Tim Blake Nelson’s Superhero Is “Concentrated Reality”

Tim Blake Nelson has always been interested in the “superhero movie phenomenon,” and it’s not just because he’s starred in a few of them himself. The Captain America: Brave New World actor was at the forefront of Marvel’s ascension to world domination, with his appearance in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. And over the past two decades, he witnessed the explosion of superhero movies into our cultural consciousness.

“I was interested in why that occurred and what it said about us in America in particular culturally,” Nelson tells Inverse in an interview ahead of the release of his new novel, Superhero (out in bookstores now from Unnamed Press). “And so I just wanted to write a novel that took place in this very specific milieu, but used that to address much larger cultural issues and fractures in our country.”

Superhero, Nelson’s second novel following 2023’s City of Blows, follows a fictional A-list movie star, Peter Compton, who signs on to make a superhero movie, hoping it will raise his profile. But as the film begins shooting, Peter Compton’s disastrous on-set behavior goes viral, throwing the whole production into disarray.

The story is purely fiction, Nelson says, though he coyly adds, “there's nothing in this novel that I didn't experience directly or pick up from a reliable source.”

But Nelson didn’t set out to write a tell-all about his time on a Marvel set — he firmly wanted it to be fiction. “It's concentrated reality. And that's what storytelling is,” Nelson says.

“As a novelist, you're the costumer, you're the director of photography, you're the writer, you're the casting director,” he continues. “Everything is completely under your control, and that's an interesting challenge. I'm not always a control freak. I love being an actor for somebody else's show, and that's also very exciting to me, but I like to mix it up.”

In an exclusive excerpt from Superhero provided to Inverse, the director of the central superhero movie, Major Machina, meets his star for the first time. The scene is part of an interesting conundrum Nelson wanted to explore: “The director still has to run the set and make those thousands of decisions on a daily basis that ultimately, no matter what, are largely going to determine what the movie is,” Nelson says. But ironically, the director is still lower on the totem pole compared to the franchise and the star, at least “from the studio's point of view.”

“There's an inherent contradiction inside of that that this moment in the novel is starting to explore,” Nelson explains. Read the exclusive excerpt from Superhero.

Minute by minute and day to day, a director controlled a film in production, and when one pursued bad choices well or good choices poorly, failures tended to abound. But in this case a desultory film, or worse, a laughable one, would be pinned on Peter more than the director or anyone else. Even many of Marci Levy’s friends wanted her husband to fail. Why should a movie star essentially born into success with appealing looks and a parent in the business get a second chance, when so many others not similarly advantaged were never afforded a first one? With this in mind, Marci received the news of Max Kaiser’s choice for who would direct Major Machina.

“First of all, remember we already have Javier Benavidez to shoot, so the movie is going to look fantastic.”

“Does this director know that? Javier Benavidez is notoriously temperamental.”

“This guy loves Javier. But more importantly, he loves Peter. Secondly, he’s been runner-up on three of our films, two of which we should have gone with him.”

“Just tell me his name.”

“Joel Slavkin.”

“Didn’t he direct Incinerator?”

“That was Joel Rivkin. Joel Slavkin directed Pleasure Island.”

“Was that any good?”

“The action sequences were phenomenal. I’ve spoken with his executive at Sony. Joel is a team player. They loved him.”

The trajectory of the director’s career did point toward success with Sparta. His movies had become exponentially more commercial, with all impulses to distinguish himself outside the studio system in conspicuous retreat. One could not, in other words, happen upon any of his recent efforts and identify it as “A Joel Slavkin Film.” Scenes weren’t willfully underlit or photographed from occluded angles. There were no pointlessly interminable shots moving from character to character in and out of rooms and buildings, calling attention to staging and camera work while completely obfuscating the narrative.

He also didn’t upstage his stars. When Peter appeared in a film it should be known as “a Peter Compton movie.” Sure, Major Machina would also be a Sparta title, and toward this she had no objection; let Peter cede a bit of attention to the most powerful cultural engine in the world, but never to a director, unless one of the world’s auteurs, of which there were few. As for Javier Benavidez, so long as the man didn’t try to take over the film, he’d be an asset, and one she and Peter could control.

