Episode 1183 - Scott Glenn
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck sticks?
Marc:What the fuckingistas?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it if you're new here.
Marc:I appreciate you coming by.
Marc:How's everybody holding up?
Marc:Yeah, there's still a massive amount of anxiety and panic and isolation going on.
Marc:And I just wanted to acknowledge that at the outset here.
Marc:I know that many of you are homebound and locked in and things are more terrifying.
Marc:It is here as well in California.
Marc:It seems that fucking COVID is out of control.
Marc:And I know there's a vaccine on the horizon.
Marc:I don't know when I'll be able to get it, but for some reason.
Marc:I don't know, my brain, I guess my brain is just fizzled out on it.
Marc:I've hit a wall with the fear and I'm in some other zone.
Marc:I'm in some other zone with it.
Marc:I've crossed over.
Marc:I'm still hyper vigilant.
Marc:But man, I've been on set.
Marc:As you know, many of you, I've begun work on this movie.
Marc:And it's been good.
Marc:I'm fucking happy to be working.
Marc:But more than that, it's not even about the work.
Marc:We'll talk about it in a second.
Marc:I do want to tell you that today I talked to Scott Glenn.
Marc:Well, I talked to him a few months ago, actually.
Marc:You know him from The Right Stuff, Silence of the Lambs, Hunt for Red October, Training Day, The Leftovers.
Marc:He was in the Marines.
Marc:One of his first acting jobs was on Apocalypse Now.
Marc:He's got a lot of great stories, but we did do it a few months ago.
Marc:It was before the election.
Marc:And we held it.
Marc:We have to hold on to things sometimes because he's got this movie coming out called Greenland and it will be released on demand this Friday, December 18th.
Marc:But I was a little intimidated.
Marc:I didn't know how that would go.
Marc:I didn't know if he was a big talker, but man, he was fired up, man.
Marc:Scott Glenn was...
Marc:Up where I think he's in Idaho.
Marc:Fired up up there in his bunker.
Marc:He's not in a bunker.
Marc:But I like people who get out of this fucking town.
Marc:Who go out and live a life.
Marc:I'm thinking about doing that myself.
Marc:Would that be alright?
Marc:I've talked about it before.
Marc:Can I go live a life somewhere else?
Marc:But I love my fucking house.
Marc:Anyways.
Marc:People.
Marc:You all right?
Marc:How's the kid?
Marc:All right.
Marc:How's the other one?
Marc:That one?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:They doing all right?
Marc:Driving you crazy?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:Have you figured out a way to stay away from each other during the day so you can at least pretend like you like each other later?
Marc:I'm not talking about your kid.
Marc:I'm talking about, you know,
Marc:You're a significant other.
Marc:Have you guys figured out a way to work it so you can maintain the love and not just be stripped down to the bare essentials and wondering whether or not you'll be able to tolerate each other on the other side of this?
Marc:I got to assume, folks, and I don't mean to be sad or negative or bum anybody out.
Marc:But man, if you make it through this.
Marc:As a marriage, as a parent, and you come out the other side of this with nothing but deepened, more in-depth love in your heart for all involved, you have graduated into decent humanhood.
Marc:I'll tell you that, man.
Marc:I got to assume that some people are just ripped raw and stripped bare and wondering what the fuck they're doing with everybody involved.
Marc:Who are you?
Marc:Why are you here?
Marc:I never wanted you to see this.
Marc:Get away from me.
Marc:Get away from me.
Marc:You don't know me.
Marc:You don't know me.
Marc:I do now.
Marc:You're the person that yells you don't know me at me.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That you don't know me.
Marc:I do now, though.
Marc:And I love this part of you.
Marc:I love the part of you that's screaming you don't know me at me.
Marc:Where are our children?
Marc:What have you done with our children?
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:Who am I talking about?
Marc:You know what helped me the other day?
Marc:I actually had to throw away some ice cream.
Marc:I know it sounds harsh.
Marc:It sounds crazy.
Marc:But I had to do it.
Marc:I had to throw away some ice cream.
Marc:Shit was getting crazy.
Marc:And Clementine's and St.
Marc:Louis sent me all this fucking rich, amazing ice cream.
Marc:And it turned on me.
Marc:I couldn't taste the difference between anything anymore.
Marc:And all I could taste was just a spoonful of self-hatred.
Marc:every time i ate it and i don't think that's a good promo it's like a warm spoonful of self-hatred with each bite isn't that most fucking good food hey look whatever i made it through i'm back on it i worked out yesterday went on my hike
Marc:And dodging maskless Armenians both ways.
Marc:What did I do on the hike yesterday?
Marc:You know what I listen to a lot?
Marc:Honestly, not that they need any promotion, but I'm just saying that if there are any top 10, top 20 rock record lists that don't include Aerosmith's first record.
Marc:then there's something wrong with that list.
Marc:The fucking guitar sounds on that.
Marc:What am I, just being an Aerosmith fanboy right now?
Marc:I don't like Aerosmith for the whole arc, but the first four records, oh, fuck.
Marc:It's list time.
Marc:It's fucking list time, folks.
Marc:The lists are coming.
Marc:And just realize that a lot of times these lists, depending on the outlet, it's just content garbage.
Marc:But sometimes they're just put together by one dummy.
Marc:You know, maybe two dummies with an agenda.
Marc:I saw a like 100 best album list that had like, I think like 40 Radiohead records on it.
Marc:Like Radiohead records that no one could even get.
Marc:Radiohead records that were only available to the members of Radiohead.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't think this list is really objective.
Marc:Not that any list can be objective, but you know, Radiohead.
Marc:sessions in the cellar at the place where they were practicing done by the guy who works there.
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:That's not one of the top 100 best rock records.
Marc:I'm just saying there's a lot of lists that are incredible and I guess it's all opinion anyways.
Marc:I do know that one list I found to be incredibly on point was the Vulture Best Comedy Special for 2020 list because that as the number one
Marc:best comedy special of 2020.
Marc:They had Marc Maron, End Times Fun, and I thought to myself, finally, finally someone understood it, and it was the comedy nerds at Vulture.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you, Vulture.
Marc:I get no award love.
Marc:I get no general... I got, you know... I just felt...
Marc:I'll be honest with you.
Marc:I'm not just blowing smoke up my own ass because I don't do yoga.
Marc:But I do believe that is my best work.
Marc:And I'm proud of it.
Marc:And I'm happy that it was recognized.
Marc:Take care of yourselves.
Marc:Use whatever options you have at your disposal to maintain your sanity without hurting yourself or others.
Marc:So I'm on set and it's a very safe set.
Marc:I'm shooting this film.
Marc:It's called To Leslie.
Marc:The director is a guy named Michael Morris.
Marc:I'm working with Andrea Riceboro and Andre Royo primarily.
Marc:I did not really know Andrea Rossboro or know what a fucking, you know, inspired acting genius she was.
Marc:I know Andre.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:We're hanging out a lot, having some laughs in our masks, having laughs in our masks.
Marc:So out of squirting and wiping on set all the time, they got a whole crew of squirters and wipers.
Marc:um and this is not uh i don't want it too easy a joke i'm not gonna do that uh but it's you know when you're shooting a small movie the way the way it works is the only people that ever don't have a mask it's the actors we're getting tested three times a week which is a beautiful perk because i enjoy testing as i've established over the time on this show over the covet times i've established that i do like to be tested
Marc:But, you know, I am not as confident as I'd like to be in general or as an actor.
Marc:But it's funny being alone and not being sort of engaged in some sort of codependent relationship or or even in a day to day relationship of love and intimacy and all that where you.
Marc:There seems to be almost a constant need for reassurance.
Marc:I think that's part of a healthy relationship.
Marc:Maybe not constant, but the occasional need for reassurance, or at least knowing that they love you.
Marc:Lynn's been gone a while now, and I carry her with me.
Marc:I carry her sense of who I was with me.
Marc:I carry her faith in me as an actor, her belief in me as an artist.
Marc:I carry that with me because she gave me those gifts of making me feel like I was good.
Marc:And, you know, after 40 years or 30 years, however long I've been doing comedy, you know, I know I'm good and I know I've gotten better.
Marc:I know I'm comfortable.
Marc:But sometimes it's nice to be showered with love and support.
Marc:But now for the first time in my life, I'm self-generating that.
Marc:What an interesting new experience.
Marc:Hey, hey, Mark, you're doing all right.
Marc:You're doing OK, Mark.
Marc:Who the fuck are you?
Marc:I'm you, man.
Marc:Are you sure that I'm doing all right?
Marc:Yeah, dude, you're doing OK and you're working hard and you should you should feel proud of yourself.
