The First Civil War General to Defeat Grant | The Legend of Van Dorn movie interview!
Celebrate America's aviation heroes: 📖 Aeromasters 🇺🇸
This episode of Talk With History features an interview with screenwriter/lead actor Lee Wilson (as Confederate cavalry commander Earl Van Dorn) and actor David B. Meadows (as Nathan Bedford Forrest) about the feature film The Legend of Van Dorn, set in Middle Tennessee in spring 1863. They discuss how Wilson discovered Van Dorn through a Spring Hill play, Meadows’ initial reservations about portraying the polarizing Forrest, and the production’s emphasis on authenticity through filming at historic sites and battlefields.
For a reminder when the film releases, sign up here
00:00 205 The Legend of Van Dorn Interview
00:05 Van Dorn Murder Mystery
01:10 Meet the Film Cast
02:49 Discovering Van Dorn
05:49 David Takes on Nathan Bedford Forrest
08:25 Why These Generals Matter
10:05 Filming on Real Battlefields
13:30 Costumes and Authentic Detail
16:07 Cavalry Training and Horses
23:05 Staying in Character on Set
25:55 Playing Confederates Today
31:52 Why History Matters
32:35 Fearless Acting Choices
33:16 Motives Behind Villains
34:39 Pirates and the Moral Gray
36:42 Context Over Caricature
38:20 Real Civil War Artifacts
43:21 Graves and Childhood Sites
44:30 Forrest vs Van Dorn
47:08 Van Dorn Love Affair
50:03 If Battlefields Could Talk
51:55 Release Date and Premier
52:52 Wrap Party
🎥 Video version of this podcast
-------------------------------------------------------
⬇️ Help us keep the show going and explore history with us! ⬇️
🧳 Plus...get free travel resources in your inbox.
-------------------------------------------------------
📧 contact: talkwithhistory@gmail.com
Mentioned in this episode:
Areomasters
Celebrate America's aviation heroes and history: 📖 AEROMASTERS: Celebrating a Century of the American Fighter Pilot 🇺🇸
Transcript
in the spring of 1863, Middle Tennessee was a powder keg.
Speaker:Leading the Confederate cavalry defense was Major General Earl Van
Speaker:Dorn, a brilliant, aristocratic West Point graduate who, alongside Nathan
Speaker:Bedford Forrest, formed one of the most lethal military duos in the Civil War.
Speaker:But Van Dorn was a man chased by his own demons, and on May 7th of that year,
Speaker:his war didn't end on a battlefield, but at a writing desk in Spring Hill,
Speaker:Tennessee, shot through the back of the head by a vengeful local doctor.
Speaker:It's a story of ego, war, and a scandalous affair that shook the
Speaker:region, and it's finally being brought to the silver screen in the new
Speaker:feature film, The Legend of Van Dorn.
Speaker:What makes this movie production truly incredible is that it wasn't
Speaker:shot on a Hollywood backlot.
Speaker:The cast and crew embedded themselves in the actual history, filming at historic
Speaker:landmarks like Elma Springs, Rattle and Snap Plantation, and on the very
Speaker:battlefields where these men fought.
Speaker:Now today, we are sitting down with two of the phenomenal actors
Speaker:bringing these larger than life historical figures to life.
Speaker:Screenwriter and lead actor Lee Wilson, who steps into the boots
Speaker:of General Van Dorn, and David B. Meadows, who captures the fierce
Speaker:intensity of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a very famous name in history.
Speaker:diving into the weight of acting on sacred historic ground, the physical
Speaker:reality of cavalry training, and what it takes to look past the myths and
Speaker:find the humans behind the history.
Speaker:Lee, David, welcome to Talk With History.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:It is
Speaker:here
Speaker:wonderful to be here.
Speaker:Thank you for having us
Speaker:Guess again
Speaker:for our audience, this is a unique opportunity for us.
Speaker:So thank you so much, gentlemen, for, for talking with us today
Speaker:and, and talking to our audience.
Speaker:I think this is kind of a perfect opportunity.
Speaker:We actually spoke with, We were at the Gettysburg Film Festival not too long
Speaker:ago and spoke with a couple other folks making a Gettysburg, a kinda era movie.
Speaker:So this, this is perfect.
Speaker:And now when I had looked up who Van Dorn was, a lot of people know
Speaker:Nath- Nathan Bedford Forrest, right?
Speaker:For better or for worse, right?
Speaker:They, they kinda know some aspects of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Speaker:But General Van Dorn, didn't think was really as well known.
Speaker:So Lee, can you … Now you wrote this, I believe.
Speaker:Can you tell me a little bit about you discovered General Van Dorn and, and what
Speaker:led you to, to writing this about him?
Speaker:Well, how it happened was I lived in Spring Hill for more than 10 years,
Speaker:and someone actually reached out to me.
Speaker:Um, it was my my agent actually said, "Someone has asked if they can call you
Speaker:and talk to you about this play." And I hadn't done theater, you know, since
Speaker:high school or college, and I wasn't really that interested, but I took the
Speaker:call, and this person was calling on behalf of, of a director who had been
Speaker:directing this play in Spring Hill.
Speaker:And she said, "Would you just please meet with the director and
Speaker:just kinda see what she has to say?
Speaker:It is a paying job." And, and I said, "Why, why me exactly?" And she said,
Speaker:"Just wait until you talk to the director." So I, I go into this coffee
Speaker:shop to meet the director, and she is a woman looking to be in her 60s.
Speaker:And as, as I walk in the door, she does like this.
Speaker:And, um, what, what is… You know, what is going on here?
Speaker:And I, I just kinda sit down and, and she's… I notice she's got tears in
Speaker:her eyes, and it's hard for her to actually speak, and she says, "You
Speaker:look just like him." And I said, "I do, I do?" And she said, "Yeah."
Speaker:And she said, "Did you look him up?"
Speaker:I said, "Yeah, but he didn't have blonde hair." And she said, "That's because
Speaker:you're seeing the black and white." She said, "He had blonde hair and blue eyes."
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:And so we talked, and she s- she gave me all these books to read, and she actually
Speaker:grew up learning to fence, to sword fight.
Speaker:Her dad was a, a very sought-after teacher of sword fighting, and one of the people
Speaker:who he taught her to revere as a child learning to sword fight was General
Speaker:Earl Van Dorn, who was considered one of the best sword fighters in the world.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:so she wanted me to be in this play, and she said, "You will learn proper
Speaker:technique of sword fight." I mean, this, this woman she's a wonderful woman.
Speaker:Dr. Dionne Collins is her name, and she actually got a, a special thanks
Speaker:in the, uh, credits of our film.
Speaker:But she offered me the role to be that part, and that's when I started learning
Speaker:about Earl Van Dorn and her love and almost obsession for Earl Van Dorn.
Speaker:And so I learned the story through this play, and I started reading
Speaker:more about him, and so that's how I got introduced to him.
Speaker:. i'll go to David next.
Speaker:You know, David, you know we kinda know Lee came into the role
Speaker:of, of General Van Dorn, right?
Speaker:Doesn't, doesn't hurt that you look, you know, like, like you're, you're
Speaker:the spitting image of this historical, larger than life historical figure.
Speaker:But David, for someone like Nathan Bedford Forrest, when that was brought
Speaker:to you, I mean, there is a lot of, there's a lot of history- … behind
Speaker:that name of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Speaker:So, so talk us through that.
