 someone's phone. Oh, it's okay. You're famous, man. Come on. People call it. And you're, you're, you have a like a garden situation out there. Go ahead. Go ahead. We're cool. We're always here. Yeah. SLP, I love when you wear that Hello Kitty shirt. It is my favorite. Well, I, you know, I have a, it's a Yo Kitty shirt. Oh, yes. And I have one in it because we, when the, the child goes to bed, we sit around and make t-shirts. I love that. So it says Yo Kitty. Ashley. Yo Kitty. And I have one in, in, uh, yeah, I have, I can, I can get you, I can hook you up. All right. That's what it says, you know. Thank you. Yo Kitty. Cause I think, you know, Hello Kitty, because, and you know that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Did you read about that? I did not read about that. Yeah. Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is a little girl. I'm going to have to look this up. That's fascinating. Just so you know, I mean, I wouldn't want me to be like out of the loop. I think what else is watching now that we're having this public private. Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is a little girl. Yeah. And so it gets, it gets interesting when you put down the Hello Kitty rabbit hole, but fortunately I think Tim, like Nelson's going to save us from that. I think he is. But he's, he's on, he's, he's on the phone. We can. I'm good. Are you good? It's okay. Where are you? Where are you today, Tim? There was an issue because my phone is hooked up to my computer. And so even when I silence it, it rings all over the place. I'm in Manhattan. That's a terrace. Oh, oh, I'm looking behind me. Maybe the terrace will manifest. If there's a hand of God there. So maybe all good things will come. Yeah, today we're thrilled that you're here and I love that you have your guitar in the background. I think we should have, we should have, we should both like play the guitar during Watch Me Work. We've got Tim Blake Nelson. We've got Tim Blake Nelson, everybody hanging out with us during Watch Me Work today. Tim Blake Nelson is an actor, a playwright, a filmmaker. His filmography, I love that word, as an actor spans 80 feature films, 80. That's a lot, man. I mean, he's made films with these incredible people like Stephen Spielberg, Ang Lee, Terence Mallick, who's amazing, the Coen brothers who are phenomenal. He's worked also, he's worked off Broadway at the public at Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Class Company, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep as a playwright because he's also a playwright and a very fine playwright. He's written The Grey Zone, The Eye of God, and Socrates, which I saw, what's the last year? Did we share the green room together? We did when you were doing the noise, yeah. And we're hanging out. For TV and film, he is directing credits because he's also a director, include The Grey Zone, Eye of God, Leaves of Grass, and Z, among many other things. Tim, we're so glad that you're here today. It's my pleasure to be in here for that. This is so cool, man, because what we're going to do is we're going to all work together for 20 minutes, and then we're going to come back from that work session. And everybody, just so we know, we can do any kind of work. It doesn't have to be writing or, you know, it can be choreography or painting or whatever you want. We'll work together for 20 minutes and we'll come back, we'll talk with Tim Blake Nelson for a little bit about his work, what he's up to today, and then he will take your questions about your work and your creative process. So I have my time. And you don't need one because I got one and Audrey's backing me up. So and oh, yeah, we're right. But Audrey's going to tell you how to get in touch. I'm so sorry, I would never leave you hanging. So if you do have a question, you're inside of the zoom, as a reminder, you can ask a question by clicking the raise your hand button likely in a participant tab at the bottom of your screen on a laptop or the top if you're on a tablet or an iPad. And I'll call on you sort of in like, whatever order I feel like, I'm sorry. And then then if you're watching on HowlRound.tv, you can also tweet at us at at watch me work SLP with the hashtag HowlRound H-O-W-L-R-O-U-N-D, or you can tweet at us at at public theater and why or message us on Instagram. And we sometimes see questions from there as well. Right on, right on, right on, right on. Okay, we're going to work for 20 minutes. Here we go. From wherever we were. We were in Wonderland. Okay, so we're back. We have again, we have a very special, very awesome, very talented guest. And very wonderful person, Tim Blake Nelson, who's here today to talk about, he will take your question, but first, before he takes your questions about your work and your creative process, I would love to hear a little bit from Tim about what I mean, if you, if it's comfortable to talk about what you're working on right now, you've got so many cool projects. Pro's piece. Here's a draft of it. Wow. And I know we don't measure things in inches, but that's impressive. I've always wanted to try my hand at one of these. And, and so I've been doing it for about the last year and change. And frankly, it's because I've written, I have too many film scripts right now that haven't, that are waiting to get made that I've, that I'm not made yet. And I didn't want to write another, but I always want to be writing. And so I just thought, why not try Pro's in my 50s. And so that's what I've been working on. Fantastic. That's really, really cool. I mean, it's very brave. I think it's very brave when an artist who is known and respected and loved and revered in other forms decides to try something. It sounds like you're trying something new. I mean, writing is not new, but Pro's, you mean fiction? Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Like a novel? Yeah. Can I use those words? Right. So, and this, would you say this is your first novel? Yeah. Yeah. So that you get to like the badge of honor and bravery? Because, yeah. I tell you, I don't, even though it was very perhaps obnoxious of me to hold the thing up, I don't, I don't, I don't know that I'll ever get it published. I probably could, but for the wrong reasons. Um, but I wanted to just see if I could do it. And so it's just been as much of a, as much a calisthenic exercise as it has been an attempt to, to make something that I could share with people. I really don't know what I'll do with it. There are a lot of inhibiting factors, but the main one is I don't want to put something out there in, in a form that is so sacred to me because I'm always reading a novel. Uh-huh. Uh, and I revere novelists. Um, and I don't want to put something out there that, that I don't feel merits being in book form for, for people to read. Um, you know, I don't want to get a book published just because I was on Watchman. Um, I want it to be on its own mirror. I understand. I understand. Um, and if, so how would you know, I mean these aren't the questions I'm supposed to be asking you, but how, how would you know that it is good enough then? Well, I think probably everybody on this call and I'm looking, there are 90 people. Um, and if people are serious enough to sit at their computers and write for 20 minutes uninterrupted and it probably went by like that for everyone. Um, I'm sure every single person identifies we're our own harshest critics and usually that's to a fault. Uh, I think that, that where we get in our way most of all is, um, through demeaning ourselves and, and, and considering ourselves, uh, uh, somehow fraudulent, not up to snuff out of ideas, all the stuff we say to ourselves that inhibits the process. Um, and that's all hateful and destructive and I try to keep it at bay, but I do let it in the room when I'm reading full drafts of my material and I'm very, I'm just hard on myself. Um, and so I have the, I suppose, um, aesthetic hubris to feel that I'll know if it's, if it's worth sharing and there are sections of this which that are and there are sections simply that aren't. It's an odd process, uh, when you have that much space because a novel can be as long as you want and descriptions can be as long as you want particularly as long as you're not showing it to anyone. Um, I guess that's true about a play too. Uh, and so you can, but, but, but there's less inhibiting a novel because you're writing for people who just love to read. And yes, when you write a play, you're writing for people who love to go to the theater, but they don't love to go to the theater and sit there for more than three hours. Um, I, you know, I love David Foster Wallace. I love Tolstoy. I love, um, you know, Murakami. You know, a lot of these maximalist writers who, who don't let the scope of something inhibit their work. Uh, but I look at my novel and I get, I feel that at times it just becomes unruly and I get out of control. Um, and it takes, uh, a good deal of, um, disciplining rigor and self criticism. And that's just been a great process for me. And so even if I never share this with anyone, it'll make my plays better and my screen plays better. Do you have the same, um, process? I mean, because you work in, in so many different media in so many different ways, you know, an actor or a writer on the stage, on the screen, um, a director also, do you have, do you feel like you employ the same, um, tools when you, when you work, you know, the sort of, you're not, you, you let the, that voice in the room at the right time. Do you think you do that from, from project to project? Uh, I'm a form is content guy. I'm of that school. So even though I'm a, uh, uh, studied classical, um, you know, classics in college, uh-huh, where form and content are just meant to be distinctive one another. I have a much more modernists, uh, or post modern view of, of form and content. So I think that when you're writing a play, you have to indulge in the plainness of it. And when you're writing a novel, it has to be resolutely a novel. Um, that's part of its content. The form is the content and the content is the form. They're, they're, they're, they're one when you're doing it right. And the same is true with being an actor as opposed to being a writer. So if I'm going to be in a Susan Lori Parks play, I leave the playwright at the, I don't bring the playwright into the room because that's not helpful to anyone. It's not, it's, it's not my play. And if I'm thinking like a playwright, then I'm not