
Most of the scenes that take place the night before the crew leaves were either made up entirely or happened days or weeks earlier. He eventually reconciles with Amanda the following morning. Eric makes her stop the truck and storms off, ending up at Duane Steinbrink's house. She tells him that she wants to have a child, which is contrary to what they had agreed upon. In the Only the Brave movie, Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) gets into an argument with his wife Amanda (Jennifer Connelly) while they are driving home from the Whiskey Row bar where they had been hanging out with the crew. I support you fully."ĭid Eric Marsh get into a fight with his wife Amanda the night before he left for the Yarnell Fire? The real Marsh stood by the decision and said, "Whatever you need to do for your daughter, you go ahead and do that.

Unlike the movie, Marsh didn't scold him and tell him no one would hire him with his criminal background. According to McDonough's memoir, he discussed his future with Eric Marsh quite some time before the Yarnell Fire. In the Only the Brave movie, Miles Teller's character tells Eric Marsh that he wants to quit the hotshots and become part of a structural team so that he can see his daughter more. "Three guys washed out," says McDonough, who was in his third season with the crew when the tragedy happened. He says that he wasn't Eric Marsh's first choice when he was hired. The book gives a firsthand, minute-by-minute account of the Yarnell Hill Fire tragedy as it unfolded. McDonough credits the hotshot crew with teaching him how to be a man and a father, and he shares his story of redemption in his memoir My Lost Brothers (re-titled Granite Mountain). I couldn't even get a job at McDonald's flipping burgers. I felt like a failure because I couldn't support my daughter, because no one wanted to hire a felon. I probably would have continued doing drugs, I probably would have ended up in prison or with an overdose - or dead.

"The hotshot crew was the best thing that ever happened to me," says the real Brendan McDonough. All of that is in line with the true story. He has a child on the way with his girlfriend and is looking to turn his life around. In the Only the Brave movie, Miles Teller's character, Brendan McDonough, is a former heroin junkie with a burglary conviction for stealing a GPS. These controlled burns create a control line that the advancing fire cannot cross.īefore joining the Granite Mountain Hotshots, had Brendan McDonough really been a druggie petty criminal with a child on the way? A hotshot contains an inferno buy using fire to burn a line through the fire's fuel path. Normal municipal firefighters put out fires with water, which often includes things like building fires and house fires.

A "hotshot" is a firefighter who fights fires with fire instead of water.