Speaker:Like, what was your- Yeah … first thought, and then as you kinda got into
Speaker:playing this role and started working with Lee, can you, can you kinda tell us
Speaker:a little bit about, about that transition of when someone said, "Hey, I want you to
Speaker:play Nathan Bedford Fo- Forrest," which again, there's, there's a lot behind that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, it's, it's very interesting because Lee and I have been friends
Speaker:for several years now, but we met under completely different circumstances
Speaker:with, you know, with his other business and everything like that.
Speaker:And so when he came to me with this movie idea, I was, I was really
Speaker:kind of like taken from the side.
Speaker:I was like, "Wait, what?" Y- you know, it was… I had no idea that he was
Speaker:interested in acting or producing or, you know, much less that he
Speaker:had written this movie or was such a historian or anything like that.
Speaker:then when he sent it out, I, I'll admit, I actually didn't know that
Speaker:much about Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Speaker:I recognize the name, of course, but I, I don't consider myself a, a history buff,
Speaker:and especially of the Civil War era.
Speaker:so when he first came to me about it, it was one of the things where I
Speaker:was kind of like, "Ah, you know, I'm not sure." It's, you know, it wasn't
Speaker:overarching passion or anything like that that I'd always wanted to do.
Speaker:So then, of course, I, I delve into it, I read the script, and I
Speaker:look into it, immediately General, General Forrest is just completely
Speaker:ripped all the way through history.
Speaker:A very, very, very polarizing figure.
Speaker:so at first, I had a lot of reservations about it.
Speaker:It was one of the things I try to keep my work in particular as an actor, you
Speaker:know, separate from i-i-- sometimes from political or religious things or whatever.
Speaker:I, I try to keep it i-i-in, in, in different verticals.
Speaker:then the more that I read about it and the more that Lee talked to me about it,
Speaker:I really started getting excited about it.
Speaker:And then the more people started reaching out to me about the prospect
Speaker:of it, because there's such a massive reenactment community of
Speaker:people that are just passionate and knowledgeable about this entire source.
Speaker:And when Lee started introducing me to a lot of the guys there, and I started
Speaker:hearing their stories and their sides and their takes on this, and the more
Speaker:I started reading General Forrest's biography and all of his true history, and
Speaker:a lot of the things that the man said and did and all these sorts of things, I was
Speaker:like, "Dude, this, th-this dude badass."
Speaker:yeah
Speaker:amazing.
Speaker:I mean, some of the real-life stories that would rival anything that happened in
Speaker:a, i-in some Hollywood action movie, you know, that were going on through there.
Speaker:so then I really started getting compelled, not to get too far into
Speaker:the acting on it, about figuring out the man underneath the legends, right?
Speaker:And really trying to delve into that sort of a thing because… A-and, and
Speaker:challenging it away from the archetype or the stereotype of what we may
Speaker:think and do, but really getting to what sort of a man does things like
Speaker:this and believes things like this.
Speaker:And so at that point in time, I was hooked
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Very cool.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's, that's awesome.
Speaker:So I, you know, gentlemen, I, I agree with you both.
Speaker:We moved here to Memphis from California, and the, the, the statue here was
Speaker:of Nathan Bedford Forrest, right?
Speaker:The statue in Memphis.
Speaker:And I was like, "Who?" And I g- I, I grew up in Pennsylvania.
Speaker:I got my education there.
Speaker:When we learned Civil War, it's a little Grant, it's a little Lee.
Speaker:You may learn Gettysburg.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:And so when I got here and everyone's talking about this statue, and I'm like,
Speaker:"Wh- who is it?" That, that's our very first video we make for Walk with History.
Speaker:Who is Nathan Bedford Forrest?
Speaker:Why is his statue here?
Speaker:Why is it controversial?
Speaker:But if you saw Forrest Gump, they kinda touch on him real fast.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that's where I think most people's recollection of the name would be,
Speaker:unless you grew up in this area.
Speaker:And like you said, David, he's very… You have to really study him to know
Speaker:the truth about everything, because he can be very pushed into these
Speaker:stereotypes, and people can just believe that is his whole story, unless you
Speaker:really read everything about him.
Speaker:And a- again, as historians, that's what we, we do.
Speaker:We make sure all the sources are out there.
Speaker:But Van Doren is even more obscure.
Speaker:Like, I would say, would… I didn't even know him until I
Speaker:had to study about this movie.
Speaker:So people who know Van Doren, which, awesome name, by the way.
Speaker:It's… You know, I love the name.
Speaker:But, but it was like I had to kinda look more into him.
Speaker:He's one of those people, again, unless you are this area, it's
Speaker:not a name you would recognize.
Speaker:So I like that you're bringing these stories to life that are here and are
Speaker:real and for people to learn more about.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:N- now, Lee, one of the, one of the things- Okay
Speaker:That, that I, I read up on was that you did a lot of the filming in that,
Speaker:the, like some of the actual area.
Speaker:Can you, can you talk about some of the locations that you filmed at?
Speaker:'Cause I know, you know, we had talked, like I mentioned earlier when we were
Speaker:at, up at, in Gettysburg, you know, some of the actors that film up there
Speaker:love being on the actual battlefield.
Speaker:Can you talk about that?
Speaker:Yeah, the producer I mean, there were eight producers.
Speaker:As you know, you know, with, um, big films there, there are lots of producers.
Speaker:But the first producer, the main producer, Brad Wilson, he, um, was
Speaker:pretty passionate about filming on and near where it happened because even now
Speaker:I live fairly close to Spring Hill, and in Columbia and some of the area where
Speaker:we filmed, there were actual fields that have been left untouched other than, you
Speaker:know, k- pasture fencing that were…
Speaker:There were skirmishes, there were parts of battles there.
Speaker:And so a couple of the battles, that we filmed, we were actually on battlefield.
Speaker:This happened, which was quite a spooky thing, especially when I
Speaker:learned something about reenactors, and that is that there are three types,
Speaker:and I'm, I hope I get this right.
Speaker:There are
Speaker:Contemporary, I think is what they're called.
Speaker:Th- then there are I may get the names wrong.
Speaker:There are contemporary, I think there are realistic, and then there are purist.
Speaker:Ah.
Speaker:Okay
Speaker:And when we were working with, uh, a gentleman, um, Dr. Kevin Gray, who's
Speaker:connected to thousands of reenactors, we didn't realize it at the time,
Speaker:but we had history consultants who were terrific, and I know we'll,
Speaker:we'll be talking about them some.
Speaker:But the reenactors that we ended up having the vast majority of were purist.
Speaker:And they're on this battlefield, they are in exact attire
Speaker:down to even their underwear.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:in, in tents with, that were made of the exact same material.
Speaker:And so one of the funniest things was that during filming, the director,
Speaker:Shane Stanley, I mean a famous director, he's had two world number
Speaker:ones, he holds the record for the longest number one in history in film.
Speaker:He's, uh, royalty.
Speaker:He's on set and he's telling these reenactors, "I need everyone to move about
Speaker:five steps to the right." They do nothing.
Speaker:He says it again.
Speaker:They do nothing.
Speaker:He looks at, uh, Joel, who is, um, director of cinematography.
Speaker:He says, "What's going on here?
Speaker:Are they deaf?" And so finally, one of the historians says, "Oh, they won't
Speaker:listen to you because you don't exist.
Speaker:Look at how you're dressed." And he said, "Well, who will they listen to?"
Speaker:And all three looked at me, 'cause I'm in this full general's uniform.
