Tim Blake Nelson Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

I guess the first film, really,

that I was in was called The Refrigerator.

It was made by some friends from college.

And they had me down the the East Village.

I didn't even know really, what the film was about.

I was in drama school at the time.

But, I do know that the movie

was about a refrigerator that ate people.

[upbeat rock music]

This is my life.

I was in Los Angeles doing a television show.

I was only two years out of drama school

and I was called over to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

And I sat with Nora and the casting director,

a woman named Mara Rosenthal,

who worked at the time with Juliette Taylor

who casts all the Woody Allen movies.

I just sat and talked with Nora

and she simply said, I'm gonna put you in the movie.

You're gonna play a babysitter

who's a stand-up comic and why don't we figure out

what his comedy is, and he can

kind of try it out on the girls

while he's babysitting them.

And when I got back to New York,

I went over to her apartment in the Apthorp

and I handed her these pages.

I really shouldn't have done that.

I think she wanted to discuss

and then, she was gonna write the pages.

But I didn't know any better and she looked at me,

somewhat startled, and said, Well,

I wasn't expecting this.

And then she read them and said,

You know what, I think we can work with this.

And suddenly, I was on a Nora Ephron set

doing a scene with Julie Kavner.

On subjects ichthyological, I don't don't mean to harp,

but who is grander than the carp?

That's a good one.

It's important to remember

that he's a bitter, failed comic.

So, I didn't need to write jokes that were funny.

I was writing jokes for a bad comic,

which, I think is a lot easier.

[upbeat drum music]

Heavyweights.

I met Ben through a classmate of mine at Julliard.

And, I also knew the writer of that movie

who's a guy named Steve Brill

and so I had these two connections to Ben.

And kind of like with Nora, he basically

said in the room, Well, I want you to play this part.

And I didn't really think I was

appropriate for it, necessarily.

I thought I was a little bit young.

But, I jumped at the chance to do it.

And then, I found myself hanging out

on that movie with not only Ben, but Judd Apatow.

That was a really lucky early movie

to get to do and a fun supporting,

not even a supporting role, but really,

a one scene, you know, a cameo.

I had a scene that involved Jerry Siller

and Anne Meara, Ben's parents.

Kind of involved them, I mean,

I showed a video tape with them.

So, effectively, I was in a scene onscreen with them.

Hi, Jerry, Roger Johnson.

Islander's fan, huh?

Team of the future, I say.

Yeah.

It astonishes me when I'm stopped

and people say, Oh my God, Heavyweights.

It really does astonish me because

I'm in the movie for just a breath.

[upbeat drum music]

The Thin Red Line.

Like everyone who has an interest in movies,

I looked at Terry Malick as a real hero.

To get the call that I was even

gonna get to read his new script

made me feel like, I don't know,

my time in drama school had been worth it.

I went through the audition process and I read on tape

and then word came back that Terry was interested.

Find something that's his.

Make an island for himself.

Being around Terry was game-changing

just in terms of what I thought was supposed to go

into making a movie and what I thought preparation meant

and was for, what I thought the relationship

between the text of a script and what actually got shot was.

Terry was incredibly prepared

and he really knew his subject matter,

but what we ended up shooting

bore very little relation to what the script was.

And each day was largely improvised.

Often, you would be told the day before

or on the morning of a shoot

that all your lines had been eliminated.

And I think this is a part of his method

of literally eviscerating all the given circumstances

of his own narrative so that the narrative

would be more free-flowing and immediate.

But, this was of course hell on a lot of the actors

and particularly, those of us, who again,

came in with certain assumptions

about, well, if I have this line, I do get to say it.

If I'm supposed to be in this scene,

I'm going to show up on the day and shoot it

and just, none of that ended up being true.

And, it humbled, I think, all of us.

It taught me, most of all, that a movie

is the director's movie, and we're there to serve.

If you're gonna do movies, you better sign up for that

and more than sign up for it, you'd better embrace it.

And, actually seek out those filmmakers

that you actually don't wanna end up

in cookie-cutter movies that those movies end up

being the least interesting ones.

I was really blessed to learn that early on through Terry.

[intense music over crashing waves]

Often what he does is he shoots all day

until the last hour, what's called magic hour.

It's really about thirty minutes.

You learn that he's been shooting all day

as a kind of rehearsal to get the scene

in that forty-five minute period when the light is right.

Well, that's interesting.

It's hard on the actors and it's hard on the crew,

but, you sure don't forget it.

And you sure know you're gonna end up

being a part of a film that looks like none other.

[upbeat drum music]

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

O Brother, Where Art Thou, I guess,

was the movie I got that changed everything.

I was lucky enough to understand

that as soon as I got the script.

Joel sent me the script and said,

Can you read this, I need some advice.

