Legendary Actor Scott Glenn — How to Be Super Fit at 85, Lessons from Marlon Brando, How to Pursue Your Purpose, The Art of Serendipity, Stories of Gunslingers, and More (#729)

Tim Ferriss and Scott Glenn




“If you love it, make it your life. And right along with that, be tenacious. Learn that the most important thing about being knocked down is getting back up. And if you can put yourself in the spot where you say, ‘I don’t care how many times I get knocked down, I’m getting back up every single time and going after what I want,’ that’s the answer.”
— Scott Glenn



Scott Glenn ’s acting career spans nearly 60 years. His impressive film resume includes performances in Apocalypse Now , Urban Cowboy , The Right Stuff , Silverado , The Hunt for Red October , The Silence of the Lambs , Backdraft , The Virgin Suicides , and The Bourne Ultimatum . More recently, Scott has appeared on the small screen as Kevin Garvey Sr. in The Leftovers , the blind sensei Stick in Marvel’s Daredevil and The Defenders , and as the retired sheriff Alan Pangborn in Castle Rock . This year, Scott will return to HBO to join season 3 of The White Lotus . Please enjoy!



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Brought to you by  Momentous  high-quality supplements , LMNT  electrolyte supplement , and AG1  all-in-one nutritional supplement.



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#729: Legendary Actor Scott Glenn — How to Be Super Fit at 85, Lessons from Marlon Brando, How to Pursue Your Purpose, The Art of Serendipity, Stories of Gunslingers, and More







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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments .







Want to hear an episode with Scott’s TV son on Apple TV+’s upcoming Bad Monkey series? Listen to my conversation with Vince Vaughn here in which we discussed developing grit, high school trauma, sharpening acting chops through improv, rejection inoculation, finding tone in storytelling, expanding comfort zones, and much more .


#243: How to Fear Less: Vince Vaughn



SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE




Scott Glenn | IMDb



Room Service Poems for Carol | Carol Glenn Ceramics



Friction Zone by Scott Glenn | Carol Glenn Ceramics



Scott Glenn Prefers Living Away From the Hollywood Hubbub | Deseret News



Bighorn Crags: Climbing, Hiking, and Mountaineering | SummitPost



Challis, Idaho | Chamber of Commerce



The Baby Maker | Prime Video



Nashville | Prime Video



Apocalypse Now | Prime Video



Universal Studios Hollywood



Scott Glenn Landed His ‘Apocalypse Now’ Role After Saving Francis Ford Coppola’s Life | The Hollywood Reporter



Baretta | IMDb



Cattle Annie & Little Britches | Prime Video



Wild Bunch | Wikipedia



The Studios At Paramount



13 and a 1/2 | Urban Dictionary



Nuestra Familia | Wikipedia



Urban Cowboy | Prime Video



Scott Glenn as Wes Hightower | Frostbite



A Look Back at How Gilley’s Gave Us ‘Urban Cowboy’ | Texas Highways



Collision Course: An Omnibus of Plays at Cafe Au Go Go (1968) | AbeBooks



Scott Glenn Talks The Defenders, Daredevil, and The Leftovers | Esquire



Scarlet Fever: All You Need to Know | CDC



Benzylpenicillin | Wikipedia



The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) | Prime Video



This Is How to See if You Would’ve Been Drafted for Vietnam | Military.com



Snap-on Tools



April 2, 1963 | Kenosha News Archive



One of the Original Acting Studios in NYC | HB Studio



Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad | Wikipedia



The Salvation Army USA



How to Convert to Judaism | My Jewish Learning



Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu | Amazon



Practical Shooting: Beyond Fundamentals by Brian Enos | Amazon



Mysticism | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy



Why Do Creationists Keep Saying Carbon Dating Is Debunked? | r/Atheism



What Kind Of Fish Swallowed Jonah? How Did He Survive? | I Love Docs



Scott Glenn And Killer Joe: A Perfect Fit | Playbill



The Leftovers | Prime Video



‘The Leftovers’: Scott Glenn on His “Unpredictable, Subversive” Character | The Hollywood Reporter



