Tim Blake Nelson‘s sprawling debut novel, City Of Blows, examines the power dynamics of Hollywood through the lives Tinsel Town movers and shakers. City of Blows follows legendary producer Jacob Rosenthal, who enlists a filmmaker named David Levit to direct an adaptation of the novel Coal, a controversial narrative dealing with racism. Doing everything he can to keep the film from getting off the ground is Brad Shlansky, a producer from David’s past with an axe to grind. At the center of this chaos is talent agent Paul Aiello, who oversees the collision of these powerful players.
Nelson began his career acting in Off-Broadway productions and writing stage plays. He is now an accomplished film actor, director, and screenwriter, best known for his signature Tulsa drawl and his collaborations with the Coen Brothers and Guillermo del Toro. We spoke over Zoom in early January.
Ian MacAllen: You have a long history of storytelling in a variety of mediums, playwrighting, directing, acting. What did like about novel writing that you aren’t able to achieve in the other formats?
Tim Blake Nelson: Writing a novel was a sort of Everest for me, and I always wondered whether I would be able even to get a good look at the summit, or even try. I’m always reading a novel. That’s been true since I was 10 years old. I’ve never not been reading a novel. Even when I’m reading nonfiction, I’m always reading a novel. I got to a point the point where I had several screenplays that were unproduced that I was developing. I didn’t want to write another one and introduce it to the mix. And I thought I’d now—at the age of 56, it was then—I’m going to try and write a novel without any expectation that I would write something creditable enough to share with anyone.
IM: At one point David and Jacob are discussing edits to the script for Coal, the novel being adapted. Jacob expresses frustration that he doesn’t want to take David’s changes, but they are still pretty good. Do you see collaboration as a key component to producing great art, and was that a challenge in the novel which tends to be a lonely writing experience?
TBN: It depends on the art. It depends on the form. Collaboration is absolutely essential in film. You’ve got all these people coming together to offer expertise and a myriad of departments, but you also have people putting an enormous amount of money into the story you are trying to tell, and your vision for telling it. You need to listen to them because if you are at cross purposes, that other person or organization or company can pull your financing or cut days or not give you a piece of equipment that is essential as to how you see things, then the whole creative enterprise is going to be in peril. Film is collaborative.
I always knew as a newcomer to the novel as a form that I was going to lean on the opinions of others, once I’d written the book. I needed others to give their opinions. That said, the initial process of creation, or to put it another way, a novel’s inception happens in solitude, and you only expose the results should you choose to do so. Moreover, all editorial decisions are ultimately yours. It is a relief to be by yourself to make decisions without having to check in with others as to how you build and realize a story.
IM: These characters are deeply flawed. Even David, who seemed sympathetic, makes questionable choices. Were you concerned with how readers would react to having these deeply unlikeable characters making these big mistakes?
TBN: I think everybody who ends up not just in Los Angeles but in the movie business is inherently deeply flawed, and that’s what makes the work they do so interesting.
IM: Is Hollywood a corrupting influence on the people aspiring to participate?
TBN: It attracts people who are trying to work out their issues through this form of storytelling. It has an incredibly brutal downside and a seemingly glorious upside to it, neither of which have anything to do with the work of telling stories. It’s this wildly seductive place that attracts a certain kind of individual, particularly when it comes to the men who go there.
IM: Throughout the novel, there is a class critique—I quote: “People like Paul, who attended SUNY Albany, and Brad, who never went to college, might as well not exist, so comprehensive was the dismissal.” Do you see this as a big dynamic in Hollywood—the elite versus the common guy, the establishment versus the new comer?
TBN: I absolutely think that it festering there. The way that the apprentice system works in Hollywood is that to afford to go out there and learn the ropes, you have to have—most, not everyone—have to have a backing or a safety net because the numbers just don’t work economically.
Also, the system advantages those who have had a certain level of education at certain schools. This was really driven home to me one day when I spoke to an agent’s assistant who had just come on the agent’s desk. He was a graduate of Harvard Business School and he was working at UTA in the agency training program for a pittance, and who knows if he would become an agent. His life for the next couple of years was to be passed from desk to desk to learn how it all works, and that’s great. I don’t have an objection to that, because I think apprentice systems are incredibly useful for people learning the ropes, but it does exclude any number of people who might want to break into the business.
The assistant pool out in L.A. for producers and showrunners, its populated by upper-middle-class and upper-class kids with extraordinary educations. And it perpetuates itself. There is something great about that in terms of really smart people aggregating inside of an industry and replenishing it with new blood, but there is also something horribly exclusive about it as well.
IM: Jacob Arrives in Hollywood with a lot of money, Brad arrives in Hollywood, bankrupt and a scam artist, with questionable moral character. But both of them prove themselves in their early films as successful and understanding storytelling, but their outcomes ultimately are very different, because Jacob is there playing by the rules and Brad very quickly decides not to play by the establishment’s rules. Do you see that as part of the problem, is there a lot of pressure in the film industry to play nicely?
TBN: That’s interesting that you draw that juxtaposition. The character of Alice gives a speech about going to the Ivy and how she doesn’t do that. To her it’s inherently corrupt in what might advantage one client might but not advantage another, and so representatives are often playing both sides of an issue. Since she doesn’t go out there and play that game, she can advocate solely for Brad. That’s a very valiant point. However, that is not the way Hollywood works. It is absolutely a social industry. And relationships and reputation are probably more important in it than in any other. An enormous amount of success is derived from showing up where you are supposed to be and behaving nicely with others.
The movie business is such a social industry, there’s a level of refinement and polish that a person has to have for any durability. It’s just as important as thick skin. You have to be prepared to be rejected over and over again and to be insulted, to have doors shut in your face, and be pleasant about it. One of the disadvantages of going to Los Angeles if you haven’t been groomed socially in that sort of way—the thing that does happen in college, hopefully, anyway—if you go out there without that you, are quite hobbled. It’s a world in which you cannot take stuff personally.
IM: Is that Brad’s fault? That he’s taking everything personally?
TBN: I don’t think it’s his fault. I think it’s his Achilles heel. You have to have drive, innovative spirit, hubris, and he has all that and he’s also a guy who did right by his family, but if you show others in Los Angeles that you take stuff personally and will be vindictive, usually they’re not going to fear you, they’re going to find someone else with whom to do business.
It is true that in Los Angeles, you can land a job just by being in a restaurant with a smile on your face. If in that moment, and I’m not exaggerating, you’re in a restaurant, instead of smiling and having a good time with someone, if you’re gesticulating and you have on a tragedy mask—somebody might be looking at you from a few tables over thinking, oh my god, he would be perfect for this role or direct this movie or write the pilot—and if you’re smiling and having a good time out in public you might get a call the next day or your representative will get a call the next day. But if you look like a tragedy mask, then you’ve diminished your chances of that occurring.
IM: You’re basically always performing in L.A.?
TBN: It’s not just actors; its everybody.
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