#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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Hello boys and girls ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job every episode to interview world-class performers from different disciplines to tease out the habits, routines, lessons learned, etc. that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today is someone I've wanted to have on the podcast for years. We did the interview at his house in Idaho. He has no social media, no website, and his name is Scott Glenn.

He is a legend. Scott Glenn's acting career spans nearly 60 years. His impressive film resume includes performances in Apocalypse Now or Urban Cowboy, the right stuff, Silverado, the Hunter Red October, The Silence of the Lamps, Backdraft, The Virgin Suicides, and the Born Ultimate.

I would venture that every single one of you would recognize his face. More recently, Scott has appeared on the small screen as Kevin Garvey Sr. in The Leftovers, the blinds sensei stick in Marvel's Daredevil and The Defenders, and as the retired sheriff, Alan Pangborn and Castle Rock. This year, Scott will return to HBO to join season 3 of The White Lotus. There is so much more to his story. He has, I would consider it, the gold medal trifecta

in terms of mastery across life, and we'll get into exactly what that means. But I've wanted to have this conversation with Scott for a very, very long time. It took place on his couch in his living room, and I'll leave it at that. Please enjoy a very wide-ranging conversation with

the one and only legendary Scott Glenn. I have an embarrassment of riches here. We could start just about anywhere, but I thought I would start with saying that I'm in part so happy to be having this conversation because even among all of the hundreds of people I've interviewed, if we look at people in their 30s and 40s, they don't check career, fitness, and relationships, but you

seem to have 50 plus years checking all three of those boxes. It's hard to find three out of three in the young guns who have sort of wide open field ahead of them, and I wanted to dig into that, but I thought I would start with Idaho because we're sitting here in your home. It's been a long time since I've been here, and you've alkened the backyard. This is not what most people imagine when they think Hollywood star. How did you end up in Idaho? A bunch of years ago, so we've been

up here for, I'm not sure the exact number, but in the mid to high 40 years. We were living in LA. My wife has probably throws on the wheel as well as any two dozen people on the plan. She's really a good butter. She was accepted to a summer workshop, was invitation only to the best ceramic artist in this country, and it was going to last all summer long. We were living in LA. We had a place in Topanga. She said we had a VW van, typical hippie-dippy, live out of the back of it.

She was going up with our two daughters to do this workshop, and she said, well, you're going to come with me. I went, no, I'm waiting for the phone to ring to tell me whether I've got a job or no. She said, does the phone really have to ring for you to kick you in your ass to go anywhere?

Can you just do something on your own? I don't know. She said, well, you can, because there's a group of people who are leaving from a place she wasn't sure where, as it turns out, was Chalice, Idaho, that they're leaving on the following dates, which was like a week after her workshop started. She said, they're going into an area called the Big Horn Crags, the biggest primitive area in the Contiguous United States, bigger than the A-Works, except Alaska. They're going to be doing

high mountains. This isn't July. They're going to be doing high mountain traverses in snow and ice for three days. Then they're going to be going down into a little valley and climbing rock faces and naming them for the G-A-D-SIC survey. It's being led by a guy named Eric Rhydeback, who's the first, at that time, the only person ever to walk the whole Pacific coast, the trail from Canada down to the bottom of Laha. She said, you're going with them. I was a rock climber at the time, so she

knew that about me, but I said, how do you know? She said, because I signed you up. It was like I had no choice in the matter. We got up here. I tend to overdo things, physically. I'm just part of my stupid personality. We got here and I started hiking up baldy. We come from sea level to here. I got altitude sickness the first day and I'm putting my guts out about four or five times. At any rate, I had about a week to try to get ready.

Then she drove me north to Chalice. I think there were seven people in this trip with us. I met Eric Rhydeback. These people I was going to be hanging out with for the next few weeks. We drove 90 miles on a dirt road to the Cobalt Ranger station where you didn't tell them where you were going. You just told them when you expected to be back. If you weren't back inside, I think the cushion was three days. They were going to send people out to look for you. At the time,

it's probably still true. The big horn crags, no internal combustion allowed at all. If forestry service had to go in and open up trailheads, they had to go in with mules, two men crosscut saws because you couldn't turn on a flim. That wouldn't work. We did that. I hadn't been off on my own alone with the exception of once. I won't talk about it. But it didn't that situation. It was just so much fun and so cleansing. It was just the best. I thought I knew how to rock

climb. There was a guy named Tony Jones there who was a great rock climber who took me under his wing and took me into 511 plus plus stuff. The dangerous stuff, he led all of it. I don't want to pretend that I just instantly did it. I did do those climbs again and again. I remember when Carol was going to come and pick it when we were done. It was like two weeks and a little over two and a half weeks of doing this. I said to Tony, I got to give you some money or something.

I mean, you've been giving me and he said, come on, I had a great time. I said, what can I do for you? And he said, you can do this when you go back to LA tell everybody how horrible Idaho is. Tell him it's a tick fever state. It sucks. And you had a bad time. I said, why should I do that? He said, because I don't want people coming up here. So when Carol drove me back into catch him, I felt like I was entering lower Manhattan. It was like noise and people and it's a small town

for people to just make a town. But what I discovered, this sounds woo-aw and whatever. But yeah, I'm really give a shit because it's true. It was like the family fell in love with each other again. I had been sort of living in the blues in LA because of what I do for a living and all that fell away up here. When you came to Idaho, roughly how old were you and where was your career at that point? I was probably 38, 39, like that, late 30s. And had you already had a sort of inflection

point in your career at that point? I had done a ton of work in New York, mainly street theater, improv, off-off Broadway. And then we moved to LA for me to do the first film I ever did, which was called Babymaker. And then I did a couple of sort of very small parts in big, important American movies. One was Nashville, Bob Alvin's film. And the other was Apocalypse Now. That I was on for a little over seven months. They shot that film. It was the shooting was a year and

a half. So I was a short timer at seven months. But that was my experience of working in front of a camera, learning a lot of stuff that stood me in really good stead later on. But what had happened in LA was, okay, I had gone to Universal, I think, to audition. I'd done some TV stuff at Universal. And I'd gone there and, because of my experience with Apocalypse, what had happened before is I would

go in and I would audition for a TV job mainly at one of the studios. And people would tell me what a crappy actor I was. You squint too much. You're not loud enough. You're not doing this. You're not doing that. And on the surface, I would say, well, what do you know? But the reality was underneath that I suspected maybe they were right. And I didn't know what I was doing in terms of a camera. On stage or doing improv in the back of an alley, yeah, I could do that. So I had no self-confidence.

And then I did Apocalypse Now and wound up working my choice. Frances thought, I think incorrectly, but he thought that he owed me because he thought I saved his life in the Philippines. So I went over to do a small part and he said, I'll write you whatever you want because you filled up a helicopter in a rainstorm with nothing getting in the gas and you kept me from drowning in a river. So I went back to the hotel and that's nice. He said, what do you want? And I said, I want to be

in the end of the movie. And he said, you can't be in the end of the movie, Scott. It's absolutely completely cast. Well, yeah, wait, there is a part you could do, but you'd be like a glorified extra play Colby, the guy who came at River in front of Martin Sheen. And 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. And I thought at the end of the movie, I'm going to be around the person who in my mind is far and away the greatest American, probably the greatest movie actor that ever lived, Marilyn Brando. And I'm going to be around this guy and just being around him and Dennis Hopper who's a lunatic, but brilliant. And Martin Sheen,

and in the end of this movie is an experience that will change my life. And it did. I told Francis later on that I got the greatest gift you could give any artist in the Philippines, which was self confidence. So when I came back before we went up to Idaho, I was basically locked out of universal because along with self confidence, I came back with a huge amount of arrogance. And now I remember 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 Marilyn Brando, victorious Darara, 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.

So now we're back from Idaho. And I'm sitting watching television, and smoking and enjoying and Carol walks into the living room and says, babe, what's wrong? And I say, what do you mean? I'm fine. She said, no, you're crying. And I reached up and there were tears coming out of my eyes. I was on television and a bread I had done. And I pointed at and I said, you're supposed to get better at what you do. Not worse. That's the crappiest

acting I've ever seen. I was so much better doing street theater in New York. What's happened to me? And I started thinking, and that night at dinner, I said, you know, what I've turned into in LA, and I'm horrible at it, is a show business politician, which is, what am I up for? Who do I know? What openings and parties can I go to to network and make? And I used to think, what makes this person tick? Why are they doing what they do? What belief system are they coming

from? All that stuff that I really cared about then and due to this day. And I said to Carol, I said, well, how would you and the girls feel if we moved back to Idaho? And she said, what do you do up there? And I said, I met somebody who told me that if I gave him three years, he would have promised me to be in a backcountry, cross-country ski guide and hunting guide. And then I'll do that. And she said, well, you quit acting. I said, no, I'll do Shakespeare in the park

and Boise, if I can get a part. I'll do that kind of stuff. But I can't go back to New York with my two daughters, this young and subject them to the life of a street actor. So we came up here with that in mind. It was a super cold year. We came up with a friend of Carol's in mind. He was a commercial director, but sort of feeling the same kind of burnout in LA that I felt. So the two families decided we'd come up here and try to figure out what to do and catch him Idaho. No real

idea. We were up here. Inside two weeks, I get a call from a friend of mine, a guy named Rupert Hitzig, who said, I'm doing a movie in Mexico. The way I knew Rupert was, he and I were in the same platoon in the Marine Corps. So Rupert said, I'm producing a movie in Mexico and I can give you a small part in it. You will be shooting for three months. And I got like, with hanga was, I can give you two thousand bucks. And I said, great. So Carol and I went to Mexico and I was warned when I went down

there. It starred Rod Steiger, Bert Landcaster, Amanda Plummer and Diane Lane. Those were the stars. And I had teeny tiny little part is one of Bert's. It was the dual and adult and gang, Western. And I was told by a lot of people who went down there that you're going to love Rod Steiger. He works the same way you do. He's a member of the actor studio and you're kind of guy, but watch out for Bert Landcaster. He's an old school movie star. He'll getting your key light. He'll

screw you up. He'll intentionally ruin two shots so they'll have to go to his close up. Just watch out for him. So we go to Mexico. First day there, El Presidente Lobby hotel in Mexico. I mean Rod Steiger. And I rarely openly dislike somebody when I meet them. But I wouldn't say it was hated first sight, but it was certainly dislike at first sight. And then a little bit later, Bert Landcaster comes into Lobby and to be really honest, he hardly saw me at all, but he's

boy, he's the Carol. And he said to her, so what do you do? And she said, I'm a potter. He said, you got any pictures and she says she has some little slide pictures of stuff she'd done. He looked at them and I could see something changing him. And he looked at her and he said, God, I love this stuff. I only have the work of one of the ceramic artists. Would you throw me 11 place or 12 place dinnabware said? Was her first commission ever? And she said, yeah, yeah,

