Never Give Up (The Hill Movie) w/ Jeff Calentano & Rickey Hill
Becoming OutlawsAugust 14, 202300:35:2632.45 MB

Never Give Up (The Hill Movie) w/ Jeff Calentano & Rickey Hill

Director and actor, Jeff Calentano joins Becoming Outlaws to discuss the premiere of the motion picture, 'The Hill.' The movie is based on the real life story of Rickey Hill who was born with degenerative disc disease and against all odds became a major league baseball player. Rickey Hill himself also joins this exciting episode. thehillmov.com

becomingoutlaws.com

Director and actor, Jeff Calentano joins Becoming Outlaws to discuss the premiere of the motion picture, 'The Hill.' The movie is based on the real life story of Rickey Hill who was born with degenerative disc disease and against all odds became a major league baseball player. Rickey Hill himself also joins this exciting episode. thehillmov.com

becomingoutlaws.com


00:00:12
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Outlaws.

00:00:15
If this is your first time, welcome.

00:00:17
If it's not your first time, welcome.

00:00:19
Becoming Outlaws engages celebrities, scholars, and

00:00:23
diverse voices in candid conversations about following

00:00:27
Jesus. Defying societal norms and

00:00:31
exploring profound and sometimes not so profound questions of

00:00:35
faith, in this episode we're going to discuss a soon to be

00:00:38
released film, The Hill. It stars Dennis Quaid, Colin

00:00:42
Ford and others. Directed by Jeff Salitano.

00:00:46
It's a true story about Ricky Hill, who as a child had a

00:00:50
degenerative disc disease as well as a dream to play Major

00:00:54
League Baseball. And those two things don't.

00:00:57
We usually go together very well.

00:00:59
Here's a sneak peek. Tagging.

00:01:01
Father of the night. At that.

00:01:03
Ricky hit. Oh

00:01:15
Ricky, I've seen you out there swinging that stick even when

00:01:19
you're suffering pain. But you can't play baseball.

00:01:23
You're going to get rid. And you're going to wind up with

00:01:27
an injury that you'll never get over that's going to give you a

00:01:31
higher calling. But all I want to do is play.

00:01:34
When I swing that bat, He did four homes in one game, so.

00:01:48
You might be better than you are not healed.

00:01:52
Bones are rapidly depleting. Then big miracle if you ever

00:01:55
walk again. You seen this Major League

00:01:58
trials? You're going to paralyze him.

00:02:00
I don't need you feeling him full of false hope.

00:02:03
He's my son, Wow, even the even the trailer

00:03:16
leaves you with goosebumps. That is it.

00:03:18
I've seen the film. It's really, really good.

00:03:20
And what I didn't mention is we actually have it.

00:03:22
Jeff and Ricky Hill with us here.

00:03:25
Welcome guys. I got a question first for you,

00:03:30
Ricky is so when I hit the age 40s or so, I was having a little

00:03:36
bit of back pain, got it diagnosed and I had this phone

00:03:39
call that scared me that says you have degenerative disc

00:03:42
disease. I thought, Oh my goodness, what

00:03:45
is happening? Well, come to find out.

00:03:47
Everyone's discs age. They decline with time.

00:03:51
What's the difference between what an aging adult would have

00:03:55
and then what you had as a child where you had that have leg

00:03:58
braces? Well, I really didn't have any

00:04:03
disc, which is a big difference in disc disease.

00:04:11
The the what I had was it was tied into my legs as well.

00:04:16
But my legs when I was born were wrapped around one another,

00:04:21
which created one problem and then the other problem it was

00:04:25
went on up to the up to my my back and my spine, where I

00:04:32
didn't have any. I was born with very little disc

00:04:37
at the same time. My grandmother and my great

00:04:40
grandmother had the same very thing.

00:04:43
That put them in wheelchairs at a very young age. 6 year old man

00:04:50
when you were How old, Rick? 17 wow.

00:04:57
So with the ancestral history of that, what you had, what thrives

00:05:06
somebody to want, I know kids have dreams.

00:05:12
But to do what seems physically impossible, which in your case

00:05:15
is to play Major League Baseball, when everything's

00:05:19
against you doing that physically, what, what drives

00:05:22
somebody to persevere past that, to mentally get past the

00:05:27
barriers that they, they, they're feeling?

