The classic mistake William H. Macy made in ‘Boogie Nights’
Although not the main focus of the film, William H. Macy is the fulcrum that Boogie Nights rests on. As the perpetually put-upon Little Bill, Macy embodies a man who simply can’t catch a break. From menial annoyances like parking tickets to full-on cuckold behaviour, thanks to his porn star wife, Little Bill’s plight is mainly played up for comedic effect.
Until the halfway point of the film, that is. During the New Year’s Eve celebration meant to ring in 1980, Little Bill sees his wife being unfaithful for one final time. In an iconic unbroken shot, Bill goes from seeing the deed to retrieving a gun from his car, killing his wife and her lover, and then shooting himself just as 1980 begins. The moment is when Boogie Nights turns from an extravagant comedy to a poison-tipped tragedy, and without Macy’s performance, the moment couldn’t have happened.
Whether he was purposefully trying to or not, Macy was the perfect embodiment of Little Bill. The proof came during a scene where a group of onlookers take in Bill’s wife having sex in the middle of a driveway. Ricky Jay’s film producer character Kurt Longjohn attempts to talk business with Bill, who is clearly distracted by what’s going on, so much so that he accidentally blurts out that his wife has an “ass in her cock” instead of the other way around.
The line is perfect for Little Bill: flustered, ridiculous, and completely wrong. But as it turned out, Macy wasn’t intentionally trying to make Little Bill sound like an idiot. Instead, in the film’s script, the line was supposed to be read in its correct order. When Macy flubbed it during different takes, Paul Thomas Anderson loved the results enough to keep it in the final cut.
“This is what happened,” Macy explained in the Grantland oral history on Boogie Nights, ‘Livin’ Thing’. “Ricky Jay stops me, and I said, ‘Listen, do you mind, I’m a little distracted. There’s a guy with his dick in my wife’s ass.’ And that was take one. And then, a second take, I said, ‘My fucking wife has an ass in her cock.’ And Paul said, ‘You said, ‘ass in her cock.'” And I said, ‘Oh, I did? Sorry. Ha, ha, ha’.”
“So take three, I think I did it right,” Macy continued. “Take four, he said, ‘You said it again.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t.’ He said, ‘You did.’ I said, ‘I didn’t. I’m pretty sure.’ We did another take. And then, when I saw the film, he’d decided to use the ‘ass in her cock.’ And that’s the genius of Paul Thomas Anderson.”
Check out the “ass in her cock” scene down below.
