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Foreign.
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This is all of it. I'm Tiffany Hansen and for Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thanks so much for spending part of your day with us. Coming up on today's show will mark the 25th anniversary of the release of the soundtrack to the film oh Brother, Where Art Thou? And we'd like to know how much the music impacted you. We'll also talk about what books you might want to give as gifts this year. And klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd is here with his band to perform live in WNYC's Studio 5. Well, that's the plan. So let's get started with actor and writer Tim Blake Nelson. Actor Tim Blake Nelson is known for starring in comedy crime dramas such as oh Brother, Where Art Thou? The Low down and sci fi series like the Watchman and Captain America. The latter partly inspired his latest novel titled Superhero. It's a satire about the Hollywood industry of blockbuster films which follows an a lister actor named Peter Compton, who fell from grace after multiple stints in rehab and a three year prison sentence. Given yet another chance to redeem himself, his producing partner and his wife, Marcy Levy convinces him to sign on to star as major machina. I hope I'm saying that right, Tim.
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Yeah.
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A superhero who is part machine, part man. Based on the 1955 comic book. Peter is hesitant at first, but he does it anyway. And as you might expect, it doesn't like, take too long before things go south. The 160 million dollar production is bogged down with egos, competing interests. There's even an outburst from Peter that has the potential to damage his career after it goes viral. Los Angeles Times called the book a kaleidoscope of a novel with a host of characters, each with a rich past wanting to create art. Superhero is on shelves now. Novelist, actor, playwright, photographer, director, filmmaker Tim Blake Nelson is in studio with us to discuss. Hi, Tim.
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Hi.
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Let's just talk about blockbusters for a second. Moviegoers. We've been seeing superhero films in the last, I want to say decade, really kind of take over the landscape. You've even starred in one. To me, that feels like sort of an unexpected turn of events that we would just sort of be inundated by these superhero superhero movies. I'm wondering if you think we've kind of seen the writing on the wall for a while and what you think about it.
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Well, so it's, I would even say it's over two decades because the first Marvel MCU movie came out at the beginning of the 21st century with iron Man.
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It's been that long.
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Yeah. I was then in the second one, which was Incredible Hulk. And then in the kind of in the middle of it all, I did Fantastic Four and then most recently Captain America. And I feel actually very lucky to have been a part of the mcu. I am someone who, even though my roots and interests lie in indie cinema and art house cinema, I actually appreciate the mcu. And I love these movies. I love going to them. My wife and I raised three boys in the city. We never missed one. And I think it's been by and large salutary for the industry to have these movies come out and do so well. I think they are a distinctively American phenomenon.
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Yeah.
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And that has been both a good thing, but also, one could argue, a negative. The novel I wrote is kind of exploring why superhero movies accomplished what they did as this not only American phenomenon, but a global one, which reached its apogee in probably the 20s teens with the Avengers trilogy, but is still going strong. Now, Marvel is owned by Disney, but you also have dc.
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Right.
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And those superhero movies, is there something.
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About American culture that lends itself particularly to these types of stories?
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Well, I think they could only have happened in America. The IP for the superhero movie, it goes back to comic books, which were a mid century phenomenon of the 20th century. And I think only American optimism, American belief in a Manichaean sort of system with a clear right and wrong in the world, good guys and bad guys, is when coupled with the fact that we have the resources with hundreds of millions of dollars to put into these movies that other film industries in other countries just don't have. I think only in America could you have these movies. But again, only in America, the country that could construe itself as having been the good guys in two world wars who came in and saved the world. Only in America could you have had the original IP of the superhero film.
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The Shining City on the Hill.
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Yeah.
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You've been in a couple. You mentioned. What is it about the behind the scenes that you thought really lended it so well to a novelization?
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I've been lucky enough to be on a lot of movie sets. And whether they're little ones and I've been on ones where there was a crew of six, from the little ones to the big ones with crews of 300 or more. They're like little societies, they're microcosms. And that's what really interests me since I know the world pretty well. In exploring how people relate in that Microcosmic society and how that might project in bigger ways about America itself, come.
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Together as sort of a community for a very brief amount of time. And then poof.