00:05:32
Kind of like kind of like in the Bible where it says and the

00:05:36
greatest one of all is love. I had the love of the game.

00:05:42
And nothing could stop me from. When you have that love and that

00:05:47
passion, it's not a dream you're going to, you're going to do it

00:05:53
one way or the other. When you have that made-up in

00:05:56
your mind, somehow you're going to make it happen.

00:06:00
And this movie shows. Somehow I made it happen and I

00:06:06
had help from a heavenly Father that.

00:06:12
Help me make it happen. And that's the reason why this

00:06:16
movie is even being made today is because of the help that I

00:06:20
had. I didn't do this alone.

00:06:24
And just what, what drew you to this movie?

00:06:27
Well, I'll tell you, but I wanted to just talk about real

00:06:30
quick one thing Ricky said at the end of the movie, which I

00:06:32
can't give away what he does, which Dennis was blown away by.

00:06:35
So I can't believe this kid did this.

00:06:38
Ricky went through the struggle you see him going through in the

00:06:41
movie, but then when he gets up there after the tragedy that

00:06:44
happened right before the last hit, which I don't want to give

00:06:48
away, but right when he got up there, he said he was, he had

00:06:51
tears in his eyes and he was ready to quit.

00:06:54
He really couldn't. He didn't have anything left.

00:06:55
He had been, he had been dehing for both teams, you know, you

00:06:59
know, designated hitter for two teams.

00:07:02
He was. He went through that thing that

00:07:04
happened. I don't want to tell you what it

00:07:05
is. And then after that, he said he

00:07:07
felt like a train hit him. He had nothing left, and

00:07:11
suddenly something came over him inside of him that he wasn't

00:07:16
ready for. It just came into him and he

00:07:18
said everything changed. He said he didn't even really

00:07:20
know where he was. He just knew that he could do

00:07:23
what he had to do and he just stepped up that plate and that's

00:07:26
when he carved the cross in the sand and steps into that,

00:07:31
putting God before him. And when we were at Joel

00:07:34
Osteen's Osteen's Lakewood Church a couple nights ago in

00:07:39
Houston, screening the movie, the audience erupted over that

00:07:45
moment because they related to it in such an honest way.

00:07:49
So that I just want to add. But yes, going back to my

00:07:52
journey on this movie. Is that what you were asking,

00:07:54
Ken? Yeah.

00:07:56
How did you get brought in or what?

00:07:57
What made you want to be a part of this one?

00:08:00
Well, it all, it all started when I read the script.

00:08:03
I mean, my brother met Ricky in a lobby of a hotel accidentally.

00:08:07
He was sitting there in another chair overhearing Ricky's

00:08:11
conversation about how frustrated he was trying to find

00:08:13
the right director and the right people for this movie.

00:08:15
And my brother leaned over afterwards and said sorry for

00:08:18
eavesdropping, Sir, but I have found your director and Ricky

00:08:22
kind of was, you know, suspect and called me that night.

00:08:26
My brother forced him to get on the call on the phone and call

00:08:28
me. And Ricky sent me the script.

00:08:32
And from the moment I read the script, it was an incredible

00:08:35
story that it just, it got inside of me in a way that just

00:08:39
like Ricky said, what happened to him?

00:08:44
With he played five seasons for the Montreal Expos and then got

00:08:48
cut because they found out about his.

00:08:50
He hid this degenerative spinal disease from everybody.

00:08:53
They didn't know about it. And when they found out, they

00:08:55
cut it. And his career was over.

00:08:57
And he was very upset and he said why?

00:08:58
Why did this happen? Why did God take this away from

00:09:01
me? And then today he knows why

00:09:04
because he was meant to tell this story to inspire everyone.

00:09:07
He was put on earth for this and I was put on earth to make this

00:09:10
movie. It's same thing happened to me.

00:09:13
17 years later I got the movie made.

00:09:16
Originally we were in Utah making this movie with another

00:09:21
group of people that fell through.

00:09:24
Then the financing came together again.

00:09:26
I was in Oklahoma, in offices, scouted all the locations, was

00:09:31
two weeks away from shooting hired Dennis Quaid.

