Never Give Up (The Hill Movie)

Never Give Up: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Never Give Up: this mp4 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Ken McMullen:
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Outlaws. If this is your first time, welcome. If it's not your first time, welcome. Becoming Outlaws engages celebrities, scholars and diverse voices in candid conversations about following Jesus. Defying societal norms and exploring profound and sometimes not so profound questions of faith. In this episode, we're going to discuss a soon to be released film, The Hill. It stars Dennis Quaid, Colin Ford, and others. Directed by Jeff Celentano. It's a true story about Ricky Hill, who as a child had a degenerative disc disease as well as a dream to play Major League Baseball. Those two things don't usually go together very well. Here's a sneak peek.

Ken McMullen:
wow. Even the even the trailer leaves you with goosebumps. That is it. I've seen the film. It's really, really good. And what I didn't mention is we actually have Jeff and Ricky Hill with us here. Welcome, guys.

Jeff Celetano:
Nice to be here.

Ken McMullen:
I got a question first for you, Ricky is so when I hit the age 40 or so, I was having a little bit of back pain, got it diagnosed and had this phone call that scared me that says you have degenerative disc disease. I thought, oh, my goodness, what is happening? Well, come to find out. Everyone's discs age, they decline with time. What's the difference between what an aging adult would have and then what you had as a child where you had to have leg braces? Well.

Rickey Hill:
I really didn't have any any disc. Which is a big difference than. A disc disease. The what I had was it was tied into my legs as well. But my legs when I was born were wrapped around one another, which created one problem. And then the other problem was when on up to the up to my. Uh, my back and my spine where I didn't have any. I was born with very little disc. At the same time, my grandmother and my great grandmother had the same very thing. That put them in wheelchairs at a very young age.

Jeff Celetano:
You. It's like a 60 year old man when you were. How old, Rick?

Rickey Hill:
17. Wow.

Ken McMullen:
So with the ancestral history of that, what you had. What drives somebody to want. I know kids have dreams, but to do what seems physically impossible, which in your case is to play Major League Baseball. When everything is against you doing that physically, what drives somebody to persevere past that? To mentally get past the barriers that they they they're feeling.

Rickey Hill:
Kind of like kind of like in the Bible where it says and the greatest one of all is love. I had the love of the game. And nothing could stop me from when you have that love and that passion. It's not a dream. You're going you're going to do it one way or the other. When you have that made up in your mind, somehow you're going to make it happen. And this movie shows somehow I made it happen and I had help. From a Heavenly Father. That. Help me make it happen. And that's the reason why this movie's even being made today, is because of the help that I had. I didn't do this alone.

Ken McMullen:
And Jeff, what? What drew you to this movie?

Jeff Celetano:
Well, I'll tell you, but I wanted to just talk about real quick. One thing Ricky said at the end of the movie, which I can't give away what he does, which Dennis was blown away by, he said, I can't believe this kid did this. Ricky went through the struggle you see him going through in the movie, But then when he gets up there after the tragedy that happened right before the last hit, which I don't want to give away, but right when he got up there, he said he was he had tears in his eyes and he was ready to quit. He really he didn't have anything left. He had he had been he had been coaching for both teams, you know, designated hitter for two teams. He was he went through that thing that happened. I don't want to tell you what it is. And then after that, he said he felt like a train hit him. He had nothing left. And suddenly something came over him inside of him that he wasn't ready for. It just came into him and he said everything changed. He said he didn't even really know where he was. He just knew that he could do what he had to do. And he just stepped up to that plate and that's when he carved the cross in the sand and steps into that, putting God before him. And when we were at Joel Osteen's Osteen's Lakewood Church a couple nights ago in Houston screening the movie, the audience erupted over that moment because they related to it in such an honest way. So that I just wanted to add. But yes, going back to my journey on this movie, is that what you were asking?

Ken McMullen:
Ken Yeah. How did you get brought in or what? What made you want to be a part of this one?