For the meeting, rather than choosing a neutral spot, they invited Joel to their home, a dynamic Marci depended on in certain circumstances. In fact, when they’d bought the house, which occupied a hill’s summit about a mile and a half north of Sunset in Brentwood, she’d done so with just such interviews in mind. During the first walk-through with the broker, she’d imagined sitting with coffee in the capacious living room facing southwest where light lavished the interior through floor-to-ceiling glass on two sides. To the left over the low, narrow fireplace she’d hang the Diebenkorn, and on the wall adjacent, the Motherwell, so that everywhere a supplicant looked, whether curated by Marci or God, they would encounter beauty. Just beyond the south-facing window, a Saarinen table with six matching swivel chairs would beckon from under the eaves.

“It’s so nice out, do you mind if we sit outside?” she fantasized inquiring, which she did after she and Peter exchanged introductions with Joel Slavkin.

“Sure,” said the director. “This place is beautiful.”

“That’s all Marci,” Peter offered. “We call it ‘the opposite of prison cell.’”

In the warm, dry air, Keith Jarrett’s Book of Ways playing at just the right volume on the outdoor speakers, they got down to it.

“So Max says you’re excited about our little superhero movie,” said Marci.

“That’s an understatement. I was obsessed with Sparta growing up.”

“Which was Indiana, right?” asked Peter.

“Bloomington. There was a comics store near our house. I’d ride my bike there with my allowance and then sit on the curb outside drinking Mountain Dew and reading, I’m not joking, Major Machina.”

“I was probably stoned on the beach in Malibu,” said Peter. “Makes me rethink everything.”

“Somehow it all worked out for you.”

“Eventually. Thanks to Marci.” She chose not to disagree, her eyes on Joel Slavkin’s every twitch.

“So,” she said, leaning forward in a bikini top covered by a short-sleeved red button-down she’d tied above the waist, “now that we’ve explored variations on boyhood in America, tell us how you see the movie. Is that a look book?”

The director had been lugging the binder since his arrival, not once relinquishing his grip, even outside, where it remained in his lap.

“My concept,” he said, opening it on the unblemished Formica top of lime green, “is one of a time suspended between now and Cold War America. In other words, more the aesthetic of Major Machina when it first came out than in the early eighties when I was reading it or of course now. So no cell phones, the cars more nondescript than ultramodern, early computers, yes, but no internet. A time you can’t pin down.”

“Why no internet, and especially why no cell phones?” Peter asked.

“So that it sets its own terms with the audience for the world we’re meaning to create. And there aren’t cell phones in the comics.”

“But cell phones are part of the other Sparta films, with which, obviously, Major Machina needs to fit. The SCG is not one planet, it’s a galaxy, if Max Kaiser hasn’t reminded you. So how do I then interface with the other characters? What if I work with Meteor Team or become a Disruptor?”

“What does Max think?” Marci asked.

“I didn’t specifically say this to him. Or, I mean, I did, but more generally, just in terms of how we wouldn’t see cell phones, which is really what I mean, not that they don’t exist.”

“So if they exist, why wouldn’t I use one?”

Their dog, a Bouvier des Flandres, the same breed with which Marci had grown up back east, bounded to the table and arranged himself on his haunches as if he, more than any of the humans, needed to appraise the director’s response.

“Sorry. This is Pierre,” she said.

“Our fierce hound,” added Peter, stroking the panting animal. “So why no cell phone?”

“You’re Major Machina. You’re wired in without needing an external device.”

“So there is an internet. A second ago you said there wasn’t.”

“There is, just like there are cell phones, we just don’t foreground them. That’s why it won’t be an issue with the other movies. With your cellular abilities—as in cell phone, not biological cells—I mean, you have those, but—”

“I get it,” said Peter.

“Your cellular abilities are onboard, which basically they were in the original comic. Paul Kramer could radio airplanes, communicate with tanks on the battlefield, read AWACS transmissions when that came around. Why would he need a cell phone?”

“And what about other people?” asked Peter.

“Of course. They have them.”

“See, I think he not only has a cell phone, but it’s this insane one of his own making. Like with the body the government gave him, he can tinker with it, improve it. It not only communicates with people and accesses data and the web—”

“I’ve said I don’t want to foreground the web either.”

“Why do you keep using that word? ‘Foreground’?”

“To foreground is to put it front and center.”

“Jesus. I know what the word means.”

