I Can Only Imagine Composer Tell Your Heart to Beat Again Composer
- "The tension I have with my brother now is probably the healthiest affair that has happened in our lives."
- Bart Millard says his older brother is his "absolute hero."
Hollywood and Christian music fans cheered when Bart Millard blew up the box function with a moving-picture show exposing his painful past with his abusive father.
Merely Millard's but sibling wasn't celebrating.
Instead, Stephen Millard lashed out, accusing his younger brother of exaggerating their father's abuse to sell more tickets.
"It ripped my heart out," Bart Millard said earlier this month. "It destroyed me."
Months afterwards the March release of "I Can Just Imagine," though, the Millard brothers have started healing the rift.
They're starting — slowly — to talk most traumatic problems from their past, discussions that have added a depth to their relationship they've never had, said Bart Millard, vocalizer for the popular contemporary Christian band MercyMe.
For that, he is grateful.
"The tension I have with my brother now is probably the healthiest thing that has happened in our lives."
Stephen Millard could not be reached for this story.
'Man, that'due south difficult to sentry'
Stephen Millard, 5 years older, at starting time encouraged his brother to make a movie that centered on their childhood, Bart said.
Movie makers landed actor Dennis Quaid to play their dad, and after filming wrapped concluding year, Bart Millard went to his Texas hometown in Baronial to testify a first cut to his female parent and brother.
His mother, in tears, said the movie was accurate. His brother said, "Man, that'southward hard to picket," and then he changed the discipline.
In the book and movie, the Millards' father was portrayed equally one time whipping his younger son so savagely with a razor strap and paddle that the male child thought he was going to die. Bart Millard somewhen reconciled with his dad, holding his father'southward manus when he died of cancer in 1991.
A week before the movie premiere, Stephen Millard called to say he didn't think he would exist at that place.
And that unleashed one of the nearly contentious conversations the two brothers ever had.
"Don't you think you kinda embellished to sell more tickets?" Stephen said.
Bart snapped: "How cartel you!"
His brother so uttered a agglomeration of denials:
"Dad was never that bad."
"I think I had a different babyhood than you."
"Dad would spank the states, just I don't retrieve that (corruption) at all."
Bart couldn't believe it.
"You lot could've only punched me square in the confront," he said.
Wedgies and wrestling
The brothers spoke very piddling in the months later. Bart concedes he didn't reach out much during that time.
"I Can Only Imagine" opened at No. 3 and clustered an incredible $83 million. The movie price $seven meg to brand.
MercyMe started selling out more and more than shows, and mainstream entertainment industry media marveled at ticket sales for the faith-based movie.
Simply Bart Millard, 45, could inappreciably enjoy the success. He thought he might be losing his relationship with his brother.
"If I never talk to my brother over again," he told his wife repeatedly, "none of this is worth it."
Like virtually fiddling brothers, Bart Millard worshiped his big blood brother growing upwardly. Even more then because Stephen e'er protected his petty blood brother, especially when their father got aroused.
The two had a normal, loving human relationship as kids, consummate with wedgies and wrestling and punching each other in the shoulder.
As they became adults, Stephen started working at a mill in Dallas and raising his ain family.
"My brother is my absolute hero," Bart said. "The one identify I thought I'd never had an outcome is with my brother, who e'er had my back.
"To know information technology hurt him deeply was devastating to me."
Thanksgiving with family
Nigh 3 months agone, though, Stephen Millard phoned his brother, and the phone call changed it all.
After some pocket-size talk, the two got into deeper discussions almost their dad and their childhoods.
"It all started coming out," Bart Millard said. "And it was beautiful."
Bart Millard came to recall that his older blood brother probably carried some guilt about knowing their father's abuse got worse when Stephen Millard left the house when he went to college.
"The reason he'south my hero is he'due south the kind of guy who would be struggling with the fact that he wasn't at that place to protect me, and that's at the root of it all. It was up to me to say, 'Hey man, there'south nothing you could've done.'"
Bart Millard said his relationship isn't perfect, but it's the healthiest that it has ever been.
"I thought maybe I wouldn't run into my blood brother over again," he said, "and now, I'll see him at Thanksgiving."
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Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.
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Source: https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2018/11/21/can-only-imagine-bart-millard-mercyme-brother/1841884002/
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