Writing with a brave heart

Walking into Edinborough Castle 12 years ago, Randall Wallace, Trinity '71, met the man who would make him a fortune.

Wallace saw a statue of William Wallace, who died in 1305. William Wallace was Scotland's greatest hero, and next to him was a statue of the greatest Scottish king, who had handed Wallace over to the English.

"I thought, this is the stuff of great literature," Wallace said. "A man who had sunk to an incredible depth and had out of the ashes become a hero. They said William Wallace was hanged and taken down while still alive, drawn and quartered, disemboweled, beheaded. His death rallied Scotland and renewed the revolt against England."

More than 600 years later, the same story inspired Randall Wallace to write his historical epic, "Braveheart."

Having just returned from the European premiere in Scotland, Wallace has returned to the University where his writing career began.

Wallace will be speaking this evening before a free showing of his film in Page Auditorium as part of the Duke-in-Hollywood career conference, which is bringing back alumni to encourage students and begin networking.

"Duke connections didn't exist for me then, in terms of someone from Duke on the other side of the chasm that I needed to cross," Wallace said.

Many other universities have huge networking programs in Hollywood. Duke is just starting one.

"For other careers there are prescribed paths to follow. If you want to be a doctor you go pre-med," Wallace said. "But there's no prescription to be a writer. You've got to follow you're own path. Those who do it, do it uniquely. What worked for them may not work for anyone else."

Wallace did not start out screen writing. Originally, he was a songwriter. During his freshman year at the University, he started a record company. Wallace was the recording artist, songwriter and salesperson. He cut two records and got a record contract in New York after he graduated.

Wallace said it wasn't fun for him to sing the songs that his producer wanted him to sing. He returned to his home state of Tennessee and got a job at Opryland USA before packing up and moving out to Los Angeles. There wasn't much light for him in Tinsel town, though.

"There were a lot of dark days. I lived in an attic when I came to L.A.," Wallace said. "I found that no matter how hard I tried, it didn't seem to be getting [me] anywhere in anything I was doing."

He worked as a songwriter and as a television screenwriter. "They were just really awful projects, but they paid good money," Wallace said. "After years of struggling, I made a block of money all of a sudden, but I realized also that I was going to die if I made a career out of writing about things like disco roller skating."

Wallace said he needed to write something more substantial, which is what his teachers at the University had told him. His freshman year, a writing teacher told him, "`You are trying to cram an ocean of emotion into a teacup, and you need to find a vessel big enough to contain all you want to put in it.' Obviously I've never forgotten it," Wallace said.

"Braveheart" is that vessel. The three-hour epic is one of the most positively reviewed movies in Paramount history, Wallace said. One of his favorite reviews from Chicago called the writing "hot-blooded."

"I loved that review because he said something about my work that I want to achieve," Wallace said. "I want to believe that I write from the heart with that kind of emotional immediacy."

Before Wallace found movies, he also tried writing novels. Wallace's first novel, "The Russian Rose," is based on his background at the University. It was about a character who had gone to Duke and was failing in his career as a songwriter because no one would pay any attention to his work.

His next novel, "So Late Into The Night," was also influenced by his college experience. "I don't know if Reynolds Price knows this, but he helped inspire that story as well. One day in my freshman writing class he asked us as a class to write down what the greatest betrayal a person could do for their mate. Most all of us thought the greatest betrayal was sexual infidelity. He said, `No, the greatest betrayal is suicide, because you can't ask your mate if it's your fault and deal with it.' It rattled around in my head for a long time," Wallace said.

He based the novel on a woman who went to Duke. In the novel, she becomes a famous presidential speech writer, and her husband tries to kill himself because he went from being a big ACC basketball player to a nobody.

Now that his work on "Braveheart" is over, Wallace is one of the highest-paid writers in Hollywood. Still, he doesn't sleep in. "If I don't write early, I can't write. I usually start about 5:30 in the morning and do most of my writing before noon, and maybe a little after," he said. Wallace keeps the afternoons for meetings and phone calls. "I usually meet other writers at breakfast, and we'll talk over what we're doing. I like to have lunch alone because I like to sit and sort of drift in whatever I'm writing."

Wallace will be signing books at 3:30 p.m. today in the Gothic Bookstore. He is also scheduled to be present at the showing of "Braveheart" at 8 p.m. tonight in Page Auditorium.