1223: William H. Macy | What Shameless Taught Him About Being Shameless

1223: William H. Macy | What Shameless Taught Him About Being Shameless

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks.

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The legendary [00:01:00] William H. Macy. You know him from Fargo, Boogie Nights, Shameless, and now Soul on Fire, where he plays famed cardinals announcer Jack Buck, who befriends a young burn victim in one of those rare but true stories that'll make you cry, then feel strangely good about it. We explore why the best actors don't give a damn what desperation does for great art and how Macy somehow only learned how to act after 30 years in the business.

It's a wide ranging conversation about acting Hollywood, the business of creativity. It's soulful, it's sharp, and he's of course, surprisingly funny and charming as always. Here we go with William H. Macy. My opening originally was the people I sat next to, but I kind of blew that in the lobby. I'll repeat a little bit for the audience here.

I was sitting next to one woman on my right side who had been in some kind of horrible accident. She had burned her body quite severely. Whoa. And she was speaking during the movie about kids getting the burn treatments and she's like, oh, that hurts so much. You have no idea. And she would say, oh, relearning how to walk.

I remember that. And it added a little bit of extra color to the [00:02:00] movie. Hmm. So it was kind of nice. Normally when someone's talking to our movie premiere, it better be good, right? Yeah, it better be good. So this added a little bit of added color, and then on my left side was a woman who had probably a little bit more to drink than maybe she needed to before the movie.

And she would start crying before anything sad happened. And she would reach over and grab me, and her husband would say, let him go. And she'd go, shut up John. But that happened maybe 20 times during the movie. She needed somebody to hold her hand and John was not having it. But it's a tear jerker man.

It's an emotional story. It really is. You played Jack Buck, a famous announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals. Do you know why he got interested in the kid who had been burned? Because it didn't really get answered in the movie

William H. Macy: either. I don't think anyone knows. Nobody knows. Okay. And since the film has been out there, more and more stories come from all different corners of how Jack Buck showed up and helped out, and he never told anyone about it.

He was almost [00:03:00] secretive about it. He's an interesting guy.

Gabriel Mizrahi: There was a funny moment during the q and a at the end where John asked you point blank, why do you think he did this? And you very elegantly dodged the question, which I think I can understand. But as an actor, when you're playing a real person, I'm assuming you did not get to speak to this guy about the role or anything?

No, that would've been years before the movie. I talked to

William H. Macy: Joe Buck, his son. I got a little background there.

Gabriel Mizrahi: So you don't have access to what this guy was thinking or feeling at the time with his kids, but as an actor, do you just invent that for yourself or is that irrelevant once you have the lines you're just there to do the job?

I

William H. Macy: think it's irrelevant because character is not what you say. It's what you do. And I loved what he did and it's pretty obvious. He had fame, he had power, he had a bully pulpit, and he felt compelled to use it for something besides making a living. He wanted to help and he did it a lot. And Joe, his son, said that as a [00:04:00] father, he was a bit distant.

He wasn't warm and fuzzy at home. So. He's a fascinating guy. He might've been looking for something too. I think so.

Jordan Harbinger: Like I can't do this with my family because it's too weird. Let me do it with a stranger, and if it goes horribly wrong, I can just not do it anymore.

William H. Macy: We all know someone who can love a dog so much more than they can a person.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a really good point. I know it's broad brush. That whole generation of men is like that, isn't it? My grandpa was like this stone cold German guy, and my mom's like, I'll be frank, he was a bastard. I wouldn't tell you that when you were a kid, but he was mean. And I'm like, yeah. The only thing I remember about him was he was being nice to me, it still seemed mean.

'cause it was like, who is this kid?

William H. Macy: Yeah. Just scary. I'm older than you. It's really hard not to become that, I gotta say.

Jordan Harbinger: It's hard not to become that.

William H. Macy: Yeah. It really is. I wouldn't have a friend in the world if I didn't have a wife. 'cause she gets us out the door. I see, I see. I'm no good at it.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Really?

William H. Macy: Yeah, and it's getting more that way as

Gabriel Mizrahi: time goes on.

Yeah. I could be a

William H. Macy: hermit if

Gabriel Mizrahi: I Yeah. Didn't have handlers. You said that you don't have a ton of [00:05:00] close acquaintances. You've said that you're a bit of a loner. You find a lot of meaning in your work. You also said, if I remember correctly, that it might be because of your blunt honesty. Is that the reason Could be.

William H. Macy: I am blunt, but I don't know why I do that. I guess because I can.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Also like as an actor, it must be nice to get an honest take from a director or from a peer about the performance or whatever. But I wonder if that carries over into the personal life. Well, I guess it

William H. Macy: has to, but certainly, yeah. One of the things I love about actors and showbiz is that the level of communication is so high.

There's not a lot of times. So people have a tendency to get right to the subject and say what they want. It's frustrating too when you find a fellow actor or a director who talks around something and most actors will say, will you just tell me? Just say it. And finally they do. But I [00:06:00] just love actors.

'cause you get with a bunch of actors, they've all got their stories and they're really good at telling it, and they've honed it and they're smart enough to tell it quickly and then shut up. And then the next actor tells this story. But when I'm out with civilians. They talk over each other. You know, I'm telling a story as I get to the punchline.

So many interrupts in my older age, I've started to say, will you shut up? I was just about to do the punchline of my story.

Jordan Harbinger: Your dad was a no nonsense guy, eh, as well. Pretty direct, yeah. I wonder how much of that comes from him and how much of that comes from just really wanting to finish your story for once and not be interrupted by civilian.

There's a quote attributed to you might be apocryphal, but you tell me nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood. Yeah, I've

William H. Macy: said it, but Dave Mamet said it first.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, gotcha.

William H. Macy: There's a certain personality that a lot of actors share and I don't know, I think there's an itch that they just can't scratch any other way.

It's a weird thing to do for a living.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Very [00:07:00] weird. What is the itch, though? Is it to recreate reality or to understand people you couldn't understand when you were younger? For me, it's

William H. Macy: that I strangely can be more comfortable. Feel braver under imaginary circumstances than in real circumstances. I love it.

And you know, not all actors are this way. I know some actors who really don't like the camera or the audience, they don't like that attention. It gets in their way. It makes them uncomfortable for me, when everyone gets quiet and it's my turn to talk, I like it. I like it a lot. I even like it when the last second they say, can you lean on your right foot?

Can you hold this at level up here? All these externals that they want. I kind of pride myself of being able to do that and still put my attention on the other person and really be in the moment.

Jordan Harbinger: This is a very serious sort of vocation. Have you ever

William H. Macy: [00:08:00] had a role where your family just roasted you for it?

Not roasted me. My mom was a Southern bell. Some of the films I'd do, she'd go,

Jordan Harbinger: I didn't like

William H. Macy: that. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah.

