The Rusty George Podcast

Rusty (00:00.118)
moved here. How fresh are you? Yeah. So I've only been here six, six months. And? It's great. It's great. Yeah. Good. It was uh.

It was the right thing to do. It's the right time. Right time. We have aging parents up in Missouri, so we wanted to get closer and it was good. Good on you, man. So you grew up in Tennessee, but you're from Australia. Is that right? When did you move over? Yeah, in the 90s. We were young at the time. I was shy of 10 when we moved. So a lot of my life's been. But you kept the accent. I worked on it. It's funny how neglect is a real thing.

you'd find yourself like there's some

Rusty (00:48.718)
So they worked really hard to like, say work. But I just like, anytime I felt myself going like car, I just said, no, I'm just gonna stay on this side. Just embrace it. Yeah. Just embrace it. Now these are questions I would normally ask on the podcast. I don't think we're rolling yet, are we? Roughly now. Okay. All right, so are you in the middle of a tour right now?

sort of, it's kind of a promotional, it's all things unsung hero. So like, man, and it's, it's really interesting because the tour looks kind of lightweight to this because the tour you go into it, you go into a town and you, you set up, you have the day, do a bit of work, and then you play the show at night. Not to, not to play it down, but this is like, like KLTY, Dayspring.

here, show tonight. You know, Joel, and it's great, but it breaks your brain a little bit. When did you decide you wanted to get into filmmaking?

Rusty (01:54.25)
and you're asking all the questions we should talk about on the podcast. You know, it's funny, music, movies chose us more than even music in some ways, because when we started out as teenagers, we would make, the first thing we would do ever before we ever wrote a song was we'd do like bad spin-offs of Indiana Jones movies and like short films.

And then Luke and I started working on this music and but it's always been very theatrical. So and I've done a handful of films throughout the years. So this was just, it almost felt more like a culmination point than interesting than like a

left hard left turn okay I got a million questions also yeah you ready yeah okay and is this okay here we okay on this level really good all right great yeah check mm-hmm yeah I heard that these are so better yeah okay all right

Very classy very classy up. Oh, well, thank you. I feel I should have worn a suit. I apologize You're dressed properly. This is all Andrew's doing

Rusty (03:04.362)
Hey, well, Joel, thank you so much for being part of the show today. Boy, you're in the middle of a lot of work promoting this movie. Yeah. Typically when we talk for King and Country, it's about music, but you've been doing movies now for a while. How many years? I mean, you were telling me you started as a kid, but when did it become like, this is a thing? Well, first things first, Rusty. Thank you for having me. Oh, thank you for coming. Great to be with you.

You know, it's an argument, right? Music chose us more than we chose music because we grew up in a musical family. Our dad was a concert promoter in Australia. And so he would run bands and artists down to Australia. And that's actually where the film, Unsung Heroes sort of picks up is him bringing American artists down to Australia and the two are going sideways and losing what would be the equivalent of half a million dollars. But anyway, fast forward a couple of decades to, or 15 years to us being in America.

And me being a teenager after a lot of years of being in the States, rather than writing songs as teenagers, we would go make short films, like bad Indiana Jones spin-offs. Nice. And we'd play them for our youth group and we developed our own little TV shows. And then Luke and I started working on for King Country, which always, you know, our music videos were always theatrical. We've done them with our brother Ben, who's a director and.

We worked on a feature film, which you were loosely tied to in 2016, called Priceless. And our live show has always been very theatrical as well. So it actually feels like sort of a natural next step, more than like a hard left turn for the band to get into movie making, particularly with this story being so close to home. I can definitely see that. I've seen you all perform before, seen your videos, even your music.

it's not just three chords in a cloud of smoke. I mean, there's... I like that, three chords in a cloud of smoke. There's a lot going on. Even your first song that kind of was popular, Fix My Eyes. There's a lot of stuff happening before you even sing. So the theatrics, I kind of get. So has your, in your movie making, has that kind of developed over time from the first film? Which was, what was the first film? Undoubtedly. Well, it depends on if it's my first film or our first film. So Luke and me...

