John Goodman Reminisces On Getting Devoured In ‘C.H.U.D.’
Beloved character actor John Goodman has excelled in every genre, but does very little horror. Despite voicing Sully, the lovable monster in Monsters, Inc, and playing characters like makeup master John Chambers in the Oscar-winning Argo, a terrifying serial killer in The Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink, and essentially playing William Castle in Joe Dante’s Matinee, he’s judicious when it comes to horror.
When he does do it, he works with the biggest names in the business: Spielberg (who produced Arachnophobia), Denzel Washington (Fallen), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (10 Cloverfield Lane), King Kong (Kong: Skull Island), and Godzilla (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters).
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Amazingly, one of Goodman’s earliest roles was as ‘Cop In Diner’ in C.H.U.D., where he and his partner (future Emmy Winner Jay Thomas) enter the diner, order hamburgers, and get eaten by the sewer monsters.
Goodman makes the most of his brief screen time, exchanging banter with Thomas and flirting with the waitress (and checking out her legs when she grills their order), before the creatures attack.
“I am definitely in C.H.U.D.,” John Goodman says proudly.
“I’m from St. Louis and I moved to New York in ’75 to do theater and I wanted to do film,” he explains. “I knew if I didn’t go and try to do films, I would kick myself for the rest of my life.”
“C.H.U.D. was made by a lot of the guys I was hanging around with at the time. I don’t remember too much about it, because it was over 30 years ago!” Goodman said.
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But, he does remember a few things. “I do remember that Jay Thomas and I are cops, we walk into a diner, where we see the waitress. The waitress is Hallie Foote, she’s [playwright] Horton Foote’s daughter—and we talk to her. After we give Hallie our orders (‘cheeseburger and Coke’) and talk to her, the director (Douglas Cheek) then said, ‘Look at the window—HERE COMES THE CANNIBALLISTIC HUMANOID UNDERGROUND DWELLERS,'” laughs Goodman. He gets bonus points for correctly naming what the acronym C.H.U.D. stands for.
“So, when The Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers are coming at us, I did this—” he points a finger at his own face, as he contorts it into a giant look of surprise and horror.
“The director goes, “Do it again—more frightened!’ So I did this—” he does a super exaggerated expression of giant open-mouthed fear and surprise. “And that’s the one they used!”
Categorized:Interviews
