: Maxinese YouTube.
Speaker 1: Now, that started the.
Speaker 4: Ball rolling for Mac wanting to do an entire album,
Speaker 4: and that's where Resurrection and Revival came from. I don't
Speaker 4: know where where he why he decided that that was
Speaker 4: the title, but named it yeah, oh yeah, Mac Mac did, yeah,
Speaker 4: he it was it was his project.
Speaker 3: Well, clearly it was Resurrection and Revival of his music.
Speaker 3: But now in the light of what we know and
Speaker 3: what's happened, it takes on a far greater significance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 4: It was reviving him, you know, personally, to be to
Speaker 4: be resurrecting some old pieces of music and bringing him.
Speaker 1: To new life.
Speaker 4: And you know, even that even that cover right there,
Speaker 4: he who is this, that's my grandfather and his grave
Speaker 4: grandfather in World War One.
Speaker 3: Who kind of looks like mac I had to say,
Speaker 3: and a little bit, but he looks he looks a
Speaker 3: little bit like he does. When I saw it, I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: he put his face, he super imposed his face.
Speaker 1: On an old picture. But it it's not it's a relative.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: He he kind of revived that picture.
Speaker 4: One of the things he did when he was working
Speaker 4: at the Foundation was kind of preserved things in archive
Speaker 4: and he would take, like, I had a lot of
Speaker 4: these old pictures of my grandfather from World War One,
Speaker 4: and he took them and kind of lightened them up
Speaker 4: and fixed them.
Speaker 1: Up, made it look better and everything.
Speaker 4: And his mom, you know, he's looking for one of
Speaker 4: those pictures to use on the cover, and he showed
Speaker 4: his mom one over here, and she said, what about
Speaker 4: that one.
Speaker 1: With Grandpa on the horse. Huh.
Speaker 4: And Mac went back and got that and he looked
Speaker 4: at it and he thought, you're right, Mom, that's that's
Speaker 4: a great that's a great shot.
Speaker 3: I had you on the show on my show on
Speaker 3: a WTN on Fox and when the first album came out,
Speaker 3: and as I listened to you, now you said when
Speaker 3: Mac saw these pictures, he would brighten them up and
Speaker 3: revive them. But it seems to me, now now you've
Speaker 3: released the second album of his work, some of which
Speaker 3: you discovered like hidden treasure in his devices after his death,
Speaker 3: you are the one who has now brightened and revived
Speaker 3: and restored.
Speaker 1: These works that he left you in many ways.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, finding these musical treasures on his laptop after
Speaker 4: he died was a blessing because it's given me this project,
Speaker 4: you know, throughout this first year of our lives without Mac,
Speaker 4: that has really helped me through quite a bit. It's
Speaker 4: resurrected me and revived me a bit from this terrible
Speaker 4: grief that we're going through after losing.
Speaker 1: Him, you know, and I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 4: You know, not everybody loses somebody and then has you know,
Speaker 4: a treasure trove of music to produce or something like
Speaker 4: that messages.
Speaker 1: You've told me.
Speaker 3: I mean, you were going clearly opening his opening these devices.
Speaker 3: I'm sure the first impulse wasn't oh, I'm going to
Speaker 3: go find some more music. You were looking for clues
Speaker 3: in the sense of what he was going through. I
Speaker 3: imagine I don't know what I was looking for Raymond.
Speaker 1: After he died. I you know, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Within days, I just went to his phone and I
Speaker 4: just opened up his phone. I had his password, and
Speaker 4: I opened up his phone and I started looking at
Speaker 4: his text messages with people, and I looked at I
Speaker 4: found voicemails of people that sent him I mean that
Speaker 4: called him the day he died, not knowing that he
Speaker 4: was gone, or shortly after he died, not knowing he
Speaker 4: was gone. These are friends that I didn't really know
Speaker 4: very well. So and I found these voice messages. So
Speaker 4: I ended up calling these these friends of his and
Speaker 4: telling them, you know, we lost mac He's you know,
Speaker 4: I just wanted you to know I found this voicemail
Speaker 4: that you left. I found text messages from different people.
