High art?

>> Character actor Scott Glenn reaches for the top in Vertical Limit

by MARK SLUTSKY

It's tough to believe Scott Glenn is merely one actor. This is indeed the same man who has appeared in various edgy bits of stage work while also honing his skills as a screen actor, working in such decidedly commercial fare as Urban Cowboy, The Hunt for Red October, Courage Under Fire and his latest, Vertical Limit.

In this ultracommercial outing, Glenn plays a bitter, mysterious, Buddhist mountaineer who still lives on one of the highest mountains in the world. Glenn is bitter because his wife died years ago while on a mountain-climbing expedition. The script has Glenn's character desperately seeking her frozen corpse, hoping to find out how she died. (No, I'm not kidding--and it gets better: at one point, he actually finds her!)

After a nasty avalanche caves in on another mountain-climbing expedition, Chris O'Donnell must risk life and limb to find his sister, who is part of the now-lost team. Glenn joins O'Donnell's rescue operation, but has an ulterior motive--he's pretty sure that the head of the lost expedition, Bill Paxton, caused the death of Glenn's late wife, and he wants to exact revenge.

No-brainer chills

Though the film does offer some decent mountain-climbing thrills, it's also about as deep as it sounds. Still, ever the consummate pro, Glenn says he finds challenges in all of his roles, insisting he can't choose which he likes better, the stage or the screen. "There's really no preference for me," he says from a New York hotel room. "Choosing a role is all about appetite. You enter a room and smell cooking: you either salivate or you want to throw up."

Vertical Limit's snowy, icy, vertigo-inspiring script intrigued Glenn right away. In particular, the actor drew inspiration from his emotionally conflicted character. "I was drawn into this love story, this person he lost four and a half years ago, this effort to try to find her and assign meaning to his life. How do you seek revenge if you're a practicing Buddhist? And with so few lines of dialogue, how do you convey that tension?"

So Vertical Limit won't win any Oscars for its screenplay--Glenn says the film constituted his most demanding role to date. "It was all very physical," he reports. "We did some ice climbing just to get a sense of what it's like. Yes, it's scary, but it's also aesthetically gorgeous. You feel like you're attached to diamonds made by God. In a really extreme way it forces you to live in the present, because the position you're in is so crucial. You really can't think about the past or the future." And Glenn adds that Vertical Limit is his favourite film to date, while admitting he has a habit of favouring his most recent project.

No cannibalism, please

Silence of the Lambs fans may be disappointed, but along with other notables from the first film, Glenn will not be returning for the much-hyped sequel, due out next year (Anthony Hopkins is the only original cast member reprising his role). "I'm not doing it for the same reasons that Jodie and Jonathan Demme aren't doing it. I'm sure it'll work out fine--I have great respect for Ridley Scott and Julianne Moore, but the new book goes in directions none of us felt those characters would actually go in. It's quite contrary to what we did in the first film, I think. To have [Jodie Foster's character] become a cannibal as well is just a bit much."

The Actors-Studio-trained Glenn--who was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for his stirring turn in last year's Off-Broadway show Killer Joe--has frequently been compared to Humphrey Bogart in terms of his style and impact. "You know, a number of writers have said that about me and I'll leave that mystery up to them. But I do respect him, probably more than just about any other screen actor. He and Robert Mitchum had to be the consummate film actors, really understanding the medium."

Vertical Limit opens Friday, Dec 8