William H. Macy - 'Train Dreams' [LIVE]

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0:38Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this very special episode of The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast being recorded in front of an audience in Toronto at the Access Canada Summit powered by The Hollywood Reporter during the 50th Toronto International Film Festival. I'm Scott Feinberg, THR's Executive Editor of Awards Coverage and host of the podcast, and I'm so thrilled and honored to be joined today by a true great. An actor, writer, director, and producer who has distinguished himself over some 50 years on the stage and screens big and small, accumulating along the way two Emmy Awards and four SAG Awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination, two Spirit Award nominations, and five Golden Globe Award nominations.

1:21Best known for films like Fargo, Boogie Nights, and Pleasantville, TV programs including ER, Door to Door, and Shameless, and many theatrical collaborations with David Mamet, he has been described by the Los Angeles Times as chameleonic, by the New York Times as dizzyingly versatile, and by the Guardian as someone whose name on a movie has been one of those reassuring elements that tend to suggest the movie in question might actually be worth watching. A badge of quality. One film that is absolutely worth watching is Train Dreams, which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, is playing at the Toronto International Film Festival, and will be released by Netflix in theaters on November 7th and on its streaming platform on November 21st.

2:05Co-adapted from Dennis Johnson's 2011 novella of the same name by the team behind Jockey and Sing Sing, Clint Bentley and Greg Quedar, it was directed by Bentley and stars Joel Edgerton as a railroad worker and logger in the Pacific Northwest in the early decades of the 20th century. And it features, as Arn Peoples, a memorable character he encounters along the way, our guest today. Would you please join me in welcoming Mr. William H. Macy.

2:44Chameleonic. I'm using it. Well, please, and thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it. And on this podcast, we go back to the very beginning. So can we just first establish where were you born and raised, and what did your folks do for a living? I was born in Miami, Florida, raised around Atlanta, Georgia. My father was an insurance man, as was my brother. And I grew up in Cumberland, Maryland in high school. Went to college in Vermont, started my career in Chicago, Illinois. then New York, then L.A. I'm fresh out of cities. Well, we're going to delve into the periods of time that you spent in each of those places.

3:28But first, the first taste of performing, I've heard, might have been something in high school to do with music more than acting. What was going on in high school? My brother had gone off to college. He's seven years older, and he came back playing a guitar, and I lost my mind. and I begged him to teach me some chords, and he did. And I begged my parents to buy me a guitar, and God bless them, they did. And I learned a pretty off-color song from my brother, and there was a talent show in my high school, so I performed this song, Your Papa Ain't Your Papa, But Your Papa Don't Know. and I went from shy redhead to BMOC instantly.

4:17The first time I sang that refrain, I got a laugh that I have been chasing ever since. That's great. Well, so coming out of high school, what would you have imagined you would do with your life at that moment? I'm pretty lucky. I did plays in high school and in college and I decided early on this was not only what I wanted to do, but apparently the only thing I was qualified to do. And then I met David Mamet in college, and he was and remains my mentor and teacher and good friend. I want to definitely ask you about that. But first, is it true that if there was going to be any other path, were you thinking about being a veterinarian?

5:02I was thinking about it. I worked for a veterinarian in high school and I was good at it and I love animals and my wife swears I was a dog in another incarnation. But apparently to be a veterinarian you have to go to school and learn things. Well, so is that why, I know you started at one school and then moved to another, what brought that about for college? I was a terrible student. So when I went to this little school called Bethany College in West Virginia, I really applied myself. And I got my grades and it was a C. And I thought, okay, that's enough. And I quit school. And I started painting houses and smoking pot and chasing women.

5:54And I did that until my parents said, you've got to do something with your life. So I found this school in Vermont, Goddard College, which was the hippiest of hippie schools. No grades, no tests, no requirements. Make it up. Interestingly, half the people that went there couldn't take it and left. But Dave Mamet had just graduated. He came back as a teaching fellow. and because there were no requirements, we played theater games for two and a half years on our parents' dime. And you just happened to take one, was it a class with him or something or had you heard that he was somebody you might like?