William H. Macy: I'm gonna guess. She wasn't a huge fan of Boogie Nights. I wonder if my mom saw boogie nights, man, that's something to imagine, isn't it? Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: What part did my mom cover her eyes or didn't cover her eyes?

Maybe when did she

William H. Macy: not cover her eyes?

Jordan Harbinger: What role did your parents have on your performances or how you understand characters?

William H. Macy: I grew up in the south, near Atlanta, so there's a good streak of Southern in me, which I'm proud of. And um, they were nothing but supportive. As a matter of fact, we started a theater company, Dave Mamet, Steven Shachter, and Patricia Cox and me in Chicago, and we got off to a good start.

We did a mammo play called Squirrels, and we got some nice notices, and then we did a disastrous production and lost all our money. We did a Eugene O'Neill play. Friends, [00:09:00] don't Let Friends do O'Neill. My grandmother died and my mom inherited a little bit of money, not much. I think it was 40 grand or something like that, and she sent it to us and we were so angry with each other.

That was it. The theater was over, but we had this 40 grand. We had to do something with it, so we did one more play and it turned out to be American Buffalo.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. I would've felt really bad if I'd wasted my grandma's money, so I guess it's really fortunate that I

William H. Macy: was pretty comfortable with spending that money.

You, yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Not a big deal for you. Well, you're also working with American Buffalo, so that helps too. You've mentioned Mammot a few times. I know people ask you about him all the time. You guys developed an acting technique together. You had the theater company. You've done a number of productions play in at least one movie.

Oh, a bunch. Yeah. House of Games and Ana and a few others. Do you still feel that Mamet is alive in you and does he play a role in your work now? He taught

William H. Macy: me everything I know. He gave me my aesthetic. He taught me all [00:10:00] about acting. He was a mentor and my biggest supporter.

Gabriel Mizrahi: How would you describe the aesthetic

William H. Macy: that you work with now?

You mean the acting technique? Sure. It's called practical aesthetic. Dave made it up. It's all action, not emotion. I talk about acting technique and I can see the will to live drain out of people. So I have to be very careful.

Jordan Harbinger: I think you have a good audience here though. Okay. He's into it, man. And there's one area that I can act interested.

It's on this podcast, so don't worry about me. Okay.

William H. Macy: Dave came up with this thing. It's Meisner and then Stanislavsky, but there were two schools of thought. One was emotion and one was action. Dave and Meisner said, it's all action. So the whole technique is figuring out not only what the character wants, but what you want.

And there's a slight difference because Dave always said a good objective is something that you can do in real time without any windup. You can actually do it anytime you want. Saving the kingdom is not [00:11:00] something you can do. A character can do it, but you have to translate it more. So that's the long and the short of it, figuring out what the objective is and letting the emotions take care of themselves and they do.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Speaking of objectives, you've played several characters who I would say live in a state of shameless desperation. A lot of the time they're men who typically need to achieve something kind of insane, and they will often do some pretty dark things or ab base themselves. You're so kind the way you're describing these people, and I don't think this is a secret, right?

This is well known, Jerry Lund guard and Fargo is the best example, but Little Bill and Boogie Nights as well. You seem to go to a place and you're acting that is both very hungry and motivated and also hapless and a little scared, but it's very alive. Do you connect with that quality at all as a person as well?

Is there a desperation in Bill Macy, the guy? Mm,

William H. Macy: not so much. [00:12:00] Perhaps when I was younger I was closer to that. But things have been going pretty well. I mean, it's hard to make it in this business and when you're making your living doing this, you get stronger.

Jordan Harbinger: Congrats on not killing your wife in this movie, by the way.

It can happen. Yeah. There was a late night talk show that you did, I don't know, 10 plus years ago. I wish I remembered the clip. It was like Colbert or something and, and he was saying something similar to Gabriel. Like you, you often play characters that, and you were like, yeah, they're losers, I think is what you said.

And I thought that was a funny way to look at it. 'cause you feel so bad for Little Bill and Boogie Nights. And finally there's like a shocking way that you handle that in the movie. And then in Fargo, of course, you teeter between feeling bad for the guy and being like, he is gonna put her in a wood chipper or something.

I don't know. You feel guilty almost feeling bad for the guy in that particular movie. Well,

William H. Macy: I've done very well with exactly what you just. Described. I'm not sure why, but I have a knack for making you root for someone who is despicable. Yeah, exactly. I think one of the things [00:13:00] in Fargo, I thought that what Jerry Lund guard was doing was saving his family.

I was fighting for my family against a despot father-in-law who was holding money away from my wife and my kids, so I was fighting the righteous fight. The other thing that I've done, which I think is a good trick, is never give up. And it's very compelling to watch someone. It doesn't matter what that person is doing, it's compelling to see someone who just keeps coming back and won't take no for an answer.

You find yourself rooting

Gabriel Mizrahi: for 'em. It's interesting, I even saw that in a very tiny moment in Soul On Fire, you walk away from the hospital room, maybe it's the first or second time you visited him, and maybe somebody's told you that he is not going to make it. This kid is not going to live. You walk away and your face falls and you go into some internal place where you're just turning over this very sad news, and then there's a nurse who calls you back and you paste on a smile and turn.

Maybe it's not a, the fireworks aren't as big as say a [00:14:00] Fargo, but there are those moments in your performances where even when, I imagine it's not necessarily in the script, you're still looking for ways to keep fighting or to keep looking for something, which makes for something very watchable, very compelling.

Are you looking for those moments? Yeah, I'm looking for

William H. Macy: the logic of. My argument and what it means to me to try to make it personal and also the reality, the situation, that moment. It's a made up moment. I'm glad you felt for it. 'cause the best moments are when you don't make it up. But it's something I know something about.

He was sad because the kid's gonna die and it upset him. But then a fan says, can I get my picture with you? You gotta put on a good face. 'cause that's what he does for a living. That's what I was doing.

Jordan Harbinger: I think I'm quoting you directly. You once said my favorite kind of actor is one. He or she just doesn't give a shit.

They don't care. It makes them bulletproof and it makes them magnificent. What is it about [00:15:00] not caring that makes a performer so compelling?

William H. Macy: It's an extension of what I've said. They won't take no for an answer. They don't care whether you don't like 'em for it or whether it's unflattering. They don't care.

They've got a goal. They're gonna go after it, irrespective of what people think of them. And it goes a little bit further. As an actor, it's hard not to want to please the director, your fellow actors, put your attention on them. How are they feeling about me? And it's liberating to put that down just to go, I know what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna do it. If you don't like it, fire me or cast someone else. I remember distinctly it was, it was around the Fargo time, but when I still had to audition for things and I decided to take the attitude of looking at the script, making a strong decision on what I thought the script was about and what my character was trying to [00:16:00] do.

And I would sort of announce it at the audition. And my attitude was, so if you think I'm wrong, I'm not your guy. And that's sort of that thing of not giving a. This is the way I would do it. If that's not right for you, we should get someone else.