I will. Later on, many months later, she found out the other ceramic artists that he owned was named Picasso. Wow. So the next day, any kind of others like, I wasn't even there. So the next day, we're on the set, getting ready to do some scene. It's a group shot. At the end of the first take, Bert walks over to me and he said, so Scott, has anybody ever taught you the difference between working with a close up camera lens and being on stage? He said, I know you've done street

theater. I can tell. I said, no, he said, I didn't think so. He said, you know, I'm not going to bullshit you. I seriously was watching you. And I think you've got something. But if you'll permit me to be a gigantic pain in the ass over the next three months, I'll teach you whatever I know. Wow. What an incredible opportunity. So he taught me about how to work with a camera and how to, I mean, he was an amazing guy. He was an aerialist who traveled across the country

with a carnival and to make drinking money, fought people in tough men. He was the real deal. I love Bert. It was like what people had told me about Rodden Bert was like, he could flip from the right. It totally flipped. So in the way, oh, this is a long, I got rid of, we get all it down the road. So we're coming back from Mexico. We went to Paramount to see a friend of Carol's in mind that on their advice, Carol got pregnant. They said, you guys have got to have a baby.

And we were really close. Jim was the director. Jim Bridges and Jack Larson was his partner lover or whatever. And they were great guys. Super great guys. So we wanted to just say hi to him on our way back to Idaho. We walk into his office. He looks at me, he said, I can't believe you're coming in here. He said, I just realized you're perfect for this part in this movie. I'm directing. It's the bad guy, but you're perfect for it. Just hang around town for two or three

more days, meet the star who has cast a proof. He didn't tell me who it was. He has cast a proof. And the producers here at Paramount, and I think we can make this happen. And I said screw that. I don't go to anybody's office like a piece of meat anymore. I just made 2000 bucks. We're on our way back to Idaho. I just wanted to tell you, I love you and I hope you and Jack are well and Carol and I are out of here. So we left. We came back up to Idaho. About two weeks later, maybe a

little less. I get a call from Germany. So okay, now I'm on location in Houston. Paramount doesn't know who you are. They don't want you to, they want Ryan O'Neill to do this part or maybe Sam Shepard. But I'm going to send you a plane ticket to come down here. I think we can make this work. I've told Irving Azoff, the music guy who's also producer about you and he likes the idea. You got to meet him. I think we can make this happen. And I said no, don't send me a plane ticket.

I don't want them to have their hooks into me even for a plane ticket. I just killed my GMC Jimmy. I'll drive to Houston. I'll see you down there. And I said, just tell me the part is and he said a bank robber and a bull rider. And I went, okay. So I drive down to Houston on my way to Houston. I stop off just in front of Huntsville prison where I knew the character I played spent some time.

And I'm going to be a little shady about this because I kind of have to be. But so I'm sitting there in my Jimmy and I hear familiar voices out of the dark saying, hey, Vato, what are you doing? And I look over and there when he was alive and another part of my life, I knew Freddie Fender, the country western singer who's real name was Baltimore. And Freddie was in a family that picked everything illegally. That was his background. And he hung out with these two guys who were

for real just the real deal. And these two guys were there. And they said, what are you doing here, man? And I told them what I was doing. They went, we don't believe this. We got our buddy coming out. He'll be out of here in a 15, 20 minutes. You got to meet him. He's a bank robber and a bull rider. And I went, yeah, Mexican guy said, no, man, he's a fucking gringo. And I went, okay. So I met this guy who told me enough about the character that I was going to be playing in little things.

Like he said, you got to get a hat sticker or something, not a tattoo, but something on you that says 13 and a half. Because that's the number that gets us in here. And we all have it. And I said, what's that stand for? And he said, judge jury and half ass lawyer. So I said, okay. And he said, you got to get tattoos on your forearm, New Estra Familia. I said, but I'm not a Latino. He

said, neither am I and showed me that he had that. What did that refer to our family? Like, what was the reason the in prison organization of what I see, I see that he's a doctor. So he gave me that to do. And then I said, is there anything about being a bull rider that bull riders do that I could learn that most people can't do? And he showed me, he said, yeah, when you tie off your glove, since you're going to be using your dominant hand to wrap the

raw hide around, you're going to have to use your non-dominant hand and your teeth. And he said, you're going to have to do it a lot of times to the point where you can go without even thinking about it. So I'm okay. I'm going to do that at least a hundred times a day from now on. Hopefully, a thousand. I get down to Houston. Jim said, I'm going to make this happen. I met the actress who

was, had never played the lead in a big movie, Debra Winger. And both she, John Travolta, Irving A's off and Jim Bridges always all kind of like shoved me down Paramount's throat. Jim said, this movie is going to change your life. You'll never have to audition again after you do it. And he told me the truth. I didn't believe it. But in those days, it was Urban Cowboy. Yeah. And the part was West High Tower. It was funny because when I read the script, I thought,

all I have to do is be honest with this character. I'm not going to go for big moments right. Because if I'm honest with, I'll jump off the screen at people simply because this movie is about oil workers and blue collar workers who dress up like outlaw cowboys on weekends to go in and ride not a real bull, but a bull machine. Yeah. Mechanical. And I'm going to play a guy who's a real bank robber, a real ex-con, and a real bull rider. And if I just get close to it,

I'll look like a diamond in a bucket full of rhinestones. Not because I'm particularly good, but it was almost like a setup. So anyway, that happened and I didn't have to audition. I audition once since then for a part that not a big part in a movie I really wanted to do. And the director said, no, no, at that point, I don't want you to do it. So I went to a cattle call under an assumed name, auditioned for it and got that part. But since I did Urban Cowboy, my life has changed.

And I thought I was offered the lead in some TV series while I was in Texas. Because in those days, daily's were shared by everybody in the business. So I turned them all down because I thought, I don't want to leave Idaho and move back to LA. I love my life in Idaho. I love, I didn't know how to ski, but I was learning how to ski and I was climbing and I was hiking and I was shooting and I

was riding motorcycles and all the things I really love to do. And plus I could really cleanly think about and concern myself with the art of acting and not who do I know and where am I going and I've got this cool place in Malibu or hey, that's the politics and the show. So I turned down the TV stuff. When I've been in Texas, Carol had shined left me, but I knew at a certain point when I was playing West High Tower that I had the character, but I was terrified if I left it alone

and put it down to be like a bar of soap and I tried to pick it up and I wouldn't. So I lived that part 24-7. Got arrested, got in trouble. I was West High Tower the whole time. I remember at one point it came back to we had an apartment in the Galaria and I came back and none of Carol's clothes were there. There was no presence of them in the apartment and they're head down and I'd gone to work that day. I'm thinking what's going on and the phone was ringing to pick it up and

was Carol and she said, I'm back in Idaho. I can't handle living with West High Tower. So you let me know when he's dead. Me and the girls love you. We're up here, but we're not going to put ourselves through this and I went, okay. And I was about to hang up and she said, wait, before you hang up, I just want to say one thing and I said, what's that? She said two things. Number one, I love you. Number two, I think you're hitting the home around with this and it's going to change

our lives. So when I drove back up here in my Jimmy, I remember I stopped off in Wyoming at one point. People must have thought I was nuts and I got out of the Jimmy. I walked down to the side of the road and I took this invisible West High Tower and threw him in the ground broke his fucking neck and called Carol to pay phone. I said, West High Tower is dead. I'm coming home. Wow. Okay. Okay. And then we're going to go back to the origin story.

Oh, yeah. We were running this house with this family that had come up with us. We were sharing this house. We had a bedroom on the bed. We're two scripts for the leads and movies for more money than I'd ever dreamed about making. And that was that. So here I am in Idaho. What we're going to go back in time. We're going to slowly rewind, except a couple of follow-up questions. One is Jim Bridges. What did he see? What gave him the feeling of the confidence to say,

this is going to change your life? What do you think it was? Was it that setup that you talked about? I had done my first movie with him and I got the movie. I came out here and I met him, but I didn't audition for the part. There was a director Ed Peron who I'd done a thing called in New York. It was called Collision Course. It was nine, one action, the course of a night. And Ed said to Jim, if you're looking for somebody, a young guy who's not going to charge you

with a ton of money, has perfect for the part. Scott cleansed the guy. So I got that part and did the movie. So Jim knew me over a period of, in those days, movies took about three months to shoot. Now it's way faster. And I guess whatever was he saw in me, it was jangle the wake when we walked into his office coming back from Mexico. That was where he went, oh my god, I had something that he saw

about me. He wrote the script for Urban Cowboy with Aaron Latham, the guy who had originally written column in, I don't know if it's the time, some place in New York about gillies and bull machines and all that stuff. And then Jim adapted that and wrote the screenplay. I don't know what it was. He saw, I remember my screen test. They wanted me to do a scene from them and I said, I can't do that. I'm not in the part. I want to lose it. And Jim said, well, we got to put you on screen.