doing my job as an actor because I'm out of the give and take that I need to have with my scene partners. And I'm suddenly thinking in a, in a differently critical way, critical is a good word about the, as a, as a, as a creative collaborator. And so when I have a question as a, as a, just as an example of a playwright, it's never about the writing of the, it's about what do you want out of me? How does this is not working for me? How, what am I not getting here? Or perhaps because as a playwright, I really appreciate this from actors. Sometimes when an actor says I'm not getting there, it's because I haven't, there's something where I can do as a playwright. But I try to leave the playwright at the door when I'm acting. And I leave the funny, I don't leave the actor at the door when I'm writing because I love writing for actors. And often I find myself writing parts that I would love to play but never could. Women, for instance. And, but you know, or older people, or younger people, or people with a different sensibility than I, you know, writing Socrates, only Michael Stoolberg could have played that role. But it was delightful for me to be able to give him that. And almost in a very constructive way, to live vicariously through just even imagining before he, we went into rehearsals, what he was going to do with it. Do you have a preference? People ask me all the time, I don't know, do you have a preference, which, you know, do you prefer film to stage or stage to film? Or are there, there's so Why not a rock and roller like you? What do you mean rock and roller? You got your guitar back. What is that? Is that a guitar? Yeah, it's two guitars, but I just learned to play guitar to do Busted Scruggs. Which, which we love. Yeah. You're kidding. I had no idea. You look like you're really playing on that. Well, I learned. I studied it for six months, hours a day. I have a son, my old son, Henry, is a really, really, really serious guitar player, Oberlin Conservatory. Oh, does classical and jazz guitar and he's a composer. Anyway, he taught me to play and I practiced the guitar. That's like, actually, this is the and I didn't stage it here. It just happens to live in my office, but this is the Busted Scruggs guitar. Oh, that is fantastic. Ha. Oh, that's so cool. And then this, this, this is a guitar that is from the 40s. It's a cataloged parlor guitar. Oh, nice. I got in Jackson, Mississippi in the fondre. Very nice. Yeah. Parlor guitars are coming back in. Well, I'm a little guy. It's the only guitar I, you know, I can't play a Dreadnought. Well, yeah, they're too big. It's like, it's like playing a boat or something. So anyway, no, I don't, I don't have, I don't, I don't have a preference. I, I just, I don't know. I want to, I can't go through the day without working on something. And I think a lot of what I do comes out of a restlessness. And there's a lot of restlessness you have as an actor, because you have time between parts. And even when you're playing a part, you have a lot of time. And I've written plays. I wrote the Gray Zone, the play I had up a long time ago at Manhattan Class Company backstage doing a Peter Parnell play at Playwrights Horizons. Wow. Wow. But I think, you know, you're, you're that sort. And I'm sure a lot of the people on this phone call are on this phone call. But I like when you talk about the rest, the restlessness, I think, and you lean into it, instead of it being like, I feel restless and agitated. So I'll pick up my phone or search the internet, you know, or read the news or whatever, you're restless to be working on something. That's that's very beautiful, Tim. Yeah, that is, you know, not to get too deeply into it, but I was almost in a, you know, what was that movie Clockwork Orange Way, taught to despise myself for any even hint of lassitude. So and that's a blessing and a curse. But I just, you know, I just need to be doing it. I just don't much like myself. That's that's that is a deep rabbit hole. Now smiles on my face, we can go on from that. Again, I doubt I doubt I'm the only one on this call who is motivated in that way. And you need to make it your friend, not your remedy. Well, there's a feeling of lost, you know, I don't, there's a feel sometimes I feel lost, like, if I'm not doing something, I don't really know who I am, which is another rabbit hole. But I have a question, another question about your work, your creative process. So do you prefer writing plays to films or teleplays? I mean, do you have a, you know, or is it all, for me, it's all delicious writing, but what about what about you? Do you think? I think I dare say that just for the writing process, probably film is my least favorite because, you know, screenplays are made to be written to be made into movies. They're like architectural plans. And they really pale in comparison to the house itself. And other forms of writing, I've never really written a teleplay. So I don't know much about that. But I can tell you that it's probably the same with the teleplay, but film even more so. Because with the movie, you're writing, you know, you're writing this, this, you know, films or events to me. And you're writing the blueprint for that. So it is like the blueprint versus the house