00:09:34
That was six years ago. That fell apart.

00:09:36
They bought real estate instead. The investors Dennis loved the

00:09:40
movie so much, said Don't worry about paying me.

00:09:43
I'm on this movie for life. I love this story.

00:09:45
It's the most incredible story I've read, I think in my life,

00:09:48
and definitely one of the harder roles I've ever had to play

00:09:51
because James Hill was a complicated man and he loved the

00:09:55
faith element of it. I loved everything about it, but

00:09:58
it it it goes further than that. I can't explain Ken why I got so

00:10:02
obsessed with this movie, but I think it was the the the fact

00:10:06
that the story was so compelling.

00:10:08
And then I felt it appealed to everybody and I felt that I want

00:10:10
to make a movie. Like Seabiscuit, you know,

00:10:14
Seabiscuit, That horse just got to me.

00:10:17
And I love. That's one of my favorite movies

00:10:19
of all time. Field of Dreams is another one.

00:10:21
The natural, all those movies about people who did the

00:10:24
impossible or animals that did the impossible.

00:10:27
This movie resonated with me in that way.

00:10:30
And I want to make a movie that everybody could go see every

00:10:32
family member, every age and nobody I mean.

00:10:36
What I hate about movies that try to get all the family

00:10:38
members in there, they're they're milquetoast.

00:10:40
They're kind of, they're kind of washed out.

00:10:43
And the stories are like Hallmark movies.

00:10:45
I didn't want to make that. I wanted to get the writer of

00:10:48
Rudy Angelo Piso on and write a big, epic, sweeping story that

00:10:52
would, you know, last for years and years and years.

00:10:55
And there was a man at the Lakewood Church when we screened

00:10:59
the movie, you came up to me after we were taking photographs

00:11:02
of people. And he shook my hand.

00:11:04
He had tears in his eyes and he said Jeff.

00:11:07
I cannot tell you what this movie did to me.

00:11:09
He said there's three kinds of movies.

00:11:11
He was very intelligent guy. He said.

00:11:13
There's the movie that you never want to see and you never hear

00:11:16
about. There's the movie that you see

00:11:19
and you never want to see again. And then there's a movie that

00:11:21
you want to see over and over and over again, and this is that

00:11:24
movie, he says. I think this movie is going to

00:11:26
last forever. And that's kind of I think what

00:11:29
happened to me from reading the script the first time.

00:11:31
I think it just got inside me. And it was my destiny to tell

00:11:35
this story because I never gave up on it like Ricky, Ricky never

00:11:39
gave up, you know, Ricky told Red Murph.

00:11:41
I'm the hardest hitter you're ever going to see.

00:11:43
I'm the best hitter you're ever going to see.

00:11:45
And when I met Ricky, I after he told me that I was trying to

00:11:48
figure out how to convince him I was the guy.

00:11:50
And I walked up to him. And when I met him again in

00:11:52
Texas and I shook his hand and I said, Ricky, I'm the best hitter

00:11:56
you're ever going to find for this movie.

00:12:00
That was it. Yeah.

00:12:01
And so. Yeah.

00:12:04
You mentioned a few movies there, So Field of Dreams, it

00:12:08
had an extra element besides a baseball movie of having the

00:12:11
father son element, which added a lot.

00:12:14
And then the natural didn't have that, but it had that naturally

00:12:19
born gift somebody has and there's an appeal to that.

00:12:24
The hill has the father Son, element.

00:12:28
The natural where somebody's gifted with something and then

00:12:31
it adds a spiritual element of faith to it, which it's like the

00:12:36
best of all of those worlds come together I think.

00:12:40
Yeah. And I was pleasantly surprised.

00:12:42
And I'm not trying to put down a lot of faith-based movies, but

00:12:44
sometimes they're at a lower quality or it's kind of

00:12:47
predictable and that somebody gets involved in something they

00:12:50
shouldn't, that you have family praying for them and they end up

00:12:54
at a church. Alter And then it's the end of

00:12:57
the movie and everyone's happy. This wasn't blatantly that.

00:13:01
You could go into it, not really realize it was a spiritual

00:13:04
movie, but you would feel spiritually moved.

00:13:08
To me it's a a movie about, well, I think your theme of it

00:13:13
is that never give up, right? Never give up.