Speaker 4: I'm in fact, one of the one of the songs
Speaker 4: on the record, it's It's.
Speaker 1: He calls it quasi love.
Speaker 4: It's you know, I know quasi is the pronunciation, but
Speaker 4: Mac wanted to kind of do something something different with it,
Speaker 4: his own jazz, his own thing. And uh so I
Speaker 4: found uh him singing into his phone the melody for
Speaker 4: this song, uh into his voice message and he was
Speaker 4: writing a song in his head and he was singing
Speaker 4: into his song. Then I found the chart for it,
Speaker 4: and then I found text messages between him and my
Speaker 4: violin player Dan.
Speaker 1: Talking about this song.
Speaker 4: And so I went to Dan and said, what what
Speaker 4: were you were you working on another song with with
Speaker 4: Mac besides Arctic Circles?
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, yeah, Mac had this cool idea
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: And I said, we'll finish that song because we're going
Speaker 4: to put it on we're doing a second record and
Speaker 4: I wanted on the record, and so it's on the record.
Speaker 4: And I just found all kinds of things on his phone, Raymond,
Speaker 4: that I don't even know what.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was looking for. I was just.
Speaker 4: I was just driven to find things and find what
Speaker 4: was happening at the end of his life. Who was
Speaker 4: who was he talking to? And do they know what happened?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: And so I had to let them know. And what's
Speaker 1: the message.
Speaker 3: What did you discover that you didn't know that he
Speaker 3: was going through at the end of his life.
Speaker 4: Gary, through all of this, you know, I never wanted
Speaker 4: to have that sort of what if conversation with Mac.
Speaker 1: Mac.
Speaker 4: You know, we're fighting cancer and it's you know, it's tough,
Speaker 4: and what if this happens were I never wanted to
Speaker 4: have that conversation with him, you know, do you want
Speaker 4: me to do this or.
Speaker 1: Do you want me to do that?
Speaker 4: There was only one time where I asked him about something,
Speaker 4: what what would you want to happen with your bank account?
Speaker 1: Because he'd saved a lot.
Speaker 4: Of money, and what would you want to happen?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: And he paid for the first record himself, I mean
Speaker 4: out of out of his savings and everything.
Speaker 1: But he saved a fair.
Speaker 4: Amount of money, and so I asked him and he
Speaker 4: told me what he would want with that. But then
Speaker 4: I didn't I didn't want to have that conversation with him,
Speaker 4: because I did. I didn't want him or me to
Speaker 4: feel like we were we were looking at the end
Speaker 4: of the road. I was always from the from the
Speaker 4: get go, trying to find the drug, trying to find
Speaker 4: the doctor, trying to find the procedure. What can we try,
Speaker 4: where can we try it? In fact, there was there
Speaker 4: was mac was getting ready to do another treatment when
Speaker 4: he ended up in the hospital the last time. He
Speaker 4: was scheduled for another treatment and then he ended up
Speaker 4: going into the arm because his breathing was affected, and
Speaker 4: we lost him on January January fifth.
Speaker 3: What what did he teach you about sacrifice and staying
Speaker 3: on mission? Did he teach you anything?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, he fought this with such grace and courage that,
Speaker 4: you know, I can only hope that I'm going to
Speaker 4: be as graceful and courageous when you know, things get tough,
Speaker 4: You know, for me, because I watched him knowing that
Speaker 4: he knew how bad things were for him, and yet
Speaker 4: he never never stopped smiling through it. You know, if
Speaker 4: he was not in pain or not feeling sick from
Speaker 4: the treatments, he was smiling. He was watching the Cubs.