Gabriel Mizrahi: But it's interesting because there are also moments in your performances where you choose not to do something.

And I think this is also very important to you from what I can tell. I think there was a moment you said that emotions are foreign to me. And you've said that emotional restraint and maybe even a kind of suppression is your go-to position, which is a smart one. You said if you don't know what to do, don't do anything.

Because that's something, when is it a performer's job to do something and when is it their job to do nothing or seemingly nothing? Well, you can't do nothing.

William H. Macy: But the truth of the matter is not only should you not do nothing, you can't do nothing because doing nothing is something, it speaks volumes. You put [00:17:00] a camera on someone you can see into their souls.

So one of the things that's fabulous about film, but you can even do it on stage, all you gotta do is think it. People will see it. You have to have faith in that, but people will see what you're thinking. I don't know how they do. Well, I know how they do because we're all very, very sensitive. It's a defense mechanism.

If someone's gonna hit you, you can feel it long before you know that there's violence here. And it's a defense mechanism. Yeah. When you don't know what to do, don't do anything 'cause worse that you make a decision and it's fake. It's not real. But that internal life can register on the face and Absolutely.

You can read it can. One time I was at Lincoln Center, we were in the new house, not the giant theater, but it's a big theater, and I was doing a play Gole and pre, and Greg Mosher was directing and he said I was going to see the great [00:18:00] Mike Nussbaum, fabulous actor. He was on his deathbed. And the director said, when you walk in.

You might play the smell when someone's really ill and just a sick room, you might play the smell. And I thought, okay, play the smell. Yeah. When you walk into a sick room, just react to the death has a smell. And he was close to death, but it was kind of a bear stage situation. So I had a long walk to get to his bed and I thought when I go in, I'll put my hand O over my nose, like it smells.

No, that's not good. I'll sniff. And I thought, no, I like the idea. I couldn't figure out how to do it. So I ignored it. I didn't do anything. And after the show, Felicity, my wife said, that bit you did about the smell. That was really good. You should keep that. I swear to you, I didn't do a thing. I just thought about it.

Jordan Harbinger: That's cool that she gave you that feedback. I [00:19:00] also have a wife and I would be a little scared to give her feedback on anything professional that she does, especially if it was a creative endeavor. So I wonder how you'd manage that in your relationship. Like, Hey, he's smart. Yeah, right. I wanted your opinion on this.

'cause I'm thinking, oh, Felicity, I saw your new movie. You know I, it was weird the way you did the like it's either that was great or I'm not saying anything

William H. Macy: at all. We talk the talk and walk the walk We met in the theater. We're both actors. We give each other notes, we read each other's scripts, we criticize each other.

We've gotten very good at being gentle and I think both of us have gotten good at, if it's not something you can do something with, don't say it. Don't try this at home. Kids.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But

William H. Macy: it's our relationship and yeah. I don't make a move without

Gabriel Mizrahi: running it by her. You said you don't recommend it, but it also sounds really nice to have a partner who's in the same world.

Oh, it so is, but what's hard about it is it just the sensitivity, it can blow up in your face.

William H. Macy: It can hurt people's feelings. [00:20:00] It's tough to take criticism.

Jordan Harbinger: Also, it's gotta be tougher, just the context, right? Like she's already annoyed that you left the garage open or something. And then it's, by the way, yeah, I didn't like this movie made and it's, oh, you wanna talk about that right now?

Let me tell you something, pal. You got

William H. Macy: it. I'll,

Jordan Harbinger: I'll pass on that

William H. Macy: spiral out of control. She did a film called Transamerica and I read it and I said, don't do this and you shouldn't do this. It's too small, it's too weird. And. She didn't take my advice and she got an Oscar nomination for Transamerica.

Jordan Harbinger: You're never living that one down.

William H. Macy: No. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Remember when you told me not to do the Transamerica gestures to the Oscar on the mantle? Maybe I'll skip your advice on this piece too.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I feel like I remember hearing a few years ago that you and Felicity were having a conversation about Shameless, maybe you were a few seasons in, and I think she said something like, what are your goals for next season?

And you said, oh, I hadn't thought about that. And then you were really grateful that she brought you back to some earlier stage of your artistry where every season you wanted to be working on something. It's true. Have you been able to [00:21:00] stay connected to that? Do you have to work to always have goals? How does that work with you?

That was the

William H. Macy: blessing of doing a series, and we did it over a decade. I got to go to work every day. I got my 10,000 hours in. I didn't do it until I was 50, unfortunately. But. I put down a lot of baggage stuff that I thought was important as a young actor. I had, I would stuff my wallet with fake IDs. I knew who was out that door and down the imaginary hallway.

I had names for them. I would create this whole world. And one day I thought, wonder what would happen if I didn't do that? And nothing happened because everything you need is right in front of you and it's on the page. And if it's not on the page, you're kind of in trouble. 'cause it's not our job. It's gotta be on the page.

I know that some roles, you have to do some research, you're gonna play a doctor, you know how to have to end. But those are, those are all external. When it comes to the acting, [00:22:00] it's on the page. Everything you need is there and it doesn't help to load yourself up. My experience is when I'm on set. To do the lines and do your blocking and work off the other person and be improvisatory.

My brain is maxed out. That's all I can do. I can't remember when Puffy, my dog got run over. I can't bring anything else. All I can do is that. That's the limit to my brain power. And so she asked, what are you gonna work on? And I thought, it sounds trite, but you've gotta really look and really listen.

Everybody says it. You gotta really look at someone and really listen. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna work on that. And this is what happened. This is really good because you can't just make the decision and do it. You've gotta remind yourself every time they say action, you gotta remind yourself, really look, really listen.

And I discovered that we would do a take and I would go, bill, come [00:23:00] on man. Really look and really listen. So the second take, I'd really look at people and really listen to them. And dollars to donuts. The actor would go, I'm sorry, I'm sky high. Uh, can we go again? They'd forget their lines. And I realized it's because I really looked at 'em and it put 'em off.

What's different here when I'm just looking at them in my actor way, there's nothing dangerous about that. But when someone really looks at you, it makes you self-conscious. Yeah. So what does it mean to really look and really listen? Really look, really look? The trick is don't just look at somebody. Look at his nose, look at your eyes, look at your countenance.

Really look, and you can do it. Even though you're doing seven performances a week, you can always really look and the extension of that is, okay, now do something with it. I see that you don't feel well or something, and we're all smart [00:24:00] people. We can all do it. You can put that into the improv that you're doing.

'cause what we do is improvise for a living. Even when you have lines, even when you have lines within a structure, but it should be an improvisation. It should be an unknown on the stage.

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So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course again, shenanigan free@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to William H. Macy. Earlier you were talking about you make a choice on how you're gonna do a specific role, and you've talked in the past about how you were born to play, the role of Jerry Lde, guard and Fargo, and how badly you wanted the role.