00:13:17
And you know that is the theme and every boy is trying to find

00:13:21
the love of his father. Could, could.

00:13:24
See this movie and figure a way out, a way to come together.

00:13:29
To me, people say, what is this movie about Jeff?

00:13:32
Is it a baseball movie? Is a sports drama.

00:13:34
No, I didn't make a sports drama.

00:13:37
I made a film about a family coming together and a boy trying

00:13:40
to find the love of his father. And in the end he does through

00:13:43
his unbelievable gift and faith, you know, And that's that's what

00:13:47
I made. Or I set out to make anyway and

00:13:49
tried to make. Yeah, Ricky, in the portrayal of

00:13:52
your dad. It comes across as kind of the

00:14:01
old school, not just a Baptist minister with his principals, it

00:14:05
has that, but the old school disciplinarian that the father

00:14:09
you know is a disciplinarian. He provides and from a kids

00:14:14
perspective that sometimes is all you see until you're older

00:14:18
and you look back and then you see the love that was in the

00:14:20
discipline. So I'm curious to.

00:14:24
There was a Dennis Quaid plays, a very loving but stern father,

00:14:28
but the sternness comes from wanting the best for you.

00:14:33
Is that a perspective you found later in life, looking back at

00:14:36
your childhood? Or were you able to see that?

00:14:40
Was it more of a struggle with a dad that was kind of holding you

00:14:44
back from your dreams, even if he thought it was the best for

00:14:48
you? No, I was.

00:14:50
I was very disciplined by him. And what he said goes, it didn't

00:14:58
matter what it was whatever he said I would do.

00:15:02
And but however, when he realized that that, you know, he

00:15:09
saw me hitting rocks all the time and with a stick because we

00:15:14
couldn't afford a baseball or a glove or anything.

00:15:22
To have to do with the sport alone, but I I gained a lot of

00:15:28
talent through going through that.

00:15:31
Even being handicapped, I gained a lot of talent of hitting a

00:15:35
small rock with a small stick and.

00:15:40
He was very poor, so he hit 2000 rocks a day on a railroad track

00:15:43
with his. Brother, Yeah, I did.

00:15:44
I did. I hit a couple thousand, maybe

00:15:47
more all day long. And the movie Rocky.

00:15:51
Yeah, pretty much, Pretty much, yeah.

00:15:53
There was as far as stopping. There was no stopping but is.

00:15:58
But even with my father I had to let him know that that I wanted

00:16:04
to make a choice, my own choice of what I wanted to do with my

00:16:08
life, whether I wanted to be in the ministry or if I wanted to

00:16:11
play baseball. And he actually understood.

00:16:15
And we kind of came to terms terms that way and.

00:16:20
He supported me. Every night that I played

00:16:22
baseball, he would come into the room, check on me to make sure

00:16:25
I'm okay and make sure that how I did always checked on me,

00:16:31
which was really, really a great thing.

00:16:36
Even though I wasn't behind the pulpit, you know, I was behind

00:16:40
the OR, I was beside a plate, a baseball plate, you know, a

00:16:44
plate. And so, yeah, he it, it was in

00:16:48
the beginning. Yes, he was.

00:16:49
He was tough. But it got a lot easier when I

00:16:53
was able to do both. Right.

00:16:57
And growing up, you'd have been called, what's a PK, right?

00:17:01
A preacher's kid, right? But Even so, growing up in

00:17:05
church, even if your dad's not a master, it's easy to learn the

00:17:08
Christian faith what it is, but not necessarily have it.

00:17:14
When was the point in your life? Or do you have a moment or point

00:17:18
in your life where? Your Christian faith became your

00:17:22
own, and not just something you had been.

00:17:25
Taught I was born again at 7 years old.

00:17:34
I accepted Christ, and from that time on I thought that I was,

00:17:42
yeah, I was wanting to be in the ministry, but wanting in the

00:17:45
ministry does not mean you're called to be in the ministry.

00:17:50
A lot of people go into the ministry maybe even today's

00:17:56
times in in these world for a business.

00:17:59
I'm not. I wasn't in this for business

00:18:02
because I believe you have to be called by Christ in order to be

00:18:08
in the business of. I say business.

