No one in the Northeast or Midwest will shed a tear for William H. Macy when he complains about the cold while filming the beloved 1998 film Pleasantville… in Malibu.
But let’s hear him out. He was shooting a memorable scene in which his character, George Parker, comes home one night to find his wife missing and no dinner waiting for him.
“It was two nights of shooting in Malibu in January. It was freezing,” Macy shared during a 2018 Role Recall interview about the fantasy comedy, which hit theaters 25 years ago on October 23, 1998. “And I had never seen so many rain trees. They had these massive construction cranes, about three of them, holding pipes as big as this room, pumping thousands of gallons of water. They had even built a street, so I could walk almost a whole block. But as soon as I stepped out of the house, my underwear and I were completely drenched in seconds. The rain was coming down so hard, I froze to death. We did take after take after take, and I screamed so much that I lost my voice. It turned into a scene out of [King] Lear. I was on my knees, screaming for my dinner.”
However, when Macy attended the film’s premiere, where and Reese Witherspoon starred as siblings magically transported to a black-and-white 1950s sitcom, the actor was in for a surprise.
“Gary was behind me, and he tugged on my coat and said, ‘Oh, I had to trim up that scene,'” Macy revealed. “So, I watched the film. I walk out of the house, I look up and say, ‘Where’s my dinner?’ Cut! That’s it. The rest of the scene never made it into the movie.”
Macy’s soaking wet experience was not the most challenging moment for him on set.
“In the script, my character looks at his wife and sheds a tear, revealing color,” the 73-year-old actor reminisced about the scene where he and Joan Allen’s Betty undergo an awakening. “That’s when my character starts to come to life. It was a crucial scene, and a pivotal moment that required an elaborate setup. Gary had every filmmaking tool imaginable to shoot this. … I went to Gary and said, ‘I can do this, but I can’t do it all day. You have to let me know when the money shot is. I can make myself cry, but it’s not my strong suit. So tell me when we get to it.’ Gary responded, ‘Okay, let’s just hear it. Let’s just read the lines.’
“And just like that, I burst into tears and cried for 12 hours straight. I simply couldn’t stop crying all day,” Macy recalled with a pause. “I suppose I had some deep-seated issues.”