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That's right, yeah. And because it's a. The relationships are kind of built in as being finite, at least temporally. There's an intensity that goes along with that because you're working 12 hour days. But you also know that in a couple of months, and on a big movie, maybe three or four months, it's all going to be over. And so even subconsciously, you just invest more in everything. There's just a crazy intensity to the pecking orders, the relationships, the stakes, the gossip, the betrayal, the victories, the despair that occur on a movie set that makes it a place that's rife for examining human interaction.
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Is it like junior high?
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In a lot of ways? Yeah, it is, but. But, but distinctively adult.
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We'll get to the book. I want to dive into the book. But why write a book, Tim? Why not write a series about that? I mean, we have the studio that's out there. People love it. They love the behind the scenes. Why not put it on the screen?
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I'm interested in the thingness of the thing, in terms of form and content and how form can be content. And so I guess that when I'm setting out to write a story, the form is just as important to me as the narrative. And I like to take advantage of the form. And a novel, unlike any other artistic medium, allows you inside the mind of a character. I like to think about, you know, when I go to see a play or a movie, or I set out to write a play or a movie or to act in one. What really intrigues me about those forms is that we actually watch people dissemble. And that's really interesting because you. So there's a mystery involved, because you never really know in the best narratives what a character is really thinking. It's all inference on your part as an audience member. And so the draw there, at least for me, is just wondering, well, what are they really thinking? How are they lying? Or what information are they withholding to get what they want? In a novel, particularly when you indulge in point of view within a chapter or sometimes a whole novel, if it's from one character's point of view, you're afforded the ability to get inside of a character's mind and know the truth of what they're thinking. And I like to indulge in that, in writing a novel. That's why I love writing A book is I can do what's essentially a converse of scripted narrative and really indulge in point of view.
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Peter Compton, who is the A list actor in your book, signed up to play this superhero character, Major machina. I instantly thought of someone who played Iron man when I was reading Peter, you know, initially, right. Like, oh, that's gotta be Robert Downey Jr. One, were you thinking like that? And two, how do you get around people like me thinking that if that's not what you want?
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Well, so there are aspects of Robert Downey Jr. In the character, certainly the biography, but he is not Robert Downey Jr. And I even go out of my way to describe him physically, and he's not Robert Downey Jr. Also, I'm borrowing from a lot of different leading men with whom I've worked over the years, and I've actually never worked with Robert Downey Jr. So much of the specific narrative doesn't have to do with him. And certainly once you finish the novel, it's clearly not Robert Downey Jr. But I want the novel to be credible. And I will say that there's nothing in the book that I didn't either experience directly or hear from a very reliable source who experienced the stuff directly. So you labeled it earlier as a satire, and that's not inaccurate, but it's a. I would call it also a satire that is absolutely rooted in the truth.
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We're talking with filmmaker, playwright, photographer, director, actor, Tim Blake Nelson about his book Superhero. It's out on shelves now. So you're not mad at me if I think initially you're not mad at not me, but the reader initially, if they're like, oh, I know who that is. Oh, I know who that is. Are you worried at all that your reader is getting sidetracked with sort of trying to peg different, you know, real life characters on fictionalized characters?
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Inevitably there is going to be that response because I'm writing about it as a practitioner, so I've been on many movie sets, so of course people are going to wonder. But to answer your question directly, yeah. If that becomes a distraction, I think it's working against the bigger mission of the novel. From where I sit, the novel is meant to be, and I'm sorry to sound grandiose, but it's meant to be an American tragedy. The character of Peter is rooted very much in the classical, the American tragic hero.
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Define that.
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Well, so I don't think that I'm a great American writer like Fitzgerald or Hemingway or Faulkner, but I'm influenced by them. And so it's a character that has ambitions, a character who has every, every, every bit of every, Every resource to succeed and does. But he's also hubristic, and that affects his inevitable downfall.
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Inevitable because it's an American story. Inevitable because of who Peter is.
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Well, in particular, it's American because he achieves fame and wealth on distinctively American terms. So you would measure him in America most of all as a great success. But much of what catalyzes that success then also ends up destroying him. And that's why he's an American tragic hero.
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Does it make him more or less empathetic?
