Jake Rademacher
Appearances
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
I raised some money and I got myself over to Iraq. and I embedded in Isaac's unit, and he let me film everything. I got out to the Syrian border with his guys. Eventually the film follows him home. He predicts his daughter won't recognize him. She doesn't. That's all in the first film and the second. And then I went back to Iraq a second time.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
Yeah, it's sort of astounding. We're playing in 138 movie theaters across the country, and 100 of those movie theaters are Regal cinemas.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And John, just to build on what Gary said and answer your question, the reason why the Gary Sneeze Foundation and Gary personally is making sure the vets know about this, the reason why we are offering this incredible, generous gift that they're offering is because, you know, theater was started by warriors coming home and trying to explain to the rest of society what war was like and what coming home from war was like.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And so the Gary Sneese Foundation is trying to give them the gift of being able to go to their local movie theater at a time that's convenient for them and to bring their family and as a community to come together. And we know the film encourages camaraderie and communication. And as you said, this is for the topics we get into. It's a pretty easy film and a pretty good ride.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
You might have a little bit of feelings here and there because you're feeling something for these heroes that serve us. And that's a good thing. But overall, it's an incredible insider's look at what it means to serve our country and to come home from that. And I think this gift is incredible because it's encouraging veterans. Go to the movie theater and experience this as a group together.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And so that's the next step. We'll be doing Brothers After War movie and seminars for years to come, but we really want our veterans and our first responders and our service members and their families to go and experience this as a community on opening weekend.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
My youngest brother's kind of a hard-ass Joe, to put it bluntly. Gary's probably laughing. But he gives me a hard time when he's 19 and then 15 years later in Brothers After War. But he said, you didn't see enough. You don't know enough. So I went back to Iraq. I went to the Sunni Triangle.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
Thank you, John. Thank you, John, so much.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
I embedded with the National Guard Infantry Company sniper team, the Iraqi Army, and Marine Advisors working with them. And I spent about six weeks over on that second trip. I I got into a decent amount of combat and saw the tougher, harder part of war. All of that became Brothers at War. I was asked to go to Iraq a third time to screen it for General Petraeus' public affairs folks.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
While I was over there, a Marine colonel, a really lovely lady, said with tears in her eyes, you have to share this with Gary Sinise. Now, I, as a first-time filmmaker who grew up in Chicago in the beginning of my career and always looked up and admired, Gary said, do you have a cell phone number? Because we're not all drinking at the same cantina back there in L.A.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And she said no, but I shared this story with a friend of ours, Michael Broderick, and
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
and michael said i know gary and i think he'd love your film and one thing led to another and gary graciously created a couple hours on his schedule he was shooting csi new york and i went over to cbs two days before thanksgiving in 2007 and it was gary sinise myself and norman powell we watched brothers at war and i'll never forget it you know gary was very moved at the end of the film he just sat there like in silence for two or three minutes and i just let him sit in it
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And then he said, it's a very important film, Jake. It's a very important film. And then Gary, as Gary does, he kind of started telling me what to do. So it was all good ideas. And, you know, it's like one of your heroes giving you advice, you're going to take it. And so eventually we said, let's make this official. And I asked him to be executive producer of the film.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
That was in 2007, and he's been by our side ever since. The workshops that have come out of that have been sort of a collaboration. I'll come up with an idea, bring it to Gary for his thoughts, and next thing I know, I'm in front of 700 soldiers back from Iraq. And this new film also came out of that continuing collaboration, the conversations that we had.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And so then we kind of came together and said, let's make this film. And Gary was the first one to support it. Eventually, I got an opportunity to talk to his foundation about it. They fell in love with the idea as well. And then in 2019, I set off across the world, four continents to follow up with my two brothers and then 10 friends I made in Iraq to make Brothers After War.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
Well, 2018, I brought you those first scenes, first moments and interviews with Isaac and Hunter and Derek, which is in this new film. And that's when you were like, we're going to do this.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
Well, it's a great question, John. And one thing you said is three-dimensional. I was very, very passionate about presenting a three-dimensional look at these service members, soldiers, Marines, veterans, wherever they are on the spectrum of their career and life. These are my friends. These are my brothers. Oftentimes when you see documentaries, people cherry pick sad stories.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
They're not really in the community. Somebody's kind of doing their drive-by film about it. And that's not Gary Sinise and I. He's been doing this for 40 years. I've been at this project for 21 years. I was at combat with these guys. So I really wanted to, and this is from the very beginning, I said, Gary, I can't just come and do an interview. I've got to actually spend a day with these people.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
I've got to embed in their life now. I embedded with them in the foxholes. I got to embed with them, whether that means I got to jump out of an airplane with them or go scuba diving or, you know, get weapons training, which I did all, all of that.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
I go on a construction site with Ben. Like I want to show the audience, these are, you know, these are for the most part, highly functioning people, but they are still carrying some of the invisible wounds of war. They still have some work to do and I'll show their vulnerability, but I also want to show their strength and, And so I have to say that Gary also felt strongly about that.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And as I finished the film and then got through the process of recutting it, it was frankly some of his insistence. Some of the humor that's in the film, Gary was like, hey, did anything funny happen? I'm like, yeah, mostly at my expense.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
So we started putting some of that back in the movie so that we could give audiences the chance to laugh alongside us, but then also feel alongside us, and then also have some of that solution. Your question about the workshops is very astute. What was special was I was there with them. I chewed dirt with them. I spent three months. I lived with them.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
I came in with Final Cut as a filmmaker wanting to really understand them and where they're coming from. So I had incredible access. I followed that up with walking with our service members for 14 years as they came home from war. When Oklahoma, where I am now, lost 14 soldiers in combat and a few to suicide, they called me and said, can you come?