00:18:11
It's not a business if for a love, for the love, and I wasn't

00:18:17
called into the ministry. I was called to play baseball

00:18:22
and minister through baseball. Right.

00:18:28
And Jeff had mentioned that kind of a romantic moment in the

00:18:33
movie, but at that point in your life during this baseball game

00:18:39
where you had to brush yourself off and keep going without any

00:18:43
energy of your own. He turned it in.

00:18:47
Something to the effect of something came over you or in

00:18:51
you. I'm going to assume that was

00:18:52
more than adrenaline. No, it's called Holy Spirit.

00:19:00
Explain that the people who don't know what are those

00:19:03
moments like? They're incredible, you know,

00:19:09
Like just like this Friday night when we were at Joel Olsteen's.

00:19:14
The Holy Spirit was throughout that house, rocking, that whole,

00:19:18
rocking that whole church apart. And you don't find them very

00:19:23
often. But for the very first time, I

00:19:27
got to witness the Holy Spirit when I was actually 18 years old

00:19:33
and I didn't even know what really the Holy Spirit was.

00:19:37
I knew what salvation was, but not the Holy Spirit and.

00:19:44
The other night when we were at the at the church at Lakewood

00:19:51
Church. Yeah, at Lakewood Church.

00:19:54
I got to see the Holy Spirit I'm talking about on Turbo.

00:20:01
I mean, if people were in that room who were atheists, they

00:20:05
would have felt it. There's no doubt it wasn't

00:20:08
anything to do with anything other than it was real.

00:20:11
I I I can't. You can't even imagine.

00:20:14
I mean, I've been making movies for 40 years.

00:20:16
I've been in millions of screenings.

00:20:17
I've seen incredible movies that people loved and walked out of

00:20:22
elated. I've never seen anything do

00:20:26
something to an audience like this did.

00:20:27
And that's not because it's my movie.

00:20:29
I could care less. I'm telling you the truth.

00:20:32
It Ricky was gone emotionally. He couldn't even talk.

00:20:35
I couldn't get out of my seat because people were just the

00:20:39
energy in the room. I said to Jacqueline, who put

00:20:41
the whole thing on, which is Joel Steen's sisterinlaw.

00:20:44
I said holy smokes, like, what is going on in that room in

00:20:48
there? She said.

00:20:49
It's pretty intense, isn't it? I said I've never felt anything

00:20:52
like that in my life, you know? And that's what happened to

00:20:55
Ricky right before that last hit in the film.

00:20:58
Something got in him and he knows what it is.

00:21:01
But at the time, he didn't know he he felt it, but he didn't.

00:21:05
He was so beat up that he felt this whole different energy

00:21:11
coming to him, and he stood up and he did the impossible and

00:21:14
then later he knew what it was. You know, No question.

00:21:19
What's your thought on it seems like the industry is, I mean

00:21:22
with surprisingly hit shows like the Chosen or the movie The

00:21:30
Jesus Revolution now the sound of freedom that are rising up

00:21:35
and. Being competitive, if not out

00:21:40
selling at the box office, major blockbusters, that's there

00:21:44
something going on? Yeah, absolutely.

00:21:48
To me, this movie seems to not just go along with that, but

00:21:54
like go to the next level because it was a briar Cliff.

00:21:57
That's not that's not a small potatoes, there's.

00:22:01
Some underground, a little company we never heard of.

00:22:03
That's big time. Ricky is ours.

00:22:10
Oh, I'm sorry. Pop down a little bit.

00:22:13
Ricky with Dennis Quaid, did you have a part in vetting actors or

00:22:21
how involved were you in this? Did you when actors were picked,

00:22:25
did you choose them? Did Jeff choose them?

00:22:28
Yeah, Jeff, Jeff tells them. Not me.

00:22:32
You know, I was born to swing a bat.

00:22:34
I wasn't born to pick a. Crew to make my family.

00:22:39
But yeah, Jeff tells all them he did.

00:22:43
He did all that direction. I wouldn't.

00:22:46
I wouldn't have a clue who would.

00:22:50
Who would play My father, of course.

00:22:52
He did it all. Ken, you said.

00:22:55
You said a very interesting thing a minute ago about all

00:22:57
these movies that are winning at the box office.