Speaker 4: He was a big Cubs fan. All this, all through
Speaker 4: the summer of twenty twenty three. He was watching the
Speaker 4: TV with his mom, watching the Cubs. My mom was
Speaker 4: in there all through Moira, My mom and mac All
Speaker 4: had their cubnats and they're all watching the cub games.
Speaker 4: He was smiling through that. He was playing his harmonica.
Speaker 4: He was working on the music. The entire last year
Speaker 4: of his life, he was focused on creating this album,
Speaker 4: and so he was filled with joy and happiness for
Speaker 4: what he was doing, and it was giving him this
Speaker 4: amazing thing to look forward to every day. I'm making
Speaker 4: a record. I'm going into the studio. He was in
Speaker 4: the studio in July twenty twenty three. He was back
Speaker 4: in the studio in November twenty twenty three. The record
Speaker 4: was finished in December. He heard all the music, he
Speaker 4: designed the cover, and he saw the final videos that
Speaker 4: were made. And then a day later he was in
Speaker 4: the hospital and we lost him six days later. So
Speaker 4: that whole last year he was filled with joy and
Speaker 4: happiness of working on this music and accomplishing this thing
Speaker 4: that he wanted to do, and this beautiful music.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's stunning.
Speaker 4: So I watched him just gracefully go through the last
Speaker 4: year of his life, you know, being paralyzed, being you know,
Speaker 4: struggling with different things.
Speaker 1: Yet Mac never ever looked like he was given up.
Speaker 3: Well, I love how you've continued you took the baton
Speaker 3: from him and in his passing, finished the work. Because
Speaker 3: now you've gotten two more album I mean, it's really
Speaker 3: two more albums. I know it's I know it's Resurrection
Speaker 3: and Revival part two. It's actually part three two. I mean,
Speaker 3: you've you've got a lot here.
Speaker 1: Double double disc. It's a double disc.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a lot of music. It's nineteen tracks,
Speaker 3: and they're very diverse. There's jazz, there's orchestra, orchestra, there's
Speaker 3: a beautiful harmonica with strength. I mean, there's the diversity
Speaker 3: of his musical palette is pretty wide and uh, in fact,
Speaker 3: kind of fascinating. And I imagine as a father. I
Speaker 3: mean I listened to it one way, but I'm sure
Speaker 3: as a dad you listen to it and go wow.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that he had that in him, or
Speaker 3: I didn't know he had he he.
Speaker 1: Felt bat because I mean, it's a wash of feeling.
Speaker 1: That's really what this is. It's an album. It's a
Speaker 1: wash of feelings.
Speaker 4: And yeah, some of the stuff I discovered was I
Speaker 4: was totally just like.
Speaker 1: Wow, why didn't he ever? Why didn't he play that
Speaker 1: for me? It's so beautiful.
Speaker 4: There's a song called just for Now on it that
Speaker 4: he did all on his computer programs. A lot of
Speaker 4: the stuff he would write, you know, on his programs,
Speaker 4: like just for Now. He did everything on his programs.
Speaker 4: We took the just for Now track that Matt created
Speaker 4: with the original vocals and everything like that. We added
Speaker 4: some strings on top of some of it, just.
Speaker 1: To give it a little more.
Speaker 4: But the track could have been put on the record
Speaker 4: all by itself because Mack did it. It's just a
Speaker 4: beautiful song. His friend from college, Lou Roy, sings on it.
Speaker 4: She's got a beautiful voice. She sings on three of
Speaker 4: the songs on the record. There's the other music on
Speaker 4: the record that Mac did all by himself. There's a
Speaker 4: cover of nature Boy, the old song by Nac and Co.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Mac does a version of nature Boy where he plays
Speaker 4: all the instruments and he sings, and he recorded everything and.
Speaker 1: He had that all in the computer. Where was this
Speaker 1: that was? That was in his files? Wow? In his file?