Speaker:sure.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so Sha- so Shane said, "Okay, I want you to try something." He said, "Tell
Speaker:these guys to move five steps left or five steps right," whatever it was, and I, I
Speaker:pointed and I said, "Five steps this way."
Speaker:They all did it.
Speaker:And so it was pretty addictive because I'd come onto set and there would be 100 guys
Speaker:at s- full salute, you know, jumping to their feet 'cause here's General Van Dorn.
Speaker:And, and they, uh… it was a fun experience for that reason, but we were
Speaker:able to use people who were dressed exactly as they would've been dressed on
Speaker:the fields where it actually happened.
Speaker:And I was dressed, and so was David.
Speaker:We… everything was authentic.
Speaker:It was an experience
Speaker:Uh, that's super cool.
Speaker:So let me ask you when it came to then recreating your look,
Speaker:like you said, do you have real source material to pull from?
Speaker:Like, is there Van Dorn garments that are still in a museum somewhere that
Speaker:you could look at and, like, make sure you were matching up, like, his… what
Speaker:he looked like and what he was wearing?
Speaker:Well, we had lots of pictures,
Speaker:Okay
Speaker:those were very helpful.
Speaker:And that's pretty much w- uh, our… We were actually incredibly fortunate to have
Speaker:as, um, our, our costume supervisor and his staff, he was a Civil War enthusiast,
Speaker:and he was also a re-enactor, and he was a professional costumer wardrobe guy.
Speaker:So he, I mean, we had incredible expertise.
Speaker:And so he actually, the outfits he picked out for me were, he said, "I've got
Speaker:General Van Dorn right here in Mississippi when they gave him his award sword after
Speaker:he had defeated the Comanche twice.
Speaker:He was considered the greatest military mind in the country.
Speaker:Here he is in this uniform.
Speaker:You have it on right now."
Speaker:I mean, he was down to incredible detail.
Speaker:And we even, there were several times, and I'm sure David remembers this,
Speaker:they would stop filming because one of the historians said, "That's not
Speaker:right." And they'd come over, and they'd bring their n- their, their needle
Speaker:and thread, and they'd get it right.
Speaker:We were, we were very much in good hands with that, and they were
Speaker:committed to, to authenticity.
Speaker:It was, uh, terrific
Speaker:It w- it, it's, it's not like the, the John Wayne days where- Yeah … where
Speaker:they're just like, "Ah, we'll put something on that looks good on John
Speaker:Wayne, and we'll just worry about it afterwards." And he's cavalry for
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:it, it's…
Speaker:Civil War.
Speaker:know, who, who Lee's talking about is, you know, our costume designer,
Speaker:Christian Michael, there was legitimately a single time where I remember
Speaker:where he was developing one of my one of my vests that I was wearing.
Speaker:He was going nuts trying to find a- a- and basically comparing and
Speaker:contrasting different pictures and perusing every forum, every article
Speaker:that he could find about a button.
Speaker:Wow
Speaker:What was the button made out of?
Speaker:What was the actual logo?
Speaker:Because there were
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:he would even go, he's like, "Well, you know, there's a misaccount that this was
Speaker:on the button, but in fact, they stopped using that in this year, and our war's
Speaker:taking place two years later." I mean, he got to that level of detail, you know,
Speaker:on making sure that not only was it used, but it was used in the exact timeframe
Speaker:that we were actually there, you know?
Speaker:And, oh, they could no longer… You know what?
Speaker:They would have to replace buttons and, you know, when they would replace them
Speaker:because there was a shortage of materials, they couldn't use the original materials
Speaker:and, and the forge was broken, you know, that the original button, so they had
Speaker:to go to this model and everything.
Speaker:Dude
Speaker:That's awesome That, that, that's absolutely amazing.
Speaker:Now, David, as, you know, someone who's playing f- you know, Nathan Bedford
Speaker:Forrest, he, kind of one of the things in, in, we joke here all, all the
Speaker:time, so my wife is the historian.
Speaker:She's the smart one.
Speaker:I, I'm, I'm the guy behind the scenes typically.
Speaker:I…
Speaker:Thank you guys for your service,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh, thank you.
Speaker:Oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker:Absolutely
Speaker:Our honor to serve our country.
Speaker:Yeah, but so, so I'm, I'm the guy who, who kinda likes to do
Speaker:the, do the production side.
Speaker:But one of the things that I have learned as I've done kinda all this history stuff
Speaker:with, with Jenn, is that, you know, when you go to Civil War battlefields and you
Speaker:read any account about Nathan Bedford Forrest, is like that guy was a rider.
Speaker:Like, he, he was a cavalry, cavalryman through and through, and I, from
Speaker:what I read, Van Dorn was as well.
Speaker:So David, did you have to, you have to learn how to ride?
Speaker:Like, was, was there a lot of- … a lot of training that went into that?
Speaker:Because some of the stories I read about Nathan Bedford Forrest that I
Speaker:remember is, like, him just, like, tearing through battlefields and
Speaker:picking guys up and all, on a horse
Speaker:So, you know, really funny story about that, Scott.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So I grew up in West Virginia, and I did a little bit of riding and things like that.
Speaker:And then, you know, back in a previous career and all that, I, I did riding
Speaker:and stuff like that, but not to this
Speaker:Right
Speaker:definitely not a stunt rider, right?
Speaker:we had these incredible Ron and Jason, who were…
Speaker:not only are they fantastic cowboys themselves, but they have a tremendous
Speaker:gift for teaching other people to ride.
Speaker:But then, of course, I show up, and Ron, the the head wrangler, you know,
Speaker:is just going, "Yeah, dude. Well, Dave, you know, I'm gonna give you the meanest
Speaker:horse that we have." I'm not kidding.
Speaker:Named Blue.
Speaker:He's like, "And she's just, she's just mean," right?
Speaker:The whole time, because that would be General Forrest's
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:you just, you're not gonna have a benign
Speaker:Yep
Speaker:the meanest one that's running around there, and you're going to h-
Speaker:And, and it was actually brilliant
Speaker:you know, I did a lot of riding on Blue, and she's biting me and, you
Speaker:know, all this other sort of stuff.
Speaker:And so we had this long period, several weeks before we actually
Speaker:commenced filming, where I would just be riding every day or every other
Speaker:day, and we're just going on, you know, continuous levels of complexity.
Speaker:And the crazy thing was I developed this relationship and this push-pull love-hate
Speaker:with Blue, and you can see it on camera
Speaker:Have fun
Speaker:because she doesn't take my shit at all.
Speaker:Like, she's just sitting there just constantly doing this thing.
Speaker:So what it made me do is actually have an energy and a control and
Speaker:an aggression even to the horse, and you can see it in the scenes.
Speaker:I'm sitting there, it's not just on some benign horse and
Speaker:doing the scene or whatever.
Speaker:There's an aggression that… So it made it very e-easy to, for me to capture
Speaker:an energy for General Forrest of always being the aggressor in everything I did.
Speaker:No matter whether I was talking to somebody, I'm fighting, I'm riding my
Speaker:horse, I'm just walking in the room.
Speaker:Like I just, bah!
Speaker:You know, it's
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:that I always would come in with.
Speaker:And so having Blue in that thing was just another… There was nothing passive
Speaker:ever about playing Nathan Bedford Forrest
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Now, now Lee, how about you?
Speaker:How, how was the… 'Cause again, another thing that I'm learning about Van Doren
Speaker:as I'm reading about this was him and Forrest, that's kind of where they, they,
Speaker:they kind of met on this, on the s- on the same, the same f- same plane, right?