00:23:00
I think one of the main reasons is because the the world is so

00:23:04
upside down and a mess that people are dying to get out of

00:23:08
their house and go see something that makes them feel good and

00:23:11
just makes them, makes them feel like they did, you know, when

00:23:14
they were kids. And I think that this movie does

00:23:17
that. I think that's why it's going to

00:23:18
win and I hope and pray it does because I know it is.

00:23:23
Actually. I don't have any doubts anymore

00:23:26
because I think people that I've talked to that leave their house

00:23:30
and see it, even if they're not having a struggle in life, they

00:23:32
get something out of this movie that they weren't expecting.

00:23:35
They come out feeling. I mean, you know, it's kind of a

00:23:37
weird thing to say, but I just want people to walk out of the

00:23:40
theater like I do, high, just high on the inspiration this

00:23:44
movie delivers to them. That's how I feel every time I

00:23:47
see it. It's so weird to be a director.

00:23:51
I tell people, look, you read the script 1000 times.

00:23:55
Then you go and you break it down and you try to get it made.

00:23:58
You have to pitch the story to investors until you find the

00:24:01
right one. You do it till you're purple,

00:24:03
Then you, then you make the movie and you have to shoot it.

00:24:06
Then you have to edit it. Then you have to do the sound.

00:24:09
And every time you do sound and effects and music you have to

00:24:13
watch it. I've seen the movie 1000 times

00:24:16
and every movie I have ever made-up until this day, I except

00:24:19
for the hill. I say at the end of the day,

00:24:23
when you get the film done, you screen it in the sound house to

00:24:27
do a quality control check. And that's usually the last time

00:24:32
I ever see it or want to see it until maybe I see it with my

00:24:35
cast and crew. That's the highlight because

00:24:38
you're seeing it with the beautiful people you made it

00:24:40
with. And then I might go to the

00:24:43
theater opening night just to see the action reaction in the

00:24:45
audience and see if I hit a home run or not.

00:24:48
But this movie, I can't stop watching it.

00:24:51
I've seen it. I'm going to.

00:24:52
I told Ricky I'm going to see this thing four more times in

00:24:55
the next two weeks at screenings and I will not walk out of the

00:24:59
theater because every one of them means something to me.

00:25:02
Like one of them is a little mini premiere for the investors.

00:25:05
I want to see how that audience likes it.

00:25:08
The other one is a critics one. I want to see how they feel in

00:25:13
the room and the temperature. Another one is our little mini

00:25:15
premiere in Augusta, you know? And then the other one is me

00:25:19
going to opening night with my friends in in Laguna Beach, CA

00:25:23
on the 25th of August. When it opens, I'm going to

00:25:26
watch all of those. I I I say to myself, well, I'll

00:25:28
go with my friends on the 25th and I'll walk outside and have a

00:25:31
drink and I'll have a Coke or something.

00:25:33
I'll go back in after it's over and and see my friends.

00:25:36
No, I will sit there and watch the reactions of the audience.

00:25:40
Yeah, because I just want to see what they feel throughout the

00:25:43
movie. When I played the trailer

00:25:45
earlier, I could see both of you in queue.

00:25:48
And you would think you'd be kind of tuned out as you see it.

00:25:51
Both of you were intently watching the trailer, the full 2

00:25:54
minutes, and Jeff, you were even smiling by the end, as if that

00:25:57
was the first time you watched it.

00:26:00
And you have any interviews like this?

00:26:01
I've done? Sure.

00:26:02
Like like a ton. And there's not one moment when

00:26:06
I talk to you about this movie. Do I feel like I did it 50 times

00:26:10
before? Yeah, I just feel like it's the

00:26:12
first time I've done it because there's some spirit guide in

00:26:16
this movie that we all know who that what that is.

00:26:18
It's it's a higher power that we can't describe.

00:26:22
There's no description needed. It's just in us.

00:26:25
Do you have any concern as a successful actor and Hollywood

00:26:29
director to be involved in? I call it faith-based movie, you

00:26:37
know, inspirational movie. Yeah, going in that genre as far

00:26:42
as. Subtle Hollywood blacklisting or

00:26:47
getting pushed to the corner by doing these kinds of Is that a

00:26:51
real thing or is that any concern of yours?

