Rassegna stampa di Bobcat Goldthwait

IN Bobcat Goldthwait’s ideal world there would be no recorded history before 2000, and he would be best known — if at all — as the writer and director of a few quirky, brutally honest independent films.
All that stands between him and his Wes Anderson dreams is the public record, in which Mr. Goldthwait is recognized mostly for a once-ubiquitous stand-up comedy routine performed as a twitchy, erratic character who spoke in a voice somewhere between a shout and a squeal. (That he continues to call himself Bobcat, instead of his given name, Bob, or that he also played a version of this character in three films from the interminable “Police Academy” series does not help his cinematic aspirations either.)
If that 1980s-era part of Mr. Goldthwait’s résumé has become its own punch line, he is in on the joke. Now 47, he relishes the opportunities that a newfound directing career have provided him to overcome an outdated if enduring caricature and an audience’s minimal expectations.
“As a comedian I’ve always dug holes for myself,” Mr. Goldthwait said recently in a gentle, quavering tone that only hinted at his ear-splitting stage persona. “When you’re feeling uncomfortable or awkward, that’s the stuff I’m interested in.”
Mr. Goldthwait’s recent movies have hinged upon moments of ultimate humiliation: his feature “Sleeping Dogs Lie” (called “Stay” when it made its debut at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival) chronicles a woman whose life unravels when she confesses to having performed a sex act on a dog. His latest film, “World’s Greatest Dad” (which opens on Aug. 21), pushes the threshold of indignity further still. It stars Robin Williams as a high school teacher whose misfit son (played by Daryl Sabara) accidentally kills himself in an act of sexual experimentation. After faking the scene to look like a suicide, the father discovers that the more he lies about his dead son, the more eagerly the public embraces the falsehoods.

Mr. Goldthwait says these films are optimistic at heart, in part because they represent the fulfillment of a long-held artistic ambition.
His directorial debut, the dark comedy “Shakes the Clown,” in which he played an alcoholic children’s entertainer, was widely derided at its 1992 release, though it has since found a cult audience; some viewers find it intentionally funny. Mr. Goldthwait grew disenchanted with comedy, making destructive valedictory visits in 1994 to Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” (setting his chair on fire) and “The Arsenio Hall Show” (spray-painting graffiti on the set).
“That really was me, going, ‘I’m done, man,’ ” Mr. Goldthwait said. He began directing music videos and decided to retire from acting, he said, at “the same time people stopped hiring me, so that worked out really well.”
Over the course of several appearances on the Los Angeles radio station KROQ, Mr. Goldthwait befriended Jimmy Kimmel, then a writer and sports broadcaster there, who later hired him to direct taped comedy segments for “The Man Show,” “Crank Yankers” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” “After the initial ‘Bobcat Goldthwait?’ and three question marks,” Mr. Kimmel said, “we looked at his reel, and everybody liked it.”
Mr. Kimmel, who went on to make Mr. Goldthwait the director of his live show, said that he appreciated his efficiency. “Most directors, it’s excruciating,” Mr. Kimmel said. “They’ll want to do 95 takes, and I like to do about two or three of them tops. Most directors don’t figure out if it’s funny until they get in the edit bay. Bob knew right away.”
During his “Jimmy Kimmel Live” tenure (which formally ended in 2006, followed by a second stint in the summer of 2007), Mr. Goldthwait began writing the script for “Sleeping Dogs Lie,” whose subplot of bestiality made his managers nervous. “They said, ‘We’re not going to send it out to anyone in Hollywood because we’re afraid of what people are going to think about your mental health,’ ” Mr. Goldthwait recalled.
Undeterred, he shot the movie in about two weeks, using crew members he hired from Craigslist. After the film was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and acquired for distribution, Mr. Goldthwait was encouraged to write “World’s Greatest Dad.”
With its frank depiction of a relationship between a frustrated single father and his sex-obsessed son — Mr. Williams jokingly refers to the film as “Dead Penis Society” — “World’s Greatest Dad” is not going to satisfy everyone’s definition of tastefulness. After Mr. Sabara, a star of the “Spy Kids” films who is now 17, showed the script to his mother, he recalled, “She handed it to me, and she smiled and said, ‘I’m not going to be on the set for this one.’ ”
Mr. Williams, a longtime friend of Mr. Goldthwait (he appeared as a mime in “Shakes the Clown”), said he was drawn to the film because its parent-child dynamic, alternately tender and strained, was so convincing. On one hand, Mr. Williams said, “there’s a weird thing that happens just before he dies, where they’re actually starting to bond.” On the other, he said, “you understand why some animals eat their young.”
During the making of “World’s Greatest Dad,” which was shot in one month in Seattle, Mr. Goldthwait told Mr. Williams that the film’s protagonist represented each of them. “Both of us, as middle-aged men, had to make decisions where we had to grow up,” Mr. Goldthwait said, noting that they both had to step away from their manic comedy to be taken more seriously.
Mr. Williams said he also related to Mr. Goldthwait as an artist who still depends on his comedy career to finance his art. “To make a living he has to go out and do stand-up comedy in the clubs and casinos and Indian reservations,” said Mr. Williams, who is scheduled in the fall to resume a national comedy tour after having heart surgery in March. “We’re both in that same phase of, ‘Got to go out and sling the hash, buddy.’ ”
These days Mr. Goldthwait is teeming with other film ideas, from a story about a serial killer to a third entry in what his girlfriend and co-producer Sarah de Sa Rego calls his “boo-hoo trilogy.” He also said, half-jokingly, “I’ve been really tempted to make a short movie where the 47-year-old Bobcat Goldthwait time-travels back and finds the 22-year-old version of me and talks me out of doing ‘Police Academy.’ ”
He said he is routinely offered lucrative work that would easily allow him to finance his movies. For example, when Howie Mandel enjoyed a resurgence as the host of the game show “Deal or No Deal,” Mr. Goldthwait said, “I was the next phone call. They went, ‘Well, who else is a very annoying ’80s comedian?’ ”
But he shoots down these unwanted propositions. “I’ve already sold out,” he said. “My early 20s is usually what happens to someone as their career ends.”
So when he cannot afford to be behind the camera Mr. Goldthwait continues to get behind microphone stands at comedy clubs around the country. And though he would someday like to leave behind a certain stage character and his grunting, gargling voice, he said that there are obligations you must fulfill when most audiences still think of you as the “Police Academy” guy.
“I’d love to tell you that I take the high road,” Mr. Goldthwait said. He added: “But trust me, I give them a couple of agga-aggas. I want to get out of there with my teeth.”
Da The New York Times, 9 Agosto, 2009