Really, life is full of contradictions. Life is messy.
Tim Blake Nelson
I think we all live dichotomies. I'm a father of three boys and a loyal homebody sort of husband and father. And yet I act in movies and write and direct movies.
I've done about every kind of fishing you can imagine, but I've never noodled. And the reason I've never noodled is because I don't want to get bit by a water moccasin. I'm just too afraid of snakes.
I am not a natural singer, but I can sing, and probably the way I sing is more imitative than from myself, which is why I am never going to be an amazing recording artist.
I frankly encountered more anti-Semitism in the northeast than I did in Oklahoma, but not much either place. Anti-Semitism is not part of my life.
Drama and comedy, to me, are all about being surprising, coherent, and true, all at once.
I started writing 'Leaves Of Grass' when my professional life was falling apart somewhat. I just had a movie implode in pre-production. And so I came back licking my wounds to New York, where I live, and started to write a script about a protagonist for whom the exact same thing happened: His life was falling apart.
'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' was this role that utterly fell into my lap and changed my life.
When I'm in a movie, what I always do, instead of sitting in a trailer or watching a DVD, is I go on the set and watch the director work and the actors work, and sometimes I'll hang out with B camera and watch what they're up to and ask questions because there's so much to learn about the medium.
I love writing about Oklahoma. I love writing Oklahoma characters; I love playing Southwestern characters.
I tried to film 'Leaves of Grass' in Oklahoma, but it was literally about a million dollars less to shoot in Louisiana.
I wanted to get the most broad foundation for a lifelong education that I could find, and that was studying Latin and the classics. Meaning Roman and Greek history and philosophy and ancient civilizations.
