John Goodman

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Joe Piscopo, Saturday Night Live, TV, 1980-1981.   Auditioned the The Not Ready For Prime-Time Players in the “so-bad-it’s-horrible” 1980-1981 season – under Jean Doumanian.Goodman never really needed SNL. He became a top character star instead.
  2. John Ashton, Midnight Run, 1987.   Candy and John Goodman had to bow to Ashton – for Marvin Dorfler in the great buddy movie. Yeah, better than the same director Martin Brest’s Beverly Hills Cop, 1983.   Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin – lean, mean bounty-hunter and his captured hysterical embezzler – were an unexpectedly superb comedy duo. 
  3. John Heard, Home Alone, 1990.  For the zero roles of Macauley Culkin’s forgetful parents (in a film written for and duly stolen by him), an astonishing 66 stars were considered – including 32 later seen for the hot lovers in Basic Instinct:Kim Basinger, Stockard Channing, Glenn Close, Kevin Costner, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Douglas, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Linda Hamilton, Daryl Hannah, Marilu Henner, Anjelica Huston, Helen Hunt, Holly Hunter, Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Christopher Lloyd, Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Annie Potts, Kelly Preston, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Sheen, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, John Travolta.   Other potential Pops were Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jeff Daniels, Tony Danza, John Goodman, Charles Grodin, Tom Hanks, Robert Hays, Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Bill Murray, Ed O’Neill, John Ritter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Skerritt, Robin Williams… and the inevitable unknowns: Broadway’s Mark Linn-Baker, Canadian musicians-comics  Alan Thicke (“the affordable William Shatner”) and Dave Thomas.
  4. Jim Belushi, Curly Sue, 1990.    “What I thought would be this cute, sweet little movie experience ended up going on for something like five months,” reported Kelly Lynch. “So much money was spent. It was insane! It was going to be me, Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey –  a whole different situation. [They left for stage dates].  Those were two guys I knew really well, but I’d never met Jimmy [Belushi] before, and then he and [director John Hughes making his final film] didn’t get along. I kinda felt like a mom dealing with two 12-year-old boys.“  Also in the Bill Dancer mix were Jeff Bridges, Richard Dreyfuss, Mel Gibson, Jeff Goldblum, Steve Guttenberg, Ray Liotta, Bill Murray (off shooting What About Bob?), Kurt Russell, Tom Selleck, Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, Bruce Willis. [Quotes va IMDb; no other source credited].
  5. Thomas Arana, Radio Flyer, 1991.   For $5m, helmer Richard Donner re-wrote and re-cast it on replacing the quickly dropped director David M Evans. Didn’t   help!   The $41m concoction made $3.3m in two weeks.
  6. John Candy, JFK, 1991.
  7. Robin Williams, Aladdin, 1991.     Disney’s voice choices for the blue Genie included Goodman, Albert Brooks, John Candy, Matt Frewer, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Martin Short… As if anyone could match Williams’ dazzling 16 hours of improv. (So much ad-lib finished on screen, the toon was denied any adapted script Oscar nomination!). In typical whirlwind of manic brilliance (at union scale!), Williams used everyone from Ethel Merman to Groucho Marx, William F Buckley to Carol Channing, Schwarzenegger to De Niro!   “Good but not great,” noted Chicago critic Roger Ebert, “with the exception of the Robin Williams sequences, which have a life and energy all their own.” Indeed.
  8. Rene Russo, Lethal Weapon 3, 1992.   Well, she sure looked better! The switch was not by director Richard Donner but his clever   producer-wife,   Lauren Schuler-Donner.
  9. Dan Akyroyd, Chaplin, 1992.  UK director Richard Attenborough had eleven possible Charlie Chaplins (from Jim Carrey  to Nicolas Cage!!!!) but just a mini-battle of two  – for his  first Hollywood producer, Mack Sennett.  Goodman, however, was tied to the Roseanne series.
  10. Jon Lovitz, National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I, 1993.   Having lost the original, Goodman was hardly interested in the send-up.