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That's a really good question. I find the character of Peter to be empathetic. I think you feel for him. I've read in some of the responses to the novel that he is a sort of anti hero and that I'm comfortable with that because the novel is being received well. So it hasn't been an attack. But it did surprise me because I find him, or at least when I wrote him, I meant for him to be deeply flawed, yes, but also to have intelligence and charm and for it to be believable that he would have the success that he does as an.
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American tragedy unfolds in his life, in his actions, in what he does. How did you avoid getting too dark?
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I guess I never concerned myself with that. I just wanted to write what's true. And certainly there are many other characters in the novel who bring optimism, humor. Even in when characters are acting selfishly or narcissistically, they, it's, it's fun, I hope, anyway, to follow what they're doing. The novel is meant to be entertaining and even as at times it gets quite dark, it's meant to pull you along because it's got a big sweeping narrative. There's a lot going on and a lot that happens, I hope.
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As on the page. So in life though, right? Still, you found that humor, you found that thread kind of pulling you along while you were creating these movies in these little micro communities that you talk about. It wasn't just all work and no play.
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Well, yes, make no mistake, I delight in my, in what, what I've been able to do in, in life. And, and I, I, I sometimes can't believe the, the places I've, I've gotten to go and the people with whom I've, I've been blessed to collaborate with. I think, you know, I'm definitely on the lucky Tree, and so I have rarely looked at what I do with foregrounding how I Don't know arduous or challenging. It is, yes. I work very hard at what I do, but, but like many people say, it often doesn't feel like work.
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One of the things I like, and you mentioned this, about the ability to go into the backstories and to get into the minds of your characters. How did it deepen your understanding of who they were as you were going along and writing this? Did you have it kind of all mapped out or did you surprise yourself as you're writing about an 11 year old studio head who would become a studio head? Right. Did you, did you surprise yourself?
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Absolutely. I guess because I come at writing initially from the point of view of an actor, I'm really most comfortable allowing character to lead. And I read this quote from PG Wodehouse about how he would start his novels with character and that always not with plot, but with character. And that has always animated my own approach. And so I knew that this Peter Compton guy was going to be a character. I wanted to tell the story of the making of a superhero as a way to examine broader issues in our culture. A superhero movie as a way of examining broader issues in our culture. And, and, and I decided on the movie star, his producer wife, a dp, the head of a studio. These were gonna be my. Yeah. Director of photography. These were gonna be my characters. But I didn't know where it was all going to end up. And I let the characters lead me and they surprised me beautifully. It's why I delight in waking up and writing every day. Because I get to be told by these people, I'm inventing where we're headed and allow them to guide me.
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Before I let you go, I have to ask you about. Our next segment is about. Oh Brother, where Art Thou? About the music for it. Obviously you were in that film. What'd you think when you read the script for the first time?
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I thought I would play any role in this script. I would love to be any part of it. And when Joel sent it to me, he didn't tell me that, that they wanted me to play one of the three leads. So I just, I, I, I delighted in it. And as John Turto said when we were shooting the movie, and I knew this already because I was a devotee of Coen Brothers movies, but it was great to hear it from one of their muses. He said, as good as the scripts are to their movies, it's the movie that that's where it really comes alive. They're an example of how no matter how good the script is the movie is going to be twice as good.
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Yeah. I mean, if you've ever. Of course, you can find these things online now, Right. You go back and read one of their scripts for whatever film, pick a film and then you compare it up against the movie. The script, as you say, is fantastic. And the movie, it's just like takes it to 11.
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Absolutely. And additionally, the script is exactly an exact blueprint of what the movie is going to be on the page so that they don't change the dialogue. They rarely cut stuff. So when you read the script, you could almost watch the movie and read along with it.
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Favorite song from the soundtrack.
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Well, obviously I want to say in the Jailhouse now, but no, because I got to sing that. But no, it would be I'll Fly Away.
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Yeah, I mean, I would agree with you on that.
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And that the montage to I'll Fly Away is so poignant and it just deepens the movie and makes it so much more than a comedy.
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Hmm. We've been talking with Tim Blake Nelson. Novelist, actor, writer, playwright, playwright, photographer, director, filmmaker. New book is called Superhero. It's on shelves now and it's been a delight and thank you so much.
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It's been a delight to talk to you as well. My pleasure being here.
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I know every operating system.
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Five years.
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