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"  Published in the October 2012 issue Late lunch at Palm Too restaurant, midtown Manhattan. SCOTT RAAB: The mayor made them put the calories on the menu. JOHN GOODMAN: Somehow it doesn&amp;#039;t faze me. But let me get a Caesar salad. WAITER: Would you like some anchovies on top of your Caesar? JG: I say yes. My gout says no. SR: Gout? JG: I have a healthy fear of gout, but I haven&amp;#039;t had any episodes. Anchovies have stuff called purines in them that trigger an attack. SR: I&amp;#039;m going to have the Delmaestro salad. JG: Are you going to give me a fashion ticket for wearing a winter jacket? It&amp;#039;s starting to get to me, being on the road. But I don&amp;#039;t want to whine about anything. SR: I&amp;#039;m worried about the mustache [not pictured], I gotta tell you. JG: Bill Murray had a line a long time ago about wearing a mustache: &amp;quot;I look like a Denver cop.&amp;quot; I was a cocaine dealer last fall, and I had a goatee mustache. Then I trimmed it down to almost a pencil-thin for a London industrialist. Then I grew the goatee back because Joel and Ethan Coen wanted it. But the goatee didn&amp;#039;t cut it, so they shaved it off and made a fake one. I&amp;#039;m going to keep it and then lose it in the summertime. SR: One of the odd things about liking your work for so many years is that I have a sense of ownership. I own you. JG: At a meeting a couple of weeks ago, someone grabbed me and said, &amp;quot;Who are you?&amp;quot; SR: Have you been living out of a suitcase? JG: I just did six weeks in London. I went home for a couple of weeks. I&amp;#039;m going to Atlanta to do a baseball movie. Then I&amp;#039;m going straight to Los Angeles. I haven&amp;#039;t always been this busy. But lately I haven&amp;#039;t wanted to turn the projects down. SR: What are you shooting in New York? JG: Inside Llewyn Davis. I&amp;#039;m playing a junkie jazz musician for Joel and Ethan Coen. I haven&amp;#039;t worked with them since O Brother, Where Art Thou? \u2014 15 years. Boy, it&amp;#039;s great to be back with them again. We have a real good comfort zone. I just adore being with those guys. It&amp;#039;s like hanging around with high school guys or something. SR: I&amp;#039;ve heard the film is based on folk singer Dave Van Ronk&amp;#039;s life. So it&amp;#039;s set in Greenwich Village in the &amp;#039;60s? JG: Right on the cusp of Dylan&amp;#039;s big explosion. SR: I&amp;#039;m probably one of the few people who&amp;#039;s seen Masked and Anonymous, the movie you were in with Dylan, half a dozen times. It&amp;#039;s such a strange movie, and it has so many moving parts. It&amp;#039;s a fascinating film. How was Dylan on set? JG: Being around Bob was a trip. I just hung back and watched him. When the cats had downtime, they&amp;#039;d go somewhere and play together. And I&amp;#039;d listen to that. The film got a god-awful reception at Sundance. There were a lot of walkouts, but who cares? It was kind of an absurdist, futurist piece. It was fun. And I got to work with Jeff Bridges again. I got to stand next to the fabulous Pen\u00E9lope Cruz for a little while. That was worth the price of admission. Senorita Cruz. SR: How many movies have you done? JG: Fucking brain. I don&amp;#039;t know. SR: 70? 80? JG: I try not to count. SR: Do you think of your films as one body of work? JG: Not so much. There&amp;#039;s some stuff I&amp;#039;m really proud of. But I&amp;#039;m prouder of just showing up and suiting up and banging out the thunder every day. And I&amp;#039;m proud of the people I&amp;#039;ve been able to work with. SR: That&amp;#039;s edging close to feeling proud of the body of work. JG: I may never be able to accept that, but I&amp;#039;m happy about the cats that I&amp;#039;ve suited up with. I&amp;#039;m happy I wasn&amp;#039;t picked last to play skins. There&amp;#039;s a lot to be said for doing a good journeyman&amp;#039;s body of work. If there wasn&amp;#039;t, I&amp;#039;d just run my ass down. You haven&amp;#039;t done shit. Who the hell do you think you are? And I don&amp;#039;t know where that came from, beating the shit out of myself all the time. I&amp;#039;m just tired of it. SR: I&amp;#039;ve heard Sean Penn talk about how difficult it is to act well. And Robert Downey Jr., who I think works very hard, never makes it sound like it&amp;#039;s hard. How is it for you? JG: I make it harder than it should be. And I overthink