John Goodman remembers his time making The Monuments Men as one of the best experiences of his film career. That hasn’t kept him from questioning whether he should have taken the role.
The 74-year-old actor named the George Clooney film and Blues Brothers 2000 as projects he “probably shouldn’t have done” during an Oct. 5 career retrospective with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.
His comments came during a discussion of movies that disappointed, according to Entertainment Weekly. He recalled spending roughly six months on Clooney’s production, working in Germany and England.
The 2014 film reunited the actors after O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Goodman played art expert Walter Garfield in a cast that also included Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett and Jean Dujardin.
Clooney Offered Him the Script at an ‘Argo’ Premiere
Clooney approached Goodman with the script at Argo‘s New York premiere, he told The A.V. Club in 2014. The project followed a World War II unit sent to recover artwork stolen by the Nazis and return it to its owners, as Sony Pictures describes in its synopsis.
“George loves movies and he loves stories,” Goodman said during the recent conversation. He also praised Clooney’s directing and his ability to tell a story.
The film received a substantially cooler reception from critics. Its Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score stands at 30 percent, with the site’s consensus faulting the narrative and nostalgic tone despite the cast and subject matter. Box Office Mojo records approximately $155.6 million worldwide for its original release and $156.7 million including a later rerelease.
‘Blues Brothers 2000’ Put Him Alongside Musicians He Admired
Goodman joined Dan Aykroyd and director John Landis for the 1998 sequel to The Blues Brothers, playing Mighty Mack McTeer. Released 18 years after the original, the film followed Elwood Blues as he tried to rebuild his band after leaving prison.
For Goodman, the attraction included working with Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd and Sam Moore, whom he singled out during the retrospective. The production also featured Aretha Franklin, James Brown, B.B. King and Erykah Badu, according to Universal‘s cast listing.
The movie earned about $14.1 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo, and holds a 47 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Comparing its reception with that of Clooney’s film, Goodman joked that making movies “should never be fun.”
In his February 1998 review, Roger Ebert described the film as “lame comedy surrounded by high-energy blues.” He also pointed readers toward Brown’s performance of “Please, Please, Please” after the closing credits, writing that the production appeared to have more worthwhile music than its story could accommodate.
His ‘Raising Arizona’ Audition Turned Into an Hour of Joking
Goodman offered Raising Arizona as an exception during the same conversation. On the small-budget 1987 comedy, he enjoyed watching Joel and Ethan Coen improvise ways to get their camera shots, including using a baby carriage. He also visited the set on days when he wasn’t working just to spend time with them.
In an August 2019 interview with GQ, Goodman recalled meeting the brothers while making True Stories. The audition turned into roughly an hour of joking around, and he enjoyed it enough that getting the part had stopped being his main concern.
He played escaped convict Gale, whose confidence far exceeded his intelligence. Goodman credited the screenplay with supplying the character, leaving him little need to invent additional details.
The collaborations continued through Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski and Inside Llewyn Davis. Discussing Walter Sobchak in the GQ interview, Goodman credited weeks of rehearsal for dialogue that sounded spontaneous. “I couldn’t improvise anything better than Joel and Ethan did,” he said.
Asked by Looper in June 2023 whether he would prefer another original Coen film or a Big Lebowski sequel, Goodman answered: “No, the Lebowski sequel’s not going to happen, but anytime Joel and Ethan have a part for me, I’ll be there.”