Scott Glenn Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

I mean, the story of my career

is just the story

of a whole long of real good luck.

My guess is that the best is yet to come

and I have no idea what it is.

Because that's the way

my life has really worked.

Meeting Carol, to becoming an actor

to all of the best things in my life

have been accidents.

Have just happened to me.

And I've had the...

good sense to recognize it.

[upbeat music]

[Narrator] It was an open call.

When I showed up at the sound stage

there were probably

maybe 50 actors there.

And Francis

he picked four guys

and he said, Here's the deal.

You're in a boat

the engine is off, you're floating down the Mekong River

you're having an argument

who the Playmate of the Year should be.

And they begin to have this argument.

Doing great improvisational work

yelling at each other

and I'm sitting there watching it

and I guess at a certain point

I rolled my eyes

kinda like this.

[Narrator exhales]

And Francis stopped the improv.

He said, I saw that, Scott.

These people are doing serious work

I don't need you making a comment on this work.

Why did you do that?

And I said, It wasn't that the work was bad

but these guys are on a boat

with the engine turned off

floating down the Mekong River.

You scream and yell like that

you gonna have a mortar round

in your laps in five seconds.

And Francis looked at me

and turned to his AD

and he said, I want him in my movie.

I got to the Philippines.

It was Friday.

Almost everybody was going back to Manila

to have their weekend

and I decided I'd just stay on location.

That Friday evening, the worst typhoon

to hit the Philippines since 1932 came in.

Typhoon Didang.

Everybody thought we were dead.

For two days, we lost all contact.

We were on an isthmus

that was turned into an island.

We had to sort of organize the place.

There was a woman who was pregnant with twins.

Since I delivered my second daughter myself

I was the only person who had any idea

of how to do that.

So finally, two to three days later

Francis came back on a helicopter.

All of our sets were destroyed.

We obviously had to rebuild things

and start all over again.

We went down to the edge of a stream

that they were gonna shoot on

which was now a whitewater

because of all the water.

And Francis, the insurance adjuster

I think Vittorio Storaro

the DP

and...

three or four guys

got in this boat

and they were gonna go out onto the stream

to take a look at it.

They tied a rope on the back of this boat

and let the boat out onto the stream

thinking if the stream carries it down

downstream very quickly

they could pull it back.

And I'm watching this from about 50 yards away.

I was not that long out of the Marine Corp

always had a knife.

And when I saw what was happening

I just realized

the minute the tide gets that boat

it's gonna snap it straight downstream

and the...

and the rope is gonna pull the boat down

and the boat it gonna sink.

So the minute they let it go

I started running towards the rope

dove at it

cut the rope.

It didn't sink.

Later on that night, Francis said, You saved my life.

And I said, I don't know if I did or not.

I just acted on instinct.

And Francis said, you've helped my out so much

I can write you a better part than you were cast.

Just tell me what you wanna do

and I'll write it right now.

And I said, I wanna be in the end of the movie.

And he said, What?

And I went, Yeah

I wanna be in the part

at the end of the movie

with

Marlon Brando

and Dennis Hopper.

And Francis said, I'm sorry, Scott

that's the only part of the movie

that's completely cast.

There's nothing in it for you

I mean, you could play Captain Colby

the guy that went up the river ahead of Martin

but it's a tiny part, very few lines

But if you wanna do that

I'm good to my word.

And I said, I do.

Colby.

I realized at the time that acting

is serving an apprenticeship.

You really can't learn how to act

in school

or from a book or...

And I was gonna be around, arguably

America's greatest actor

Francis working with him.

So that's how that happened.

[upbeat music]

Carol is laughing right now.

I got called

from my manager

Johnnie Planco

another one of my best friends

who's no longer with us.

But

at the time, he said

Marvel is really interested

in your playing this character Stick.

I didn't know any of those characters at all.

And he said, it's the mentor to the Daredevil

that will be played by Charlie Cox.

And I went, oh.

And I got so angry

because I thought

the mentor.

Yeah, I'm gonna play some old guy

who sits behind a desk

and sends

young actors out to do all kinds of fun interesting stuff.

This is going to be a pain in the butt

and I don't even think I wanna do it.

And I got

I got stupidly angry.

