WHEN THE PART PLAYS YOU

Scott Glenn has been in many classic movies – NASHVILLE, APOCALYPSE NOW, URBAN COWBOY, THE RIGHT STUFF, SILVERADO, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, just to name a few – as well as in a lot of pretty good ones, like John Frankenheimer’s THE CHALLENGE, BACKDRAFT and a childhood favorite of Roel Haanen: WILD GEESE II. These last couple years he has enjoyed a career high point on the small screen, with an impressive turn on The Leftovers, as the blind sensei Stick in Daredevil and The Defenders and as the retired sheriff Alan Pangborn in Castle Rock. In November 2020, at the time of the release of the disaster movie GREENLAND, in which he plays a supporting part, Roel got a chance to talk to him via Zoom, about his craft.

I really enjoyed GREENLAND. What I like about it, is that it’s a pretty simple story – it’s about a family trying to stay together. Was that what attracted you in the script?

It was exactly that. What I did not know – I don’t know if I would call it good luck, but in any case it was fortuitous for the movie – was when we made the film, no one had ever heard the term corona virus. But now that the movie has come out, families can relate to this film simply because what this virus and a comet heading for earth have in common: they both target us as a species. Under that kind of pressure what you begin to realize is that the only thing that really counts are the people you know and love.

There’s this great moment in the film where you turn your head towards the sun and there’s this half smile of acceptance on your face. Was that scripted?

No, it was not. To begin with, films always have two leads and two heroes, and I believe this is true of all films. The first is called the writer, the second is called the director. Ric Waugh, the director of GREENLAND, called me up before we made the movie, and he said: On the surface this looks like just another disaster film. But that’s not what I want it to be about. I want it to be about the human heart. He told me that the strength of the film is this family trying to stay together, but where the emotions become condensed, is in the section where they come to visit me, before they leave. That’s what he gave me to aim at. When we came to the end of that scene, the way it was written, was that I either physically or psychologically shrugged, turned around with resignation and walked back to the house. But when we shot it, I didn’t do that. It wasn’t a decision on my part. Aside from my daughter, son-in-law and grandson, the only really important human being in my life, was no longer with me, my wife. Our life felt… This all happened to me in an instant. It does that with actors sometimes. And when it does, it’s a great gift. So, the circle of my life was completed. Whatever the universe was going to bring to me – whether it was a comet, or old age or cancer or tripping and falling – it was just a matter of time. Everything comes to an end. So I looked up at the sky, kind of like looking at fate or God, you can use whatever words you want, with acceptance. You’re exactly right. The script supervisor said: We’re going to have to do that again, because Scott didn’t go into the house. And Ric said: Nor will he. He told me what I just did was absolutely perfect. But I had to be honest. It really wasn’t my idea. There are times when you’re acting, when the part plays you. If you’re sensitive enough you just let it happen and try to stay out of the way.

Did that also happen earlier in your career or does it come with age and experience?

It’s something that all artists shoot for, talk about, think about. Aside from acting, I’ve been doing martial arts since I was ten years old. I spent a short but intense period of my life training as a modern dancer. And I’ve read a lot of books, especially from Japan and China, where they talk about that happening: the Zen moment. That’s when the part plays you. It’s something you always want to happen, but no, aside from those small moments, where you’re given those kinds of gifts, I’ve only experienced the part playing me three times in my life. One was URBAN COWBOY, one was an off-Broadway play I did called Killer Joe, written by Tracy Letts, and the third was an episode I did for a TV show called The Leftovers. The episode was called Crazy Whitefella Thinking.

That episode for instance, we shot that in the Outback in Australia. Before we went there, Damon Lindeloff called me up and said: I’ve written the longest monologue I’ve ever written. I said: Well, how long is it? Three pages long? He said: Seven. That was the first thing we were going to shoot. Normally, I wake up at least an hour and a half before my call, in order to work out and stretch and work on the part. Remembering lines and giving myself notes of things I want to remember, like a physical attitude. With Crazy Whitefella Thinking I woke up, did my workout and then looked in the mirror and said: Your job today is to stay out of the way! Leave it alone.

