John Goodman Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

I'd have a long shot of me driving in a truck,

and Steven Spielberg would be sitting down,

hiding from the camera.

I don't know why, but he got the biggest kick out of that.

He goes, Only we'll know that I was here.

[upbeat rock music]

Monsters, Inc.

That was a lot of fun.

I started doin' cartoons when my daughter was very young,

and I tried to bring her up with cartoons.

Like we'd watch cartoons all the time,

and it kind of did it for her.

When they moved Billy Crystal

into the booth with me

when we were doin' it together, the energy just took off.

I'd try to hang on to whatever Billy was doin'

and ride it together with him.

Good, good Sully!

Keep it up, you're doin' great!

♪ I'm a happy bear ♪

[excited squealing] Ah!

Yeah, I've heard two different approaches to this.

Some guys say it's real easy, and for me,

I have to put my whole body into the performance

in order to get the voice pitch to where I want it to be.

And it's a hard day's work.

It sounds easy, but it's pretty tiring.

But it's fun, but you have to do a million takes.

They don't know what they want yet,

so they'll pick it out of whatever you got.

So yeah, it can be a little tiring,

but you don't have to dress up or wear makeup.

True Stories.

It was the first lead I've ever gotten,

and I was just coming off of a musical on Broadway,

and they'd said, David Byrne wants to meet with you.

And I'm goin', Oh, this is cool.

And I met with him for a while.

I really liked him, and I liked what he was trying to say

in the film, and it was very gentle and fun.

I haven't seen it for a long time,

but I got to sing. [chuckles]

♪ In 1950 when I was born ♪

♪ Papa and I haven't written this verse quite yet ♪

♪ Six feet tall in size 12 shoes ♪

The approach was taking what I could get off of the script,

and it just seemed to work, and everything felt good.

We shot in Texas, and the people were lovely,

and everybody was great, yeah.

That was a lot of fun.

And yeah, that's the most time I'd had

in front of a camera without loitering.

Raising Arizona.

While I was shooting True Stories,

I went and had a meeting with the Coen Brothers.

We shot that about three months later.

I had a great audition with them,

and we just wound up goofing around for about an hour.

And it was one of those things, I had so much fun,

I really didn't care whether I got the role or not

'cause used to a lot of rejection.

And I always looked at Gale Snoats

as being a criminal genius with a two-digit I.Q.

The whole script was just beautiful, just made me laugh.

Roseanne.

I had a really good film career going.

You know, nobody knew who I was, but it's perfect

because they'd hire me because I still worked cheap.

So I was doing a lot, and I got to the point

where I was tired of living in a suitcase.

I went in and read with Roseanne the first time,

and it was easy as falling out of bed.

We just hit it off.

We laughed a lot.

I brought you some lunch from the restaurant.

Smells good.

Yeah, I don't know why the guy didn't finish it.

[audience laughing]

It was also one of those things

where I didn't think I was gonna get it,

so I just didn't care.

I was real loose, and I go, This would be nice to have,

because I could settle down in one place for a while.

And I didn't want to come to Los Angeles unless I had a job.

And it had just happened that way.

I feel there's an ownership about it,

maybe too much, where you won't go out

on a limb and try something else,

but I think he's a pretty stable guy.

And I really admire him.

When I was drinking, I'd love to sit down

and drink with him, and I probably did.

Arachnophobia.

I liked working with Frank Marshall.

I think this is the first film he'd ever done

and maybe the only film he's ever done.

But he was real easygoing and a welcome collaboration.

I didn't know exactly what I was gonna do

until it was too late [chuckles]

to think about it, and I wound up just doing

a biology/ gym teacher that I had.

He probably lost control of all of his bodily functions.

There's no spider here,

but I will hunt down the alleged arachnid

and spritz him to kingdom come.

And you wouldn't believe this guy,

anyway if you'd saw him, would work.

So I thought, I gotta use this.

And it worked out perfectly, I think.

And it was a lot of fun 'cause I'd have

a long shot of me driving in a truck,

and Steve Spielberg would be sitting down

hiding from the camera.

I don't know why, but he got the biggest kick out of that.

He goes, Only we'll know that I was here.

And I would take to going to Amblin Entertainment a lot

after I got off of Roseanne,

and just hanging out and seeing everybody.

It was a very friendly place.

I had no idea what I was gonna do.

It just baffled me, and I wanted to reach for it

and do something nice, but I think it holds up.

The Babe.

That's one I want to do over.

I started practicing throwing left-handed

maybe six to nine months before the picture started,

and I got it down all right.

And I could hit okay when we started rolling,

but we didn't shoot the baseball scenes for another month,

and I lost a lot of what I could do in that time.

But I found out he was a sidearm pitcher.

I finally saw a film of him pitching that I didn't know

was around, and I think we all could've known a lot more

about baseball in general before we shot.