And I said, and Debra was doing her sexy bull ride at the time. And there were a bunch of guys in the front watching. And I picked out the baddest looking one of all who was a Bandito Texas. And I said, put the camera on me. And I thought, dear Lord, don't let this go bad. But here we go. And they were watching Debra. And I walked over to him. And I went, hey, and he looked up at me. And I said, you're sitting on my fucking seat. And he looked at me. And I thought, what's going to happen?

And he got up and walked away. And I went and sat down. That was my screen test. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. Now, do you get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement? And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually

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check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time drinkag1.com slash Tim, check it out. If we go way back in time and this is just based on what I researched online, but it seems like initially you were not born out of the womb dreaming of being an actor. It seems like you wanted to be a writer. How did acting enter the scene for you? I read a bit about Berghof.

I wanted to be a writer. If I look back on my whole life, the most important single event in my life was Scarlet Fever when I was nine years old. I wasn't supposed to have survived. There was one week in when the doctors told my mom and dad to get a plot. What saved my life was Crystal Line Penicillin. I don't know if you've ever had that a shot of it, but it's interesting. Because usually with most shots, it's the needle going in that hurts. It's fine. Crystal Line

Penicillin is thicker than entry grease. The needle going in kind of hurts, but then the rest of it going straightens you up. I didn't realize what saving my life. I hated it. But that experience turned me into an athlete, turned me into someone who I've learned to not only live with, but falling love with my fantasies and my imagination. I don't know if it's true or not. I don't want to know because it's a fantasy that if it's not true, I grew up believing it was that on my mom's

side of the family, I was directly related to Lord Byron. When I got out of bed from Scarlet Fever, my bones were so soft that they bent and I limped for almost four years. But it turned me into an athlete because I was just embarrassed about the way I looked and I was in a neighborhood where it wasn't good to be physically frail. This was Pittsburgh? Yeah. At any rate, I decided, you know, two things. Number one, I wasn't going to be Walter Middey. I wasn't going to have an imaginary

life. The adventures I was imagining were all going to be true. I was going to make them come true. And one of them was I was going to be a writer, poet writer. So when I enlisted in the Marine Corps, I enlisted as a six month through reserve. Why did you do that? Because you went from English major to Marine Corps. Yeah. Because where I came from, there was nobody dodged the draft. And the draft was happening. So for me, and I knew even with the BA in college, I had so little technical ability

of everybody will tell you about that. If I was smart enough, I would have tried to become probably a naval aviator, but I wasn't smart enough to be a pilot. So where I came from, the choices were through Marine Corps, a second airborne, a hundred first airborne. That's it. And then a friend of mine said, well, you can be airborne enemy in both. And then I was worried about my hearing because I've been legally deaf since I was 10 years old because of the cause of the cause of the storm.

And they laughed. They said, you're going to be an enlisted Marine. You're going to boot camp at Paris Island. You're worried about your hearing. People are going to scream at you the whole time you're there. And then you're going to be shooting automatic weapons without your hearing protection. Your hearing is going to be trash. Don't worry about it. So that was my reason. So I did my six months in the Marine Corps. And this was the sixties where if you were a reservist, you didn't really

have to make weekend meetings in summer camp. There are other ways of doing your time of deployments for three months or a month, month and a half, whatever. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I went to see my mom and dad who were living in Kenosha, Wisconsin. My dad was at that point, he got in pretty high up and snap on tools. When I was born, he was at salesman. So he went from no money and no nothing to you actually wound up kind of running that company. I went to Kenosha.

There was a job opening on the Kenosha Daily News. And I didn't interview and lied as I often do. They said, can you type? And I went, yeah. And they said, how many words a minute? And I said 35 because I knew that's what I needed. After the interview, they said, well, you've got the job. I came out and there was a Jojo Kobe, one of the reporters there said, you should be happy. You don't look happy. And I said, I'll tell you the truth. I lied. I got out of type at all.

And he said, me and one of the reporter will cover for you, Scott, for two weeks, you go to a doll education at the public high school and learn how to type. And what was the job before this was re-transcribing or what was the job? The job was cover reporter. I got it. I was not very good at what I saw. Anyway, I'm up in the city room doing that. And I hear shots out the window. And it was cold as shit. And I remember I said to somebody in the city room, those are shots.

Go out and check them out. And it was like 30 below zero. It was freezing cold. And somebody said, no, that was a car back by me. I said, vapor lock. Cars aren't even starting now. And there's a lot of stuff in life I don't know. But I just got out of the Marine Corps and gunfire I do know. And I'm telling you, those are shots. And they said, why don't you go out and cover it?

So I went outside and two blocks from the newspaper at the side of the road was the city patrol car with Mrs. Hockadol, the chief of police's wife sitting in the driver's seat where their husband's pistol smoking in her lap. And next to her Dorothy Batadas, who was the chief of police's secretary, slash mistress with half her head blown away. It was my story. It was the biggest story, obviously. So they made me a police reporter. And I realized I thought being a police reporter would be really

cool because I'll cover, you know, mob hits and all that stuff. And I realized that you do do that. But you're all for every one of those. You do six interviewing a woman 15 minutes after her teenage son has died in a traffic accident. And you're thinking about, do I get a byline? Is this going to be on page one or page two? And I felt like a ghoul. There is a bulletin board with other jobs listed. So I applied for the job of a reporter on the sports desk. I can't remember the name of the paper,

but it was an American Virgin Islands. I got the job. And I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone and she lives in Long Island. And she said, when's the job start? And I said, in about six months, when she said, why don't you go to New York and take an acting class? And I went, why? And she said, I'll be honest with you, Scott, I read the stuff that you write in your description of ideas and action and places isn't bad. It's okay. But your dialogue essentially sucks. It's stiff.

Nobody talks like that a minute. You put words in anybody's mouth, whether it's a poem or a short story, whatever. You blow it. If you have to get in front of people and say words, you'll kick you in your ass to start to listen to the way people really talk. And if you're doing theater, you'll be dealing with arguably the best dialogue ever written. So after I got over maybe five or ten minutes of being angry because she told me the truth, I thought, okay, so I got my car,

I had an old triumph, I drove to New York, sold the car, got two jobs. I looked up acting in the village voice, nothing under A under B. It's at Berghof Studios. I didn't know anything about it. Call it up. Call it Berghof Studios. And this guy named Bill Hickey, who was one of America's greatest character actors, nominated for a might have gotten an Academy Award for Connitch I think of him. Anyway, Bill answers the phone. And he says, yeah, work on this, bring it by

Berghof Studios Wednesday morning. It was ODAD Poor Dad, Mom was hugging you in the closet, I'm feeling so sad. It was the play. Something I'm completely unsuitive for, but it was a little monologue, I worked on it. I go down to the basement of Berghof. There was draining outside Wednesday morning, maybe seven or eight people sitting there to watch. I walk in front of Bill Hickey to start this monologue. And for the first and only time my life, literally a light bulb went off between my

eyes. And I thought, holy shit, I'm an actor. That fast. And it wasn't like, oh, I'm so fulfilled. It was, for the first time, my life made sense to me. My perclivity to daydream, my laziness and a lot of areas, everything made sense like that. And Bill saw it and he started laughing and he said, that's right, you're one of us. And then he turned to the other students and he said, Scott's not going to finish this. He's got to go outside, walk around the block a couple of times

and think about things. I went outside, there was a pay phone on Bank Street. I called my mom and dad, I, my dad in the phone, I said, I'm not going to the version, I'm not going to be a director. They were terrified I would go back into the service, which I actually was thinking about doing. Because being in the service in a lot of ways can be rough and you know, all that stuff. But in other ways, it's very easy because you don't have to make decisions about what you're going to wear,

what you're going to do, what you're going to eat. And I like that because I really am lazy. I'm like horrible and lazy human being. Anyway, I told my dad that and he took a second and he gave me the best advice I could ever have had. He said, son, I don't really know anything about what you're telling me. The only advice I can give you is don't give yourself any deadlines. I said, what do you mean? He said, don't say if I haven't made it in two years, I'm going to

sell insurance. He said, that's like starting a race with a lead wheel weight hung around your neck in for a penny in for a pound. If you love it, make it your life. And I did, and here I am talking to you. I'd love to zoom in on your dad for a second because it seems like just based on what you've said thus far that for a company man at that time, that seems like very unexpected advice that would be given that there wouldn't be any pushback. What do you attribute that to? Why did

your dad give you that advice? Do you think or why did he feel comfortable? Come on, my dad grew up in a way that I can't possibly understand in real serious poverty. I remember he told me at one point, if I ever have money, I'm going to give it to a charity, make it the salvation army because they fed us Christmas time. They had a cow and a vacant lot that three blocks of people used for milk. So I'm not going to go into, I don't want to divulge to, but my dad was involved in

his hard of life as you can imagine and did well in that life. So my dad's background was he dealt with really poor Irish, Jewish, Black Italian and all of them involved in gambling and booze. None of them involved in drugs. They were all people. My dad's best friend who raised me as much as my mom and dad did was a Black Cherokee, super honorable, super loving, super gentle,

but also somebody you wouldn't want to fuck with. So that was my dad's background when he met my mom and she said, basically, if he even cursed around me, we're not going to be together and you can't do anything illegal. So he left the world that he was in and started selling blue point tools that morphed into snap on tools. He told me later on when I was still struggling as an actor and the

thing that I'm sad about, but I can't do anything about it is he never saw me being sick. My mom did, but my dad was dead by the time, but he told me he said when he was start doing really well with snap on tools, he said, I keep running it to these men who are lawyers and doctors and they're not happy because they're doing their father's dream, not their dream. And he said, the only vice I can give you about having kids is when you have kids don't dream their dreams for them.

