Randall Wallace - Living the Braveheart Life: Finding the Courage to Follow Your Heart

PRAISE FOR LIVING THE BRAVEHEART LIFE

There are two ways a writer can be brave. One, he can tackle a daunting and ambitious subject. Two, he can write in his own voice, revealing for the benefit of his readers private and dangerous stuff about his own psyche, his life, his struggles. Then theres a third way (and I didnt know this till I read Living the Braveheart Life). That way is acting with courage in his real life.

Randall Wallace has done all three in this extraordinary new book. I dont think Ive ever read anything like it. Living the Braveheart Life is a prescription for what ails the contemporary soul, and no one but Mr. Wallace could have written it. Its his testament as a father and a son, as a Scot and a Southerner, and as a writer... straight from a brave, brave heart.

STEVEN PRESSFIELD, SCREENWRITER AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR, GATES OF FIRE AND THE WAR OF ART

Randall Wallace is a man who approaches filmmaking with great care and passion. Weve enjoyed working on a number of films together over the years, and I can tell you one thing for certain: he has a natural intuition as to what makes a truly great story. Living the Braveheart Life will show you how a true master craftsman approaches storytelling and life with great courage.

DEAN SEMLER, AM. ACS. ASC., ACADEMY AWARDWINNING CINEMATOGRAPHER, SECRETARIAT, DANCES WITH WOLVES, THE PATRIOT

The creator of the epics Braveheart and We Were Soldiers takes us on a personal journey that is no less inspiring than those of his movie characters. Informative, entertaining, and ultimately spiritual, Randall Wallace reminds us what truly matters.

STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL, GEN., US ARMY (RET.), BESTSELLING AUTHOR, TEAM OF TEAMS

The essence of the Braveheart Life is courage, sacrifice, selflessness, and choosing to live not for yourself but for other people, in freedom, the way God intended. Living the Braveheart Life is the only way to truly live.

SEAN HANNITY, #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND HOST, HANNITY, FOX NEWS

If C. S. Lewis had been blessed with a Tennessee birth, a Virginia upbringing, and a career in Hollywood, he might have written this book. If you loved Braveheart as much as I did, then you will be enthralled with the journey that pushed Randall Wallace to write it.

JILL CONNER BROWNE, #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, SWEET POTATO QUEENS SERIES

Randy Wallace is an American treasure. He lives the Braveheart Life, so Im glad that by reading this book, others will have the chance to try to live it too.

LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST, THE LAURA INGRAHAM SHOW

Braveheart isnt just a film by Randall Wallaceits a portrayal of a life well-lived because of the heart found in its hero. By all accounts Randall is an iconic writer and filmmaker who has achieved stratospheric success. At the same time he is one of the most down-to-earth people you will ever meet. No one can better communicate the ups and downs, the joys and struggles, or the costs and rewards of building your own Braveheart Life. Read this book. Youll be glad you did.

TODD BURPO, PASTOR, VOLUNTEER FIREMAN, AND #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, HEAVEN IS FOR REAL

2015 Randall Wallace

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing Group, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN 978-0-7180-3084-1 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wallace, Randall.

Living the Braveheart life: finding the courage to follow your heart / Randall Wallace.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-7180-3147-3 (hardback)

1. Authors, American20th centuryBiography. I. Wallace, Randall. II. Title.

PS3573.A429Z46 2015

813'.54dc23

[B]

2015007225

15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

Before the release of Heaven Is for Real, friends in Mississippi helped arrange an advanced screening, and among those in attendance were some young people whose only home is the palliative care unit of the Blair Batson Memorial Childrens Hospital. They are paralyzed from the neck down, their bodies confined to wheelchairs.

At the end of the screening one of the nurses, who has become family to these children, asked one of them, a luminous girl named DAsia, what she thought of the movie. DAsia replied, I felt God was right in my face.

This book is dedicated to everyone who has placed God right in my face. To the Teachers and Friends who have shared their lessons and their hearts, and the enemies who have taught me too. To the heroes of the past and the poets who have shaped their Stories into a history that can speak to me. To those like my Grandmother, and my Father and Mother, whose love bore the nature of Divinity in its constant and eternal Presence, even when I could not see their eyes and touch their faces. And to my sonsAndrew, Cullen, and Soren Eliwhose very presence sings anthems of the love of God.

CONTENTS

ON AN EARLY SUMMER DAY IN IRELAND TWO DECADES AGO, I stood on a field, where a film crew was re-creating a massive fight that had taken place seven hundred years earlier. The fight was the Battle of Stirling, and the movie was Braveheart.

It was the first time I had ever seen something I had written becoming a feature film.

For that moment we had gathered together more than two thousand Irish Extras to play the Scottish Highlanders who had fought that day. They were members of the IRAnot the one you think about when you hear those lettersthe Irish Reserve Army. As reservists, they were required to put in a few weeks of military drill each year. The production team had made a deal with the Irish government to let us use these hordes of young men: they got to work on a movie instead of doing monotonous military drills, and the film company benefitted by having inexpensive labor for the big battle scenes of the movie.

My father-in-laws ancestors were all Irish, and in my experience the people who come from that magical island are a kind of rolling chaos; wherever two or more are gathered, it is a fight or a partyor both. It didnt take much to change the modern Irishmen into Highland warriors; they came ready-made with the right haircuts and the right tattoos. The films makeup artists didnt even have to smear dirt on most of them. The Assistant Directors had lined them up in rough formation, and the Extras were doing what Irishmen love to do; they were playing, whacking one another with the rubber swords and rubber spears wed given them.

In all fairness they had every right to be bored. Veterans of the movie business say the most exciting day of your life is your first day on a movie set; the most boring day of your life is your second. This was their third day of standing in lines, posing in the background to establish the masses of men who had fought the great battle we were all there to capture.

That same morning they had stood for hours in the background as the crew filmed close-ups of the conferences of the Scottish noblemen who were ready to sell out the commoners in order to gain concessions from the English king. The one bit of action the Irish Extras had gotten to portray was the beginning of the mutiny of the Scottish army; they were allowed to shift positions, beginning to walk away, just before William Wallace would arrive with his band of Highland rebels.