(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 27 August 2025 18:45, UK
The only person who doesn’t seem to realise, or appreciate, that John Goodman is one of the modern era’s greatest character actors is John Goodman, with the star having always been incredibly critical of his work.
Obviously, he’s not the first performer to enjoy a successful career in the face of relentless self-doubt, and the widespread acclaim he’s been gathering for the last four decades and change should be more than enough to convince him of what everyone already knows: he’s pretty damn good at the whole acting thing.
Despite all of the scene-stealing supporting roles and cameos he’s contributed to film and television over the years, Goodman called The Big Lebowski the only one of his performances that he can rewatch without being overcome by a sense of dissatisfaction that he could do it better. It’s one of his best, but he’s delivered plenty of turns that pass the test.
On one occasion, though, it didn’t sound like he knew what the hell he was doing, which is fair enough. He’d been in a few blockbusters, but at no point had he ever worked on anything like the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer, a dayglo-drenched fantasy that was overflowing with garish and kitschy visual effects.
He was aware of the animated source material, not that it gave him any pointers on how to get to grips with the characters, structure or story when he didn’t get it at all. “Man, I didn’t understand Speed Racer the first time around, and I don’t get it now,” he admitted. “Does this chimp talk in the back of this racing car? I don’t understand what this is?”
Even with those misgivings, not to mention feeling “isolated” on a cavernous Berlin soundstage, Goodman found the positives in the freedom he was afforded in having to act against nothing for much of his time on set. Even though he “shot a lot of green screen stuff” that wasn’t his forte, it “kind of threw me back to when I was doing community theatre in a church basement, where you have to imagine where you are.”
Unfortunately, the Wachowskis’ first non-Matrix movie in over a decade was a total bust that failed to recoup its budget at the box office and notched a Razzie nomination for ‘Worst Remake, Ripoff or Sequel’. Still, with the benefit of hindsight, Goodman thinks it may have been too far in front of the curve.
“It might have been a little ahead of its time,” he mused to The Hollywood Reporter. “It didn’t feel like that when it sank, but that’s one thing about film: It’s there forever. If people dig it now, that’s just great and means the Wachowskis knew what they were doing.”
He wasn’t sure what they were doing at the time, and a lot of audience members didn’t have a clue either, but Speed Racer has gradually grown more popular with time. Is it a good movie? Not particularly, but the directorial siblings definitely take some wild swings, and those kinds of candy-coloured epics that are so incessantly dumb from start to finish always have a funny way of sneaking toward cult status eventually.
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