6:40How did you guys actually end up, you know, you're both there obviously, but where did you cross paths and did you immediately hit it off? He was and remains an odd duck. he had this class I went to the class did I mention it's a hippie school he said you can't be late if you're late we'll lock the door and you can't come in and everyone said did he say we can't be late what is he talking about and then he would do things well at any rate he was a task master and he's the guy that taught me we should teach the theater as a house of worship, that people through the centuries have gone to the theater to find the truth, that when despots come into power, the first thing they do is close the theaters, and that it was not our job to make up things.

7:40It was our job to tell the truth, and he had a technique whereby we told the truth under imaginary circumstances, but you had to tell the truth. That involved a good amount of technique, but also really looking at someone and really talking to them and really thinking hard about how you feel. What do you think? What do you think is the truth? And tell your own truth. It sounds facile, but it was a novel approach at the time. Was this practical aesthetics? This is called practical aesthetics. And so you guys clearly hit it off during the time you were there, because when you graduated, 72, right, why did you go to Chicago?

8:27A friend I graduated with, Stephen Schachter, who became a lifelong collaborator. We wrote Movies of the Week forever. We did about a dozen of them. We thought we'd open a theater in Los Angeles, which is like starting a Sunday school in Beirut. It's just not, it wasn't well thought out. And Dave called us and said, Bully, Stevie, I just did this play. It's called Sexual Perversity in Chicago. I'm a big deal. Come here. I got a new play. So, and I had just gotten a motorcycle and a girlfriend. So I dumped the girlfriend, sold the motorcycle, and moved to LA. And we did a play called Squirrels that David wrote.

9:10And how does it evolve? I mean, what you guys started in Chicago, I guess, through the end of that decade of the 70s was pretty significant. And I think people may not realize that, first of all, many of the productions that he's best known for, you originated roles in and would have, you know, their success was jointly, you know, a joint product of your efforts. I think maybe most notably American Buffalo, which was exactly 50 years ago, right? 75. And sorry to... But I understand that the origin story of that show, which is still being done, I saw it on Broadway maybe two years ago. I saw that one with Sam.

9:59Sam Rockwell and Lawrence Fishburne and all that. Yeah. And Darren Criss. But my question there, can you share, because I think in hindsight it all looks rosy, like, oh, he was a genius, he was a genius, it all made sense. But I think your mom, even, from what I read, may have helped make that one possible. So just to paint a picture of what life was like as you were getting going in Chicago, can you share that origin story? Dave did sort of own Chicago because he was a Chicago boy. and we did a play called Squirrels that I mentioned and we bounced around finding spaces. Then he disappeared for a while.

10:39Dave was an odd guy. If he had his wristwatch on, he had played poker and he was winning. If his wristwatch was missing, he lost that night. But he supported himself playing poker. He lived in one room at the Hotel Lincoln. He disappeared for about four weeks. You know, it's a loosey-goosey 60s, 70s, but we were about to get worried. When he showed up, and he, Stephen and I lived in the, shared an apartment, and he plopped down this script in the old fool's cap, you know, the yellow paper. He, to this day, writes on us, IBM Selectronic. He thinks all other electronics are evil. And it was American Buffalo.

11:23And I remember reading it thinking, well, I knew it was the greatest play of my lifetime, certainly. And I really wanted to do it. So we did it at the Goodman Theater, where a good friend was the associate artistic director. It was a big fat hit. Stephen and I decided we needed a theater. So my mom, you're exactly right, my grandmother died, my mom inherited about not much money, maybe 25 grand, something like that, and she sent it to us, to the St. Nicholas Theater Company, which was what we called ourselves. And it was just enough to put a down payment on a former commercial space. and we went to the Goodman Theater and said they wanted to move American Buffalo got nice notices it was a great production said where?

12:22we said our theater he said you don't have a theater we said we do and he said you don't have any seats in your theater so we said about I'm a bit of a carpenter and eight weeks later we opened American Buffalo at that commercial space had a garage door the audience would come in we'd open this giant garage door and they'd walk in there wasn't enough headroom so I remember we wrapped all the pipes that you could hit your head on which people did we had a lawyer on staff just to deal with it then we patted them and then we painted them orange nothing helped and we opened American Buffalo and it was a big fat hit and the cheese story the cheese story oh Dave Dave would come over one room in the Hotel Lincoln he'd come to our house Stephen and me and he'd come in and he'd go I've got all these sides and he'd go to the refrigerator he'd take out the cheese and the bread he'd cut off giant hunks of cheese and tell us all the things we're going to do when the cheese was gone he left and it happened all the time.

