This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

We were soldiers as a motion picture about the Vietnam War from writer-director Randall

Wallace, which stars Mel Gibson, Gibson playing the role of Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore.

Here's Randall to tell the story of his film.

I was sitting in my office working on a story while Braveheart was still in production.

I was writing the next story because I didn't know if Braveheart would be a titanic sort of failure or a monstrous success. Either way, I needed to have

momentum on a new story. You need to feel that your best work is coming, not behind you.

So I was working on the story and the phone rang, and it was an executive from Warner Brothers,

a friend of mine, who said, listen, we didn't know about Braveheart and we wish we had.

And we would love to fly you to Hawaii to meet Kevin Costner and talk about ideas with

Kevin Costner. would you be willing

to do that?

And like, yeah, I would.

And they made reservations for me.

And I went to a bookstore to pick up something to read on the flight and it came across

the cover of We Were Soldiers Once and Young.

It showed a young lieutenant whose name was Rick Rescorla, who is, the cover of We Were Soldiers Once in Yom.

It showed a young lieutenant whose name was Rick Rescorla,

who ended up an incredible hero in his own right,

not only in Vietnam, but also at the World Trade Center,

where he lost his life going back up into the World Trade Center to make sure that all of his people had gotten

...