Jeff Celetano:
Well, it all it all started when I read the script. I mean, my brother met Ricky in a lobby of a hotel accidentally. He was sitting there in another chair overhearing Ricky's conversation about how frustrated he was trying to find the right director and the right people for this movie. And my brother leaned over afterwards and said, Sorry for eavesdropping, sir, but I have found your director. And Ricky kind of was, you know, suspect and called me that night. My brother forced him to get on the call on the phone and call me. And Ricky sent me the script. And from the moment I read the script, it was an incredible story that I just it got inside of me in a way that just like Ricky said, what happened to him with he played five seasons for the Montreal Expos and then got cut because they found out about his he had this degenerative spinal disease from everybody. They didn't know about it. And when they found out, they cut it and his career was over and he was very upset and he said, why? Why did this happen? Why did God take this away from me? And then today he knows why. Because he was meant to tell this story, to inspire everyone. He was put on earth for this and I was put on earth to make this movie. It's same thing happened to me 17 years later. I got the movie made. Um, originally we were in Utah making this movie with another group of people that fell through. Then the financing came together again. I was in Oklahoma in offices, scouted all the locations, was two weeks away from shooting, hired Dennis Quaid.

Jeff Celetano:
That was six years ago. That fell apart. They bought real estate instead. The investors. Dennis loved the movie so much. He said, Don't worry about paying me. I'm on this movie for life. I love this story. It's the most incredible story I've read, I think, in my life, and definitely one of the harder roles I've ever had to play because James Hill was a complicated man and he loved the faith element of it. I loved everything about it, but it goes further than that. I can't explain, Ken, why I got so obsessed with this movie, but I think it was the the fact that the story was so compelling and that I felt it appealed to everybody. And I felt that I want to make a movie like Seabiscuit, you know, Seabiscuit. That horse just got to me. And that's one of my favorite movies of all time. Field of Dreams is another one, The Natural. All those movies about people who did the Impossible or animals that did the impossible. This movie resonated with me in that way, and I wanted to make a movie that everybody could go see, every family member, every age and nobody I mean, what I hate about movies that try to get all the family members in there, they're milquetoast, they're kind of kind of washed out. And the stories are like Hallmark movies. I didn't want to make that. I wanted to get the writer of Rudy Angelo Pizzo on and write a big, epic, sweeping story that would last for years and years and years.

Jeff Celetano:
And there was a man at the Lakewood Church when we screened the movie who came up to me after we were taking photographs with people. And he shook my hand and he had tears in his eyes and he said, Jeff. I cannot tell you what this movie did to me, he said. There's three kinds of movies. He was very intelligent guy, he said. There's the movie that you never want to see and you never hear about. There's the movie that you see and you never want to see again. And then there's a movie that you want to see over and over and over again. And this is that movie, he says, I think this movie is going to last forever. And that's kind of, I think, what happened to me from reading the script the first time. I think it just got inside me and it was my destiny to tell this story because I never gave up on it. Like Ricky. Ricky never gave up, you know, Ricky told Red Murff, I'm the hardest hitter you're ever going to see. I'm the best hitter you're ever going to see. And when I met Ricky after he told me that I was trying to figure out how to convince him I was the guy. And I walked up to him. And when I met him again in Texas and I shook his hand and I said, Ricky, I'm the best hitter you're ever going to find for this movie. And that was it. Yeah. And so that's the story.

Ken McMullen:
You mentioned a few movies there, so Field of Dreams, it had an extra element besides a baseball movie of having the father son element, which added a lot. And then the natural didn't have that, but it had that naturally born gift somebody has. And there's an appeal to that, right. Um, the hill has the father son element, the natural where somebody is gifted with something and then it adds a spiritual element of faith to it, which it's like the best of all of those worlds come together, I think. Yeah. And I was pleasantly surprised. And I'm not trying to put down a lot of faith based movies, but sometimes they're at a lower quality or it's kind of predictable and that somebody gets involved in something they shouldn't. You have family praying for them and they end up at a church. Alter and then it's the end of the movie and everyone's happy, right? This wasn't blatantly that you could go into it, not really realize it was a spiritual movie, but you would feel spiritually moved. To me, it's a movie about, well, I think your theme of it is that never give up, right?

