Capone curls up in a tent to discuss the found-footage Bigfoot horror film WILLOW CREEK (on home video this week), with writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

Despite all of his films as a director being so vastly different, there is a sensibility in the works of writer/director/comedian/actor Bobcat Goldthwait that simply speaks right to center of my twisted soul. He says things about people, America, the world population that no one seems to want to say out loud about our obsessions, behavior, thought processes, and defects. And with each new film, he grows in a different direction as a director.

The depravity of SHAKES THE CLOWN in no way prepares you for unspeakable elegance of SLEEPING DOGS LIE 15 years later. WORLD’S GREATEST DAD, featuring one of Robin Williams’ finest performances, is a master class in how people fake mourn a person whose a Class A asshole, while GOD BLESS AMERICA is a brilliant statement about how to deal with loud hypocrites. But WILLOW CREEK, out on home video this week, is a different monster entirely, literally. And even more impressive, it’s a relationship drama couched in one of the scariest films you’ll see all year. And maybe one of the best found-footage films you’ll ever see.

I had a chance to chat with Goldthwait about WILLOW CREEK a couple times. Once was about a year ago (which is this interview), and more recently we did a Q&A screening of WILLOW CREEK at the Chicago Critics Film Festival in May. He’s one of the great talkers, and he’s utterly aware of people’s perceptions (and misconceptions) about him and his work. Please enjoy my talk with the great Bobcat Goldthwait…





Bobcat Goldthwait: We’ve met before, right?

Capone: Yes, we did the Q&A for WORLD’S GREATEST DAD many years back.

BG: Oh yeah, the one that Tim Kazurinsky was there for.

Capone: Right, exactly. The POLICE ACADEMY mini-reunion.

BG: Oh, that was fun. How’s it going, dude?

Capone: Good, man. So what are the origins of your fascination with the Bigfoot legend, and did that go hand in hand with your fascination with the community that surrounds it, or did that come later?

BG: Ever since I was a kid I wanted to go to see the Patterson-Gimlin site. That’s really the whole genesis of this project, me not long ago, I just took the car and drove 1400 miles in California going to all of the major Bigfoot sites and that being the Roswell of Bigfoot. When I got up there, I was like “Oh hey, I could do this as a movie.” I had a different idea for a movie sey in the Bigfoot community and maybe someday I’ll do it, a narrative. This was still a narrative, but a little bit more of a traditional feature or almost something that I think would be similar to the other movies I’ve made. When I left there, I was going like, “Let’s go make THE BLAIR SQUATCH PROJECT.”

Capone: I know a lot of the people in the film are non-actors.

BG: Yeah, the majority of the folks in the town are not actors, like Steven [Streufert] at Bigfoot Books, he’s a real person, and the woman at the visitor’s center and Shaun White Guy Sr. is a real person. I wouldn’t come up with that name for a woman, much less a Native American woman—that name was so confusing. The majority of folks are real, and I was trying to make a suspense movie, because I watch people with these suspenseful scenes in movies and that was the challenge for me… I shouldn’t say “challenge.” That was what made me want to make the movie and see if I could do it, so I guess it’s a challenge, but I don’t consider it a challenge. It’s just the things that interest me in making the next movie, trying to see if I can pull it off.

Capone: When you went through there on your own trip, it seemed like the attitude among the locals at least was that they knew more than they were letting on. Is that how they act, with these subtle warnings and these hesitant answers?

BG: There are two things going on. One, people discussing Bigfoot are very skittish because they’re very picked upon as far as people taking the time to talk to them. In the pecking order of subcultures, they are not on the top. It goes like Ren Faire enthusiasts…

Capone: LARPers.

BG: [laughs] LARPers, then Al Queda, then Bigfoot people. So that’s part of why they are a bit skittish. Then, I think Bob Saget came through the town. In fact, I know he did. He did some sort of thing where he was doing comedy bits, and I know that they were very nervous about me.

