I think what it is is that you walk out of the theater and I think you feel better. You have a greater feeling of hope and that we’re human beings, all of us are humans and we share this world. And why not do what you can to help one another? I don’t know what it is. It’s a feel-good movie, it is. I mean, it’s a war movie so you think you’re going to come away feeling devastated and sad, and there are those things that take place in the film. So it was just unexpected.
I think the most interesting for me… All of those awards are unbelievably great, but when we screen for a group of veterans. They invited us to Pearl Harbor to screen for all the Naval officers at Pearl Harbor. We went there and showed the film to about 350 Naval officers there at the theater, and the credits rolled and the film ended and in unison all these big dogs in the military stood up and gave us a standing ovation. We were absolutely [floored]. We were crying because it’s those guys and girls, those men and women, that’s who we cared about. We loved that everybody loved the film, I don’t want to give the wrong impression. But when it’s those people that are saying you hit it on the head. When they come up and say, “I was a medic and that’s how it was.” When you have a 70+ year-old man sobbing and saying, “Thank you for telling this story,” that is what makes everything worth it. It’s been the same thing everywhere we’ve gone. At all of our screenings we have any veteran, anybody who served in the service, stand up and be recognized.
What’s next for you?
Gosh, hopefully another war movie (laughing). It’s funny that you asked that because after “Saints and Soldiers,” I did some guest star television on some really good jobs. And the next four out of five jobs were all military stuff.
Are you afraid of getting typecast?
(Laughing) No. But that’s the thing, “Saints and Soldiers” hadn’t even come out so nobody knew. I was a Marine in Iraq on “Threat Matrix,” Navy Seal on “JAG,” and then I was like a corpsman in the Navy on “NCIS.” So there’s all these military things that happened. They’re like, “Get the Army guy,” now, I guess. But I’m looking into a project right now. There’s some talk Kirby Heyborne, who plays Winley the English character in the film, we’ve talked about playing brothers in a romantic comedy, which we would be shooting in December.
Is that lined up or still in talks?
No, that’s actually lined up. It’ll be an independent film and right now it’s in the pre-production stage. If everything goes well, it’ll be in December. Then there’s some television stuff right now in the works. We’ll see. Maybe a horror film coming up here in the next little bit. I’m also planning on working with Ryan and Adam – I’m hoping “Saints and Soldiers” will be the beginning of a nice professional romance for a bunch of us together. Ryan the director calls me all the time and says, “We’re just looking for the next script.” We’ve got some ideas for a Western or maybe an extreme sports movie.
That pretty much covers everything – horror, Western, romance…
Well, I’ve got to do it all at some point.
What’s the romantic comedy about?
It’s called – right now it’s called “Take a Chance.” It’s just a simple romantic comedy about some hillbilly brothers from Texas. My character falls in love off a picture with a girl from this small town and we decide that we’re going to go there. We pull a few pranks and strings, maybe even pose as foreign exchange students with fake accents to try and win the heart of this girl and get close to her. You have to see it when it comes out. It’ll be funny. We’re some pranksters. Basically it’s just a couple of goofy brothers trying to find love.
Are you deliberately going toward indie films right now?
It’s just kind of what’s coming up. Doing independent films, I just have such a love for them. Since traveling around with this film and going to the independent film festivals and seeing the quality and caliber of the work that’s out there, that goes unseen a lot of time unfortunately, it’s just fun to be a part of something like that. It’s work where it gets back down to the roots. It gets back down to where you’re not doing a film for the money. You’re not doing a film because, “Okay, I need to pay rent so I better do this project.” You’re doing it because you know you might take a big pay cut but you love the project, you love the people you are working with, and you’re doing a fun, little movie. I have aspirations now – I started a production company with my brother a little while back and we’re looking to get some stuff underway. Also I started another production company with my roommate, K.C. Clyde.
