I Want Never, Never, EVERRRRR..... To Meet Scott Glenn!!!

But only because I know in my heart that at first glance I would fall to his feet a blubbery sobbing pool of complete and utter non-functionability... other, of course, than the uncontrollable FULL-ON-ugly-cry instinctive capability that would immediately kick in and take over my entire being until my tears would finally disappear me into the ground along with the rain which I picture also accompanying me through such experience. This would be horrible. I don't want to go into the ground with raindrops and emotions. I don't like worms. Therefore, I can never meet Scott Glenn.

I have to go back just a little bit (actually a lotta bit because I'm old) to explain my journey into the painfully beautiful Scott GlennVille.....



The 8-track that started it all...

I was five years old when Grease hit the big screen and I absolutely LOVED it!!! I was one of the billion-million-GAjillion little girls who was going to grow up to be Sandy and marry Danny. My dreams, both waking and sleeping, were filled with the musical numbers I danced and sang my little lungs out to, accompanied by my beloved movie-watching memories and that magical old 8-track player helping me to keep them alive daily. See, things were different back in the seventies and early eighties, even though it really doesn't seem so long ago, and we didn't have the current luxury of instant and constant access to the music and movies of our hearts. I had seen the movie once and had been lucky enough to talk my parents into buying me the 8-track soundtrack shortly after but it wasn't until maybe six years later when the VideoDisc Player came into my life and along with it, once again came the movie of my childhood heart. For those who either don't remember or who maybe weren't even around in those days... the laser disc player was mind blowing technological awesomeness! A machine that played movies on discs the size of records and my beloved Grease was on the title list of available rentals!!! It wasn't easy to actually find and buy the movies back then but Grease was my special choice for every weekend rental it was my turn to choose. My parents and older brother tired of my choice quickly but were always good sports while my younger sister reveled in the movie right along with me. For those who didn't get to experience the first days of disc players, have a look at what was once the latest and greatest in 'dvd' players through the video link below.

http://youtu.be/Chgt9y0Insw


Anyhow..... it was in 1980, two years after Grease came out when I started seeing television ads for a new 'Danny' movie in theaters. My heart was FLYING! Until it dropped. I was seven then and not allowed to see the movie because "it's not an appropriate movie for childrennnnn....." said, of course, in my best whiney, eyerolling copycatness of my parents as they refused my daily beggings to go and see Urban Cowboy at the theatre. Sure, looking back on it now, I wouldn't have let my kid see it either... but that wasn't the point; I needed to see that movie and I was MAD!

It took a very long while in those days for movies to make it onto one of our thirteen-dial-channel television stations so it wasn't until I was twelve (1985) when I happened to turn on the television in my dads downstairs office to... you guessed it, Urban Cowboy! It was totally meant to be, I was meant to watch that movie! I had actually gone in there to unwind from doing my homework by playing a few games of Q-bert on the ColecoVision but my plans changed fast and I instead curled up in my dads office chair to disappear into the world that had finally found me, sprawling forward across his desk in my  dreamy longingness to jump straight into that small screen and become one with my newfound idols living it up at the legendary Gilley's. I had waited years to see my still beloved 'Danny' as the Urban Cowboy named Bud who was next in line to become even more beloved, this time as a cowboy, I just knew it! I was already beyond delighted from the first moment I had started watching and my heart had almost leapt straight out from my chest at that first and forever famous dance scene that made my also painfully beloved Johnny Lee a household name.

But then...

.....Wes Hightower entered the scene and my world and heart became instantly and forever changed!!! I wanted to be Sissy more than anything in the world and if I'm to tell the absolute truth now, I still really do.

My heart will never heal.....

I'm still waiting for my Wes to come back.

Anyhow, back to my real life circumstance of being completely entranced in the Gilley's greatness... I had asked for and been given permission to play a few games of Q-bert but the deal had been from eight-thirty to nine on the ColecoVision before getting ready for bed and reading until my nine-thirty bedtime. Yes, I had a bedtime of nine-thirty when ALL my friends could stay up as late as they wanted to by the grand old age of twelve, or so they all said; looking back, I'm pretty sure they all still had bedtimes, too but just didn't admit to it. I remember glancing at the desk clock and seeing it was just past nine... I wasn't technically breaking the deal because my mom had said I was allowed to play the game until nine but she didn't say I couldn't be watching a moooovie past nine..... It wasn't long though, until I heard movement on the stairs and my mom peeked in through the doorway to remind me:

"Time to get ready for bed, Honey."
"But Urban Cowboy is on and it's sooooooo good!"
"But you have school in the morning and it's time to get settled for sleep."
"No, please, please, pleeeeaaaaaase can I just finish watching???"
"Does it finish at ten?"
"Eleven....."
"Sorry, Honey, not on a school night, it'll be on again."
"No, it won't! I already checked (I hadn't checked) and this is the ONLY time!!"
"I'm sure it won't be the only time, now let's go."
"No... ten o'clock then, please?!!!"
"Ten o'clock and then it's straight to bed..."
"Okay, I promise!"

Of course I had no intention of honouring my promise and in my mind we would go through the same pleading drama to get me through until ten-thirty followed finally by an eleven o'clock argument that would get me all the way through until the movie's end. Unfortunately, it just didn't work that way and instead went a little something like this when my mom again appeared in the doorway:

"It's after ten now... bedtime."
"Next commercial....."
"No. Now."
"But..."
"No."
"It's almost over, though!"
*click*
"Now it's over. Bedtime."
"All my friends get to stay up late! Why can't Iiiiiiiiiii???"
"Because I'm your mother and I said so."