There are some hinkey things in it.

I wish we would've had more CGI then

'cause we had pitchers that couldn't find the plate,

and they kept movin' 'em in, movin' 'em in,

and his swing was a loop, like a Fungo bat,

which is how he learned how

to hit Fungo was at the home for boys.

And that was his style.

He used to loop 'em out to right field.

And it was like Wrigley Field,

a hundred degrees, wool uniforms.

But I just loved the guy so much,

you know, a great man, but a bad boy.

Yeah, that's always been a do-over film of mine.

I just wish I could've gotten it right,

I could've gotten it better.

The Flintstones.

Rick Moranis was an ace.

Rick Moranis is the best.

I loved showing up for work with Rick Moranis.

♪ Twitch twitch ♪

♪ When you get that itch ♪

♪ And you do the twitch in Bedrock ♪

♪ Twitch twitch ♪

♪ Ah ♪

Yeah, they kind of sandbagged me.

Steven Spielberg cast me in a film called Always,

and I was just in heaven.

Just it's the best thing,

so on the day of the first table read,

he goes, Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to say something

before we start, I've found my Fred Flintstone.

And it just took the wind out of me.

It's not something I was looking forward to doing.

Yeah, I felt like I was sandbagged. [chuckles]

It was hot, it was sweaty, but it was fun.

And I got to meet Jonathan Wonders, who was in a scene.

That was great.

Barton Fink.

This was in the summer of 1990.

The writing was just gorgeous.

It's a bit more mystical and magical, but I loved it,

just playing this guy with multiple identities.

And he was just sincere as hell, and he loved Barton.

[flames roaring]

Barton.

[flames roaring]

[whistles] Brother, is it hot.

And I'd trust Joel and Ethan all the way.

Whatever they say is good for me,

and the sets were wonderful.

And working with John Turturro was wonderful.

King Ralph.

I developed a friendship with Peter O'Toole

that lasts to this day, even though he has

the bad taste to remain dead.

I'd never met anyone like Peter O'Toole,

and I don't reckon I ever will.

I just loved listening to him talk, and he loved talking,

and he loved telling stories, and he would take me around.

He wasn't drinking at the time,

and he would take me around and watch me drink

to various places and give me a little history lesson

about we were into, just tell all these fabulous stories.

And yeah, I wanted to be him when I grew up.

I just loved Pedro, just marvelous.

And we had to shoot a lot of scenes in Soho,

back around Piccadilly Circus in the west end

with no police security, and we were shooting

on a Saturday night, and it was just catch-as-can,

hope we grab this, hope we can get it.

But yeah, that's one I'd like to go back and do now

because, well I'm too old, but because I know London

so much better, and I know the way of the world over there.

I mean it was good to play an innocent like that,

but I wish I had a little more knowledge.

♪ Good golly Miss Molly ♪

♪ Wow ♪

♪ Good golly Miss Molly ♪

It was endless, endless.

We kept doing it again and again and again,

and I'm, you know, like 150 pounds overweight

and sweating battery acid by the end of the day.

And it just kept going.

It was relentless.

The Big Lebowski.

Another Joel and Ethan movie,

another role they had me in mind for.

We were lucky that we had a couple of weeks of rehearsal,

of reading the script, reading the script,

reading the script.

People have always asked me if we improvised the dialogue,

and I couldn't improvise anything better

than Joel and Ethan did.

It just sounded like that because of the luxury time

we had of rehearsing with it, plus the dialogue was

just so damn good.

Am I the only one around here

who gives a shit about the rules?

Mark it zero!

Mark it zero!

That's one of those things I've always said performed itself

just right off the page.

Yeah, and I'm really proud of that film,

and I got to work with Jeff, who was just one

of the best people I've ever been around.

I'll see him every once in a while, and it's always great.

The way he talks to you, it's like you're the only person

in the room, you know, one of those guys.

10 Cloverfield Lane.

I'd never played anything like it before.

Yeah, he was pretty bent, and he scared people.

It's great.

Please, Howard.

[Howard] I'm giving you one chance.

Hey, Howard, just calm down.

One chance to answer with some dignity,

or I swear to God, you're going into this barrel

while you're alive to feel it!

It was me.

I got to shoot where I live, in New Orleans,

and that was wonderful.

Mary Elizabeth was wonderful.

Everybody was.

We were in this bunker all the time,

and it kind of gets to you after a while,

really the bunker mentality.

It was different and ultimately fun.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Big Dan Teague from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

was a psychotic Bible salesman Klansman.

He's got strings all over the South.

The part that I loved more was where I was beating

Tim Blake Nelson and George Clooney with a tree branch,

and I just laid it upside the head of Tim Blake Nelson,

knocked him out, and George, lookin' at me

with a piece of chicken in his mouth,

he goes, I don't think I know

what you're gettin' at, Big Dan.