And you fought hard for that role. It says you crashed the audition. Actually, I don't know how you do that. I guess you can get away with it at some level. And you told Ethan and Joel Cohen, correct me if this is wrong, but you said that you, I will shoot your dog if you don't cast me in this role. Which they probably appreciated.

Just

William H. Macy: Ethan did. Thank God again, kids don't try this at home. It's not a good idea. You really

Jordan Harbinger: have to pull that one off.

William H. Macy: Yeah, I heard they liked me. I wasn't described in the script. It was a portly man with no hair. [00:28:00] And I'm not that, I just understood it. I just knew how to play it immediately. And it was a brilliant script.

One of the best they've ever written a great story. It's the Cohen Brothers. You know, it's popular for actors to say, well, you never know. You never know it. It's all blind. No, I knew that was going to be big. I knew it was gonna change my life. So when they went to New York to continue auditioning, I got my Jolly Lutheran as on an airplane and uh, walked in.

I said, I'm worried you're gonna screw up your movie by casting someone else

Gabriel Mizrahi: bold words. It worked. But you've also said that wanting a role that badly is a really dangerous thing for an actor. Why is that?

William H. Macy: The actors we love so much are the ones who don't give a shit. And when I started to book auditions more regularly, it's when I took that attitude of this is what I'm gonna do, take it or leave it.

Desperation is not a pleasant thing to behold,

Gabriel Mizrahi: but the character you're [00:29:00] portraying is very desperate. So there's some funny qualities that might have served, and it's interesting that the actor can't be desperate. The character can play desperate. You said something really interesting about acting, that you don't have to do a ton of heavy lifting in order to convince an audience that what you're doing is real and that it's meaningful.

You said that there's like a baked in buy-in with an audience. They spent money on the ticket. They left their home, they drove to the theater. They want to have an experience. And they want to go on a wild ride with the actor as you put it. So they end up doing a lot of that heavy lifting for you or with you.

So a lot of what you think about is good acting, like how does this character feel, or how would this character address you actually think that's wasted energy, which kind of fits with what you were talking about a moment ago about backstory and all of this extraneous information. So what is the actor's job ultimately?

Is it just the thing you're doing in that moment, the movement, the words, or is there more to it?

William H. Macy: There's a little more to it, but not much. Yes. It's to figure out [00:30:00] what I want from you, what I want, how I want this scene to go, what I want at the end of it, what's my objective, in other words. And then to improvise with whoever you're talking about.

Do it differently. Try to figure out what they want. And that's what gives it vari similitude because the audience sees what it's, especially on stage. If I want something from you and you've got this sour look on your face, I know I'm not gonna get it. And they know I'm not gonna get it. So if, if I don't plug that in somehow and try harder, figure out some way around it to get you off that position you're on, that's what makes acting.

'cause you see me dancing around trying to get what I want. It's the emotional stuff I think takes care of itself. Most people got into this business because they love throwing themselves into these situations. They feel things deeply. It's just the kind of [00:31:00] people that go into the job. They're show offs.

They don't mind if everyone's watching. It brings 'em to life rather than makes 'em self-conscious. And I've discovered that I'm really emotional. I'm Lutheran. I don't like emotions in my real life and I run away from them, but it turns out on stage I can be a blubbering baby. Oh my god. Felicity and I did a benefit in New York for the Atlantic Theater Company.

We read love letters.

Jordan Harbinger: Your own

William H. Macy: love letters is a ar gurney play.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. I was like, gosh, that's vulnerable. Yeah. Here's a love letter I wrote to my high school girlfriend,

William H. Macy: famous play.

Jordan Harbinger: You don't seem like the type. No, I don't wanna be

William H. Macy: vulnerable unless I'm somebody else. It's really a nice play. And I was blubbering like a baby.

I mean so much. I thought, you gotta clean this up. Every time we rehearsed it, the older I get, the more emotional I get. My daughters just love it. We watch TV [00:32:00] and the commercial comes on and a tear comes. Oh God, I'm that way too. Go. Are you crying? Yeah.

Gabriel Mizrahi: What's, what is that about? Do the walls come down more and more as you get up there?

I think as you get older,

Jordan Harbinger: I'm experiencing this, I had kids, my kids are three and six, and they unlock this part of your heart where you're like, oh, I don't know if I like this, but I, okay. It's there. I can't do anything about it. And I, it's sad 'cause I'll be in the car with my wife and she's, are you gonna keep crying when we get to dinner?

And I'm like, oh, you noticed? 'cause I'm thinking like, I'm getting away with this. The cat's in the cradles playing on the radio and I'm, I'm like, oh God, the AC is too much for my eyes. I know. It's gonna

William H. Macy: get worse,

Jordan Harbinger: man. Yeah. It's so frustrating because your grandfather was a Quaker. My grandfather was, I don't know, an angry German man, famous religion, angry old German man.

So it's just, I'm also not so comfortable. Maybe I should have become an actor, so if I get emotional, I can go, oh, I'm just, I'm rehearsing.

William H. Macy: Yeah. I'm rehearsing a role. There are those actors who are. There's a play at Atlantic Theater, by the way, that Ethan [00:33:00] Cohen wrote. It's called Let's Love and Aubrey Plaza Stars in the Thing, and she's as dry as a desert, but there's a lot churning in there and oh my Lord, it's the funniest play I've seen in a long time.

She's funny. And Ethan Cohen is funny, man.

Gabriel Mizrahi: It's, I recommend it highly. Speaking of funny you said that it's not the actor's job to be funny. It's the writer's job. That's a mammo quote. Yeah. You said also that Lord help us from funny acting. I can't abide it. I know. But then we know that there are actors who can be funny.

There are comedies. So what's the actor's job in creating funny moments?

William H. Macy: You

Gabriel Mizrahi: gotta

William H. Macy: know what's funny about it and there's a mechanics, a mechanical aspect to jokes. You gotta set it up. You gotta hit the punchline. What's more frustrating for a director when you get an actor who doesn't get what's funny?

And when they get to the punchline, they mumble it so nobody heard it. Or when they get to the [00:34:00] punchline, they turn up stage, you go, come on man. Use your brain. They gotta hear it and you gotta set it up. But when Saturday Night Live hit the air and was so wildly successful and launched so many careers, they started taking comics and putting them on television into all these shows.

And I was not a fan. I thought, even now when it's a comic, I can tell when the script ends and they just keep going because there's a joke and it's a good joke. And then there's a variation on the joke, and then there's a shading of the joke and it's that joke is done. But they keep on going because they thought they had to be funny.

The best jokes are done dryly. And the best jokes are when you don't see them coming and you don't tell a joke in a funny way. You tell the joke, you set it up, and the

Gabriel Mizrahi: punchline is unexpected. [00:35:00] Also, sometimes when the character doesn't know it's funny. I think that's part of what's so funny about the Cohen Brothers.

