John Goodman Breaks Down His Career, From 'The Big Lebowski' to 'Monsters, Inc.' | Vanity Fair

I remember when I saw Godfather 2 trying to call up Al Pacino after we came home. Well, New York information didn't have that number. But I got to meet him, and I got to work with him. He's one of my heroes. One of the great things about the business is you get to meet your heroes. And so far, I have not been disappointed. Hi, my name is John Goodman, and this is a timeline of my career. When did it end? Let me know so I can start hanging out at home again. I can't do that. Can't do what? I didn't get serious about it until I was in college. It was the only thing I'd ever done that I was really interested in. 1975, I decided to take a shot at it and go to New York. I said, you know what, the worst that can happen is I can die. But the second worst thing is I'll just come home in a year with my tail between my legs. But I will have tried it. But I had to go because I knew if I didn't try to be an actor, I would hate myself for the rest of my life. And I wound up with both of them. A lot of it was dinner theater. Children's theater kept me afloat for a while. Regional theater. Off-Broadway, I was doing a play in 82. For a couple of years, we'd take it around to different theaters. Directed by Dan Florek with J.T. Walsh. And Martin Bregman came and saw the show at the Manhattan Theater Club and hired J.T., Dan Florek, and myself to be in a movie he was producing called Eddie Macon's Run, which was with John Dues of Hazzard Schneider and Kirk Douglas, who I never saw. That was in Laredo, Texas, 1983, I think. I can't do that. That's good! Welcome home, son. Where's he been? Phoenix. I went to New York to audition for Joel and Ethan. And I never saw Blood Simple, their first film. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, but we were locked into the casting room for about an hour just laughing, having the best time, goofing around. And that would have been good enough. I mean, if I hadn't got the film, I had a good time with those guys. They made me laugh a lot. The writing was so damn good. It was so much fun that I'd show up at work even when I wasn't shooting just to see what they were up to. They really fascinated me. They didn't have a lot of money to work with, so they'd invent shots, invent how to do things, and it was just a wonderful place. Just being there and being a part of something. I got the idea that it doesn't really matter about reviews because I had a good time and I thought I did a good job. I pleased those guys, and I really looked up to them because they were so funny and so smart. They're separated. Dan! Yes? How come that scene can't fix yet? Oh, I'm going to get right on it. Oh, check this out! Roseanne I knew from doing Pizza Hut commercials, I believe, at the time, so that's the only time I'd ever heard or seen of her. I read the script and I liked it. I grew up a Midwesterner with not a lot of dough. I felt like I knew the guys that I was portraying. But I walked into the audition, Roseanne and I just hit it off. I left the audition knowing that I had the job, which rarely happens, but it just fits so well. And I'd been living out of a suitcase for 3 or 4 years, going from job to job in hotel rooms. I said, well, this would be nice, maybe to be able to stay in one place for 6 months. After the pilot, if it gets picked up, just stay in one place for a little while. It just felt right. We'd make each other laugh. My main objective was to try to get Roseanne to wet her pants, which she did if she laughed very hard, so we'd all kind of team in on that. It was a learning experience too. We had an audience, and the first couple times the audience was in, I was playing directly to the audience and ignoring the cameras in front of me, so it was a little big. But I finally figured it out. Is it something about him being your boyfriend? He is not my boyfriend! Do you always strike out the one you love, Mrs. Winstead? It was stylistically different being on a sitcom. It's formulaic. I tried to fight against that as much as I could, and within the style, just figure out kind of different ways to do things, things that would interest me, because it was a little repetitious, but there was a time when I was trying to see how big I could do things and still ground them in reality. Like everything else I'd done up until then, I used it as a learning experience. One of these days I'll get it right. That's what you get for trying to pull yourself up out of generational poverty. We're rooting for you. But we'll save you a spot. The only thing I wanted to do was to see everybody again. That was strange evolution. Sarah Gilbert by that time was producing a daytime talk show called The Talk, and I was on there, and she asked me if I'd ever be interested in doing revival. I said any time. A lot of the memories that came back were good. I'd filtered out all the other stuff. It just kind of evolved from there. She started calling people