Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - John Goodman

Episode Date: April 1, 2018

More than 20 years after “Roseanne” ended, John Goodman and the cast are back together for the show’s revival. In this episode of "Sunday Sitdown," Willie Geist visits Goodman in New Orleans to talk about how the reboot isn’t so different from two decades ago and how his life has improved in recent years after overcoming struggles with alcoholism. He also chats about what it was like to work with the Coen Brothers on the cult classic “The Big Lebowski” and the impact that movie has had 20 years on. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Guys, here with the latest episode of Sunday Sit Down. This is the podcast where we give you the entire interview from my Sunday Today show, where we give you seven or eight minutes because it's TV and that's all we've got time for. Now you're getting the whole interview with some of the biggest stars on the planet. We do about 45 minutes an hour, sometimes more, with these guests. And there's so much lying on the floor. I wanted to scoop it all up and give it a home. And so here is, after two years on the air,

of Sunday today. We've got our podcast. The Sunday sit down. I'm so psyched to bring it to you. And today's guest is John Goodman, the great John Goodman. We caught him right before Roseanne exploded. When we talked, the show hadn't aired yet. So he had no concept that on the other side of it, he was going to have 25 million viewers for the first episode, become this national conversation, this national debate about what the show was about, what the success of the show meant about the country, what it meant about Trump voters and people who don't like Donald Trump. Back and forth, he was right in the middle of it. And this is the show, remember, that launched his career 30 years ago in 1988.

When he auditioned for Roseanne Barr, this show became number one eventually. It ran for nine seasons, made him a star, but actually, you know, it brought with it some problems. You know, he didn't know how to handle fame, and he talks about that in our interview. We talk about his long run with the Cohen brothers. we, of course, talk about the Big Lebowski, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary. So John invited me down to his adopted hometown of New Orleans, where he's now lived with his wife, a Louisiana native, for 20 years. I hope you enjoy a Sunday sit-down with John Goodman. Thanks for having us down here, John.

Thanks for coming down. It's nice to be out of the tri-state area right now, I imagine. It is. I take this over the nor'easter, although you were complaining about the cold, which is like summer to me. It's a little nippy eye. It's so beautiful. here in March. It's gorgeous. It's we got the tournament coming up and and blossoms in the trees and birds. You can actually hear birds. Yeah, we don't have that in New York as you may know.

What brought you down here originally? We were just talking about the move and a parallel with Jeff Daniels who did almost the same thing you did. I got the idea from Jeff that you could, after I made a certain amount of money I could kind of live wherever I wanted to when I didn't have to audition all the time for stuff. So, yeah, I'd be on the road and I'd go to L.A. or New York to audition and go back. So I said, why live there? And at the time that I moved, it was all showbiz all the time. And we were still under a lot of tabloid fever from the Roseanne.

Right. So I was getting a lot of residual stuff. I lived in Encino and I went out one day and saw a guy with a camera, a video camera, sleeping right outside my driveway. So I got my video camera. I filmed him for a while. And then he left me a note saying ha ha or something like that. Pretty clever. Was it a decision where you said this may be risky to leave Hollywood?

I think when I talked to Jeff about it, he said, in hindsight, maybe it was because he wasn't quite there yet. but did you see any risks to her you just happy to be done with it I didn't care I would come to I started coming to New Orleans in 1972 with 50 sig-ups from Southwest Missouri State College and I'd never well I hadn't seen much but I'd never seen anything like this it was to me it was otherworldly it was old worldly it was there was a vibe to it we were only here for a short time but it It turned out every time I'd get some money to scrape together, I'd come down here for different reasons. And I live here now.

There was a freedom to the place, but there was something else that attracted me. It was the people and the music and the alcohol open all night. Plenty of that. Yeah. I was walking at Bourbon Street 9.30 a.m. The bar doors fly open. About six or seven people sitting at the bar. So we're talking about Roseanne, obviously.

But I'd love to go back to the beginning, 30 years ago, to Roseanne, and where you were in your career when that phone call came, because I'm thinking about raising Arizona, and I'm thinking about men in skin bracer. Yeah. Yeah, that was 40 years ago. I did that. And I hated myself because I was making a living doing commercials.

and I had some kind of idea that I was an artist or aspired to be this Kevin Klein or Bill Hurt or, you know, one of these guys and I kept running myself down at the bar which was an excuse to go to the bar because I was actually making a living which is all I set out to do in the beginning

but I was on the road doing a film I can't remember which one but I had three movies in the can't wait in a come out. They called me in for this audition. All I knew Roseanne Barr was from a pizza commercial. I never, I'd heard she was a fantastic stand-up. I hadn't seen her. I never saw her at the clubs. But I walked in there and we just hit it off. And I never had the feeling, I walked out of the place knowing I had the job. I might have been wrong, but I just knew I had. at it and we had such a good time at the initial meet that we fit right in.

