Tim Blake Nelson always impresses Marc with his acting and, since the last time he was on the show, he’s made more stuff Marc loved, like Old Henry and Nightmare Alley. But now Tim has also impressed Marc as a novelist. His first novel, City of Blows, is in the tradition of classic Hollywood fiction. Tim tells Marc how his own experiences as an actor fed the book’s morality tale and how he found inspiration in the old stories of Hollywood past.
Tim Blake Nelson might be a familiar face due to his indelible character roles in many films, but that didn’t stop him from defying just about all of Marc’s preconceptions about him. Marc had no idea, for example, about Tim’s Jewish upbringing in Tulsa, or that his family escaped the Holocaust and became oil drillers in America, or that Tim tried his hand at stand-up in the 80s, or that he studied the classics in hopes of becoming a professor or an archeologist. They talk about all of that stuff and a lot about the Coen Brothers, too, particularly their new movie with Tim, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. This episode is sponsored by The Shivering Truth on Adult Swim, Spotify, SimpliSafe, and Stamps.com.