When I think about Jerry Lund guard, a lot of the comedy comes from the fact that this is not funny to him. He's clueless, but it's funny to us. Yeah. And through the magic of the way they shot the movie and the language of the shots and everything that you're seeing this ridiculous drama play out. It's funny to us, but to everyone in this situation, it's dead serious.

Oh yeah. So you almost, I imagine, have to turn off the part of your brain that's aware that there's comedy, there's a layer of comedy to this. No. You gotta know what's funny.

William H. Macy: You gotta

Gabriel Mizrahi: know. So that's still on

William H. Macy: your mind. There's a mechanical aspect to it. Neil Simon's a perfect example. He's a genius at putting, uh, two jokes per page.

And a lot of times you start laughing before he hits the joke. Oh yeah, he just, he trains you his rhythm. There's something funny happening and you're just, you're waiting for it. And there's some mechanics to doing comedy. Not everybody can do it,

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:00] dear, earlier, but one of those scenes in Fargo, I think that had it.

My mom rented this on VHS, so the first time I saw it, I was probably maybe on the line of too young to have watched this, but my mom didn't fully understand what it was about. Somebody said, you've gotta see this. It's incredible. That was correct. What they didn't say is, watch it with your 11-year-old son.

One of the scenes that I remember my mom laughing hysterically, which surprised me was there's a woman with a bag over her and she's running around trying to get away, and there's a wood chipper with blood splattered all over the snow. And my mom's laughing like a maniac, and I'm thinking, what is happening right now in my living room?

A minute ago, she's horrified by this and now she's just cracking up with this woman who's clearly like about to get thrown in a wood chipper and we're all laughing and then we're like, are we supposed to laugh at this part? I don't know if we were supposed to laugh at this part. Those

William H. Macy: are the best laughs.

Yeah. Why do we always think of the funniest things to say at a funeral? Yeah, it just happens because it's so inappropriate.

Jordan Harbinger: And I remember my mom looking at me like almost [00:37:00] ashamed. Like, this isn't really funny. I don't know why I'm laughing, and you should also not laugh and maybe we should turn this off.

You know? It was like one of those moments and as an adult I go, they designed that scene so brilliantly so that everybody would feel that way. Oh yeah. Gelt laughing. I shouldn't laugh, but God, that's a funny scene. They're walking around with the wood chipper and the bag over her head and everything. It creates that weird effect.

It's like a pull in your heart where you're like, God, I'm dying laughing. It's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah, and you feel it's not quite Gelt, it's just like a tension in your body that only genius, like these guys can, it's the

William H. Macy: juxtaposition of the reality with the absurdity. It's kind of a rule. Mike Nichols always said, if you want people to cry, get 'em laughing first and then get the phone call if you want people to laugh, put it at a funeral when it's really sad and then drop the punchline.

Jordan Harbinger: There were a couple of those in the film yesterday as well. I mean the one in the beginning where he is vomiting 'cause he's so nervous and you think what's about to happen? And then he goes in as a [00:38:00] group of like six girl scouts that are all under eight years old or 10 years old and you like

Gabriel Mizrahi: the pull from that is just, it's funny.

It's well done. I'm just thinking about something you said a moment ago that you think of so much of, or maybe all of your acting as improvisation, but you've also worked with some writers who are incredibly precise and controlled. Mamet and the Cohen brothers in their own way are very. Specific about pausing and repeating this word and the cadence and the musicality of the lines, like they are just very militant in some ways about how the writing should go.

How does that meet your instinct for having these improvisational moments with your actors? First

William H. Macy: of all, I've only done Fargo with the Cohen brothers, but I think both Dave Mammot and Joel and Ethan, they're not precious about their lines. They're not precious about it at all. I've never seen Dave. As a matter of fact, I've heard Dave say, oh, you keep saying that this [00:39:00] way.

I must have wrote it wrong. He's not precious.

Gabriel Mizrahi: That is not the impression you

William H. Macy: get when you read the plays. No. Yeah, not at all. What it is is that when the Cohen brothers write a script like Fargo, all the actors memorized it absolutely perfectly because it's brilliant. Ad lib something better than that.

You should be a writer. It doesn't get any better than that. Two actors who've done American Buffalo will start singing the lines to each other. They literally feel good. It's like humming a pop tune that you just love. They feel good to say they've got rhythm and music to them, and they're so funny. And Joel and Ethan, they're perfect.

You find that one word. You think there's 10 words you could put here. That word is perfect. So I think it's the actors who did that, and Dave's famous for saying the words are gibberish. They don't mean anything until you say 'em. They don't mean anything. [00:40:00] I've heard him say that. I heard an actor come up to him and said, I'm really uncomfortable about this scene.

Dave said, you are. I'm so happy for you. And walked away. 'cause his thing is, you better be uncomfortable about the scene. Or I wrote it wrong. They're not precious. It's us. We want to say it 'cause it's that good.

Jordan Harbinger: In an old interview, you said that in Hollywood people, for the best of intentions, they try to improve your script until it's a wreaking pile of shit.

It happens all the time. Yeah. These are quotes from you, man. Don't look at me. Is there a version of that for actors where they try and fine tune you until it sucks? Yeah. Yeah. They ad-lib

William H. Macy: and they don't learn the lines and I don't like it. I don't like it. My friend Steven Cha and I used to do movies of the week.

Remember those? We did a bunch of 'em. We did about a dozen of them and I was on set one time and there was this woman just launch. I was just acting in it too. She'd just launch off into this stuff. She'd sort of paraphrase it and start called it first over and I said, does she know [00:41:00] I wrote this? It's your name's on the thing.

And I put up with it for a while and I finally said, do you write. And she said, you know, I do. I do. And I said, I think you should write, but until you do, will you knock, get the fuck off and say the lines, I wrote this and I'm better than you. She was not amused.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I was gonna ask how she reacted to that.

Yeah, that's that question. She

William H. Macy: stopped. She knocked it off. She stopped.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You said in the first half of your career you were an angry artist. Just pissed off all the time and it didn't help. You said that you took yourself too seriously. What were you angry about besides her not reading the freaking lines,

William H. Macy: which seems reasonable.

I think it came from fear because I wanted to be good and youth,

Jordan Harbinger: you don't strike me as angry now, that's for sure.

William H. Macy: I credit shameless. I got to go to work every day for a decade and I learned that finally. Okay, this scene's not very good. There's another scene. Okay, we blew this episode. I didn't like it, but there's another episode I didn't like this year, [00:42:00] but there's another year.

There's always something else. The other thing that I finally embraced is that it's anarchy. When people don't do their jobs, it's not the actor's job to direct or to coach the other actors. Every time I would do it, I would get in the director's face about the shot or something like that. I could count on it.