There's a hike south of here

that's very steep

and in furor well I...

ran up the side of this mountain.

It was so steep and I was, you know

so full of myself, stupidly

with my big dumb ego

that I jammed my hip coming down.

Got home

and they had sent the script.

And I started reading the script and I went

whoa!

This is a blind assassin

who's an expert with swords and knives

and comes out of this incredible dark crazy background

and has adopted this kid.

I've never even played blind, how do...

And all of a sudden I felt stupid

because I went from hating the idea of the part

to loving the actuality of the part.

[breathing deeply]

Nice catching up.

I remember when I met the stunt coordinator.

He said, Do you know anything about martial arts?

And I went, Yeah, a little bit.

And he said, What about martial arts

with knives and swords?

And I said, Yeah, a little bit.

He said, well, how long have you been doing this stuff?

And I said, Kind of since I was 10 years old.

And I remember he had a couple of fake rubber

they were all knives.

And I said, Why don't we...

Wanna spar a little bit?

And he said, Sure.

So we started.

We were knocking over racks of dresses

and after about

probably two minutes

he just stopped in the middle of it.

You can do all this stuff better than me.

I'm not gonna double you with any of this.

And at the time, I had just met a guy

who has become my Sifu, Dan Anderson.

His dojo is Broadway and Canal.

And so when I wasn't doing the TV show in Brooklyn

I was at Anderson's

just playing with knives and swords

and stuff like that.

[upbeat music]

I was in Europe

and I got a package in the mail

and it was from Larry Kasdan.

He said, Here, I wrote this part for you

what do you think?

And I read Silverado

and I yelled

Yahoo!

And threw the script up in the air

and danced around the hotel room

I was so happy.

So Larry wrote that...

Wrote that sucker for me.

You men

stay with your wagons and your families.

Get rolling, keep your eyes peeled.

[Black Coat Man] Wait a minute.

Even if you do get the money.

How do we know you'll come back?

Well, if we don't you can keep my brother.

[horses neighing]

[Narrator] First thing

he said is there anyone here

who can't ride a horse?

And Danny Glover and I took one big step forward.

And everyone else didn't.

I always consider it

to be unwise

to pretend you do something you can't.

Danny and I were given, by the wranglers

horseback riding lessons

everyday

up until when we began shooting.

About four days before we began shooting

Larry Kasdan picked the horses he wanted

each one of us characters to ride.

And for me, it was a huge Quarter Horse

the size of a Clydesdale

but a pure Quarter Horse

gray, named Ajax.

And he told the wrangler, Freddy

has someone got on that horse?

And Fred said, No

that's my own horse.

Stunt riders can't even ride that horse

just turned five so he's very young

and he's already two times world steer roping champion.

If you get near this horse with a pair of spurs on

he's gonna kill you.

And I...

said, You know what?

Why don't you saddle the horse

and let's see

if the horse tries to kill me or not.

So as I was walking out

towards this big horse

I remember an animal trainer

a woman named Barbara Woodhouse

saying

that horses communicate with each other

by blowing into each others noses.

So I'm walking out

and I walk up to this big horse

and he kind of looks at me.

And I said, To begin with Ajax

I'm supposed to tell I'm the boss.

Guess what?

I'm not.

You're way bigger than me

you're way stronger.

I don't know anything about riding horses.

I'm talking to the animal.

I said, So you're in charge.

You're the boss.

And he brought his nose

right up to my face.

So when he did, I...

Blew in his nose

and he...

blew back at me

and hit me with a word of snot

the size of a snot ball

like right in my face

I wiped it off

and he just stood there.

I put my foot in the stirrups

got up on

and set the saddle.

He didn't move.

I'm like...

[Narrator clucking]

He starts walking.

I'm thinking

I don't even feel myself

motion into the left.

He goes to the left.

I do to the right.

He moves to the right.

I touch him with my heels.

Now this is a world champion steer Roper.

I touched him with my heels.

He goes from a walk to a straight out hard gallop.

But I'm comfortable on him

and at one point

we go to the left

we go to the right.

It's like being on a sports car

at one point, I think I want him to stop.

I dropped my heels and say, Whoa

this horse is used to jerking the steers on their butts.

So he...

does like that.