Capone: Did you talk to them when you went on your own about possibly coming back and making a movie? It seemed like a lot of those people thought you were actually making a documentary. Is that how you played it?





BG: Yeah, some of the folks were on a need-to-know basis or they wouldn’t have been comfortable. But Steven was aware that I was doing a hybrid movie, but he did a straight interview, because Bigfoot is his life. He’s been someone I’d been in communication with before I got there, and I wanted to be really honest with him. I wanted to make sure that he knew that I wasn’t coming up there to poke fun at him and stuff and that I was sincere, too. I thought that was key.

Capone: There was no doubt in my mind that that guy was not an actor, and I don’t mean that he gave a bad performance. But everything about him screamed that he was a legitimate enthusiast.

BG: Yeah, and he’s really key to the movie if the movie works. He lays a lot of pipe, you know?

Capone: He’s a wealth of information for sure. I think the first time I remember hearing about Bigfoot and seeing that footage was an episode of “In Search Of…”.

BG: Yeah. How old are you, because I’m 51. So “In Search Of…” is the biggie and then [THE LEGEND OF] BOGGY CREEK, and also LIFE magazine had printed stills from the Patterson footage that when I was a kid I was just obsessed with. Those were the ones. It’s funny, when you talk to the folks in the Bigfoot community, that that “In Search Of…” was a big deal to most of them and got them on their road.

Capone: I remember that episode and the Loch Ness monster episode, but I don’t really remember many others that felt even remotely authentic, outside of those two.

BG: There’s something about the Patterson footage that 47 years later we’re still discussing. Authentic or not, there’s something about it that works on our subconscious level, and it might be something as simple as the gait of the creature in the footage rings true. But yeah, it really is the Zapruder film of Bigfoot. It’s probably the second-most-watched handheld footage ever seen.

Capone: After I watched your movie, I went looking for it and just to watch it over and over again and just ask myself, “Is it as real looking as I remember?”

BG: It’s funny, I made the joke about BLAIR WITCH, but the Patterson-Gimlin footage is the original found-footage movie [Laughs]. I think the comparisons are going to be obvious with this movie. BLAIR WITCH is a good movie; it wasn’t like I was going “I’m going to rip it off.” It’s just that that’s the form that this story lends itself to; I wasn’t really looking to making a found-footage movie.

Capone: As I’m watching the early scenes when they’re doing the interviews and he’s narrating his own footage, I realized that if he ever had the chance to put this together, it would be a horrible documentary, because he’s so aggressive with the interviews and he’s mocking his subjects.





BG: Yeah, well that’s the thing. There’s this one time where he says “Roll the footage,” and it looks like he’s doing the universal sign for “This guy is crazy,” but it’s supposed to be he’s telling his girlfriend to roll. Maybe that would be a funny bonus feature, to put together his documentary and use the best really cheesy home-editing effects. That sounds like a really good idea. One of my favorite jokes in the movie is really subtle, but it’s when she starts narrating and she’s knocking his narration. That makes me laugh, like “This is Kelly, I’m in the forest…”

Capone: You’ve made a relationship drama the actual core of this, and that seems just as important to show the cracks in this relationship as it is this search for Bigfoot.

BG: For me, that was the most important thing, to make this feel like a real relationship. I wanted people to be invested in these people, and I wanted them also to come across as an extremely real couple. And I think Alexi and Bryce, if the movie works for people, it’s because of how great they did their job.

Capone: These are actors you’ve worked with before. How much of what they are doing is improvised? How much of the camerawork is actually them?

BG: It’s a lot of improvisation. We drove up together and back, so it was 11 hours in the car, so we got to discuss the characters and who they were. Some of the scenes are scripted. It’s funny, a lot of the early screw ups were scripted, which is really funny because it feels like they’re not. And then a lot of the other scenes were not. We knew what had to happen during the proposal scene, but we just talked about the beats of it, and then we would do it a handful of times. But it’s all about what great actors those two are, and there are people where we didn’t say, “We’re making a suspense-horror picture.” There was not a reason for them to not 100 percent believe they were a real couple. It was pretty funny. We had people asking when they were going to get married and stuff like that.