When I got to the set, Mimi Leder, who’s a wonderful director, said: We’re going to do this in sections, because there’s no way you can do the whole thing in one chunk. And I said: Let’s just try. How many cameras can you work with? And she said: Three. And I said: Set ‘em up the way you want and let’s see what happens. I actually didn’t think I was going to make it through. She said: Action! And the next thing I remember was her saying cut. And I stopped. She gave me a great compliment, which I did not deserve. She said to the crew: Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just been given a masterclass in acting. Then to me: Okay Scott, remember when you picked up the tape recorder and you played your son’s voice and you broke down and cried and you put the tape recorder down? And I honestly said: I don’t remember doing that. I could not remember anything that I had done. So she asked me: No part of you was an observer to this? I said: No. Mimi said: If you can’t direct yourself, no one else can. We’re going to do this again, but would you be willing to take a little part of you to sit outside the scene and watch it, so that I can direct you through the scene? Would you be willing to do that? And I said: I don’t want to be arrogant or a pain in the ass, but no, I’m not willing to do that, at all. Because these moments don’t happen very often in an artist’s life, when the painting paints you, when the poem writes you, when the scene acts you. Then she asked: But what if I don’t get what I want? What are we going to do? I said: We’ll do the whole thing again. She said: But it will exhaust you. I said: No, it won’t. I feel energized. So we did seven more takes, all the way through. After that was over, Mimi said: Is this what I’m going to be dealing with this entire episode? I said: You’re the director, you can give me orders, I suppose. I’m an old Marine, I guess I will do as I’m told. Do I have to? And she said: You absolutely do not have to. Let’s see what happens. So, for the rest of the episode I tried to stay out of my own way.

When you tell that story, I’m reminded of what you said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2003, that you hoped that you would arrive at a place where you would know a little bit about how it works. Have you arrived at that place yet?

I may be giving myself too much credit, but metaphorically I would say I’m probably a junior in college by this time. I haven’t even gotten near grad school. There’s so much for me to learn. Most of it involves letting go even more than I did in the way I described. At one point I did not understand Jackson Pollock. He could sit down and look at you, draw you and hand you the picture and it would look like a photograph. He was technically that good. He wound up climbing a ladder with buckets of paint and dripping them down on the canvas. But – excuse my French – he knew what the fuck he was doing. I’m scratching the surface of that.

Do you still prepare as rigorously for roles as you used to do?

I try to. For me the research is the number one draw. People paying me money to learn about things, to learn about myself. So, I try to as much as possible, especially if there are things in the part that I don’t know anything about at all. Occupation has a lot to do with it. I remember a small part I did, and I hope I did it well, in a movie called THE SHIPPING NEWS by Lasse Hallström. There’s a scene where I’m gutting codfish. And I told Lasse that I wanted to be able to play that scene without thinking about gutting a codfish. This is a man who has done this his whole life. I had never done it. So, I asked Lasse if he could get me a job in the kitchen of a hotel for an hour or two hours every night, gutting fish. He laughed and said he would do it. And I also wanted to go out to the outer banks with a fisherman and know what that feels like, maybe even take control of the tiller, if he’ll let me. And Lasse said: Scott, there are no scenes in the movie of your character sailing this fishing boat. You’re only sitting in the boat. And I said: Doesn’t matter. If I have this experience, and I can actually do it, it will give the scenes a degree of authority that they won’t be able to have any other way. So, for the next two or three weeks, every morning, bright and early, I went down to the docks, went out in a fishing boat, got seasick and learned what it was like. So, if you’re talking about that kind of research, then yeah, I will always do that.