She says you were the first and last person to interview for Dan. She felt the same way you felt when you walked out. She said that's him. Wow. Thanks, honey. So why do you think that show resonated and took off the way it did? I mean, it went to number one, obviously. It went for nine seasons.

What did it hit in the zeitgeist? Oh, I love using the word zeitgeist. It's a name check for myself. Yeah, yeah. Willie the ghost. It hit a lot of people where they live. And if it wasn't quite economically, it was familial issues. Sisters constantly fighting, love each other.

Kids constantly fighting, we love each other. How do you deal this? We're up against it. That's the deal. They were always up against it. And it was not exactly life or death, but it was eat or death. don't eat or don't get insurance. I need something for the car.

What am I going to have to sacrifice for that? Live in paycheck to paycheck. And it was within that struggle, I think, people found they could laugh at us. Hey, here's somebody worse off than we are. But you said, I mean, you were not a household name when you started that show. And then all of a sudden... Not even in my house. That show takes off, and all of a sudden, you're John Goodman, and you're on the cover of magazines, and everybody knows who you are.

What was it like for you personally? At first, it was exciting. Then it got frightening when I lost my anonymity. I could bitch about anything, man. I can take the best thing and run it into the ground. It's a therapy. It was a struggle. It was weird.

I handled it like I did everything else by sitting on a bar stool. And that made it worse. It was nice in some aspects. People were fans of the show. All I saw it was an invasion of privacy. And I was wrong. I was a jerk for a couple of years. And I didn't see it.

My main thing then was to act as normal as possible. But by doing that, I tuned out a lot of wonderful things. that could have happened, but things, whatever happened for a reason, and I got over it. And in the first couple of years of Roseanne, we drew a lot of attention from the tabloid press, which was one of the reasons I wanted to leave Los Angeles. I just didn't want to be in showbiz 24 hours a day. But it was, that was very uncomfortable because you're seeing things printed about either. And I was residual.

She was getting all the flack, and I was getting second banana flack. A lot of peels. And it was just uncomfortable to see my face in a headline. I walked out of a bar one time with a friend of mine's girlfriend, and the next thing is I'm leaving my wife for this woman who I really didn't know. I'd better. I think I was divorcing wife for a playboy model. And it was funny to me, but it upset people in my family and my wife's family.

Were you unhappy during that run, despite all the success of the show? What I was, was ungrateful after five or six years. And I was doing swell. I mean, I was doing movies and during the summertime and just having a great old time and I love coming back to work every year because it was like a family but what it boils down to was I got complacent and ungrateful and after nine years eight years I wanted to leave the show and I think that just boils down to the fact that I when you start drinking spiritually emotionally your growth stops and I was basically a 23-year-old

in a 36-year-old body. I've never been a pillar of maturity anyway. I was always the big baby of show business. But my growth stopped, and I stopped appreciating the things that, the fruits of my labor, you know, and just took it for granted. I can't close the door in the past,

because what's the point, but I sure as Al can learn for it. But this time around, me and I think everybody in the cast is very grateful to be there. That's what made it so special to go back. Plus, there was a walking into the set that they reproduced from scratch. I have no words for it other than deja vu on acid. It was so bizarre to find myself back after. after 20-year break and feeling like it, we took two weeks off. And it clicked right away?

I mean, after all those years? Everything clicked right away. The first table read, it was move over. We were back. It was amazing. Were you surprised to get that first phone call, surprised by the idea that anyone had even conceived of bringing the show back? What happened was I did a talk show for Sarah Gilbert.

She's a producer and a host of a CBS. talk show. We did a little Roseanne sketch at the top of the show and that felt like putting on an old shoe. No offense, Sarah. And then she asked me during the show, she goes, you think you'd be up for a reunion show or something like that? And I said in a heartbeat. And she called Roseanne. And she said, yeah, John's up for it. Then we got a hold of Tom Werner and the rest of the cast and I think between the time I did that show and the time we had to deal with ABC it was three weeks is that right yeah wow now we're going to let America down again I'm going to give myself another couple of weeks to get complacent again

taking everything for granted was there some element of going back and sort of writing a wrong from the past not that not changing your acting performance but in joy Making amends. Yeah. Making amends to myself. Yeah. I never thought of that, but that's exactly what I did. Putting the things that I did to myself right again.