Marc:Hey, go fuck yourself.
Marc:I mean, you're bullshitting me, right?
Marc:No, man, I'm you.
Marc:Yeah, that's what you say.
Marc:But are you me?
Marc:Yeah, I'm you and I'm proud of you.
Marc:Oh, gross, gross.
Marc:What does that even mean?
Marc:It means I'm proud of us.
Marc:Oh, now we're together?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Finally.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:You think so?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay, I'll hang out with you.
Marc:We are doing a good job.
Marc:So...
Marc:But I got on set, you know, and I was nervous.
Marc:But here's here's the beautiful thing about being present, being in scenes, is that when you're doing these movies, these smaller movies and even, you know, TV shows without big budgets, there's no read through.
Marc:I mean, you got to show up ready for work, ready with your choices, ready to engage.
Marc:And you usually kind of rehearse on set.
Marc:you know, in the first couple takes, but we're shooting on film and it's intense.
Marc:And, you know, Leslie, I'm calling her by her character's name, Andrea has to really put a lot of things together before each take.
Marc:You know, she's a professional and she's got to get in something deep.
Marc:But there's not a lot of time for us to engage as as each other or, you know, we're on set as the as the characters.
Marc:There's sometimes when I'm in a moment and we're having I need to be received emotionally when I'm acting.
Marc:And I think that's part of it.
Marc:And she's such a good actress that, like, I don't know if she's pretending to receive me or she actually is.
Marc:But either way, it's fine because I'm I'm feeling it in my heart.
Marc:And like sometimes like on set when I'm watching her work or her, she's going through emotional things.
Marc:I get choked up.
Marc:But I realize like the character shouldn't be choked up, Mark.
Marc:So you're going to have to shove that shit down.
Marc:So I don't know if that reads like, you know, oh, look at this poor man who's struggling with his heart because that guy, the guy I'm playing definitely does that.
Marc:Maybe that's exactly what I need to do.
Marc:But I do know I shouldn't be squirting out tears.
Marc:So I hold that back.
Marc:And I guess that's just part of being in it, in the scene.
Marc:We had to do a scene that was very engaged.
Marc:And you've got to get your lines together and you've got to get ready.
Marc:And it's a quick day.
Marc:It's a quick shoot.
Marc:And there's not a lot of takes because you are shooting on film.
Marc:So you've got to be in it.
Marc:And, you know, we had not really ever, you know, this is like Friday and we'd been working together five days and we had not really rehearsed together.
Marc:And she was just sort of like, can we just do this?
Marc:And I'm like, yes, please.
Marc:Anything you need.
Marc:You are the star.
Marc:However, I can help us do this.
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:And we just kind of hold up and rehearse for the first time, like going through the lines and going through the scenes and getting it right and kind of connecting as people.
Marc:And it was very moving to me.
Marc:She's an amazing actress.
Marc:And and I and I didn't feel like I got to know her at all until Friday when she's like, can we run this?
Marc:And I'm like, let's run it all day.
Marc:Andrea, let's I'll run it all day long with you.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:And I have a hard time admitting this, but I, you know, I think I am doing pretty good work.
Marc:But more than that, like, I'm excited that I know how to do it, to be on a set, that I've achieved some sort of experience with working as an actor.
Marc:And, you know, I'm kind of proud of myself.
Marc:And I hate saying that.
Marc:I hate it.
Marc:But I'm proud of myself.
Marc:And I hope I don't die of COVID or get it first, okay?
Marc:But I'll tell you one thing.
Marc:In the last few days, I felt very at peace with a lot of things, and I don't really know why.
Marc:I don't know what to attribute it to, but I've been very at peace with a lot of things.
Marc:And I have very little control over almost anything.
Marc:And it's okay.
Marc:So Scott Glenn is a great actor and intimidating until you meet him.
Marc:And then he's just a little less intimidating and very engaging.
Marc:His new natural disaster movie, Greenland, will be available on demand this Friday, December 18th.
Marc:And we recorded this...
Marc:This talk before the election.
Marc:But man, did I did I like talking to him?
Marc:This is me talking to Scott Glenn.
Guest:i'm still new to doing this shit so hey yeah how many have you done you just started i did a thing for what was it for uh gq it was called oh yeah iconic parts of the actors who played them oh nice and wait which which role was that for
Guest:Yeah, it was for a whole bunch of them, starting when I think they began with Urban Cowboy Wright stuff, Hunk Red October, Silence of the Lambs, Silverado, blah, blah, blah.
Marc:Yeah, I think a childhood memory I came upon this morning was that you playing with that worm in your mouth in Urban Cowboy.
Guest:Yeah, that was an accident.
Guest:Was it?
Guest:Yeah, we finished shooting for the night, and...
Guest:It was mezcal con sucasana with your worm.
Guest:And I said to Jim Bridges, the director, you know, I know how to get the worm out of this bottle.
Guest:Why don't we shoot it and gross everybody out in dailies?
Guest:And he said, great, we'll put it on a macro lens.
Guest:How do you do it?
Guest:And it's a game I played in another part of my life down in South Texas where everybody puts a hundred bucks in the table, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pass the bottle around.
Guest:The first person gets the worm, gets all the cash.
Guest:And what typically people, gringos, people are unused to doing that kind of shit is they try to get the worm and they pass out from drinking too fucking much mezcal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what you do is you stick your tongue in the neck of the bottle.
Guest:hold it up wait for the so you can feel the worm hit your tongue then take in as big a gulp as possible and what I did was I held the worm against the roof of my mouth swallowed the mezcal and used my tongue to shove the worm back out and then chewed it back into my mouth to really be totally fucking disgusting
Marc:But the plan was just to fuck with people in the editing room, not to put it in the movie.
Guest:Our dailies, they used to do this with movies all the time.
Guest:Everybody involved, didn't matter if you were a caterer, a driver, a cast, everybody came to dailies.
Guest:And so it was just a joke for dailies.
Guest:And Jim saw it and he said, that's going to be one of the most memorable movies.
Guest:memorable scenes in this movie stuck in it you you know a movie is on your side when a lot of the best stuff are accidents yeah i i mean it it's it seemed to have scarred me so uh it's stuck in there i'll go good
Marc:Where are you from?
Marc:I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:Family's from Jersey.
Marc:But I grew up in Albuquerque.
Marc:How about you?
Guest:Pittsburgh.
Marc:Really?
Marc:How long did you live in Pittsburgh?
Guest:I lived in Pittsburgh until I joined the service.
Guest:As a six-month reservist, and since it was in the 60s, I was briefly activated a couple times and got my discharge November 27th, 1967.
Guest:So you just missed it, huh?
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:I don't talk a whole lot about that.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:But nevertheless, was and will be past the grave of United States Marine.
Guest:So there you go.
Marc:Yeah, it's a big life changer, I guess.
Marc:I mean, I don't know.
Marc:What was your dad doing in Pittsburgh?
Marc:What was the family business?
Guest:Snap-on tools.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was a salesman and then worked his way up through the company.
Guest:And for me, Parris Island was probably the best three months of education I ever had in my life because I was really...
Guest:pretty much of an arrogant cocksucker, and I needed the discipline of those three months.
Guest:And then what came afterwards was some of it was great and some of it was not so great.
Marc:And so were you one of those cases where, like, if you didn't go into the service, you might have ended up in jail?
Marc:I mean, what was the childhood like?
Guest:Yeah, I could have.
Guest:You know, that future was always a looming possibility.
Yeah.
Guest:And also the part of Pittsburgh that I came from,
Guest:nobody was drafted.
Guest:So if you were smart, you could either join the Coast Guard or become a pilot, either in the Air Force or the Army or the Marine Corps.
Guest:And if you weren't smart, the options were 101st, 82nd Airborne, United States Marine Corps.
Guest:And I'm just going to go with the 101st until someone told me that I could join the Marines and also be airborne.
Guest:So I thought,
Guest:oh, that's cool, and I'll do that.
Guest:I did not avoid the draft five times from fucking bone spurs in a foot.
Guest:So let me see.
Guest:Oh, I can't remember which foot I had my fucking bone spurs in.
Guest:That was not me.
Marc:Yeah, no, it does not seem like it.
Marc:And yeah, these cowardly rich kids, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, I mean, not to be too serious.
Guest:I don't give a shit if I am serious.
Guest:John McCain was a huge, was and is a huge hero of mine.
Guest:When I heard the douchebag calling and saying, I don't like people who are caught.
Guest:Wait a minute.
Guest:Multiple.
Guest:I think it was 20.
Guest:I don't want to overage that.