  11. Tom Hanks, Forest Gump, 1995.  “My name is Forrest Gump. People call me Forrest Gump.”  Author Winston Graham (who did not write that line, it was a Hanks adlib) saw John Goodman as his creation. Director Robert Zemeckis did not.    His first choice was Harry Anderson  – stuck in Dave’s World, 1993-1997. Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Bill Paxton and John Travolta simply refused.  Big misake confessed Travolta.  Well, they all, agreed on that when Hanks earned his second consecutive Oscar plus an estimated $40m from his profits-deal. Life was really like a box of chocolates or a movie deal.  “Ya never know what you’re gonna get.”
  12. Willem Dafoe, The English Patient, 1996.    When Fox was interested in Anthony Minghella’s movie, it was less keen on Dafoe – suggesting Goodman, Danny DeVito or Richard Dreyfuss as David Caravaggio. At Miramax, Mingehella’s film won nine Oscars, including Best Film and Best Director.
  13. Rip Torn, Hercules, 1996.  Goodman,  James Belushi,  Gregory Peck, Patrick Stewart, were in the frame to voice Zeus. Apart from Peck, they all went on to supply other voices for other Disney characters. Goodman, for example, was Pacha in The Emperor’s New Groove, 1999, and The Princess and the Frog’s Big Daddy, 2008.
  14. Dylan Baker, Happiness, 1998.    “Compelling andinteresting materialbut…” All singing fromthe same hymn sheet (“I’m a father first and an actor second”), a dozen stars fled the therapist who proved to be a pedophile in the bleakly controversial script – by young auteur Todd Solondz. 
  15. John Ritter, 8 Simple Rules…For Dating My Teenage Daughter, TV,  2002-2003.  Goodman was seen for what Ritter turned into  #48 of in TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Dad – the overly  protective father where young men (rather like his Jack Tripper in Three’s Company) were concerned. Early in the second season, Ritter collapsed on the set and died in the hospital opposite the studio.  The same hospital he was born in. 
  16. Jon Voight, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, TV, 2004.    Goodman was booked elsewhere, so Voight put on the make-up to be 83 as Eddie, dying in trying to save a kiddy from an accident. He wakes up in Heaven where Jeff Daniels’ Blue Man explains how he will discover the meaning of his life.  
  17. John Ashton, Midnight Run,1987.   Candy and John Goodman had to bow to Ashton – for Marvin Dorfler in the great buddy movie. Yeah, better than the same director Martin Brest’s Beverly Hills Cop, 1983.  Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin – lean, mean bounty-hunter and his captured hysterical embezzler – were an unexpectedly superb comedy duo. 
  18. Bill Murray, Charlie’s Angels, 2000. Drew Barrymore bought the movie rights and proved herself as star and producer.   Chasing Goodman, then Murray, as Charlie’s right-hand  man, Bosley, made famous on TV by the late David Doyle. was not a happy camper. Director McG said  the actor attacked him in-set – denied by Murrayu. But he certainly had a blazing row with co-star Lisa Liu that halted shooting for a day!  Allegedly, Murray told  her: “What the hell are you doing here? You can’t act!”  Not surprisingly, this led to a physical altercation  from Liu. Murray, again, saw it differently. “We began rehearsing this scene and I said: Lucy, how can you want to say these lines? These are so crazy. She got furious with me because she thought it was a personal assault, but the reality is she hated these lines as much as I did. I feel very warmly for her now.”  Not enough to reprise Bosley in the 2002 sequel, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
  19. John Ritter, 8 Simple Rules…For Dating My Teenage Daughter, TV,  2002-2003.  Goodman was seen for what Ritter turned into  #48 of in TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Dad – the overly  protective father where young men (rather like his Jack Tripper in Three’s Company) were concerned. Early in the second season, Ritter collapsed on the set and died in the hospital opposite the studio.  The same hospital he was born in. 
  20. James Cromwell, Big Hero 6, 2014.    Six super heroes. So they naturally require one super-nemesis. Who better than (the masked) Robert Callaghan, head of a robotics at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. The voicing gig for Disney’s first Marvel subject –  after The Big Buy-Out but before Kevin Feige created the  Marvelverse, and  winning the best animation Oscar – was aimed at Jason Alexander, Alec Baldwin, Jeff Bridges, Jim Carrey, Danny De Vito, John Goodman, Dustin Hoffman, Bob Hoskins, Michael Keaton, John Malkovich, Eddie Murphy, Jack  Nicholson, Gary Oldman, Joe Pesci, JK Simmons, Jeffrey Tambor….plus the great Gilbert Gottfried, putting the rest to shame by scoring 179 screen roles in 41 years!   They all made way for Cromwell. Ten years earlier, he had created the I, Robot called Sonny, played by Alan Tudyk… here playing Cromwell’s enemy.  
  21. Alan Tudyk, Big Hero 6, 2014.   Now it was again Goodman, Baldwin  and Oldman, plus   Peter Dinklage, Paul Giamatti, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd, Alfred Malina, John Malkovich, Mandy Pantinkin,  Hugo Weaving and UK comics John Cleese and Eddie Izzard  bowing to Tudyk…  as the above Cromwell’s arch rival, Alistair Krej.   Ten years earlier, Cromwell created the  I, Robot  called Sonny, played by…  Tudyk!


 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  21