Speaker:Now they, they had some
Speaker:All right
Speaker:the two of them, but, you know, Van Doren was a writer as well, and a very good one
Speaker:Yes, and a, an incredible horse trainer as well.
Speaker:And, you know, right before he beat Ulysses S. Grant, you know, the
Speaker:only… He was the only one that did.
Speaker:Mm-hmm
Speaker:he had lost two battles as, uh, an infantry general.
Speaker:Now, one of them, General Bragg took half their guys because he thought it was over,
Speaker:and left Van Dorn with half their force.
Speaker:And at that point, Van Dorn realized, "I've just gotta try to save our guys',
Speaker:you know, our lives right now." And so that was considered a loss, but most
Speaker:people don't blame Van Dorn for that.
Speaker:But he was an incredible horseman, and when he got… When they basically said,
Speaker:"Look, you're undefeated as a cavalry officer, so we have something we want
Speaker:you to do," and Van Dorn w- wanted to do it, and it was take on Ulysses.
Speaker:was one man he, he wanted to help him, and it was Bedford, because he considered
Speaker:him his e- equal in terms of cavalry.
Speaker:And so that comes out in, in, in the movie.
Speaker:But I had to go through almost two months of horse training
Speaker:because, you know, you have to look like you know what you're doing.
Speaker:And I had a, a horse that was identical to the one that the people of San Antonio
Speaker:gave General Van Dorn after he defeated the Comanche twice and saved the Cherokee
Speaker:from basically from annihilation.
Speaker:The people of San Antonio gave him this horse, and he named
Speaker:it San Antonio, coincidentally.
Speaker:Sure
Speaker:so they ha- they had matched that.
Speaker:And- That horse, number one, it was huge.
Speaker:It bucked me off.
Speaker:The first time in my life I've been bucked off a horse.
Speaker:oh
Speaker:I went up in the air, landed on my back, and Ron Ron came over and got
Speaker:control of the horse and, and he handed it to Dayson and he, they, you know,
Speaker:they're checking on me like, "Oh, no."
Speaker:And he's like, "You, um, you just wanna go back to the hotel?" And I remember
Speaker:thinking, "If I do that, I'm gonna think about this all night, and I'm not gonna
Speaker:wanna get back on this horse." Plus, I thought the horse is gonna know he can
Speaker:buck me off and he's done for the day.
Speaker:So it was one of the bravest moments of my life when I put my foot back in that
Speaker:stirrup and got up on that horse again.
Speaker:And I think, uh, I don't think Ron or Dayson thought I would do it, but I did.
Speaker:I got back on that horse, and it was a terrific experience.
Speaker:But one of the scenes, our horses have been in cannon fire and gunshots,
Speaker:and they're just freaking out.
Speaker:And then we have this scene right after, and so we think maybe
Speaker:they'll be calmed down because switching scenes is a big ordeal.
Speaker:I mean, you're talking at least minimum an hour even with a good crew.
Speaker:But the horses are still really jumpy, and this is where, just like David
Speaker:was talking about, we're trying to have this conversation on horseback,
Speaker:and our horses are going crazy.
Speaker:They're bouncing their heads up and down, they're jerking this way and
Speaker:that, and they'll just start running.
Speaker:And, and so Shane, the director, he's just getting ticked 'cause
Speaker:these horses won't stay still.
Speaker:And finally he said, "You know what?" And he had the ca- He said, "Back up,
Speaker:back up." He said, "Go with it." So our horses will just randomly take
Speaker:off while we're trying to talk, and he said it actually looks more realistic.
Speaker:And in one of them, David actually grabs the horse and just goes, "Ho," and
Speaker:then he turns to me and keeps talking.
Speaker:And, and afterwards, David even said to me, "That was a train
Speaker:wreck." Then we saw it on, on, we got to see it a little bit later.
Speaker:They showed us some of the clips.
Speaker:It looked so realistic, as horses would if they had just been
Speaker:through, you know, a, a war.
Speaker:Uh, it was, it turned out to be a really good scene.
Speaker:But I just remember David y- gra- you know, "Ho," yelling at his
Speaker:horse while we're in the middle of dialogue 'cause that thing, j- Blue
Speaker:is just, was a nut, and so was mine.
Speaker:His name was Jasper, and he was in a commercial recently with Post Malone.
Speaker:Oh, no
Speaker:I like, " There's my horse."
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:a, there's another great thing…
Speaker:so I would say it sounds very method.
Speaker:Like, you guys are almost, like, method acting here, right?
Speaker:Like, people are in character.
Speaker:You have to be in character to order the men to do something
Speaker:even if it's not during a scene.
Speaker:Yeah, on location too.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:You're with the horses.
Speaker:The horses are act- and you have to kinda go with the flow and just, you know, reign
Speaker:'em in as you're trying to do your scene.
Speaker:It sounds like it really helped you maintain your character and, like,
Speaker:stay in that spatial awareness of what you were trying to reenact.
Speaker:It was, you know, there was, So first of all, there was one other
Speaker:thing I was gonna throw in about
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:horse.
Speaker:very early in my research about General Forrest, I found out that he was renowned
Speaker:for standing up and riding into battle
Speaker:Oh, wow.
Speaker:at full
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I didn't know that
Speaker:and would oftentimes shoot men from horseback standing.
Speaker:And his whole thing about literally was, again, part of his larger than
Speaker:life persona, but he legitimately did it where he was just like, "Come get
Speaker:me. Come get it. What do you want?" And he would routinely stand up in the
Speaker:middle of the battlefield and be able to, you know, see where his men were and
Speaker:things like that, and would sometimes ride across the battlefield standing.
Speaker:So I insisted that Ron and Dason teach me how to do that so that we… And there's
Speaker:several scenes where I do it actually in the movie, and, and it looks so
Speaker:That's awesome
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:It's just, and it's so iconic and just so indicative of Nathan Bedford
Speaker:Forrest and, and all of that.
Speaker:But, you know, back to you guys' point, I was having the exact same thing with
Speaker:Lee and anyone who actually knows me, I- I'm like the most casual, non-formal
Speaker:dude that there, that there possibly is.
Speaker:And so going in there and, but then you step into this larger than life,
Speaker:not just a general in the Civil War, not just, but Nathan Bedford
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:you know, in there, who these men just idolized.
Speaker:You know, his men loved
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:so to walk in there and then to go onto the, you know, onto the sets and
Speaker:things like that, and then just be kind of lavished with that much respect
Speaker:and renown at the same time, you know, there's, there's obviously the great
Speaker:deal of imposter syndrome for me at first where I'm like, "Gosh, you can relax."
Speaker:Like, I'm just, you know, it's like, it's cool, but they're
Speaker:just, that's just not the world.
Speaker:But so, like, once I eventually leaned into that and said, "Okay, this is what
Speaker:we're gonna do, this is what we're gonna do, this is gonna be the way," it became
Speaker:so easy just stay in character the whole
Speaker:Absolutely
Speaker:and just live in it because everybody was just kind of,
Speaker:that's what everybody was doing.
Speaker:And after several weeks, even the, the rest of the people on set, you know,
Speaker:the, the camera guys, the, the, you know, the supporting, all the, all
Speaker:the… Everyone just kind of went with it, and they just did their whole thing.
Speaker:So it's like you show up on set, get into costume, and that was
Speaker:it, you know, until, until we were wrapped for the day, and it was, it
Speaker:wa- it was a pretty fun experience.
