Name: Gary Sinise | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #623
Uploaded: 2025-11-11T03:53:19.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Gary Sinise | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #623' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Gary Sinise | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #623' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-11. Transcript available.

Gary Sinise | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #623

Today's guest is an actor, he's a musician, and he's an activist.
You know him for some of his famous roles like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump
and Mac Taylor in CSI New York.
But he's also known for his work helping veterans and first responders.
I had a great chat today with the one and only Mr. Gary Sinise.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, thanks so much for coming in.
Yeah, so you bought in Nashville in...
Well, we bought in 21 and then we moved in 23.
Okay.
So we had to do some renovating for our son and what was going on with him and
everything like that.
But then we finally... I moved my foundation in 22 and then we moved out in 23.
And overall, has it been a good experience?
Fantastic.
Yeah.
I got no... I was in Hollywood for 35 years.
Wow.
So that's enough.
Yeah, that's a lot of service.
You kind of like... You did your service.
Yeah, it was good.
You know, we raised our kids there and everything.
Oh, yeah.
Gary Sinise, thanks for joining me, man.
Oh, it's great to be with you, bud.
I appreciate it.
And the Lieutenant Dan Band, you guys are performing at the Ryman Auditorium on
Veterans Day?
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah, at the Opry.
Yeah, it's good.
Sorry, you guys are performing at the Grand Ole Opry.
Yeah, that's right.
On Veterans Day.
Oh, that's going to be sick.
There's more seats there, too, which is even better.
It's...
I think it's 4,000-something seats in there.
You know, we played there summer of 24.
They did a really fun thing.
They wanted...
We were talking about having my band come there at some point to the Opry.
And it was the 30th anniversary of Forrest Gump coming out that summer.
So they did a...
Opry celebrates 30 years of Forrest Gump.
And we went and we played.
And we had a bunch of people on the bill.
And yeah, there we are.
Did you guys play any songs from the movie?
Well, everybody did.
That's what was cool about the night, is we had Gary LaVox from Rascal Flatts.
He was on the bill.
Jamie Johnson.
Jamie Johnson's the best, dude.
Yeah, Jamie.
And he'll be there on Tuesday when we play.
The bill, this...
Tuesday is great.
And then when we did the 30th anniversary, it was great.
And they had the idea that everybody on the bill would do songs from the
soundtrack of Forrest Gump.
That's so cool.
So we all did.
What a fun night.
It was really fun.
Does the band rehearse a lot?
You know, we...
I mean, this...
I've been doing it with this band for over 20 years.
So we will rehearse once or twice a year.
Yeah.
And it's all about learning some new songs.
Got it.
You know, sometimes we can plug those in in our soundcheck.
We just give a little extra time for soundcheck and we wind up a song, a new
song.
But we've played, you know, we play a lot of the same songs for, because my
band is, the whole purpose of my band is the military veterans, first
responders mission.
And so I take the band on military bases and military hospitals and do all that
kind of stuff.
That's, I don't play for money.
This is what I do for a mission.
It's a service mission.
I have to pay the band.
I have to pay the production costs of the staging and the lighting and all that
stuff.
And that's so pricey.
People don't realize it.
There's, you know, there's costs affixed with that.
Yeah.
And we have a big band.
Yeah.
I mean, if you look at my band, there's, you know, there's me plus 12.
So there's 13 of us, it's not cheap.
Yeah.
It's a, it's an expensive show, but it's a good show.
We play a lot of, a lot of good songs.
Were you always a musician?
Well, back in fourth grade, I got my first guitar and that this is, this goes
back to the sixties.
So, uh, Beach Boys were my band and I started listening to them a lot and
trying to play their songs.
And then, and then I got my guitar and then, uh, in seventh grade, I got a bass
and I started playing bass and then played all the way through high school into
my early twenties.
And then I got very busy with acting and started a theater company and got very
busy with that.
So I didn't play for a long time until like the late nineties, I started
picking it up again.
And now we've, you know, formed a band and started going on military bases and
overseas.
We've done over 600 something shows for the military.
Wow.
That's incredible, man.
Thank you so much for, uh, for your service, uh, for supporting the people who
serve.
Um, I, uh, yeah, whenever I was first starting out in comedy, we would do a
bunch of like, um, kind of USO affiliated kind of tours where you would go.
And, uh, we went to so many unique places that you don't even think that there's
bases that you don't even think that there's people like, like little, like
Ford operate, like Arif John, we went to one time.
I've been there.
We went to the Azores.
Um, my gosh, we went to like places in Spain, just places.
You don't even think that there's bases and there's, there's people there.
You know what there, we have, how many bases do you think there are that the U
S has in the world?
I mean, I couldn't even guess.
I don't think it's about 800 bases and the, the, the big giant ones, you know,
like Fort Bragg or something like that.
Uh, to very, very tiny ones in little remote areas, like you, like you said,
and a lot of them don't get a lot of support or entertainment and that kind of
thing.
It's, it's, I think it's 750, 800 bases, something like that.
What's that say?
Yeah.
It says, oh yeah.
750.
Yeah.
To 877 U S military base.
Yeah.
That's a lot of bases.
My, when I started out with this, my goal was to hit every single one of them.
And then I realized, well, I think I'm about a 25% the way there.
I think I've played about 200 bases.
Wow.
That's cool.
Oh, there's something about like, like I went to Qatar a couple of months ago.
Sure.
Yeah.