00:26:54
Not at all. Everybody in Hollywood that I

00:26:56
know that knows me you know on every every every single kind of

00:27:00
walk of life crew on up to executives.

00:27:04
They all I have a really good relationship with them.

00:27:06
They know that I I who I am and what I'm about and I've sent the

00:27:12
film to a lot of them that are non Christian people who are the

00:27:15
Hollywood people you're talking about and they all love the

00:27:18
movie because I did not make a faith movie.

00:27:21
I made a movie for the mainstream.

00:27:23
I mean as as Briarcliff said, Tom Ortenberg, you hit a movie

00:27:27
straight down Main Street. This is for every family all

00:27:30
over the world. If you're an atheist, you'll

00:27:32
love this movie. Like I said, if you're if you're

00:27:34
a Christian, you'll love this movie.

00:27:35
That's what I wanted to set out to make because I wanted the non

00:27:38
believers to get something out of it they weren't expecting

00:27:41
without hitting them over the head.

00:27:42
I mean I hate those kind of movies.

00:27:44
What I my favorite kind of movies like I said are Field of

00:27:46
Dreams that have the faith element in it.

00:27:48
Rudy had that in it. Hoosiers had that in it, but it

00:27:53
but it was a movie everybody could go see and that's the kind

00:27:57
of movies I make. I don't think I'd ever make a

00:27:58
faith movie per se like you described earlier.

00:28:02
The ones where everybody ends up at the in front of the the altar

00:28:06
at the end and it's just not my my kind of thing.

00:28:09
I like movies that are subtle in in their messages and things

00:28:12
like that. I'm not worried about it at all.

00:28:15
I think it's going to go the opposite.

00:28:17
I think everybody's going to love it.

00:28:18
Matter of fact, I just got worried the other day that the

00:28:21
Directors Guild is going to screen it for on this 23rd of

00:28:26
September. They're going to have a private

00:28:28
screening at for the Directors Guild in New York and LA at the

00:28:30
same time. So they like it.

00:28:34
Yeah, it it's. When you make the specifically

00:28:38
faith-based, it ends up being a faith-based audience.

00:28:40
Seems like it's a very narrow group of people.

00:28:43
You give them kind of what they want.

00:28:44
This one, it felt like to me, kind of like when I was younger,

00:28:48
what the Disney movies felt like.

00:28:51
They weren't well, they didn't have agendas.

00:28:54
They were just like whether they were based on true stories or

00:28:57
not inspiring. They uplift you, they're fun,

00:29:01
and it just seems like a, I mean, there's kind of the

00:29:04
spiritual movement I mentioned with.

00:29:06
The faith-based movies recently, but just being real, telling

00:29:10
real stories of inspiration and in this case someone with faith,

00:29:16
Ricky and and overcoming challenges in their life is what

00:29:20
people need. Well listen, like I love the

00:29:23
story, whether it was faith-based or not.

00:29:25
Bottom line, the problem that happened, not the problem, but I

00:29:27
mean the thing that is happening is that Ricky's father was a

00:29:31
pastor. Dennis plays his father, his

00:29:33
father and it's a backdrop. It's like the it's like the

00:29:37
fabric of the movie. He's a pastor and Ricky could

00:29:41
recite the Bible the age of eight and had a gift.

00:29:43
So ultimately he was going to be a pastor in his father's eyes.

00:29:47
But as he grew up, he he had this ability to put up a thing

00:29:52
with a stick and a ball together and and have hand eye

00:29:55
coordination that's like amazing.

00:29:58
And so that just transitioned him into baseball.

00:30:01
But what attracted me to the movie, number one, was the

00:30:04
family element, the fact that this family is struggling.

00:30:08
They're so poor fighting everything that every family

00:30:11
fights. It was a universal story to me.

00:30:13
That's what got me excited about it.

00:30:15
When you really said something, Ken, everything I try to do in

00:30:18
this movie, I feel like I achieved watching it with that

00:30:22
audience of the night because they reacted to every little

00:30:24
thing that I nurtured in it. But one thing I always kept

00:30:27
saying to my my director of photography and the crew, I said

00:30:30
the word for this movie is magic, magic, the Magic Kingdom.