Capone: That proposal scene is awful, just a horrible thing to watch, by the way.

BG: I think it’s funny that that gets the biggest scream in he movie. [Laughs]

Capone: I’m guessing it’s running neck and neck with the sequence in the tent. Talk about constructing that sequence. I remember marveling after it was over at how simple it had to have been to actually shoot it, because it’s just noise and things slamming up against the tent. You couldn’t have done it any simpler, yet it’s completely effective and scary as shit.

BG: It’s interesting, yeah. It’s close to 19 minutes in that tent.

Capone: Is it really that long?

BG: Yeah, and the funny thing is people go “What was that scene? Is it like five minutes?” I’m like “No.” It’s fun to sit there and look at people with their hands over their face and eyes. I’ve said this before so this isn’t exclusive, but there’s a couple of things with found footage where I wonder “Who is the creep that found this footage and said ‘I’m sorry your daughter got raped to death, but if I re-edit it, there’s really a tremendous movie here.’?” I’m also concerned with “Who keeps the camera running while you’re near death?” I think that’s what inspired the scene.

I like Tarantino’s movies and I’m like “How does he do it when there’s a conversation going on, and I want to scream, it’s really intense. how does he do that?” So I was seeing if I could pull that off. One of the elements I realized was there is often an unseen element, be it the possibility of a threat or be it people hiding under a floorboard. There’s always something unseen in those scenes. Movies that inspired this movie were like PAPER HEART had a lot to do with it, because Charlene [Yi] used that same idea of the real interviews and a scripted story with improved. And then GRIZZLY MAN, I go back to that a lot.

Capone: There are a lot of things that remind me of GRIZZLY MAN.





BG: It’s the same thing with this guy not using any common sense, to follow this along and then the girlfriend gets caught up in it too. But yeah, those are the movies that inspired it. That scene, when we filmed it, the actors did all the lifting. The one thing was in that scene, all the noises are happening live. It’s like, how do you get two people at the exact precise moment to twist their neck around? Again, you can’t just be standing outside the tent, because it just wouldn’t have sounded right.

That’s the thing that makes me laugh, when I’m out in the middle of woods. We shot it where the Patterson-Gimlin footage was shot, 17 miles down a dirt road that takes two- and-a-half hours to do it, and we’ve got mountain lions and all of this stuff. Those guys at least got a light. I’m walking out in the middle of the woods growling. [Laughs]

Capone: Did they know what was coming?

BG: No, so different things were done at different times, and it was mixed up. The first take was, due to exhaustion and the fact that we were out in the middle of the woods and we had seen mountain lions, both Bryce and Alexi fell apart, and it was kind of weird. It almost bonded them too much. Bryce actually started crying [laughs], so the take that’s in the movie is the second take. And then the third take was interesting, because their characters are more resigned to their fate. So all three takes were different, as far as even story and performance. Bryce actually yelled at me afterwards, because we could have shot that scene in a Walmart parking lot, since we never show anything outside the tent. I guess he’s right.

Capone: Are there actually people out in that area warning tourists not to go looking for the site?

BG: Yeah, that’s not so far off. I don’t want to ruin it for people, but those are when we used actors. But we were told not to go there and we were also told, “You’ve got a gun, right?” “Uh, no we don’t.” That was pretty funny. All that stuff adds to their performance.

Capone: You’ve been making these fantastic dark comedies up to this point. Were you looking to change things up and challenge yourself, or do you think this falls in line somehow thematically with some of your other films?

BG: It might be about people getting their comeuppance if there’s a theme. I’m always interested in seeing what I can do. The word “challenge” is the actual word used to describe it, but I’m never comfortable with it, because a challenge is having a day job. That’s a challenge. [laughs] Making a movie is not that bad. That’s what I’m interested in, challenges, and I don’t have a five- or ten-year plan as a director, so I really just make the movies that I’m interested in when I can make them.

