Bohls: Thank you for your service, Nate Boyer — and for your movie, too
Nate Boyer’s résumé is getting very, very clustered.
U.S. Army Green Beret.
Texas Longhorns football player.
NFL player (for a minute).
Social activist.
Friend of Colin Kaepernick.
Humanitarian.
Advocate for veterans.
Actor.
Producer.
And now movie director. Yep.
As of Friday, when his latest work “MVP,” a movie about a homeless veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder comes out on video on demand, Boyer will officially have director among his long list of credits.
Steven Spielberg, move over. You’ve got company.
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Boyer dipped his toes in these choppy waters almost by accident.
“I wasn’t expecting to direct it initially and interviewed six directors for the movie,” Boyer said from Dallas, where he was to attend a private screening of the movie at The Star alongside Dallas Cowboys coaches Mike McCarthy and Dan Quinn and some players. “I produced my first feature film ("Secret of Sinchanee") in January 2020 and was on the set shoulder-to-shoulder with the director, and I thought I can do this. I really wanted a veteran to direct it.”
So, he did, shooting the lowest of low-budget films — he joked that the movie cost less than most films spend on catering, far below $1 million — and pulled it off in 24 days of live shooting. Some horror films take 12 days of shooting, he said, and almost all of “MVP” was filmed at a real-life abandoned home shelter in East Los Angeles that has since been closed down for a lack of funding during the COVID pandemic.
He even had to jump through a broken window to get a few final shots. Such is the life of a director.
But the directing gig is a whole new experience, and he ultimately relished it.
For one, he joked that he didn’t have to pay himself. Good point. But he also thought he could do the job.
And as are all things with probably the most famous Longhorns walk-on since preferred walk-on kicker Jeff Ward, it’s a love of the heart. Few follow their dreams with quite as much passion as the 41-year-old former deep snapper for Texas, and nothing much gets in his way.
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Boyer doesn’t just wear his emotions on his sleeves, he lives them out, which is why he co-wrote, starred in the movie alongside Mo McRae of “The Flight Attendant” and “Big Little Lies” and, yes, directed “Merging Vets & Players.” That’s the same appropriate name of the support organization he founded along with Fox NFL insider Jay Glazer in 2015.
“'MVP' was created for camaraderie,” Glazer said of the nonprofit from Qatar where "Fox NFL Sunday" will broadcast from a military base. “And to give our combat vets, our heroes and professional athletes a new locker room again. Because when you lose that locker room, life can be scary. When the uniform comes off, the struggle is incredibly similar. So let’s have them build each other up.”
It’s no coincidence the movie debuts on Veterans Day, given the patriotic message. It’s available on Amazon Prime and Apple TV and wherever you stream although it had a limited theatrical run at 35 theaters for one night in September. Heck, you can even host your own screening via GATHR as Boyer did in Austin and around the country.
There’s been no shortage of supporters who got on board, including executive producer Sylvester Stallone, who teamed with Boyer to help raise awareness of these difficult issues and spur appreciation that goes beyond a perfunctory thank-you for their service. Stallone read the "MVP" script, became enamored with the project and wanted to attach his name to the endeavor.
“He’d been to one of the MVP sessions at our organization,” Boyer said. “He was blown away by the work we’re doing. He told all of us his story about ‘First Blood’ and told the filmmakers Rambo shouldn’t die (as in the original script) because he said there’s no hope in this. And they made four more Rambos.”
The “MVP” movie focuses on the monumental challenges that military service members and professional athletes face when their respective careers end, often at a very young age in their 30s. Boyer used almost 30 veterans for on-screen roles in the movie and convinced former NFL players like Hall of Famers Tony Gonzalez, Howie Long and Michael Strahan to take part.
“Tony Gonzalez really stood out,” Boyer said. “But they were all great.”
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Boyer hopes the public can not only embrace the message of severe obstacles that veterans face after they end their military service but also identify with many of the same emotional toll. Namely, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. One in five vets will suffer from PTSD.
“PTSD is a very human issue, not just a veteran issue,” Boyer said. “It looks different for all of us. It’s a very common thing to have PTSD. Even calling it a disorder doesn’t feel right because it’s very normal. I feel it’s more of a disorder if you don’t have PTSD.”
Boyer plays the role of Zephyr, the main character who's a homeless former Marine who lives in a 48-bunk shelter in East Los Angeles and is battling PTSD and suicidal thoughts in his transition to civilian life. His character interacts with Will Phillips, a fictitious, veteran NFL defensive back battling his own issues after football. That character is based on a former Navy veteran portrayed by McRae, who was homeless as a kid living on the streets with his mother.
Boyer’s character is based on the true story of composites of Boyer's friends in the Second Battalion Seventh Division, a Marines division that lost 29 men to suicide after back-to-back deployments overseas in 2007 and 2008. Incredibly, the same division has had 56 men die of suicide since 2009.
“That’s crazy. It’s a really high number,” Boyer said. “That battalion had the highest suicide rates of any unit.”
And tragically not that unusual. Boyer said roughly 22 veterans a day take their lives, and their homeless status is “significantly higher” than the national average. The Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that 33,136 were experiencing homelessness in January 2022, but that number dipped 11% in the last five years. Half of those have some form of mental disability, the Department of Veteran Affairs reports.
“I almost didn’t do this project because I was worried I couldn’t do it justice,” Boyer said. “I almost talked myself out of not doing it.”
But he overcame his fears and anxiety because he was so committed to the cause of explaining the harsh problems that not only the military but professional athletes and every-day people face with big transitions in their lives.
Boyer himself has suffered symptoms of PTSD after six tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and did at Texas when he played 38 consecutive games.
“Absolutely I have it. I still deal with it,” he admitted. “For me, it’s not so much having nightmares or flashbacks, but I’m sensitive to sounds and smells. I’m hyper-vigilant at times. When I’m in big, crowded spaces and there are a lot of people talking, it’s hard for me to focus. I can be irritable at times, dealing with anger. And I struggle with survivor’s guilt and have problems allowing myself to be happy.”
Some of Boyer's most troubling moments in Austin came on game days when he would hear Smokey the cannon fire its four 10-gauge blank shotgun shells after Texas scores and each quarter.
“It makes me jump when the cannon goes off at UT games,” he said. “Every time we scored, I could never get used to it. It never really set me off, but even when I knew it was coming, it’d get to me. And some of those years, we scored a lot, and that cannon went off a lot.”
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Boyer keeps up with the 6-3 Longhorns and likes what he sees although the team has much room for improvement before Saturday’s game with unbeaten TCU.
“It’s crazy because it feels like we’re inches away from being 9-0,” he said. “It’s all good. We’re learning how to win games. Obviously we’re still not playing second halves like we want to. It’s not the way we want to finish, but we’re getting through it.”
For his new gig, however, Boyer’s just getting started.
“That’s what I want to do,” he said. “I want to start my own production company soon. But I absolutely want to continue to direct these projects. It’s a calling I’ve had for a while, and hopefully it’s my new path.”
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Nate Boyer, football player-activist-actor, adds director to résumé
