Transcript
jesse thorn
Hey, folks! It’s Jesse. We’re getting close to the end of the year. Maybe you’re thinking about gifts you’re getting your friends and family, maybe you’re thinking about what causes you can support. I wanna take a second to talk to you about supporting your local public radio station. I'm literally a life-long listener to public radio. Shout-out to KQED and KALW, in the Bay Area. Now, you might be thinking, “If I listen to Bullseye on my phone, why should I donate to a radio station?” Well, it’s pretty straightforward. Bullseye is part of a public radio network, because all those stations give money to NPR, NPR is able to pay us to make shows like Bullseye. And, bonus: when you support public radio, you’re helping build curiosity, conversation, and community right in your backyard. That’s why I support my local NPR Member Station and why you should too. This year, we’re making it really easy. Just go to donate.NPR.org/bullseye to support your local NPR member station. And again, that is donate.NPR.org/bullseye. And thanks!
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Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.]
jesse
I’m Jesse Thorn. It’s Bullseye!
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“Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team plays. A fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jesse speaks, then fades out.
jesse
Tim Blake Nelson is an actor—kind of a character actor. He’s from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s got a little bit of an accent to prove it. He plays up that accent, in some of his roles. Maybe he’ll play a desert-dwelling outsider, or a corporate type from Texas—the kind who wears boots—or a Faulkner character. [Music fades out.] It’s also made him an unforgettable part of some great movies. Like O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brothers classic.
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[Sound of talking and music in the background.] Delmar O’Donnell: [Shouting joyfully.] Well that’s it, boys! I’ve been redeemed! The preacher done washed away all my sins and transgressions! It’s the straight and narrow, from here on out! And Heaven everlasting’s my reward! Everett: Delmar, what are you talking about? We got bigger fish to fry! Delmar: The preacher said all my sins is washed away! Including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo. Everett: I thought you said you was innocent of those charges. Delmar: [Beat.] Well, I was lying!
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jesse
These days, he’s part of the cast on Watchmen—the HBO series that’s an extension of the world of the graphic novel of the same name. In it, Tim plays Looking Glass: a masked hero who works closely with the Tulsa police department. When I talked with him, last year, he was starring in another Coen Brothers movie—The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. It’s a western made of up six vignettes. Each story is told in archetypes: a bounty hunter, a wagon settler, a big, goofy goldminer with a big, goofy beard and a burro. Like most great Coen Brothers films, it’s more about how the archetypes get used. In Buster Scruggs, they’re tweaked, caricatured, sometimes subverted, and it’s all done in the service of bigger themes. Stuff like love, capitalism, justice, and death. My guest, Tim Blake Nelson, plays the title character: Buster Scruggs. He’s the star and subject of the first vignette. He’s a handsome, flamboyantly dressed, singing cowboy with a revolver in his holster and a guitar around his back. Kind of a Gene Autry type. And he’s got a way with words. Like in this scene, from the very beginning of the film. Buster, played by Tim, is on horseback. He’s ambling along a canyon in the kind of desert you’d see in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. And, as we’re about to hear, he turns to the camera to introduce himself. Oh, and, uh—one visual thing: about halfway through the monologue, Buster pulls out a wanted poster with his own picture on it. Underneath, it labels him as, “The Misanthrope.” Okay. Let’s listen.
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[A mostly quiet scene, filled only with the ambient sound of a low wind, hoof steps, and the clink of spurs.] Buster Scruggs: A song never fails to ease my mind, out here in the west—where the distances are great and the scenery monotonous. Additionally, my pleasing baritone seems to inspirit old Dan, here, and keep him in good heart during the day’s measure of hoof-clops. Ain’t that right, Dan? Dan, the horse: [Whinnies.] Buster: Maybe some of y’all heard of me. Buster Scruggs, known to some as the San Saba Songbird. [The sound of a discordant guitar strum as Buster carelessly swings the guitar onto his back.] I got other handles, nicknames, ablations, and cognomens. But this one here, I don’t consider to even halfway earned. Misanthrope? [He crinkles up the wanted poster.] I don’t hate my fellow man! Even when he’s tiresome and surly and tried to cheat at poker. I figure that’s just the human material. And him that finds in it calls for anger and dismay is just a fool for expecting better. Ain’t that right, Dan? Dan: [Gives another resounding whinny.]