Do not do that. So he was an unusual guy to be very honest, the only human being I've ever met in my life, close to who he was was him. Thank you for sharing that. And how would you describe your mother, her character, what you absorb from her filled with love, unconditional love. When I think back on it, my mom and dad played tennis, my mom also grew up really, really poor. Her dad died when he was in his 30s, but she had a rich super aunt who never gave the family money, but gave her

things like ballet lessons. And so my mom was a dancer and I think back on it, she was a loving physical artist. It was like when I remember when Karen and I were going to get married and I told my dad that we grew up Sweden, Borgens, that I was planning on converting to Judaism. I don't want her to have a target on her back that I didn't have in mind as well. And my dad's answer was

man should do it the woman wants. So that was my mom and dad. I mean, what I will say about growing up with them is we hear all these people talk about growing up in these dysfunctional events. I don't have any excuses. I grew up in the most functionally family, straight out love. My dad never hit me except for once in my life. I remember my mom wanted me to take this girl to a dance junior high and she was the daughter of a friend of hers and I went, oh, I know she was

little hefty, whatever. I didn't want to do it. And I said, no, I don't want to do it. She's pleased. So I'm asking. I said, no. My mom teared up and started going, my dad walked in the door and he said, why is your mom crying? And I said, some of my said, he walked over and hit me with an ever cut and dropped me on my ass like, wham. This is somebody who had never given me a spanking. Yeah. And he looked down at me, he said, make your mom cry. You're going down and walked away.

So the next time my mom wanted me to do something, if he even started to go, I said, hey, mom. So let's come back to the conversion to Judaism. I'd love for you to say a little bit more about that. You mentioned, if Carol was going to have a target on her back, he didn't want her to be alone in that. Can you say more about the decision to convert? Yeah, I had a friend, his name was Milton Bedot. When I've lost touch with him, I don't even know if he's alive or dead, but he was a

rabbi in a shul in the Upper East Side in New York. And he was a friend of mine. He had been a rabbi in a shul in Charleston, South Carolina. He'd been some of the first bus sedans. He'd been in shootouts with a KKK. And I believe he dropped a couple of those. And he was my friend. He loved theater. And I went to see him. And I said, I want you to make me a Jew. He said, why don't you see that to him? He in preparation for getting married. Yeah. I said, I'm going with Carol.

I want to make me a Jew. He'd met her. And I said, I want you to make me a Jew. And he said, schmuck a life for you. I'll tell her parents that I did it. And I won't do it. And I just went, it's not her parents don't have any of you to do it. And he said, I'm a conservative rabbi. I don't really believe in conversions that much. What do you know about the Talmud? And I said, if a man teaches his son no trade, it is as if he taught him highway robbery. And he said,

you've read the Talmud. And I said, some of it. And he said, you accept as the word of God. And I went, no, not really. I said, I think it's a book with a lot of wisdom as is the Bible, as is the Quran. But if you're asking me of all that stuff, what resonates the most with me, it would be allowed. So it was the way of life. He said, I'll find a rabbi. It'll do a prayer. I'm going, okay, I start walking out of the show. He said, hey, wait a minute. I told him around. So I did. And

he said, you're not doing it for the Talmud. You're not doing it for her parents. Why do you want me to convert you? And I said, because I met this woman. I love her and we want to travel. And I don't want to be going anywhere in the world where somebody's pointed a gun at her and not of me for the same reason period. That's it. If there was no anti-Semitism, you and I wouldn't be having this talk. And he said, sit down. So I sat down and he said, after me, all of Beth,

Gimel, thought, and I said, what are you doing? He said, I'm converting you. And I said, well, you just told me you wouldn't. He said, nobody has ever given me that answer to that question. He said, if you want to take this on that way, I'm duty bound to convert you. And then he kind of converted me. I was doing an off-broadway play at the time. So he would go down and when I would go to the shul to like learn about Judaism, he was a closet director. He would say, I want to

come back on stage in two days. I want you to try this. I'm not going to say no to the guy. So Abraham or Frem, Benavraham is my Jewish name. You mentioned Lao Tzu. Why does that resonate? What is his writing or the conglomerate known as Lao Tzu? It feels like an honest description of of inner and outer truth for way I know it. It just resonates with me that I mean, we can talk about this later on or not talk about it. You shoot. I know. Do you know who Brian Enaus is?

I know the name. I did. So he wrote a book called Practical Shooting Beyond Fundamentals. And it's about when you enter the space of doing something, the less thought that can be involved. And the more you're just present in the now, the better it will be. Doing martial arts and boxing wrestling and all that stuff. I just realized at a very young age that if I wanted something to work out well physically, the best thing I could possibly do is watch my body do it.

Not make any decisions at all. So, you know, if somebody does this, then you do that. I never bought that in martial arts. Given where I grew up, I knew that wasn't true. Number one, if anybody who predicted what would happen in, let's say, a physical confrontation. If they were making the prediction, one thing for me was very clear about them. They'd never been in one. Now, I believe that that's not just true of that kind of stuff, but it's true of pretty much anything

you do physically. If you have muscle memory, let your muscle memory alone. It'll do it so much faster and cleaner than you ever will. And for me, spiritually, that's what Lao Tzu is saying. So it's this sort of diminishing of the self or dissolution of the self? Yeah. I mean, Lao Tzu is the ultimate mystical. And for me, mystical, the mystical side of every religion is not the impractical. That's the practical side. The impractical side is orthodox.

That says, this is a whole other thing. And I'm just an actor and I'm not that bright. So, I'm just saying this, but I believe that orthodoxy right now is under fire and diminishing quickly. It's in the rear view mirror. And people like Mike Johnson even complain about going to fundamentalist evangelical church and seeing less and less people in the pews. The reason for that, I believe, is because orthodoxy is not practical. orthodoxy says, take absolute for real the words that are

written in these books. Well, if you want to save orthodoxy, forget about banning books about LGBTQ or blacks or Latinos, you want to save orthodoxy ban the teaching of these three following subjects. Math, physics, chemistry. Because under the harsh light of science, orthodoxy doesn't work. Carbon dating says to the Bible, the Talmud and the Quran, all of which get kind of close to the same date as the age of the earth. Carbon dating says, yeah, you'll miss that one by only

around 170 million years. Whoops, somebody lived in the belly of a whale. Well, 2000 years ago, you look at somebody as big as whale, you save as possible. Biology says, this thing can barely swallow anything bigger than a minute. Guess what? Never happened. Whoops. But mysticism says, all of this is poetry to tell you from God how to live your life, how to be an honorable, just

person, how to have a family, all of which I completely believe absolutely. So to me, Lao Tzu is the ultimate mystic because in my mind, what mystics in orthodoxy are looking essentially at doing the opposite thing. Orthodoxy is saying, if I bow to mecca or if I eat fish on Friday or if I live kosher, when I die, I'll be cool. My ego will be cool. I'll be fine. I will be fine.

Mysticism tries to dissolve the ego altogether. Do I believe when I die, Scott Glenn will be around no, but do I believe there's something in me that's a point of view, that's a point of view of you two guys and the cloud outside and elk running. Yes, I do believe that. Talking about that dissolution from a firsthand experiential perspective like a mystic, have you ever experienced say enacting a role playing you as opposed to the other way around? Yes. Could you describe

what that's like? The first time it happened was urban cowboy. I translated it wrong. I translated it as fear of leaving this character alone. The second time it happened was doing an off-broadway play called Killer Joe. And I just realized that up until one part of Killer Joe, it was a crazy play where we were allowed the director realized that the acoustics were so good in the so-ho playhouse that we could turn our back on the audience and be heard. We could walk off stage and

be heard. So he thought to make this really spontaneous and organic, I'm going to allow anyone to do whatever they want. There's not going to be any blocking at all. None. The whole thing took place in a trailer on the outskirts of Dallas. So if as a character, in the middle of a conversation, you felt like walking down the hallway off stage to take a leak, you did. So it was completely open like that. The only part that was choreographed originally was there was a big fight at the

end. We brought it in a guy from the opera to choreograph the fight. And he choreographed a great fight scene, but it didn't look right next to how loose the rest of the play was. So we realized we had to improv the fight as well. Mercifully, the people in the cast had circus skills. We knew how to prat fall and stuff like that. But everybody got heard doing it. We got 15 minutes before half an hour. We come on stage and we say, okay, tonight, this chair's a breakaway. This will shatter. This

is real. And the deal that we had was like, if you came up behind me and grabbed the back of my hair and pulled me, I would fall backwards. But since I couldn't see what I was falling into, it was the obligation of the person pulling me to kick. If there was a chair or something, I was going to fuck up my back to kick it out of the way. The only place to kick it was the first aisle of the theater. So we told people when they came to see his play, this is a projectile aisle.