Because I never really been so wrong about something, and it feels so good to make those amends. So if you were, let's talk to the new generation of people who didn't see Roseanne 30 years ago, 20 years ago. I'm assuming that's everybody. With a lot of people who are going to be introduced to the show. We were on the cover of AARP magazine and I figured that's our core audience. That's a big audience, by the way. It's a big audience.

It's a big audience. Great power. Is the show different now than it was 20 years ago? We have new characters. We've got grandchildren now. It's the same show with different problems. and the challenge of aging. And the character of Darlene brings her children home

because she's at the end of her rope. And we're still raising kids, but we're helping raise grandkids now. And they have their own problems. But it's, it never stops. It never stops. It's just a constant struggle. And, you know, we're still living paycheck to paycheck,

worried about our insurance, what's going on with that. The first couple of episodes deal with the election. And that was Roseanne's idea because she knows people and families that still to this day won't talk to each other because of the election. Is that a tricky thing to wade into for TV show? It makes me nervous because I don't think it'll age. well. But on the other hand, you know, you start talking about stuff like that immediately. You get boycotts, death threats. So why not talk about it? It's a fact. It's divisive. And it's

one more goddamn thing to get through the day. There is one plot hole we've got to fill here. You may recall in the final season of Roseanne, you died. I didn't get the memo because I didn't show up that, I didn't have to work that day. So that doesn't count. I died, but in a funny way. Now, I wanted, because zombies are really big right now. So secretly, that's what I'm playing. There's, Dan has a little secret, but I thought we could cash in on the whole zombie thing, but they...

Walking Dead, it's huge. Yeah. Go for it. Yeah. Take a piece of that action. Couldn't be any worse. It's solved in a couple of different ways. And frankly, I think nobody really cares.

They don't, actually. They like it. You're back. They're willing to overlook a lot. Yeah, we addressed it. So when you, when you left Roseanne, I think you already shot the Big Lobowski and and then it was going to come out near the end of Rosanne. Lobowski came out 20 years ago this week.

20-year anniversary of the Big Lobowski. It's incredible. The celebrations and the memorials for this movie, it's unbelievable. And I read one piece where they went back and interviewed all the critics who panned it when it came out. Did you see that? And they all said, in hindsight, it's a classic. It took us 20 years to get there. What happened with that movie?

Why did it take off and explode? It was because it was so well written, A, and because of Jeff's character. He's a dudeist. He's the head dude. It's just, he drifts through life and solves crimes. I know John Terturo was working on a project to resurrect his character, Jesus. I'll call him. I don't know what happened with that, but

and we're perfectly happy to leave it alone. It stands alone. You have a favorite line because people go through them all. Yeah. Oh, fuck it, dude. Let's go bowling. He's just distributed Donnie's ashes all over the dude, and Walter just can't do anything right.

And he says he says, Jewish as Fibia. He converted to please his wife after she'd already left him.

When you watch that movie again, it's impressive how you keep your level of rage at 10 through an entire

movie, regardless of the situation, regardless for how little it calls for rage. Yeah. He's always

right there. That's his, that's his motivation. It keeps him alive. And you usually think of people

that are that enraged, being thin, and whip it like. But he maintains his weight. It's weird because I had weight loss in gain throughout the movie. So there's scenes where I come out of a place.

When I get in the car, I'm 40 pounds heavier. That's always fun to watch. You've, of course, done a long list of Cohen Brothers movies. What's the magic that they come with to those films? Their eyes, their ears, and the way they put things on paper, it is, I don't want to say this because they're not foolproof, but they're not actor proof, but it makes it a lot easier to come up with stuff when you've got so much that's rich on the page.

You don't have to really dig to make things work because if you do it right, it's an automatic. And they hire, they surround themselves with great crew. They always hire good actors. They're very in tune with the New York theater scene. And they've always gotten actors out of that. But it's the writing. It's the writing, and it's laugh out loud funny. Lobowski, we got lucky because we had a two-week rehearsal period

where we could sit and listen to each other. other and just go over the language because I've had so many people ask me if we improvised that you couldn't I couldn't I have I don't have those skills but I couldn't possibly improvise that stuff it's it's too good but it looks like it was because because it was so well written do you have a favorite of your Cohen brothers movies I know it's a terrible question it changes right now it's Barton Fink The first one, Raising Arizona was special to me because that's where I met him. I went into the audition, expecting nothing.

