“It’s a beautifully-told, beautifully-directed and wonderfully-acted film,” veteran motion picture and television actor Morshower (24, X-Men: First Class, Dallas) says of the deeply touching, mesmerizing and emotionally-compelling cinematic drama Flutter. “And, I do not say that because my wife (Carolyn) and I executive produced the film. I say it because it worked. It’s a story that certainly makes you think. More importantly, it’s a movie made for people who love to feel and share an incredible emotional experience. Flutter is a wonderfully satisfying movie that I am so proud to be a part of.”
The tale of a young mother who struggles to nurture her son in the face of poverty, isolation and incarceration, Flutter explores the truest love on earth-the love of a mother and child. The Eric Hueber-written and -directed film stars Friday Night Lights alums Glenn Morshower as Mark, a concerned father-in-law/grandfather, Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad) as a seemingly uncaring dad, and Lindsay Pulsipher (True Blood, Justified) portrays JoLynn, the young mother left alone with her son Johnathan (Jonathan Huth Jr.) while her singer/songwriter husband (Plemons) chases his career.
“At its core, Flutter is the story of a mother’s unswerving commitment to her nine-year-old boy,” Morshower explains. “She is not a single mom, but she might as well be, because she is in a marriage to an absentee husband. He’s also failing to show up for his son, which makes him an absentee father. They are a very low-income family, and they are doing the best they can to make ends meet, while this child is suffering from glaucoma and systagmus, an eye condition where the eyes flutter horizontally at a rapid rate — every day, all day. They flutter, hence, the name of the film. The only medicine that gives her son any relief is marijuana, so she grows it and uses it to treat him. She is just trying to do what they can to get by, and I step in, as the father-in-law, motivated over embarrassment that my son is not executing his duties as a husband and a father. It is based on a true story, although there are some embellishments. Eric Hueber, the film’s writer and director, gave himself permission to create additional drama within the existing drama to make it that much more compelling and interesting to the audience to watch.”
With close to 200 film and television acting credits on his stunning résumé, Morshower has portrayed every type of character imaginable in his four decade-long career. While he admits he still does extensive research for many of the roles he plays, the 55-year-old, Dallas, Texas-native jokes that some parts simply require him to memorize his lines.
“The way I prepare for a role is all on a case by case basis, because some roles I do, I seriously could do blindfolded,” Morshower says with a laugh. “There are some roles that I can do that you don’t have to even wake me up for. Just bring the camera and I’ll sleep my way through it. But, others, if it’s previously uncharted waters, then obviously I have to do my research in order for it to read as real. I’ve always been willing to do whatever it takes to become somewhat of an authority on the character that I’m playing, so that I can play it from truth. Otherwise, you are playing it from guesswork and from pretending. The problem with that is ends up translating in an artificial manner.”
Morshower dug into his own psyche and bonded with his co-star Lindsay Pulsipher to deliver an intense, breathtaking as Mark in Flutter. “I have, in my own family’s history, a lot of Mark’s similar challenges, I was raised in and around that kind of thing,” Morshower confesses. “Not specifically medical marijuana or anything like that, but just the family dynamics are something I was very familiar with. Also, because I am an attentive and caring human being — I’m not a hardened person — it’s kind of second nature for me to play anyone that comes from the heart.
“There’s a beautiful relationship that ran between Mark and JoLynn, then the answer to create that onscreen was to immediately, and as swiftly as possible, cultivate a relationship with the woman who would be playing JoLynn, in this case Lindsay Pulsipher,” he explains. “Lindsay and I, with great haste, leaped into a friendship so that we could that we could connect on the level of soul and heart. That’s ultimately what spelt the connection between JoLynn and Mark. It made it a piece of cake to photograph, because the chemistry wasn’t fake, it was real. Only the greater truth is that it was running between Lindsay and Glenn. It was really a Lindsay-Glenn connection.”
Having played incredibly diverse recurring characters on such seminal television series including The West Wing, JAG, CSI and Friday Night Lights, the actor says there is one TV role he portrayed that is more like the real Glenn Morshower than most people would realize. “In all honesty, anyone who knows the series 24 and knows the character of Aaron Pierce, they automatically know me,” he says of the iconic action series starring Kiefer Sutherland. “My character, Aaron Pierce, is based on everything that I stand for in my personal life. Originally, the character was scheduled to just be on just two episodes. Two weeks of employment is what I signed on to do. Seven years later, I was still alive on that show. I did exactly 50 episodes, but what makes that extraordinary is that it was 50 over a seven year period on a show that prides itself on killing series regulars.
