Stargazing | Nelson breaks character for ‘Big Miracle’

There’s a trick to the character actor’s trade. And Tim Blake Nelson, who has been the good guy (“The Incredible Hulk”), the bad guy (“Holes,” “Hoot”), the stoner (“The Good Girl,” “Leaves of Grass”) or the rube (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?”) will share it with you: “You never want to take on a character that they could cut from the film and not have it make a difference.” An Oklahoma native, Nelson has played more than his share of slow-speaking, sometimes slow-witted drawlers on the big screen. He can thank, or blame, the Coen brothers for that. “They saw my movie (based on his play) ‘Eye of God’ and cast me in ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ ” But in his latest film, “Big Miracle,” he plays the smartest guy in the room. He’s the wildlife biologist who explains whales and the arctic to the media and other “cheechakos” (Alaskan for “naive newcomer”) in a movie about those three stranded-under-the-ice whales that the world came together to save back in 1988. Think of his character as the Jeff Goldblum of the movie — the guy who explains the science. “I didn’t think of myself as ‘The Explainer,’ but I’m pretty happy to serve that function,” Nelson, 47, says from Los Angeles. “It’s myopic of me, but I love getting the chance to play a smart, articulate character who is close to the real me. Normally, I’m asked to play more outlandish and extravagant guys.” He certainly is. But the real Tim Blake Nelson is a graduate of Julliard, the Jewish son of a geologist father social activist mom, a playwright, screenwriter and director. He’s a writer and actor with an eye and an ear for the outrageous. Check out the little-seen dark comedy he wrote, directed and co-starred in (with Edward Norton and Keri Russell), “Leaves of Grass.” It’s about an Ivy League Latin professor, his pot-dealing twin brother and a poetry teacher with a thing for Walt Whitman. It reveals Nelson’s gift — “He never condescends to his articulate redneck characters,” as the New York Post put it. “Big Miracle,” which features Drew Barrymore as a Greenpeace activist, Ted Danson as an oil tycoon and John Krasinski as a local TV reporter, offered Nelson a chance to work on a movie that tugs at emotions and tweaks expectations. Every character could be a “type,” but every type has surprising traits. “What I knew this guy could contribute to the story was a deep and abiding knowledge of the natural phenomena on the ground, but also the social forces at work there — the Inupiat (the whale-hunting natives of Point Barrow), the oil people, the conservationists, the news media. “But what I appreciated the most about it was that while it is undeniably a family film, it has just enough worldliness and cynicism to voice the reality of how strange it was that the whole world had to come together to save three whales that were endangered in a way that was pretty routine for that part of the world. Our human impulse to save what’s in danger, even when that doesn’t measure up to the other tragedies in the world, the way we prioritize, is voiced intelligently. And I love the way every character — Greenpeace person, the politicians, the native tribesman — seems to have some hint of self-interest that maybe isn’t their most attractive trait.” Movie screens are never Nelson-free for very long (he was last seen in last fall’s birding comedy, “The Big Year”). He works on his own scripts — he has one he started pitching to studios this very week — takes supporting roles in studio pictures and enjoys the travel. “Any time they say ‘We’re shooting this in Alaska,’ you know there’s going to be a little adventure to it.” And if the next time we see him, he’s playing up the drawl and getting laughs the old-fashioned way — by being outrageous — he’s just happy to have the work. “I’m the last person to complain because I’ve gotten to create a menagerie of weirdoes for the movies. It’s just fun to step away from that, every now and then.” Posted on Sun, Feb. 05, 2012 07:00 PM影视帝国校园爱情电影 最新爱情电影 热韩爱情电影 好看的武侠小说