‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise And Jake Rademacher

The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and filmmakers Gary Sinise and Jake Rademacher on a Saturday edition of Morning Wire.

Returning from war and re-entering civilian life can be the hardest part of military service – particularly after wars mired in controversy like Iraq and Afghanistan – yet that part of a soldier’s story often goes untold. A new film produced by Gary Sinise and directed by Jake Rademacher takes an unflinching and personal look at the struggles and triumphs of U.S. soldiers returning home from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Morning Wire sat down with Sinise and Rademacher to discuss the making of their new film and how it folds into their larger mission of supporting and honoring America’s bravest.

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JOHN: Joining us now to discuss the new film “Brothers After War” is executive producer Gary Sinise and director Jake Rademacher. First of all, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us.

JAKE: Thank you for having us.

GARY: Yeah, thank you, John. Good to be with you.

JOHN: Georgia and I had a truly remarkable time at the premiere here in Nashville earlier this week. And we came away with a lot of questions we wanted to ask you. First, Jake, this is a sequel, in effect. For those who maybe haven’t had the opportunity to see the film that preceded this, “Brothers At War,” you’ve been documenting this group of men – your brothers and more – for decades. How did these documentaries come about?

JAKE: The first one came about because my brothers, Joe and Isaac, told me that the truth was not coming home from Iraq. This was 2004, they were at the 82nd Airborne, and they were in combat. Joe was a sniper with the 82nd Airborne, 18-years-old. Isaac was a captain, infantry officer doing civil relations. And as a family member, as a brother, that pissed me off. So I went back to my hometown, I raised some money, and I got myself over to Iraq. I embedded in Isaac’s unit, and he let me film everything. I got out to the Syrian border with his guys. Eventually the film follows him home. He predicts his daughter won’t recognize him. She doesn’t. That’s all in the first film, and the second. And then, I went back to Iraq a second time. My youngest brother Joe is kind of a hard ass, to put it bluntly — Gary’s probably laughing. He gives me a hard time, when he’s 19 and then 15 years later in “Brothers after War.” But he said, “You didn’t see enough. You don’t know enough.” So I went back to Iraq. I went to the Sunni Triangle. I embedded with the National Guard Infantry Company sniper team, the Iraqi Army and Marine advisors working with them. And I spent about six weeks over on that second trip. I went out six days a week and I got into a decent amount of combat and saw kind of the tougher, harder part of war. And all of that became “Brothers At War.” I was asked to go to Iraq a third time to screen it for General Petraeus public affairs folks. And while I was over there, a Marine colonel, a really lovely lady, said, with tears in her eyes, “You have to share this with Gary Sinise.” Now, I, as a first-time filmmaker, who grew up in Chicago in the beginning of my career and have always looked up to and admired Gary, said, “Do you have a cell phone number? Cause we’re not all drinking at the same cantina back there in L.A.” And, she said, “No.” But I shared this story with a friend of ours, Michael Broderick and Michael said, “I know Gary, and I think he’d love your film.” One thing led to another, and Gary graciously created a couple hours on his schedule. He was shooting CSI New York and I went over to CBS two days before Thanksgiving in 2007, and it was Gary Sinise, myself, and Norman Powell. We watched “Brothers At War” and I’ll never forget it. Gary was very moved at the end of the film. He just sat there in silence for two or three minutes and I just let him sit in it. And then he said, “It’s a very important film, Jake. It’s a very important film.” And then, as Gary does, he kind of started telling me what to do – and it was all good ideas. It was kind of like one of your heroes giving you advice — you’re gonna take it. And so eventually we said, “Let’s make this official,” and I asked him to be executive producer of the film. That was in 2007 and he’s been by our side ever since. The workshops that have come out of that have been sort of a collaboration. I’ll come up with an idea, bring it to Gary for his thoughts, and next thing I know, I’m in front of 700 soldiers back from Iraq. This new film also came out of that continuing collaboration, the conversations that we had. So then, we kind of came together and said, “Let’s make this film,” and Gary was the first one to support it. Eventually, I got an opportunity to talk to his foundation about it. They fell in love with the idea as well. And then in 2019, I set off across the world, four continents, to follow up with my two brothers and ten friends I made in Iraq to make “Brothers After War.”