I thought, Oh, he wants to talk

about the adaptation of the Odyssey

because I studies classics in college.

And then, he offered me Delmar.

I was so astounded that I told him initially,

No, I'm not sure, let me spend a night thinking about it

because what I don't want to do

is come down onto a set with you and Ethan.

Who had become friends of mine at the time.

And not come up with the goods.

You've offered me this part

without even hearing me read it.

Let me at least assure myself

that I have some purchase on this role.

And he said, Well, yeah, you can try

to persuade me otherwise, but we think

that you're the right person for the role.

But, I spent the evening with it

and I decided, alright, I have a way in here.

I don't even know if he really believes

that there was a possibility I could have

said no, but there really was

because, again, I didn't wanna go and be on somebody's set

and have them regret having offered me a part.

[squeaking]

[screaming]

Pete, Pete!

[water splashing]

It was all practical.

There's nothing digital there.

I was really chasing a toad in the water

and the toad actually did escape

into the water when I was splashing around after it.

That all happened.

Luckily for me, I was very anxious about that scene.

Even though it's funny and it's extreme,

it's also very emotional and there needed

to be a truth in there for it to resonate as being funny.

And also, dramatically compelling, as funny as that sounds.

♪ I had a friend named Ramblin' Bob ♪

♪ He used to steal Gamblin' Rob ♪

♪ He thought he was the smartest guy around ♪

The song I sing on in the movie is In the Jailhouse Now.

And because the movie got a Grammy for album of the year,

I actually have a Grammy.

I like to think of it as probably one

of the most undeserved, or, you know,

there's no reason I should have a Grammy.

I got to sing Jailhouse because basically,

I begged Joel to let me have a crack at it.

♪ For, I'm bound to ride that northern railroad ♪

♪ Perhaps I'll die upon this train ♪

[cheers]

♪ Perhaps he'll die upon this train ♪

I didn't sing on Constant Sorrow,

but I got to dance to it with Turturro.

And I got to lip sync it with Turturro

in the studio scene where we sing it.

And that was just so much fun.

Working with John was great.

I used to dream, fantasize, as a kid,

about being in a recording studio

with the headphones on.

There I was, in my thirties,

doing just what I had fantasized about.

It just was different route.

And I wasn't gonna end up having a career in music,

it was just a little moment in time

that answered this fantasy I had.

[upbeat drum music]

Minority Report.

I just shot a film as a director

called the Gray Zone in Bulgaria.

I got a call from my agent saying

Steven Spielberg has offered you a part

in this new film of his called Minority Report.

Are you in?

It's apparently a very flashy role.

And I said, May I read it?

No, he's not giving the script out.

You're either in or you're out.

But Tim, it's Steven Spielberg,

you're gonna say yes to this.

And I said, I'm sorry, again,

like I said to Joel, it's incredibly flattering,

but the last thing I want to do

is show up on somebody's set

and not be able to come up with the goods.

And have a director look at me

and say why did I cast this person?

It's great that he didn't want

to audition me, I'm not sure why.

Well I learned that he had seen O Brother

that summer in Barry Sonnenfeld's screening room

in the Hamptons, and so, that what interested him

in me for this part.

But I still didn't know what the part was.

And so, I said, Can I talk to him?

The next day, I'm in the editing room

and the assistant comes in and says,

Steven Spielberg is on the phone.

And I said, Hello, such a honor to meet you.

And he basically said, What's the deal?

Do you wanna do this part?

Somebody said you needed to talk to me.

And I said, I just would love

to be able to read the script if that's possible.

It's not because I doubt that it's incredible,

it's actually the converse of that.

It's that I doubt that I'm gonna be good enough

or suitable, anyway, for the role.

And he said, Of course you can read it.

That's a perfectly legitimate thing to ask.

And it was basically just a set of monologues

because the guy talks a lot.

I got all the monologues down.

I felt like I really had command of them.

And I showed up on set and I was called

to Tom's, Tom Cruise's bus.

He had this enormous bus, it was like

a shopping mall, it was just huge.

And so, you know, I wandered in,

and we're working on the scene

and Steven just doesn't seem happy at all.

And I thought to myself, Ugh, my nightmare is coming true.

I'm coming up short, I'm disappointing a director.

I should've said no.

And he comes up and stands next to me

and he's just thinking, he's very quiet,

and he said, Can you do a Boston accent?

And I'd gone to college in Rhode Island.

That's pretty close, and so I said, Yes, actually, I can.

And so I did it, and he said,

Now that's more like it.

And then he stared ootsing with certain sounds I was making

and really, right there, like a fresco painter,

he just started shifting, with Boston accent as a base,

the way the guy spoke and literally,

in that fifteen minutes, we came up with

who and what Gideon was and it just suddenly felt right

and everything he was after made sense.

