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John Goodman gives us a jolly, heroic coke dealer in ‘Flight’

By Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune News Service –

ORLANDO, Fla. — When was the last time Hollywood gave us a drug dealer as a hero, as comic relief in a drama? It’s not something that happens often in a country where “Just say no” rivals “E pluribus unum” as a national credo.

But here is Harling Mays, lifelong pal of substance-abusing pilot “Whip” Whitaker, the comical candyman whose every entrance signifies emotional rescue, good times and “Just say YES” in the new drama “Flight.”

“Just say yes,” laughs John Goodman, who plays Harling. “No way I’m owning that. Not something we want the kids to take up, is it?”

The “yes” phrase gets a laugh out of “Flight” screenwriter John Gatins. “Flight,” which stars Denzel Washington as the pilot who acts heroically and saves many lives after his plane has a catastrophic mechanical failure. The guy flunks his drug test after the crash — big time. But Harling is the guy who can ease his pain, get his “edge” back — with pharmaceuticals.

“I don’t know if I’m glamorizing coke dealers, or even if Harling is a glamorous or cool character,” Gatins says. “Harling is exactly who he seems to be.” And who he seems to be, Gatins says, is Whip Whitaker’s one true-blue friend.

Gatins is stunned by the reactions to this character, whom the Village Voice praised for his “dirtbag bonhomie,” whom Screen Daily described as the film’s “riskiest performance,” a jolly, bad-influence Falstaff to Denzel’s Prince Hal.

“I’ve seen the movie with a lot of audiences now, and the scene pops up where Harling is strolling down that hallway with a knapsack full of cocaine, riding to the rescue, people are cheering,” Gatins says. “It’s the strangest thing. I want to ask people, ‘Why are you cheering?”‘

Credit the director, Robert Zemeckis, who scores Harling’s entrance with the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” Credit the screenplay, which sees Harling as an uncomplicated character in a movie full of moral ambiguity. And credit Goodman, the lovable big man who decided “Harling is stuck in another era,” and gave him the clothes, the shades and the ponytail — “Hair extensions, man. Two months. It was hell.” — to match.

“We all have that guy in our life we’re conflicted over,” says Gatins, a recovering alcoholic who combined “my two biggest fears — drinking myself to death and dying in a plane crash” for “Flight. “You kind of love the guy, but you don’t like what he brings into your life. He’s a bad influence, but he is the one person who says, ‘You need to go testify to the National Transportation Safety Board? I can have you out of here in seven minutes. You make the call.’ That’s who Harling is.”

Perhaps only Goodman, who like Gatins (“Dreamer,” “Coach Carter”) has had sobriety issues, could give Harling the credibility and lovability that makes the character work, and whose contribution has helped “Flight” (opening Friday) become one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year.

“If you’re a character actor you spend some time thinking about your function in the story,” Goodman says. “You’re helping the director out when you do that, and you’re serving the story better when you know what it is your character does to move it along.

“Harling Mays is an easy out for Whip. He’ll tell Whip anything he wants to hear and supply him with anything he needs to get through the day. Starting with hero worship, building him up when he’s low, and continuing on through to supplying him vodka, cocaine.”

Gatins says that Goodman, like Washington, masterfully puts flesh and blood on a character designed to create unease in the audience for “Flight.” Could a sober man have coolly made the decisions that saved lives on this doomed airliner? And is the guy who keeps this addict functional merely an enabler, or the source of the edge that pilot needs?

“I want everybody to head into that last turn in the movie going, ‘I don’t know WHAT I’m rooting for here, or who,’” Gatins says. “Do we blame them, or let them go? The characters might seem evil, on the surface. But are they?”

Washington and Goodman, Gatins says, give audiences inclined to see such characters in stark terms “pause. And that’s what I hope people are arguing about when they leave the theater.”

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