Don’t Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor | Amazon



Vince Vaughn to Star in ‘Bad Monkey’ from ‘Ted Lasso’ Co-Creator | The Hollywood Reporter



Eugene the Marine | IMDb



Stories From the UN Archive: Marlon Brando, the UN’s First Frontman for Water | UN News



Bizarre Things That Happened on the Apocalypse Now Set | Looper



Royal Academy of Dramatic Art | RADA



What Is Method Acting? | We Are Actors



Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire: Why the Method Actor’s Co-Stars Couldn’t Stand Him | Slate



Where Was Apocalypse Now Filmed? | The Cinemaholic



Rolling Stones: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction | The Ed Sullivan Show



Simple 10-Minute Daily Ear Massage & Acupressure | Qigong of Tulsa



How to Breathe Properly | Breathwrk



How Humming Stimulates Your Vagus Nerve for Stress Relief | Bustle



Pressing Reset: Original Strength Reloaded by Tim Anderson and Geoff Neupert | Amazon



The Quick and the Dead: Total Training for the Advanced Minimalist by Pavel Tsatsouline | Amazon



Kettlebells | Amazon



The Most Brutal Push-Up Exercise (Prison Push-Ups) | Victor Gaspar



Resistance Bands Vs Weights: Which Gives The Better Workout? | Marathon Handbook



Resistance Bands | Amazon



FeetUp | Amazon



Scott Glenn is a 75-Year-Old Knife-Fighting, Spear-Fishing Madman | GQ



Where to See Manatees in Florida | Visit Florida



Master Your Inner Experience | Breath Hold Work



Freediving Apnea Trainer



The Actors Studio



Decompression Sickness | Harvard Health



Learn to Dive Today | NAUI Worldwide



Static Line Skydiving: Is It Really Safe? | DZONE Skydiving



Golden Knights | GoArmy.com



Everything We Know About ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 | Robb Report



Krabi-Krabong: Thailand’s Traditional Martial Art | Fighters Vault



Where to Watch Muay Thai Fights in Bangkok | HeavyBJJ



Off Limits (1988) | IMDb



Lesser Vehicle | Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia



Savate | Wikipedia



Asia’s Infamous Golden Triangle and the Soldiers Tracking down the Drug Smugglers Who Rule Its Narcotics Trade | ABC News



Three Pagodas Pass Much More Than A Border Gate | The Lost Passport



How to Increase Your Luck Surface Area | Codus Operandi



The Right Stuff | Prime Video



Tosca Cafe, San Francisco: An Oral History | Bon Appétit



Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov in “Giselle” (1977) | American Ballet Theater



Easy Writer | Sun Valley Magazine



Slow Riding Tips: How to Ride a Motorcycle at Slow Speeds | Harley-Davidson Insurance



The SVD Dragunov: The World’s Most Prolific Sniper Rifle And Its Olympic Roots | Gun Digest




SHOW NOTES




[07:10] Idaho vs. Los Angeles.



[13:26] Apocalypse Now , self-confidence soon after.



[17:26] Burt Lancaster’s movie star lessons.



[23:06] The birth and death of Wes Hightower.



[32:22] Catching the attention of James Bridges.



[35:42] Scarlet fever.



[37:29] From Marine to police reporter.



[42:12] Berghof Studios and parental advice.



[50:44] Converting to Judaism.



[53:36] Lao Tzu: the ultimate mystic?



[58:16] Letting go with Killer Joe .



[1:02:53] “Crazy Whitefella Thinking.”



[1:08:31] Getting out of the way and Erwan Le Corre.



[1:11:51] Lessons from the “morally phenomenal” Marlon Brando.



[1:16:26] How Scott’s childhood bout with scarlet fever informed his life’s course.



[1:19:05] Daily routines and exercises of an in-shape 85-year-old.



[1:35:12] Securing a serendipitous skill set.



[1:42:13] Thailand talk.



[1:46:18] Increasing surface luck.



[1:47:04] How Scott met and fell in love with his wife.



