On Veterans Day, we remember the men and women who have served our country, and we don’t have to look far at Illinois State. The University has a rich connection to the military, particularly in the Civil War, when students and faculty served the Union and fought for freedom.
Dr. John McHale of the School of Communications recently authored an acclaimed feature film script, Blood Brothers, based on the one-of-a-kind story of the 33rd Illinois Infantry.
The 33rd, which had its roots on the campus of Illinois State, was famously known as the “Teacher’s Regiment” since a high number of the men were students or teachers. The nickname was a nod to the original mission of Illinois State, which was teacher training.
McHale, who has been part of the Illinois State faculty since 2002, was inspired, in part, to create Blood Brothers by looking at his own background.
“I have relatives in Chicago who are Irish, and relatives in Oklahoma who are German,” McHale said. “My family could have easily found ourselves on opposite sides of the battlefield in the Civil War. It’s so rare that brother could have fought against brother like that. That really struck me.”
The outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861 gripped Illinois State, which had been founded only four years before as the state’s first public institution of higher learning. Many students remembered that the war was foremost on everyone’s minds, and students could barely concentrate on their studies.
The first president of the University, Charles Hovey, eventually suggested that the men of the school should become prepared for when the call to action arrived. As a result, he organized the students into a quasi-military unit.
Hovey eventually received authority from President Abraham Lincoln to organize what became the 33rd Illinois, mustered on September 18, 1861. Many of the ISU students went into Company A of the regiment.
Dozens of other Illinois State students also enlisted in other regiments. In all, at least 117 members of the University community were in uniform.
McHale based his script on the remarkable story of the 33rd Illinois, using amalgamations and composite characters.
“Fictional characters can become representative of ideas, ethnic groups, voting blocs, and the like,” he said. “They can become the identity and the spirit of the soldiers who fought in the Civil War. They helped me deal with some of the questions I wanted to look at.”
His plot centers around four students who come from diverse backgrounds, but ultimately realize that they were fighting for each other. “That’s one of the things warfare is all about,” said McHale, “the willingness of one man to shoot someone else, just to defend his brother.”
Blood Brothers is also about freedom, and the question of what defines it. “Freedom is an important thing in this country, but there are so many questions that surround what it means,” McHale said. “In the Civil War, it took the sacrifice of over 600,000 people at the foot of the altar of liberty. A lot of people have died for us to figure out what liberty means, in that war and others.”
The powerful story of Blood Brothers has resonated across the globe. In 2023, he received the Award of Excellence for Faculty Feature Screenplay in the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Writing Division, Festival of the Arts. The script placed in the top-20% of the competition.
The BEA is the preeminent competition for the academic realm, representing over 250 colleges and universities from around the world.
Blood Brothers was also an Official Selection at the 2023 Cannes Film Awards in France. McHale’s script was one of only 245 selected—less than 10% of the 2,836 projects in the competition,
In addition, McHale’s script was a semifinalist in the 26th annual Fade-In Magazine First 10 Pages Competition, which is based in Los Angeles.
During his career, McHale has earned over 20 awards for film writing and production, including the BEA’s Top Film screenplay in 2020. He also won the association’s Award of Excellence in 2021.
McHale has engaged in a number of meetings with production outlets in the hopes that Blood Brothers may become a major motion picture.
“That’s the dream of all scriptwriters,” he laughed. “But any time you deal with a period piece like this, it takes a lot of resources and a lot of money to make it happen. I think it could be managed, especially if a lot of Civil War reenactors were used, like (filmmaker and media mogul) Ted Turner did in his movie Gettysburg.
“I think the time is right for a movie like Blood Brothers,” continued McHale. “This is one of the times that we’re so divisive in the direction of our country, where we see ourselves as a people, and the identity that we continue to grapple with. I think this script reflects that, and one of the reasons it’s such a strong story.”
McHale also emphasizes the importance of the contributions of Illinois State to the war that resulted in emancipation and set a new course for our nation. “I want to celebrate the Illinois State teachers and students who fought in the Civil War, and what they accomplished,” he said. “Their contributions, and the reasons why we fought the war as a whole, are too often forgotten today.”
Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher who, in collaboration with Carl Kasten ’66, co-authored the 2020 book Abraham Lincoln and the Heritage of Illinois State University.