itself. Whereas plays, at least the ones that I write, and my God, certainly the ones you write, are also so much about the words that the form of a play is somehow less distant from the form of a theatrical event. There's less of a distance there. It's not blueprints or design of a house and the house itself. I don't quite know what it would be. It's not even a maquette versus a statue. I'd have to think that through because I'm spinning it right now. But I do know that at least with the plays that I write, the words and the rhythms are really important. And the distance between what's on the page and the performed event is far narrower than the one between a screenplay and a movie. And with this new experience writing prose, it's, you know, it is the book. The form of it is the book. It is the bookness is the book. And that makes the writing quite challenging and but also when it's working quite delightful. But it's a marathon. Yeah. So yeah, I guess I like prose and playwriting, the writing process more than writing a movie. You're restless to get on set. And then when you're on set, you're restless to get into the editing room. And then, I mean, it's crazy when you're in the editing room, you're restless to get into timing and post-production sound. And out. Yeah, your heart broken because it's done. Right, right, right. And once you're done, no matter who you are, I've really never met an exception to this. It's always underwhelming in retrospect. Because, you know, the schedule on a movie is so inflected and controlled by how expensive it is to make them. That eventually you're always, you know, having it's like in that square play, Six Degrees. You know, the picture is always being taken away from you before you feel like you're done. You could work on them forever. You love Terrence Malick. I mean, Terry. Terry is a great example of that. You know, his best movies, he spent two years editing both of them. In my opinion, the first two. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Two years. Okay. In the edit. Yeah, in the edit. Right. Wow. This is, oh, I'm so happy that you're here today. So you feel like in the mood to take some questions from our people? Yeah, yeah. So we have, we have about 15 minutes or so. Let's take some, Audrey, call on some people. All right. Carla, you are up first. Hi there. Hiya. Hi. I'm Carla. I actually work front of House of the Public Theater during Socrates, and I saw about six times. Oh, you did? Okay. Yeah. But it was great. It was great. Usurers, we get to sit a different angle. So we get to see the play in a different way every time and with a different audience every night. So it's really cool. So my question is, I have multiple projects in writing. Some of them are novel. Some of them is more playwriting. But my issue is, and you mentioned this earlier, that the form is the concept. And it's just sometimes I see things more as a novel because I find too many details or too many things come up ideas or I find myself, I guess, lost in the research of things. Like for example, I'm writing something where I'm describing a city and I get lost into the history of the city and it's a medieval city and there's all these gates. And why are these gates here? And instead of focusing on the characters, I find myself going that way. And then I'm writing something where I'm finding myself in the details of the novel. But then I wrote, this one is based on a memory and I wrote it as a play and sort of imagining the audience being with me in my memory. And so I just, I guess my question is, how do you know when, which I wrote it down? How do you know which form the content will take, I guess, like when you have an idea or something? I suppose it's a give and take, but the give and take starts with a gut feeling. You know, the memory play is an entire genre. We don't talk about them anymore, but geez, in the 50s, it was a whole thing. And there are some beautiful ones. And so you obviously had a, you know, you had a gut connection to that tradition. And I think it's really useful to hear that, but the give and take then comes in saying, all right, I've made this decision and I'm going to indulge that. And I'm going to make this as live theatrical as possible. I'm going to make it indelibly that. I have an interesting process on, you know, the play, my play, The Grey Zone, I then made into a film. I did not direct the play. This wonderful director named Doug Hughes did. And his approach to the direction of it was to, it's a Holocaust play, and it actually takes place in the crematorium, number one crematorium. And so he said, well, we're never going to have all that on the stage. You really can't. So I'm going to pair it all the way in terms of the set and really rely on side light and sound. And so it was an environmental production in terms of light and sound. And he took the theater, which was the old small theater at Manhattan Class Company before they moved to their fancy current environs. And he clad it all in cement. And it was incredible. It was a really great production. But it had no detail in the set design. When I made the film, I made it hyper real with the wonderful production designer that I had named Maria Jerkovich. And she's a