Speaker:because we were with all the, the purists.
Speaker:Wherever we would go, we were saluted.
Speaker:It was awesome.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh
Speaker:It was constant
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Um, so let's talk about the elephant in the room then.
Speaker:What does it feel like playing Confederates?
Speaker:Like, so when we did that interview in Gettysburg the director and the writer
Speaker:of the movie was in the movie Gettysburg, and he talked about how has seen a shift
Speaker:now when people play General Lee, I think it was Martin Sheen who plays Lee in it.
Speaker:Like, he was very renowned for his portrayal, and people… and but he
Speaker:said now it was hard for him to get people to want to play Confederates.
Speaker:People don't want to even step into that space, and said it's killing
Speaker:acting for that, and I wanna know how you guys feel about that.
Speaker:Well, I'm happy to go first
Speaker:one of the things that I learned in studying the Civil War a tremendous
Speaker:amount was that there are stereotypes that exist today that are not real, and
Speaker:one of them is the idea that there was all these Southerners owning slaves.
Speaker:Did you know, and, and feel free to look this up, the, the
Speaker:estimates are between one and 3% of Southerners actually owned slaves.
Speaker:I don't think I knew that Oh, yeah.
Speaker:it was, it was incredibly expensive to do,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:there were people who, uh, were opposed to it in the South.
Speaker:And what, what was going on was, and you can read accounts of this, where
Speaker:there were people who did not own slaves, didn't even know there was
Speaker:a war going on, working their crops with their families, and this cavalry
Speaker:unit comes over the hill and executes their sons and burns their home down
Speaker:and takes the woman as a prisoner.
Speaker:And so a lot of Southerners were simply defending their homes.
Speaker:They didn't even know what the issue was.
Speaker:They, I mean, we didn't have the internet.
Speaker:They barely had
Speaker:They
Speaker:And so, yeah.
Speaker:And you know what's interesting is General Van Dorn, most people don't
Speaker:know this, but he was extremely opposed to the United States fighting itself.
Speaker:And so the first surrender of the war was where Van Dorn in near Galveston,
Speaker:Texas, took, uh, command of a Northern ship that was bringing in soldiers,
Speaker:and he said, he said, "Keep your guns. We're all Americans." He said, "The,
Speaker:you're not my prisoners. The only thing I ask of you, if you sign this
Speaker:document pledging you will not take up arms against your fellow Americans."
Speaker:And all but five of them signed it, and those five threw
Speaker:their guns into the ocean.
Speaker:The others, he let them keep their guns.
Speaker:He said, "You're not my prisoners. You're Americans." For that, where he
Speaker:prevented bloodshed, it was the first surrender of the Civil War, but he also
Speaker:prevented them from starting the war.
Speaker:It hadn't started yet.
Speaker:Lincoln proclaimed Van Dorn a pirate, wanted dead or alive.
Speaker:He put the highest bounty in the world on his head, $5,000, which doesn't
Speaker:sound like much today, but then it was you never have to work again money.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:And so Van Dorn, what choice did he have?
Speaker:Because he was wanted dead or alive by those guys, so who's he gonna fight with?
Speaker:Sure
Speaker:So th- there are some thoughts there that most Southerners were defending
Speaker:their, their lands, didn't know why these people were coming and killing, you
Speaker:know, them, and they didn't own slaves.
Speaker:And they s- the people who were fighting, they certainly weren't fighting for
Speaker:1% of somebody else to own slaves.
Speaker:You know, most of it was, most of them would've said it was self-defense
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:D- David, how about you?
Speaker:Yeah he already covered Lee already covered all of that.
Speaker:So I, I think, you know, one of my interesting things about I very
Speaker:much resonate what, what you guys were just saying about Gettysburg
Speaker:I agree with that, and I think it's an absolute travesty, and here's why.
Speaker:So I, I went to classical theater school, and one of the great things, and one of
Speaker:the reasons I fell in love with acting, and I've just become so passionate about
Speaker:it, is acting is not about performing.
Speaker:It's about exploration of the human spirit and the human nature
Speaker:and the understanding that inside, largely, we all want the same things.
Speaker:We wanna be loved, we wanna be understood, we wanna be safe,
Speaker:accept-- so on and so forth, right?
Speaker:It's just the exterior or the methodology to get those things that's
Speaker:different for people, but at the end of the day, child would want the same
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:what, what, what maybe what you guys think of what it means to be loved to
Speaker:you may be a little bit different from me, and that's what people see, right?
Speaker:That's the exterior.
Speaker:But it's still wanting to be loved.
Speaker:And so I think that this whole thing nowadays… A-and that's what the theater
Speaker:has always been about, acting is a safe place to explore the truth in the
Speaker:uncomfortable sides of human nature.
Speaker:They're all the way back even in the Greeks and, you know, classical theater.
Speaker:The theater was the one place that was safe to say what everyone was
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:that, even the kings and people would let it
Speaker:Yep
Speaker:as long as it was in the theater, even though the theater was just saying
Speaker:what the populace was too scared to
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:But that was the privilege and the beautiful thing about that exploration.
Speaker:I think that nowadays, I totally agree with you.
Speaker:There's so much thing-- People ca-- are, are losing this ability separate
Speaker:society and modern ideologies from the
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I think that that's incredibly tragic for two reasons.
Speaker:One, think it shows an erosion of maturity and of emotional intelligence and all
Speaker:that for people to go, "Oh, I can't… I you know, I-- Oh, well, you know, I can't
Speaker:think American History X is a good movie.
Speaker:What will people think about me?" It's like it's a good movie, and it's…
Speaker:You know, they're like, "Oh." You know, you see, you know, the cancellation of
Speaker:books now, you know, where people are like, "Oh, we can't watch To Kill--
Speaker:We can't read To Kill a Mockingbird.
Speaker:It makes people offended." It's like, "It
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:the
Speaker:That's the point Mm-hmm
Speaker:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker:And anybody who knows, who studies philosophy or history or human
Speaker:psychology knows that the fastest way to create travesties is to forget
Speaker:the ones that already happened, shut yourself off from that sort of thing
Speaker:and to, and to kind of deny this whole section of, of the human condition.
Speaker:And, and I think that that's where we're going
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:right now.
Speaker:You know, as a society, there's a lot of that.
Speaker:And I think that… And then when you get into an acting world about it, I've
Speaker:seen it even, you know, once I got out of theater school and so on and so forth,
Speaker:and then I would go to do continued training at certain times, and I've
Speaker:watched a little bit of that ideology go into some of the modern work that
Speaker:people were doing, and it makes them
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Like they'll literally all of a sudden people won't make the choice.
Speaker:And I'm like, could you imagine, to go back to, could you imagine
Speaker:if Edward Norton was scared be as racist as he possibly could when
Speaker:he was first playing that chara- he's not playing the character.
Speaker:He's tell- he's not telling the story.
Speaker:The story loses its
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:its function, it loses all of everything that made it powerful if he didn't
Speaker:have the balls to just do it, right?
Speaker:You know, but we don't walk around saying Hannibal, you know, Anthony
Speaker:Hopkins actually is a cannibal
Speaker:Right
Speaker:Hannibal Lecter so brilliantly, right?
Speaker:And, and people have just lost this whole thing.
Speaker:And so I think that all of that is there.
Speaker:And then the other thing that I remember is that, and I think that this is a great
Speaker:thing, again, getting back into Nathan Bedford Forrest of Mandy was Lord of Life.