After I got out of the audition and told people what I auditioned for, apparently everybody was trying to get into it. Because their first movie was so hot. Blood Simple. And we went in there and just goofed around for about an hour. I overstayed my visit and probably my welcome. But we just goofed around and laughed, and then we read. And I had a good, I felt good about it, but I had such a great audition that I didn't really care. Because I had a great time.

I had a great time with these guys. You know, fellow Mad Magger magazine and alumni, provincials from the Midwest. but they are so smart and they just made me laugh. You've worked with the Cohen brothers a lot. You've worked with George Clooney a lot. Aaron Sorkin. My kids know you as Sully from the Monsters Inc. movies.

How do you say yes to a project? What's the bar? What's the standard for you? You're sitting at home with your wife in New Orleans. What's going to get you onto a set? Usually a script, and mostly the script. And sometimes if they're... they've already cast somebody that I like,

I'll go for that, somebody I wanna work with. A director, but usually it's the script. Sometimes it's just been, just to get up my butt and work and go through the process. But mostly it's what's on the page. You like the voice acting, going to the studio? I do, and I never thought I was particularly good at it, but I spent my childhood goofing on commercials and cartoons. And I used to do

imitations when I was in grade school and high school. And I was pretty good at it. I had a good ear. But a lot of times I would do imitations just to entertain the hard guys, the bad asses in school, so I could get protection. That guy's funny. They'd take care of me. That's an, you raised an interesting point because you were a football player, right, in Missouri. You played in college. No, I didn't. You didn't?

I didn't. I didn't. I don't know where they came from, though, didn't you? No, I went down. I was in a junior college in St. Louis, and I had, I got enough for a Defense Act scholarship. Not a not a scholarship, it was alone. It didn't cost much. is 200 miles away.

A lot of my friends went to school there. But I thought I liked playing football. I was terrible. I was slow, but I liked to hit. And I like being part of a team. I just, you know, love not the locker room aspect

of it so much, but I just like being part of a team and helping. And I did like to hit, but I thought I could possibly go, try to walk on the football team there and maybe get some money. By the time that happened, my grades were so bad that I would have had to wait another year to try out for the team. By that time I did a one-act play in college and that changed everything and

by the next year I met a man who opened a lot of doors for me, opened my eyes and gave me a passion because I just fell head over heels with theater with the history with what it takes the theories of it just doing it it's the only way you can learn but I've flipped I was just theater 24-7 and that was in college did you act at all did you have any inkling about it in high school or growing up a play in eighth grade you can't take it with you I was Grandpa Vanderhoff. I forgot my lines. I stood up at the dinner table

and started improvising, walking around, by the time I got to the other side of the dinner table, I remember my lines, went back and sat down. My drama teacher was an actress in St. Louis. She was really pretty, and she gave me the biggest hug.

And that motivated me strangely. I did two musicals in high school. I was with my friend Mark Wade driving around his Camaro. He goes, I'm going to audition for Lil Abner. Want to come with me? And he started talking about the girls that were in. I said, yeah, yeah, I'm going. And I got a good role in it. And the next year I did Hello Dolly. The heels didn't fit, but coming down the stairs, it was tough. But I really liked it.

liked it. I think a lot of it was the attention, but a lot of it was a discipline that I was yearning to have that I didn't know. I faked my way through school, barely, I made it up by the skin of my teeth. I was a class clown, but there was a, there's a discipline to acting that I didn't know I needed, and it was that discipline that I craved. that I needed deeply and it helped me a lot. As soon as I got in the theater department proper, I started turning my grades around and my life turned around. I had a purpose and an ideal that I wanted to fulfill

instead of just goofing around. Was your mom supportive of it? My mom worked very hard, you know, living hand to mouth. lived on tips and she would support everything I did she got she used to get on me for being fat for being lazy for a lot of stuff and once I started making money not not just the money of it but started making something of myself she got very proud and I was able to provide her with the support that she was she had given me through my life

And that really made my life. It made me very happy. And she was the queen of the grocery store. Because no matter if they knew who I was or not, she'd start talking about me. And I'd find out about it and it'd make me cringe. But it made her happy. And she didn't have a lot of happy times.