fantastic production designer. And she really, with collaborating with her, we really went to town in terms of every detail. And so in the movie, if you see the movie, you see every detail of the cremation process. And there's the sound, but it's also lit, natural. It's not lit theatrical. It's natural light. So in one, you have something that's indelibly a live theatrical experience that leans on light and sound and exploits the audience's imagination in theater to fill in the rest of it. Because theatrical audiences are very imaginative in that way. Whereas in the movie, you expect to see everything. You can't conceptualize like that unless you're doing something like Dogville, the Lars von Trier movie, and that's the point. But that wasn't the point of this movie. It needed to be absolutely real. And so it could only be a movie. Yeah. So the give and take is once you make the decision, really embrace the nature and the signifiers, whatever, however you want to put it of your form. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You see one of Susan's plays. You couldn't do it as a movie. It's just their theater. They're absolutely theater. She practically invented a genre because it's so theatrical. And that's what you have to do once you make that decision. And then finally, and then I'll shut up. Take your own. Who's to say that in a play, it can't suddenly go into a monologue that's eight pages that is borrowed from the novelistic form. And then you're inventing something new and that's your own approach to theater. Yeah. That also makes me think of sometimes I have trouble with third person and first person. Sometimes if I'm writing the novel, I'm trying to write a third person and then all of a sudden I keep writing and I'm like, oh, wait, all of that was in first person because it just came out naturally to me. So it helps. You know, the play I was talking about earlier, six degrees of separation, you have dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. There's no act break in that play. And then suddenly bam, about two thirds of the way through, this character walks out center stage and just talks to the audience and tells an experience. And it's so powerful. And it's first person. So there you go. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you, Carla. Thank you, Tim. All right. Up next, we've got Judy. Judy, are you with us? Hi. Thank you. My question is how often would you interrupt a writing project because another opportunity comes along and so you start chasing down a new writing project to meet that opportunity? You know, I, most of my projects are self-generated. I've done a few jobs for hire. And, but usually with me, it's more I'm writing something and then I get an acting job. But it's kind of like water, you know, and cracks in the sidewalk with me. It's path of least resistance. So I ended up writing a prose piece because, you know, the air traffic control for the airport, you know, my projects just said, we don't have enough runway space for you to land these movie scripts you keep writing that aren't getting produced. And so don't send another plane to our airport. And so I thought, all right, I can't, I can't, I can't do that. There's no, I can't, there's no landing space. It's clogged there. And so now's the time I'm going to try to write a prose piece. While at the same time I'm getting those other movies set up, I will make those movies. I just, you know, I was doing watchmen which took half a year and before that I was, you know, I did a bunch of acting roles. And so I just had, you know, these scripts that weren't getting made. And so, yeah, I think it's not often healthy to let yourself get interrupted when you're in full swing. But it's great to be interrupted when you can get some distance from something that you, that's driving you nuts. Is that helpful at all? I feel like I answered your question in a way that's specific to my life, but maybe not as, maybe not be so helpful for you. Did I answer your question? Yeah, yeah, it's helpful. I mean, I look at, I have several plays I'm working on and they're all different stages and I'm okay with that. I have so many more ideas, but then all of a sudden I hear the opportunity had the deadline of June 30th if I want to write for it. And then I think, no, no, no, because it takes me a long time, but then it doesn't leave me. I start writing it overnight and bad until I approach it. And so I guess I'm looking at how common is that among writers. I look at everything I write will help with something else I'm working on. Well, you know, there are all types of fishermen and some fishermen need to use one pole and concentrate on that and just hold that line and feel when the fish is going to bite. And some like to put eight lines out. And you got to decide who you are. I'm more of a one pole guy, but that might not be who you are. Okay, thanks. Very good. Thanks, Judy. All right. We've got about four minutes left in that time for I think we're going to do more questions. Let's see. I'll try to be shorter. Take your time. Do what you want to do. All right, Tasha, go for it. Hi. Hi. My question is about when you know a project is done. I mean, I feel like that's, I don't know if that can be answered, but