You may not get a heavy object landing on your lap or you may. You for sure are going to be covered with fried chicken and ketchup and fake blood. There's no question. So don't wear suits that you care about. So anybody over the age of 25 avoided those seats and the kids fought to get so that was sort of the way the playwork. There was one scene at the very beginning of act two where I'm supposed to walk on state's dark and this guy is trying to get in. He's drunk and he's

trying to get in the front door, but I don't know who it is. And I've moved in at that point and I'm in bed with a young girl. So I come out in the dark, grab him, slam him down on the ground. And I've got a 45 automatic and I'm wearing a watch. And the lights come up and then everybody else wanders on stage who's in the trailer. My wardrobe is a 45 automatic and a watch. At one point Tracy Letz said, Scott, when people walk on stage, all I see is your ass. You're trying to,

you live at this place. So full-front on the duty fine. But doing that oddly kind of after the first night of doing it was like, I don't know whether I'll liberate is the right word. But I just can use that word. I realize that after that and Tracy forced me into that spot, the best thing I could do with the play was just let it happen. Just let it happen. So that was killer, Joe. When you say let it happen, how does that change how you approach the next performance? You decide to

let it happen. What do you mean? The next performance, I didn't make any decisions about what I would do, what a prop I would pick up, anything. Just let's see what's going on here. I'm going to live in this space. I know that I am this character. I even told Tracy. I said, I know other people have played this part at Steppenwolf where it started in Chicago, but you fucking wrote this for me. And I just

know it in the way that I felt the same way about West High Tower and Urban Cowboys. So that was killer, Joe. The next time it happened, I was doing leftovers. And I had been in two seasons of leftovers. And I've gone from just being a character to Damon Lindlock, calling me up with Mimi later, the producer. She directed most of them and Damon wrote it. And they said, we want you to be a regular member of the cast. We're doing the last season in Australia. And I think the second or

third episode is going to be just you, Scott, all just you in Australia. And I've written the longest monologue I've ever written. I'm so lucky. So I said, was it two pages long? He said, no, seven. I don't know. Shit, seven pages. And he sent it to me at the time he sent it to me. I was reading this book. I know you've got a dog. I'm going to ask you about your dog, but I was reading this book called Don't Sheet the Dog. Excellent book. Isn't it a great book? It is the top recommendation

always for people who are considering getting a dog for any type of training. It is an excellent book. Holy mics. I'd argue. So I got so I'm reading Don't Sheet the Dog. And the section I'm reading is where she says positively enforcement can help you train your dog, your husband or your wife, your friends, even yourself. For example, if you've got something long to memorize and I'm thinking, holy shit. So what she said in that was it'll take longer initially, but it's the

perfect way to remember something really long. Start at the end. The last sentence and then the last sentence and the next last sentence and then like that. Because what will happen when you get to the beginning of this thing and you launch into it for real, as you're getting towards the end, it'll become more and more familiar. It'll be like walking home. Wait a minute. I know this street

lamp. Okay, I know why I'm stating. Instead of the ending being this hanging, this scared you will kind of why I remember it as you get near the end, you become more and more comfortable and more and more comfortable. So we get down to Karen, I get to Australia, we go to the outback and we're going to do this. See, it's the first one we're going to do. And so Mimi says, we'll do this in bits and pieces because this is seven pages. No way you can do the whole thing

and one. And I said, you know what, Mimi? Can you set it up so that I at least give me a shot at doing them one day? And she said, yeah, okay, I can do that. So he said up, it's really, it's not a monologue in that it's not me talking to myself. I'm talking to David Gopalil, but he doesn't say anything. So he just sits there and listen, so we start doing this scene and we come to the end of it. I hear action. I feel my key light a few times. I hear cut. And Mimi says, okay, that was first

she said incorrectly, but I'll say it because I got a big ego. She said, ladies and gentlemen, you just had a master's class in acting. She said, okay, so Scott, so when you picked up the tape recorder and you started to play it and you weld up and you started to cry and you wouldn't let yourself and you put it back down, what did you do next? And I said, what did I do with the tape recorder? She said, what do you remember about what you just did? No, not much. She said,

you're telling me that so much of you was in that scene. There wasn't enough to set outside. You weren't watching yourself at all. I went, no, and she said, if you can't direct yourself, I can't direct you. So would you be willing the next time we do this to have a little piece of you watching it so that when I talk about parts of the that I want to change, we can talk to each other. And I said, are you asking me as somebody who has this job and is being told by the director or

as an artist? She said, what's the difference? When I said the difference is I'm a blue collar enlisted marine. I know how to take orders. You're in my boss. If you tell me to do it, I'll do it. But if as an artist, you're asking me, well, I do it. Artist wait whole lifetimes to be able to have this experience. And if I could have this experience again, fuck no, I don't want to do it. I do not. And she said, what if I'm not getting what I want? I said, let's do another take.

We'll just do one take after another. She said, it'll wipe you out of the exhaust you. I said, no, it won't. Look at me. Am I exhausted? So we did three or four more takes of the whole thing. And at the end of it, Mimi said, is this what I'm going to be dealing with the rest of this episode? And I went, not if you tell me not to. And she said, I'm not going to tell you not to.

Let's just go for it. So we did that whole episode, crazy white fella thinking. And all I would do in the morning when I would wake up first in the outback and later on in Melbourne, was I look literally look in the mirror and I say, stay out of the way. Do not make editorial decisions or try to work for that big moment. I had a manager, you see, his term was having a conversation with Oscar, have no conversations with Emmy or Oscar, just stay out of the way of this and what it happened.

So that was when I really understood being in that spot as an actor. And then it happened to me again with Vince Vaughn doing a series that hasn't come out yet. The first season, I don't know if the lea second season, the first season will be around August. It's called Bad Monkey. It stars Vince. And the first day on the set working with Vince, we did, I play his dad and the character is a shaman who talks to manatees and the manatees flying by and flying. So like that. At a rate,

Vince, after we did the scene, has written like three times and it felt like it was just taking me. Vince said, okay, we know the scene. Scott, will you be cool with just throwing the script out and just winging that scene what we just did, just completely open ended loose. And I went, you mean like I used to do in street theater? Shit, yes. And after we did that, I just thought I'm not going to edit myself or this character that I'm playing because of a key that kind of something that I

signed up for a breathing thing with this guy, Irwan LaCour. And a rate, I just realized after that day with Vince and the key that I had to play in the character, I'm going to stay out of the way of this because it feels so good and so fresh. And I'm lazy too. I mean, it's taking care of me. Why should I work my ass off when the best stuff is just leaving it alone. And then the next job I got after that was something called Eugene the Marine, which is this low budget thriller

that will be coming out sometime in the next year. And with that, I realized from the get go, just stay out of the way, both because the director was going to let me do whatever I really wanted. I would make the physical, but I'm supposed to pick up a drill and drill a hole in the wall. I do that. But how I was going to do it, whether it was going to be the same again and again, whether it would match, I wasn't even going to not even think about that a little bit to a great step

because I am lazy. And in the part that I was doing in Eugene the Marine was beyond the lead. It was in a 98 page script. I was in 96 of the pages. So there's no way I couldn't even memorize. I was just hope that the words would come to me. And what I happened on with that was I realized that what gives in my mind, what gives performances on film, their juice or electricity is there degree of spontaneity. And complete spontaneity, and I got this from Brian Enos as well about shooting,

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 is you don't have a future, which means plans on what you're going to do in the scene, dissolve and then finally disappear. So what I had with that movie was finally would just wound up being with the crew as my very small audience every single take was a one act play called

now. You mentioned Marlon Brando earlier. Was there anything that you gleaned from your time around Marlon Brando or that he taught you any gems you picked up? Aside from his moral behavior, which was phenomenal. What do you mean by that? He supported two villages in the Philippines with all his pay and wouldn't let anybody write about it or it's not in the movie, but there's one point where I killed Dennis Hopper. And I was working on the scene and Marlon came over to me and said,

Scott, just because they call it acting, then me you have to act. Okay. What did he mean by that? What he meant by that was I was trying to squeeze something out of a moment rather than seeing what the moment was going to present to me. And what I learned from watching him was because he had this reputation of being okay, there are two basic schools of acting that even to this day that when you watch people work and you know which one they're coming from. One is

brought a really great great actors all have this which is technique. You get down the accent and the physical characteristics and the wardrobe and the makeup and the dealing with props and get the whole outside perfect and then do the part. That's rata technique acting. Most of what you still see, then there's the Russian school which is Dennis Lossi, Boloslovsky and that is you begin with the inside of the character. Does this person

share my same way I look at life, philosophy, all that stuff? What emotions are really mine that are also this characters and if they're not the same can one be replaced with the other. So if something makes me angry about getting on a subway and I'm playing somebody who's angry about not being left money in a will, the audience doesn't know where that anger comes from. So use the subway because you're not in the other side. So Marlon had the reputation of being mainly,

if not 100% the Russian school. I realized around him he was whatever worked. Sometimes he would take a mirror make an expression on the mirror of freezing to say action. At other times he would say how are they lighting this scene and they would say there's a way I can put this ear in the dark so you don't see it. Yeah, but what are you going to do? And he put a sound plug in his ear and play not his lines, but the stuff he wanted to cover in improvisation so he wouldn't miss stuff.