For me, the greatest critics are the people who actually do it. I remember when I did URBAN COWBOY, I said to James Bridges: You know, it would be nice if Pauline Kael said something nice about the film or my performance, but the people I really want to believe this, are ex-cons from Huntsville Prison and bull riders. If they say: My god, did you hire a guy that just got out of jail and has been a bull rider all his life? Then I’ve done my job. I did read a review once from a cod fisherman in Newfoundland who was convinced that Lasse Hallström had hired a real cod fisherman from Newfoundland. It’s my favorite review.

If you prepare for something like Daredevil, playing Stick, that must be physically tough.

That was a lot of fun. A gift, really. When I got hired to do the part, I went to New York to do physical, hair and makeup and wardrobe. I was in the wardrobe room trying to figure out what this character Stick would wear. The head stunt coordinator came into the dressing room and he said he was going to hire four stunt guys to double for me, to do all the fight scenes. He knew that I had some experience with martial arts, but he asked if I also had any background with weapons. I said that I did, with Filipino and Indonesian martial arts. He asked me how much experience. I said: You know, we can talk about this, but let’s take these fiberglass short swords and let’s spar. He started doing these slow motion moves on me and I took him out, and I took him out again. Then we started getting into it really hard, knocking over big racks of dresses. The wardrobe people must have been really pissed off at us. After about a little less than ten minutes, he suddenly stopped and said: You know what you just did? You just fired three stunt men. I’m going to keep one stunt double, unless you also wanna jump out of buildings, fall down stairs and roll under moving vehicles. I said: No, no! I don’t wanna do any of that! And I’m quite sure the insurance company wouldn’t let me anyway. I don’t wanna roll down three flights of stairs. Whether I can or not.

When I realized they were actually going to let me do the stick-part of Stick, what I suddenly was worried about, was the fact that my character was blind. Yes, I know martial arts. Yes, I sparred with a stunt guy. But how am I going to do all this stuff while playing blind? If I’m playing blind and you’re playing blind, and we’re talking to each other, there’s a real simple trick, and I can give it to you if you don’t know it: just look at my mouth, don’t take your eyes off my lips and I won’t take my eyes off your lips. We’ll look like two blind people talking. Absolutely. Problem is, it doesn’t work if there’s four or five people coming at you with swords, knives and clubs!

The challenge there was a physical challenge. I finally settled on something I learned in the Marine Corps. It’s called peripheral walking. You learn it to avoid ambushes. You can start in a room. You take ten or twelve straight steps and you look ahead, but you try to ignore the information you’re getting straight on and allow what you see in your peripheral vision – left, right, up and down – to come in and get sharper. The trick is: if you intentionally try to do it, it will get worse and worse. It will keep tightening up. So, it’s really a matter of physically and mentally relaxing. You can look straight ahead and see your feet. But you can’t force it to happen. You have to relax and relax and allow and allow. But for me, it was a paradoxical space, because you wanna be in a space that’s as open and relaxed as possible, and yet have reaction time that can handle the physical shit that’s coming at you.

When I watched you as Stick in Daredevil I had these flashbacks to my childhood when I watched you in THE CHALLENGE. But between those two roles, you haven’t done any martial arts type roles.

No, none. Because I never thought of myself as an action actor. Martial arts for me have always been part of my private life. I love them because they are a very honest template of progression. Plus, they keep you healthy. What happened with THE CHALLENGE was, there’s this old movie – you’re probably too young to have seen it – it’s called THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY. The way THE CHALLENGE was originally written, I saw that as THE JAPANIZATION OF RICK. I wind up in Japan, as someone who has never really had a mother or a father. An orphan. A tough kid from the streets, who winds up in Japan with a surrogate father from an ancient culture, played by my favorite action star of all time, for sure, Toshirô Mifune. No one even vaguely comes close. For me, that’s what the film was about. But when we got there, I realized that the way John [Frankenheimer] was shooting it, it was gonna be an action film. At one point, Mifune came to me and said: Scott, you can either let it break your heart, wishing this was something else, or we can make the best action film ever and have a great time. Let me be your tour guide to Japan. So, I went from resenting it to embracing it, but with no plans of continuing and becoming a Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal or any of that. So, you’re quite right, I didn’t do any of this stuff until Daredevil came along. At that point I had enough years under my belt to actually pull some of this stuff off.

