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• Longer bio on Mr. Sinise
• Steppenwolf Theater Company
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• Operation Iraqi Children

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Tavis: I'm delighted to have talented actor, director, and producer Gary Sinise with us tonight. This fall he's starring in the newest version of one of the hottest shows on TV, CBS's 'CSI' series, this time set in New York City. He's also the co-founder of Operation Iraqi Children, a nonprofit group helping to send much needed school supplies to the children of Iraq. This past November, he toured Iraq for a firsthand look at the conditions there for Iraqi children, and tonight Gary Sinise is back stateside and joins us on our set. Gary, nice to see you.

Gary Sinise: Thank you, thank you. It's great to be here.

Tavis: Nice to have you here. So we'll get to this 'CSI' thing here a little bit later I hope, but just what TV needs, another 'CSI' series, huh? Ha ha ha!

Gary: I'm glad it's me.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! You're glad it's you.

Gary: Yeah. It's a popular series, it's a good series, and I thought it had a good chance to be successful, so, um, I'm jumping in.

Tavis: Well, heck, we're into it. Let's talk about it for a second here. Tell me why you would choose at this point in your career to lock yourself into the rigors of what I'm told is a pretty aggressive schedule for doing a television drama like this on a daily--on a weekly basis when you can pick and choose the movie parts and go here and go there and film in exotic places, et cetera, et cetera. I guess on the one hand, it's job security. On the other hand, why lock yourself down?

Gary: Well, um, it's--you know, it shoots near my house.

Tavis: There you go!

Gary: And I have 3 kids...

Tavis: Right.

Gary: And it's a good show, and there are good people involved in it, and I like the creative head of it--Anthony Zuiker. He's a very smart guy, and he does a great job, and he's a good writer, and they--you know, they wanted me to do it very badly, and it seemed like the right thing at the right time.

Tavis: Yeah this question may not be something you're interested in, but it fascinates me, so, what the heck, I'll ask it. There's some folk--I read a piece the other day, as a matter of fact. I'm trying to think of where I read it, but I read something the other day that suggested that this spin-off, you know, all of the 'CSI's,' all the 'Law & Orders' really one day will lead to, as if television isn't bad enough already, may make television even worse because it detracts from the creativity. I mean, every time I'm flipping the channel--and I'm not mad at Dick Wolf. I wish I were Dick Wolf. But every time I turn the channel I see a 'Law & Order' show on some channel, and now, every time I turn the TV, I see another 'CSI' series somewhere. You think it detracts from the creativity that television ought to offer the viewers, when everything is a spin-off?

Gary: I...look, they only spin the shows off that are successful, you know? I mean, they wouldn't be putting these shows on the air if people weren't watching them. A lot of people are very fascinated with forensic science, obviously, and 'Law & Order' is very much a Sherlock Holmes kind of a show. I think part of the success of those 2 kinds of series is that anybody at any time can tune in and just watch the show. You don't have to have a whole lot of back story with the characters to be able to say, 'Well, what's going on? Why are they doing this and that?' Because each individual show is just basically about solving the crime, and doesn't have a whole lot to do with how they got there or what the characters are doing, or any of that. So that's why they keep spinning these shows off. They're successful, it's a successful format, and I don't know if it's gonna drag TV down or anything like that. Certainly I hope it lasts at least, you know--

Tavis: A few seasons for you. Ha ha ha ha! As long as 'CSI: New York' works, you're happy with it.

Gary: That's right.

Tavis: Um, let me stay away from the TV thing that you're doing now, 'CSI: New York,' to your film career. We all, of course, know you as Lieutenant Dan from 'Forrest Gump' and a thousand other roles you've played, but I raise Lieutenant Dan because I suspect at a time like this, when you play a character like Lieutenant Dan at a time of heightened security around the world, certainly when the U.S. military is involved, they must be calling on you to do some of everything. I know you've been over to Iraq a couple of times. I suspect that it has part to do with the fact that people know you as Lieutenant Dan, this wonderful character you played in 'Forrest Gump.'

Gary: Well, I volunteered for the U.S.O. myself. They didn't seek me out.

Tavis: You volunteered for this?

Gary: Yeah, I volunteered to support the troops, and get out there and show them that we care about them. Shortly after September 11th and right around the time we went into Afghanistan, I called the U.S.O. and I said, 'What can I do to help? I want to, you know, send me...somewhere.' The first trip I went on was to Iraq, and then I went back to Iraq again in November, and each--since then, I think I've been on 12 different trips in probably the past 9 months in support of the troops, and it's, you know, wherever I go, they call me Lieutenant Dan, and I think they have a relationship to that character. They feel something for the character. And the last trip I went on, I took my band. I have a band, and we renamed the band the Lieutenant Dan Band, and just said, 'Well, why don't we just go with it?' We'll just go with it because the troops seem to like it a lot.

Tavis: Yeah. Why would you call up and volunteer your own service? And I'm probing this because I wonder whether or not you are one of those persons that supported the war, and that's in fact why you did it, or you're one of those persons that didn't really support the war, but you're doing it to support the troops.

Gary: I've been involved with veterans' groups for many, many years prior to--even prior to 'Forrest Gump.' For a full 10 years before 'Forrest Gump,' I was involved with Vietnam veterans' issues and groups. I've helped--I was based in Chicago, where my theater was. I started a theater called Steppenwolf. We've been very supportive of the veterans there. Um, I helped build a memorial there, in Lansing, Illinois, a Vietnam veterans' memorial. So for, you know, for a good 20 years now I've been involved with veterans and soldiers and in support of them no matter what they're doing. I mean, look, every president sends the troops somewhere.

Tavis: Somewhere, yeah.