It was audio-heared recording himself. So he would do anything and I learned from him that part. But I also got from Marlon his understanding about okay so brief little story where we were in the Philippines was in a place called Poxinhon. And I had a room with Poxinhon in that I basically kept all my crap in. I was living at the time with this group of people called the Iffelgaal that were on the set. But one afternoon I was back at the hotel with Marlon with two producers. I think

Dennis Hopper and I think Larry Fishburn was there. So anyway we're sitting around the table in the hotel and where you check into the hotel and a jukebox were all kind of in the same room. This couple came in to check into the hotel. Philippine a couple and they had two little girls with them. One was holding her mom's dress hiding behind it. The other one and I think it was satisfaction was playing on the jukebox. The other little girl heard this song and she came dancing

into the place where we were all sitting around sort of miming to satisfaction. And she was magical and people were laughing and funnier parents checked in and they all left to win upstairs. One of the producers I think was a great friend of her because it said about the little girl who was in dance. She said God that little girl was magical. Someday that little girl will be a great actress. And Marlon said great actress and they said yeah Marlon said you're wrong. It's the other

one. They didn't get it but I immediately understood because that other little girl doing like this was me who needed the permission of a part to go nuts to do whatever it was and Marlon was saying the same thing about himself. With the quickening that you felt when you realized that you were meant to act when your life started to make sense. Do you think that was predestined out of the box? Was that informed by your experience as scarlet fever because I know I believe you couldn't read

at the time? Yeah scarlet fever attacks sometimes all usually just one of your senses and they don't know why it does that but they were trying to protect my eyesight which turns out to be really good. What scarlet fever left me out was damaged all the joy in nerves. I mean I've got hearing aids in now because Carol finally was up here probably five six years ago. She just got tired of screaming at me and having me walk into the room and turn in the TV up so like ear splitting loud she said

you got to get hearing aids. Didn't think I needed them and then I got checked by the audiologist who went behind my back to talk to me and what happened was he was talking to me I'm looking at him I'm hearing him fine. He walks behind me and I can't hear him and he told me he said that's because you read lips I thought no I don't read lips so yeah you do and he said the good news God is this is not age related the bad news is you've been suffering this for at least 40 years my suspicion is

longer so that was scarlet fever and do you think that informed helped shape you into what later became this actor or it led me into having discoveries that I wouldn't have had before like when I got out of bed from scarlet fever I could take my finger literally and run it out of my ribcage

my bones were soft so I lent I grew up in a neighborhood that was very physical so out of mortification if there was a pickup football game I played but what I discovered from playing sports and stuff wasn't that I was so good at it but I actually liked it a lot I loved

physicality before I got scarlet fever I didn't all my friends were girls I'd much rather talk about flower arrangements than the NFL or and to some extent that's still true of me so scarlet fever just introduced me to a different world that I really loved I'm reencorded to all of those

things rock climbing with Tony Jones up in the big horn cracks all of that stuff I found out was really fun put a smile on my face and I don't think if I had never gotten scarlet fever I don't know that that would have ever had I don't know it did happen and now I'm 85 and here it is

so for people who of course are listening to this not seeing any visual I mean for the majority of our conversation you're sitting comfortably cross-legged on a couch no back support something that I know 30 somethings who wouldn't be comfortable in that position more than a few minutes what

is your physical training look like now and what would you say are some of the most important types of training or decisions about training that you've made say post 40 just to allow this type of okay I always wake up the same way I wake up I didn't today oh I slept in but normally I wake up

around 530 I slept till 7 today I don't know why but I come downstairs I fill up the coffee machine with water turn it on clean up the surfaces of all the tables just because it feels like a good thing to do and then I massage my ears pull them up as high as possible I'm not talking about

being gentle not general at all pull them down and then massage my ears and if I feel any even slightly tender resource but I really go after that as hard as I can I learned this in a tight she said in our years ago in New York and I've done it ever since but anyway strong super strong

ear massage then after that and while I'm doing all this stuff I'm thinking I'm making sure that my breath is horizontal and low what do you mean by horizontal okay there are two kinds of breathing that most people like most Americans doing properly after the age of I don't know two or three

one is we're born breathing horizontally which means if I say take a big in a big breath of air your stomach goes out the diaphragm is working right and it's not and you're not bringing anything into the top of your chest at all that's horizontal breathing vertical breathing is where you see

the shoulders going up and and we vertically breathe way way too much because what vertical breathing will do aside from the fact that you're not taking in as much oxygen is it will put tension into your upper body and lower body it also jack you into a fight or flight situation so if you

do that and stop like as somebody you know gotten your way that's really a bad idea because you're going to jack up your heart rate you're going to jack up your blood pressure you're going to screw with your central nervous system so I just try early in the morning try to remind myself

horizontal breathing horizontal breathing and then drop it down low so that you're feeling the diaphragm that's all so I do that after the ear massage I tap my head bring tap it this is also from Chinese medicine yes so after I finish tapping I wash my hands blow my nose walk outside

and I'm dressed usually like this usually I've got a lighter shirt on yeah I slip on these slip on shoes because this time of year I'll probably be standing in snow and ice and I open up the garage and I walk outside and I hum and when I say I hum any of us can do it easily you put your

back teeth together and I do that eight times and put vibration in my vagus nerve this is every morning for sure and then I come back in shut the garage door and usually then I look at what the temperature was because I think whoa that was pretty cool like this morning it was 14

and you're outside in shorts yeah yeah I'm not uncomfortable at all but you know I know other people who handle the cold way better than I do but the humming you know who does that Buddhist monks do that in the Himalayas and they do that in way colder weather with robes on it will actually work if

you can do it in a relaxed way you know you start to learn sort of to anchor your coccyx hum come back in and then take a shitload of vitamins and minerals and crap like that probably most of which I don't need but I do it anyway and then make the bed upstairs always make the bed and then

I do something physical to finish waking up today was baby fit you know baby fit I do not know baby fit Russian special ops do it in the morning use your legs first five times with each leg lying on your back with your arms over your head use your legs to turn yourself over the way of baby

wood and then you use your arms to do the same thing five times five times then you rock back and forth I do it 20 times do with your neck I do 10 times usually and then a low crawl and a bear crawl you can either do a bear crawl either butt up in the air or your butt lower than your shoulders I do

it lower than my shoulders did you get it on into this and and what he said was make so much sense we spend so much of our time looking at cell phones and computers and driving and doing so much stuff like that or like that right with your head with your to do that a bit get your neck extended

instead so I and I do a bear crawl and I like today I didn't do that many because I was thinking about you guys coming over here and I didn't want so I adjusted 12 but usually I do 60 when it's warm out I'll use the lawn out there and it's usually a site 90 to 100 out this is yards or feet feet

I guess this is just moves oh okay I got it like that that's quite a bit good for you and I don't even know if I could do that so that's one one thing I do the other the other is you know like a really brief warm up I say brief warm up 30 seconds of running in place swinging my arm just

putting some snow real fluid in my joints and then what I've been doing a lot is quick and dead for me that's just 10 kettlebell swings either with a 32 pound I don't know the KG's in the 30s and plus 16 or a 42 yes I stopped doing the 52 because I screwed up my muscle I'm learning about

more muscles in my body with my old age but anyway I do 10 kettlebell swings inside a minute 10 more inside a minute wait a minute get on the ground do pushups depends on how ambitious I am I all either do I rarely do straight pushups I'll usually do fist pushups or open finger

fish pushups try finger pushups or these which are oh I got it the close hand more try to push up yeah right back going around exercise prison pushups so do 10 of those 10 of those wait a minute back and forth and I'll do five rounds so inside of five rounds I've done 100 KB swings

and 100 pushups then I'm pretty much done with like specific working out if I want to do I used to do you know workout with like dumbbells and barbells and stuff like that just for the chuckles of it every now and then I'll pick up some dumbbells just to play where I say can I

still do this but I avoid that because I'm 85 and I don't want to mess with my joints and tendons and ligaments and I've discovered that bands work just as well and they're way more merciful on your body I mean one point you talk about being 85 I absolutely take into account the fact that

I'm and the other thing I realized is that already at 85 my recuperation time is way longer than it used to be if I do an all nighter now it'll take me three days to get back when I was in the Marine Corps I could get I'm not an exaggerer I could get 15 20 minutes of sleep just

tying myself to an armor personnel carrier and I was good for 72 hours for real and those days are long gone yeah so and now also if I drink too much tequila I'm going to really feel for two or three days all that stuff the one place where I'm lucky I'm not bragging is really true

is my reaction to him I'm still as quick as I used to be but what I'm I realize is that could turn into for people who can't see just through job right my face what I realize is that could drop off 30 seconds from now I'm 85 it's at some point that's going to go and if it does that's I'll deal with

it those are some of the stuff that I do aside from the breathing stuff I used to think the most important muscles in the body were the butt the hamstrings and the quads lower body big muscles and there's not it unimportant at all but now I believe that easily the most important muscle you

have control I mean I guess yogis have control over their heart so that would work I don't I can slow my heart right down and that's pretty much it so the most important muscle in my body that I can have control over for sure is the diaphragm nothing else even gets close and that feed up thing

over there I used to oh wow yeah look at that I know the heat I like I like forget exactly how the diaphragm feels so I'll invert myself and then drop my heels over so that they're against the wall really gently it's generally as possible and why I'm doing that is that can then take all

the tension out of my shoulders and my hands and everything and then I just start breathing deeply if you're in that position you won't be able to vertically brace you will not be able to let me just describe taking a big breath you're going to be introduced to your diaphragm right away so let

me explain this for folks because a lot of people listening a lot of my friends who are former athletes in their 30s or 40s could not do this comfortably so I want to explain it so imagine there's a device called the feed up but just for visual purposes imagine that you took a let's call

it a three inch cushion and put on your toilet seat emptied the toilet water right your head in the toilet and then kick your feet up so you're basically doing a handstand on your shoulders you can't shrug your shoulders or be very hard so you have to then breathe your diaphragm so this is

what Scott does at 85 just for hashtag life goals for everybody listening and do you exercise every morning no I guess I kind of do I was thinking when I was doing Eugene the marine all I would do is no actually I did do about 60 pace I would do baby fit in the morning that'd be pretty much

sick because I knew I have so much work to do during the day and a lot of it was super physical as martial arts stuff with training knives and stuff like that so I'm not compelled to work out every day but at least every other day and the diaphragm stuff I use because like I say I'm super

lazy as an actor so I got this part in bad monkey I'm playing this shaman I get the part and then I can't wait to see this because I'm thinking how do I play somebody who talks to manatees and I don't want to I don't want to have to technically figure that out as an actor that's going to be way too much work so sign me up for this thing with this guy named Erwan LaCour who does natural movement you probably know he is I do he also would concur that the diaphragm is the most

important muscle and he's he's all about breathing and the course was all about breathing and meditation and Erwan believes for me it's true it may not be true for other people I don't know but for me it's true that thoughts are either trying to figure out problems will she all do what how do I

get from here to there what's two plus two equal that kind of thing or it's a conversation that you're writing the script and you're delivering to yourself when you say that you mean these are like the stories you're creating yeah so this is what Erwan believes in a breath hold where you

feel stress because the stress you ultimately feel when you're holding your breath is you're afraid you're going to die you're not because at a certain point against your will your body will take over and force you to breathe so he believes that if you have one thing to think about and meditate

on during that breath hold you can rewire your central nervous system now that sounds like woo woo stuff to a lot of people but for me it actually worked so he said Scott what kind of conversations do you have are they basically any one thing I said yeah they're minor being pissed

off being angry at somebody took my parking place or making up this confrontation that I may never have with a casting person but they're pissed off so he said I would suggest that one of your meditations be peace go in the other direction so at the end of this course he gave us this thing