“When they decided to keep me, they had to develop not just the storyline, but the emotional future of Aaron Pierce,” he continues. “They asked me what my feelings would be if they built that character on everything that I believe in, because I travel extensively as a motivational speaker. ‘What if we build this character on all the things you travel around talking about? Integrity, loyalty and the power of the spoken word.’ I said, ‘Well, it sounds like you want to pay me to play me.’ They said, ‘Pretty much.’ The only difference between Aaron Pierce and me is that I do not walk around in my personal life with an earpiece. And, I very seldom wear a business suit. Other than that, it’s the same man.”
When he is not starring in major motion pictures (all three Transformers films, Moneyball, All the King’s Men, Good Night & Good Luck, The Island, Hostage, Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor, Godzilla, Air Force One) or prestigious network and cable series (NCIS, Revolution, Castle, Bones, The Closer, Charmed, Monk, ER, Alias, Deadwood), Morshower takes to the road, roughly every fortnight, for his “The Extra Mile” seminars, which are one-of-a-kind experiences (visit www.GlennMorshower.com for upcoming cities). Part motivational seminar, part stand-up comedy and part inspirational concert, his “The Extra Mile” presentations are deeply moving presentations that run the gamut of emotion through a collection of life observations designed to awaken, illuminate and expand human consciousness. Glenn has the ability to connect with his audiences in a very special way. He believes in the restoration of the human spirit. His unique outlook and no-nonsense approach facilitate a better understanding of our relationship with the core self.
“What I’m out there in the world talking about is wellness, joy, love, personal alignment, and, basically, stepping into the fullness of your intended desire, Morshower says of his “The Extra Mile” seminars. “In other words, ‘Why are you really here breathing up air? What do you most want to do while you are alive?’ It started out as a program for actors, and now I’m training people around the country in corporate America. About every ten days, I’m on a plane to fly to some event, somewhere in the U.S., to help companies groom their employees to have a better attitude and to increase efficiency in the work place.
“It’s all rooted in love, joy and celebration,” he adds. “You can either be enduring your life, living your life or celebrating your life. There are only three levels of engagement with the gift of life. So many people are enduring, they feel the weight of the world on them. The majority of people are living the status quo, which means you are simply living life. But, a handful know what it means to wake up to the experience of celebration, and that’s what I’m out teaching the world. It’s formulaically, it’s how to move from just living your life to celebrating it. Like acting, it give me incredible joy to go out and speak and, hopefully, inspire as many people as I can.”
In addition to his speaking engagement and his starring role in Flutter, you’ll be seeing a whole lot of Morshower in 2015. Last month, Netflix released 13 episodes of Season One of Bloodline, a drama about a family of adult siblings whose secrets are revealed when their black-sheep brother returns home. Having already been touted as the next Breaking Bad for its tragic anti-hero narrative, Bloodline is a complex, intriguing and gripping new series starring Kyle Chandler, Ben Mendelsohn, Linda Cardellini, Sam Shepard, Sissy Spacek and Morshower as a local drug distributor who owns a bait shop.
“The prime reasons to watch Bloodline is Ben Mendelsohn, an Australian actor, who has erased all hint of his native dialect, and, of course, Kyle Chandler, my longtime friend from Friday Night Lights,” Morshower explains. “They so completely light up the screen, and the show just keep getting better and better. I get to play a drug lord and stone cold killer, which is quite a fun change for me to play. The last half of the season is just incredible. We’ve already been picked up for a second season. Ten days after it premiered, we found out we’ll be back. I’ve had so many people calling me and telling me how blown away by the series. Believe me, it’s a great show.”
Morshower will also appear in the 2015/16 motion pictures Hoovey, Dark Places, The Doo Dah Man and Bug. Surprisingly, after 200 roles playing everything from military men, FBI/CIA agents and the devil himself, Glenn says his upcoming film appearances will allow him to not only portray a varied cadre of characters but will permit him to challenge himself as an actor — like never before.
“Despite the fact that I am a hetereosexual man, I am really stoked about the fact, in a few months from now, I’m in a film opening up called Bug, in which I play a flamboyantly gay character,” he enthusiastically admits. “That was a choice that I wanted to make. I had three roles, in particular, that were on my bucket list, and at 55 you start thinking, ‘What have I not done?’ I wanted to do more roles from the heart instead of procedure. Because so many of the characters I play are repetitive at this point, I thought, ‘Okay, I know that I want to play a serial killer,’ not because I have any desire to kill people in real life, it would be such a departure for me that I would like to do it just to rattle the cages of the viewing public, who may falsely think that I’m one or two note kind of guy. The other one is that I wanted to play the President of the United States and the third was to play a flamboyantly gay character. And, in a three month period of time, two of the roles became available. The only one I haven’t done yet is the president, and I’ll be doing that this summer. This is the busiest year of my career. And, I’m having the best time of my life…and it only seems to get better every day.”
Flutter is now available on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vimeo and VUDU, as well as On Demand with AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Cox, TWC and Vubiquity.