I wasn't acting very well. 'cause that's a full-time job and it's such a bore when people don't do their jobs and wanna do other people's jobs.

Jordan Harbinger: That's an interesting way to look at it. I think you'd mentioned I didn't learn how to act until I did Shameless, which weren't you like not doing you a favor here.

Sorry about that. Weren't you like 60 when that was going on? So your first credit was 33 years before that and you're like, ah, I finally learned how to act. What do you mean by that? That can't be true.

William H. Macy: Everybody comes to this with a certain amount of talent and that's God-given I had technique. I didn't refine it.

I [00:43:00] didn't make it part of me, and I didn't trim it up so that it's efficient until I got to my 10,000 hours on the stage. It really helped. I just put down a lot of baggage, figured out what's important. I had more fun and I had pissed off fewer people. I was rough on shameless. If it was a bogus scene, I spoke up, but I did it the proper way.

I would call John Wells or I would call the writer, or I talked to the director, but I finally embraced the idea of he used to get pissed off if I saw a movie and it was bad. Now I realize they didn't make it bad. They did the best they could. It just didn't work. Don't be mad at them. They're not purposefully making something bad.

Now I can go to the theater. I used to have a rough time going to the theater. 'cause if it wasn't great, apparently I'm moan. So no one would go with me to the theater. Just

Jordan Harbinger: loud, actual moaning during [00:44:00] the Wow. Yeah, I would moan. Oh

William H. Macy: man. But now I love going to the theater. We go to Broadway every time we get to New York and it's not good.

It's okay,

Gabriel Mizrahi: I gotta say it. It's inspiring to hear that as an actor, you could evolve so significantly later in your career. You sort of think about things developing a lot, maybe twenties, thirties, and then they become fixed. But you've also said that people don't fundamentally change or that they don't change much.

And when people change, it's only when there's absolutely no alternative. I think if I understand you correctly, you feel that the big task of living this life is accepting ourselves that regret and Gelt are not useful emotions and that the past is just not fixable. So why worry about it? But then I'm also hearing that you've clearly evolved a lot.

Did you feel that there was no alternative? I chose

William H. Macy: the easiest path I discovered. I think as most people do, there's an easier way to do this. And what I was talking about people don't [00:45:00] change is that you read it. Regrets and things like that. I think we have to accept ourselves. The Catholics say you're cooked by the time you're eight.

Eight, eight. Yeah. That's not very, it's pretty young. And it might be earlier than that. When my daughters were born, it was astounding. They were women in full at 1-year-old. They have traits that they still have and they were so original. Same cook, same ingredients, same kitchen, but they're completely different women.

I don't know. I think it happiness comes from accepting who we are. There's somebody wrote a book, Malcolm Gladwell, maybe.

Jordan Harbinger: I was gonna ask if you're a fan. 'cause you mentioned 10,000 hours a few times. Yeah. This guy either has read Gladwell a lot or this is a thing that's floating around the zeitgeist.

William H. Macy: No, I read that one.

The way we deal with school, we go, you're good in English, but you've got terrible math scores, so we gotta double down and put you in more math classes. And this guy said, that's stupid. [00:46:00] You should do what you're good at.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

William H. Macy: And get somebody else to do your math for you.

Jordan Harbinger: It's true. Yeah. We do a lot of interviews on the shows.

You might guess whenever you look at people who are mediocre. They tried to refine their weaknesses instead of working on their strengths, they spent a lot of time like, oh yeah, gotta take more math class. Oh, now I'm in honors math. You're still really bad at it, so you gotta work extra hard. Get tutors in math and people who are really good at stuff.

My neighbor, one of my buddies was a quarterback on an NFL Championship Super Bowl winning team. And I said, what was school like for you? And he goes, I don't remember. I just did football. And I was like, oh, that actually makes a lot of sense. You are good at football, so you focused on football. And here I'm like, I worked on all the crap I hated so that I could get Cs in it.

And why did I do that again? So that I would be the most middle of the road guy? And that was a weird plan. What were we thinking with that?

William H. Macy: Well, I did that in spades. I went to a liberal arts school and spent three semesters there, got my grades back. It was a c. [00:47:00] I thought, if that's the best I can do, I'm gonna go smoke dope and live in Washington dc, which I did.

Why DC? Because my buddy moved there and I grew up in Cumberland, Maryland, and we went to Washington or Baltimore to get in trouble, and then my parents started putting the full court press for me to go back to school. So I went to Goddard College up in Plainfield, Vermont of all hippie schools. This was the hippiest of the hippie schools, so you still could smoke pot, that's all you had to do.

No grades, no tests, no requirements. You created your own curriculum. Half the people who went there quit. They couldn't take it. They thought they wanted that freedom, but imploded the other half created what they wanted to do and this guy showed up. His name was David Mamet. He had been there. All we did was theater all day and sometimes all day and all night that we didn't have to do another thing except theater.

Jordan Harbinger: That kind of unordered freedom is pretty cool if you know what to [00:48:00] do with it. When I got into podcasting for example, it was like all I wanted to do, all I wanted to think about. And I remember my friends were like, you're taking this hobby pretty seriously. This hobby no one cares about 'cause it's 2006.

And what are podcasts again? They go on your iPod. What's that? I think I saw that on tv. It was that and I was just obsessed with it. And I remember I was luckily in law school where you're supposed to do a lot of things, but people aren't holding your hand anymore and the consequences are yours to enjoy or whatever.

It's not for everyone because some people just go, oh, I'm just gonna not do anything. Now they can do everything. Did you get your law degree? I did. I became a law, a corporate finance attorney in New York, speaking of diving in headfirst onto things that are not your strong suit. I was like, I'm gonna be the best overachiever in the field that I don't want to be in.

And then I did that and then I went, why the hell did I do this?

William H. Macy: I can't tell you how many actors I know who I law degrees.

Jordan Harbinger: You know what law school is? Are you a person who does what you're told and you can excel in that you should go to law school, not [00:49:00] because you wanna be a lawyer, forget all that.

It's because you can do the thing really well and then you go and you do that and you go, oh wait, I have to be a lawyer now. No thanks. I'm gonna join community theater. Oh, I actually like this. I can excel at anything, not just the school stuff. And then we all go, can I get a refund on that $300,000 tuition?

William H. Macy: No, you

Jordan Harbinger: can't. Unfortunately not. You better make a Fargo so you can pay off your law school loans. That's the motivation. You get that burning behind you.

William H. Macy: That's a good idea. Your kids are choosing creative paths as well. My youngest, George's pre-law, she's working at a HO firm in New York and taking the LSATs and I don't know what kind of law she wants to go into, but she's loving it.

And my other daughter. Sophia is in the tribe. She's an actor and she's doing pretty well. She's got this film called Brian coming out, which I've seen. It's really adorable. She talked me into doing a scene, so I got to see a cut.

Jordan Harbinger: That's pretty cool. If you can get a an A-list [00:50:00] actor in your, is it a student film?