“Look at it this way: you’re one of the most compelling actors in the world. The more time Javier and I spend pointing the camera at computer screens and smart devices, the less time we’re pointing it at you. The movie’s called Major Machina. The title is an oxymoron. With the original comic, World War II had just ended, a war fought with machines as much as men. Not trench warfare, but tanks and airplanes, the bomb. A holocaust on a mass scale achieved with crystalized gas that came in canisters from chemical plants. All this in the middle of a century that began with the Industrial Revolution. And in the wake of that, the comic dared to do what the rest of the world refused to: not obsess over the dichotomy between man and machine, not fear dehumanization, but embrace it by combining the forces into one hero whose very flaws seemed to spring from the friction between opposites. He was named for those opposites: machine fused with man when people were thinking machine versus man. But what’s even more extraordinary is that in our era the contradiction has become even more relevant, because now we’re in a different sort of revolution, this one technological, obviously, where we’re actually manifesting a version of the print comic, because we’re not fighting machines, we’re merging with them. What are smartphones, what is the internet, but a kind of man-made extension of our collective brains: all of human information not just accessible in the palm of a hand but more and more attached to us, individuated to us. And so much so that it’s affecting our biology, so that brains—less essential for memories of simple stuff like addresses, names of people and things, how to get to places, appointment times—now can focus on other stuff, and so we are literally changing physiologically. And we know this because of brain mapping that shows synaptic activity, blood flow, cell density, you name it. I don’t even know my wife’s cell number. That just seems crazy to me. And biometrics! Again, think of the early Major Machina comics where he’s constantly checking his blood levels and oxygen levels and battery power along with his organically alloyed bones and synthetic muscle and tissue. Guess what? We’ve got actual devices, some of them we wear, others permanently attached for people with congenital issues, that measure heart rate and numbers of steps and blood pressure and glucose levels for readouts at will or that connect right to a person’s doctor. And biggest of all, the new frontier: AI. Who the fuck knows if any of our jobs will even exist anymore as creative people?”

“Yeah, I don’t buy into that. Actors are unique. What, you’re going to AI a guy who went to prison and is now a movie star?” said Peter.

“My point is Major Machina was kind of the first smartphone in the imaginations of two genius writers in 1953. Why would Paul Kramer, why would you, need to carry what you already are?”

It was clear to Marci that Joel Slavkin was ready to make this film. He evinced just the sort of passion, verve, and intellectual enthusiasm necessary to spend two years conceptualizing, prepping, shooting, editing, and scrutinizing visual effects, sound mixing, color grading and the rest. Day after day of utter tedium, the minority of which would be spent actually on set. He would need to accomplish this with politesse and grace under constant oversight, every decision vetted by corporate ombudsmen wary of any deviation from what they deemed central to their brand.

Directing a Sparta film constituted the perfect converse of authorship: unlimited resources, but the ceding of all meaningful control within a system built to protect itself from the aesthetic caprice of any individual.

But while Joel Slavkin fit with Sparta, his relationship with Peter posed challenges. The guy was perhaps too smart and educated, flashing knowledge and references that would irritate her husband for not knowing them. Marci had learned within months of their courtship that a deep insecurity from never having attended college only intensified as Peter had gained early stardom. While incarcerated, he therefore applied all the time once allocated to procuring drugs, women, and roles to the attainment of knowledge, helping to run the prison library where, under the guidance of a UC Davis professor, he read a broad selection of the Western canon, starting with the Bible (both the Old and New Testaments), then the Greeks, assaying not only Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides, but Euclid somehow as well, then Augustine, Dante, Locke, Hobbes, Mill, Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud. Along with these he finished every great novel he could, with particular emphasis on the Russians, from War and Peace to Gogol, Solzhenitsyn, and all of Dostoyevsky, already a favorite. When the professor, as Peter’s sentence neared completion, insisted he fashion a course load ex post facto representing all the material he’d assimilated to form the basis for a degree, Peter surprised him with a furious dismissal.

“Not a chance.”

“Seriously? What’s the downside?” “You don’t know Hollywood. I’ll get, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,’ all while they’re secretly looking down on it. The thing I hated most about my job before I got locked up was the condescension, even while I understood the scripts better than anyone I ever met as an actor. Usually understood them better than the directors and producers too, where I was teaching them about the historical context or the central conflict because I’d actually done the research. No, I’m my degree, and without the meaningless piece of paper.”

Superhero is available in bookstores now.