Everyone knows George Bailey — but almost no one knows the war Jimmy Stewart came home from before he played him. In this episode of Refining Rhetoric, host Robert Bortins sits down with Aaron Burns — homeschool graduate, founder of Burns & Co. Entertainment, and producer behind Beyond the Mask, War Room, The Forge, and Sony’s The Birthright Outlaw and Legacy Peak — to talk about Jimmy, the new Jimmy Stewart movie starring KJ Apa and made with Stewart’s daughter, Kelly.
Aaron traces Stewart’s path from his 1941 Oscar to being rejected by the Army as too skinny, to commanding B-24 bombing runs with the 8th Air Force — 20 official missions, with a flight log marking 13 planes lost on a single run — and home again with PTSD, until the prayer he cried out on the set of It’s a Wonderful Life became his own. He also shares how unstructured homeschool summers spent building a log cabin and shooting short films launched his career, how Stephen Kendrick mentored him on War Room, why Poets’ Corner and the original meaning of “propaganda” shape his view of the storyteller’s role in culture, and what’s next with his film on missionary Hudson Taylor.
For Christian homeschool families who love history, film, and faith, this is a behind-the-scenes look at what it means to tell stories worth telling. Catch Jimmy in theaters November 6 for Veterans Day weekend, bring a veteran if you can, and share this episode with a friend.
Watch Jimmy in theaters November 6 — tickets and VetTix donations for veterans.