Guest:Combat runs, overhand noise, shot out of the sky.
Guest:beaten up, busted over 30 bones in your body.
Guest:And then when you're incredibly influential dad, when the, when the NBA found out that he was Admiral of the Pacific and you were offered a ride home to say, no, you know, and the next day they hung him up by his, by his, by his, by his wrist.
Guest:And, uh, you know,
Guest:Week, week and a half later, disrespect a Gold Star family, I guess because they're Muslims.
Guest:I don't give a shit if you're a three-headed fucking Martian.
Guest:You lose a son or daughter fighting for this country.
Guest:You're owed all the respect, I think, for the rest of your fucking life.
Guest:And then stick a dagger in the heart of the Kurds while we were fighting ISIS.
Guest:Four brave special forces operators died and 11,000 Kurds.
Guest:How did we get on this subject?
Marc:It's like he's a fucking monster, dude.
Marc:It's like I was thinking about it today, you know, about the new movie, like about about Greenland.
Marc:And it's like I'm watching this movie and like all these movies are being made, you know, like a couple of years ago with apocalyptic themes and they're being released.
Marc:And I'm like, I can just look outside, dude.
Marc:My fucking state's on fire.
Marc:You know?
Guest:Oh, man.
Marc:Are you in L.A.
Marc:now?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:holy i said yeah i saw pictures of it today what's going on up there you're in idaho yeah our air is carol here what's the air like today sucks right yeah it sucks up here too not as bad as you have it but there are numbers i think we're 70 something
Guest:Not good.
Marc:So the Marines, like, I can feel the impact.
Marc:Like, even when you were just talking about service, I got kind of choked up.
Marc:And I think that, yeah, I guess that's where you kind of develop the depth of your character as a person, huh?
Guest:You know, I guess so.
Guest:It's...
Guest:It's really a good experience, I think, even briefly, to be in a spot where you take orders and go for something bigger than yourself.
Guest:One of my best friends, also no longer alive, didn't believe in the military on any level.
Guest:So he joined the Peace Corps.
Guest:Same deal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just had the experience of thinking about for half a second about somebody else and trying to take care of them for a while.
Marc:That's all.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that's what that's what's supposed to make humans different than other animals in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you're talking about the apocalyptic this.
Guest:I mean, in California, holy shit, you've got you've got coronavirus and climate change both smacking in the face at the same time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now I got to wear a mask just to breathe.
Marc:It's not just about.
Marc:I went on a hike today because I can't not get physical or I'd go crazy.
Marc:I put an N95 mask on.
Marc:I kept it on the whole fucking way just because of smoke.
Marc:You keep in fucking solid shape.
Marc:What did you eat for breakfast there, Scott?
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:I had a protein drink and a couple pieces of toast and about a half a gallon of coffee.
Guest:Nice.
Marc:I do a half a gallon of coffee, too.
Marc:It's good.
Guest:I mean, we're in it.
Guest:We're in it.
Guest:Carol and I, my wife and I are kind of still in quarantine.
Guest:She's a potter and a brilliant potter.
Guest:So she's her work hasn't stopped at all.
Guest:She's in her studio throwing pots and fire and glazing.
Marc:I'm a big pottery fan.
Marc:I want to know.
Marc:Tell me, how can I look at her stuff?
Marc:I like buying pottery.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I'll send you.
Guest:I'll work it out with the producers, but I'll send you a link where you can check out her stuff.
Guest:And she has a book.
Guest:She's brilliant.
Guest:She's easily the best artist in this family.
Marc:What's her name?
Guest:Carol.
Guest:Carol Glenn.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Guest:I was Carol Schwartz, but now.
Marc:OK, I I'm a huge I don't know why I've I've taken.
Marc:I love pottery.
Marc:I buy a lot of pottery.
Marc:I was just up in Taos.
Marc:I bought some pots.
Marc:I'm a big fan of it.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Marc:Yeah, I guess you would be.
Marc:How long has she been throwing pots?
Guest:She's been throwing pots for 50 years 50 years.
Guest:Yeah, we've been married.
Guest:This will be our 52nd wedding anniversary.
Guest:Holy shit Yeah, so she's been since just right around the time we hooked up she started
Guest:throwing and firing and still is doing it.
Marc:It's interesting to me because it seems like there's, you don't, I don't know you obviously, but to come out of the Marines and then, you know, choose a life of the arts, I mean, that seems, it seems, it's not counterintuitive, but it's unique.
Marc:And also to have this, to have a wife who's an artist, I mean, how did that happen?
Marc:How did you come out?
Guest:You know, my life is, it's a terrible lesson for other people because I wouldn't,
Guest:I tried not to even give it to my two daughters.
Guest:But for me,
Guest:The best thing I can do is walk outside, see how high I can jump up in the air and find out which way the wind blows me.
Guest:Because every really good thing that's ever happened to me has been an accident.
Guest:And that's just the truth.
Guest:From meeting her to, I never planned to be an actor.
Guest:I took acting classes in New York.
Guest:I wanted to be a writer.
Guest:poetry and short stories and shit like that.
Guest:And I was talking to a friend of mine and she said, and I had gotten a job
Guest:on a sports desk of a newspaper in the Virgin Islands.
Guest:In the Virgin Islands?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought, you know, go to the Virgin Islands, hang out with a lot of hot days and bikinis and live a good life and write poetry and the great American novel.
Guest:And she said, why don't you go to New York and take an acting class?
Guest:And I went, for what reason?
Guest:And she said, I'll be honest with you, Scott.
Guest:Your description of places and action and ideas is not bad.
Guest:It's okay, but your dialogue essentially sucks.
Guest:It's stiff.
Guest:It's not real.
Guest:The minute you put words in anyone's mouth, whether it's a poem or a short story or whatever, you lose it.
Guest:She said, you're not doing anything for six months.
Guest:If you get up in front of people and say words...
Guest:It'll kick you in your ass to listen to the way people really speak.
Guest:And if you're dealing with theater, you'll be dealing with arguably the best dialogue I've ever written.
Guest:So, you know, after I got over maybe 30 seconds of being hurt and angry at somebody telling me the truth.
Guest:I thought, you know, she's right.
Guest:So I drove to New York and I got a couple jobs.
Guest:One is a bricklayer turning a burlesque house into a rock theater, the Fillmore East.
Marc:You were laying bricks for the Fillmore down on the Lower East Side?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then a job briefly is, it sounds like bullshit, right?
Guest:well, they called it a bouncer.
Guest:What I got really good at because I'm skinny guy, but I got really good at buying people drinks and stopping fights.
Guest:So I got a couple of jobs and, uh,
Guest:The first day I looked up acting in the Village Voice, nothing under A, under B, Berghoff.
Guest:I didn't know anything.
Guest:I called it Berghoff Studios.
Guest:I got a hold of this guy.
Guest:I don't know if you know, Bill Hickey, his name was.
Marc:Yeah, Bill Hickey.
Marc:He was, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That guy.
Guest:You almost had his voice for a second.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Bill Hickey.
Guest:He was nominated for an Academy Award.
Marc:Pritzy's Honor.
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:And I got him on the phone and he said, he gave me a monologue to work on.
Guest:He said, come by Wednesday.
Guest:So like 11 o'clock in the morning, Wednesday in the basement of Bank Street, I walked out in front of probably seven or eight people.
Guest:yeah and literally this is true literally before i opened my mouth for the first and only time in my life it was like a light bulb went off between my eyes and i thought holy i'm an actor i got fast it was like and it wasn't oh i love this i want to express myself or anything like that it was like
Guest:my life made sense to me for the first time ever.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I like instantly thought, you know, I daydream all the time.
Guest:I live in these fantasies.
Guest:I, this is, this is what I meant to do.
Guest:And I, and Bill saw it and he looked at me, he started to laugh and said, that's right.
Guest:You're one of us.
Guest:And then he turned to the seven people who were trying to still wake up probably.
Guest:And he said, uh,
Guest:Scott's not going to finish this scene.
Guest:He's got to walk.
Guest:He's got to go outside, walk around the block a couple of times and think about things.
Guest:And he was right.
Guest:I went to I got on the phone, called my mom and dad up.
Guest:I said, I'm not going to the Virgin Islands.
Guest:They thought maybe I was going to go back.
Guest:And I said, I'm not going to go back into the Marine Corps.
Guest:I'm going to be an actor.
Guest:And my dad.
Guest:He said the smartest thing any father could say about something like that, and very few ever would.
Guest:He said, I don't know anything about what you're telling me, son.
Guest:The only advice I can give you is don't give yourself any deadlines.