I go over his head

and land in the ground

luckily I didn't break anything.

But the minute I landed on the ground

Ajax, trotted over to me

put his big nozzle on my face

and started rubbing me with his head.

He fell in love with me.

People see that movie now

and they think I'm an expert rider.

I'm not, I still really don't know how to ride horses.

It's just that this...

monster, phenomenal athlete

love me.

[upbeat music]

I had a part in the Western called

The Great North-field Minnesota Raid

directed by Phil Kaufman.

I had to go to Universal to...

to meet the...

the producers

and just get to know them.

And the producers

walked in.

Phil said, this is Scott Glenn

he's going to be playing this part.

And he said, great, great

we just want to meet you great.

So we'll see you on location.

I hop on my motorcycle.

I drive back to Venice where we're living.

The phone is ringing.

I pick it up.

It's just Phil Kaufman.

He said, I couldn't let an agent

or someone else tell you this Scott.

You're not gonna be in my movie.

You're half an inch too tall.

And I remember saying, I'll wear moccasins.

I'll drop my knees down a little bit

a half an inch.

He said, I'm sorry

It's not gonna work.

But the next time I have a film where I have real control.

I'm gonna send you the script

and you get to pick your part.

I get said the right stuff.

I called Phil Kaufman up

and I said, I know what I wanna play.

And he thought I was going to say

Chuck Yeager

or maybe John Glenn.

And I did not.

I said, I wanna...

I wanna do Alan Shepard

and there was a long pause.

And he said, Alan Shepard?

Well that's kind of a comedic part.

And I said, yeah, yeah

it's funny.

That's right.

That's what I wanna to do

I wanna be the IC commander.

Dear Lord

please don't let me fuck up.

I didn't quite copy that.

Say it again please.

I said, everything is okay.

[Narrator] And he said, I'm good to my words Scott.

You wanna be Alan Shepherd.

You are Alan Shepherd.

Would you like to meet him?

And I said, absolutely not.

I'm a home movies

of him

as far back in his life as possible.

Everything I can see recorded about him

but I don't wanna meet the guy himself because

if you play somebody and...

they know that their image

is going to be exploded on a screen

the size of a four-storey building.

They will...

even without intending it

edit themselves.

And I didn't want that.

I wanted

Alan Shepherd

the inside of Alan Shepard to be my creation.

Mr. Glenn, You are way out of line.

Each man here is volunteered to do a job

and doing many things

above and beyond the strict call of duty.

such as bringing girls up to your room

in the middle of the night.

And foregoing any semblance of an orderly family life.

And Mr. Glenn

as long as a man uses good sense.

What he does with his zipper or is his wreck

is his own business.

My favorite review I've ever gotten in my whole life

was after we finished the film

then Admiral Shepard

wrote a note to Phil Kaufman

and he said, please show this to Scott Glenn.

He said, Mr. Glenn

you got me

almost perfect.

I have no criticism.

You only missed one thing.

And that is...

you ain't anywhere near

as good looking as I am.

[Narrator laughing]

[upbeat music]

Jonathan Demme

was a good friend of ours.

He called me up and...

asked me to come to New York.

There's this part

and I want you to play it in Silence of the Lambs.

I'm going to send you to Washington.

So I went and I spent a period of time

sitting in on cases, case studies

still have bad dreams

about some of the stuff that I was exposed to.

And I haven't led a very sheltered or easy life so...

this stuff I was privy to

the human condition

had a degree of darkness

I never knew existed.

So it was rough in that way.

[Scott] And you are to tell him

nothing personal Starling.

Believe me, you don't want Hannibal left inside your head.

Just do your job

but never forget what he is.

[Narrator] When we did the table read

the description of me and Jody when we meet.

It said

the relationship between these two people is strange.

Are they father and daughter?

Mentor and student?

Boyfriend and girlfriend?

Jonathan at the time as we were reading

he said, forget all that guys.

You can't play that.

There's no way you can play that complicated

or relationship.

Okay, cut to...

two or three weeks into shooting the film.

There's a scene when Jody is coming out of her office

getting on the limo

to go to West Virginia.

She had a hard time getting in the limo.

I opened the back door

and I took her arm

to help her into the...

into the limo.

And Jonathan yells, cut cut cut.