You mentioned Steven Seagal just now. Didn’t he work on THE CHALLENGE as an advisor?

Yes. I knew a lot of the fighting stuff already, but there was this scene where I was thrown into a gravel garden behind the temple. I had never done aikido, judo or jiu-jitsu. High school wrestling, that was about it. The martial arts I learned were about lethal striking and stabbing and that sort of thing. I heard there was an American teacher of aikido in Osaka who was really good at this stuff. So, I asked if we could hire him because I needed someone to teach me how to fall. So, Steven was hired to walk me through that, he showed me how to fall and he taught me other things as well. We did that scene over three nights. It worked out, but I did get a lot of gravel in my back. At dawn I would go back to my hotel room and sit at the edge of the bed and drink sake while my wife would pull pieces of gravel out of my back with tweezers. [Laughs] The best thing that came out of that experience was that my wife, who is a master potter and a way better artist than I’ll ever be, was inspired to throw a series of sake bowls that were just gorgeous, called Sake at Dawn.

James Bridges gave you your first movie role in THE BABY MAKER and then a career defining turn in URBAN COWBOY. What was your relationship to him?

I loved and still love Jim. He hired me for THE BABY MAKER, which was also his first film, out of the recommendation of a director who had directed me in an off-Broadway play. That’s how I got that job. And then Jim and his partner Jack became really close to Carol and me. When I say close, we basically had our second child at their recommendation. They said: Have another kid! You can’t just have one daughter. So, we had two. We remained friends, but not working together. I would go over to Jim’s house once or twice a week, just to talk about things. At a certain point I couldn’t handle being in LA anymore, so Carol and I moved to where I am now, up in the mountains of Idaho. I didn’t know how I was going to make a living. I just thought: Obviously I’m never going to have a real career in front of the camera. I did a few major films and then my career just came to an end. Part of it was my own arrogance, being a pain in the ass to work with. Part of it was the vicissitudes of life as an actor. I did THE BABY MAKER, a small part in NASHVILLE, which is one of the seminal American films of all time, and a small part in what is probably the most influential movie in my life, APOCALYPSE NOW. After that everything ended.

So, we moved to the mountains and I thought I would maybe go to New York and do theatre, once the kids were old enough. When we got here, I got a call from an old friend from the Marines who was doing a movie. He asked me if I needed money. I said yes. It was four months work for three thousand dollars. The movie was called CATTLE ANNIE AND LITTLE BRITCHES. So, Carol and I went down to Mexico and we met Burt Lancaster, whom I was told to watch out for. They said: He’s an actor of the old school. He will get in your key light. He’ll mess you over. Of course when Burt and Carol and I met each other we instantly fell in love. He asked Carol what she did. She told him she was a potter. He asked to see pictures. He said: I love this stuff! Can I commission you to throw me a dinner set? I only have the work of one other ceramic artist. Later she found out the other artist was Picasso.

First day on the set of CATTLE ANNIE AND LITTLE BRITCHES, Burt came over to me and asked me if anyone had ever taught me the difference between being on stage and working with a close-up lens. I said no. He said: I didn’t think so. These were his words: Scott, I think you’ve really got something. If you’ll permit me to be a gigantic pain in the ass over the next four months, I’ll teach you whatever I know. He would come up to me between scenes and say things like: You’re doing too much. Try this. Try that. He even taught me how to walk a tightrope!

