By Shawn Smith
Screenwriter Randall Wallace knows firsthand how hard it is to break into Hollywood, and even upon finding success, fortune can turn rapidly.
“[W]hen people will say to me, where did BRAVEHEART come from? The best anecdote I can tell is that I was sailing along,” Wallace told Pastor Greg Laurie. “My first son was born, and then the second came along. I had a long-term contract with a television company. They guaranteed me a really wonderful income for years into the future.”
While he had the idea for the story of real-life Scottish warrior William Wallace for years, it wasn’t until a writers’ strike that threatened his and his growing family’s livelihood that led him to write BRAVEHEART, which won Movieguide®’s 1996 Best Movie for Mature Audiences.
“[W]e bought a new home and spent all of our savings remodeling it, because we figured we had money coming in, and it was only a one-time thing,” the Oscar-nominated writer recalled.
“[A]s soon as all of our savings were gone, there was a writer’s strike, which I had not expected,” he continued. “And it went on and on, and I began to break down. I began to knot up so much. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t write, and when I was the same age as my sons were, my father had had a nervous breakdown, and I’d seen that happen, and it was the most terrifying experience of my life.”
He and his sister lived with relatives in a small house in rural Tennessee after his father’s breakdown, and afraid that his sons would have a similar experience that he did growing up, he “had nowhere else to go except on my knees.”
“[M]y prayer was, Lord, what matters most to me right now is my sons. I know my wife’s going to be all right. I know I’m going to be all right no matter what I have to crawl through,” the HEAVEN IS FOR REAL director/writer said.
“But it looked like we were going to lose our home…my career, I was going to have to go do something else,” Wallace added. “But my prayer was, what matters is my sons and maybe they’ll grow up to be better men, if, instead of living in a house with all the bedrooms and the bathrooms and the tennis court, they’ll grow up in a little house, like one without indoor plumbing [like we did].”
Instead of a complete career overhaul, Wallace’s prayer was the catalyst to write the movie that would win the Oscar for Best Picture.
“‘[I]f I go down in this fight. Let me go down, not on my knees to Hollywood, trying to do what Hollywood says they want. Let me go down with my flag flying, fighting for what I believe,’” he prayed. “And I stood up and went back to my desk, and that led directly to BRAVEHEART.”
Wallace has reunited BRAVEHEART director and star Mel Gibson for the two-part sequel to THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, called THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST.
The Tennessee native recalled how the idea of a sequel to 2004 hit movie came about over a lunch with Gibson.
“The resurrection is the story,” Wallace told Gibson, praising the THE PASSION but emphasizing that it was only part of the story. “It’s the greatest story in human history. It’s a story that feels almost impossible to tell. I think that’s a story we need to do.”
Gibson agreed, and now the cameras are rolling with Jaakko Ohtonen playing Jesus.
There’s little detail about the upcoming movie, other than it will have some “crazy stuff,” “a little sci-fi” and a “big story” according to the HACKSAW RIDGE director.
While there is some truth to the SUNSET BOULEVARD quote where struggling writer Joe Gillis’s agent tells him the “finest things” are “written on an empty stomach,” the longevity of Wallace’s career shows that the finest things are often divinely inspired.
Read Next: Mel Gibson’s THE RESURRECTION OF THE CHRIST Hits the Set
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