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jesse
Tim Blake Nelson, welcome to Bullseye. I’m so happy to have you on the show.
tim blake nelson
Ah, it’s my pleasure to be here.
jesse
I have to say that I laughed almost embarrassingly loud in a hushed, sincere, serious critic screening of this film when you banged on the guitar strings as you [laughing through his words] swung the guitar over to your back.
tim
Well, that’s Joel and Ethan. There’s a technique, which they developed with their sound designer, Skip Lievsay, called the hubcap.
jesse
Mm-hm.
tim
And in a Coen film, whenever something is disturbed—and usually ends up being dispatched to a resting place, offscreen—you get a little bit of an extra sound from it. Like a hubcap that’s rolling off a… [He draws out a long “uh” sound as Jesse talks, as though searching for the word.]
jesse
You’re doing the gesture of a settling hubcap.
tim
Yes. [Laughs.]
jesse
[Mimicking the sinking, rolling sound of a hubcap spinning to a stop.]
tim
And so—and they call it the hubcap. Joel and Ethan use sound, I think, better than any other filmmakers around. At least, of which I know. Other than, maybe, Steven Spielberg. It’s such a presence, in their movies. And, of course, what you’re describing there is definitely Foleyed. So, they put that in and sweetened it. And that’s just Joel and Ethan, to a T.
jesse
When you’re watching a film, often the sound is entirely transparent to you. Like, you don’t—the sound is often designed to be unnoticeable. And because all of the aesthetics, in a Coen Brothers movie, are 15% more saturated—like everything is heightened in this odd way—just that moment of the guitar making a noise, it, like, makes you notice the artifice of film, because guitars do make a noise when you do that, but they don’t make a noise when you do that in a movie.
tim
That’s precisely right. And Joel and Ethan are always, as you—as you imply, making movies about movies. That’s always a part of what’s going on. And it’s part of what delights one, when you see a Coen Brothers movie. You know that’s happening and you just want more and more of it. It’s why I like to say that their films are, above everything else, generous.
jesse
There’s this idea of the old west as this lawless world, but so much of the western genre is about the order being imposed on it by a good guy. You know, somebody riding—a sheriff, or whatever it is. Right? And, in this film, it’s a story about the lawlessness and grotesquery of the old west, as an idea. Right? Like, that there’s no rules and anything can happen. And people die and stuff. But it leaves out the part about someone coming in to make [laughing] the rules. Like, it’s really just about—yes, living in a lawless world is brutal and terrifying, and also the actual world that we live in—all of our ideas of, like, what the rules are, are more tenuous than we give them [laughing] credit for.
tim
I think that’s certainly true. And Joel and Ethan, if they’re anything, are… [stammering] leaving their personal beliefs aside, they’re decidedly old testament, in that the universe—whether it’s God conducting it or some other force—is an unpredictable, wrathful, and violent place. And the more man tries to control it and make sense of it, the more tragic his demise. In the case of Buster Scruggs, he’s got a code—which is, uh, he’ll never start a fight, but he’ll always end one lethally. And they’ve written a character who would be a great friend, but a terrible enemy for you to have. But even he can’t control his own destiny, because he, when he least expects it, has his own reckoning.
jesse
Could you already do the things that singing cowboys can do? I mean, you’re riding, playing, singing, shooting. I think those are the top four skills involved in being a singing cowboy, right? [Chuckles.]
tim
It was a—I—so, I didn’t know how to play the guitar. I had to learn to do that. And I certainly didn’t know how to twirl pistols. I ride well enough, but riding without being able to hold the reigns and steer the horse with my hands, and therefore needing to do it with my knees—that necessitated literally, and I’m not exaggerating, five and half months of prep. Because it has to look like he’s done it all his life. And I didn’t wanna be onset worrying about whether my g-chord was right. So, I just—I had to learn it to the extent to where I could just, literally, walk around the house playing the guitar while… carrying on a conversation with someone. Where I could twirl the pistols while talking with my wife. And spin the gun right into my holster without having to look at it, etc., etc.. But that’s the Peter Pan life of an actor. It’s constant regeneration. So, getting to play a part like this at age 53, it’s—that’s—that was my—that’s been my dream. So, it was a great challenge.
jesse
I wanna play a scene of you, my guest, Tim Blake Nelson—in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. It’s about three inmates who escape from jail in search of buried treasure, if you haven’t seen it. If you haven’t seen it, come on. Get your act together. About halfway through the movie, Pete—who’s played by John Turturro—goes missing and Delmar—played by my guest, Tim Blake Nelson—decides that Turturro’s character got turned into a toad. And so, when Delmar walks into a movie theater and finds Pete back in handcuffs on a chain gang, he is quite surprised.