This is where I stormed past her and up the stairs, stomping my feet as hard as I possibly could, not caring in the slightest that my little sister was already asleep just down the hall, then I  SLAMMED my bedroom door with all the might I could muster in my fury, all while screaming...

"I will always, always...
 .....ALWAYYYYYYS JUST HATE YOU FOREVER FOR !!!!!!!!!"

I don't still hate my mother. However, I do still hate the fact that I wasn't able to stay up to finish watching the movie and still have never quite fully recovered from the heartbreak of that one hour loss in what would become my lifetime of dreams. I still smile every time I hear "She knows what she's doin'..." run through my mind and see that look in his eyes, cigarette hanging so incredibly awe-inspiringly out of his mouth in his light blue denim shirt as he turns down the bull for Sissy. Looking back though, it's maybe actually better that I didn't see the ending then because even though it wasn't until years later when I finally did see the movie in its glorious entirety that I came to know that my beloved Wes was not only a beautifully tough, badass who looked every ounce of threat straight in the eye with nothing but calm, steely sureness that he could fully back up, bu-uuuuut that he was also just plain mean and controlling. Pity....my...soul..... I still couldn't settle my heart even once I finally knew the script-written truth of Wes Hightower! He was somethin'! And no one that I met in real life ever could quite measure up...

Well..... until a few months later when 'Emmett' came along.....

This much hotness seriously shouldn't even be allowed..... but, boy am I grateful it is!

Emmett burst into my heart straight off the big screen and it was, without doubt, the moment I had waited my whole entire life for! I hadn't heard of the movie, Silverado, before my dad asked me if I wanted to go and see it with him but since watching old westerns was our thing, I had happily agreed to go with him. I had loved every western I had ever seen but only seconds into Silverado my heart explOded at first glance of Emmett... now I just KNEW it was going to be the best one ever! And it really, REALLY was!!! I was never quite the same after heart-throbbingly handsome Emmett said, "Y'know, Mister... if I'd brought a pretty lady like that into a place like this, I'd stay close." Sighhhhhh... to be the pretty lady, Hannah, in that moment!

Pure perfection!

My beloved Silverado is seriously PACKED full of awesomeness! Never a dull moment with characters, all lovable in their own rights and I was glued to that screen in pure, delicious awe... even the bad guys are so full of inspiring that hating them is loving them because they're all just so good at being bad! Brian Dennehy took a little of my heart in this movie, too, that big ol' flashing smile mixed with rattlesnake-mean, snappin'-twinkly eyes... wowzers! Seriously... what is it about the danger men!?? Kevin Costner kept me giggling while Danny Glover kept me hoping and at the ready to push forward through all his pain right alongside him. And even though my love and loyalty go COMPLETELY with the incredible Mr. Scott Glenn in this movie, as in all his others, I have to admit that no one, and I do mean NO ONE... mounts or sets a horse quite like Kevin Kline does; I may have unabashedly swooned a little at the breath-catchingly-heart-stopping sight of Payden swinging so effortlessly up into the saddle and riding along with nothing but a stellar ease of relaxed confidence..... but I never did tell my beloved Emmett that little tidbit of extra curricular crushiness.

I honestly can't even begin to count the number of times I've watched Silverado since my first time seeing it at the theatre but I do, even thirty-one years later, still know every line by heart (much to the annoyed dismay of both my brother and sister) and I gleefully lose myself entirely in the pure and utter joy it brings me each time I watch it over again. All I have to do is turn that movie on and I am lost in another world, another time. It may sound silly how lost I become in my favourites but there are just some worlds worth getting lost in and Silverado, for me, is one of them. I don't watch a lot of television or movies, but the few I do love, I watch time and again, year after year and I never lose the first-watch-magic in my heart. When I love something, I truly LOVE that something.

I think I came to honestly notice the pattern of my great love for Scott Glenn, cowboy-extraordinaire when My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys came out later on. Sure, I had watched every one of his movies I could get my hands on but the ones that captured and enamoured me most were definitely the westerly inspired. Old West, Urban West, current West... it matters not when that one signature flash of a full smile appears! I wait giddily (even just knowing it's coming) every single time!!! When H.D. got so mad at his sister when he was sticking up for their Dad... "He ain't an old pair of boots goin' to Goodwill, he's a hero! He's MY hero! You don't put away your heroes!" ...I found myself caught up in yet a new kind of admiration for my favourite movie dude! Here was my hero defending his hero and I felt not just my usual idolizing of him just then but a kind of kinship had suddenly set in as well.


I get made fun of, a lot, about my utter dedication to the characters brought to life by the one man I'll just never feel worthy of meeting but will forever just absolutely adore; I pay it no mind. Watching and getting lost in those worlds brings me so much joy that no one will ever be able to extinguish it. Getting lost in imaginary worlds is a gift I truly cherish. My parents not only taught me but encouraged me to get lost in books and films of different times, new and old worlds of both the real and the fantastical. We all have heroes, real and imaginary. One hero of my heart is and always will be Scott Glenn and his incredible abilities to bring the coolest, strongest most handsomest imaginary heroes to life.

And so, I can never meet Scott Glenn... because I just adore him too darned brutally much.

I'm curious to know... Who are the lifelong heroes of your heart? Would you want to meet them in person, or, are you like me and just to afraid of letting them down?