13:39And we were vegetarians, so we needed the cheese. And he came by one time, started, and I go, help yourself. And it's as if I had slapped him. He mumbled, help myself, help myself. I should help myself to a slice of fucking cheese. We go out to dinner. Who picks up the check every time? Do I say anything like some bust out fucking asshole? No. Do you recognize that speech? Teach says it in American Buffalo. That's amazing. Well, and you guys, I mean, I don't know the exact number, but there were a lot of theatrical collaborations over those next few years. And I will, and obviously when we come to your film career, it continues.

14:22His film career and yours also were taking off around the same time. But I just want to note that you have been described by too many people for it to be a coincidence as sort of the embodiment of the ideal Mamet performer, you know, bringing his vision and yours to life here. New York Times, quote, the perfect Mamet actor. New York Magazine, the ideal Mamet actor. And then David said about you, quote, I think he's the hardest working person, let alone actor I've ever met. People love him. You walk down the street with him and people come up to him and they're smiling. A great, great actor, close quote.

14:57So that's the foundation and the launching pad, I guess. Then you go in 1980 to New York. What was the idea there? I know you've spoken about one of the great acting teachers there was Sanford Meisner, who you, I think, studied with and continued doing theater. But that decade in New York, what was, as you look back, what was that about? It was ambitious. We sort of owned New York. Running a theater is tough. this was now the Atlantic Theater company you guys started? No, in Chicago. It's a lot of work. David moved to New York. I don't know, I was ambitious. I wanted to, if you can make it there.

15:38I did plays. I hit the ground running pretty much. And I did off-Broadway plays, one after the other. And I had enough juice that I could at least get the audition. And it was a good time. It was a fervent time. and Dave continued writing. I did some of his films. Yeah, I look back on New York as a really lovely time, but really difficult, but wonderful. So films, it was not like you had one film that blew everything open at the beginning, right? Can we just, there were small parts in films like Somewhere in Time and 1980, War Games, 1983. up through Searching for Bobby Fischer, came out in 91, but I think was made while you were in New York, a couple of Woody Allen movies, Radio Days and Shadows and Fog.

16:35Fun fact, you were the assistant district attorney in the first produced and sixth aired episode of Law and Order ever, which continues. It's sort of a rite of passage, right, to be on that. But as far as being in films that David was involved with, His directorial debut was House of Games, 1987. Then things changed, 1988. Homicide, 1991. How did he acclimate to going from the stage to the screen? And how did you acclimate from going from the stage to the screen? He's the smartest guy I've ever known. So he just knows things. I don't know how he knows things. He's also prescient. And he will write things that I would say, wait, can you say that?

17:27And he's the only rootin' tootin' genius I know. Me, in doing film, it was a slow process, figuring out what's in, what's out. Luckily, I was never thrown into a big role with a lot demanded of me. I played tuna fish father. I played cop number two. And so the stress was not that great. Was there enough traction though that, like, the fact that you moved at the end of the decade, around 1990, you moved to LA, is that because, hey, let's see what we can do with this? If it'll be easier screen acting-wise to be in LA? Or what was the impetus for that? I wanted to make movies. that's where they make movies maybe New York had gotten under my skin I'm a country boy it's a great place to visit it's a rough place to live as opposed to LA lovely place to live but you wouldn't want to visit there trust me I wish I had a better answer for why I moved to LA I'm not quite sure what I did and that I can remember the things that But the progress was certainly continuing towards, I mean, I think elevating your profile.

18:51It was also back in the day when if you had a New York address, they thought of you as a stage actor. And if you wanted to do movies, you had to be in L.A. That's long since passed. Well, so there was in those early years in L.A., the client you were in, Oleana, the Mammoth adaptation, which I think you've said, so you'd done the stage version and then you did the screen version. One of the most challenging of all the ones you'd done with him? Is that fair to say? Yes. You said I've been described as the perfect Mammoth actor. His stuff is difficult. Do we have actors here? I'm going to take that as a no.