William H. Macy: It's a micro budget

Jordan Harbinger: that's even better. Like, Hey, do you think you can get your dad to do a scene? I don't know. We'll see.

Gabriel Mizrahi: I'm glad I did it. Was there any part of you that wanted to steer her away from the industry?

William H. Macy: No. It's a great way to make a living. I've had the best time and the best people. I just love theatrical people.

They may be full of shit, but they're never boring. They're just delightful.

Jordan Harbinger: I think you called actors, you were doing some directing. You said, what a bunch of loons. These people are unhinged. Oh my God.

William H. Macy: First time I directed, I thought, are we really that insane? And self-absorbed. You said as

Jordan Harbinger: well. These are your words, not mine.

William H. Macy: What's the old joke? What are you doing, Hamlet? What's it about? It's about this messenger. Who, uh,

Gabriel Mizrahi: and did that change the way you act when you started directing? Um, no,

William H. Macy: I'm not a very good director. I did three. One of 'em turned out pretty [00:51:00] well, and I did a couple episodes of Shameless and I did really well on those.

I think I'm gonna try it again. It's on my bucket list To direct something that's successful. I've heard that it's better when it's successful.

Jordan Harbinger: Probably feels better. Yeah, the pay is better. You said you can't listen to everything. Actors wanna change about their characters because it would take all the drama out of the script.

Why

William H. Macy: is that? It's our job to fall in love with our character and to do our character's bidding and to make sure our character wins or never give up. Trying to make your character win. So if you read something that's unflattering to your character, there's a tendency to go, I don't like this moment. And if you do that too much, you're gonna take all the drama out of the thing.

It's all the conflict out. Yeah. I told directors, you can't listen to the actors except for me. You should listen to me. That's what I tell 'em.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Goes back to the mammoth thing. Right? Oh, you're uncomfortable. Great. [00:52:00] Yeah. That is the point. Exactly. You're playing a character. Let's not take all the bones out of this.

Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: Macy said the best actors don't care what people think. I'm not quite there yet, so here's something. I do care about paying the bills. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Cook Unity Cooking. Not my forte, actually. It's pronounced Fort, but whatever. But eating. I like that. At one point, Jen and I hired a personal chef.

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Now for the rest of my conversation with William H. Macy, I wonder what the oddest or funniest place you've ever been recognized like surely it happens at airports and things like that, but someplace that maybe you didn't expect it. I'll give you an example why you think I was in New York somewhere near Times Square and I really had to go to the bathroom, and I asked this office building if I could use the restroom, and they were like, you don't look like the kind of person who's gonna make a mess or whatever.

And they could see the desperation in my face, right? So I go into the bathroom and this guy pulls up next to me in the next urinal and I casually look over to do the nod or whatever, and I realized it's Regis Philbin. And I said, oh H hi. And he goes, Hey, how you doing? Like overly energetic and Regis Philbin.

How? Yeah. How you doing man? He's eat on your

William H. Macy: shoes.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. You realize he's like up to your nipples or whatever. He is a small guy, but his personality was so crazy large and he was very talkative. And I was like, what building is this? And it was probably where they were shooting the show and he was in the [00:57:00] middle and I thought, wow, I'm really lucky that they let me in here because a lot can go wrong if you let some schmo onto your live set.

William H. Macy: Right? My pity The tourists who have to pee. Yeah. In New York. Ugh.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah. You wonder why the back alley smell like pee. The reason is because there's a lawyer somewhere who's, look, I'm six blocks away from my office. I gotta go.

William H. Macy: I got no choice. Yeah. I get recognized a good bit. Shameless is out there and it's still out there.

I went with a family. We rode horses across Akia in Kenya. I got in, recognized in Kenya a bit. I thought that was pretty cool. And with some of the guys from Woody Creek Distillery, I have, uh, I work with a distillery in Colorado and having the best time. But we went on a motorcycle trip. We went from Rome up through the boot of Italy into the Alps and then ended up at this big liquor show in Berlin and we're walking along in some little place.

I was with my mates and this woman pushing a baby carriage [00:58:00] Frank, and we had beers in her. She wanted a picture, so she held my beer wallet.

Jordan Harbinger: That stuff's gotta be kind of fun when, when it's not disruptive to your life, it's gotta be quite fun. Actually, I remember I saw you once, in fact, I forgot you ride motorcycles.

That just reminded me. I was on Le Brea driving when I used to live in LA and I looked at my rear view mirror and I was like, this guy on the triumph is really close to my car. And I said. He's wearing a helmet, but I swear that's William H. Macy. And then sure enough, my friend and I said, do you think that's William H. Macy behind us?

And he looked in the mirror and he is like, oh, definitely. So did you own a triumph by any chance? Like Yeah, that was me. That was it. I was

William H. Macy: too

Jordan Harbinger: close to

William H. Macy: your

Jordan Harbinger: car. I just was worried. 'cause it was like a new car and I thought like motorcycle, it could be dangerous person. And I was like, no, that's actually a, that's William H. Macy.

William H. Macy: I don't get it, man. My wife was one of the original Desperate Housewives. It was the biggest thing. She was on the cover of Time Magazine. We went to Paris one time when she was doing that show. And it's the only time we've had bodyguards. [00:59:00] The Parisians lost their mind really over Felicity. And now she walks down the street.

Every once in a while she gets recognized. I'm wearing my motorcycle helmet, you can see this much of me. And I get Frank.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I don't get it. It's the something with the eyes and you are very recognizable. And they use them a lot in film too, probably for every actor, but. Especially for you, I feel like, and with her maybe, I don't know.

You never know. Right. But the helmet on, there's something that identifies you. It's weird to me to hear that the Parisians were so aggressive. 'cause you think if there's a country where they're gonna at least pretend not to give a shit just to spite you. I don't care. Paris is the place.

William H. Macy: Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Oh, is that Barack Obama?

No. Whatever. I'm gonna pretend I don't even notice him.

William H. Macy: Yeah. Bears for you. This French is terrible. Yeah. They lost their minds. We go into a restaurant, we look out the window, there's 50 people.

Jordan Harbinger: Geez. Wow. Parisians are actually much friendlier than I thought. I was surprised when I went there. Everyone said, they're [01:00:00] gonna be really rude.

It's gonna be really dirty. I forget what the other one was. They don't like Americans. And everyone was like, where are you from? Oh America. I wanna practice my English. And I thought, okay, I've been misled. I've been lied to about this place. It was as friendly as a Midwestern town.

William H. Macy: No, but close

Jordan Harbinger: people were sitting with us and asking us, it was not, I thought it would be ruder than New York.

Wasn't even close. It really reminded me of, I grew up in Michigan, so like they actually did care. They weren't just being friendly. They weren't getting tipped extra. They just wanted to practice there. I couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. You're right, it's probably not Fargo, North Dakota, but it, it didn't even have a big city vibe as far as the people are concerned.

