John Goodman talks about working with George Clooney, Coen brothers

JOHN Goodman confesses he was thrilled to get a kiss from folk icon Joan Baez. Ruben V. Nepales

LOS ANGELES—“Working with George (Clooney) is like working for your favorite 5-year-old kid,” John Goodman said of being directed for the first time by the actor-director in “The Monuments Men.” “He knows what he wants. It’s like play. It was great.”

“The Monuments Men,” which was co-written by George based on a book chronicling how a crew of art historians and museum curators hunted down works of art stolen by Nazis before Hitler destroys them, pits John with Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray and Jean Dujardin. George stars in the film, too.

“It was probably the most fun I ever had making a movie because of George, Matt Damon and Bill Murray sitting around,” admitted John, smiling and casually dressed on a recent morning at The London Hotel in New York. The actor took off his blazer and rolled up his sleeves when he sat down. “We would just sit around and crack jokes.”

Busy career

He was in a good mood, cracking jokes in a deadpan manner or dishing them with a grin. Complimented about his busy career, John said, “So far, in the last couple of years, it seems to have gone that way. I can turn down a lot more than I used to. I used to grab anything for fear of not working. But there’s a lot of good people out there. This year, I got to work with George Clooney and that was great.”

John, as a perennial favorite of Joel and Ethan Coen, got to work for the fifth time with the writing and filmmaking brothers in “Inside Llewyn Davis.” The night before this interview, John hosted a terrific concert presented in connection with the film, “Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’” at The Town Hall in Manhattan. The gig, which featured an array of artists, including Joan Baez, Elvis Costello and Patti Smith, probably explained his hoarse voice.

We asked what the concert’s highlight was for him personally. “Joan Baez kissed me!” he exclaimed as he clasped his hands, behaving like a delighted boy with a huge smile on his face. “That was swell!”

“Just listening to the talent that was up there and, man, everybody got along so well backstage,” he gushed. “Basically my whole evening was about trying not to bump into people or trying to get out of people’s way. But all these young people – they are so talented. They are going acoustic, going to roots music… going to something that I think means more. They are really learning their craft. They’re not using Auto-Tune or machines. It’s just really refreshing to watch these people who have such a passion for what they do.”

Nervous

He admitted feeling nervous onstage. “I thought I was going to fail on a really large scale. I was thinking, what do I take away from this if people started throwing things? Maybe I’d get free shoes.”

While John first collaborated with the Coens in “Raising Arizona,” they reportedly started writing scripts with him in mind with “Barton Fink.” John quipped, “From what I hear, they had a picture in their minds of (John) Turturro and me sitting on a hotel bed in our underwear. That’s probably not true but it’s a good story.”

“I was supposed to play Oscar’s role,” John joked, referring to the title role, a struggling musician brilliantly played by Oscar Isaac in “Inside Llewyn Davis.”

What is it about the Coens that brings out the best in him? “They write very well,” he answered with a deadpan expression as he declared the obvious. “I’m going to be very selfish and egotistical here but I’ve always felt a special connection. I could understand them. With any good art like that, you are going to feel like somebody is speaking directly to you.”

Of the movie itself, an ode to the struggles of musicians and artists in general (songs are played in full – one of the film’s delights), John declared, “It is a classic to me. It makes me want to see it again because my second viewing raised a lot of questions that I have about myself as well.”

John plays Roland Turner, a mysterious man. It’s a short but marked role. “Why did he wear those shoes? I related to the whole thing about the fear of success, the dealing with people. I don’t consider myself an artist but in the craft of acting, if you are in the arts, how do you relate to the rest of the world?”

Born in Missouri, John moved to New York with a suitcase and money borrowed from his brother. He’s had his share of struggles. He auditioned for the 1980-81 season of “Saturday Night Live” but did not make it. From stage roles, he went into film and TV work.

“I lived in constant fear of failure, of—God forbid—[missing] a meal, and of poverty,” he admitted. “I wasn’t always this large. Sometimes we make the wrong choices when faced with that kind of necessity. I think Oscar’s character, Llewyn, maybe thrives on a little bit too much. I got a different reading seeing it at the (New York) Film Festival two nights ago than I did the first time I saw it. It affected me much more—the terms of failure and success.”

Funny man

How early did he discover he was funny? “When I was young, I watched Ernie Kovacs with my brother,” he replied. “It was always nice to listen to my brother laugh. I used to read religiously a magazine called MAD and later on, National Lampoon. Laughter makes me feel better than almost anything. It sure gets you through a lot. But I love to laugh almost more than anything else. At an early age, I used to be able to do imitations and do just anything. I think it was just a naked need for attention in school.”

He was not the rebellious type. “I was just too afraid of everything to be a rebel. I just wanted to fit more than anything else when I was a kid.”

While he described his Roland Turner character as mean-spirited, John said he himself was a generous person. He cracked, “I’m probably just a crabby old bastard. Yeah, you want to think of yourself as Saint Francis.”

On which of his qualities he can do without, John, who is 61, said, “I get very selfish with my time. I have a lot of impatience with people that I wish I didn’t have but that’s viewing myself through the profession that I have chosen which is through a very ugly prism these days. Yeah, as a celebrity, I just don’t know how people view me so I get very defensive.”

As to his opinion of television today, the costar of the hit series, “Roseanne” (which ran for seven years and for which he won a 1993 Golden Globe Award) said, “I don’t really watch much anymore. They’re just things that are not of interest to me. It’s not that they are bad. I’m sure they are well-crafted. I’m just not interested in the young dating scene… people talking about genitals—which I like to save for private conversation. There’s a couple of shows that I’ll watch.

All this crap

“But yeah, I was thinking when you were saying that ‘today, there is crap on,’ I’m sure that when we did ‘Roseanne,’ people were saying the same thing about our shows. ‘Oh, all this crap they have on today—fat people living in a trailer’ or something.”

Home for John and his wife Anna Beth is New Orleans, Louisiana. “My wife is from Louisiana. When I moved away from Los Angeles, I knew I would be away [from] home a lot.” He chose to reside in Louisiana so Anna Beth “could be near her family when I was gone.”

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