Speaker:Everybody does whatever they do because they think it's the best option
Speaker:they have in their circumstances.
Speaker:That's basically the motivation for every human
Speaker:That's a great point
Speaker:always trying to do the thing that we think is the best for
Speaker:us at that particular time, given our experience, given our
Speaker:possibility, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:And, and it's not that people go out there thinking they're a bad person
Speaker:or thinking this, and there's, there's this huge danger of pushing modern
Speaker:ideologies and modern thought processes onto past because at the same time
Speaker:you're like, "Dude, at the time they were doing exactly what they thought
Speaker:was totally normal and totally correct."
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So to try to play that, that was what I tried to remember the
Speaker:whole time when dissecting Nathan Bedford Forrest's motivation.
Speaker:It's like, what does the child want?
Speaker:He wants to be safe, he wants to be loved, he wants to be respected.
Speaker:You know,
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:normal things that we want nowadays, and he's doing what he thinks is right,
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:A-a-and so I tried to just find that and embody that and live from
Speaker:that place rather than a place of
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:a place of… or something else.
Speaker:You know what's interesting is Pirates of the Caribbean is
Speaker:a, a franchise I, I just love.
Speaker:I, I, I enjoy it.
Speaker:My sons love it.
Speaker:It was… It's obviously been extremely successful.
Speaker:Do you know what Pirates did to people?
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:w- you wanna talk about the monsters and the killers and the villains, and
Speaker:we've turned them into the heroes.
Speaker:I mean, they were celebrated.
Speaker:And Jack Sparrow, a lot of people don't know this, it's in the
Speaker:deleted scenes of, on the first DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaker:Do you know that the Black Pearl was a sh- a slave transport ship?
Speaker:I believe it Oh, I didn't know that 'Cause that was, that was Blackbeard's
Speaker:The, the East,
Speaker:was a slave ship.
Speaker:So if it m- if
Speaker:the
Speaker:after Blackbeard, it's the same kind of
Speaker:Yeah, the East India Trading Company.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:so, you know, we, we have this franchise that we celebrate, and these people were
Speaker:bloodthirsty se- killers who would go into town when they arrived and kill
Speaker:everybody and steal from them, and we made them into Disney characters.
Speaker:No,
Speaker:so we're j-
Speaker:you.
Speaker:yeah, so
Speaker:I
Speaker:we see it, we're, we're, we're telling this is what happened.
Speaker:We're not telling people how to think about it.
Speaker:We're just saying, "Hey, this happened."
Speaker:That's what historians do So she says it all, she says it all the time We tell
Speaker:you how to think, not what to think.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Truth matters, and I commend you guys for telling the truth
Speaker:because the problem is it's not black and white, it's gray, right?
Speaker:And people need to empathize with the truth.
Speaker:If you wanna really understand it with humanity, you need to empathize with it to
Speaker:understand where these people are coming from and the choices that they're making.
Speaker:I commend you guys for telling the truth about… 'Cause these
Speaker:were amazing characters to play.
Speaker:They have amazing stories to tell.
Speaker:And who wants to tell the boring story of the person who didn't do
Speaker:anything, who didn't take a chance and test their mettle, right?
Speaker:Like, you guys are really doing it, so I commend you for telling their stories.
Speaker:And and I'm, I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It, it's, it's one of those things that we're constantly talking about,
Speaker:both on, on the podcast and on, on the YouTube channel, context matters, right?
Speaker:Context is everything, and both of you guys said, said that
Speaker:just in, in your own way, right?
Speaker:From a historical perspective and from an actor's perspective of what
Speaker:you're trying to do in portraying, truly portraying that character.
Speaker:And it, it reminded me a little bit of Have you guys ever seen, probably not
Speaker:because I had never seen it there's a 1985 Civil War series, miniseries with
Speaker:Patrick Swayze- That he probably saw
Speaker:called North and South.
Speaker:We've-
Speaker:I've heard of it.
Speaker:Haven't seen it
Speaker:With Patrick Swayze … you, I, I'm telling you guys- … you
Speaker:should go watch it.
Speaker:It's early Patrick Swayze.
Speaker:Like, from, like, the first time you see him, I was my first thought was, like,
Speaker:man, he, he looks like just, he's it looks like he's still got baby fat on him.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Just young Patrick Swayze.
Speaker:It was awesome.
Speaker:And
Speaker:He was awesome
Speaker:we, we- Yeah … we watched the whole, we watched the series and we talked about it
Speaker:on a podcast with another friend of ours.
Speaker:But they do the, they do a similar thing of what you guys are talking
Speaker:about, is they kinda stretch it out.
Speaker:It's everything leading up to the Civil War in this first part of the
Speaker:miniseries, and they provide this North and South context, and these
Speaker:two guys who become best friends.
Speaker:And they, they show both sides and the struggle on both sides and exactly
Speaker:what you guys are talking about, that not everybody was slave owners.
Speaker:A lot of it was self-defense.
Speaker:There was extremes on both sides back then, but then
Speaker:there's everybody in the middle.
Speaker:So I really appreciate you guys bringing up, kinda, one, the reality
Speaker:of the contextual history, but then also the reality of contextual people.
Speaker:People are, are gray, that we live in that, in that gray.
Speaker:Now, one of the other things- Mm-hmm … yes, people are people.
Speaker:We say that all the time.
Speaker:Now, o- one of the things, you guys filmed on location kind of so
Speaker:throughout various spots of Tennessee.
Speaker:Now, Lee, I saw, one of the things I was looking up, that you guys
Speaker:actually got some kinda real artifacts that you were able to use on set.
Speaker:Can you, you talk a little bit about some of those?
Speaker:One of them, and I'm glad that, uh, David can… I've been, I
Speaker:keep meaning to ask him this.
Speaker:We talk a lot, almost every day, and I, every time I, we do, I forget.
Speaker:But there was a top an undershirt, well, not an undershirt, but it, it
Speaker:was worn under the general's jacket that was owned by General Forrest
Speaker:that actually still had blood stain
Speaker:No
Speaker:from General Forrest on it.
Speaker:It was owned by his, Sarge is his nickname, but Maury forgive
Speaker:me, Mari, I, I can't think of his last name at the moment.
Speaker:We, we just called him Sarge, and, um, he had this shirt, and it had the
Speaker:bloodstain of, of General Forrest on it.
Speaker:And both David and I put it on, and I'm pretty sure Dave
Speaker:wore it in one of the scenes.
Speaker:Is that right, brother?
Speaker:Yeah, that's,
Speaker:Wow
Speaker:true.
Speaker:And as a matter of fact so during several of the scenes,
Speaker:So y- 100%, you know, so we actually worked into S&P, I
Speaker:mean, the production office.
Speaker:I had nothing to do with it.
Speaker:But the very strong and Sarge in particular, you know, is just a
Speaker:legend down there, not only for his knowledge, but for, you know, the
Speaker:incredible network and the respect that, that he has down there.
Speaker:so he somehow convinced the museum to lend us authentic, not replicas,
Speaker:real artifacts from the Civil War.
Speaker:at one point in time we, you know, Lee already mentioned the shirt
Speaker:that he and I both wore there.
Speaker:That was General Nathan Bedford Forrest's real
Speaker:Wow
Speaker:still crusted with blood to this day.
Speaker:they lent me his revolver
Speaker:Whoa
Speaker:which is, I mean, r- it's basically a priceless artifact.
