80s
I carry my anxiety underneath my eyes. It tickles my cheekbones and walks to the tops of my ears. When I feel that hotness, that dread, that’s when I know things aren’t going well.
Paul Thomas Anderson managed to pull those feelings out of me twice during Boogie Nights’ 155 minute runtime. The first was during New Years Eve, 1979. It was a year of milestones for the film’s ensemble, but all good things have to end. Fortunately for the audience, one good thing that Anderson chose not to end was the long take that brings us from Little Bill’s arrival at the party to the murder suicide that starts the decade with a bang. Cut to black. Titlecard: 80s.
We see every moment behind William H. Macy’s performance in this scene, and the camera doesn’t leave him for a moment. Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band’s “Do Your Thing” starts slow as Little Bill exists his car and enters the party, looking for his wife, who has been public about her infidelity (as he famously complains to one of his coworkers earlier in the movie, “my fucking wife’s on the driveway with a fucking ass in her cock!”) He’s an assistant director on a porn set, and that’s all people will ever see him as. Buck Adams hands him some champagne. As he walks into the kitchen, drink in hand, he hears moaning in a nearby bedroom and the door. Mystery solved.
He shuts the door and the music picks up, louder now. Still holding his glass, Little Bill marches out of the party back to his car and gently places his drink on the top of his car. He retrieves a pistol from the glove compartment, shuts the door, locks it and puts his keys back in his pocket. He knows exactly what he’s doing. More guitar. Louder now. He walks back into the party while loading the gun. The other partygoers rush to count down the end of the decade. Louder. Cheers. Little Bill approaches the bedroom and opens the door.
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“Five!”
“Four!”
“Thr-”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Chaos.
Little Bill walks away from the crime scene, gun loose in his hand. Music even louder now. His face is emotionless. And in front of the terrified partygoers, he lets out a quiet smile before he puts the gun in his mouth and ends his life. Bang. Then, silence.
80s.
It’s a gripping, emotional scene. For such a pitiful character, Little Bill becomes completely irredeemable in his last 3 minutes on screen. At one of the first screenings of the film, a group of teenagers started cheering when Macy’s character first brandished the gun. Paul Thomas Anderson didn’t like their reaction — he thought he got the scene wrong. But moments later, their cheering stopped when he turned the gun on himself. You can’t cheer through that dread. The anxiety must have gotten to them.