Guest:Don't say if I haven't made it in four years.
Guest:He said, that's like starting a race with a lead weight hung around your neck.
Guest:In for a penny, in for a pound.
Guest:You love it, make it your life.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:And I did.
Marc:But that's what an amazing thing for that guy to say.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You guys, you were tight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I, you know, I mean, I, I grew up in a disgustingly functional family.
Guest:My mom and dad loved each other to the very end.
Guest:Long marriage.
Yeah.
Guest:Got along with them great.
Guest:It was all good.
Marc:Well, that's some testament.
Marc:That would be why you are also still married and grounded, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm lucky to be with a woman who's not only amazingly beautiful and talented, but on her mom's side of the family, she's how many generations, Carol?
Guest:22?
Guest:We're around 22 unbroken generations of Orthodox rabbis.
Guest:So there's a rich background that this woman comes from.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I just come from Jewish tailors in Russia.
Marc:That's cool.
Marc:Where do the Orthodox rabbis go?
Marc:What part of Eastern Europe is she from?
Marc:Hungary.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:My family goes back into the pale of settlement in Russia.
Marc:So you're Jewish now.
Marc:Is that true?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I converted a friend of mine, an amazing guy.
Guest:I went to see him.
Guest:As it turns out, he was a rabbi with a shul on the Upper East Side.
Guest:But he had been just a very amazing, interesting kind of activist guy.
Guest:And I said...
Guest:made me a Jew.
Guest:I want to be a Jew.
Guest:And he said, schmuck, I'll lie for you.
Guest:I'll tell her parents I didn't do it.
Guest:You don't want to do that.
Guest:And I went, yeah, I really do.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:And I don't want to do it for her parents.
Guest:I just make me a Jew.
Guest:And he said, you know, he said, I'm a conservative rabbi, Scott.
Guest:And I don't really hang with conversions that much.
Guest:But no other rabbis don't do it.
Guest:So I'll get a hold of one of them.
Guest:But I just would assume not.
Guest:I went, OK.
Guest:And I started walking out of the shul.
Guest:And he said, hey, wait a minute, asshole.
Guest:Turn around.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:And he said, it's not for her parents.
Guest:It's not.
Guest:He said, what do you know about the Tomlin?
Guest:And I said, if a man teaches his son no trade, it is as if he taught him highway robbery.
Guest:And he said, you've read the Tomlin.
Guest:I said, a lot of it.
Guest:I have.
Guest:He said, do you accept it as the word of God?
Guest:And I said, no.
Guest:I said, it's a lot of wisdom, but if you ask me what resonates with me more than any other of those kind of works, it's probably Lao Tzu's The Way of Life.
Guest:And he said, Ben, why do you want to be a Jew?
Guest:And I said, honestly, if there was no such thing as anti-Semitism, we wouldn't be sitting here talking, but...
Guest:I love this woman, and I don't know how long it's going to last or what's going to go on, but we both like to travel, and I just simply don't want to be anywhere in the world where somebody's going to be pointing a gun at her and not at me for the same reason.
Guest:And he said, he looked at me, and he said, sit down.
Guest:So I sat down, and he said, after me, all of that dim old doll.
Guest:And I said, what are you doing?
Guest:He said, I'm converting you.
Guest:I said, why?
Guest:And he said, I've never had that answer to that question.
Guest:And he said, you want to take a target and put it on your back?
Guest:I am obligated to convert you.
Guest:So he did.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:And now you're just two happy targets.
Marc:Two happy targets.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Welcome to the club.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:So now, so you studied with Hickey, and you went back to the class, I assume, and that was the beginning, huh?
Guest:Yeah, that was the beginning, and it was...
Guest:In a lot of ways, the late 60s, early 70s, I think was a much easier time for actors to learn their trade in New York than, say, right now, because there was so much off-off-Broadway happening.
Guest:Back then, if you wanted to work at, say, La Mama, if you were willing to run props and paint flats, you had a part in the play.
Marc:I imagine the third thing on that list would be, you know, be naked and paint yourself red as well.
Guest:Well, there's that too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, that didn't happen to me until later on when I did Killer Joe.
Guest:I didn't have to paint myself red, but I did have to walk around in front of people for a while.
Marc:Killer, what's Killer Joe?
Marc:Oh, Killer Joe was McConaughey.
Guest:Killer Joe was originally, and in its best form, not a movie, but a play.
Marc:It was a play by Tracy Letts.
Guest:Exactly right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And Friedkin made it a digital movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Got it.
Guest:And I never, it was, you know, it's one of those deals.
Guest:Some pieces are really meant to be what they were originally and nothing else.
Guest:Killer Joe, we did it in a theater that held a little less than 200 people with very low ceilings.
Guest:It was fucking claustrophobic.
Guest:The people that came to see that play, it was like they were all jammed into a trailer on the outskirts of Dallas where the thing took place.
Guest:There's just no way
Guest:we had a fight scene at the end of the play that was not choreographed.
Guest:It was improv every single night.
Guest:And so, you know, Amanda Plummer threw her neck out three times.
Guest:I think she broke her wrist.
Guest:I had a crap collarbone.
Guest:It was a crazy, crazy experience that there was no way you could duplicate any of that stuff
Guest:On screen.
Marc:You originated that play with Tracy?
Guest:No, it was originated in Chicago.
Guest:Tracy comes from Steppenwolf, and they were doing... I can't remember whether it was Steppenwolf proper or one of those experimental offshoots, but he...
Guest:He brought the play from Chicago to New York with Michael Shannon, with a couple of the original people from Chicago.
Guest:And then the add-ons were Dottie, two different actors who played that part, and Amanda Plummer and myself.
Guest:And it was a great experience because it was comedy, which is fantastic because it ain't working if they're not laughing.
Guest:And you needed circus skills.
Guest:You had to be able to do pratfalls and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And willing to be naked both emotionally and physically in front of people.
Guest:And so I remember when we started doing the thing, I said to Amanda,
Guest:This is great training, but this, you know, this play could potentially kill us.
Guest:And she said, you know, it's such an extreme play.
Guest:We'll probably split the critics down the middle and you won't have to worry about it.
Guest:We'll be here for, we'll do, you know, our long, our endless previews.
Guest:In our case, it was, I think, a couple of months of previews.
Guest:We'll open and we'll close in a week or two.
Guest:What happened was we got great reviews and were essentially adopted by the New York Times magazine section.
Guest:And I remember right after it came out, I was walking to the theater and three blocks away from the fucking theater, the limos were lined up.
Guest:yeah i walked in and amanda was there and she said whoops we're going to be doing this for a while and that was uh six months we did it and then i went to uh new zealand to make a movie so you're saying in the mid 60s that it or the late 60s it was a good time for actors if they were willing to sort of you know do everything yeah there was a ton of work there was improv i mean i remember we
Guest:We did one play.
Guest:We started on the streets.
Guest:We started at Battery Park and worked our way up to the George Washington Bridge.
Guest:That was the actual play?
Guest:No, these were theater games, improvs.
Guest:Just picking up on things and trying to either make something happen.
Guest:What you go to quickly is humor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And...
Guest:If you've had the chops and you thought you could pull it off, you could also take improv can go in other directions, as John Cassavetes has proved.
Guest:But doing improv when you're doing it for things other than laughs is tricky business.
Marc:Well, you worked with Altman a couple of times.
Marc:I mean, what was it like on Nashville?
Marc:I mean, that character, was that improvised?
Guest:Nashville was not improvised.
Guest:Joan Tewksbury wrote that script.
Guest:She called it her patchwork quilt.
Guest:But the way that you did things...
Guest:I have had a tiny part in Nashville and I remember that it was a scene in a hospital and I went over to Bob and I said, how do you want me to do this?
Guest:I mean, I could I think I could actually be funny and or I could hopefully.
Guest:Have some pathos, maybe break your heart, maybe be sad.
Guest:Where do you want me to go with this?
Guest:And he said.
Guest:You're the fucking actor, not me.
Guest:I have no idea.
Guest:He said, you know, Scott, you're doing the only job in this movie that I can't do.
Guest:I can light better than the lighting guy.
Guest:I can cook better than the caterer.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You do it.
Guest:And I said, what do you want?
Guest:And he said, this is what I want.
Guest:I want to see...
Guest:your performance in dailies and say, yes, that's real.
Guest:That happened.
Guest:I said, that's it?
Guest:He's like, yeah.
Marc:But you chose that part, even though it may not have been big, the choices you made were kind of powerful because it's a memorable little part because you were so, the obsession or whatever you felt for that singer, it seemed to kind of reveal itself as something genuine, like love.