Rusty (05:25.374)
and the band really championed Priceless, the movie, a song called Priceless, something we shared about from stage a lot. And then I've had these little dabbles in filmmaking for years. I did a country film in 2014 where I played Billy Ray Cyrus' son. Okay. With Priceless, I did another film, speaking of playing sons, that released last year called Journey to Bethlehem. It's a musical I play Antonio Bandera's son.

And now there's like this flip-flop where I'm playing the father In in a film with unsung hero, I play my own dad in the film Which I've dubbed a very expensive therapy session so we've had enough like blips on the radar by the grace of God I think to get my sort of Acting you know feet under me because acting is very different from the stage Everything with the stage is just big and boisterous and you're sort of playing to the person in the back of the room

And with the camera and film, everything is just, it's all right here. Wow. I forgot you were in Journey to Bethlehem. I loved that movie. Now there were people that didn't like it. They thought it was, were taking the story too lightly. Did you get pushback like that? Funny, I never did. I mean, it was different for Mariah and me. So Mariah, my wife, played

uh... mother mary sister deborah in the film okay and she got cast in at first and then i uh... at the very eleventh hour last year actually i was flying over to spain where they filmed to visit her for four days and they had literally just cast antonio mid-production and they called and said hey would you like to mariah actually called and said they want to offer you the role to play

Rusty (07:20.018)
And the whole project was a delight for her and me. I felt as a, now as a director, I felt for Adam Anders and Nikki Anders, the ones that wrote all the music and the screenplay. Because yeah, they were folks that I just felt, the spirit of it was so joyous and so creative and the music and I felt the tenets of the story were very much, obviously it's the greatest story ever told. The tenets of the story were very much intact.

They weren't running around Jerusalem singing songs, at least that we know of at that point. And so it was a bit sad for him, but no, all I've gotten is eight year olds coming up saying more than my music, like with a spear in hand trying to do the dance in my blood, you know? Yes, that's so true. Well, I gotta be honest, you know, it's Christmas, it's a Christmas movie. I thought, well, we should see it. I'm a pastor, I feel like I should see this. Right.

But then I get there and I realize it's a musical and I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah, I don't like musicals either. What are we doing? But first of all, the movie was great. The music was really, really good. The music's world class. I mean, like the song Mary sang, I thought, boy, this is powerful. I wept. I cried. Every time I, Mother to a Savior and King is what the song's called. I cried every time I hear it. I think it's a classic. It's a great song. Really well done, too. OK, let's talk about Unsung Hero.

Yeah. Movie is about your family. It is. Give us some background on it. Yeah, well, like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode here, it kind of starts in Australia. You know, it starts with. Dad promoting shows at the Sydney Opera House, and actually, if we're going to get very specific, it starts as at a striper concert, which were one of some of my first memories, Rusty, were like at.

Yellow and black attack striper concerts or holding their vinyl 45s. And so this is oh she's done it Hero

Rusty (09:23.022)
She brought the coffee. For those not watching on YouTube, shame on you. You're missing the receiving of coffee right now. This is the liquid of God for me. Why don't you take a drink? Can we just talk about Striper for a little bit? Because that was a huge part of my growing up. Whoa. I loved Striper. Did you have long hair? I did not. I was not allowed. Did you wear spandex? I did not. I was not allowed. My parents would sooner I watch a white snake video than a Striper video because- Oh, they were out. Oh, sheep and wolf's clothing.

or wolves and sheep floating. I flipped that around. But it was, you know, I had to kind of hide it, but I loved it. And the fact that you referenced the original yellow and black attack tells me you're a true fan. True fan. It's actually crazy because we just launched a hilarious and very preposterous version.

of to hell with the devil with Michael Swede on guitar for king and country and lecrae oh my and it is just as ridiculous as it sounds it's amazing we did a music video of Kaden actually sitting over here to the side and directed the music video and we did a whole thing and so the film we're getting sidetracked this is why you listen to these right because you just go on rabbit trails so we start we start the film starts at this striper concert and um

