'Wouldn't have wanted to grow up any other place': Tim Blake Nelson returns to Oklahoma

Over the past four decades, Tim Blake Nelson has earned more than 100 film and television credits as an actor.

But the Tulsa native also has penned several plays and directed five feature films, writing the scripts for four of those, including his 1997 Sundance Grand Jury Prize-nominated drama "Eye of God," which he set and filmed in his home state.

Now, the multifaceted Nelson, 58, is exploring new creative territory: He released in February his debut novel, "City of Blows," via The Unnamed Press. The book follows four men grappling for control of a script in a radically changing Hollywood, aka the "City of Blows."

"Novelists were always revered in our house growing up, and it was therefore something I always wanted to try but never felt the maturity or the depth in terms of writing prose to be able to do it," Nelson told The Oklahoman by phone this week.

"But I got to a point in about 2018 when I had a couple of screenplays in the process of trying to find financing for me to direct, and I had a new play I'd written, which was going to be going up. And I really didn't want to confuse matters with another piece for screen or stage. So, I thought, 'Well, maybe now I am old enough — and maybe now I've done this for enough time to where I could really give writing a novel a try.'

"So, I did and I turned, for subject matter, to a world that I know, which is the movie business."

Best known for his credits in "O, Brother, Where Art Thou?," "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" and HBO's "Watchmen," along with his anticipated upcoming roles in "Dune: Part 2" and "Captain America: New World Order," Nelson is returning to another world that he knows — his home state — for a book signing April 15 at Oklahoma City's Full Circle Bookstore.

Here's what Nelson had to say about books, movies and the Sooner State ahead of the OKC event:

Q: What is it about the film business that makes it your thing?

A: Movies are the the closest thing we have to mass cultural artistic events ... and the power of that has always interested me. And of course, my way in was as an actor, because that's what I trained for. I trained in theater, which at one time was what movies are now — I'm talking all the way back in the ancient world, and when a play was performed, it was often a cathartic event for a community.

Now, movies have the potential anyway to do that, as does really good television, and I wanted to be a part of the telling of stories in that medium. I trained as an actor for stage because it felt so remote to me to get roles in movies and on television. ... In a lot of ways, that was an incredible preparation to be in movies, and then in a lot of ways, of course, I had to unlearn a lot of what I learned as a stage actor.

Q:  Now, you have literally more than 100 movie and TV credits and about a dozen projects coming up. At what point did you realize this was a real thing that was happening to you?

A: I started to believe that I might have a lasting career when I was cast in 'The Thin Red Line' by Terrence Malick, which was in 1997. But already then, I think in a very healthy way, I was hedging my bets because I was writing plays, and I'd made my first movie as a writer-director. ... Even then, I wasn't imagining that I had a career that would last the way mine has lasted — and that would actually snowball, in a sense — because I'd spent, at that point, seven years being rejected a lot, even though I'd done a lot of theater in New York. ... Really, the career in movies I've ended up having didn't become a real notion for me until Joel and Ethan (Coen) cast me in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Then, roles started being offered to me, and it became clear that if I kept holding up my end of the bargain — being responsible and decent to people and on time and on point as an actor — that I could keep doing it.

Q: For someone who works in the movie business, your debut novel isn't the rosiest depiction of the film industry.

A: My friend Ethan Coen turned to me at dinner about eight months ago and said, "You know, we really have been doing this at a time when there have been some real monsters around. And we've gotten to meet some of them." (laughs) And I'm glad for that, because in many respects, both for good and bad, the people who end up going out to Los Angeles and participating in the process of making movies are exaggerations of all of us.

That's really what I'm trying to get at in the novel. ... There are some pretty awful people in the book. There are also some people who act bravely and heroically and have a lot to say that's true.

So, it's not all venality and corruption and opportunism and avarice. The book is also about people who have deeply pure aspirations to tell stories that are going to make a difference.

Q: Do you find that being a more experienced actor helps you to be a better director and writer, and that now being a novelist maybe feeds your creativity as an actor?

A: Any artistic field is synergistic with the others, so I've certainly become a better film actor by directing movies. And I couldn't have written the novel — forget the subject matter — without having written a bunch of screenplays that taught me structure and form. ... "City of Blows" is a dialogue-heavy book, and had I not been acting for 30 years, I don't think the dialogue would be as interesting.

Q: As an actor, you have a habit of popping up in surprising places, like as the Black Rabbits in Guillermo del Toro's 'Pinocchio' or as Roy Acuff in the recent series 'George & Tammy.' Do you feel you've gotten to do some cool stuff in your career?

A: Directors like Guillermo and the Coens and even Steven Spielberg ... and Damon Lindelof with "Watchmen," they write eccentric characters. And they need offbeat people to play those roles, so I end up getting stuff brought to me. And it's not lost on me how lucky I am. It really isn't. It does make up for all the rejection I had from the fairer sex growing up.

Q: When you come back to Oklahoma, what does it mean to you to be from here?

A: I see Oklahoma, because it's so wonderfully peculiar a place, as strangely exotic. And it's not the word you'd use for a state in the middle of the country, but there really is no other place like it, with its combination of the oil industry and country music and cowboy culture. Even though it's the Southwest, there's a Midwestern feel to it. ...

I grew up around really smart, articulate people, and when I went out — and I did it a lot — to go to small towns and just talk to people, pretty much all I ever encountered, at the very least, was wisdom and history and authenticity.

Those 18 years before I went off to college absolutely formed me, and they influence who I am not only as an actor, but as a person, a father and a husband. ... I wouldn't have wanted to grow up any other place.

TIM BLAKE NELSON OKC BOOK SIGNING

• When: 1 to 4 p.m. April 15.

• Where: Full Circle Bookstore, 1900 Northwest Expressway.

• Information: https://fullcirclebooks.com/events.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Actor Tim Blake Nelson to sign debut novel, 'City of Blows,' in OKC