Marc:And it was sort of a moving thing.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:It was.
Guest:And that was kind of what I was going for.
Guest:I mean, I was...
Guest:I was telling you that my good luck is really the name of my life and good accidents.
Guest:My masters, when I moved to Hollywood, both of whom were thought of at the time as outlaws were Bob Altman and Francis Coppola.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, with Francis, I played really a tiny part, but in the most amazing movie,
Marc:american movie i think ever made apocalypse now i yeah i yeah you were you were there on the on the on the shore right as the boat pulled up i was the guy that went up the river ahead of first colby yeah exactly right you know it's weird dude i was just in new mexico uh i spent a couple weeks in taos and i visited dennis's grave oh man did you know him
Marc:I didn't know him at all, but I, you know, I'd heard he was buried up there in this little weird kind of like Mexican cemetery that wasn't even attached to a church because he loved it up there.
Marc:And it was such a moving thing.
Marc:I went twice and just spent time over there because, you know, with those kind of rough kind of Mexican cemeteries where, you know, it seems like people keep contributing to the grave that you could there was sort of a celebration to it.
Marc:It wasn't morose.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And just being there, I felt I was very connected to him as an actor.
Marc:I didn't know him.
Guest:He was God.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I loved him.
Guest:He was crazy.
Guest:Really crazy.
Guest:I mean, I had a chance.
Guest:Francis told because of a bunch of events that happened that
Guest:Francis thought I'd saved his life, which I hadn't really.
Guest:And, but at any rate, he, he, he said, you know, you've got a decent, I was going to play a part of the duel on bridge of a guy on his M79 grenade launcher.
Guest:It's in the movie.
Guest:It's a bigger part than what I wound up playing.
Guest:Anyway, he said, I'm a great writer because I think you maybe saved my life and helped out.
Guest:We were hit with a typhoon in the Philippines and screwed us up a lot.
Guest:And I helped out some.
Guest:So he said, just tell me a part you want me to write and I'll write you a phenomenal part in this movie.
Guest:I said, I want to be in the end of the movie.
Guest:And he said, that's the only part I can't.
Guest:I can't do that, Scott.
Guest:It's completely cast.
Guest:It's Dennis Hopper.
Guest:It's Marlon Brando.
Guest:It's the people.
Guest:He said, I mean, if you want to play Colby, the guy that went up the river ahead of them,
Guest:You can do that, but I don't even have any lines right now.
Guest:Maybe I could give you a line, but essentially you'd be just a glorified extra.
Guest:But if you want to do it, okay, it's not going to start.
Guest:We won't even get to that part of the movie for certainly at least four or five months.
Guest:And I'll have to figure something else for you to do here in the Philippines in the meantime.
Guest:Do you really want that?
Guest:And I said, yeah, I really, truly want it.
Guest:Because I realized that
Guest:acting is like serving an apprenticeship and you you don't learn it out of a book or you're an actor and a comic do you learn is there any is there any school other than stand up that can teach you what stand up can teach you no definitely not well i was going to get to work with marlon brando dennis hopper at the end of this movie
Guest:in the middle of all of this insanity, and I realized I had to.
Guest:And it was the smartest thing I ever did.
Guest:Three or four months ago, Francis may have even been five or six.
Guest:I'm so screwed up with time now.
Guest:Because of this pandemic.
Guest:But he released the final cut of Apocalypse.
Guest:And I went and saw it.
Guest:And I told him, I said, you know, I've never said this before, but you gave me the greatest gift that anybody can give, certainly a performing artist, if not any artist.
Guest:And he said, what's that?
Guest:And I said, the gift of self-confidence.
Guest:before I'd gone to the Philippines, I'd go to like Universal and, and I auditioned for some TV show and, you know, and they would say, you know, you squint too much and you don't, you don't do this enough and you don't do that enough and you're not going to get the part, but, and I would get kind of angry, but I walk out thinking, shit, maybe I should go back to New York and,
Guest:Maybe I just can't do this in front of a camera.
Guest:And then after Apocalypse, I'd have the same exact experience.
Guest:But at the end of it, when they would tell me about what a shitty job I'd done, I'd say, who the fuck are you?
Guest:I just finished working with Marlon Brando.
Yeah.
Guest:And Dennis Hopper, Victoria fucking Storaro, and Francis Coppola.
Guest:And by the way, you can't direct traffic.
Guest:How's that?
Guest:And then they said, you're not coming back to Universal.
Guest:And of course...
Guest:A month or so later, I was back in Universal, even making more money.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's a gift to not give a fuck.
Marc:It's a gift to be able to say, fuck you.
Marc:And it's a gift to realize that these people are talented at almost nothing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Very true.
Guest:I asked Bob Town.
Guest:I said, also, I noticed, I said, why?
Guest:These people wouldn't let me get in the front door to their office.
Guest:And now I live in Idaho.
Guest:And they're all offering me, you know, big parts and big films.
Guest:And Bob said, that's because when you come into an office now, you bring the Sawtooth Mountains in with you.
Guest:And they are all fucking jealous.
Guest:They all want that freedom.
Marc:That's wild.
Marc:Do you talk to him still?
Marc:Is he still around?
Guest:You know, I'm going to have to call him up in the next day or two because I don't know if you've had this experience or not, but it's like,
Guest:When you're making a movie or working on a TV show, you get so tight with the people.
Guest:It's kind of like your best friend in fourth grade was going to be your best friend forever.
Guest:And then three years later, you can barely remember their name.
Marc:It's a weird thing.
Marc:It's a weird secret little... It's almost like you have this life that you spend a life with them from birth until almost like death in a six-month period, and then you walk away from it, and you don't miss them, really, and it feels like a complete thing, but it's another universe or something.
Marc:It's a very weird experience.
Guest:Because you're on to the next one, and you're on to the next one, and investing whatever that...
Guest:Part of your personality.
Guest:You want to turn the volume up on.
Guest:However you work.
Marc:So were you there on the set of Apocalypse when Keitel came and went?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:That must have been an entire lesson in show business on all levels.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:Yes, it was.
Guest:I know Harvey.
Guest:Harvey and I are brother Marines.
Guest:We'll be for our whole life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And really a good guy, and I like him a lot.
Guest:With Apocalypse, God, I better not say it.
Guest:okay um what was how did francis think he saved his life when i got uh to begin with uh the way i got a part in apocalypse was um they cast all of the all of the major parts everybody in the boat and all of that and they were casting all the i don't know
Guest:30, 40, 50 smaller parts that were going to run throughout the film.
Guest:And what they did was they had a bunch of maybe, I think it was probably around 50 actors come over a long weekend to a soundstage in Hollywood.
Guest:And there were folding tables all around in the center of the room and then folding chairs around the side.
Guest:And everybody would sit there and wait to be called.
Guest:And Francis with the ADs would run improvs.
Guest:And first two days, nobody called on me.
Guest:So it was the final day.
Guest:It was a Sunday.
Guest:I went in.
Guest:I sat up against the wall again.
Guest:And Francis came over and he put up a card table right opposite where I was, but did not pick me.
Guest:Pick four guys.
Guest:And he said, OK, this is what you're doing.
Guest:You're floating down the Mekong River in a boat.
Guest:The engines are off.
Guest:And you've got Playboys, Playboy magazines, and you're having an argument, the four of you, over who should be Playmate of the Year.
Guest:So go.
Guest:So these guys start doing improvs on, you know, I'm an ass guy.
Guest:No, I like this woman.
Guest:And they're doing great work.
Guest:But I guess what I did was...
Guest:rolled my eyes to the sky.
Guest:And Francis stopped the work right away and he walked over to me.
Guest:He said, excuse me, I know I haven't called on you.
Guest:I don't even really know who you are, but don't make comments on people's work like that.
Guest:These guys are doing good work.
Guest:They're really.
Guest:And I said, no, no, I'm not commenting on their work.
Guest:That's not why.
Guest:He said, why did you roll your eyes?
Guest:I said, you're floating on the Mekong river engines off and you're shouting like that.
Guest:You're going to have a mortar in your fucking lap in five seconds.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You're dead.
Guest:You're going to have that fight.
Guest:And he looked at me, he turned to the AD and he pointed at me.
Guest:He said, I want him in my movie.
Guest:So I got to, so I get to the Philippines and,
Guest:And they're all in a place called the Sand Valley Inn, I think it was called.
Guest:It was a Japanese bunker that turned into some kind of a motel.
Guest:And everybody in the film was staying there, but it was the weekend.
Guest:So they were all going back to Manila.
Guest:Most of them went back to Manila.
Guest:I think Marty stayed there with his kids.