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[The clicking sound of an old projector, accompanied by the distant sounds of a movie playing in the background^.] Delmar: [In an echoing whisper.] Do… not… seek… the treasure! It’s a bushwhack! They’re fixing an ambush. Do! Not! Seek! The treasure! We thought you was a toad. [Scrabbling, thunking sounds.] [Breathlessly, strained, soft, and barely voiced.] We! Thought! You! Was! A toad! [Louder] Do! Not! Seek! The treasure! Speaker: Quiet, there! Watch the picture!
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jesse
[Chuckling.] I mean, in a lot of ways it’s—the character is entirely different from your character in Buster Scruggs, but it’s—the whole thing is so mannered, that if there’s any winking the whole house of cards would collapse. And so, you just have to have this beautiful, absolute commitment to the reality of that mannered-ness.
tim
Yeah. That’s what the Coen Brothers ask for. And I think that’s why you see them casting… time and time again, actors who’ve been trained, formally, in heightened language. So, Fran, John Turturro, Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man, I—you know, all—so many of us.
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Tim: Almost everyone in their… stable. Jesse: Sort of a stable. Tim: Yeah.
tim
Went to school, went to a drama school and studied Shakespeare and Shaw and restoration comedy. All of us. And… what that trains you to do, is to pick up a script… internalize the terms of its reality, and play them without any, um—without any sense of irony, or seeming over intentionality, or histrionics. You simply accept that that’s the truth. It’s a heightened world. And you become a part of it. And engage with it on its terms. You lift yourself up to its terms. And I don’t think that I would be able to… do what I’ve tried to do for the—for the Coens and the parts that I’ve had, without having had that training.
jesse
Now, here’s the thing that I’m confused about, Tim Blake Nelson. You went to… literally two of the best schools in the world, for college and graduate school. You studied possibly, actually the two least practical things you can study. [Tim chuckles.] [Jesse laughs through his words.] You went and got a degree in classics at a top-tier ivy league university, and then you went off to arts college at Julliard. So… did you just have older siblings who had already broken down your parents? Or were they like, “Well, if you’re gonna go into the arts, or into scholarship, you gotta do it 10/10, and if you’re doing it 10/10, it’s okay.”
tim
I think it was probably a bit more of the latter. And… you know, we weren’t the Soros family or something, but I definitely had resources to fall back on. And so—and my education was paid for by my parents. So, I graduated without debt. And that was an incredible help. I’m not gonna lie about that or try to mislead. So, that—so, I didn’t have certain pressures on me that others do. I think my father probably wondered a bit about what was gonna come of all this. And I don’t blame him for that. My mother did a very astonishing thing, however. Which was, during my freshman year in college, she came up to visit me. And we were at dinner, and she said, “Well, what are you gonna do, this summer?” It was the spring. And I said, “Well, I think I’m gonna come home and stay with you.” And my parents were divorced, at this point. And the divorce was fairly recent, and so she was alone, and I think lonely. And so, had every reason to think, “Well, great. He’s gonna come home. I’ll have one of my children home for the summer, in the house.” But that’s not what she… she didn’t respond to that temptation. She said, “Well, what do you wanna do with your life?” And I said, “I think I wanna become a classicist. I’d like to teach Latin in high school, or maybe even get a masters and a PhD and pursue a life in the academy as a professor.”
tim
And she said, “Look. Nothing would make me happier than to have a scholar as a—as a son. So, that’s fine. Great. But… now is the time to take chances. And you did used to like acting, in high school. Why don’t you, instead of coming home—you’re still gonna major in classics. That’s—you’ve made that clear. That’s there for you, in your future. Why don’t you spend the summer acting at one of these summer theatres?” I said, “Oh mom, it’s not that easy.” And she basically said, “Don’t give me your excuses. You have… no family. You don’t have any financial concerns, right now. You don’t even have a girlfriend, with whom you may wanna be. You’re totally unaffiliated! Go get a job at a summer theatre!” And she even helped me do that, through a connection. And so, I did! I went and acted in a summer theatre, and I—we did Hay Fever and Real Inspector Hound. And Lanford Wilson’s play, the Fifth of July. And I realized, in that one summer, that my mother had encouraged me to have—“Go be an actor,” she had essentially said, “Try that out”—that it is what I wanted to do. And I returned from my sophomore year, in college, and stuck with my classics major, because I just loved it, but determined this is what I was gonna do. And I—and I pursued it vigorously, with her complete encouragement. And I think that’s a pretty unlikely story. But it’s true.
jesse
More from Tim Blake Nelson after a break. When we come back: he’ll tell me about the time he got to play a villain in a live-action version of Scooby-Doo! And how he would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids. It’s Bullseye, from MaximumFun.org and NPR.