When we finished the film, we drove back up from Mexico and we stopped off in LA. I went by Jim Bridges’s office on the Paramount lot and he said: I can’t believe you’re here. I’m doing a movie and you’re perfect for the villain. It will change your life. Just wait around town for the star to arrive, who has cast approval, and the producers to meet you. I think we can make this happen. And I said: Jim, I don’t do that anymore. I’m not walking into someone’s office like a piece of meat. I just came by to tell you I made some money in Mexico. I love you. I’ll see you later. I’m going back to the mountains. So, Carol and I left. About two weeks later I get a phone call from Jim. He was in Houston and he asked me to come down and do the movie. He said: Scott, it will change your life. You won’t ever have to do audition again for as long as you live. I’m sending you a plane ticket. I said: Forget the fucking plane ticket. I don’t want the studio to have their hooks into me even for a plane ticket. I’ll take my truck and I’ll drive down to Houston. Which is what I did. And lo and behold: Jim was right. It changed my life. I never had to audition again. Not even for major films.

You’ve talked about preparation already. But which role was the hardest to prepare for?

The answer to that question is that most of them were easy, because I love preparation so much. Physically, and this is an odd one, was THE RIGHT STUFF. Simply because Alan Shepard is right-handed and I am very left-handed. I tied my left hand behind myself, so I couldn’t use it. I had to learn to instinctively go to my right hand. I had to get the outside of Alan Shepard pretty spot on, because Phil Kaufman was planning on going back and forth between us, the actors, and newsreel footage. It wasn’t a matter of getting close, I had to really get there. So, I watched many home movies and so much coverage of him. I didn’t meet Alan Shepard, because I didn’t want him editing himself. I wanted the inside of Alan Shepard to be my idea of him, not his. When he had seen THE RIGHT STUFF, he wrote to Phil Kaufman and said: You tell Scott Glenn he got me down perfectly, there’s only one thing he missed: he’s nowhere near as good looking as I am. [Laughs]

The hardest role to prepare for emotionally and psychologically was, by far, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Which kind of blindsided me. This wasn’t my choice, this was Jonathan Demme’s choice, may he rest in peace. He was a brilliant director and a very good friend of Carol’s and mine. Jonathan wanted me to spend two or three weeks with John Douglas at the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI, to find out what this world was about. The stuff I was privy to, in that research, still gives me nightmares. I was in the Marine Corps. I grew up in Pittsburgh. It’s not like I led a sheltered life. I thought that I had seen humanity at its worst. I had no idea. When you listen to a tape made by people who were raping, torturing and killing little kids, even if you sit through thirty seconds of that, it scars you for the rest of your life. There are times when it still creeps up on me.

If you think back on the role, do you think you really needed to hear it?

[Pauses] I don’t have an honest answer to that. I truly don’t know. I do know that those experiences give your performance an underlying sense of authority. Without you intending it. For instance, in those scenes I have with Jodie, when I’m talking to her about this guy that she’s going to look for, I’m not trying to go to those dark places, but I’m quite sure they’re there anyway.

Let me ask you about a movie you’re not really fond of: WILD GEESE II. I read that you don’t think it turned out well. What don’t you like about it and what did you hope it was going to be?

You know what? That’s a great question. What I really should do is watch it again. Here’s the story on that movie: I felt kind of ambushed by it. In the screenplay, my character was not a major character. The major character was Richard Burton reprising his part from the first WILD GEESE. He was living in Switzerland at the time. Laurence Olivier had signed on to play Rudolf Hess. So, I was doing a movie with Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier. All I had to do was run around with an Uzi and have an affair with Barbara Carrera on screen. They would pay me my money and my family could have a great vacation in Germany. The wall had not come down at that point. I don’t know if you ever spent any time in Berlin before the wall came down, but it was the youngest city in the world. The biggest party city in the world. It was all good. So, I went to Berlin, I did some stunts like jumping from one building to the next. The day before Richard Burton was to arrive in Berlin, we were celebrating our youngest daughter’s birthday in the hotel, and I get an emergency call to come and see the producer. So I went to see him and he told me Richard Burton had just died of a heart attack, right before he went on the plane. So I said: I guess we pack up and go home then. But they told me that Thorn EMI, who were the money behind the film, had been watching the dailies of me doing the stunts and stuff, and they were going to rewrite the script and make my character the lead character. Essentially, I got the Richard Burton part and they flew in someone else from England to do my part. I was getting terrified, because given the circumstances this was not going to be a great film and all of a sudden it’s gonna be on my shoulders. Holy shit! I don’t want this to happen! You would think I would be delighted with a lead role, but in point of fact I felt ambushed. I was being given a film that, had they offered it to me like this, I never would have said yes to. It was getting really close to that type of action role we talked about, like Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris. Not that they’re not great, but it just wasn’t anything I was interested in doing in terms of defining myself as an actor. But really, I should watch that film again, because my reaction to it has more to do with my insecurities and my being petty about myself than it has to do with the film itself.