It chronicles dad losing everything in Australia through a tour that went bad. He lost the equivalent of half a million dollars today. And then in the name of chasing a dream, mom and he agreed to move to the States. He'd been offered a job for two years. And so six kids, mom was six months pregnant at the time, 16 suitcases, moved halfway around the world from everyone we knew.

from the accent we knew, from the world we knew, the life we knew, and then when we arrived, almost immediately lost his job. And so we were stuck on the other side of the world, and this is the 90s, with nowhere to go, no one to turn to, and so we sat in a circle and we just prayed for everything. We prayed for a car, we prayed for checks to cover our rent, we prayed for our little sister, we were in a hospital, prayed for the next meal.

Rusty (11:43.226)
And obviously Luke and I were very young at the time, like I said, but we just saw God do incredible, miraculous interventions through the community, through the church, and through unexplainable events. And so about this 2020 was in the middle of the pandemic. Lucas shared this story from stage for years as a pay it forward child advocacy.

segment of our show.

And he came up with the idea of like, what if we just have someone put pen to paper on a screenplay? So that was 2020. Wow. And here we are almost four years later and Lionsgate's putting in 2,500 theaters. Which is outrageous. What's the main message you hope people walk away from after they see this movie? Well, it's an adventure film. Like it's a drama for sure, but it's such a, it's a family film. It's an adventure film.

It's a true story. It certainly circles around mums and miracles and music and migration with us moving from Australia to the United States. But it's really a, it's a film, there's a great, there's a great line in the film where our granddad says, "'Your family's not in the way they are the way.'" And that's probably, if you had to anchor like,

Locked down what the sort of sentiment is that was that was really kind of the why behind it is that you know it chronicles our sister of Bex and James starting like stepping into music and us kind of becoming the road crew and As we and then she was really one that sort of pulled us out of a level of poverty that you know All too many people know about and so yeah, I think the why is family is to put

Rusty (13:42.37)
family on the screen. It's interesting even in the faith and family film genre. There's a lot of faith films. There's actually very few. Can you name a family film maybe other than Journey to Bethlehem? Like there's not been many family films and so we felt it's 2 to 82. It's an opportunity people come to the theater. So much so that we've dubbed April 26th the release date family day. You got Mother's Day, you got Father's Day. We could use a good family day at the theaters and so...

man, we hope people come out and experience this special story. You mentioned playing your dad was a little bit of like a very expensive therapy. What, what did you discover about him through that process? Maybe you didn't know before. That's a good question. I was the act when we moved, of course, cause we were so young. We had always.

experienced this story from a childlike perspective. And it was such an oxymoron because although we felt so we were so unsafe, emotionally, you know, logistically, physically, we felt so safe spiritually and emotionally in God's love, if you will, and in our family's love and in our parents love. And so for us, it was a great adventure.

When it came, I co-wrote the screenplay as well, so when it came time to writing it, and then particularly playing dad in it, it was like, oh my goodness.

the anxiety, the compounding failure, the pride, the insecurity, the journey that he went on, you know, really dropping into his shoes as someone now who is roughly his age when he moved. Wow. And it gave me a whole other level of empathy for him that I'll take to my grave, you know. Your parents are not in the way.

Rusty (15:40.578)
they're the way. Family. Maybe parents can be in the way sometimes. But families not in the way they are the way. They are the way. I love that. Anybody in the film that you want to talk about that was kind of a break out performance or keep an eye on them? Well some unabashed fun facts about the film. If you were a fan of the TV show Nashville, Jonathan Jackson is in it. If you were a fan of the TV show Lost or John Locke.

Terry O'Quinn is in it and does a marvelous job. If you're a fan of the Fast and the Furious franchise, Lucas Black, who was the lead in Tokyo Drift, he's tucked away in there. If you're a fan of the Hallmark Channel, you got Candice Cameron Bray. But one of the great performances of the film was by a woman named Daisy Betts, who played our mom. And she was also one of the miracles of the film, because...

