Jake Rademacher
speaker
36 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Jake Rademacher’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And she said no, but I shared this story with a friend of ours, Michael Broderick, and
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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