and see if they were interested, and it went well for about eight shows. I just wanted to do the show again. Kidding? What is it? It's hard to say. Would anybody object if I tore this floor out? I would. The fact that I was hanging out at Steven Spielberg's company, Amblin, rubbing elbows with these guys, it just felt like the most natural thing in the world. I go, well, I guess I'm finally where I belong. Yeah, I got a little too comfortable. Jeff Katzenberg was the producer. I chatted with him, and I decided to go ahead and do the film. And I couldn't come up with a character to save my life. Time was running short. It was time to start shooting. I just remembered a high school biology teacher that I had. I always thought he was pretty funny, so that's where I based the character on. Doubtful, Henry. There was a case in Florida where one of my colleagues bumped into a nest of black widows, sustained over a dozen bites, and lived. I let myself become overwhelmed, but when I became famous, when people started knowing who I was, there was an initial rush. I thought, hey, this is pretty cool, and then it just, I turned it sour. I could have handled it better. It just bothered me. I mean, there's worse things in the world, but I really let it get to me, and I shouldn't have. I was ill-equipped at the time to handle success. I'll show you the life! I'll show you the life! The hallway was lit up. It was very safe. I had all kinds of super goo, fireproof goo rubbed all over me. My wife, 9 months pregnant, showed up one day, and this is what I was doing. She really didn't take kindly to it. Totoro's wife was pregnant, and my wife was pregnant at the same time. My wife gave birth after the movie wrapped. But to me, it was one of those challenges. I was a macho boy, a stunt boy. I could do whatever they'd throw at me, and it'd get a little warm, but there was a lot of flame. And I got to shoot a guy, so... Yeah, I'm damn sorry if I bothered you. The damn wall's here. Well, I just apologize like hell. My name's Charlie Meadows. I guess we're neighbors. Barton Fink. On Barton Fink, we just kind of stayed away from each other. For whatever reason, sometimes there's stuff that I don't understand why I did things until much later, because I've got part of a character that I'm playing. I'm riding him pretty hard, and I just follow him naturally, and it's just the way it happens. Mark at 8. Excuse me. Mark at 0, next frame. Bullshit, Walter. Mark at 8, dude. Smokey, this is not NAMM. This is bowling. There are rules. First time I read the script, I was in love. It just, it was so funny. You can see where the script derived from Raymond Chandler and a ton of other influences, but it just was so goofy and endearing and fun. I just loved my guy so much. He was such a prick. But he meant well. The character was all on the page. I got everything. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I didn't dig hard enough, but it just evolved, which is usually the best way of doing things for me is letting it come to me. We had a couple of weeks of rehearsal, which was a godsend. I still have people ask me whether we improvised a lot of the stuff because it seemed that way, but the dialogue was so great, and it took care of itself. Here you go, Larry. You see what happens? You see what happens, Larry? We're in the middle of their neighborhood, and I'm yelling foulest obscenities that Joel and Ethan can come up with at 3 o'clock in the morning. And I was just worried to death about that. It made me really uncomfortable until I started doing it. And then I found out that they'd paid people to stay away. I had the best damn time smashing a Corvette with a crowbar. Try it sometime. So who, who? Jeff Lebowski, the other Jeffrey Lebowski, the millionaire. That's ******* interesting, man, that's ******* interesting. Man, if I knew what was so special about it, I'd bottle it and keep it to myself. The fact that it was so much fun to be on that set should have told me something was special with it. It felt special to me, and I didn't really care who liked it or what, as long as I'm having fun. I trusted Joel and Ethan, and it's a good place to be when you're with people that you know are going to take care of it, like Jeff Bridges. Yeah, he's a special guy. Bullshit! Market 8, dude. How could I do this? How could I be so stupid? This could destroy the company. The company? Who cares about the company? What about us? I had no idea what Monsters, Inc. was going to turn into. I had been doing animation since my wife got pregnant, and Steven Spielberg was the first guy I ever did anything for that was animated. I can't remember the name of it. It was dinosaurs hanging around in New York City. And Steven would stay off the mic and read me my cues and stuff and direct me. And I thought, well, this is a pretty cool way of doing things. And then I got involved in a couple other projects, and then I got to meet John Lasseter, and that's a whole other great family there. Billy