Guest:He lived away from the hotel.
Guest:At any rate, they went back to Manila in the morning, late that afternoon.
Guest:The worst typhoon to hit the Philippines since 1932 came rolling in directly where we were.
Guest:uh we were on an isthmus that was turned into an island they thought we were dead for the first two days because there was no communication yeah and we had uh you know there was a woman thank god she didn't but she was gonna she was pregnant with twins
Guest:Has anybody here delivered a baby?
Guest:I had to raise my hand because I did.
Guest:My second child I had in our bedroom in Topanga Canyon.
Guest:On purpose?
Guest:Huh?
Marc:On purpose?
Marc:Yeah.
Okay.
Guest:Hippy-dippy, yeah, on purpose.
Guest:So I set up an operating room for, you know, had the generator.
Guest:We had no fuel.
Guest:I said, can we run this on Lamanuk, which is coconut moonshine?
Guest:They said, yeah, but you burn the generator up after two hours.
Guest:I said, fine.
Guest:That's all I need is two hours, but we'll do that.
Guest:And we just sort of, myself and...
Guest:A PA who had also a former Marine kind of got the place together.
Guest:Two and a half days later, they flew back from Manila and Francis came in with the insurance adjuster because of the force majeure.
Guest:You can't just say, look, this is the worst typhoon to hit the Philippines since 32.
Guest:Give us our money.
Guest:All of our sets are destroyed.
Guest:We're going to have to close down for a while and start again.
Guest:That's not the way it works.
Guest:The way it works is an adjuster has to see you try to continue to shoot and in fact, see that it's impossible.
Guest:So they went down to what was a shot that was going to be at a very shallow, gently meandering stream.
Guest:But because of the typhoon, it turned into whitewater.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So Francis got in the boat with the insurance adjuster.
Guest:And I think Enrico Amatelli, who was a camera operator.
Guest:I'm sure I can't like four guys in the boat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they tied a rope to the back of the boat.
Guest:to let it out into this whitewater so that if it started getting away, they could pull it back.
Guest:And I'm a baby 25 yards away, and I'm seeing this whole thing happen, and I'm thinking, this is a disaster.
Guest:Because what's going to happen is the tide is going to take that boat straight downstream, the rope is going to go taut, pull down the back of the boat, and it's going to sink.
Guest:So the minute they let it go,
Guest:Being a Marine, I always had a knife on me.
Guest:I pulled out a knife, ran, and cut the rope.
Guest:And the boat sort of went downstream a bit.
Guest:And they eventually got in.
Guest:And Francis said, who cut the rope?
Guest:And they said, he did.
Guest:Scott did.
Guest:So he thought potentially, you know.
Guest:And all he did was run and cut a rope.
Guest:And then the next day, the helicopter pilot was ready to leave to go back to Manoa.
Guest:And it was still raining sideways.
Guest:And he said, we can't go back because to fill this chopper up with jet fuel, if we get any water in it, you know, we'll go down on our way back to Manila.
Guest:And I said, no problem.
Guest:I, you know, filled a million of these things up.
Guest:So I ran out and all you do is you shield the
Guest:where you're putting the gas in with your back, you shield yourself being a block from the rain, and you shoot into the opening where the fuel goes, and some of it bounces back on you.
Guest:And I didn't have a shirt on.
Guest:So I fill it up and top it off.
Guest:And I go back and I say, OK, you're good to go.
Guest:There's no water in the fuel.
Guest:I guarantee you're not going to crash.
Guest:But meanwhile, the front of my chest looked like I had a triple case of measles because of all the fucking jet fuel that was on.
Guest:At that point, Francis said, I'm a good writer.
Guest:What do you want?
Guest:And at that point, I said, I want to be in the end of the movie.
Guest:That's what I want.
Yeah.
Marc:And he couldn't deliver it.
Marc:He couldn't deliver it.
Marc:Well, I mean, like, it sounds like that thing, not unlike the Marines, just being on that set was a life changing, you know, year.
Marc:I mean, that was.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Marc:And it kind of gave you all this confidence.
Marc:It planted you in the business.
Marc:You've got to spend time with these guys who you respected.
Marc:I mean, Jesus, that's a great experience.
Guest:And also Francis wanted, he essentially wanted each one of us to dive as deeply into our own personal lunacy as we possibly could.
Guest:So for me, that meant living with... There were probably a couple hundred thousand of them all together.
Guest:We had about 500 people from a tribe in northern Luzon called the Ifugao.
Guest:And I lived with them in the longhouses for four months.
Guest:I learned their language.
Guest:They took me into the tribe, gave me an Ifugao name, Kimayong.
Guest:And so for me, that was... The side adventure of that was wonderful, but it also was a lesson on...
Guest:really immersing yourself in parts and finding not necessarily the lunacy, but the place in whatever character you're playing where the volume is really turned off.
Marc:The truth of the character?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So like when you do something like, how do you carry that when you do the right stuff?
Marc:The right stuff is one of my favorite movies because, you know, when you realize it's kind of a comedy, it becomes an amazing, it's like it elevates it somehow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:that there's definitely the tone of that movie outside of being sort of heroic and amazing about the astronauts, but there's so much humor in it and it's so cleverly done.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you were great in that.
Marc:So when you try, like in the quest for truth of Alan Shepard, did you, were you able to spend time with him?
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:I was, I was given the option and I turned it down and I, and it was,
Guest:It's my observation that when you're going to play somebody.
Guest:And they know their image is going to be exploded onto a screen the size of a four story building.
Guest:Yeah, they will.
Guest:maybe without even intending it, edit themselves.
Guest:I didn't do this.
Guest:I didn't do that.
Guest:I just didn't want.
Guest:So I wanted every bit of footage on Alan Shepard that I could possibly get, including home movies, anything.
Guest:And I wanted to talk to everyone who knew him
Guest:I didn't want to talk to him myself, partly because I didn't want to be edited and partly because I wanted whatever that inside to be mine.
Guest:It was Phil.
Guest:Phil sent me the script and he said, here, pick your part.
Guest:And he thought I was going to say Chuck Yeager.
Guest:He thought I was going to say Yeager.
Guest:And I said, I want to do Alan Shepard.
Guest:he said that's really a comedic part and i went yeah i know and he said can you do that and i'm like yeah and uh he said okay well i promised you uh he's i'm good to my word you want to so so a lot of that the exterior was actually admiral shepherd you know probably the hardest thing
Guest:And then the humor, you're quite right, came from the script.
Guest:It was just implied in the script.
Guest:And then the vibe on the set was somehow, I mean, how can you miss...
Guest:when you're seeing involves not being able to keep from peeing in your space.
Guest:I mean, how can you miss?
Marc:With the joke, you mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the thing that you realize also about these guys, they're all lunatics.
Guest:They were so squeaky clean and short hair.
Guest:But...
Guest:The odds are were then that they were going to die.
Guest:That's what happened with most of those rocket ships.
Guest:They went up and they exploded.
Guest:So what kind of a person really wants to do that?
Guest:A crazy person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:My favorite review I ever got in my life, I got actually from then Admiral Shepard.
Guest:He saw the movie and he wrote a letter to Phil Kaufman.
Guest:He said, tell Scott Glenn when you see him from me.
Guest:Congratulations.
Guest:He did a phenomenal job.
Guest:He got me almost perfect.
Guest:There's just one thing he missed, and that is he isn't anywhere near as good looking as I am.
Guest:which I love.
Guest:He didn't disappoint me.
Marc:Well, that's like, yeah, that is the best review that you could get when you're depicting somebody else.
Marc:So that crew of guys, when you were coming up in New York in acting, you studied with Hickey, but were you also, did you also study anywhere else?
Guest:Yeah, I got, a friend of mine called me up and he was doing his final audition for the actor's studio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The scene partner had gotten sick.
Guest:And it was a scene from Long Day's Journey at the Night.
Guest:And he was playing Jamie, who has a huge monologue.
Guest:And my character, Edmund, was just essentially listening to him talk, knowing I was going to go into a hospital for consumption the next day.
Guest:So I'm just sitting there.
Guest:And he said, ask me if I do it.
Guest:You see, you don't really have to do anything.
Guest:It's my audition.
Guest:I said, sure.
Guest:So three days before that, I was in a traffic accident in the back of a car with a bunch of dogs, a station wagon that got everybody that was hurt except for me.
Guest:And I had to get people to hospitals and stuff like that.
Guest:And I got a bad cold.
Guest:So I was coughing and wheezing.
Guest:And then right before the
Guest:the audition, a friend of mine called me up and he said, my girlfriend got sick and I've got one ticket, light heavyweight championship of the world, Madison Square Garden, you want to come with me?