Jeff Celetano:
Never give up. And you know, that is the theme. And every boy that's trying to find the love of his father could could see this movie and figure a way out, a way to come together. To me, people say, what is this movie about, Jeff? Is it a baseball movie? Is it a sports drama? No. I didn't make a sports drama. I made a film about a family coming together and a boy trying to find the love of his father. And in the end, he does through his unbelievable gift and faith, you know, And that's that's what I made or I set out to make anyway and tried to make.

Ken McMullen:
Yeah. Ricky in the portrayal of your dad, um, it comes across as

Ken McMullen:
Kind of the old school, not just a Baptist minister with his principles. It has that, but the old school disciplinarian that the father, you know, is a disciplinarian he provides. And from a kid's perspective, that sometimes is all you see until you're older and you look back and then you see the love that was in the discipline. So I'm curious, too. It was a Dennis Quaid plays a very loving but stern father. But the sternness comes from wanting the best for you. Is that a perspective you found later in life, looking back at your childhood, or were you able to see that? Was it more of a struggle with a dad that was kind of holding you back from your dreams even if you thought it was the best for you?

Rickey Hill:
No, I was I was very disciplined by him. And what he said goes. Um. It didn't matter what it was. Whatever he said I would do. And, but however, um, when he realized that, that, you know, he saw me hitting rocks all the time and with a stick because we couldn't afford, um, a baseball or a glove or. Anything that has to do with the sport alone. But I gained a lot of talent through going through that. Even being handicapped, I gained a lot of talent of hitting a small rock with. With a small stick. And it was very poor.

Jeff Celetano:
So he hit 2000 rocks a day on a railroad track with his brother.

Rickey Hill:
Yeah, I did. I did. I hit couple thousand, maybe more all day long. And all the.

Ken McMullen:
Movie.

Rickey Hill:
Rocky Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. As far as stopping, there was no stopping. Um, but. But even with my father, I had to let him know that. That I wanted to make a choice. My own choice of what I wanted to do with my life, whether I wanted to be in the ministry or if I wanted to play baseball. And he actually understood. And. We kind of came to terms terms that way. And he supported me. Every night that I played baseball, he would come into the room, check on me to make sure I'm okay and make sure that how I did always checked on me, which was really, really a great thing. Um, even though I wasn't behind the pulpit, you know, I was behind a or I was beside a plate baseball player, you know, a plate. And so. Yeah, he. It was in the beginning. Yes, he was. It was tough, but it got a lot easier when I was able to do both. Right.

Ken McMullen:
In growing up, you would have been called What's a right? A preacher's kid. Right. But even so, growing up in church, even if your dad's not a pastor, it's easy to learn the Christian faith what it is, but not necessarily have it. Um, when was the point in your life Where do you have a moment or a point in your life where your Christian faith became your own and not just something you had been taught?

Rickey Hill:
Um. I was born again at seven years old. I accepted Christ. And from that time on, I thought that I was know I was wanting to be in the ministry. But wanting in the ministry does not mean you're called to be in the ministry. A lot of people go into the ministry, maybe even today's times in this world for a business. I'm not I wasn't in this for a business because I believe you have to be called by Christ in order to be in the business of I say business. It's not a business. If for a for the love. And I wasn't called into the ministry, I was called to play baseball and minister through. Baseball.

Ken McMullen:
Right. And Jeff had mentioned that kind of a romantic moment in the movie. But at that point in your life during this baseball game where you had to brush yourself off and keep going without any energy of your own. He termed it in something to the effect of something came over you or in you. I'm going to assume that was more than adrenaline.

Rickey Hill:
No, it's called Holy Spirit.

Ken McMullen:
Explained that the people who don't know. What are those moments like?