19:36You're here by yourself, brother.

19:41His language is really difficult. I've had this experience where I'll read the line and I don't know what it means. And when you start memorizing the lines, you say them out loud a lot. And what would happen to me a lot of times is when I would hear myself say it, it suddenly made sense. When I read it off the page, I was thinking grammar and things like that. And David speaks on the speech of the streets. there's a great in American Buffalo Donnie says to Bobby he's talking and talking about the value of friendship you have to be a stand-up guy you've got to be a friend and at the end of the speech he looks at him sagely and he goes you don't got friends this life and I was talking to this actor who's gonna play the role and he said why would he change his mind at the very end of that speech until Bobby doesn't have any friends.

20:40Well, you get it. When you say it, you don't got friends this life. Shaking your head, it means if you don't have friends this life, then your life is a fraud. But you don't have to say it on the street. And you don't have to say it in a mammoth play. It's clear. So Dave is famous for saying, oh, those are just the words. Those are just the words. They don't mean anything. The greatest writer of our generation says, those are just the words. You can't act the words. You got to act the action. And the words will take care of themselves. He's famous for saying, the words are gibberish. Well, so those two projects I just mentioned were 94, but also the beginning of, I think probably what would have been a very big deal at the moment was you were playing the hospital chief of staff on ER which started you were on from recurringly from 94 to 98 31 episodes Emmy nomination was that the first time that you were in something that everyone was watching yeah yes it was a huge hit right out of the gate.

21:50Great people, hard-working, and John Wells. I got to meet John Wells, who's the greatest producer I've ever worked with. He's magnificent. It was a great gig. They guaranteed me three or four or five or six shows at the beginning of the season, so I knew I had that in my back pocket. They were really nice about me going off to do a movie, and they would bunch up my work. It It was a weird ending. I think I decided I wanted more money, and that didn't go very far. And I got a script that says that I fired George Clooney. And I thought, I don't think he's leaving the show. I wonder what this means.

22:38So I did the scene. I fired George's ass, and I was gone. Well, that was all 94, 95, Mr. Holland's Opus. 96, or at least that's when this next one I'm going to mention was released, probably getting going 95-ish, is the one that I think totally changed your career, and that's Fargo. Jerry Lundegaard, car salesman in a financial bind who hires a couple of goons to kidnap his wife, hoping to get a payoff from her father, and it all goes awry. How did you first hear about it? And also my understanding is you were initially invited to audition for a different part. So how did this end up with Jerry?

23:26The normal way. I had an agent, got the script. They wanted me to read for the detective. And I went in and I think it was Ethan who says, that's real good. You want to read Jerry? And he said, yeah. And I went out in the hall. I went back in and they said, that's real good. You want to work on it and come back tomorrow? I said, yeah. Every actor I knew in L.A. came to my house and we worked on it all night. It was a Coen Brothers film. Everyone was going to see it. It was the best film they'd ever written and it was a role that was made for me. Even though they didn't describe what I look like, I knew I had to have it.

24:09Can you share what they imagined Jerry to look like originally? Yeah, he was bald and overweight and short. One out of three ain't bad. So I've told this story many times, so forgive me, but they said that's real good. Those two guys, they're like two hippies that got a camera. I mean, they're so unassuming. They're such lovely filmmakers. I found out they were auditioning in New York, so I got my jolly, jolly Lutheran ass on an airplane and crashed it. And I don't recommend this, but I said, I'm worried you're going to screw up your film and cast someone else. Then I said to Ethan, if you don't give me this role, I'm going to shoot your dog.

24:57Thank God he laughed. That's great. Again, I don't recommend it. It's not going to work. And how much longer after that before you found out that you had it? It was a long time. It was weeks. I have a little cabin in Vermont way up in the Northeast Kingdom. I don't have a neighbor for a mile. It was January and I was in my cabin. I heated it with a wood stove, had to bring in water, but I did have a telephone and it rang. And I I was leaping out of my skin and there was no one to tell. And it was 30 below zero and I was just running around the yard. But I knew that my life was going to change.