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jesse
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jesse
Hey, gang. It’s Jesse with a quick reminder. We’re in the middle of the holiday season, and it’s a great time to donate to your local NPR Member Station. They’re the reason you’re listening to Bullseye and we need their journalism now, more than ever. Go to donate.NPR.org/bullseye to give. And thanks.
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Music: Dramatic, movie trailer–esque music. [The hosts use very "announcer" voices in this promo.] Mark Gagliardi: We interrupt the podcast you're listening to to tell you about another podcast! That's right: We Got This with Mark and Hal. Hal Lublin: That's correct, Mark! This is Hal. We do the hard work for you! Settling all of the meaningless arguments you have with your friends. Mark: So, tune in every week on the Maximum Fun network for We Got This with Mark and Hal, and all your questions will be asked... and answered. Hal: You're welcome! [Music reaches an apex and quiets down.] Mark: Alright. That's enough of that. Chorus: [Singing] We Got This!
jesse
Hey, Bullseye listeners. It’s Jesse, your host. Um, so, I have a… sad, personal coda to offer, here. The other day, I learned that one of my closest friends—and longest standing friends—died of an overdose, in San Francisco. His name was Evan Larsen. He was a gifted artist, a wonderful guy, a renowned graffiti writer. He wrote Spesh, if you’re a graph-head. And just a wonderful joy. A guy that I had known since I was two years old. And… it was really horrible news. I will be fine. I don’t want you to worry about me. But, you know, he leaves behind his parents and a lot of people who loved him and a lot of people whose world was made more joyful by him. So, Maximum Fun, the company that I own that produces this show, is gonna make a donation to an organization called The Homeless Youth Alliance, who serve homeless youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived, in his honor. We’re gonna donate $5000. And I hope that you will join us, by going to MaximumFun.org/evan and any amount or donation would mean a lot to me and to the memory of a—of a great friend and a—and a wonderful guy. And I’m sure mean a lot to his family, and so on, as well. Um… he was a special dude. And he will be… well remembered. And I know that I’ll love him as long as I live. So… um, yeah. That URL is MaximumFun.org/evan. Thanks. Sorry. We’ll get back to arts and culture interviews, now. [Chuckles quietly.]
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jesse
Welcome back to Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My guest is actor Tim Blake Nelson. You’ve seen him in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Syriana, Hulk, and more. These days, he’s starring in the HBO series, Watchmen. He and I talked, last year. Your family’s Jewish. To what extent were there other Jews around, in Tulsa, when you were a kid?
tim
The Tulsa Jewish community is, uh, a very cohesive one. Everybody knew each other and looked out for each other. It was amazing to grow up with European grandparents and a mother who’d been born in London but spent her first five years in Germany and London. And to celebrate Passover and the High Holidays in the middle of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I felt like I had… everything. Because I’m growing up in the heartland and was aware enough to realize that there was… strangely, something quite special about that. As the world, at that point, was—the country had—at that point, was already becoming more and more homogenous, through television and advertisements and various periodicals making us, you know—making tastes more and more common. And regionalisms more and more—uh, less and less distinct. And I… I already had an understanding—as I think most of us did, in Tulsa in the 70’s—that we were in a special place that was, in its way, protected. Because nobody was coming to Tulsa for any attractions. Oral Roberts University and—you know, there wasn’t—it wasn’t a tourist destination. It was its own enclave. And yet, I also had this foundation that was distinctively European, with grandparents who’d brought over, somehow—I really don’t know how they did it—all their flatware, from Europe. And we would have these Passover dinners, or break-fasts on these European plates with Vollmer glasses of hand cut crystal. And I just felt incredibly blessed. And I loved all the funny accents at the Synagogue, from the European refugees—where you could hear people who were, like a—off of a You Don’t Have to be Jewish album—in the Synagogue, and then go out and hear [exaggerating his southern accent] people saying, “Hey! [Laughs.] What’s going on?” [Returning to his usual accent.] Uh, outside, that just wasn’t lost on us. On my family and me.
jesse
There’s this David Cross album—David Cross, who is Jewish and grew up in Georgia. And I don’t remember which album it is, and… I know this is—I’m quoting from memory, but he describes this scene where he’s over at a friend’s house, when he’s—you know—twelve years old, or whatever. And he has a sleepover, and the next morning… I’m making up the specifics. I can’t remember exactly what it was, so my apologies to the great David Cross. But, the mom asks him, “Do y’all’s people eat pancakes?” [They laugh.] And I thought, like, that is, like, such a particular thing of… being Jewish in a place where there’s not that many Jews is—it’s not about hostility, but just a kind of… a vague awareness that things are done differently, but complete ignorance about in what specific, different way they’re done. [Laughs.]