Rickey Hill:
They're incredible. You know, like just like this Friday night when we were at Joel Osteen's The Holy Spirit was throughout that house rocking that whole rocking that whole church apart. And you don't find them very often. But for the very first time, I got to witness the Holy Spirit when I was actually 18 years old, and I didn't even know what really the Holy Spirit was. I knew what salvation was, but not the Holy Spirit and. The other night when we were at the at the church at Lakewood Church? Yeah, at Lakewood Church. I got to see the Holy Spirit. I'm talking about on Turbo.

Jeff Celetano:
Yeah. I mean, if people were in that room who were atheists, they would have felt it. Yeah, there's no doubt it wasn't anything to do with anything other than it was real. I can't You can't even imagine. I mean, I've been making movies for 40 years. I've been to millions of screenings. I've seen incredible movies that people loved and walked out of, elated. I've never seen anything do something to an audience like this did. And that's not because it's my movie. I could care less. I'm telling you the truth. It Ricky was gone emotionally. He couldn't even talk. I couldn't get out of my seat because people were just the energy in the room. I said to Jacqueline, who put the whole thing on, which is Joel Stein's sister in law. I said, Holy smokes. Like, what is going on in that room in there? She said, It's pretty intense, isn't it? I said, I've never felt anything like that in my life, you know. And that's what happened to Ricky right before that last hit in the film. Something got in him and he knows what it is, but at the time, he didn't know he he felt it, but he didn't. He was so beat up that he felt this whole different energy coming to him. And he stood up and he did the impossible. And then later he knew what it was, you know. Right. No question.

Ken McMullen:
What's your thought on it seems like the industry is mean with. Surprisingly hit shows like The Chosen or the movie The Jesus Revolution. Now the sound of freedom that are rising up and being competitive, if not outselling at the box office, major blockbusters that there's something going on.

Jeff Celetano:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Ken McMullen:
To me this movie. Seems to not just go along with that, but like go to the next level because it was at Briarcliff. That's not that's not a small potatoes or some underground little company we never heard of. That's big time.

Speaker11:
Yeah.

Ken McMullen:
As far as. Oh, I'm.

Jeff Celetano:
Sorry. Hopped out a little bit.

Ken McMullen:
Ricky with Dennis Quaid. Did you have a part in vetting actors or how involved were you in this? Did you when actors were picked, did you choose them? Did Jeff choose them?

Rickey Hill:
Yeah. Jeff. Jeff chose him, not me. Uh, you know, I was born to swing a bat. I wasn't born to pick a crew to make my family, but, uh, yeah, Jeff chose all of them. He did. He did all that direction. I wouldn't. I wouldn't have a clue who would. Uh, who would play? My father. Of course. He did it all.

Jeff Celetano:
Ken, you said you said a very interesting thing a minute ago about all these movies that are winning at the box office. Yeah, I think one of the main reasons is because the world is so upside down and a mess that people are dying to get out of their house and go see something that makes them feel good and just makes them makes them feel like they did when they were kids. And I think that this movie does that. I think that's why it's going to win. And I hope and pray it does, because I know it is. Actually, I don't have any doubts anymore because I think people that I've talked to that leave their house and see it, even if they're not having a struggle in life, they get something out of this movie that they weren't expecting. They come out feeling I mean, you know, it's kind of a weird thing to say, but I just want people to walk out of the theater like I do high just high. On the inspiration this movie delivers to them. That's how I feel every time I see it. Yeah, it's so weird to be a director. I tell people, Look, you read the script a thousand times, then you go and you break it down and you try to get it made and you have to pitch the story to investors until you find the right one. You do it til you're purple, then you then you make the movie and you have to shoot it. Then you have to edit it. Then you have to do the sound. And every time you do sound and effects and music, you have to watch it. I've seen the movie 1000 times and every movie I have ever made up until this day except for the Hill.