25:42And let's just note, while you were making it, did you realize that it was going to be something so special? I mean, just to give context, just two years after it came out, it was included as the most recent selection on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest movies of all time. Before that, you got personally an Oscar nomination for it, but also the film. for Best Picture. I mean, it was a... This is stuff that other Coen Brothers movies hadn't done. Just, it was a big, big deal. But did you know while you were making it that it was turning out special? I did. I flatter myself that I'm good at reading scripts.

26:25And here's the secret. This is the way I read a script. Read it in one sitting and skip the stage directions. They're all nonsense anyway. If you get confused, go back. But just read the dialogue. And if you read it in one sitting, you can read it in real time. So you can see the movie in your mind's eye. If we could all see the movie before we agree to do it, it'd be easy to decide, wouldn't it? I saw it in my mind's eye. I knew it was great. They're great filmmakers. I was born to play the role. Yeah, I knew. And then when it was released and so successful and you have the Oscar nomination and all these things, in a year, by the way, which at the Oscar, it was like the year that the Indies broke through, including this, right?

27:09It was a bad year to get nominated. But I mean, four of the five Best Picture nominees were not from the major studios, only Jerry Maguire, all of this stuff. But I guess... Billy Crystal was the host. He said, who are you people?

27:27How did your day-to-day life, career, what was the impact? How soon was it felt and in what ways? It took a long time. It took a year or two. I think Paul doesn't mind me telling this story, but nothing dramatic happened for a while. And then I was working someplace and I got this script for Boogie Nights. And I loved it. First I thought I was being punked because it was really racy, the first script I read. and my agent assured me no it's going to be an R-rated film and oh I wanted it it was so brilliant and I had seen Paul's first film called Hard Eight and I would have read the newspaper for him and I had a meeting with him so I did my actor thing of thinking of the through line and the bigger meaning.

28:26I came up with all this horse shit that I would say to get the role. And I couldn't say a word. We met at the Formosa Cafe and he started talking and described the film and he talked about this and he talked about that. And I thought, I'm not auditioning. He is. He's trying to talk me into doing this film. And I remember going,

28:55that was when i thought okay things are different and really that auditions were over by that point there were nobody was going to ask you to read again right with the exception of my wife and two daughters it's the best thing has ever happened okay so order of making these things might be mixed than what I'm about to say, but same year as Fargo, Ghost of Mississippi, then 97 Air Force One, then Boogie Nights comes out. And just to remind people, little Bill Thompson, kind of, if you look up cuckold in the dictionary, this is him in the porn industry, you know, just can't catch a break. But what is it, because you did that, again, Paul's second feature, and then two years later, back again with Paul and Magnolia, along with a few other people who had also been in Boogie Nights, these are the, you know, Hard 8's great, but these are the ones that put him on

29:50William H. Macy:the map in a big, big way. And I wonder, first of all, let's, with Boogie Nights, just because, as you mentioned, it was, what made it to the screen with Dirk Diggler and all this stuff was pretty risque. But the funniest thing that I encountered prepping for this was that there There were a lot of people on set, at least initially, who didn't really know what the movie they were in was about. That's a great story. It's the Academy Awards of the porn industry. We shot in a big ballroom and they had about 75 or 80 extras there and all they knew was it was a Burt Reynolds movie. and they were told to come in their 70s finest and they were all sitting there Paul came up and he said okay very quickly he said okay so this guy his name's Dirk Diggler when he gets up when he wins the award stand to your feet scream and yell he's your famous favorite guy and so a lot of enthusiasm And Melora Walters takes the envelope and she says, and the winner is, I love her voice, and the winner is, oh, and I can't wait to get his big cock in my ass or my pussy, Dirk Diggler.

31:22And there was stunned silence. and then 80 people got up and left we were down for about two hours where they were calling around going we need people we need people dressed like and this time paul described what the scene was so in between the two pta movies were or was wag the dog co-written by mamut but also one of my, and I know a lot of people's favorite movies, Pleasantville, which was the directorial debut of Gary Ross. You're playing George Parker, a guy from kind of this ideal TV family, black and white TV show that's infiltrated by two modern kids, siblings who bring new ideas and attitudes and all of that.