It was during that film that I had been sent a script in the mail from Larry Kasdan. It said: I wrote this part for you. Will you do it? It was SILVERADO. I remember screaming with joy and throwing the script in the air and hugging it and rolling around with it on the floor. I thought: This is my salvation! I’m not going to be stuck with this film.

Working with Laurence Olivier must have been a big plus.

Oh! He was the best. An interesting man. When Carol and I met him in the bar at the Kempinski [Hotel], I was calling him Sir Laurence. At the end of the evening he said: Please don’t call me that. My name is Larry, for God’s sake! Next day we were on the set, and I was talking to him about the scene and I was calling him Larry. The producer, who was also British, came over and said: Larry, could you… And Olivier spun around to him and said: Excuse me. You called me Larry. Shouldn’t that be Sir Laurence? That was kind of evil of him. [Chuckles]

He was amazing. He was the embodiment of acting in the twentieth century. Not only was he one of the greatest stage actors that ever lived, he also created the National Theatre of England. So, I asked him what was more important: skill, talent, timing, being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people? Which is the most important? What do you need to really make it in this business? He said: My dear boy. It’s none of those. Just develop strong jaw muscles. Learn how to bite and not let go. I said: You’re telling me tenacity is the answer? He said: Absolutely. Hang around the gates with a beggar’s bowl long enough and they will get sick of you and open the doors and let you in. [Laughs]

Did you ask Marlon Brando the same question? I read the story about how you got the role of Captain Colby in APOCALYPSE NOW, that you chose to be Colby so that you could be in the section of the movie at the end, when Brando was on set. Did you learn anything specific from watching him work or talking to him?

Yeah, I just wanted to be around him and watch him work. And I did get to know him. We talked about so many things. What I learned from Brando, was that there are a lot of rules to obey, but you move from rule to rule. It’s up to you. There were times when he would practice his expression in the mirror, freeze it and say: Okay, now shoot! There were times when he didn’t want to know anything at all about the scene, while at other times he would have an ear bud in his ear, with a tape recorder that he would turn on and off, giving him things he wanted to cover. One time, when I was getting ready to do a scene, he walked over to me and said: Scott, remember. Just because they call it acting doesn’t mean you have to act.

I remember one time we were in a hotel, which was also a bar and restaurant. It was all one room. We could see the people checking in at the counter. A Filipino couple came in with two little girls. One was deadly shy, hiding behind her mother’s dress. The other one came dancing into the restaurant – Satisfaction was on the jukebox – jumping on the tables, spinning around. Just an amazing performer. Her parents checked in and the four of them left to go up to their room. The producer turned to the table and said: What a great performance. Some day that girl will make a great actress. And Marlon Brando looked over at him and said: You know what? You’re wrong. It’s the other one. I immediately understood what he was saying, because that other girl was me and it probably was him. Someone who, growing up, was painfully shy and needs the permission of a part to express himself.

Related talks

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• James Glickenhaus

• Mark L. Lester

Special thanks to Ditke Schwartz.

This interview first appeared in a shorter version in the Dutch fanzine Schokkend Nieuws. Above is the full version of this talk, edited only for clarity.