Guest:And I said, yeah, I'm sure I'll make it because the audition is early.
Guest:And of course it wasn't early.
Guest:And by the time we did it, all I was thinking was, I want to fucking out of here.
Guest:I want to go to Madison Square Garden to see this fight.
Guest:And meanwhile, I'm coughing and wheezing.
Guest:I was the character.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Next morning, I get a call from Liska March, who was the Lee Strasberg secretary.
Guest:And she said, I don't think this has ever happened before, Scott, but congratulations.
Guest:You're a member of the Actors Studio.
Guest:And I knew so little about it.
Guest:I said,
Guest:You know, that's really great, but I don't have that much money now.
Guest:And, you know, I'm joining and paid by the month.
Guest:She started to laugh.
Guest:And she said, wait a minute.
Guest:The next voice came on was Lee.
Guest:He had been in the place.
Guest:He said, I was there last night.
Guest:He said, so listen, Schmuck.
Guest:He said, this is for free for life.
Guest:I saw you last night and you really have something.
Guest:So work on a scene.
Guest:Come on by.
Guest:Let us be rude to you.
Guest:And I worked on a, so I worked on a scene, two giant, two longest monologues I could find of Iago's from Othello.
Guest:And I put them together with costumes and props and everything and brought that into the active studio.
Guest:And I did the scene and Lee talking in the Royal We, he said, we don't know what to say to you.
Guest:He said, bring in something simple, something that,
Guest:like tying a necktie.
Guest:This is too much, Scott.
Guest:And I got criticized by a bunch of the people in the audience.
Guest:And I thought, fuck this.
Guest:I feel bad.
Guest:And I waited until everybody left because I didn't want to walk out into
Guest:you know, with everybody who just see me, you know, essentially screw up.
Guest:And when I walked out, Lee was standing on the sidewalk by himself.
Guest:And he said, what do you drink, coffee or tea?
Guest:I said, coffee.
Guest:He said, for me, it's tea.
Guest:Come on, I'll buy you a cup.
Guest:And we sat down and he said, you really have something, Scott, but I work on smaller things, on
Guest:He said, I'll give you suggestions and I'll work with you myself.
Guest:He said, but when we go back in that building, don't expect me to be polite or let you down easy or anything to change.
Guest:So for a period of time,
Guest:Again, just an accident.
Guest:Good luck.
Guest:I had Lee Strasberg as like a private coach.
Marc:And did it change the way you saw acting?
Guest:What he told me from the, yeah, it did.
Guest:But what he told me about all studied acting, especially if you work from the inside out and begin with what started at the Moscow Arts Theater, excuse me.
Guest:And he said this himself.
Guest:This wasn't my idea.
Guest:He said, basically what you're learning from me and from Bill and George Morrison and theater games and all this stuff is how to get yourself out of trouble when you've got a really shitty director or when you've got a part that's really not working.
Guest:He said, if you're in the throes of inspiration, if it's playing you, just leave it alone.
Guest:That's not what this is about.
Guest:This is about getting yourself out of trouble and making something work anyway.
Marc:And did you have to use that quite a bit?
Marc:Yeah, more than I'd like to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've only done three parts of my life.
Guest:that actually played me, where I would wake up in the morning and say, Scott, your only job today is just stay the fuck out of the way.
Guest:Don't get in the way.
Guest:Just leave it alone.
Guest:And now there's Killer Joe on stage, Urban Cowboy.
Guest:And then much later on, a TV show that I did...
Guest:You know, and with all credit to the brilliant writer, Damon Lindelof, The Leftovers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where I just said, you know, Damon has given me an amazing gift and my only job essentially is not to fuck it up.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:The reason I asked you about the Actor's Studio is because it seemed like the right stuff, all those guys in one place seemed almost like a generation of actors.
Marc:Quaid and Harris and Fred Ward.
Guest:Sam Shepard.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:I remember when we were doing the right stuff, somebody came up for a variety.
Guest:They asked us about the competition.
Guest:All you guys are starting.
Guest:Your careers are all beginning.
Guest:You must be trying to steal scenes from each other.
Guest:What kind of friction is happening on the set?
Guest:They got really pissed off at me and anyone else that was asked that question because the answer was,
Guest:We all love each other, and we're all getting along really well.
Guest:I remember I told the reporter from Variety, I said, today I did the scene where I was in a rocket ship and I was going to have to pee in my spacesuit.
Guest:Dennis and Fred Ward and Ed all showed up on the set to help me out.
Guest:They weren't working that day.
Guest:It was their fucking day off.
Marc:So it was just like the movie.
Guest:It was just like the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:I just watched Silverado recently again to sort of check it out.
Marc:You know, I feel like that's I feel like there's like four Westerns in one Western in that movie.
Guest:Yeah, Larry Kasdan and his brother tried to include their favorite scenes from every Western they'd ever seen.
Guest:And the only part that had to be cut out because of budget were the Indians.
Guest:There was a giant...
Guest:thing with the indians save the wagon train from the yeah we had to yeah that part was written for me so again that was a gift that and the fact that i can't ride at all and luckily the horse that i wound up with fell in love with me yeah and with me do pretty much anything with him that i wanted to but you were great in it it must have been fun doing that yeah it was new mexico where'd you shoot it uh santa fe
Guest:And outside, we would leave.
Guest:We were shooting in New Mexico in the winter, which meant we had maximum four and a half to five hours of decent light a day to work with.
Guest:Good news was it was all magic hour, all five hours.
Guest:The light was low in the sky, and it's just the most beautiful place in the world.
Guest:But we would leave, having had breakfast, leave for work every day between 3.30 and 4 in the morning.
Marc:It's so, there's something so magical about Northern New Mexico, man.
Marc:It's so fucking pretty.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is it pretty in Idaho?
Marc:Gorgeous.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How long, you been up there forever?
Guest:Yeah, we, Carol and I have been here for 37 years.
Marc:When you went, was it one of those things where you're like, we're getting out of Hollywood?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was, nothing was going right.
Guest:And, uh, it,
Guest:i just thought you know um we had come up here to idaho for the summer carol was at the time which was uh it was by invitation only the kind of the most prestigious ceramic workshop in the world at the time with all of america's greatest potters and so she was coming up here with our two daughters who were little babies and um
Guest:I went while she was throwing pots.
Guest:I went up north with a group of people for a little over two weeks of high traversing on snow and ice and then rock climbing.
Guest:When I came back, the whole family had kind of fallen in love with each other again.
Guest:We moved back to L.A.
Guest:and we all get the blues again.
Guest:And I'm sitting in our living room in Topanga Canyon watching myself on television on a Beretta that I had done.
Guest:And Carol walked into the living room.
Guest:She said, what's wrong, babe?
Guest:I said, what do you mean?
Guest:She said, you're crying out.
Guest:And I'm pointing at the screen.
Guest:I said, you're supposed to get better when you do, not worse.
Guest:That's the worst piece of shit acting I've ever seen.
Guest:I was way better on the streets of New York.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:And I realized that living in L.A., for me,
Guest:was I had stopped thinking about what makes this person tick and how do I make this person understandable?
Guest:And and to what party can I go to to meet who?
Guest:What's my billing?
Guest:And I turned into a
Guest:a show business politician, and I wasn't any good at that at all.
Guest:And I thought, you know, my dreams of acting are, you know, right on the edge of dying.
Guest:I can't go back to New York because my kids are, I can't subject them to the life of a New York street actor.
Guest:And so we moved up here, and I didn't really know what I was going to do.
Guest:I thought, you know, I can do Shakespeare in the Park in Boise, and I'll get a job up here doing something, and I'll somehow make it work.
Guest:And if I still have this love when the kids are older, I'll move back to New York.
Guest:So...
Guest:We've been up here just a few weeks, and I got a small part of the film called Catalani and Little Bridges, only because Rupert Hitzig, the producer, was a friend of mine from the Marine Corps, got the part, came back up here, and they wanted me.
Guest:I remember Jim Bridges.
Guest:We dropped by on our way up from Mexico to see him, and he said, you're perfect for this part of the movie I'm doing.
Guest:wait around town for three days, meet the producers, the stars, cast approval, and I can make this happen.
Guest:It's a great villain.
Guest:And I said, fuck that.
Guest:I don't do that anymore.
Guest:I don't walk into people's office like a piece of meat.
Guest:I live in Idaho.
Guest:I just made $4,000 on flesh.
Guest:I just wanted to tell you I love you and say goodbye, goodbye.
Guest:We came back up here.
