Ray Mendoza
speaker
64 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Ray Mendoza’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, always wanted to join ever since I was a little kid. Maybe some would argue that Hollywood had something to do with that. Growing up in the 80s, some of the best movies in my opinion, Commando, Predator, Tombstone, you name it. I could go to all the Terminators. Uh, I don't know. It was something that was always attractive to me. Uh, that's serving. Um, do you know what I wanted to do?
Wasn't sure. Uh, it was a lot of information on the SEAL teams then like there is now or any really soft component. Um, always loved the water, always loved the beach. Um, and so as I got older, it was time to get out, uh, graduate high school. It was, uh, This still seemed like a good place for me to go and try out to see if I could do it. By chance, it ended up being kind of a perfect fit.
I kind of dovetailed in with the mentality there. I grew up playing sports, always very competitive. It just really nurtured that. Suddenly, I was already there. Yeah, I showed up, and they're like, yeah, made it through training. Had a few hiccups here and there, but eventually checked into Team 5. Did three pumps there. Was a communicator right away. It was just by chance.
They just needed a communicator. I was the first guy to check in. They're like, you're going to communication school. I was like, I don't know shit about radios. They're like, well, that's where you're going to communication school. Cool. Um, but it ended up being a good fit for me.
Just, um, it puts you at the center of all information that gets disseminated, which, you know, the care, one of the character, the guy who plays me in the movies portrays that somewhat, um, yeah.
And then, you know, obviously the war kicked off and just Iraq was just, uh, the insurgency, you know, typically we're, we're, we're kind of farmed out, you know, we're not big enough to have our own battle space. Uh, so it's usually we're attached to some army or Marine Corps battalion or some Army Marine Corps brigades. And then we were used accordingly as this, you know, very surgical tool.
Um, yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of components to how I came to this. to that. Just wanted to make this way to answer your question. I think it starts with how I got into the movie industry, which is with Act of Valor, which is like the Navy's essentially attempt to grow the SEAL teams.
At the time, in 2000, right after Red Wings with Marcus, we were losing a lot of SEALs, whether that's them getting out or just dying. So we were gaining, I think, once in a year at the time. It wasn't enough to expand the SEAL teams by any means. So it was like, we got to get the word out. We need people to join the Navy. So yeah, it's active element. That's where I got introduced to filmmaking.
I met the stunt coordinator, Scotty Wall, Basil Coy, who, you know, stunt guys turned movie makers or the directors met them met a bunch of other stunt guys other producers Yeah, I started like day playing as a stuntman. And then Lone Survivor came around. Marcus Trowell gave me a hoot. Hey, I'd love you to train the cast.
And that was my first experience behind the camera, which that's like a whole different world. When you're in front of the camera, especially for the act of valor, everyone's catering to you. You don't really understand how things work. But on this, I saw how it all just like dovetailed together.
And what was very attractive to me was the structure, which was multiple department heads working in kind of concert with each other to achieve one thing. In their case, it was a movie. In our case, it's typically a mission. And so just that was just like, oh, this is very similar. There's like the pressures of time. Someone having to make a decision. For them, a movie making time is money.
We're talking millions of dollars. um some people don't like making those hard decisions uh i do i'm like thriving that shit uh i want to be the guy to make the big decision this is awesome i love this shit um and so yeah it was like just a cool medium to tell stories uh that's probably where you know so then this is 2014 um When this first happened, Elliot doesn't remember what happened.
So when he woke up, obviously he had a lot of questions. No matter how many maps we drew and how many times we answered his questions via email, it just almost raised more questions. I think because he didn't have that core memory visually, it just raised a lot of questions from big picture questions of why, what, to the little questions of what color things were.
so you know after Lone Survivor that's where I think that first seed was planted I was like well maybe one day it'll you know, I could just do like a 30 minute recreation of what happened. Uh, I never, did I ever think it would be a movie on this scale. Um, so I just started to learn the tools and there's like other, you know, as you start, I started, my name started to get around.
I started working on other films, uh, was Dave Payne, some guys in all the different shows in LA. Um, And just learning more. And then between jobs, tech advising jobs, at the time nobody knew me. I was a PA in camera department. I worked in production and I sat in editing rooms. So I was just kind of really learning how to speak this new language. Because I didn't
want to give it to somebody, um, a lot of great film directors and who have done more movies. Um, I just felt they always miss something, uh, whether they miss representing the culture, uh, because they weren't there. Um, and so I just felt like it's all anecdotal for them. Um, so I was like one day, I think I'm just going to keep acquiring the skill sets and the tools, um, to do this myself.
And a lot of things had to be in line. Meaning the people who were funding it had to let me, because I didn't want to change anything. Anyone involved, yeah, I was just on board with it being very, very factual. It was going to be a recreation for Elliot and I didn't want to do it any other way. If it wasn't going to happen that way, then I just wasn't going to do it.
Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coincidentally, when he was editing Civil War, I built out who's seen Civil War. Yeah. Yeah, so there's like that whole White House piece externally eventually making the way into the corridor to the final corridor of the Oval Office. So I built all that out for him. you know, I just created this kind of 360 freaking playground for him. It's pretty, it's pretty fun.
It's pretty awesome. So things are concurrently happening. Uh, there'll be like, he's like, no matter where you point the camera, Alex, something's happened. I just created, this is like 360 amusement park for you. Uh, I said, yeah, it was just, he loved it. Um, but in editing that, I think he saw something. He saw all the other directors. Yeah.
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