everything. That&amp;#039;s something I work on \u2014 to make it less difficult. Because the goal has always been just to tell the truth, to make the acting not stand out, to smooth the rivets off of the plane. And it&amp;#039;s still what keeps me going, because I&amp;#039;ll never quite get there, you know? I kind of realized early on that the real joy was in the work, that the other stuff was bullshit. I wish that I had better chops going in. I had very good teachers, but it seems like I start every job over, like I&amp;#039;m trying to reinvent the wheel every time. SR: I think for people who take it seriously, mastery never consists of getting it right immediately. It consists of trusting yourself to know that you will. JG: You keep tinkering with the machine and make it better. Sometimes I overtinker, which is something wrong with my brain chemistry. But in figuring out why I do that, maybe I&amp;#039;ll make myself a better person. I doubt it. The other problem is I don&amp;#039;t trust myself enough. When I write, I overwrite. Gingerbread. Too much gingerbread. Writing is probably the only hobby I have. But I wish I had another one. If I was just a little better at golf. SR: You still play? JG: I haven&amp;#039;t played for a few years. It got to be more of a golf outing. I&amp;#039;d start getting bombed after the third hole and I couldn&amp;#039;t hit anything, but I&amp;#039;d still enjoy the ride \u2014 and the cart girl. But when I do it right, it&amp;#039;s great. I just need a little more encouragement. SR: It&amp;#039;s hard to tolerate your own clumsiness, your own failure. JG: I think I&amp;#039;m finally learning now to just accept being given what I was given. SR: Which is a lot, really. JG: I&amp;#039;m learning to enjoy what I got.  SR: Has fame been a burden? JG: I had a long time to deal with it. But it was compounded when I got Roseanne. I think everybody kind of goes nuts when stuff like that happens. And I was about ten years into a pretty good drunk when all that hit \u2014 and that compounded everything. Fame was always the most frightening part. I don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;s anything good that comes of it. And I still have that opinion, even after becoming sober and self-analytical. I don&amp;#039;t trust it. I&amp;#039;m a lot easier with it, but it&amp;#039;s worthless. It&amp;#039;s just been cheapened by so many that it&amp;#039;s a commodity more than ever. I bent over backward trying not to act like a famous guy. And I kind of fell into some traps doing that. Trying to act like a normal guy instead of relaxing and seeing what was going to happen, I put up all kinds of walls. SR: How do you relax under that kind of scrutiny? JG: I could have made it easier on myself, I guess, but I didn&amp;#039;t know how. And that culture&amp;#039;s just ratcheted up. There was always a tabloid culture. But then Entertainment Tonight and all these shows--that&amp;#039;s pretty much all there is on TV now. SR: I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;ve ever seen you as roadkill. You&amp;#039;ve been in a stable relationship for a long time. You&amp;#039;re a dad. You&amp;#039;re a hardworking actor. JG: It&amp;#039;s just another defense mechanism, I guess. I did too much as a reaction to being worried about it instead of just enjoying it. I&amp;#039;m trying to get better at it. SR: Happy living in New Orleans? JG: I snapped to it the first time I went down there. I just had an affinity for it. And when I started making some dough doing commercials and shit, I&amp;#039;d take a week off and go down there for Mardi Gras every year. And then I got to know it outside of that stuff, you know? The obvious hook. What a great place it really is. SR: I&amp;#039;ve never been there. Maybe it&amp;#039;s because I&amp;#039;m a Jewish guy, but I have a fear of the Deep South. JG: It ain&amp;#039;t the South. It&amp;#039;s more like northern Costa Rica. SR: It&amp;#039;s an international city. JG: You know, Jews built the city. The secretary of state of the Confederacy was [Louisiana politician] Judah P. Benjamin. WAITER: Excuse me, are you guys done? SR: Yeah, thanks. WAITER: No double porterhouse? No five-pound lobster? SR: No, thanks. [To Goodman] You&amp;#039;ve got a slew of movies in postproduction. You&amp;#039;re working harder than anyone else I&amp;#039;ve ever interviewed. JG: Last year I was really busy. The other day I saw Argo, which Ben Affleck directed. It&amp;#039;s