00:30:33
Think the Magic Kingdom, Disney. I want to make a Disney film and

00:30:37
that is so not me, you guys. I'm, I've made action movies and

00:30:40
stuff. Like I want to make a Disney

00:30:42
film like the old ones, not the new ones.

00:30:44
I want to make a movie like Seabiscuit.

00:30:48
Seabiscuit is one of my favorite films because that horse went

00:30:51
through so much and wanted to win so badly and it never gave

00:30:55
up even with all the injuries. And in the end it won.

00:30:58
To me, Ricky was Seabiscuit. It was just revert.

00:31:02
It was just transferred into a man.

00:31:04
Ricky, before I let you guys go and this one is personal, it's

00:31:09
advice from you as a lifelong believer and someone who knows

00:31:14
scripture, faith and wisdom. And it has to go along with the

00:31:20
movie in that I feel like if you watch the movie and the point is

00:31:24
for inspiration, that if you personally, everyone personally

00:31:27
is going through something and you can watch a movie like that

00:31:31
and you can come out and go, well, it's just a movie.

00:31:33
But I feel a little better about my situation.

00:31:37
I feel like I have a little more hope in it than before I went

00:31:40
in, Even if I've had knowledge. God is good, everything works

00:31:45
out, you know, in the end. But that gave me a moment of

00:31:50
inspiration, so I'll give you a specific without naming names.

00:31:54
I have a friend I was just communicating with yesterday.

00:31:57
Older in life, not a child wearing braces.

00:32:02
What advice would you give somebody who's going through

00:32:07
life challenge at an older age, not old enough to be retiring,

00:32:12
but in a low physical health position that isn't looking

00:32:17
good? Not terminal, but like man, I

00:32:21
have 20 or 30 more years to live and as a believer knows all the

00:32:26
right things, the right verse. But having a hard time mentally

00:32:29
getting past life is just hard right now.

00:32:33
I don't feel like crying. I guess K what would I, what

00:32:43
would I say? Yeah.

00:32:45
I would, I would say, like I said this about two hours ago.

00:32:53
I walked into a room and there's a lot of people in there with

00:32:58
different injuries and there's always someone worse than you.

00:33:05
There's always someone out there that's involved in a headon

00:33:10
collision in life. There's always someone out there

00:33:14
that. Either falls off a building and

00:33:17
paralyzed for life. There's always someone that's

00:33:21
worse than you are. There was always someone out

00:33:24
there that was worse than me. And I took what I had and I

00:33:31
tried to take what was wrong and try to make it right.

00:33:35
And withstain all the because there's a lot more to this than

00:33:40
you than you would ever believe if I told you my whole story.

00:33:45
But I would say there's always someone out there that's worse

00:33:50
than you, I can promise you. And this person that's having

00:33:53
them having their problems, they have to overlook those, pray

00:33:58
their way through it and trust in God.

00:34:00
Either way, that and they have to really dig down deep in their

00:34:04
heart and believe it, that God can do it alone for them or he

00:34:12
won't. And so I will say this much,

00:34:16
like I said, you just look at you look to him and he'll answer

00:34:23
the prayer one way or the other. But like I said, there's always

00:34:28
someone that's got it tougher than you do.

00:34:34
Right. All right.

00:34:35
Thank you for that. And thank you, Rick, for all the

00:34:39
perseverance to get your story out there.

00:34:41
It's going to affect millions. And thanks, Jeff, for making the

00:34:44
film. Thank you, Ken.

00:34:46
I got to tell you, it's one of my favorite interviews ever.

00:34:49
Really. Yeah.

00:34:50
You just really got, you got a lot of the stuff, the movie you

00:34:54
said, things that other people have said, and they're all,

00:34:56
they've all been fantastic interviews and great people.

00:34:59
But you kind of summed it all up in a very, like, with a lot of

00:35:02
wisdom in a very concise way. I just loved it.

00:35:06
I appreciate that. Right.

00:35:08
That's great. I wish you good luck with your

00:35:10
film, but I don't think you need it.

00:35:12
Thank you, man. Thank you so much.

00:35:16
Gathered among the outlaws, he said.

00:35:18
Come follow me people from all walks, and I've since have been

00:35:23
becoming outlaws.