Scott Glenn throws many scripts – literally. His wife of 57 years, Carol Schwartz, went to call these discarded script “Wallbangers” because of the sound they make after he threw them across the room.
“The white lotus“The script started as Wallbanger. Glenn just didn’t contact the character he would play: Jim Hollinger, a rich American businessman who has lived in Thailand for decades and possibly murdered the father of Walton Goggins’ Rick Hatchett. When Rick finally confronts. With a sugar pipe, he has been a sugar. 86. “I thought,” Fuck this. This sounds like the last five parts I was offered, which I rejected. “”
But after reading the script closer, he had a change in the heart, joined the wild eclectic season 3 role and delivered a performance that is a deviation from the tough guy that has made him one of the most noticeable character actors in the last six decades. He is best known for playing men of authority, skilled charmers and combat machines in movies including “Silverado”, “Urban Cowboy”, “The Hunt for Red October” and “The Right Stuff.” And now, thanks to that change of heart, he has earned his first great actor nomination, for outstanding guest actors in a drama series.
“I make horrible decisions on parts all the time, so it’s nothing new to me,” he said. “What was interesting to me about (Jim) is that this is a guy who has lived steadily in Thailand for 50 years, off for 60 years, married to a Thai woman, has two Thai daughters. To a large extent he is Thai, as opposed to this American guy.”
To play Jim, Glenn studied two Thai martial arts, Krabi-Cabong and Muay Boren-not because his character is involved in Fisticuffs, but because he wanted to “get the rhythm in that country and hopefully it has to cover my character.” He said “every tag is a one-act game that now, and I do not know what I literally do what I will do what I will do what I would literally do.
When you look at Glenn’s early life, you can understand why he can chafe of people who tell him who he is. As a boy he had Scarlet Fever, which he was not supposed to survive. When he did so, he devoted the rest of his life to intense physical activity – Ithletics, Martial Arts – in an obvious rejection of his bedridden childhood. He spent time in the marinas before moving into actors and playing suitable soldiers, especially in Robert Altman’s “Nashville” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”
In Altman’s spreading movie from 1975, Glenn had a small part in a huge role and played a
Vietnam veterinarian who is obsessed with Ronee Blakley’s Barbara Jean, a popular but fragile country star. He called the film, written by Joan Tewkesbury but often improvised by Altman and his actors during Skytte, a formative experience, one where the famous steadfast director encouraged him to trust his instincts.
A few years later, Coppola Glenn taught another important lesson. For several years, the actor suffered from self -doubt when he was given notes in auditions and feared that he was not intended for the camera. But doing “Apocalypse Now”, even with only a few minutes of screen, rejuvenated him. Coppola gave him what he called “The biggest gift someone can give an artist”: trust. After the damaged notes not so much. “I would say, ‘Who F – K Have you worked with? Since I have just worked with Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Francis Coppola, Vittorio Storao, and they all thought I was good,” he said and laughed.
The 1980s found that Glenn did a stable high-profile work, including “Urban Cowboy”, “The Right Stuff” and “Silverado.” Near the end of the decade he got a script that became an instant Wallbanger. “(My wife) said,” What is it? “And I said,“ Oh, it’s a horrible horror show. She said, “Let me read it.” She came back and said, “Who is directing this?” I said: ‘Jonathan.’ She said: “Jonathan Demme? The movie was” The Silence of the Lamb. “So yes, he said,” I’m making big mistakes. “
In the mid-2010s, Glenn had a second act on television and picked up remarkable roles in HBO’s “The Leftovers” and Netflix’s “Daredevil.” In “The Leftovers” he plays a man who moves through the series who speaks to invisible voices and predicts waiting apocalypes, alternating between sageness and obvious madness. “I love that character because you never knew if you had to do with a prophet or a madman,” Glenn said. “In many cases it was both.”
On paper, “Daredevil” (and Marvel’s “The Defenders” also sounded on Netflix) as a perfect project for Glenn, who plays Stick, a blind martial art that trains the possible Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. But the actor didn’t care about this guy either at first. “I got so angry with it – the leader of the leadership, I will be this doddy old man,” he said. “I went for a crazy walk up the mountain and almost hugged myself. I came back and on my iPad was the first script. I started reading about stick, and I thought, ‘Holy Shit, this guy is amazing!'”
When it comes to “The White Lotus”, Glenn found the musicality of creator Mike White’s writing and directed addictive. Before going to Thailand, he took up the seasons 1 and 2. When he looked at the second episode of the first season Glenn stood and danced for the show for an hour. And he sees similarities between White and Altman. “They encouraged my probably crazy and unpredictable way of working rather than getting in the way of it,” he said.
Glenn is not sure where to go next. He called himself “too lazy” to return to the stage, where his career began, on Broadway in 1965 with “The Impossible Years.” (The last game he made was to “finish the picture” in 2005.) He still learned so much from playwright Tracy led while doing “Killer Joe” with him in the late 90s that the right script could attract him back. It’s not like the man will slow down now. “I just feel continuous luck,” he said. “People pay me to do something that I love to do so much that I would probably pay them to let me do it if it wasn’t the other way around.”
This story first ran down to the Wire Drama issue of Thewrap’s Awards Magazine. Read more from the question here.