Speaker:And it was his real revolver, and they don't know how many confirmed
Speaker:kills he got with it or anything like that, but it was a lot.
Speaker:I actually use it in one of the scenes, and then they also gave
Speaker:me his sword that they had.
Speaker:And what-- So there's one scene where I draw my sword standing from horseback
Speaker:and command charge to everybody.
Speaker:I think it's in the trailer and things like that.
Speaker:That's his real
Speaker:Oh my gosh
Speaker:But at the end, as a wrap gift, all of the re-enactors came together
Speaker:Holy cow
Speaker:And gave me a real Civil
Speaker:Oh, that's awesome Oh, that's super cool
Speaker:an authentic sword um, by an unknown soldier, not a
Speaker:Oh, wow
Speaker:that I don't know exactly if the museum had it, but they were willing to give it
Speaker:up or, or, or like something like that.
Speaker:But it is actually a real Civil War sword used in battle by
Speaker:an unknown, unnamed soldier.
Speaker:That's really cool.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:And then I got to use I didn't know at the time it was going to be given to me,
Speaker:but Van Dorn, because he was wanted dead or alive, he was the, he was more heavily
Speaker:guarded than Lincoln or President Davis.
Speaker:Wow
Speaker:He had this is according to Maury Sarge, he, he had 40 bodyguards,
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Holy cow
Speaker:because he was under that kind of threat from the North, which if you
Speaker:see our movie, you'll, you'll kinda see that we bring some of that in there.
Speaker:But this is a Colt Walker
Speaker:Oh, cool Wow.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:They were involved.
Speaker:Holy cow.
Speaker:That is
Speaker:And it, uh, is Van Dorn carried two of these all the time.
Speaker:And if you ever… I don't know, obviously you can't… I don't know if
Speaker:you can tell, but this is a heavy gun.
Speaker:It's about eight or nine pounds.
Speaker:Oh my
Speaker:And, uh, he had two of them on him at all times, and it's actually used in a little,
Speaker:little love fight that he and Forrest had where he pulls a gun on Forrest.
Speaker:But, uh, it was this particular gun, and it's made from some authentic
Speaker:pieces and some replica pieces.
Speaker:But it's, it's quite the, quite the item to behold.
Speaker:And we got, uh, I also had a t- terrific sword that was, um, it was
Speaker:a replica, but it was identical, you know, so it, it felt real, and I
Speaker:had it on me pretty much all times.
Speaker:And I know David did his as well.
Speaker:It was really an immersive experience for, uh, you know, like a month.
Speaker:We felt like we were literally Civil War generals in s- in many ways.
Speaker:We probably ate a lot better, but
Speaker:And you guys didn't sleep outside.
Speaker:Did you sleep outside
Speaker:We did not.
Speaker:No, we slept in a, in a hotel.
Speaker:Nice, nice hotel
Speaker:Now of these two gentlemen, have you been to their grave sites?
Speaker:Have you gone to visit their graves?
Speaker:I know Van Doren is buried in, is it Port Gibson?
Speaker:I've been there.
Speaker:As a matter of fact you can go to the Instagram Legend of Van Dorn,
Speaker:and if you scroll down a few of the videos, you'll actually see me at the
Speaker:grave site of General Earl Van Dorn.
Speaker:And then Dave and I both were at Forrest's grave over in Elm, Elm Springs here in
Speaker:Yes Yeah They just moved it there.
Speaker:We filmed there, as a matter of fact.
Speaker:We filmed at Elm Springs, yes
Speaker:Thad
Speaker:Yeah, and Lee actually even took me over to
Speaker:that's right
Speaker:Forbes' childhood home.
Speaker:wow.
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:So we got to go to everywhere and, and go around and see the thing, and it
Speaker:was pretty wild sitting there going, "Wow, this is probably where General
Speaker:Forrest literally ran around as a child."
Speaker:Wow
Speaker:the woods that he played in, the bed that he slept in.
Speaker:I mean, like, everything.
Speaker:know, imagining playing hide-and-go-seek, you know, out in the woods or,
Speaker:or whatever the case is, or in the dilapidated barn that's still
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:All that sort of stuff.
Speaker:It was just a wild, wild experience.
Speaker:So, so what was it like for you guys?
Speaker:Because, you know, Forrest was very much kind of a self-made, kinda came up, you
Speaker:know, I, I, I mean, he was poor initially and then kind of got some money, right?
Speaker:And that's how he got his commission.
Speaker:Whereas Van Dorn kinda came from the other side of the tracks, right?
Speaker:He w- went to West Point, didn't graduate, if, if I remember right, the
Speaker:No, he did.
Speaker:He got…
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:graduated, just not the
Speaker:He graduated.
Speaker:Which I, which I, I- You, you can relate to … I can totally identify with that.
Speaker:So, He went to the academy.
Speaker:Yeah, so
Speaker:Now part of that, his defense was because of demerits.
Speaker:So he actually, 'cause he drank whiskey and he cussed a lot they said.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:So he might have had really good grades, but he had demerits
Speaker:that demoted his grades.
Speaker:I can
Speaker:Anyway
Speaker:id- I can absolutely identify with that.
Speaker:So, so what was it like for, for you guys playing these two- Yeah … kind
Speaker:of, again, kinda coming from the each, each side of the tracks,
Speaker:but then working together, right?
Speaker:And historically, obviously, that's what happened.
Speaker:H- how mean, how were you guys able to kinda develop that dynamic?
Speaker:Like, what was that like?
Speaker:Well, and you know what's, you know what's really interesting about that,
Speaker:the historical truth that you were just hitting on, and then Lee and I
Speaker:as friends and just as individuals, because again, anyone who knows
Speaker:me, I cuss all the time, and at one point in time I drank quite a bit.
Speaker:But General Forrest doesn't.
Speaker:He didn't cuss.
Speaker:He was not into or
Speaker:He didn't drink
Speaker:didn't drink, nothing.
Speaker:He was actually very, very devout to his wife.
Speaker:It, which is again, it's an interesting thing to
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:a guy, he did not go to West Point or have formal education.
Speaker:He was self-educated and actually took it as a point of pride to constantly
Speaker:des- destroy West Point grads and all this other sort of stuff because
Speaker:it was literally, it was part of his e- I mean, he, he was, he got
Speaker:Yeah
Speaker:just loved embarrassing these people.
Speaker:Like what you said, he came from pretty much nothing and was largely
Speaker:just a self-made man and rose to just these tremendous heights.
Speaker:And it's, it's very interesting, you know, because because Lee himself is,
Speaker:is a man who is not given to, to, to cussing much or anything like that.
Speaker:So it's interesting for him to step into Van Dorn's,
Speaker:Sure
Speaker:characterization
Speaker:yeah
Speaker:then, you know, for me to go into Forrest, it was just literally like a
Speaker:complete role reversal on the whole thing
Speaker:Yeah, and Van Dorn is, like, very t- tested soldier.
Speaker:Like, he's in the Mexican-American War, he's part of the American
Speaker:Indian Wars, like you talked about with the Comanche and the Cherokee.
Speaker:Like, he's a tested soldier.
Speaker:By the time he hits the Civil War, it's, like, a old hat for him almost.
Speaker:It's not new, what he's learning how to do, his tactics and stuff.
Speaker:Um- Well, and, and the interesting thing, another interesting thing I, I, when I
Speaker:was reading about Van Dorn, is, like, all the accounts as I'm doing my, my
Speaker:generic non-historian research on- online, it, all of them said, like, " Van Dorn
Speaker:was an incredibly handsome man." Right?