JOHN: Wow. Now, Gary, you obviously know exactly what makes for successful storytelling. Why did this particular project, “Brothers After War,” appeal to you so much? 

GARY: Thank you, John. Because of the first film, during the days Jake was making that movie, I had made a commitment to do everything I could to try to help out our service members. I was trying to use the spotlight that I had on television with “CSI: New York” and some of the popularity of that, to take that spotlight and shine it on what our service members and military families were going through. When I saw Jake’s movie, it was just so perfectly aligned with the messages I was trying to get out to the American people about what our service members were doing overseas and how we should support them and the difficulties of active military duty life. And that’s what the first movie is about. So it was like this beautiful gem came at the right time, where I thought, “That’s my wheelhouse there.” That’s why I signed on, to help Jake and to try to do everything I could to draw attention to that first movie. For a documentary, we had a very successful run. Jake and I have talked about this: It got a theatrical run; It got a DVD; It was on television. I mean, it really did well for a documentary. As Jake said, out of that grew the workshops that he began doing on military bases all over the country, all over the place. Thousands of service members have seen “Brothers At War.”

GARY: I remember the first idea for it. I was curious about what happened to the people who were in the first movie. And I remember asking Jake “How many of them had you stayed in touch with? How many of them are still in the service? Out of the service? What’s going on with them?” That started the ball rolling and Jake’s wheels started going — and when Jake gets going, it’s a good thing. Eventually, we came to the realization that “Brothers After War,” which now looks at the transition from active duty military service, transitioning out of the military into the civilian world and the challenges our veterans face, that’s what this second movie is about. My foundation, that’s our mission, to support the men and women who serve our country and our veterans and first responders, and to try to help them, where needed. That’s why we decided at the Gary Sinise Foundation that we were going to sponsor the film, because it was surely going to not only lead to some good things, like what happened to the first film and the workshops that came out of that, but also ongoing support. Because I think the movie really speaks to that question of: What is it like for our service members to come home? And what can we do to support them?

JOHN: It really struck me that you’re seeing a complete, three-dimensional person as you get to know each of the heroes you highlight in this film. These are real people who struggle with real things, and the sense that we get two decades of insight into some of these guys, it really fleshes it out for you. It’s very real and I wanted to talk about that. The workshops appear to have helped shape this film – it sounds like, to me. There were questions and answers after the premiere this week and even that got very emotional, pretty raw at times. And you could feel the workshop mode taking over in some ways. Jake, I know that you run these. How did that help? How did working with a lot of soldiers coming home, becoming civilians, working through that process – how did it help shape this film?

JAKE: It’s a great question, John. And one thing you said is “three-dimensional.” I was very, very passionate about presenting a three-dimensional look at these service members, soldiers, Marines, veterans, wherever they are on the spectrum of their career in life. These are my friends. These are my brothers. Oftentimes when you see documentaries, people cherry pick sad stories, they’re not really in the community, somebody’s kind of doing their drive-by film about it. That’s not Gary Sinise and I. He’s been doing this for 40 years, I’ve been at this project for 21 years, I was in combat with these guys. From the very beginning I said, “Gary, I can’t just come and do an interview. I’ve got to actually spend a day with these people. I’ve got to embed in their life.” Now, I embedded with them in the foxholes. I got to embed with them, whether that means I got to jump out of an airplane with them or go scuba diving or get weapons training, which I did all of that. I go on a construction site with Ben. I want to show the audience these are, for the most part, highly functioning people, but they are still carrying some of the invisible wounds of war. They still have some work to do. I’ll show their vulnerability, but I also want to show their strength. Gary also felt strongly about that. As I finished the film and then got through the process of recutting it, Gary was like, “Hey, did anything funny happen?” I’m like, “Yeah, mostly at my expense.” So we started putting some of that back in the movie so we could give audiences the chance to laugh alongside us, but then also feel alongside us, and then also have some of that solution. Your question about the workshops is very astute. What was special was I was there with them. I chewed dirt with them. I spent three months living with them. I came in with final cut as a filmmaker wanting to really understand them and where they’re coming from. So, I had incredible access. I followed that up with walking with our service members for 14 years as they came home from war. When Oklahoma, where I am now, lost 14 soldiers in combat and a few to suicide, they called me and said, “Can you come?” I went and we built the workshop to what it is today. We expanded it to help them deal with the loss of their friends. We wrote a workbook for family members. The two-one Marines, when they lost 11 guys recently, with the help of the Gary Sinise Foundation, we went there and did a workshop. We play the original film and then we ask, “What part of the film do you relate to?” And then I’ve got 18, 19, 20-year-old Marines for 45 minutes talking about what they related to in the film. And that’s the power of the movie. It makes tough subjects easier to talk about. Well, this filmmaker was in the war zone, spends a decade working with veterans helping them walk through the trauma of war and then turn that into post traumatic growth so they can thrive. And his directions from the studio head, Gary, are, “I want to know how they’re doing and what they need.” So when I say in the beginning of the film, “I want to know how they’re doing, how they’re really doing,” I mean it. 