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And I came and we built the workshop to what it is today. We expanded it to help, you know, help them deal with the loss of their friends. We wrote a workbook for family members. And so the reason why that's important, you know, the 2-1 Marines, when they lost 11 guys recently, we, you know, with the help of the Gary Sinise Foundation, we went there and did a workshop.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And we play the original film and then we first part, what part of the film do you relate to? And then I've got 18, 19, 20 year old Marines for 45 minutes talking about what they related to in the film. And that's the power of the movie. It makes tough subjects easier to talk about.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
Well, this filmmaker was in the war zone, spends a decade working with veterans, helping them walk through the trauma of war and then turn that into post-traumatic growth so they can thrive. And his directions from the studio head, Gary, are, I want to know how they're doing and what they need.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
So when I say in the beginning of the film, I want to know how they're doing, how they're really doing, I mean it. And you'll see that in the film. I push them sometimes that moment when we re-examine Gunner. And his first response is not in the film. I asked him about that response where he's in combat. There's bullets going across the lens of my camera.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
Then I come upon one of the saddest things I've ever seen in my life, which is these wounded Iraqi soldiers that were just patrolling their own country. And now one's got his leg busted up. The other one's got a jaw messed up. And Gunner's on one knee caressing the face of a wounded Iraqi soldier, all right?
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And I'm filming it. I see him do this. And I'm in the midst of all this horror. There's this moment of grace on earth. And I ask him about it. And he kind of goes, yeah, the bullets were flying, la, la, la. And I go, Gunner, I was there. And it was grace on earth. And I pushed in my camera to get a closeup. Cause it just, I just, it was the most important thing happening right there.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And he stops and he looks down and he starts to cry and he gets real. And he says, it's because that's your, it's an intimate connection you have with another man and it hurts. He was my soldier.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And that is the reality of the film that I have that, I was there first of all, but I know from doing our seminars that it's okay for me to ask that question and ask them to take a step further into the experience. And it's, he's gonna have to feel it a little bit to heal it. And so he opens up and starts talking about that.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
So that's an invitation for anybody that's been in that hard moment of combat to re-examine that and watch somebody else walk through it two months after I was there. David reached out to me and he said, Jake, thank you for coming. It really helped.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
You know, the first one came because my brothers, Joe and Isaac, told me that the truth was not coming home from Iraq. And this was 2004. They were with the 82nd Airborne. They were in combat. Joe was a sniper with the 82nd Airborne, 18 years old. Isaac was a captain, infantry officer doing civil relations. And as a family member, as a brother, that pissed me off. So I went back to my hometown.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
And on Friday night, David is going to do a Q and a, and we've invited the second Marine division where he used to be the division gunner to come in and listen to him do a Q and a. So now if you take this all the way through the life cycle in 2005, six, I'm there with him in combat. He was the one who was in the crossfire. He's the reason we went out there now.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
he hasn't totally walked through his own trauma we make the film which becomes an opportunity for him to really look at some of these moments he's sort of buried a little bit he heals from that and now he's using the film to model that for other marines and to help them understand hey guys When you're in a war zone, not necessarily the time to talk about your feelings.
Morning Wire
‘Brothers After War’: An Interview With Gary Sinise & Jake Rademacher | 3.1.25
However, when you come home, the more you talk about it, the more you make sense of it, the more you open up to your family or friends, the easier it's going to be for you to transition to the next part of your life.