I'm curious as to what your process is because I feel like I can never let mine go. Are you a playwright? Yes. So do you have people come over to your living room or do you go to somebody's living room and have your stuff read and listen to it? Yes, sometimes I'm also in school. So we have like a process that we can do that through the school, which I do. Yeah. I don't know. I don't, I haven't, I've written, I've rewritten in every single time I've been produced and it's not, it's not, I don't know, I've been produced as a playwright maybe five times. So it's not some huge amount. And I've been, I've always rewritten all the way up through the last preview until I, until somebody says, all right, enough. So Socrates is an example. I was making changes literally until Doug Hughes, the director, said, your script is frozen. And then when I published it, I made more changes. Do you do that, Susan? It depends. Yes and no. I sort of also just leave things alone and go on to the next thing. I, you know, I mean, Socrates is different. You were actually working on it. It was, you know, a big play and you work on it till the director says stop, you know, which is great. And then you fix it some more, do a little more tweaking when it's published. I think that's normal. I think that's a good way to work. In answer to your question, the student, Tasha, and maybe Susan would want to chime in here. You'll learn to hear your, you'll learn. I don't think when I was a student, I had much of an idea when I was done. In fact, usually when I was a student, I was convinced I was done and I wasn't even close to done. That's helpful. Thank you. All right, we're going to take one last question. And we're going to go to Erin. Erin, go for it. Hi. Hi. I feel like I'm speaking or to giant, so I don't even, but I guess my question is I'm working on a screenplay and I know that beginning and I know the ending very clearly, but I feel like the ending is predictable. And I'm wondering, like, if you've come across that or what you think about predictable endings. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. And you might not be able to know whether your ending is predictable if you don't have your middle yet, which you don't. I don't think predictable is you know, 98% of the time predictable is a pejorative when it comes to narrative. And maybe 2% of the time you want that. My youngest boy was just writing an essay about 12th night for ninth grade English. And he sort of made the point, this is ridiculous. You got these people who barely know each other marrying at the end. It's all sewn up. I don't buy it. The rest of the play was so much more interesting until these marriages at the end just puts everything up in this predictable bow. And I thought that was a really interesting point. And that pops into my head. I would just give yourself a break. You know, with a lot of these, with writing, I still feel like, and Susan, please say it, tell, tell, tell if this is bad advice. You know, I think of it in a certain in certain respects as abstract painting. And you just want to get your your fields of color and your your basically your abstract, the bones of your abstract up on the canvas and have something to work on. Rather than all these demons that you can allow, sorry for the word, but that you can allow to like the one you're bringing up right now to tell you, oh, it's bad. It's no good. It's not worth it. It's a problem. All that's going to do is inhibit you from getting the paint up on the canvas. Right now, on a first draft, who the fuck cares if your ending is predictable? It doesn't matter. You can change the ending. Rule one as a writer, you don't have to show anything to anybody until you want to. And so write whatever the hell you want. Just get it, get your pages out, get it moving, get credible, interesting action that has traction and grit and truth, you know, paint on the canvas and then worry about that's predictable because you can always go back and change that and set it on its head. What do you think about that, Susan? Does that help? Oh, music to my ears, brother. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think you're exactly right. You get it down and make it better, you know. And I agree. Predictable is, you know, in some circles, the meat and potatoes of Hollywood. So don't worry. Don't sweat it. You know, giving the people what they expect is okay. It's not a crime. All right. It's six o'clock, one six o' two, actually. Tim, you're such a blessing. What a blessing to have you. Yay, we give you virtual hugs. Thank you for coming here. Oh, breath of fresh air and so inspiring. It was my absolute pleasure. And just to everyone who's writing out there, stick with it. That's what it's all about. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Come back anytime and talk with us some more, share with us some more because I love you. And thanks for hosting this. Oh, sure. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Our links will be posted for next week, starting tomorrow at three p.m. And we'll see you next week. We will not be here on Monday because it's Memorial Day. Okay. Bye. Have a happy Memorial Day, everybody. Bye. Happy weekend. Thanks, SOP. Thank you.