A Fart Ruined One Of Paul Thomas Anderson's Impressive Long Takes In Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson was 26 years old when he, in the words of Ebby Calvin LaLoosh, announced his presence with authority. "Boogie Nights" was as familiar as it was revolutionary. Any kid who'd received an unofficial film school degree via their local movie theaters, video stores, and whatever pay cable channels to which their parents subscribed were fluent in Anderson's heightened cinematic language. We knew every reference, every lifted technique, and were certain that this brilliantly bratty mash note to the moving image would change the medium forever. A whole generation of young filmmakers suddenly had license to tell stories in their heavily referential yet deeply personal manner. For better or worse, we saw the world through the lens of a camera and/or the flickering light of a movie theater projector. We lived, we loved, we got our hearts broken and our asses kicked, and we were determined to tell our stories on the big screen.

Only less than .1% of us succeeded, but the Gen Xers that broke through (e.g. Anderson, Edgar Wright, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and Wes Anderson) knocked out some of the best films of the last 30 years and, in several cases, ever made.

Of course, they couldn't do it alone. Filmmaking is a collaborative process that requires the sweat and creative input of artists and crew members. Everyone needs to be on the same page, driving at the same goal — and when something goes wrong during a complicated take, especially one that's unfolding precisely as staged, folks need to take a deep breath and reset.

Which brings us to the fart that literally blew a take of one of the most complicated oners in Anderson's "Boogie Nights."

In Anderson's film, porn auteur Jack Horner is hosting a raging New Year's Eve party, the last of the 1970s, and, as has become customary at a Horner shindig, the wife (Nina Hartley) of cameraman Little Bill (William H. Macy) is having sex with another man. While she's been more contemptuously open about her dalliances (early in the film, she screws some random guy in front of a crowd of partygoers), Bill has finally reached his breaking point. Whatever is going on in their relationship, this isn't about the work. There are no cameras rolling. This is strictly for pleasure at Little Bill's emotional expense. So Bill, rather than behave like a reasonable adult and file for divorce, retrieves a gun from his car, weaves through a crowd of revelers, and shoots his wife and her sexual partner before blowing his head off in Jack's living room.

There were several mishaps during the shooting of the sequence. At the conclusion of one take, the "gore pack" that explodes Bill's brains all over Jack's wall went off prematurely, leaving a mess that took nearly four hours to clean up. But the most awkward slip-up slipped out of Macy's backside. And had he not been honest about his accidental emission, he might've left an unexpected stinker for Anderson in the editing room.

In a 2022 interview with Vulture, Macy revealed that all was proceeding swimmingly during the first take until he floated an air biscuit. According to Macy:

"I'll bet you there were a hundred extras in this house — and it wasn't that big a house — so everybody had to be really cagey about not getting out of my way, making me force my way through the crowd, but melting back seamlessly so it didn't show on camera that they had to open up. I find my wife f***ing this guy, and then I go back out through the front door, to my car, I get a gun out of the glove box, and then I locked the car, which made Paul laugh. That was a spontaneous thing; he loved that and left it in. To be candid, the first time we did it, I was stepping over this ottoman and I farted. [Laughs.] I was going to just keep going because it's a rough shot, but I started giggling. Paul said, 'What happened,' and I said, 'You didn't hear that?' The sound guy said, 'I heard it!'"

As for whether Anderson, or anyone in Macy's immediate vicinity, wound up smelling the gastric expulsion, that evidently is a follow-up question that went unasked. So this is my promise to you: if I ever get the chance to interview Macy again, we will get to the bottom of everything pertaining to what came out of the Academy Award-nominated actor's bottom.