He comes running up to us.

He says, Scott

please don't.

I don't want you to touch Jody.

And Jody said

yeah I mean, he was just being polite.

Jonathan said, remember when we did the table reading

and I told you guys

there's no way in the world

you can play that relationship.

Guess what?

I've been looking at dailies

and that relationship is exactly there already.

And Scott

I know if you physically touch her

it's all gonna be blown.

I only want you to touch Jody

twice in this whole movie.

when she's gone through the experience

of dealing with this serial killer

and someone has died in her hands.

I want you to walk out of that house

and put your arm over her shoulder

at the very end of the film

I want you to shake her hand

and that can shape will be so lovely.

That's what a great director is all about.

Great directing

is having that kind of sensitivity

and being able to make those kind of calls.

[upbeat music]

Carol and I had moved

up here to Idaho.

Driving back

we stopped off at paramount

to see Jim Bridges

who directed me in the first movie I'd ever done

Something called Baby Maker.

He looked at me and said, Oh my God

this is unbelievable.

I'm doing a movie

that you're perfect for the bad guy.

Stick around town for three days

meet the producers, meet the...

star who has cast approval.

And I think we'll make this happen.

And I...

Said

no.

I came up here.

Two weeks later, the phone rings

and it's Jim Bridges again.

And he's...

he said, okay now

I'm on location in Houston.

Paramount doesn't want you to do this part.

They don't know who you are.

Come down to Houston

and we can make this thing happen.

I hop in my...

my pickup, on my way to Houston.

I stopped outside of Huntsville prison

because I know the character I'm playing.

And as I'm parked there

these two guys

who I know from another time in my life.

Who were friends of Freddy Fender's

Baldemar Huerta.

And these guys are pistoleros.

The real thing.

And one of them

walks up to me

in my truck and he said, Hey [indistinct]

what are you doing here?

Are you doing a movie?

What do you play in?

I said bank robber and they go

Hey our buddy

he's a gringo.

A bank robber, he's getting out today.

You wanna meet him?

I mean, my God

what a gift.

So I hung out with these guys for about a day.

And then I...

I got rid of them because

I wanted to go try to get a movie

not wind up in jail.

Drove down to Houston.

Irving Azoff.

Who wanted me to do the part

Debra winner

who wanted me to do the part.

Jim bridges

who wanted me to do the part

and John of all them, God bless him.

He also wanted me to do the part.

So kind of over

Paramount's objections.

They said, yes

and I started one of the three parts in my life

that really played me.

Mexicans say

you eat the worm

you're going to see visions.

Visions of what?

I don't know

I heard the whole mess in my nursing vision.

I sure feel good.

I talk about being lucky.

I've got her a bull in the Huntsville prison rodeo.

I was just going to sit on the bull

and...

then they were gonna cut and a stock rider

was gonna actually get on the bull

ride in the long shore.

I'm sitting on this bull

and I don't know where the camera is.

I think, you know

how close are they?

So when I take a rap.

I take what's illegal in PRC

but

all the cons do at the Huntsville Prison Rodeo

which is called suicide rap.

Instead of just wrapping the rig around your hand once

you put lighter fluid and rolls in on your glove

and then you thread it

between your little finger and your ring finger.

You take the leather glove.

Pound it down.

Now you're locked in.

The bad part about that is

if both

throws you and you have a suicide wrap

what they call hung up.

You're

with the bull

wherever it goes...

probably will kill you

or jerk your arm literally out of your body

who knows.

But I thought, God forbid

some ex-con

sees this movie and sees

I didn't take a suicide rap.

because my biggest critics

are always the people that actually do the job.

So anyway, I took the suicide rap.

None of us had figured

that the bulls are used to being in roll out gate.

A matter of seconds before they go.

This was like 15 minutes

while they were lighting the shot.

And finally, the bull on camera decided

I'm leaving whether the gate is open or not

and just charge

up out of the deck.

If I hadn't had a suicide rap

I would've slipped down behind its butt

and probably been kicked to death.

Everything literally went into slow motion.

I mean, I had all the time in the world

and I looked up

I grabbed the tail

I popped it loose.

we went down the bull went forward.

I hit the ground

with a chipped collarbone

and concussion.

