Rock Bottom: Before I start off I just want
to say that I’m a huge fan of your work.
Gary: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Ok, let’s get started and talk about this documentary
you are releasing. Tell me about “High Flight”.
Well, having interacted
with the military community for quite some time now – I have been able to do some incredible things and visit our troops
all around the world – where they’re deployed or training or whatever… so I get to see the military in
a way that the average American doesn’t really because I get to visit so many cool and interesting spots where they
are working. And from time to time I get invited to do some pretty cool things and one of those things was to fly at
70,000 feet on a U-2 “Dragon Lady”. The U-2 is a spy plane that was developed during the Cold War to actually
spy on the Soviet Union and they wanted a plane that would go so high that the Soviet missiles wouldn’t be able to reach
it. Unfortunately they found out after a while that the Soviets did have a missile that could reach that high and so
one of the pilots, Gary Powers, was shot down. But this is a plane that goes up so high that it can avoid most land
based missiles and actually, you know, perform a surveillance mission on the ground. You get up that high, which is
twice as high as an airliner and you get to see the Earth in a way that only the shuttle astronauts after that get to see.
I think it’s something under a thousand human beings that have ever gone to 70,000.
What is your stomach going through
as you’re that high in the air?
You know, it was very – the U-2 is kind of like
a glider. I mean it goes so high that – and there’s no jet streams up there [laughs] because no one is up
that high… so it was a very very smooth ride. It climbed very fast to 70,000 feet – I think we were at
30,000 feet within, I don’t know, five minutes or something like that. And then the next leg of the trip goes
a little slower climbing to 70,000, but you experience the Earth in a different way. It’s very very dark above
you because you are up so high you could kind of see the thin blue line, you know, all the good stuff that kind of keeps us
alive down below – sort of on the horizon there. Ice on the cockpit windows – it’s super super cold…
[laughs] I decided that it was going to be such a unique and special experience that I just wanted to have it captured in
some way – so I asked a couple of buddies of mine who have made a documentary with me previously to shoot the experience
and I just kind of financed the whole thing myself – I was just looking to document it kind of for my own personal archives
– just so my grandkids could see it someday. And we had such nice footage and the experience was so good that
I just went ahead and put it together as a nice documentary that you can only get on our foundation website, www.garysinisefoundation.org – and the proceeds from the purchase of it will to go support the foundation’s programs of supporting
and serving and honoring the needs of our military and First Responder Communities.
You’ve done quite a few amazing
things in your life – this has to be one of the most exciting things you’ve done.
Yeah
– it was one day of training… [laughs] that’s a lot of training packed in for one day… [laughs]
these guys train for a lot longer than that to go up into the U-2, but they wanted me to know what to do in case something
goes wrong. That was the scariest part of the experience – was preparing to go into the U-2 because it’s
all about the, you know… if the cockpit catches on fire then you lose control – you lose pressure…
[laughs] All
the worst case scenarios…
You are in a space suit up there because you are so high that by the end of the training day I was completely exhausted
from all the stuff that they’re cramming into my head – all the physical stuff I had to learn – if I had
to parachute out of the plane or whatever… [laughs] and you get that on the DVD. You see all the training –
you see me going through it first hand, learning about the U-2 program and learning about the space suit, you know, if I had
to parachute out at 70,000 feet – what I’d have to do, and all these different things. It’s pretty
interesting and you learn about the incredible U-2 program and you see our men and women in action and how just so good they
are. It’s really, I think, an inspiring look at one of the aspects of our incredible military.
Now how are you going to top this?
What’s your next step to top this adventure?
[laughs] Well, can’t go up in the shuttle anymore. [laughs] I
don’t know, I’ve had the opportunity to do some amazing things. I mean, I’ve even landed on an aircraft
carrier, not in an F-18, but in a plane that carries about twenty people – I did that, and landed on the “Ronald
Reagan” out in the Persian Gulf at one point… and took off from there. I spent the day out there just visiting
the troops out there on the Reagan in the Persian Gulf, I’ve flown in an F-16, I’ve trained with Special Forces,
I’ve been on submarines, I’ve just had the opportunity to see the military at work in a way that most people don’t
get to experience and I think one thing that I can do as an entertainer and as somebody who does get to visit them in that
way is to kind of explain what I see to folks. And that’s what this program does, I think, a little bit –
the “High Flight” videos – you get experience right along with me and the men and women serving the Air
Force up at Beale Air Force Base in California.
I’m definitely going to check it out…
Terrific, thank you. Yeah, thanks for spreading the
word. There’s
also a nice bonus feature on there – I mentioned that the guys that I had shoot the experience made another little documentary,
and that little documentary is about my World War II Uncle Jack who was a navigator on a B-17 and I wanted to surprise him
with a ride on a B-17 so I asked my friends at the Disabled American Veterans if they knew somebody with a B-17. And
so I surprised my Uncle Jack by taking him down to Texas – he thought he was going there for something else and we walked
outside and there was a B-17 sitting there with the crew all ready to go. And… [laughs] we took him on a ride
on a B-17 and got to sort of re-live his experience from World War II with him and we filmed it all, and it’s a nice
little bonus feature on the “High Flight” DVD. He did thirty missions over Europe – survived them,
but barely sometimes. This was the first time he’d been on a B-17 since 1945, so it’s a pretty sweet little
moment and I wanted to capture that for him.
Oh man, I bet he was smiling the whole time…
He was just – you could see it on his face, he was just thinking back, you
know. Back when he used to take off in those things.
Gary, thank you so much for doing this.
Thank you so much – thanks for spreading the word. It’s a sweet
sweet video – and again all the proceeds go to support our program The Gary Sinise Foundation.
