It is true that I did not hesitate about choosing Fargo for the source of today’s image. (Though I did waver over several facial expressions.) It is also true that, at varying times in my awareness of William H. Macy, I would not have hesitated over choosing several different roles. When I first became aware of him, it would have been Dr. Morgenstern from ER—I actually just called him Dr. Morgenstern for a couple of years. And then I saw Mystery Men, and he became the Shoveler. (He shovels well!) That one only lasted for a few months, though, because I saw Fargo in the week the dorms opened the fall after having seen Mystery Men in the theatre, and there’s just no competition.
This is not to say that Macy hasn’t done an enormous range of roles, in a long list of movies I love. I count at least fifteen movies he’s been in that I like, including several I’d legitimately call great, and six TV shows. Plus he narrates Curious George, which my son likes. And it’s definitely not a case of, “Ugh, that guy again.” He brings something to each role, even if it’s only distracting me enough by letting me run scenes from other things in my head, as is the case with Curious George.
I think it’s his Normal Guy demeanor that makes him so successful in a lot of these roles. The Shoveler, for example, is a dull suburban husband by day (in a completely unremarked-on biracial relationship, note) and a crime fighter by night. He’s in perfect agreement with his wife that his superheroing has its issues, but it’s what he loves, and he continues to do it. Jerry Lundegaard is essentially the character you’d figure the Coens developed after reading the phrase “The Banality of Evil” and deciding to see what that looked like in Minnesota. He is only very briefly in Room, but it’s mostly I think there to make you consider how you’d react to being in his situation and how well—or badly—you’d process what happened.
Could anyone but Macy give the “egg salad” speech from Mystery Men? I ask you. I keep going back to that role, but I think it’s underrated. As is The Cooler, as is Pleasantville, as is The Sessions. It’s almost as though one way to get the best notice you can for a certain kind of movie is to cast William H. Macy and hope the rest of the movie takes care of itself. I’m actually surprised he hasn’t done more with the Coens, because his sensibility is great for them. They cast well. I grant you I’m having a hard time thinking of a Coens role where he would’ve done better than who they had cast, but why isn’t he one of the writers at least in Hail, Caesar! where he would have given a tiny performance that would have made everyone happy?
He’s no longer just a Hey, It’s That Guy, but he is one of our best-known character actors. He’s been married for not-quite twenty years, in a relationship with his wife for fifteen before that. The Simpsons writers acknowledge that he would be Ned Flanders in any live-action version of the show. He seems like a down-to-Earth guy just as a person, not even just as an actor. I think I’d like him if I met him, which I think is probably the secret to his acting as well as his personality. He’s William H. Macy, and we are lucky to have him. The way he acts, though, you figure he’d be astonished if you told him that.