Screenshot: YouTube/Brothers After War

And you’ll see that in the film. I push them sometimes. That moment when we re-examine Gunner. His first response is not in the film. I asked him about that response where he’s in combat and there’s bullets going across the lens of my camera. Then I come upon one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in my life. These wounded Iraqi soldiers who were just patrolling their own country and now one’s got his leg busted up, the other one’s got a jaw messed up. And Gunner’s on one knee caressing the face of a wounded Iraqi soldier. This is like a warrior’s warrior, all right? And I’m filming and I see him do this. I’m in the midst of all this horror and there’s this moment of grace on earth. And I asked him about it. He says,, “Yeah, the bullets were flying, la la la,” and I say, “Gunner, I was there and it was grace on earth.” And I pushed in my camera to get a close-up because it was the most important thing happening right there. And he stops, and he looks down, and he starts to cry. And he gets real, and he says, “It’s because that’s your — it’s an intimate connection you have with another man. And it hurts. He was my soldier.” And that is the reality of the film. But I know from doing our seminars that it’s okay for me to ask that question and ask them to take a step further into the experience. He’s going to have to feel it a little bit to heal it and so he opens up and starts talking about it. That’s an invitation for anybody who’s been in that hard moment of combat to re-examine that and watch somebody else walk through it. Two months after I was there, David reached out to me and he said, “Jake. Thank you for coming. It really helped.” And on Friday night, David is going to do a Q&A. We’ve invited the 2nd Marine Division, where he used to be the division gunner, to come and listen to him do a Q&A. So now, if you take this all the way through the life cycle, In 2005/2006, I’m there with him in combat. He was the one who was in the crossfire. He’s the reason we went out there. He hasn’t totally walked through his own trauma. We make the film, which becomes an opportunity for him to really look at some of these moments he’s sort of buried a little bit. He heals from that, and now he’s using the film to model that for other Marines, and to help them understand —Hey guys, when you’re in a war zone, it’s not necessarily the time to talk about your feelings, however, when you come home, the more you talk about it, the more you make sense of it, the more you open up to your family or friends, the easier it’s going to be for you to transition to the next part of your life.

SEE THE FILM: “Brothers After War”

JOHN: I wanted to stress that suicide does come up in this film – the statistics that you, Jake, provided actually during the Q&A are just utterly shocking. Anybody that’s looked at that, it’s actually hard to believe. But this is not a sob story for all of these, again, heroes – there is a lot of victory. A lot of what we’re actually witnessing in the film is all of them figuring out ways to deal with, address these very traumatic things they’ve gone through – and make the transition and move on. And Gary, your foundation is driven by a lot of hope for our veterans, that this is not a tragedy we’re dealing with – these are a bunch of people that are bravest, the most important members of society. They need some support, but they can and do amazing things when they come back. Can you speak to that some?

