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.

Real brave movie