The president was doing something there and, uh, they invited me to come and,
and so it was just like, but you get there and the, the, were you on that big
Middle East tour that I wasn't on the whole thing.
I was just on Qatar and it was like a last minute thing.
I was literally central command.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they're like, do you want to come?
You have to get on a plane in like five hours.
And I was like, yeah.
And dude, but even the best part of it was when you walk up, there's all these
soldiers like in line.
Cause they're like, um, I don't know if it was mandatory that they go to this
event, but I think a lot of them wanted to, too.
It was probably like a fun thing to do on the base that day.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Anything to break up the day.
Yeah.
That's for sure.
And, and just to walk up.
And a lot of them were like, Hey, what's up?
And just like that moment alone, like not for me, but for both of us kind of,
it was just like that.
I got to be, it was just awesome, man.
That's what it's like.
Yeah.
It was just awesome.
Um, and then, um, yeah, you see guys like who are away from their families.
Um, and then you have friends who, uh, their families are away.
Just all of it.
You know, I don't know, being close to it, you get to kind of see so much of
what it's about.
Um, did you, cause there's kind of this theory.
I feel like with you, for some people that don't know that you got into like
the Lieutenant Dan character.
Right.
And you got into it so much that you were just like, I am now, this is like my
life calling.
Uh, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of like, is that kind of what happened or is
that, but that, no, I mean, I have Vietnam veterans in my family.
I was playing a Vietnam veteran, Lieutenant Dan.
And so prior to playing him, I was like keyed up and tuned up to that because
with Vietnam veterans and my family, I, I, I, you know,
you know, I was, I was in high school, I was a senior in high school when
combat operations ended in Vietnam in 1973.
So I remember people coming home and then I met my wife and she introduced me
to her two brothers who served, her sister's husband served in Vietnam.
So I was kind of tuned up to what was going on with our Vietnam veterans, had a
lot of compassion for them and what happened when they came home.
You know, they were not treated well at all.
It was a difficult time for our country, difficult time to be a soldier.
And then when Lieutenant Dan came around, I had the opportunity to audition for
it.
I very much wanted to get that part.
I was lucky to get it.
And then I just started, I mean, I remember getting invited to the disabled
American veterans organization convention about five or six weeks after Forrest
Gump came out and they wanted to give me an award for playing a wounded veteran.
And this was an organization that at that time represented 1.5 million wounded
veterans going back to World War II, all the way up to the Gulf War.
This because this is 94 and I walk out on the stage, get introduced and I walk
out on the stage there.
Yeah, that's a picture of it.
And they gave me their national commander's award.
And the guy there, Richard Marbs, he's got one leg.
He's missing one leg up to his hip.
He's standing on crutches there.
And I looked out into the audience and I saw 2,000 wounded veterans out there
in the crowd.
Wow.
And it was very, very moving.
I can feel it right now.
It's moving to me to even imagine that somebody saw that.
And it was very impactful.
And that started me supporting our wounded going back to that time.
And then September 11th happened and I just turned it into a full-time mission.
Wow.
Yeah, it was – I met a lot of interesting people over the years.
I started going on USO tours in 2003.
I started going to the bases.
Qatar was one of the first bases I went to on my first overseas US tour.
Really?
Yeah.
It's a beautiful base.
Yeah, we were there.
We were in Iraq.
We were in Kuwait.
That was a big tour that Kid Rock was on and Leanne Womack was on that tour.
Oh, yeah.
Robert De Niro was on the tour.
I mean, Paul Rodriguez, comedians were on the tour.
It was – there were a lot of entertainers.
It was called Project Salute.
And that's some footage there from that very first trip overseas to Iraq and Kuwait.
This is me going out to a place called Camp Udari, which was right on the Iraq-Kuwait
border.
And I saw thousands of troops that day.
And it was very impactful to go out there, see these people in the war zones,
see what they were doing, shake hands with them.
I wanted to talk to everybody.
And I didn't have time because, you know, there were so many people lined up to
see us.
But we entertained.
Well, you know, we – I didn't do anything except I'm Lieutenant Dan and I'm
waving to everybody and shaking hands and taking pictures.
But Kid Rock put on the show.
Oh, for sure, yeah.
Bob's been in here.
Bob's ridiculous.
He lives across town.
He's one of – he's one of a kind.
Good, good, good, good guy.
We've known each other since that –
Oh, you have?
That trip, yeah.
He's got a big heart, dude.
He's a – yeah, he's a –
Loves our military, really.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We spend a good bit of time together.
He's a special guy.
What's something – yeah, because you just had – like, you had so many, like,
kind of iconic roles, like, you know, and were in so many, like, just, you know,
films that really touch people.
You know, The Green Mile, I remember.
Of Mice and Men.
Yeah.
That's crazy, dude.
Did you see that in high school?
Yeah.
I remember.
Dude, you know how many – you know how many people even on the spectrum were
not allowed to have a pet after that movie?
Do you know how many –
You can't have a dog.
Oh, dude.
You know how many of my neighbors got their pets taken away after that movie?
I never thought of that.
Oh, dude.
It was – yeah, it took, like, a month to get them back for some of us.
That's hilarious.
But that – just so many special roles.
But then it feels like you really kind of found this, like, a role that really,
like – like, almost a bigger role in this space of service, you know, and of
feeling like – even just showing up somewhere and giving of yourself, you
know?
With the veterans in my family, and especially the Vietnam veterans, I have
World War II and World War I on my side of the 