In praise of John Goodman’s ‘True Stories’ performance
There’s something extraordinary about the cinema icon that is John Goodman. The actor has starred in many of Hollywood’s favourite pictures over the years, including several Coen brothers movies such as Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? while also turning in notable performances in projects such as The Flintstones, Argo and even The Emperor’s New Groove.
But long before we knew Goodman as the legend that he is celebrated as today, he needed to make his first foray into the big time, and we first saw the most significant glimpse of his talents in 1986’s True Stories. The project is the only feature film as a director for Talking Heads singer David Byrne, and it’s glorious from beginning to end.
True Stories: A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil Texas does precisely what it says on the tin and sees Byrne detail the lives of everyday folk in a fictional Texan town. It features a soundtrack with songs by Byrne’s old band, Talking Heads, along with contributions from Terry Allen, The Panhandle Mystery Band, and a few other artists.
Byrne had been inspired to document the series of the film’s vignettes while he was touring the United States with Talking Heads and would read the tabloid news stories about America’s weird and wonderful people. Throughout the New York band’s catalogue, he portrays that everyday existence and the result is nothing short of a masterpiece.
And at the centre of it all is a stellar performance by Goodman. He plays Lewis, ‘The Country Bachelor’, a country-western singing technician who works for Varicorp, a Texan computer manufacturing plant. Lewis is on the hunt for love, but it tragically seems to elude him wherever he looks for it.
Lewis’s story is the most prominent in True Stories, and we often find him going on dates with single women. One brilliant moment in the film sees Lewis on an evening rendezvous with a compulsive liar, who tells him she wrote Michael Jackson’s song ‘Billie Jean’, has “extra-psychic abilities”, and was born with a tail. And that’s just for starters.
Goodman’s acting is outstanding, and he manages to listen to the woman’s lies whilst remaining polite and entertaining, always on the cusp of bursting with laughter. He rarely speaks, but he doesn’t need to, communicating expertly only with his face, knowing that he’s landed himself into a situation he can’t quickly escape.
But there’s a tragic seriousness to Goodman’s character, too. We know he’s writing a song and loves sad tunes as they “make me want to lie down”. But we’re not prepared for arguably the movie’s best moment, which arrives more or less at its conclusion at the ‘Celebration of Specialness’ concert to mark the 150th anniversary of Texas’ independence.
Lewis finally finds his way onto the stage with the song he has written about his life. “What else do I know?” he states. Lewis delivers a moment of genuinely heartbreaking beauty through an emotionally charged and beguiling rendition of ‘People Like Us’. Byrne’s decision to give his song to Goodman rounds off the film’s brilliance with the sincerity that oozes throughout the runtime.
“We don’t want justice,” Lewis sings. “We don’t want freedom. We just want someone to love.” After all, True Stories documents the ordinary everyday lives of those to whom the big philosophical questions just aren’t as important as the personal quest for love and happiness and ‘People Like Us’ personifies that very quest.
Goodman made his breakout performance in Byrne’s film, and it’s all too clear from his effort that he was a star in the making. He possesses that southern charm that we would all come to know him by and can make us laugh and cry in the same breath. He’s simply mesmerising.