I’ve written a BILLY JACK-type movie, but it’s like a gay Western. So I just write the movies that come out of me, and then I go make them and that’s how I do it. I don’t really think too much about it. Every time I’ve made a movie, there’s not a big group of people going “I can’t wait for his next movie.” And when I started making movies, nobody was saying “I’m very excited to see this.” When I was ego surfing, all I read was how terrible every movie I’ve ever made is. [Laughs] I remember the very first thing I ever thought about WORLD’S GREATEST DAD was a guy in Toronto writing, “This is going to be the worst movie ever made.” So no, I’m not too concerned about any fanbase, because I’ve never had the most supportive fans out there [laughs].

Capone: Between WORLD’S GREATEST DAD and GOD BLESS AMERICA, there has been a groundswell. I remember being at SXSW and going to see the last film, and people were genuinely excited to see it. There was actual anticipation happening there.

BG: I think if I started thinking in those terms, I would probably still be doing the voice on stage.

Capone: Almost as much as the anticipation for you as a filmmaker, is the excitement to find out what’s going to come out of your head.

BG: Well that’s exciting, if there are people, but honestly for the most part, my movies are not really made for general consumption. I just make them for me, which is really obnoxious, but usually that’s really what I’m thinking about. It is nice if people like them or start to follow them, but I just make them for me first.

Capone: Of course the fanbase that has built up liking the last few films you have done are going to be thrown for a loop with this new one, because it’s so different. Have you shown this to Bigfoot believers or enthusiasts?

BG: Definitely. We had what I call “the believer’s screening.”

Capone: How did that go?

BG: They really like it. Like with WORLD’S GREATEST DAD or SLEEPING DOGS LIE, if someone explained to you the premise, you would think it’s like a Farrelly brothers comedy, where we laugh at this girl who blew a dog, but we don’t. That’s treated seriously in a weird way. It’s not an exploration of bestiality, but that’s treated seriously. Or if you hear about how Robin’s son dies, you would think that’s the joke, and that’s not the joke, it’s treated seriously. In the same way, that’s how I treat Bigfoot in this. I actually treat Bigfoot seriously, so the Bigfoot community…the quote I keep hearing is that it’s the best Bigfoot movie after the Patterson-Gimlin footage.

Capone: It’s probably like porn for those guys to watch.

BG: Yeah, I did have one guy stand up almost in tears going “Mr. Goldthwait, this is the best Bigfoot movie ever made,” and he was in Cammo. I’m glad. I think of myself as a misfit, and I have no interest in making fun of other misunderstood people. I know I sounded weird, as if I wasn’t aware of having a fanbase; I know I do have one growing. But I sold out so much as a young man, so now as a guy who’s 51 and just starting to make movies, I really only am interested in making the movies that I want to see.

Capone: I never got a sense with any of your films that you were trying to hit a demographic or took notes from anyone on how to commercialize your films.

BG: No, there are no notes. The only time I got notes once, I put peanut butter on them and fed them to a dog that was in the editing bay and took a picture of it with my phone and sent it back to the guy who gave me notes. But I have worked with Darko a bunch, and I wouldn’t say I don’t get notes, because it’s not like they’re outsiders. It is very collaborative when I work with them, and I don’t consider them “the man.” They’re just very supportive of me.

Capone: Well I hope at some point you are able to bring it through Chicago, and we can pull an audience of like-minded individuals to come and enjoy the hell out of it, because it is terrifying as hell. Someone sent me a screening link, and I watched it at like two in the morning in my room by myself—the absolute worst scenario for sleep.

BG: Maybe outside watching it in a tent—the worst case.

Capone: Bobcat, thank you so much for talking.

BG: Yeah, thanks Steve. And you have my info, too, so if you need to ask me stuff, just reach out.

Capone: Absolutely. Thanks.

BG: Alright, bye.





-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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