tim
Yeah! But also, a benign fascination. I mean, I actually felt appreciated. Kids wanted to come to your bar mitzvah. They were astounded to sit there and listen to the Hebrew. Couldn’t believe that they were hearing that. It was exciting. Fascinating. There’s that line—there’s a line in Cormac McCarthy’s novel, Outer Dark—and somebody asks another character, “Do you know what a Jew is?” And the character responds, [with an exaggerated southern accent] “Well, they’re them old-timey people in the Bible.” And that’s what I felt… growing up. That people embraced us. Treated us as special friends. It was only when I went to the northeast—to college, and then particularly in New York—that I really ever encountered antisemitism to speak of. So. That’s… not what you’d expect, but it was my truth.
jesse
Tim, we’re running low on time, but—you know, you would think that I would use this time to play clip from one of the—one of your many brilliant acting performances in acclaimed films, or one of your own brilliant acclaimed films. But instead I’m gonna play a clip from Scooby-Doo 2. My guest, Tim Blake Nelson, played the villain of Dr. Jonathan Jacobo in Scooby-Doo 2, colon, Monsters Unleashed. Jacobo’s a former scientist and master of disguise [slowly dissolving into laughter] who committed bank robberies for his experiments to create real monsters. In this scene, from the end of the film, he’s been apprehended. The gang unveiled his guises as the evil masked figure and Heather Jasper Howe, played by Alicia Silverstone. Let’s, uh, take a listen.
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Music: An organ plays in the background. Jonathan Jacobo: [Shouting in a German accent, disheveled.] As if you getting the lead in My Fair Lady wasn’t enough! I was an excellent Eliza! You were too acty! [The sounds of an unruly crowd shouting in the background.] And stealing my tater tots! You kept saying you felt puffy! Fred: And the real identity of Ned is… [The sound of tape being ripped off.] Ow! Ned! Music: Chiming, victorious music that swells with the action. Scooby: [Confused sound.] Jonathan: I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling punks! And their damn dog! [The crowd cheers.]
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jesse
[Shouting with excitement.] That’s an actor’s dream! To get to say, “I would have gotten away with it”!
tim
I got to say the line. Yeah. [Laughs.] That was—it was great. I only ended up playing that part thanks to my oldest son, Henry. He was five, at the time. And when the offer came in, I… responded, on the phone, incredulously, “Scooby-Doo 2?!” By—on my way to saying, “I don’t know.” But before I could say that, he looked up at me and said—he had this very deep voice, at the time, “You can be in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!?” [Jesse chuckles.] And I said, “Oookay.” And I took him to this—you know, he was on the set and had a great time and so did I.
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jesse
Tim Blake Nelson, I’m so grateful to you for coming on Bullseye. It was really great to get to talk to you.
tim
It has been my absolute pleasure. Thank you.
jesse
Tim Blake Nelson, from last year. He was terrific in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which I thought was really hoot. If you haven’t seen that, it’s streaming now, on Netflix. His latest project, Watchmen, is wrapping up its first season, right now on HBO.
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jesse
That’s the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye produced at MaximumFun.org world headquarters, overlooking beautiful MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, California—where a woman has been feeding birds at the lake, except that every time she reached into her bag to give them seeds, she’d raise her hand up high and slam the seeds down! Like some kind of wizard making a smoke bomb! Or possibly like a bird Emeril Legasse. “BAM!” Show’s produced by speaking into microphones. Our producer is Kevin Ferguson. He’s the one who wrote that Emeril Legasse material. Jesus Ambrosio is our associate producer. We have help, sometimes, from Casey O’Brien. Our production fellows are Jordan Kauwling and Melissa Dueñas. Our interstitial music is by DJW, Dan Wally. Our theme song is by the great, British band, The Go! Team. Our thanks to them and their label, Memphis Industries, for letting us use that song. You should buy their records. They rule. One last thing. We’ve got a lot of interviews in two decades of Bullseye. They’re all online at MaximumFun.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. YouTube is an easy way to catch an interview that you missed, or if you wanna share an interview that you missed on social media, we put them all there on YouTube. Just search for Bullseye with Jesse Thorn on any of those platforms. I think that’s about it. Just remember: all great radio hosts have a signature sign off.
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Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.]
About the show
Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.
Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.
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