Speaker:It, it, like, it said that consistently, and then it basically said, like, he,
Speaker:you know, he, he was a womanizer, right?
Speaker:He was, for the most part, you know, out there kinda whatever he could get his, you
Speaker:know, whoever he could get his hands on.
Speaker:man.
Speaker:Yeah, you know, like, a- and so I, I find that so interesting and, and
Speaker:you know if it says it consistently in historical accounts, it was,
Speaker:was probably relatively true
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, and
Speaker:And he was, he wasn't, he didn't even hide it either.
Speaker:Like, he was always this… I mean, he like, especially at
Speaker:that time where it was just
Speaker:No, decorum was such a thing, right?
Speaker:ah.
Speaker:And he
Speaker:that we, that was made known.
Speaker:I didn't realize it until kinda near the, the end of it, but there was the reason
Speaker:we were doing certain scenes, and it was to show that this was a very public
Speaker:thing, and that's… The accounts say that the people were kinda shocked at
Speaker:how open Van Dorn and, and Jessie Peters were with their affair, that hi- his ca-
Speaker:carriage would go to her house and pick her up at all times of the day and night.
Speaker:They were seen walking the streets of Spring Hill together, you know, downtown.
Speaker:They would go to banquets together,
Speaker:That's
Speaker:together.
Speaker:And he, he… I think he got to a point in his life where i- and this, this…
Speaker:I'm not justifying it, but I, I think I maybe can explain it to some degree,
Speaker:and that is he knew every day could be his last, either by battle, or he
Speaker:knew that the most powerful man in the world, arguably, Abraham Lincoln, had
Speaker:a bounty on his head, uh, of $5,000, which, you know, today's money, I
Speaker:don't know what that is, m- probably millions, but it was life-changing.
Speaker:And, you know, when you go so long thinking, "I probably won't live
Speaker:to see tomorrow," or, "I may not live to see tomorrow" … You know,
Speaker:during the Comanche Wars, he took an arrow through his lungs and through
Speaker:his stomach, and they gave him,
Speaker:That's
Speaker:you know, tha- he wasn't gonna live through the night.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then five weeks later, he, he, he beats the Comanches a second
Speaker:time, and they never come back
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:they think that, that the, the, the, um, Cherokee are under
Speaker:the protection of Van Dorn.
Speaker:So this guy's, this guy knows he is mortal, and I think in the, i- in the
Speaker:war, in some ways, that Jessie and Van Dorn were kinda two souls s- in some
Speaker:ways trying to save each other, just like let's have something special in the
Speaker:middle of this hell that we're in, and I think that's how he looked at life.
Speaker:So I'm not justifying it, but I do think that if you're trying to understand Van
Speaker:Dorn, and I'm not saying that I've done it more than anybody else, but I've
Speaker:spent years trying to understand the man.
Speaker:And in a time of war, maybe you do things you wouldn't normally do.
Speaker:You know, maybe
Speaker:Yeah, you seize the day because you don't- might be your last.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I, I can understand that.
Speaker:All right, so, so as we get ready to, to wrap things up here, for, for the both
Speaker:of you, right, you gu- again, spent a lot of time on location, which I think just
Speaker:lends to that authenticity of this, this movie that, that we're looking forward to.
Speaker:Now, i- if the, if these battlefields could talk, right, if these battlefields
Speaker:could talk today, from the time you guys spent on them, what do you
Speaker:think they would say about the way we remember these events or these people?
Speaker:Wow
Speaker:I, I think that we humanized these people and that we very much one of the things
Speaker:the director would tell us is that w- this is a fly on the wall type of movie, and
Speaker:that this is about a story that happened.
Speaker:And so we're not trying to make this guy as always the bad guy, because no, no
Speaker:bad guy's always the bad guy, you know?
Speaker:He had… People had kids, people had puppies, and they were… They
Speaker:wanted to live with their family.
Speaker:They wanted to retire, things like that.
Speaker:And so we were very… He was very much, uh, Mr.
Speaker:Stanley was very much against caricatures and exaggerated portrayals, and he
Speaker:said, "What we want is we want people to see General Van Dorn, General Forrest,
Speaker:Jesse Peters, Dr. Peters, all these people, and say those were human beings.
Speaker:They, they weren't just words on a page or, or caricatures
Speaker:or bad guys or good guy.
Speaker:They were human beings who were going through one of the worst times
Speaker:in the history of this country." And he said, "I wanna see human
Speaker:That's cool
Speaker:Where do you think the premiere's gonna be?
Speaker:I'm, I'm going to show you
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:but…
Speaker:We found out just recently.
Speaker:It's Amazon Prime,
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:of them.
Speaker:A- Amazon Prime, August 21st.
Speaker:It will be on Charter Cable and Cox Cable, and then Verizon has a streaming
Speaker:service, I didn't even know that, and,
Speaker:yeah
Speaker:Fandango, FandangoNOW.
Speaker:Uh, that's August 21st, and then it will be on other platforms following that as
Speaker:well, but we, we don't know of those yet.
Speaker:But Amazon Prime, August 21st.
Speaker:You can go to The Legend of Van Dorn… I'm sorry, legendofvandorn.com.
Speaker:That's legendofvandorn.com, and you can sign up to be notified, you know, reminded
Speaker:when it's, the day it's premiering and when it's premiering on other platforms.
Speaker:It's legendofvandorn.com
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:We did a red carpet event in Franklin.
Speaker:Uh, it showed the Franklin Theater.
Speaker:We sold that theater out and, and so Dave was there and everybody was there.
Speaker:Oh, that's awesome
Speaker:DB Sweeney and Joe Lando and all the people who were in the, in the movie.
Speaker:So we had a red carpet event there,
Speaker:well, I'm really and I know you probably don't care, but I'm
Speaker:really proud of you gentlemen.
Speaker:I'm really proud of you for telling
Speaker:you
Speaker:story.
Speaker:I think it's our story, and I think it, we need to see it.
Speaker:We need to embrace it.
Speaker:It belongs to all of us, and I really love that you are truth tellers, and you're
Speaker:finding the humanity in all of us in history and portraying it for us to see.
Speaker:So thank you for doing that
Speaker:So thank you for having us
Speaker:Thank you
Speaker:for those listening, for those watching, I will absolutely put the
Speaker:links that you mentioned in the video description of the podcast show notes,
Speaker:so please keep an eye out for that.
Speaker:End of August, that is The Legend of Van Dorn.
Speaker:My immense thanks to Lee Wilson and David B. Meadows for joining us today.
Speaker:It's rare to see a production lean so heavily into the physical reality of
Speaker:history, not just through the script and the performance, but by honoring the
Speaker:actual soil, the homes and battlefields where these incredible stories took place.
Speaker:If you wanna see Lee and David bring this gripping chapter of middle
Speaker:Tennessee history to life, look out for The Legend of Van Dorn.
Speaker:You can check out the trailer right now on Vimeo, and look in our podcast
Speaker:show notes and for some of the links to where you can find the movie.
Speaker:We'll talk to you guys next time.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:This has been a Walk With History production.
Speaker:Talk With History is created and hosted by me, Scott Bennie.
Speaker:Episode researched by Jennifer Bennie.
Speaker:Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode.
Speaker:Talk With History is supported by our community at thehistoryroadtrip.com.
Speaker:Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player,
Speaker:and we'll talk to you next time