I've got on my phone and it's what it is is six breath holds you decide how long you want them to be and they shouldn't be killer but they should be long enough that they're difficult because everyone said keep telling yourself I'm getting stronger and better with and because of

the stress there are six and with diminishing amounts of rest between each one and I do those three times a week everyone says don't do them in succeeding days because it's probably not good for you and so I don't but I do this these breath holds and I started doing them here while I got

out the part of and I remember one point oh this is the part of the job and I sit upright in bed and I yell whoa and Carol is 230 in the morning and Carol says what what I said I found my manatee and his name he's a French guy his name is Erwan La Cure what I meditate on are peace

clarity and focus and when I say focus I do mean physical focus like a gun sight I'll pick a tiny spot on the ceiling and as I'm holding my breath I'll focus on that but try to find the place of meditation to just let's me live there and I started off with doing a minute I think I was

doing a minute 15 anyway right now I'm doing a minute 40 breath six yeah performance free dive and I'll tell you the of record my longest breath hold is four minutes and 15 seconds not to look might even be longer now I don't know but up here I'm at 140 but what I'm aiming for I would like

by the time I hit 86 the benchmark for me is two minute breath holds those are real yeah that's very real so but I'm at a minute 40 right now but what I was gonna say about good luck and this is just pure good luck to the point where I almost just accepted know when I need to learn something

the best teacher in the world materialized right in front of me so I want to ask you about this because it seems like this is going to be a leading question but it's an uninformed observation it seems like from LA to Idaho you loosen your grasp on something and then this opportunity this

amazing opportunity presents itself for this career changing role yeah and it seems like that's happened a few times how would you explain that I would like to be some kind of intellectual giant which I am definitely not I'm probably at average maybe a little bit above average intelligence

but not much that's not false modesty that's for real me if people ask me am I a good shot with a handgun my honest answer is above average a lot no above average but I'm a really good instructor I can teach anybody probably to expert level how to shoot a handgun am I a good shot

with a rifle yes I am can I teach people well how to know I'm the world's worst teacher I don't do anything right I don't get a consistent spot well and I don't do any this I just been doing since I was so young I just do it and it works out my great fortune in life

but I used to be amazed by it and now I just accept it is okay I got into the actor studio by accident and I got by accident Lee Strasberg is my own personal standalone teacher and coach the best in the world I'd never planned on that happening it just happened I'm out at the rain shooting

guy next to me was watching me shoot and he says you're pretty good at doing this but I could give you some pointers come on over to my house tomorrow and I'll show you what I know his name is John Shaw world champion coach John stood calls me up when I'm in LA and says you want to know

about combat shooting it's not military but the real civilian stuff LAPD SIS coming out to the Eagles Nest and meet this guy Scotty Reads and we become we become we become really good friends and is the real deal he's my teacher I'm down in the Baja this is how stupid

I truly am down the Baja and for two years I've been scuba diving without any instruction I should be dead I used my BC at almost a hundred feet to rocket myself to the surf so I'm in this bar and I've just spent a day doing this oh man and I'm talking about it like I'm

the coolest person I ever lived this guy walks up to me in his 60s pop belly guide he looks at me and he said you're a real asshole and for whatever reason I don't know if was in his what about him saying that to me but I came to attention and I said why sir and he's got a big grin and he

looked at me and he said okay your army airborne marine which one and I said bring course sir and he laughed and he said I'm here with my girlfriend I'm staying in that room you show up tomorrow and give me the next six days of your life show up tomorrow with coffee at 8 45 not

before night after and I'll teach you how to scuba dive and certify you and then he walks out of the bar and the owner of the bar just got your own early walks over to me and I tell him about he said do you have any idea who that was and I said no he said that was James Stewart I said

Jim Stewart Jimmy Stewart the actor he said no like Jim Stewart dive master emeritus at Scripps Institute Jim Stewart who wrote the syllabus for the seal themes Jim Stewart who's the only person who can sign the chat that says you're allowed to dive in the and article Jim Stewart

who's now he card is number one and Jacques Estelle said he's arguably the greatest scuba diver there will live that's who's going to teach you and certify you and he did I mean so I mean it's again again I'm out here I'm out here in the summertime and I'm talking about what does it feel like

to be a bird because when I was in the service I never free fall I never did free fall like him and like SF and seals do at all but I've done static line jumps so I'm telling somebody at this cocktail party this guy walks up to me and he said you want a free fall I'll teach you come over to my house

tomorrow afternoon I'll hang you in front of my porch I'll teach you malfunctions and major malfunctions and how to deal with them and we'll go jumping and I said why should I trust you and he said because I'm four times world champion I'm the only person allowed to videotape the golden

nights if you know anything about jumping videotaping skydivers is the easily the most dangerous part because of all the stuff you can it's all the things that can go wrong yeah so I said are we going to attend him jump he said no you already told me you just a static line jumper will put a

two by four assessment will go up we'll use the two by four to launch ourselves out on the stride of the wing hang on to it he said you'll go first I said what will you do he's all come after you he said just you jump off and establish a hard arch and he showed me how to do that and I say okay

but then what will I do and he said well jump off catch up with you I want you to can't of mine but don't do it can't of mine pulling your rip cord and you yell to me what your altitude is will go out it hopefully 15,000 and when you hit 3,000 you don't pan of mine anymore you actually pull

the rip cord and pump air into the cells of his parachute and that's where it'll work and it did the worth that way perfectly because he was so good he would bullet dive down and be as far from me as I am from you right now like four feet but I mean again and again and again the best person is not

like oh this person's kind of good at what they do there's good at as anybody on the fucking planet earth and they're gonna teach you and the one thing I will say and hopefully whoever is hearing this will take it to heart there's part of me that's really a good student and here's

the part of me that's really good student 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 yeah I heard someone say

recently very high performer I'm blanking on thatribution but they were taught by a mentor something and I'm paraphrasing but they said in order to be excellent at anything you have to first be willing to be extremely crappy at it that's so true I mean it's like with martial arts

you've done them enough so I know I'm talking to somebody the two of you guys understand this okay so I'm going to Thailand to do this TV show white lotus that I can't really talk about it because they're very secret but I'm gonna be in Thailand so I called up a friend and just because

I love the word krabi krabong I mean it's so cool krabi krabong little babies probably like to say it to but it's a time-larshal art and it's the weapons side of Muay Thai when you're really good at it you use razor sharp double swords but when you begin it it's just retanned sticks and what I

want to do in Thailand is not learn krabi krabong or be taught secret moves or any of that I just want so much to show me the absolute basement seller foundation what are the moves that you need to be able to I know they won't be complicated I know there'll be something that with just pure

repetition I can do again and again so that's what I'm gonna do when I get to Thailand and you've done a lot of me a lot of knife work also I imagine that some of the nice stuff I yeah actually do the movement patterns yeah probably translate really well one thing you should definitely try to

do while you're there if you can is go to lumpeini stadium or raja dom nun to watch the Muay Thai fights I've been to both of those I have yeah I would I did a film in Thailand this as an actor I've been in Thailand a few times but I was there as an actor doing a movie called off limits and it

was the king's birthday and he was turning 60 and if you know with a lesser vehicle boonism you'd be coming to doll of 60 it's the end of the fifth size so they still hope for 12 years yeah so his birthday was all year long and we lost locations and so my week and a half or two week job wasn't going

to happen for at least two months so I said to them why don't you just keep me here in a hotel rather than spend first class plane tickets back and forth back and I bring Carol over and we can go to food cat and have fun so we did that but why was there the movie is kind of a sad movie to me

because two of my friends who were in the movie who played much bigger parts than me are no longer alive what was Gregory Hines who I loved and Gregory I knew from martial arts from doing Korean martial arts in New York he was really good at it he's the only person I ever saw he on his

passport you know where you put occupation his said tap dancer he was amazing he died of liver cancer and the other was Fred Ward who died of Alzheimer's but Fred was Fred was an amazing athlete Fred had a silver boot in box for a save so that so that yeah and when he was in Thailand he

trained me we tie with the people from a rush it in the room oh yeah I was and so he brought me well at one point remember he brought me in to work out with those guys I wouldn't hit palm trees with my hands raising like that but they had heavy bags and stuff like that too you know and Fred

told me that God gave me a right hook and I said yeah I know that part but we weren't Fred and I went across the border illegally into what was then Burma and up in the golden triangle it dangerous area three pagoda pass yeah so I had had adventures in Thailand and saw a lot of me tie

yeah oh yeah the art of eight limbs beautiful and brutal and very effective art I want to revisit for a second this luck because there's luck differing degrees of luck and a lot of it's outside of your control but it seems like there's certain ways you can increase the surface area in

your life that luck can stick to and one is by being a good student for instance that increases the likelihood that luck is going to stick to you are there any other recommendations you would have for people who want to increase the type of serendipity and luck that you've experienced are there any other ingredients that you can play with if you have the good fortune to fall in love with and find yourself with a Jewish girl from Brooklyn don't fight her about anything because number one