Guest:Two weeks later, the phone's ringing.
Guest:It's Jimmy.
Guest:He said, now I'm in Houston.
Guest:Paramount doesn't want you to do this film, but I do.
Guest:If you come down and do this thing, you'll never have to audition again as long as you live.
Guest:It's going to be the making of you.
Guest:I promise.
Guest:I'm sending you a plane ticket.
Guest:I said, screw that.
Guest:They're not going to have their hooks into me.
Guest:Even for a plane ticket, I'll get my truck and drive down to Houston.
Yeah.
Guest:He was right.
Guest:I didn't have to audition.
Guest:And after Urban Cowboy, when I came up here, Carol said, I'm going to show you something.
Guest:I went up to the bedroom and there were two scripts lying on the bed for authors for leads and movies for more money than I'd ever dreamed about making.
Guest:And I thought, you know,
Guest:And at the time, I thought, all I have to do is not do a repeating part in TV.
Guest:I can live anywhere I want.
Guest:If I'm willing to get behind the wheel of my truck or hop on a plane, I can live here and have a life.
Guest:And here I am.
Marc:That's beautiful.
Marc:I'm starting to think that, too.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here.
Marc:I can't even breathe outside.
Marc:But I like I like that.
Marc:You know that, you know, you you claim to have had all this luck, but you fought some of it, which was, I think, a pretty interesting that, you know, like this guy was telling you he's going to change your life.
Marc:And you're like, you know, fuck that studio.
Yeah.
Marc:yeah i mean arrogance has got its plus and minus side but the weird thing is though it's like it's arrogance to a certain degree but it's it becomes impossible i think well i think what you saw in that moment was you know you were going to lose your ability to have self-respect if you stayed there you're right right absolutely and you know nothing's worth that really nope
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I want to ask you a quick about the like like I've seen a lot of your movies, obviously, and a lot of them are great.
Marc:But like there's something I've talked to.
Marc:I talked to Ethan Hawke about Training Day.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Ethan told me this weird thing about how he prepared for that.
Marc:He said, because he knew the nature of Denzel, that he watched all of Denzel's old movies like they were football training films.
Marc:Like he said, if I'm not going to get...
Marc:if I'm not going to get eaten alive by this guy, I better be in good shape.
Marc:I got to know how to work this thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And those scenes, that scene where, you know, with you and Denzel, where, you know, you know, you're kind of going to die and, you know, and he knows you're going to die.
Marc:Like,
Marc:I find him to be a very I think there are guys that can just fill themselves up with something that you can't quite explain.
Marc:Hackman does it, too.
Marc:Like, what do you when that that scene with you two was fucking amazing.
Marc:Now, when you work with an actor that's, you know, you guys are equal caliber and you're going to go you're going to do this thing.
Guest:do you like is is it is that what makes it worth doing it must have been a great scene to do no am i projecting it was a phenomenal scene to do and i didn't you know i had i'd worked with with d once before and um on the courage under five oh right yeah small part i'd play a reporter you know yeah talk to him and so we knew each other and and and
Guest:Got along right away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had done.
Guest:God, I were at the point I got offered that film.
Guest:I worked straight for two years and I just wanted some time off.
Guest:I'd gone from.
Guest:from, um, from killer Joe to vertical limit to Buffalo soldier.
Guest:My way back from Germany, stopped in New York, had lunch with Lasse Hallstrom, but turned into a whole day.
Guest:And he said, I want you to do this part in shipping news.
Guest:Will you do it?
Guest:And I said, yeah, once it started, he said three weeks.
Guest:I'm like, okay, I've got three weeks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got home and, uh, I get this offer to do training day.
Guest:And I, and I,
Guest:And I turned it down.
Guest:I said, you know, I got to have some time off.
Guest:I can't I can't do this.
Guest:And so Denzel got a hold of me and he said, this is the way it works, God.
Guest:I need somebody, a white guy to play my best friend who I'm going to kill in the end of this movie.
Guest:And the whole audience, including the entire black audience, has to be pissed off at me for doing this.
Guest:He said, you're it.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't have this relationship with you're the one.
Guest:You're it.
Guest:So he said the way it's going to work and
Guest:At the time, Hollywood was under the threat of a writer's strike.
Guest:So everybody was trying to get inventory before the strike happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And which allowed Denzel to make my deal.
Guest:And he said, the way it's going to work is going to say Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke in training day, starring Scott Glenn, Dr. Dre, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:He said, and for this month and you're going to be paid this much money and you're going to work for maximum five days.
Guest:And I said, OK.
Guest:And just went and did it and realized then how amazing that part was.
Guest:And how D and I got just between the two of us to cover so much of each other's unspoken history.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Together.
Marc:It's some real acting, man.
Guest:And so, you know, it was just a.
Guest:it was a pure joy, pure joy.
Guest:My, my, uh, my grandkids are my older, my oldest daughter lives now.
Guest:She's a teacher in LA.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, um, her two kids, my, my grandson and granddaughter were visiting the set when, when, uh, when I was doing that.
Guest:And, um, my nickname on the set was, was, uh, well, they heard everybody was calling me dog.
Guest:And what happened was Dre, one of Dre's, uh,
Guest:One of Dre's bodyguards said something about a pistol that was across the set lying on a prop table.
Guest:And he said, oh, that Glock over there.
Guest:I said, it's not a Glock.
Guest:It's sick.
Guest:Dre said, go over and see what it is.
Guest:He said, oh, it's not a Glock.
Guest:It's sick.
Guest:Later on, this submachine gun that he had, he was fooling around with snap caps, fake Glock.
Guest:And it got jammed and they couldn't fix it.
Guest:And I said, give it to him.
Guest:And I feel stripped and cleaned it and handed it back to him.
Guest:He said, dog, is there anything about guns you don't know?
Guest:And I went, not much.
Guest:And then Denzel said, yeah, there are sheep, there are wolves, and there are sheepdogs.
Guest:He said, you're a sheepdog.
Guest:So to this day and for the rest of my life, with Elijah and Chloe, I'm Grandpa Dog.
Marc:It's stuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you went up to Idaho, you were rock climbing?
Marc:You've been doing that kind of stuff for your whole life?
Guest:Yeah, I like...
Guest:I like those kind of challenges.
Guest:And, you know, I like things that demand my attention.
Guest:And if you don't give it your attention.
Guest:You die.
Guest:Things won't turn out well.
Guest:It's very physical.
Guest:When I was a kid, I had scarlet fever.
Guest:I wasn't supposed to have lived from it.
Guest:I still, you know, talked to my, I lied about my hearing to get into the Marine Corps.
Guest:So, you know, I've always, you know,
Guest:challenge yourself everything everything's felt like kind of a gift since then so yeah i like ice climbing and what i did i i don't you know for a while i was an addictive free diver open water spearfishing and i don't do that anymore because although i'm not afraid any i was at the time i'm not afraid of being in the water of all a lot of sharks or going deeper
Guest:But I am definitely afraid of skin cancer.
Guest:So I'm not doing that sport anymore.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I understand that sort of the nature of like the type of focus it takes when you engage in that stuff.
Marc:It's sort of like you're so you're so in it and you're so alive that sometimes, you know, you don't realize it until after you're out of it.
Guest:Also, it's a very it's amazing that in some odd way, it's a it's it's rest.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because even though you've been in this high adrenaline space that's forcing you to live in the present, for that period of time, there's no past that's screaming at you, oh, gee, I wish I'd done that.
Guest:Why did I do it?
Guest:There's no future.
Guest:God, I've got to pay those bills.
Guest:None of that.
Guest:It's like free time away from all that stuff.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And I think that stuff, the past and the future,
Marc:are more exhausting and debilitating than anything oh yeah yeah because they're just draining you and it's all yeah you when you're looking back at the past if you're if you are of of of strong spirit you don't have any regrets but the future you can't know about so that's impossible to project without a certain amount of dread so yeah the present the future doesn't end well for anybody so nobody gets out of here alive that's for fucking sure
Marc:Well, I mean, it was great talking to you and the new movie.
Marc:I hope the new movie, you know, does well.
Marc:But, you know, your career has been a real gift and I've always enjoyed watching you and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and now even more.
Marc:It was great talking to you, Scott.
Guest:It was great talking to you, too.
Guest:Let's do it again.
Marc:Okay, buddy.
Marc:Take care, man.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:wow fucking live wire man intense dude what a great guy scott glenn is in the new disaster movie it's a natural disaster movie greenland uh it's available on demand this friday december 18th okay and now get this guitar in your head
so
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guitar solo
guitar solo
Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey and the Fonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.
Thank you.