Can't let you take that out of here, chief.

It's against the rules.

Anything else going on in here that's against the rules?

[clicking]

Careful, chief, you dig up the past,

all you get is dirty.

What's remarkable about Steven

is that he can do that with everyone on set.

He just knows the entire apparatus of filmmaking.

That's what's so unbelievably special about him.

[upbeat drum music]

Holes.

I loved being in holes and the director

of that movie, Andy Davis, who directed not only

that movie, but The Fugitive, I mean,

talk about a wide bandwidth.

It was a great deal of fun and also

working with Jon Voight and Sigourney Weaver,

what could have been better?

It was a really fun part to play.

I'm probably stopped on the street

about that movie as much as any movie

in which I've gotten to appear.

You might as well teach this shovel to read.

Go ahead, Zero, take it, it's all you'll ever be good for.

B-I-G, what's that spell?

[metal clanking]

The kid who hit me with a shovel

in Holes is this wonderful guy

whom I still know a bit named Cleo Thomas.

It was great getting whacked with the shovel.

It was, you know, again, a scene I knew

was gonna be really pleasing for the audience

and I love, as an actor, taking a dive.

It's why a person wants to be a character actor.

Not being the hero, but often being the butt of jokes,

being the eccentric, being the dimwit,

being sinister, being naive, all of that,

I mean, getting to find all those colors role to role

is why I love acting and the kind of acting I get to do.

An actor once said to me, I don't wanna

be the guy standing next to the guy

or opposite the guy, I wanna be the guy.

Well, I wanna be the guy standing next to the guy

or opposite the guy because they often

have the best stuff to do in a movie.

[upbeat drum music]

The Incredible Hulk.

That movie came at me in a funny way

because I was about to direct this film I'd written

called Leaves of Grass with Edward Norton

and he and I were producing it together as well

and I got called town to, I think the Mercer Hotel,

the lobby of the Mercer Hotel to meet Louie Laterrier,

the director of Incredible Hulk

and Gale Ann Hurd, his producer.

And they said, We want you to play

this scientist character, and I had read the script.

He was a wildly eccentric guy,

mainly in the second half of the movie.

And I thought, Well, yeah, alright,

that's interesting to me, I haven't been

in one of these movies before.

And then they said, Well, you're gonna

become the villain in the next movie.

So, you'll basically be signing up for three movies.

And you're gonna be this character called The Leader.

And I thought, Oh my God, this is fantastic.

I said, Well, whom else have you cast?

And they said, Well, weirdly, you're our first offer.

Which was, I thought was strange,

because nobody was gonna come see the movie

because I was playing this scientist,

or even because I was gonna be the villain.

They needed a guy to play Banner.

And I said, Who's?

And they said, Well, it's either gonna be

Mark Ruffalo or Edward Norton.

And I think I even said, But wait a minute!

Edward's supposed to do my movie

and I'm not contest for you guys,

of course he's gonna wanna play Banner.

And I called Edward and he said, basically,

Tim, get real, of course I'm gonna play Bruce Banner.

That's gonna be fantastic, you're possibly

gonna be in the movie with me, it'll be a blast.

And then we'll do your movie, I'm not going anywhere.

And Edward's a man of his word.

And so we got to act, I got to act

in a movie with Edward right before directing him.

For both of us, we did Hulk and then Leaves of Grass

was our next movie.

Now, take your hands off him.

[electrical buzzing]

I learned so much about shooting from Louie Leterrier.

As I often do, because I direct my little movies,

I hang around on sets, even when I'm not needed

and just watch what the director's up to

because all these guys with whom I get to work

know so much more about it than I do.

[upbeat drum music]

Lincoln.

This time, when I got the call,

I didn't risk offending Steven.

I said yes without reading the script.

It helped to know that Tony Kushner

had written the script, but, I just said,

Fine, I'm not gonna hassle him again, I'm in.

And the real fun for that movie

for me was the sad environment

because Daniel Day-Lewis stays in character always.

But, in addition to that, he demands

that there be no anachronisms on set.

Nothing that wouldn't blend in at least,

to the period, was allowed on set.

That just furnished a level of de quorum

and seriousness and focus, the likes of which

I've seen on no other set.

And then there was just having a scene opposite Daniel.

It felt to me, like I was a decent enough painter

in 1925 who got to go into Picasso's studio

and watch him work and just completely transform

and reorganize an entire approach to the art form.

He's working on such a level where

the transformation of the man was just molecular.

I literally couldn't find him in there.

All I saw was Lincoln.

The democrats we've yet to bag, sir.

The patronage job simply won't bag them.

They require more convincing, Mr. President.

That I got to be in two of Steven's movies

has been incredibly meaningful to me

because he likes to change it up.