you're going to lose and number two she's going to take you in a much better direction than you ever figure let's go go deep down that rabbit hole then so relationship we've talked about career we've talked about some fitness long durable good relationships with a partner any advice for people out

there because especially in your I would imagine in the world of entertainment this is a rarity I would have to think from the outside looking in again is my good fortune to just fall completely in love with this woman how did the two of you meet in a movie theater in New York the girl I have been

kind of not really living with but semi living with often on and I'd broken up and she just tried to kill herself and I had a friend who now is teaching school in Iraq of all places his name is Jeff Siggins and he called me up and he said we're going to the movies Murray Hill cinema

me and the group of people are going to come with us and I said sure so Carol was one of them I never matter before I sat next year in the movie theater and I just felt these I didn't touch her anything I just felt these waves of I don't know what it was but some and I'd fallen in last

probably at least a couple thousand times in my life and pursued that you know with full vigor but I never really fallen in love anyway so the movie came to an end and everybody got up to leave and for whatever reason I turned to Carol and I said I think I want to sit through this and watch

it again she said yeah me too so we sat through the whole movie again not even touching and the movie came to an end in that period of time it was like magical we walked out of the theater and there was probably half a foot of snow everywhere so we went out and we played in the snow and was getting

light and Carol said and I was doing a play but I was off that night she said you want to spend the night and I said yeah oh yeah so I went over and she cooked spaghetti and meatballs and we had beer and at the end of dinner she went into the bedroom came out with a pillow through it on the

couch and said this is a turns into a bed they're blankets so I have a good night went back into the bedroom shut the door and went to sleep I went okay so the next morning we had breakfast and we played in the snow some more and I was gonna say goodbye to her and I thought I'm not gonna

even try to hug her and kiss her because if I do with this and she does one of those pullaways my whole world will collapse how I knew that I don't know so I said I had a really good time and the hell of my hand I shook her hand goodbye and then for the next week I would open my I had

predictably a little black book and I would open it up and I would call a phone number and a young woman would answer hello hello and I wouldn't say anything and I would just hang up and I went through one phone and I've and finally I thought who you kidding you want to see it her that's

who you want to see so I called her up and I told her my TV was broken and there was something I learned to watch on television that Saturday night I think it wasn't she said okay so I get down to her apartment she's got makeup on she's all dressed up and she's oh I've got a date tonight but

you know where the fridge is and there's the there's the TV and so have knock yourself out and I set literally two feet away from her so pissed off I was just fucking really pissed off if I had been a dog I would have been growling yeah so I'm watching the TV I'm not watching the TV and I hear the

downstairs bell go thong thong and I hear Carol say I remember the guy's name to this day Earl she's okay Earl Abuggians and I'm watching the TV and I'm here in the front door open and I'm hearing Earl say whoa you look hot tonight and I hear Carol say listen Earl an old friend of my brothers just

dropped by I haven't seen him in a long time I'm not gonna help with you tonight you can see the emotion I'm filled with right now okay that went yes she shut the door walked into the living room and that was about 55 years ago wow incredible what would Carol add to this Genesis story if

she were sitting here with us what else would she add tell me I was full of shit and wrap it up and you got you got shopping to do for me this all say about her because she's not here right now and I've seen it with enough people and what it is about her I I don't know and maybe I don't want

to know but even with he's no longer alive but I remember when she and I first met Freddie Fields who was the toughest hardest ass agent Hollywood as old school has ever seen within 10 minutes of meeting her he desperately wanted her approval I've never seen anybody around who doesn't want her

to say you're okay what is that about her she comes from I think now it's 3035 unbroken generations of Jewish rabbi and Israeli airborne whatever I don't know maybe that's part of it but that is true about her people want her to say they're okay what that quality is in her I don't know but

it's there that's for sure it's amazing funny and she is funny you know and doesn't take seriously a lot of the stuff I do and laughs at it and keep sort of like properly puts me in my place I have to ask can I make up the name wrong here you mentioned Gregory Hines you spent some time at least as I

understand it a brief intense period with modern dance I think and let's see if this goes somewhere playing pool with Nuriyev in New York City is my game the name right no that was I was dancing with a guy named Matt Maddox who was phenomenal and I remember one point I said how do I get better

at this it was when I quit dancing almost altogether he said stop acting stop doing martial arts stop wrestling working out don't do anything else just dance you want to get better you're at that point right now and I quit dancing because I didn't go on I ran into Nuriyev while we were doing

the right stuff in San Francisco in New York City ballet had moved to San Francisco for the year and I met him and he had seen urban cowboy and he told me that I was a much real or better cowboy than John Travolta would ever be and by the way John Travolta pretty much sucked his dancer too

so I remember at one point we were down in the basement of this place called Tosca's a bar in New York I mean I'm sorry San Francisco and we were shooting pool and drinking me in a minor way he in a major way vodka I remember one point I said to him well you Russians can really hold your

vodka and he stopped got really angry looked at me he said I am not Russian and I said what are you he said I'm Latvian there was the first time it ever dawned on me that these parts of Russia that I thought were kind of along with Putin were actually Russian were more like Ukraine they had

their own identity their own sense of who they were and it meant something and certainly did to Nuriyev he was in the some ways the best physical shape of any human being I've ever been around I watch him go down a flight of long stairs on his hand I mean he was he would invite me to come

and watch the New York City ballet workout in the Makarov who was the best premat ballerina in the world of the time I would watch her on point not coming down from point spinning one direction three directions four back and forth chain smoking two camels at the same time it was the weirdest world

because there was a world where there was zero fitness in that way and yet they were the outrageous athletes I mean right stuff that triple back black belts and shodokon couldn't even dream about doing these people did easily I didn't want to talk about poetry that's okay sure I believe

you've written a fair amount of poetry what is the and we already spoke earlier a bit as we were discussing Judaism of these scriptures as poetry slash parables for living yeah what does poetry mean to you why write poetry why read poetry poetry to me is the along with physical art scratching

on the side of a wall the first this is one of one of your books frictions of the most elemental way that human beings have to communicate ideas and feelings real deep ideas and feelings and also because as I said I grew up with probably but I don't want to know for sure the myth that I'm

directly related to Lord Byron who had a club foot was crippled but swam the hellisbond's and fought in Greeks war of liberation from Turkey and he did all this stuff and was you know an outrageous coxmon and mainly he was a poet so I've lived with the belief that I have that in

in me but what happened with Carol was I wrote a poem to her every Christmas Hanukkah time and at a certain point on her 50th anniversary she said I want to publish these is it okay with you and I said correctly it's not up to me I'm not I can say Indian giver because I've got

command she bled him so I don't mind using the word if I give something it's yours it's not mine you can rip up those pages and wipe your ass with it so she said well I'm going to publish it self-published so that was room service that's not that book and then during the pandemic there was

no acting happening anywhere and then right after that I had a brief period of time when I could work and then the the strike happened but during the pandemic which was about two years long all I could really do aside from workout and hang out with Carol was right poetry I now wouldn't even know if

I would call it observations I leave it to other people to say whether that's poetry or not I don't know but the thing about the pandemic that I realized with relationships is a lot of people who were in love with each other had to discover whether they liked each other and what I

discovered with Carol was I liked her better than anybody I knew even to this day we're like a giraffole big curmits we'd have no problem I don't need the company of anybody anyway that friction zone is kind of what came out of the pandemic and it's not big heavy duties to you

know friction zone is friction zone is where you want to be with a big heavy motorcycle like a Harley Davidson to drive it slowly you're slipping the clutch constantly slipping the clutch with a little bit of power on the so the metaphor for that just anyway how do you apply that metaphor

outside of riding motorcycle like that trusting that your body will do the right thing so when you're riding a say a big Harley I can tell you this academically when you're driving a big Harley you're going over 25 miles an hour you ride like any other motorcycle if it's a street bike just

remember the following dictum front brake until you're really sure about how it works only stay away from the rear brake dirt bike the opposite if you're going under 25 miles an hour if you're going under 12 miles an hour you keep the power on slipping the clutch and you will go

where your head looks if you look down at the ground I guarantee you you're going to dump the bike I like the metaphor so we're going to wrap this up I'm wondering just as a way of landing this plane and wrapping up what advice let's just say 10 years from now your grandkids are listening to this and they're wondering what life advice I would give them both the lessons I learned from Sir Lawrence and from my dad which is if you love it make it your life 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 I mean again I'm going to bar with

Lawrence Olivier who created the National Theatre of England who was the biggest movie star in the world was the most creative stage actor in the world and director he'd done everything my question to him was what is it that you need to make it in this business is it

timing right place of the right time is it contacts knowing the right people or is it just working on your skills and becoming better and better what you do he said my dear boy none of the above develop very strong job muscles learn how to bite on and not let go I said you're telling me it's

just pure tenacity his answer was yes if you're a monk outside the gates with a beggar's bowl and you stay out there alone enough they'll finally get sick of seeing you open the gates and let you in fantastic Scott thank you so much for taking the time thank you what fun I've grabbed away a lot

that's the whole point that's the that's the whole blueprint and you know maybe we'll get a chance to go out and shoot again and for those people listening I think a little birdie told me that with open sights you can still hit targets at 400 yards maybe beyond I don't know about it

well there was a time my life and I have witnesses that because it sounds out I could with steel sights hit six under the yard whether I can right now at 85 probably not but who knows well you know I get the dragon off down in warm weather I'm gonna I'll give it a shot use a

horrible horrible man well I'm curious to see if I can get my ass up side down on the feet up after this of after being inspired by your daily routine so thank you so much for the time hey guys this is Tim again just one more thing before you take off and that is five bullet

Friday would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between one and a half and two million people subscribed to my free newsletter my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday easy to sign up easy to cancel it is

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tech tricks and so on they get sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you so if that sounds fun again it's very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off

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