She, um...

You can imagine, so I mentioned I played dad. I also co-wrote the screenplay. I also co-directed it. Very indulgent, I know. And, but part of the co-directors, the directors role is to cast the movie. So you're casting your sister and your sibling, you're casting yourself, which that's a trippy exercise. But you're also casting your mom. And I think I drove.

You know, I almost drove Beverly Holloway, our casting director, mad because, because I was, it was such a sacred cow for me, casting mum. And I had some rules that I just did not think were breakable. Uh, one was that she was genuinely Australian. And one that she was around the age, uh, that mum was. And th and thirdly, that, that she was actually a mum in real life.

Rusty (17:34.086)
Once you do that now ring rusty, there's not a lot. So we, our dream, you know, at one point was Rose Burns. We talked to Teresa Palmer's team, who are both Australians, both moms. And for various reasons, they couldn't do it. So we were down to the 11th hour, 10 days. We did not have our Helen, my mom, 10 days before we were going into production for a film. Like we didn't have our unsung hero. And,

I pulled up, we typed in like on Google, like top 100 Australian actresses. Ironically, Rebecca, our sister, was one of them. So for a split second, we were like, should we? And they're like, nah, that's very Old Testament. So we hopped off that train pretty quick. But amongst the other actresses in that list was Daisy Betts.

And so we reached out to her agent on a Friday. Her agent kind of reluctantly put it in front of her. She read it over the weekend. We got on a Zoom call that Monday. And we were all, her included, were like, this is it. But she's in Brisbane, Australia. She's half a world away. She's a three year old. She's four kids. And we said, how on earth are you gonna leave your family? And she said, well, you know, she said, oh, you're not gonna believe this, but.

actually, I was producing another film during this time. And so we'll just push that in Australia. So we'll just push that later. But my parents were already, I'd already made all the plans. My parents were already coming into town to watch the kids. Everyone had already planned on me being away. And so that's okay. And then we were like, but Daisy, what about, this is 2022, so this is on the back of the pandemic. What about your passport? Because we'd approached a couple of actors and it's like, well, I don't have my passport. Love to do it, but I don't have my passport.

And she was like, well, you're not going to believe this. I was in Hawaii earlier this year, and a friend of mine just encouraged me on a whim just to renew my passport. Just do it, just in case. So she had a, none of her family did, but she had a passport. And so that was on the Monday. And then on that Friday, she was on a plane to America. And then we, if my memory serves me, we started the next like Monday or Tuesday.

Rusty (19:59.69)
of the following week. Oh, that's amazing. So she was a great miracle in the film. And man, there were so many. Obviously the film depicts so many miracles, but there were so many behind the camera as well. That's incredible. Well, can I ask you about your music for just a minute? Of course, yeah. Who were your musical influences?

made you who you are today? Well, not to sort of close the loop and tie it back into the movie, but one of the incredible exercises musically about the movie is not only, man, not only is there some great music in the film, like some great needle drops, like Jesus Jones or Rod Stewart, Lenny Kravitz, Seal, Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Striper, as we mentioned. Like, there's just some great musical moments. We actually are releasing a song in the film.

that no one's ever heard before as a band. But then we did a whole Inspired By soundtrack. And we did more features, Rusty, on this Inspired By than any record in the history of the band. To name a few, Striper, as I mentioned, the Cray, Lee Bryce, who's a country artist, Michael W., Amy Grant, we remade their songs, Lead Me On and Place in This World, and they sung on them.

Our sister Rebecca James, Sleeping At Last, Hilary Scott from Lady A, so many just marvelous names on this. And we just, we had so much fun because again, speaking of musical influences, this is the music that built us. Right. You know, this is the era that we fell in love with music was where all of these bands and artists, Seal was a massive, his records were massive influences, a massive influence on Luke and me. And so

To be able to do this inspired by and sort of take the lid off the thing, there's hip hop songs on there and country songs on there and hymns on the inspired by was just such a great exercise. And so I would put them a lot of those acts, particularly the legacy acts in the category of heroes. You two, you two is massive. Bono is a massive inspiration for me as well. I just saw them at the Sphere. I did, too. Did you see them towards the end, then?