William H. Macy: Yeah. New York is singular, isn't it? It's, I actually love it. What's the joke? The old couple from Colorado or in Times Square and they've lost their way and the old lady goes up to a traffic cop and says, excuse me, could you tell us where the Empire State Building is? Or should we just go fuck ourselves?

Jordan Harbinger: If you hadn't made it as an actor, what do you think you would've [01:01:00] ended up doing? Or is that a terrifying question? Yeah, probably

William H. Macy: carpentry or something like that. I like that. I like that a lot. Oh, that's right. I'm a terrible carpenter, but I've got a killer shop. In Colorado.

Gabriel Mizrahi: Carpentry and motorcycles

William H. Macy: then?

Yeah, and whiskey. And whiskey. I like whiskey a lot. The whole process I find very romantic. We invented distilling 2000 years ago. We don't even know who did. It might have been the Sumerians. Some people say the Egyptian, some people say this woman, Sarah, the Jewish, or something like that. She was trying to make gold out of silver, and I joke she didn't do that, but her company parties were legendary,

Jordan Harbinger: accidentally inventing booze instead of gold or silver as a good second place.

Oh yeah. Hey, bad news, no jewelry. The good news, you won't care. Yeah. Once you taste this, when artists ask you for advice, what do you tell them? [01:02:00]

William H. Macy: Actors? Yeah, it's usually site specific. It's usually about audition and how to audition or I like it when. Actors talk about what we do for a living.

Interestingly, it's sort of verboten on a set. You don't get into that stuff, but I like it. We never talk about each other's work too. I think it started before Shameless, but I like to go up to people after the scene is over and if it was good, I like to tell 'em it was good.

Jordan Harbinger: Why verboten? You mentioned something is verboten to talk about with other actors.

William H. Macy: Sometimes we talk about craft, but you don't talk about the film that you're making or the play that you're doing. Oh really? That's not true In plays. We do talk about it a lot 'cause you got four or five weeks, two or three weeks and you're sitting around all day. And y yeah, you talk about the play and the different characters.

But in a film for some reason we know we don't talk about that. Not

Jordan Harbinger: [01:03:00] much. Do you think there are principles that lead to success in the industry? Or is, is a lot of it capitalizing on luck and other opportunities? A lot

William H. Macy: of

Jordan Harbinger: luck.

William H. Macy: Don't give up. I think a strong technique helps, but mostly it's luck. It's a big industry.

There's a lot of

Gabriel Mizrahi: room for a lot of different types. Do you still feel that way, even though people are talking about the death or the crisis, let's say, of independent film and more human driven stories? Does that worry you as an actor who's done so much meaningful, intimate human drama this moment in the industry,

William H. Macy: there are more indies than you would think, and they're on the rise and soul on Fire is gonna be released in a couple of thousand theaters.

It's unusual. It's very unusual, and I think it's gonna do well. Last night was triumphant. We were at the Powell Theater, which is jaw dropping.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That place was, I was not ready for that. And it was full. It was full of people you were [01:04:00] probably in earlier, but. When we went in, it was like, oh, I can't move in here.

I mean, it was just as to elbow packed. 2300 people were there. I think someone said something

William H. Macy: like that. I think it was sold out.

Jordan Harbinger: That's like going to a massive concert. I mean, you could just not fit in there. It was,

William H. Macy: can

Jordan Harbinger: you believe? Believe it. Unbelievable. For

William H. Macy: a film, for an independent film

Jordan Harbinger: in St. Louis, Missouri.

Half the town must have come out for this thing. And you know what else? I loved everyone dressed up. They did. We felt like a-holes, right? Because we're like, what's the dress code for the premiere? And whoever it was was like, Hey, just respectable. So we're like, okay, fine. Leather jacket, black slacks, little button down.

We show up and it's like black bow ties. And I'm like, dang. We definitely look like the turds from LA who flew in to come to this premiere.

William H. Macy: The older I get come on, the more it means something to me. I go to these fancy restaurants and there are these. Dumb asses and sweatpants with a baseball cap on backwards in a Michelin restaurant.

I think Get outta here. Go grow up [01:05:00] a little bit.

Jordan Harbinger: It's sort of, I shouldn't admit this, but it detracts from my experience. 'cause I'm like, I'm here to be pretentious and enjoy this in a hoity-toity way. And you're not playing along, pal.

William H. Macy: Yeah, I love decorum. I

Gabriel Mizrahi: think we gotta get back to that, but the response to the movie last night was very touching.

William H. Macy: That was something,

Gabriel Mizrahi: and it sounds like it's gonna resonate with a lot of people. I don't think we got to talk about what drew you to this project and how you ended up in this movie. I like the

William H. Macy: script. Here's my thing. I try to read a script in one sitting and I skip the stage direction, so I just read the dialogue.

If you get lost, go back and read where it is. But stage directions are just the bane of my existence. They're nonsense usually. Half a page on the trees and how the wind is blowing. She's a girl, but not just any girl. She's the kind of girl that you would've gone out with if your dad hadn't taken the keys away from your car.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah,

William H. Macy: because you got a D in math. Well act that or put a costume on it. You [01:06:00] can't. So I read it in one sitting, and if you skip over the stage directions, you can see the film in real time, in your mind's eye. It's pretty easy to decide. And it made me cry and it made me emotional. And I loved Jack Buck.

I loved the enigma of him, that it wasn't spelled out why he was there and why he does that. And I love that. And the only thing that was daunting is that he's beloved by millions of people and he's in the Hall of Fame, he's in the Baseball Hall of Fame in the Broadcaster's Hall of Fame, and he's really known.

So I thought it was important that I do something of a lookalike. Last night as I watched the film, I should have gone all in with his voice, but I didn't. I did a little bit, but not a lot. But I just did that big shock of white hair, which is his signature. Sean, the director, he agreed with me. You don't wanna give people, you don't [01:07:00] wanna have them get bumped out of the story because they go, that's not Jack Buck.

That's not what he looks like and they accept it. It's what we were talking about character before. Character is a trick. We play on the audience with their endorsement. They pay a lot of money to be tricked. Just like when you watch a magician, you don't want him to show you how you did it. You want 'em to astound you.

So give me an Herman robe and a crown and put me on the throne and just tell people I'm the king and that's it. Until I give them a reason to doubt it, I'm the king. They're ready to, to go along with this. That was a lovely place to end this interview.

Jordan Harbinger: It is a good place to put it down.

Gabriel Mizrahi: And pretty much right on time.

This is great. Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Oh, good. Thank you for that. We got to talk about every single thing that we wanted to talk to you about and more.

William H. Macy: No. Good.

Jordan Harbinger: It's a fun interview. Definitely clicked well. You'll be able to find Soul on Fire in a bunch of theaters coming out actually out already. As far as I understand it.

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