GARY: Yes, we provide all kinds of services at the Gary Sinise Foundation to just keep people whole. There certainly have been a lot of broken people over the years. With the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the difficulty there, and 20 years of sacrifice, and the Taliban taking back the country, and young girls going back into slavery. After that you have a lot of veterans who served there who were really struggling with that quite a bit. We continue to provide multiple services on many fronts to try to help them and their families. “Brothers After War” is part of our wellness program at the Gary Sinise Foundation. Like Jake said, he’ll be doing workshops with both movies. I’ll be doing workshops for active duty and we will be doing workshops with “Brothers After War” for veterans, and we’ve had to expand that. I said to him at one point, Jake, “You know, you want to expand this program, but you can’t do it all by yourself.” So we have to have additional counselors and additional trainers. People that can really train folks, in giving them the tools we’re trying to give them to move on with their lives. It’s all about moving on in a positive way. I’ve tried to have this conversation with Jake many times — when I played Lieutenant Dan Taylor in “Forrest Gump,”the good thing about that story is that it has a happy ending. You’ve got a guy who goes off to war, he’s serving during a time of conflict in our own country about whether he should have even been in the war or not. He has to isolate. So he drowns himself in alcohol and disappears. But then, thankfully, at the end of that story, he’s standing up again, he’s making peace and he’s moving on. That’s the story we want for every single person who goes and serves in the military and comes home from war and defends our country. We want them to be okay. We want them to move on. A lot of them are struggling. So we try to provide as many wellness programs at the Gary Sinise Foundation as possible to support them. And if we don’t have those programs, we try to point them in the right direction. And Jake, his films are a part of our relief and resiliency efforts at the Gary Sinise Foundation to make sure that if you go off to war, you go to serve your country, that there is a grateful nation out there and that we appreciate what you’ve been doing for us and that we’re gonna back you up.

“Forrest Gump,” 1994. Robert Zemeckis. Gary Sinise. Paramount Pictures / Collection Christophel

JOHN: It’s beautiful and wonderful and it speaks to the success of your workshops that you need more people doing more of them because clearly they’re making a difference. A final question for both of you: What’s next with this project? Where can people see it? How do you plan to use this going forward with your various efforts?

GARY: Well, you can go to the GarySiniseFoundation.org or you can go to brothersafterwar.com. There you will find links to find theaters near you and where the movie will be playing this weekend. You can actually put your town or your zip code in there and it’ll tell you which Regal theater it’s playing in. And by the way, Regal has been just outstanding with us on this one, really supportive of Jake and the movie. They’ve got it in how many theaters this weekend, Jake, now? 

JAKE: It’s sort of astounding. We’re playing in 138 movie theaters across the country. A hundred of those movie theaters are Regal Cinemas. 

JOHN: Really encouraging to see a major chain like that get behind this – it’s exciting.

GARY: It really is. And for veterans out there, if you’re interested in seeing the film, The Gary Sinise Foundation has provided $150,000 to Vet Tix. Go to www.vettix.org. We want veterans to see this movie, so we provided a grant to Vet Tix so that they can provide free tickets to veterans. 

FREE MOVIE TICKETS FOR VETERANS: “Brothers After War”

JOHN: We’ll certainly include the links for our audience.

JAKE: And John, just to build on what Gary said, and to answer your question, the reason why the Gary Sinise Foundation, and Gary personally is making sure the vets know about this, the reason we are offering this incredible, generous gift is because theater was started by warriors coming home and trying to explain to the rest of society what war was like and what coming home from war was like. And so the Gary Sinise Foundation is trying to give them the gift of being able to go to their local movie theater, at a time that’s convenient for them, and to bring their family and as a community to come together. We know the film encourages camaraderie and communication. For the topics we get into, it’s a pretty easy film and a pretty good ride. You might have a little bit of feelings here and there because you’re feeling something for these heroes that serve us. And that’s a good thing. But overall, it’s an incredible insider’s look at what it means to serve our country and to come home from. I think this gift is incredible because it’s encouraging veterans — go to the movie theater and experience this as a group together. That’s the next step. We’ll be doing “Brothers After War” movie and seminars for years to come, but we really want our veterans and our first responders and our service members and their families to go and experience this as a community on opening weekend.

JOHN: Terrific. I hope a lot of people show up. We certainly enjoyed being able to share that film and watch it with you guys. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and just making this film. It’s already saved lives as you’ve highlighted. We look forward to tracking its success in the future.

GARY: We appreciate it, John. Thanks so much

JOHN: That was Gary Sinise and Jake Rademacher, talking about their new film “Brothers After War” – and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

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