Rusty (22:18.57)
I did. Amazing. Sort of transcendent. Yeah, it's just... I said to someone, when I left, I said, in the history of mankind, there has never been a musical, sonic or visual experience more curated and more technologically advanced for the human emotion than what the sphere is. Think about it. Right.

Never. I mean the technology in that room is outrageous. We go into basketball arenas so often and they're designed for a bunch of really tall blokes to bounce a ball back and forth. They're not designed for a concert, you know, but this was 17,000 people and this whole thing was designed for a live performance. Right. It was amazing. Yeah. I can't even describe it. You got to sing a song with Dolly Parton. True story. What was that like?

We just wanted to give her a break, you know, we just, she's a new artist. Wanted to just really wanted to find, uh, one of the great highlights and compliments of our time as musicians, you know, for so man, for so many reasons, rusty one, because first of all, I'm, we are brothers to a, a woman, Rebecca

Rusty (23:46.47)
Her journey as a musician. It's hard to be a woman in music. I'm a husband to a wife who is a latin country artist It's hard to be a music a woman in music Dali's been in music for 50 years. Yeah, think about all the chauvinism misogynism and all the You know, and she's a she's a beautiful woman Like just think about all she's had to deal with in her 50 years and yet she still has that light, right?

she still has that grace, she's still, she told me, she's like, oh you're a handsome one, I, you know, people tell me I need to be upset at men, I love men, like, and she stayed faith, you know, she's faithful to her husband, and she's written, Jolene, like, I will always love you, I mean, she's written some of the great songs of all time, and so, when we presented,

Rusty (24:38.446)
I mean, I ask a lot of people to be involved, and I get shut down a lot, to be honest. And within presenting it, like a week later, we were on the phone with Dolly herself. And I remember her saying on the call, like, y'all, I just, I love this song. I think it's one of the great songs I've ever heard, and I'd love to sing it with you, and we should do a music video, and we should perform it on television. And you know, your jaw, the combination of your brain falling out of your head and your jaw hitting the floor, you're just going like.

How can this be? You know? That she wants to sing, and she was as advertised, Rusty. That's what I'm also so proud of. Sometimes you get worried about the peak behind the curtain because you're like, where are all the dead bodies buried? And she's just so charming and lovely and lovable. Yeah, it was a great experience. We won a Grammy for it with her. Yeah, it's amazing. It was just preposterous, you know?

Well, let me ask you this about your music, last question about that. And I know you write these songs, you have to record them, you have to play it like a million times for them to get all they want, to be able to put it on a, whatever we say now, not an album, but Spotify. Streaming platforms. Right, and then you go out and perform it, there's gotta be songs you're like, oh my goodness. I know this is somebody's first time hearing this live, I gotta put everything into it, but there's gotta be a song that you think,

but that one means something right now. What's that song for you right now? Do you have that with sermons, by the way? Yes, absolutely. But you have the go-to one, right? I got the go-to one. That you're like, and you still enjoy it? Parts of it. Parts, okay. Fair enough, fair enough. I think similarly to you probably, there are those songs that, and I roll is a strong way to put it, but there's songs that you just have, you've performed 1,500 times at this point, you know.

But the way we approach the live show is so much more about creating and curating experience for the audience much more than what we want to get out of the night. And that's actually a really helpful mindset because you're sitting there going, OK, you know, what are these? Their joy. It's that whole adage. It's greater to give than it is to receive. Right. It's like when you see.