[1:53:04] “Just dance.”



[1:53:46] Mistakenly calling Rudolf Nureyev Russian.



[1:55:57] Poetry.



[2:00:01] What Laurence Olivier knew about the value of tenacity.



[2:01:41] Parting thoughts.




MORE SCOTT GLENN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW



“I understood, because of the way I’ve learned everything in my life that’s important to me, is you learn by apprenticeship, not from a book or going to school. At least I can’t.”



— Scott Glenn



“I did one audition and they said, ‘You know, you’re not really very good. We want to give you things to work on.’ And I said, ‘What the fuck do you know? Who have you worked with? Because I was just doing improvs and work with Marlon Brando, Vittorio Storaro, Francis Coppola, Dennis Hopper. And they accepted me as an equal. What have you done? You’ve done this and this. You can’t even fucking direct traffic.’ So they kicked me out of Universal.”



— Scott Glenn



“I stopped off in Wyoming at one point. People must have thought I was nuts. I got out of the Jimmy and I walked down to the side of the road and I took this invisible Wes Hightower and threw him in the ground and broke his fucking neck and called Carol at a pay phone. I said, ‘Wes Hightower is dead. I’m coming home.'”



— Scott Glenn



“The most important single event in my life was scarlet fever when I was nine years old that I wasn’t supposed to have survived. … But that experience turned me into an athlete, turned me into someone who had learned to not only live with, but fall in love with, my fantasies and my imagination.”



— Scott Glenn



“What gives performances on film their juice or electricity is their degree of spontaneity. … And complete spontaneity is not watching yourself at all. Complete spontaneity is being in the now so completely that you really don’t have a past, and more importantly, way more importantly I think with acting, you don’t have a future, which means plans on what you’re going to do in the scene dissolve and then finally disappear.”



— Scott Glenn



“When I need to learn something, the best teacher in the world materializes right in front of me.”



— Scott Glenn



“I’m willing to fall on my ass in front of people. The embarrassment of screwing up and being clumsy and falling on my ass in front of people is not great enough to keep me from doing it. And that’s the trick to being a good student.”



— Scott Glenn



“The thing about the pandemic that I realized is a lot of people who were in love with each other had to discover whether they liked each other or not.”



— Scott Glenn



“If you love it, make it your life. And right along with that, be tenacious. Learn that the most important thing about being knocked down is getting back up. And if you can put yourself in the spot where you say, ‘I don’t care how many times I get knocked down, I’m getting back up every single time and going after what I want,’ that’s the answer.”



— Scott Glenn




Carol Glenn



Eric Ryback



Robert Altman



Francis Ford Coppola



Richard M. Colby



Martin Sheen



Marlon Brando



Dennis Hopper



Vittorio Storaro



William Shakespeare



Rupert Hitzig



Rod Steiger



Burt Lancaster



Amanda Plummer



Diane Lane



Pablo Picasso



James Bridges



Jack Larson



Ryan O’Neal



Sam Shepard



Irving Azoff



Freddy Fender



Debra Winger



John Travolta



Wes Hightower



Edward Parone



Aaron Latham



Lord Byron



Walter Mitty



William Hickey



Lao Tzu



Brian Enos



Mike Johnson



Tracy Letts



Damon Lindelof



Mimi Leder



Molly Ferriss



David Gulpilil



Vince Vaughn



Konstantin Stanislavski



Isaac Boleslavsky



Laurence Fishburne



Gray Frederickson



Erwan Le Corre



Scott Reitz



Lee Strasberg



John Shaw



Kurt Johnstad



James Stewart



Jimmy Stewart



Jacques Cousteau



Forrest Gump



Gregory Hines



Fred Ward



Freddie Fields



Rudolf Nureyev



Matt Mattox



Vladimir Putin



Natalia Makarova



Laurence Olivier

The post Legendary Actor Scott Glenn — How to Be Super Fit at 85, Lessons from Marlon Brando, How to Pursue Your Purpose, The Art of Serendipity, Stories of Gunslingers, and More (#729) appeared first on The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss .