![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/John-Goodman-2019-Actor-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n
Thu 14 May 2026 17:45, UK <\/p>\n
Although he\u2019s always come off as an affable chap, there\u2019s darkness within John Goodman<\/a>. Not to a massive extent, but it\u2019s there nonetheless, and he\u2019s spent his life trying to keep a lid on it.<\/p>\n As was the case for innumerable others, alcohol was to blame. Goodman\u2019s hard-drinking days lasted for decades, and he wasn\u2019t always the easiest guy to be around. Whether he was working with Martin Scorsese or Roseanne Barr<\/a>, self-loathing and shame were the clouds constantly looming above his head.<\/p>\n If you gather 100 people in a room, one of whom is obligated to be John Goodman, and ask everyone in it if he\u2019s one of the best character actors in modern Hollywood, he\u2019d be the only one who said no. Keeping things to yourself is never the wisest idea, and when one of cinema\u2019s most famous directors pushed him into a movie he didn\u2019t want to make, the star shouldn\u2019t have kept his mouth shut.<\/p>\n It might have a certain nostalgic appeal to the generation who watched it the first time around as nippers, but 1994\u2019s The Flintstones isn\u2019t a good movie. Goodman knew that it probably wasn\u2019t going to be a good movie, and he had no intentions of auditioning<\/a> to play the patriarch of the titular family, but he didn\u2019t have a choice.<\/p>\n Steven Spielberg, who\u2019d recently worked with the sitcom staple on Always, took it upon himself at the table read of the forgettable fantasy, which he\u2019s adamant is the most underrated film<\/a> he\u2019s ever made, to tell everyone that he\u2019d found his Fred Flintstone in the formidable shape of Goodman, who called the in-development family flick \u201cnot something I was looking forward to doing,\u201d but Spielberg had spoken.<\/p>\n Even more unfortunately, it was a huge hit. Whether he was making the publicity rounds, appearing on talk shows, or going about his daily business, one of the inevitable side effects was that wherever Goodman went and whatever he did, people demanded that he give them a yabba dabba doo. How did he feel about it? Well, he summed it up in two words: \u201cI\u2019m screwed\u201d.<\/p>\n Having gritted his teeth to grin and bear it through The Flintstones, director Brian Levant, who returned to helm the follow-up, Viva Rock Vegas!, revealed that when plans were put in place for a sequel, the original plan was to shoot them back-to-back, making Goodman go through personal hell twice more in quick succession.<\/p>\n Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/p>\n When word reached his ears, he couldn\u2019t have made himself any clearer, with the leading man going directly to Spielberg<\/a> and telling him, in no uncertain terms, \u201cPlease don\u2019t make me do any more of these.\u201d His wish was granted, and he was freed from the shackles of Fred Flintstone, but things were never the same between Goodman and Spielberg.<\/p>\n The first time they worked together was on Always, and Spielberg proudly announced him as The Flintstones\u2018 leading man before a single frame of the former had even been shot, but after enduring a miserable experience he never wanted in the first place, the pair have never collaborated again, which is enough to make you wonder what happened in that meeting behind closed doors where Goodman laid down the law.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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