Rusty (27:05.674)
That song when you see proof of your love that you've been singing for 10 better part of 10 years means something to someone You go well that makes it worth it and yes there are certainly nights where you like do we have to but The nights are actually probably less about the song and more about like you just got nothing left to give you know how it is You you have to show up at 930 on a Sunday like you have to show up at 9 p.m.. On a Saturday night or whatever it is

And it does not matter what life you're walking through relationally emotionally spiritually health wise I mean you kind of need you've got a commitment, right? And so it's more about the like, I don't know have it in me tonight and God's graces Is sufficient because somehow we're still standing and somehow we still end up showing up, you know as far as songs though that are like they're just

are a real thrill to sing. Burn the Ships has actually been one that has, was sort of slow and steady, but it's like compounded over the time. We released that song about five years ago, but almost now more than ever, you just see people. I remember a month or two ago, we were playing it and,

Rusty (28:29.426)
from the moment the song came in. Do do do. That little line comes in. You just, there was someone sitting in sort of the front area and you could just, poof, just see them break. And so, literally towards the end of the song, she was close enough where I got to literally go, I've never spoken to this woman in my life, but I got to step off the stage and I just got to hold her and she just wept. And there was something about the,

And the power of music, the power of God, the power of that moment, and I've not obviously seen her since, but it was like, we are connected forever through that moment. And she felt safe, 12,000 people in the room just to weep. And I don't even know what took place, what great loss she'd faced or hurt she'd faced, but yeah, that'll...

That'll humble you. Wow. Quick. That's so good. And one day you'll find out what was going on. Yeah, one day. One day. Come up to me on the other side of this whole thing and say, hey, do you remember when we were back down there and this thing happened? Okay, so I gotta ask you this. Australia's greatest treasure. I'm gonna give you a few options. Okay. Is this like a test? Nope.

You're personal. Cause I think I'm the authority here. Personally. Rusty, all right. Crocodile Dundee. Right. Crocodile Hunter. Good, good pull. Okay. Good delineation. Hugh Jackman. Oh man. Nicole Kidman. I'm gonna have to put my coffee down for this. This is serious. Or men at work. Just got serious. All right, I can take men and work off the table. Sorry guys. Really? Yeah, they're off the table. Okay, oh wow. The Vegemite sandwich.

I'll take Crocodile Dundee off the table as much as I love the film franchise. Um... So I'm gonna leave you with the Crocodile Hunter. Hugh and Nicole. Um...

Rusty (30:37.51)
I'm gonna rate them top three. Okay. Because I don't think I can pick. Okay. Or all three as number one. Look, I admire Nicole, because similarly to Dolly, like the lady has just moved continents and she's still got that sparkle in her eye. She lives just a few miles actually from where we live in Nashville, Tennessee, her and Keith. I just have much admiration for her.

I am a enormous fan of Hugh Jackman. Like, I don't know if you, if I've said it publicly, but he would be at the top of the list for me as actors are concerned. He's Wolverine and Greta Shulman. Yeah. And I love the way he can shape shift in roles as well. And I love the fact that he's kept, he seems like a really kind man. I've heard a lot about him. So.

And then I don't think you can ever put crocodile hunter, excuse me, Steve Owen, on a list and not put him at the top. Because he's immortalized now because of his life and his death, frankly. And it was a crazy thing to see Australians go... They were so annoyed with Steve most of his career because they were just like...

You know, you're giving Australia a bad name, mate. This is what everyone thinks of. When they think of Australia, they just think of the crocodile hunter. And like, that's not, we're not all like that, you know, that whole thing. And then when he passed, he's like a national hero, you know, and rightfully so, because never has there more been a genuine man who just loved God's good earth and loved his family well, and they're still living on his legacy. So I can't choose, I gotta go. It's a three for one deal. I'll accept that. And that's the right answer. Yeah.

Thank you. Man. Thanks for being at the church. Thanks for what you're gonna do for this conference. This is great. And thanks for sitting down with me. Great to just settle, sit down for a moment. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it, brother.

Rusty (32:45.31)
Yeah. That's good. That was very generous of you. Thank you. Absolutely. Not just one word answers, but really.