[audience shouting]

I don't really remember this

but what I actually did

was dropped right back on my feet

climb back on the lead up gate

jumped back on the bull

and I saw blood all around the wood of the gate

and I said

is that my blood, is that my blood?

And it wasn't.

It was like one of the stock handlers

had reached in to grab me

and try to save my life

had been hit

with the bull's horn

and shattered his cheek.

And it was his blood all over the place.

And I said, is that my blood?

And they said, no Scott, it's not your blood.

I said, you don't understand

if it is

you got to get hair makeup here

cause it's got to match to shot.

It's got to match the shot. I...

I don't remember any of that.

[upbeat music]

The leftovers

was the single best acting experience

I've ever had in my life.

Doing a no small part

to Damon Lindelof.

Three times in my life.

I've had parts that played me

and...

in my job was just to get out of the way.

One was Urban Cowboy.

One was a play

I did off Broadway called Killer Joe.

And the third was The Leftovers.

Where the writing was so deep inside me.

when I woke up in the morning

I just say to myself

Scott, your job today

is just stay out of the way.

The other great blessings

I had aside from Damon

Mimi Leder as a director

and Justin Theroux

as the star.

And I love

those three people

without them

there would have been no performance for me.

[Old man] If you're asking me

when I started losing my shit

contrary to the professional opinion of others

I maintain

my ship remains intact.

[Narrator] I remember where the longest monologue

Damon told me, he said

it's the longest speech I've ever written in my life.

I said, what is it, a couple pages?

He said no, actually it's seven pages.

When it came time to do that scene

and we were in the Outback in Australia.

Mimi was going to do it in cuts

and I said, you know I think I know this whole thing.

Can we just...

do the whole thing?

She said sure, we'll do it once

and see

what you miss.

So we went through the whole

I didn't miss any of it.

[Blond old Man] I used to hear voices.

They started about five minutes after it happened

after people disappeared.

So they put me in an institution.

We went through the whole thing and Mimi said

that was great, Scott.

Remember when you picked up the tape recorder

and you almost started crying

when you were listening to your son talk.

And I said

no, this is what it mean.

I said, I remember picking up a tape recorder.

She said, what do you remember from the scene?

I said

not much.

I remember you saying action

and...

saying cut.

So you weren't directing yourself at all?

And I'm like [shaking his head]

she said, would you be willing on the second take

so that a little bit of you

could hang laugh and watch it

because if you can't direct yourself

I can't direct you either.

I can't say

at this point

would you be willing to do that?

And I said, no.

I said,I actors lived their whole life.

Not just actors, artists

for these moments when it does you

and I'm not willing to do that.

She said, what do you suggest we do?

And I said, just a lot of texts.

She said, it'll wear you out.

And I said, no.

So we did, I don't know

six, seven takes something like that.

Mimi, rather than trying to take control one way

just let me go until she saw what she wanted.

And the whole experience of doing that show was that way.

[Blonde Old Man] I believe

the rains will come

and with them

a great flood.

I have to sing to make it stop.

It did me in such a profound way.

I still

I miss it a lot.

I miss all those people.

Wish the show was still on the air.

[upbeat music]

Roughly it's a disaster film.

And the disaster is...

a comment is headed for the earth.

First they think it's gonna be a near miss.

And then the...

the people of the trucktors then figured

Oh, whoops, no

it's gonna hit.

It's going to be the kind of...

event that killed the dinosaurs.

So the defense department decides to grab

a group of I don't know, 50 people.

Bring these people

into these bunkers in Greenland

to restart

civilization all over again.

And it's essentially a family

that are in some kind of crisis with themselves.

So we track

their journey trying to get to Greenland.

I play someone who is a widower

who

deeply misses his wife

to the extent where he's not really concerned

with living or die

but very much loves this family.

That's coming by.

My Mary went to heaven in this place.

And when the good Lord is ready for me to join her

I'm going to be right here in this place too.

Bags packed.

That's what excites me now about this film

and also...

a little shout out to

Ric Waugh

the director

who did a phenomenal job of directing this film

and directing me in the film.

Little shout out to him.

Thank you all

for once again

watching me

and these characters that I play

that are iconic

really a lot more because of you

and because of me.