Speaker 1: What do you think he would say if he saw
Speaker 1: this part two? What would he say to you? What
Speaker 1: would he say to me? I hope you'd say, let's
Speaker 1: do part three. He may he may give a g yet, Garry.
Speaker 3: Okay, there's a there's a string of questions I ask
Speaker 3: every I call this my royal grande questionnaire.
Speaker 1: So now you're going to be subjected to it.
Speaker 3: These are fast, you don't have to spend much time
Speaker 3: on these, but I'm warning you they are deadly questions.
Speaker 1: You're right, who's the person you most admire? Jesus? Hmmm?
Speaker 1: Who do you most attest? Oh? I can't say it,
Speaker 1: Come on, I can't. Everybody tries for dodging on that.
Speaker 1: You right now? Thank you? Yeah for asking that question?
Speaker 1: You awful person. You What is your best feature? I
Speaker 1: don't know, Maybe M hard to say. Persistence, maybe persistence?
Speaker 1: What's your worst? Your worst feature?
Speaker 2: Maybe persistence, the double edged sort of persistence. Well, you
Speaker 2: don't build a foundation and call it the Gary Sineze
Speaker 2: foundation without a little persistent.
Speaker 1: Your favorite meal, Gary, Oh, dear.
Speaker 4: Gosh, maybe one of my favorite meals is uh, chicken pacata?
Speaker 3: Chicken pacata? Yeah, well, I see, I evade that. I
Speaker 3: like anything Italian. So my favorite meal is one I
Speaker 3: get to eat with family or friends.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite deal. Well, like the one I had
Speaker 1: last night with somebody.
Speaker 4: But my dad used to make chicken pecata and that's
Speaker 4: a good man.
Speaker 1: But but I like a lot of food. What do
Speaker 1: you fear? Gary? Failure? Maybe maybe loss?
Speaker 3: M your greatest virtue is what? What do you what
Speaker 3: do you consider the greatest virtue? Not your greatest virtue,
Speaker 3: but what do you consider the greatest virtue?
Speaker 1: Honesty? Maybe honesty? Why?
Speaker 4: Well, if you're if you're not honest, you know, and
Speaker 4: nobody's gonna trust you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What's that old line? My great grandmother had a line,
Speaker 3: if you lie, you cheat, If you cheat, you steal.
Speaker 3: If you steal, you're no good.
Speaker 1: I guess that's I guess that's true.
Speaker 3: What could you not live without? Mm hmm, Well that's
Speaker 3: a good answer.
Speaker 1: I guess that's that's kind of universal, Gary oxygen. What
Speaker 1: is your biggest regret? Oh?
Speaker 4: Gosh, you know, I've thought about this with regards to
Speaker 4: Mac and just wishing that I had in those final days,
Speaker 4: I had asked him if he was afraid and and
Speaker 4: let him talk to me a little bit more. But
Speaker 4: neither of us wanted to go there. You know, I
Speaker 4: don't know if that's my biggest regret, but when I
Speaker 4: think of it, I wished i'd.
Speaker 1: Before he was.
Speaker 4: Unable to speak again, you know, because he lost that
Speaker 4: capacity with what was going on with the his lungs.
Speaker 4: It went so quickly that I wished that I had
Speaker 4: spent more time in those last days having you know,
Speaker 4: having that, having some kind of more in depth conversation
Speaker 4: with him about his feelings, what he'd been through and
Speaker 4: what he was going through. But again, like I said,
Speaker 4: I never wanted to feel like I was given up and.
Speaker 1: You were in the fight.
Speaker 3: And I would argue, if you'll permit me, you helped
Speaker 3: fill his last year, and that those last days with
Speaker 3: great joy and accomplishment for Mac.
Speaker 1: I mean I saw.
Speaker 3: That from the little piece we did after Christmas, just
Speaker 3: on the cusp of the new year, the reaction he
Speaker 3: had to that, and the pride he had in that
Speaker 3: showing it to other people, and that was all you're doing,
Speaker 3: so and it was the culmination of his work.