Jeff Celetano:
I say at the end of the day, when you get the film done, you screen it in the sound house to do a quality control check. And that's usually the last time I ever see it or want to see it until maybe I see it with my cast and crew. That's the highlight because you're seeing it with the beautiful people you made it with. And then I might go to the theater opening night just to see the reaction of the audience, to see if I hit a home run or not. But this movie, I can't stop watching it. I've seen it. I'm going to I told Ricky, I'm going to see this thing four more times in the next two weeks at screenings, and I will not walk out of the theater because every one of them means something to me. Like one of them is a little mini premiere for the investors. I want to see how that audience likes it. The other one is a critics one. I want to see how they feel in the room or the temperature. Another one is our little mini premiere in Augusta, you know, And then the other one is me going to opening night with my friends in Laguna Beach, California, on the 25th of August when it opens. I'm going to watch all of those. I say to myself, Well, I'll go with my friends on the 25th and I'll walk outside and have a drink and have a Coke or something. I'll go back in after it's over and and see my friends. No, I will sit there and watch the reactions of the audience. Yeah, because I just want to see what they feel throughout the movie.

Ken McMullen:
When I played the trailer earlier, I could see both of you in queue and you would think you'd be kind of tuned out because you see, both of you were intently watching the trailer the full two minutes. And Jeff, you were even smiling by the end as if that was the first time you watched it.

Jeff Celetano:
And you know how many interviews like this I've done there are like like a ton. And there's not one moment when I talk to you about this movie. Do I feel like I did it 50 times before? Yeah, I just feel like it's the first time I've done it because there's some spirit guide in this movie that we all know what that is. It's it's a higher power that we can't describe. There's no description needed. It's just in us.

Ken McMullen:
Do you have any concern as a successful actor and Hollywood director to be involved in call it a faith based movie? Uh, you know, inspirational movie, faith in that. Yeah. Going in that genre as far as subtle Hollywood blacklisting or getting pushed to the corner by doing these kinds of is that a real thing or is that any concern of yours?

Jeff Celetano:
No, not at all. Everybody in Hollywood that I know that knows me, you know, on every every single kind of walk of life crew on up to the executives, they all I have a really good relationship with them. They know that I who I am and what I'm about. And I've sent the film to a lot of them that are non Christian people. Who are the Hollywood people you're talking about, and they all love the movie because I did not make a faith movie. I made a movie for the mainstream. I mean, as Briarcliff said, Tom Ortenberg, you hit a movie straight down Main Street. This is for every family all over the world. If you're an atheist, you love this movie. Like I said, if you're if you're a Christian, you love this movie. That's what I want to set out to make because I wanted the non-believers to get something out of it they weren't expecting without hitting them over the head. I mean, I hate those kind of movies. My favorite kind of movies, like I said, are Field of Dreams that have the faith element in it. Rudy had that in it. Hoosiers had that in it, but it was a movie everybody could go see. And that's the kind of movies I make. I don't think I'd ever make a faith movie per se, like you described earlier, the ones where everybody ends up at the in front of the the altar at the end. And it's just not my my kind of thing. I like movies that are subtle in their messages and things like that. Yeah, I'm not worried about it at all. I think it's going to go the opposite. I think everybody's going to love it. As a matter of fact, I just got word the other day that the Director's Guild is going to screen it for on the 23rd of September. They're going to have a private screening for the Director's Guild in New York and LA at the same time. So they like it.

Ken McMullen:
Yeah, it. It's when you make the specifically faith based, it ends up being a faith based audience. It seems like it hits a very narrow group of people. You give them kind of what they want. This one, it felt like to me, kind of like when I was younger, what the Disney movies felt like. Yeah, they weren't woke. They didn't have agendas. They were just like whether they were based on true stories or not inspiring, they uplift you. They're fun. And it just seems like a I mean, there's kind of this spiritual movement I mentioned with the faith based movies recently, but just being real, telling real stories of inspiration. And in this case, um, someone with Faith. Ricki and, and overcoming challenges in their life is what people need.