But you gave her some. Yeah, I tried. And, you know, she went out. She was very proud. I've got a lot of friends who lost their dad at a young age, not necessarily as young as you did at two years old, and they talk about what their dad missed seeing with them, whether it was just kids or a career they chose,

and with you it's success. Do you think about that? No. I was so young that it was never a factor. I think he probably would have kicked my ass and the minute I mentioned going to New York on a train, they put the kibosh on that. I don't know.

I would have been a totally different person. You know, obviously I had a big hole to fill up. It's still there, but I fill it with other things. Spackle. Was that the discipline of acting you're talking about? Yeah, I think so. That you needed something that your dad might have given you. That's what I missed.

Because I was really immature and really, in need and I didn't know it until I started paying a woman to tell me about it. But looking back, it's, you know, I would say I wouldn't change the thing, but you know, for my mother, my dad's death was devastating. And she had two miles to feed and she did whatever she had to. Took in kids, took in laundry. One of the things you have changed over the year, just over a decade ago was your lifestyle. I think you showed up at a red carpet 10 years ago, and people said, is that John Goodman?

You lost weight, you stopped drinking. Was there a tipping point for you in there? The tipping point was coming. I should. It was, I was in a hotel room, and alcohol withdrawal is, they say it's more dangerous than maybe narcotic withdrawal. You get into these spasms, you shake, you feel like you want to leave your body through the pores of your skin.

It's horrible. For a long time, I didn't realize that the antidote to that was drinking to level it up. But I was at the point, and it had been a long weekend, playing golf with my friends. and I had to go except an Emmy Award so I missed a rehearsal because I was drunk and then by the time Sunday morning rolled around I was shaking I was still drinking but I was still shaking

I had clarity of thought that I needed to be hospitalized now I could either go to Cedars get it patched up or I could do something about it for real And I, besides the self-hatred, I didn't like drinking anymore because it wasn't, it wasn't filling the hole anymore. When I started, it was fun. By the time I ended, it was a necessity for breathing. And I didn't know any other way.

So I decided, I called my wife, which was like turning myself into the Gestapo. And she made some phone calls. We got me into a treatment center and I detoxed there and decided I like the feeling. And it's been 10 years and that was in California and moving back home was scary because this is New Orleans. And one of the reasons I moved down here was because of the access and I like hanging around in bars. And I loved the quarter. but once I found a group of like-minded people, let's say, I had no more fears. I just want to be this way.

Yeah, you know, it started out fun, but the only thing you're trying to do is just get that first buzz again. Gone. Can't do it. Yeah. You think it ever affected your career or your family? I probably did. I made some bad choices. I made some ludicrous choices while I was drinking.

I got so lucky because I was still getting hired for things. But the fact is I was drinking at work. There's people that do it that can get away with it. My speech would be slurred and I used to have a makeup woman tell me I had the sweetest breath of any actor she'd ever work with because I was like, living on breath mumps. But I thought I was fooling people, my cheeks would turn bright red when I was liquored up.

And I just looked like a stop sign. Do you look back in any of your movies or TV shows and say, I know how it was feeling there? Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I'm ashamed of it, but I can't live on that shame. So it's, I got to learn from it and move on. We started talking about Jeff Daniels.

I'll end talking about Jeff Daniels because one of the things he said about moving back to Michigan was he wanted to live there because he knew the phone was about to ring and his career was going to be over. At least he'd be home when that happened. When I heard him say that, that made a lot of sons. Well, I've heard you say you still, even at this point in your career, you assume it's all going to end tomorrow. It's the business is so nuts. What's good about it is watching all these kids come up. now, just brilliant.

But you never know when, you know, it's gonna be over. I assume, and I have always assumed, I can still do theater. I did theater last year. Somebody will hire me somewhere doing that and that I can still get the pleasure that I derive from work doing anything. So it was a good, I locked into this. business. I went up to New York with $1,000 on an Amtrak

train. The goal was to make a living as an actor. And so far, so good. I should say. Thanks, John. I appreciate it, man. That was awesome. Wow. How much you want for the therapy? That was great. This one's

on the house. My thanks to the great John Goodman. You know, for a guy whose characters are so big and brash and loud, John Goodman actually is like a reflective, almost quiet guy. And I was so honored to sit down with him. He doesn't do a lot of interviews, but it was a blast to talk to him. And boy, just to be so open about his family and all the problems he's had with alcohol and struggles through the industry. You don't always

see that side of these stars' careers. So I appreciate him opening up that way. To hear more of our Sunday sit downs, make sure you click on subscribe and don't forget to tune in to my show Sunday today, every Sunday on NBC. I'm Willie Guy. We'll see you next.