Speaker 4: And and yeah, and his mom and his two sisters.
Speaker 4: He loved them so much, and they loved him so much,
Speaker 4: and you know, we all pulled together, and they were
Speaker 4: they were a big part of everything, no question. Without
Speaker 4: their support, I couldn't have you know, I couldn't have
Speaker 4: gone gone through everything I was doing, and they were
Speaker 4: helping Mac in so many ways, so many beautiful ways.
Speaker 1: What is the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Speaker 4: The one I always I always give this one to
Speaker 4: like young actors who asked me for advice, and I.
Speaker 1: Save your money? Is that the best piece? Gary? Save
Speaker 1: your money? That's all the broke actors out there.
Speaker 4: I know the feeling right saving thing are good today,
Speaker 4: but they might not be good tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Save your money, Okay, I guess it's good advice. If
Speaker 1: you could not do what you're doing now, what would
Speaker 1: you like to do? Mmm?
Speaker 4: These are these are difficult questions because I I don't
Speaker 4: I don't ever think about that. You know, I'm I'm
Speaker 4: fairly at you know, I'm at peace with what I'm doing.
Speaker 4: I've done a lot of things in my life with
Speaker 4: a career, and I've got a great family.
Speaker 1: My family is it. It's great.
Speaker 4: May maybe spend more and more time with my family.
Speaker 4: You know. I'm still trying to accomplish a lot with
Speaker 4: the foundation work and the band and supporting the troops,
Speaker 4: and that takes me away sometimes.
Speaker 1: And you know, my wife is just the.
Speaker 4: Best person I know, and you know, and I look
Speaker 4: at how she sacrificed for this mission that I've been on,
Speaker 4: because she spent a lot of time without me there
Speaker 4: because I've been going somewhere to do something, and she's
Speaker 4: she's a real she's a real hero and my biggest champion.
Speaker 4: You know, her brother served in Vietnam, and she always
Speaker 4: wanted me to go out there and try to make
Speaker 4: sure that our service members know they're appreciated because her
Speaker 4: brothers didn't get that when they came home. And so
Speaker 4: she's been backing me up every step in the way.
Speaker 1: So just you're spending more time with them and.
Speaker 4: That you know, that's that's that's the important thing, and
Speaker 4: the grandkids and all that.
Speaker 3: Final question, what happens when this is over? Not the interview,
Speaker 3: it's life.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope I'll be welcomed and Lord will say
Speaker 1: good job.
Speaker 3: I think you'll not only be welcomed, you'll hear familiar music,
Speaker 3: music maybe Arctic circles played when you get there.
Speaker 1: My friend, So great to see you. God, bless you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you. Eminen.
Speaker 3: Gary Sonise is such an incredible person. His sense of
Speaker 3: sacrifice and commitment to his art, the veterans and the
Speaker 3: mission of his son is just It's inspiring and if
Speaker 3: you haven't heard Maxinie's Resurrection and Revival, go to his
Speaker 3: YouTube page and order copies at Gary Sinisefoundation dot org.
Speaker 3: Here's the hole the takeaway. There is so much there
Speaker 3: to unpack, but I love that line. I had to
Speaker 3: find a way to do it differently. I had to
Speaker 3: build my own Gary built a theater company, an amazing
Speaker 3: career and one of the most active veteran service organizations
Speaker 3: in the country.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll support his good work and come back
Speaker 1: next time.
Speaker 3: And as I mentioned on every episode, why live a dry, constricted,
Speaker 3: narrow life when if you fill it with good things,
Speaker 3: it can flow into a broad, thriving Arroyo Grande.
Speaker 1: I'm raving at Arroyo.
Speaker 3: Make sure you subscribe like this episode, Thank you for
Speaker 3: diving in, and we'll see you next time. Arroyo Grande
Speaker 3: is produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts and is available
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