Gary: So, uh--

Tavis: How did you get involved. Take me back 20 years ago. I'm just trying to figure out where the fascination came. How, out of all the things that you could have supported and gotten involved with, even back to Steppenwolf, why this?

Gary: I'll tell you what--there was a moment where I, uh--I was actually here in Los Angeles. I went to see a play in 1980, and it was performed by a group of Vietnam veterans, and this was... You know, I was a young guy, and I went and saw this play and it really knocked me out. I went back to see it again, and then I went back to see it again, and I begged the guys to let me do it. It was written and performed by a group of veterans based on their own experiences in Vietnam. And in 1980 this was prior to, you know, sort of America, you know, saying 'We're sorry' to the Vietnam veteran, and it was only 5 years after the fall of Saigon. So I had this enormous feeling of emotion about it and guilt, quite frankly, when I thought about what I was doing when I was 19 years old. So I begged the guys to let me do the play in Chicago at my theater. They did, and from that point on, I became very, very active with Vietnam veterans groups. While I was working on that play, I took my cast to the V.A., spent time with guys that were struggling with post-traumatic stress, um, got very, very active. They made me an honorary member of the Vietnam Veterans of America at that time, and so, uh, it just became something that I felt very passionate about. And I've always supported veterans and soldiers, and my wife's 2 brothers were in Vietnam, her sister was a captain in the army, her sister's husband was a medic in Vietnam, so I've been very, very active in supporting the troops for a very long time. And now that we're actually sending them someplace and they're getting hurt and they need our support and I'm out there doing it.

Tavis: Now I understand it. I was just trying to figure out what the connection was to how you got so passionate about this. Now I understand. Speaking of your passion about this, you're very passionate about this program that you have co-founded--Operation Iraqi Children. Tell me how you started the program, why you started the program, and what the program is all about.

Gary: Great. Sure. I went to Iraq twice, as I said. And the second time I went there in November--it was with the U.S.O. again--and we went about 40 miles north of baghdad to one of our bases up there. And they took me out into the Iraqi town, and I was able to meet and mingle with Iraqis at an Iraqi school--one of the 1,500-some schools our soldiers have been helping the Iraqis to rebuild over there. The educational system was just basically decimated and the schools were left to pretty much rot. The school that I visited originally didn't have a floor, it didn't have windows, it didn't have fans, a toilet, none of that. And now it has those things, thanks to the troops working with the Iraqis to help rebuild that. And when we went out to this school, I saw these kids interacting with the soldiers in this extremely positive way, and a totally opposite way than we ever see on television, with the Iraqis chanting anti-American stuff, and all the stuff that's going on there. I saw a completely opposite feeling where the kids were just hugging the soldiers and climbing on them and the soldiers felt very protective over these kids. In fact, there's one picture on our web site that has a solider in full battle gear and everything on his hands and knees. He's got a pile of Iraqi kids just on top of him in a pyramid. It's one of my favorite pictures because it shows, you know, another side of the story over there, and I thought, 'This is great, you know? I want to get this footage, this video footage on television. I want people to see another side of the story, and I want to help support these troops in these efforts over here.' So I started talking to them there about what they need, and the kids, although the school is being rebuilt slightly, they still need basic supplies, like pens and pencils. I saw, you know, 3 kids sharing one pencil, you know? Or one little notebook, uh, all packed into a little desk, and they need just basic things to help them learn. And so, by sending these supplies over there that are being distributed to the kids by the soldiers, who are helping to promote the goodwill between the soldiers and the kids, and we're helping the kids to have a new beginning over there. It's a wonderful program that everybody in this country and all the around the world can get involved in and actually participate in doing something positive for the troops.

Tavis: I can interpret what you've just said--I feel your passion just from there to here as you talk about this--I can interpret what you just said in 2 ways, I suspect. One is that Gary Sinise is more concerned... If I were a cynic I'd say he's concerned about the Iraqi children and their educational needs. We've got educational needs for American children right here at home. Why spend his time there? Number one. Or I could say Gary Sinise really does get it. No matter where children are in the world, children need to be loved. Children need a quality education, and the least that we oughta do is to make sure that the children of Iraq are taken care of. Which mindset would I be right in--in--

Gary: Well, you're not incorrect on either front, because absolutely, there are children here in this country that need help as are everywhere in the world. I went there in support of our troops. I went there to help, you know, show our troops that we care about them and we're thinking about them. And while I was there, I saw them interacting with these children, and I wanted to help promote this good will between these soldiers and these kids. By helping the kids, we're helping the soldiers there. And our soldiers are in a war zone over there. They're working very, very hard to try to do something positive over there in a very, very dangerous and difficult situation and circumstances.

Every time one of our soldiers hands, you know, a school kit to a child over there, it sends a completely different signal to that child in terms of what the Americans are like. And that's a very positive thing for the effort there. I mean, we're there. We're in Iraq. Our soldiers are deployed all over the world. What our program tries to do is help soldiers help children. And that's what we're trying to do. As the program grows, we hope to go into other countries and be a part of other countries. Right now it's focused on that because it's such a volatile and difficult situation and these humanitarian efforts are vital to turning that into a positive situation.

Tavis: Well, you're doing good work and I'll be looking forward to your good work on 'CSI: New York.'

Gary: You can go to the web site, too, which is very important. Anybody listening can go to www.operationIraqichildren.org, and they can participate in this program. It's really a program for all people to channel their energies into something positive. And by doing that, you can participate in operation Iraqi children and help these people out.

Tavis: I can hear folks logging on even as we speak. Nice to see you, Gary.

Gary: That's great. Thank you.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR, and I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from Los Angeles and keep the faith.