Jeff Celetano:
Well, listen, like, I love the story, whether it was faith based or not. Bottom line, the problem that happened not the problem, but I mean, the thing that's happening is that Ricky's father was a pastor. Dennis plays his father. His father. And it's a backdrop. It's like the it's like the fabric of the movie. He's a pastor. And Ricky could recite the Bible at the age of eight and had a gift. So ultimately, he was going to be a pastor and his father's eyes. But as he grew up, he he had this ability to put a thing with a stick and a ball together and have hand-eye coordination. That's like amazing. And so that just transition transitioned him into baseball. But what attracted me to the movie, number one, was the family element. The fact that this family is struggling. They're so poor fighting everything that every family fights. It was a universal story to me. That's what got me excited about it. But you really said something, Ken. Everything I try to do in this movie, I feel like I achieved watching it with that audience of the night because they reacted to every little thing that I nurtured in it. But one thing I always kept saying to my my director of photography and the crew, I said, the word for this movie is magic. Magic the Magic Kingdom. I think the Magic Kingdom at Disney. I want to make a Disney film. That is so not me, you guys. I've made action movies and stuff. Like, I want to make a Disney film like the old ones, not the new ones. I want to make a movie like Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit is one of my favorite films because that horse went through so much and wanted to win so badly and it never gave up, even with all the injuries. And in the end, it won. To me, Ricky was Seabiscuit. It was just it was just transferred into a man.

Ken McMullen:
Ricky, before I let you guys go and this one is personal. It's advice from you as a lifelong believer and someone who knows scripture, faith. And wisdom. And it has to go along with the movie in that I feel like if you watch the movie and the point is for inspiration, that if you personally, everyone personally is going through something and you can watch a movie like that and you can come out and go, Well, it's just a movie, but I feel a little better about my situation. I feel like I have a little more hope in it than before I went in. Even if I have head knowledge, God is good. Everything works out, you know, in the end. But that gave me a moment of inspiration. So I'll give you a specific without naming names, I have a friend that was just communicating with yesterday. Older in life, not a child wearing braces. What advice would you give somebody who's going through life challenge at an older age? Not old enough to be retiring, but in a low physical health position that isn't looking good, not terminal, but like man have 20 or 30 more years to live and is a believer, knows all the right things, the right verse. But having a hard time mentally getting past life is just hard right now. Don't feel like. Trying.

Rickey Hill:
Are you asking? Okay, what would. What would I say? Yeah, I would I would say, like I said this about. Two hours ago. Um. I walked into a room. And there's a lot of people in there with different injuries and there's always someone worse than you. There's always someone out there that's involved in a head on collision. In life. There's always someone out there that either falls off a building and is paralyzed for life. There's always someone that's worse than you are. There was always someone out there that was worse than me. And I took what I had and I tried to take what was wrong and try to make it right and was staying all the because there's a lot more to this than you than you would ever believe if I told you my whole story. But I would say there's always someone out there that's worse than you, I can promise you. And this person that's having the having their problems, they have to overlook those, pray their way through it and trust in God either way. That and they have to really dig down deep in their heart and believe it, that God can do it for alone, for them or he won't. And so I will say this much. Like I said, you just look. You look to him and. He'll answer the prayer one way or the other. Uh, but like I said, there's always someone that's got it tougher than you do.

Ken McMullen:
Right. All right. Thank you for that. And thank you, Rick, for all the perseverance to get your story out there. It's going to affect millions. And thanks, Jeff, for making the film.

Jeff Celetano:
Thank you, Ken. I got to tell you, it's one of my favorite interviews ever. Really? Yeah, you just really got you got a lot of the stuff, the movie. You said things that other people have said, and they're all they've all been fantastic interviews and great people. But you kind of summed it all up in a very like with a lot of wisdom and a very concise way. I just loved it.

Ken McMullen:
I appreciate.

Rickey Hill:
That. Right. That's great and wish.

Ken McMullen:
You good luck with your film, but don't think you need it.

Jeff Celetano:
Oh, thank you, man. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys.

Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.

Automatically convert your mp4 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.

Sonix has many features that you’d love including automatic transcription software, secure transcription and file storage, powerful integrations and APIs, transcribe multiple languages, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.