I asked William H. Macy a question

Edit: The movie name was "The Deal", not "The Plan".
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Just for the record, I realize the photos below might not match up with the specific text that they're supposed to. The formatting I used when composing this blog seems to get messy, photo-wise, given that the borders/margins are different in the editor than here on sonicplague.com or the blogspot site. Gotta work on that.

I still owe what will be another longish entry about the New York Film Critics movie series we've been attending for the past seven Wednesdays, but in the short term, a quick note about last night's events.

The film shown was "The Deal", starring William Macy and the carved remains of what used to be Meg Ryan. It's an indie, though a pretty big budget one, by the looks of it. Long story short, Macy's a suicidal filmmaker who sweet talks his way into making a $100 million film starring LL Cool J, an action hero who has recently turned to Judaism. Sure, why not.

Anyway, I'll give details of the actual film later on (it's probably not worth seeing). The special guest for the evening, though, was Mr. Macy himself, which was very exciting. He's a real deal movie star, and I've always appreciated his work, even if he himself is better than the majority of the movies he's in.

After the film, Peter Travers (the Rolling Stone film critic) opened the Q&A up to the audience and I was the first to raise my hand for a question. Thus, I was the first to get the microphone. I stood up and said (this is almost verbatim, because - believe me - I rehearsed it in my head several times before asking it aloud):

"First of all, I'd like to thank Mr. Macy for being here with us tonight."

(Appropriate audience applause. To this point, I'm KILLING!)

"Your performance in 'Fargo' is one of my personal all-time favorites, but what I really appreciate about your work is that you tend to take unusual roles, or roles that might be as obvious as others. That's why I got excited to see, when I looked on IMDB.com, and I hope this is true, that you're attached to appear in 'House of Re-Animator'. Is this true, and, if so, how did you get involved with it?"

That's right. Mr. Big-Shot movie star comes to New Jersey and what's he hit with in the very first question - his wife, a star of "Desperate Housewives"? His Academy Award nomination? The movie we just saw?

Nope. A question about a film that's not even being shot yet. The fourth sequel in a series based on an H.P. Lovecraft story about zombified re-animated corpses.

I think I threw him off a little bit. If you knew the audience at this film series - mostly older (Nicole and I are probably 20-30 years younger than 90% of the attendees), mostly affluent - you'd know that the question was even funnier, because NOBODY there knows what the "Re-Animator" is. And if they saw it, they'd be horrified.

Mr. Macy laughed and started talking a bit about his long-time friendship with director Stuart Gordon, who asked him if he'd be interested in playing the President of the United States (who dies and is brought back to life).

Peter Travers stepped in and sort of re-directed the question to something about David Mamet, trying to bring the audience back into things, but Mr. Macy was a trooper and told a couple of anecdotes, and then pretty much just re-iterated, to conclude my question, that he was doing it because he was friends with the director.

It wasn't a great answer, but then again, it wasn't exactly a great question, either.

But how often do you get to ask an Oscar nominee a question about being in a zombie movie?

I kick ass.

And so does William H. Macy, a genuinely cool guy.