He can have any pigment he wants for his canvas.

He'll only use the ones, because he can,

that are exactly right for what he wants.

And, I'm lucky that my color

was right for two of the movies.

[upbeat drum music]

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Joel gave me that script after O Brother had been released.

And because I had done my own singing

for In the Jailhouse Now, he and Ethan decided

that I should play a singing cowboy

and that would be really funny

and sort of contrapuntal because I'm not

what you'd really think of as a cowboy type.

They find that funny and so they said,

Well, let's have him do this and do pistol tricks

and we'll write a short and it'll be companioned

with these other shorts.

So, 18 years later, they came to me

and said, Alright, we're ready to make it.

They got it financed and they took me to dinner

and said, Alright, you're gonna need

to be able to sing four songs.

We need you to play the guitar

and we need you to do all these pistol tricks.

You've got six months.

I had a great six months working on that every day.

My son taught me to play the guitar

and I loved the character so much,

I just wasn't gonna let him down.

♪ Old Ann and I with throat burned dry ♪

♪ And sows that cry for water ♪

♪ Cold clear water ♪

Because I'd felt that I really prepared

and I was ready, we had a wonderful time shooting.

It's one of the best times I've ever had

on a movie, and I've had a lot of fun on movie sets.

But, I don't think I've had more fun

than on the Buster Scruggs set.

[upbeat drum music]

Watchmen.

What I love about Watchmen is

that while it's based on a graphic novel/comic

and it has superhero elements,

particularly with Dr. Manhattan,

really, Watchman is about vigilantism.

It's about justice, it's about human frailty

called revenge and how that's misinterpreted

as a strength and I think what Damon,

in particular, is examining in the show, Watchmen,

is what revenge can allow for.

Not just in the vengeful person,

but in the tit for tat in response to revenge

and how revenge and vigilantism build on themselves

and then finally, what it brings

out in someone to wear a mask.

Why would they start this shit up again?

[guns firing]

Maybe there was something they didn't want found.

Damon and the writers have written a character

for me who's got some very complicated issues.

And he allowed for those issues

to be explored, both when they're directly

being explored, and they are, over the course of the season,

but also, just in his behavior

when they aren't being explored

and you can infer a kind of fragility

and despair in the guy.

And I get to be a scene partner

with Regina King, truly one of the classiest

people I've met doing what I do.

Jeremy Irons, Don Johnson, the legend.

I'm very excited about the show.

I think it's wildly inventive.

I think people are gonna be surprised,

moved, and very engaged.

[upbeat drum music]

Just Mercy.

Just Mercy is exactly the kind of film

in which I'd like to appear.

It's made my Destin Daniel Cretton,

first of all, who has proven himself

to be one of the talented and innovative directors around.

If you watch Just Mercy, just think

about where there could be score

under some of the performances,

and he doesn't furnish it and he allows

the actors, the writing, and the simplicity

of the photography to tell the story.

Jamie Foxx plays Walter McMillan,

and Michael B. Jordan, who also produced the movie,

plays Brian Stevenson and I got

to work with both those guys.

If you go digging in those wounds,

you're gonna make a lot of people very unhappy.

[intense violin music]

When people care about a thing that much,

they'll do anything to get what they want.

The character I play is also the victim

of an extremely difficult life

coming up through foster care.

He was nearly burned alive and

wears those scars, literally, on his face.

And he was basically frightened

by the DA and the sheriff's department

in Montero County, Alabama to put this guy on death row.

And he has to come to terms with that.

[upbeat drum music]

The Report.

The Report is a movie made by Scott Z. Burns,

who's a protege of Steven Soderbergh.

I originally met Scott because he wrote

this wonderful play called The Library

about the Columbine shootings

that Steven Soderbergh ended up directing at the public.

Scott thought of me for the Report,

gave me this wonderful role, I guess,

of a character you'd call a whistle-blower.

But, you know, my presence in that movie

is really is a part of a greater ensemble

of some other really wonderful New York actors,

many of them stage actors that were put in the film

by Scott and the wonderful casting director, Avy Kaufman.

You know, you've got Maura Tierney and Jon Ham

and Linda Powell, Annette Bening

playing Diane Finestein and so

it's just scene after scene of, I think,

selfless performers, if such a combination

of words is possible in the vicinity of the word truth.

Have you guys used this thing before?

No, we watched your video.

I think you know as an actor

in roles like that, it's always important

to know where you fit.

What's the spine which is usually best told

in terms of the protagonist and in the case

of The Report, it's the amazing Adam Driver.

The job of the actor, I believe anyway,

or, my job in those sorts of films

is just how I help drive his or her story forward

and to fit in in the right way

in playing the truth of the scenes.

Don't do too much so that you get in the way.

It's the other person's story, it's not a movie about you.