Crystal came up with the idea of putting the both of us in a booth at the same time, because we'd been doing it separately. And when we came together, the energy took off like a rocket. It was clever and cute, and I couldn't believe they'd show us the progress they were making on the animation. It was just stunning. Johnny Lasseter had them put, and Pete Docter, the director, they would put what they were working on, their concepts. Because we did Monsters, Inc. once, and then they threw everything out, rewrote it, and so we started from scratch again. They had visuals all over the place. Actually trying to keep the truth of everything, because everything's so fantastic, you have to have a base, and it's just some guy going to work. How are you going to get in the embassy? They're not in the embassy. During the takeover, 6 people escaped. I had to meet with Ben. I don't know if I read for it, but it was kind of an audition process. He's a real smart guy. I trusted him because there was this terrific script, but he was having, he was on such a rush, he just, I liked to watch him when he was behind the monitor directing. He's always kinetic, always moving, always real into it, and he had to lose a lot of that stuff when he'd come on camera. Hi, I only got a couple of minutes. I'm getting a Lifetime Achievement Award. I'd rather stay home and count the wrinkles on my dog's balls. I met one of the loves of my life, Alan Arkin, my Scrabble buddy. That was worth the price of admission, folks. God, I just admired him, and Al would give me bits of advice. He's so smart and funny. I think that's the common denominator, is this sense of humor. Maybe not. Chambers! John Chambers' makeup! Whatever I did came organically through the script. I didn't know enough about John Chambers until I'd actually finished the movie. John Chambers was a makeup artist, and he did a little side work with a company out of Washington, D.C. And the oddest thing happened. I met a good friend of his, and he goes, How did you get Johnny's limp down? I'd since had two knee replacements. It was the craziest thing. I wasn't aware that I was limping. But yeah, it felt great. So I, well, I don't know, I picked it up. It was a great coincidence. Universal said, After eating a toasted cheese sandwich, I found myself purging from every orifice. One of them like a fire hose. I got a call from Ethan and said, Hey, Madman. They call me Madman because of Barton Fink. Yeah, I think we got something for you. And I looked at it, everything came organically and directly from the script. Just read it, read it, read it, read it, and the character became flushed out, down to his little funny haircut. A man named Jerry Mulligan, he was a saxophone player, part of the California cool, but he always had a little Caesar thing going. And I said, I'm going to cop that. And it just looked ridiculous on me. Oscar Isaac boy. He's so good. And he was so much fun to lean on because he was right there and detailed and terrific. It looked like he was just making everything look like a, you know, rolled right off him. Like it was the easiest thing in the world. He has a grace about him. He's a great guy. You come here every Sunday after church. For years. What do you need from me today, Brother Pascoe? The big thing about working with Danny McBride is to try to not laugh during a take. He's a powerhouse. Jody Hill, David Gordon Green and Danny are part of a production team. I stand in awe of their ambition and their goals and just how damn funny they are. It's great to have that much self-belief and it's even better when it's successful. And they make me laugh. The first year was tough for me with the character because he was grieving for his wife. Oh, I love you! Take a look at this crowd, Eli. I do believe it is the best-looking bunch of friends we've spent time with yet! I found myself in the position of being a straight man, which I often am in the series. Play it straight because those guys are out there. And just try to root it, you know, in as much truth as I can, not crack up on camera. Yeah, I'm still finding stuff out. I mean, this year was a revelation to me because there are things, the character's background that I didn't know about, but were better than anything I could have come up with. So just ride the wave. Yeah, those guys will never let you down. Anybody in the cast will never let you down. We're all there for each other, but they're so nuts. It's a shared... a shared vision that Danny shares with everybody. And it's nice to be a part of something that's that sharp and goofy and that actually means something after the laughs are over. Acting, it can be looked at as kind of a cheap cultural life, but it had meaning to me. It made me feel at times like I was in the midst of creation with other people. The passion has grown. I'm still trying to figure out how to do things. And the more I meddle, the further away from it it gets. But I'm on the right track, and one of these days I'll get it.