terrific. I was on the edge of my seat. And I knew how it was gonna end. I got to work with Alan Arkin. That was great. SR: Talk about a guy who makes it look easy. JG: He&amp;#039;s just one of those guys. He keeps telling me to get a new hobby. He wants me to join an improv group. I&amp;#039;ve worked with three of those original Second City guys now \u2014 Mike Nichols, him, Ed Asner. SR: Sorry. I&amp;#039;m just looking at my list of questions. JG: It&amp;#039;s nine inches. SR: Nine inches? JG: One of the questions I imagine myself lying about. SR: I asked Ryan Seacrest about his penis. That&amp;#039;s the only time. Him, and maybe Dennis Rodman. JG: I love Rodman. He was beautiful to watch rebound. That&amp;#039;s one thing I always sucked at. Man, I could never play basketball. I had a court in the back of my house when I was doing Roseanne. And I&amp;#039;d go out there by myself, and I tried and I tried. And I just sucked. I&amp;#039;d just wind up laughing at myself, because I was so bad. SR: You were a football player instead. Were you quick? JG: I was antiquick. I was lazy and emotionally immature. SR: At least you&amp;#039;re not hard on yourself. JG: I&amp;#039;m just looking back, trying to figure out what&amp;#039;s happened to me. SR: When you come back to New York, is there a sense of connection to the city? JG: When I first got here from St. Louis, I thought, Well, I&amp;#039;ll get my ass kicked in three months, tops, and then I&amp;#039;ll go back. The entire point was not to be able to kick myself in the ass later in life. The first three years here I used to feel trapped, and then the spring would come and it was Ah, man. It&amp;#039;s working. Something works. Something&amp;#039;s right again. It&amp;#039;s going to be all right. Today I was just trippin&amp;#039;. I just love it so much, doing everything a New Yorker&amp;#039;s supposed to do. I got so turned on today walking around. SR: Do people pester you? JG: Not as much as they used to. A lot of times they just see somebody they know from television. A lot of times they don&amp;#039;t even know my name. I&amp;#039;m &amp;quot;that guy,&amp;quot; but they&amp;#039;ve got to have a picture. SR: That still happens? JG: Yeah. They&amp;#039;ve got to have an autograph. And they don&amp;#039;t know who I am. They just want an autograph. SR: I know they don&amp;#039;t know the real you, but it&amp;#039;s genuine. People love the work. JG: I can handle it a lot more now than I used to. I used to think that everybody was goofing on me. SR: My favorite John Goodman moment is the scene in Barton Fink where you&amp;#039;re running down a burning hallway with a shotgun, bellowing, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll show you the life of the mind!&amp;quot; That seems like a peak experience for an actor. JG: I was so scared, I didn&amp;#039;t think about it. But the fire was very controlled. It looked a lot worse than it was. SR: But still. You gotta like to bellow. JG: That&amp;#039;s why they hired me in the first place. SR: You have a hall-of-fame bellow. JG: I hung up the bellow. I don&amp;#039;t know if I could do it anymore. I&amp;#039;m past my bellow prime. SR: Have you tried lately? JG: No. SR: I bet with the right motivation... JG: There&amp;#039;s gotta be a paycheck or I trip over a goddamn dog.  THE ESQUIRE DOSSIER JOHN GOODMAN  DATE OF BIRTH: June 20, 1952 PLACE OF BIRTH: Affton, Missouri NOTEWORTHY COMMERCIAL ROLES: McDonald&amp;#039;s Egg McMuffin eater, Foot Locker customer, infamous Mennen Skin Bracer face-slapper (&amp;quot;Thanks ... I needed that!&amp;quot;). SNL AUDITIONS: One. He failed to make the cut for the 1980-81 season. SUBSEQUENT SNL APPEARANCES: Twelve times as host, beginning with a 1989 appearance. MOVIE ROLES THAT INVOLVED BOWLING: Fred Flintstone (The Flintstones), Walter Sobchak (The Big Lebowski), and Ralph (King Ralph). MOST UNDERRATED ROLE: The hopeless romantic Louis Fyne in David Byrne&amp;#039;s 1986 movie True Stories. UPCOMING FILM ROLES: Trouble with the Curve (out September 21), Argo (October 21), Flight (November 2), Inside Llewyn Davis (to be announced). ADVICE HE GAVE US IN 2009: &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no formula to life. If I figured it out, I&amp;#039;d probably have to check out the next day. &amp;#039;Oh, Mr. Goodman, your seven o&amp;#039;clock stroke is here, sir.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a15759/john-goodman-interview-1012/>