What's goin' on, Big Dan?

It's all about the money, boys!

That's it! Ah!

[grunting and thudding]

I don't get it, Big Dan.

Ah!

But yeah, that's Joel and Ethan,

and you fell in love with the script.

They surround themselves with a great crew.

There's a certain amount of shorthand that you use

when you're with people that long,

and again, the script is wonderful.

Flight.

Clueless, in your face, self-centered,

but he loved Denzel's character.

You know, he would've done anything for him.

I mean, the guy flies a plane.

How cool is that?

He's just the coolest guy he'd ever seen,

and he's more than willing to co-opt him for his own needs.

They're sayin', Sweet Jesus, what a stud that pilot is!

You're a hero, man.

You will never pay for another drink as long as you live.

I don't know how much of his own product he uses,

but I think he was take it or leave it.

[sharply inhaling]

To me, it was obvious on the page,

he's just one of these southern loudmouth guys,

you know, with a hairdo that's 40 years old

and you know, flip flops, shorts.

He was takin' it easy.

He was kind of a dude wannabe.

Treme.

Oh, Creighton Bernette from Treme was an idealist,

good marriage, good family, and Katrina killed him.

Katrina broke him.

He couldn't believe all the horror that came out of it,

all the ineptitude and evil in the city that he loved.

I think he loved New Orleans above everything.

It was well written, and it was good.

I don't think he could've survived more than one season.

He was very sensitive, and something

in him broke when the levees failed.

You say, Why rebuild it?

I say, Fuck you, you rebuilt Chicago after the fire.

You rebuilt San Francisco after the earthquake.

Another one where I got to work at home,

and it was very relevant

because it broke my heart when Katrina happened.

I was helpless.

Something you love so much,

and you're helpless to do anything.

It's like having a loved one with cancer or something,

and it came back, and it came back stronger.

Yeah, it's actually based on a man that did commit suicide.

But I think he loved teaching, and I tried to get that.

And we only had, I think,

no it was the day he killed himself.

He was teaching morning class,

and I tried to make it very passionate.

Inside Llewyn Davis.

That was interesting to play somebody so self-absorbed

and immobile and addicted to smack.

He really styled himself, dressed well, liked

to make a good appearance, crumbling inside,

and we never did figure out what acts he played.

I swore he was a piano player I think.

Ethan thought he was a trumpeter,

and Joel thought he played sax.

But in jazz, you know, we play all the notes,

12 notes on a scale, dip shit,

not three chords on a ukulele.

Yeah, we never nailed it down,

but just seemed like a pianist to me.

Argo.

John Chambers from Argo was tops in his craft.

He was a leading makeup man,

discovered a lot of tricks and devices,

and at the same time, was an operative working

for the Central Intelligence Agency,

super-patriotic, not much room for fools.

I wanna set up a production company

and build a cover around making a movie.

[Man] That we're not gonna make. No.

So you wanna come to Hollywood and act like a big shot?

Yeah.

Without actually doing anything?

[Man] No. You'll fit right in.

And a friend of his saw me after he'd seen the film,

and he goes, How did you get Johnny's limp down?

And I said, I didn't know Johnny had a limp.

That's me, and he couldn't believe it.

It can be limiting, in that you don't wanna step

on anybody's toes or offend anybody, but by serving

the script, and the script was devoted to the guy.

Once I sat down with Alan Arkin,

everything else fell into place.

He's just a mentor and a good friend,

and I idolized him, you know, until I worked with him,

and then it was all over.

The Righteous Gemstones.

I've always been a fan of Danny's.

I think he's honest above everything else and funny,

but it's the honesty that portrays.

He doesn't care if he comes off looking like a jerk,

and I admire that because it makes him all the funnier.

Well go on, big shot, you got everybody's attention.

What do ya got to say to me?

Make it good.

I got church lunch waitin'.

[man chuckling]

He's, I'm gonna call him a successful businessman now,

and his life is fallin' apart.

He's still grieving for his wife.

I think it's been over a year since she's died.

He's got these rotten kids that he's finally got

to face up to dealing with 'cause his wife dealt

with 'em all the time 'cause he was busy doin' something.

She was the light of his life.

When she died, his whole world died.

So I think he's got to start snapping out of that,

but he was an empty shell,

and Mr. Karma started knocking on the door.

He's still gonna have to deal with that.

But I think he definitely a man of faith.

He just got blindsided by how successful

the business became, and wants more of it.

It's like power corrupts.

And yeah, I was so pleased that ironically,

it was about a day or two after I lost the Roseanne job,

and this came up, and I read it, and I liked it.

And I said, Well, got no reason why.

Let's take a shot at it.

It's in Charleston.

I love Charleston.

People cannot be beat.

They're great.

It was a great shoot all around.