Great Minds with Michael Medved, via Discovery Institute, is an extremely wide-ranging program, by (intelligent) design. There’s nothing about science, evolution, or ID in Michael’s newly posted conversation with writer-director Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart, We Were Soldiers, Secretariat, and other great films. Yet I couldn’t help thinking of some of our colleagues in the evolution debate when Wallace describes the underlying point of Braveheart.

He recalls presenting the idea behind the movie to a Hollywood breakfast meeting with Mel Gibson and studio executives. Wallace at the time was a total unknown. Yet he pounded the table and lectured, “The theme of most movies is the guy with the bluest eyes, the biggest biceps, the fattest wallet is the one who prevails and gets the girl. This movie says if you’re faithful to your heart, even if they cut it out of our chest, you prevail. Now that’s the movie I want my sons to see.”

Me too. The film tells the story of the historical (and gruesomely executed) William Wallace. I think plenty of ID’s Darwinist critics would, figuratively speaking, love to cut the heart out of some design scientist’s chest if they got the chance. 

Randall Wallace boldly told Gibson and the others that if they wanted to make a more conventional type of film, they had the wrong screenwriter and the wrong screenplay. He also remembers, when he was getting ready to meet Gibson for the first time, sincerely praying “that I would not kiss his a**” but instead “just be honest and straight.” Teach that to your kids, as well. Resist the temptation to flatter or kiss up, and instead tell the truth as you see it.

The writer recalls the inspirational moment he had on seeing the statue of William Wallace at Edinburgh Castle. Randall Wallace is an inspiration himself, and clearly a profound man. There are many memorable interactions with Michael Medved in this moving 20-minute conversation. The audio version of the podcast is up now at the Great Minds website, and the video will follow a little later today. Enjoy!

Photo: William Wallace, Edinburgh Castle, by Kjetil Bjørnsrud [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], from Wikimedia Commons.