Most of the great filmmakers in American cinema will candidly admit some of the most enduring and memorable moments in their films were scenes or lines that were never in the script.

“Here’s looking at you, kid,” was never in the “Casablanca” script; it was a Humphrey Bogart ad-lib. “Leave the gun, take the cannoli,” from Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” was a riff from the actor. On a lighter note, the iconic scene in “Pretty Woman” when Richard Gere snaps a jewelry box on Julia Roberts’s fingers was originally a practical joke.

It is spontaneity that Mike Rowe, podcaster, author, television host and champion of the everyman, says he now understands after finishing his first movie, during which he placed in at the last minute something that becomes one of the most riveting parts of his history-themed documentary “Something to Stand For.”

Rowe said his impromptu interview (a conversation, really) with Andy Michael, a 91-year-old Korean War veteran at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., was never in the script, and it wasn’t even in the treatment for the film that dives into some of the most extraordinary events that took place behind the scenes in our country — from the American Revolution, Civil War, World War II and the civil rights movement to today.

The film is full of larger-than-life stories that remind us that greatness begins with the least of us and that patriotism, even in our most flawed moments in history, is worth standing for. These are stories you have likely never heard. They are stories that make you see these men and women who shaped who we are today quite differently.

Rowe said he was standing in the World War II Memorial trying to collect his thoughts for a very specific, scripted standup he needed to do for the film when he noticed the veteran.

“The director had very thoughtfully put a nice X on the ground where I could hit my mark perfectly, the light was just so, and I was going to walk in, and I was going to say whatever I say, and we were going to check that box and move on to the next setup,” he said.

Rowe says it was at that moment when something caught his eye 30 feet from where he was supposed to do his stand. He stopped the production, grabbed the director and said they needed to stop what they were doing and go talk to a man Rowe saw sitting in a wheelchair staring at the memorial with tears running down his face.

“Happily, because my name’s in the title, they have to do that, but that’s not what you do when you’re making a movie. It doesn’t make any sense. It takes up time that you don’t have. But within seconds, everybody realized this is the heart of the movie,” Rowe explained.

Rowe’s first foray into filmmaking, “Something to Stand For” intentionally, from beginning to end, inspires the patriotism that used to be cherished by all of us no matter what our political party was.