Quint talks WORLD'S GREATEST DAD with Bobcat Goldthwait!!!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Listen, I grew up in the ‘80s. Whether he likes it or not Bobcat Goldthwait is an icon of that time and to people of my generation. Whether it’s his Police Academy movies, Hot To Trot, One Crazy Summer or his kind of demented turn in Scrooged I’ve always liked the guy. And yes, I must confess to be disappointed that his crazy scream-talking was a part of the act and not how the man actually speaks, but all nostalgia aside the man’s turning into a rather unique voice in the world of dark comedy. World’s Greatest Dad is a great little fucked up father/son black comedy with Robin Williams delivering a damn fine performance in the lead. We talk a lot about Williams and a whole lot about spoilers in the movie. Sorry ‘bout that, but when you see it you’ll know why it is unavoidable. The flick just hit Blu-Ray, but the interview took place during the limited theatrical run the film had, so if you see a reference to “last night’s audience” that’s why. So, spoilers, but I think it’s a particularly good interview with someone who really knows his shit. Bobcat Goldthwait is a real film nerd. Who knew? Enjoy the chat!

Quint: It’s kind of hard to talk about the movie without talking about the big moment because that moment splits the film in two.

Bobcat Goldthwait: It makes it really hard to promote.

Quint: Yeah, because so much of the heart of the movie I think is in the second half.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Well I think it’s funny too, because… I don’t know if it’s because we are all so paranoid now, but people will be like “The trailer doesn’t reflect the events,” and I’m like “Well, it’s not MARLEY AND ME…” What was that movie where they kill Macaulay Culkin? Remember that one?

Quint: MY GIRL?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah. It’s not MY GIRL. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s the new MY GIRL. (laughs)

Quint: I don’t think Macaulay Culkin was beating off when he died in that movie.

Bobcat Goldthwait: He was beating off with bees, I think.

Quint: That’s an interesting way to describe the movie. I think somebody needs to put that on IMDB or something! Speaking of, just watching…

Bobcat Goldthwait: Speaking of beating off with bees… (laughs)

Quint: That’s a great transition, I know. Just speaking of the subject matter, which is right up my alley, I like very dark humor and raunchy stuff, so none of that stuff bothers me at all. I was laughing through the whole movie, but I couldn’t help but think especially when I went and looked how old Daryl [Sabara] was when he made the movie that he must have some really cool parents….

Bobcat Goldthwait: First of all, he was fifteen and now he’s seventeen and so I couldn’t have exposed nipples around him, so the porn that he is looking at, the nipples are covered and then he couldn’t rub the outside of his pants, because it would look like he was miming masturbation. There was all this really weird stuff, you know, but yeah his mom is actually pretty rad. She was like “I don’t want to be around for this one…” (laughs) She was just like “You can have the boy.”

Quint: So, she was like an old Arab trader in ‘40s movies?

Bobcat Goldthwait: (laughs) Yeah. At first I looked at his teeth… No, but Sandy is really sweet and she got the movie, Daryl is a really smart guy. I like Daryl a lot. I think he’s a good guy.

Quint: He’s really great in the movie, too.

Bobcat Goldthwait: You know what made him happy last night was I introduced him and people were like “Oh yeah…” Then when they saw him and realized he was that kid the crowd, they elevate. It made me happy for him, because I don’t think he gets… I have gone to screenings where people really like his performance and I want him to know, because everybody is insecure and I think as a kid taking such a chance at being so repulsive and always having oil on his face in every shot…

Quint: It is a very brave performance, because not in any other way necessarily other than the fact that he has to play it so despicable at the beginning, but what is a testament to what he did in the movie is when he dies… I don’t know, he some how peppered in little moments of a likeable character in his douchebagginess, so that you kind of feel bad for him when everybody starts taking advantage of his death.

Bobcat Goldthwait: For sure. And I like the fact that people start warming up to him just before he dies.

Quint: Literally, there’s that dinner scene!

Bobcat Goldthwait: It is kind of funny that he and his father’s only bonding moment is they start talking pussy and that’s when they start a relationship… a little bit of one.

Quint: Robin [Williams] is great in the movie, too, and that’s something I had read in a review that compared his work in this movie to his work in THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP.

Bobcat Goldthwait: That’s really bittersweet kind of stuff.

Quint: This movie didn’t make me want to tear my wrists open, like GARP did, but yeah I though it was great to see him outside of RV-land.’ I say that, but at the same time he has been really smart recently. His studio stuff is one thing, but he has not Eddie Murphy-ed himself if you know what I mean where he has been able to do ONE HOUR PHOTOs and INSOMNIAs.

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Bobcat Goldthwait: You know what’s funny about Robin and I don’t know what it is… You know what I think it is, because I was thinking of what the difference is between him and Bill Murray is that Bill just doesn’t go back and do the comedy. He is on this trajectory now where he is really just doing what he likes. I think what makes it hard for Robin’s fans, because it is kind of schizophrenic, he will do something like this and then he does do a big studio film.

Quint: Big studios… I think now, doing a big studio comedy might be better than a few years ago, because the trend in studio comedies is now harder material.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah and I’m not saying this to be adorable, I really don’t watch many comedies, you know, like I haven’t seen THE HANGOVER. The last Judd Apatow movie I saw was that fat kid camp movie.

Quint: Really?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah, I think he had something to do with that…

Quint: HEAVYWEIGHTS?

Bobcat Goldthwait: There you go! It had a climactic go-cart chase… I remember Ben Stiller was funny and then creepy, but I don’t really go to comedies that much. Maybe I should if I’m trying to make them. Maybe that would help.

Quint: Or maybe not.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I feel like OBSERVE AND REPORT, people seem to like that one a lot.

Quint: I loved OBSERVE AND REPORT.

Bobcat Goldthwait: And my friends do to. I love the fact that… I used to direct THE KIMMEL SHOW, right? So I was back there and it wasn’t that long ago and my buddy who works there is telling me the plot of that movie and there was a woman who was working there as an extra that day in some sketch and she didn’t know we were talking about a movie. She just heard him talking and she filed a harassment complaint! (laughs) If I ever see Jody (Hill), I’ll have to tell him that story… I just want to tell him that. I think that’s so funny. My friend goes “Bro, I just called out.” (laughs)

Quint: Did he have to take the seminars and the harassment courses?

Bobcat Goldthwait: No, he explained to them. He goes “I was telling him the plot of OBSERVE AND REPORT.”

Quint: The MPAA says its R rated material! I think you would really like OBSERVE AND REPORT. It just seems like your taste in comedy is very close to Jody Hill’s. Have you seen any of his other stuff?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Well, I’ve seen…

Quint: FOOT FIST WAY?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Not FOOT FIST, but I have seen…

Quint: EASTBOUND AND DOWN?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah. That’s really funny and it’s really awesome. It makes me laugh a lot, so yeah. I really just don’t watch comedies, but I’m not like “Oh I don’t watch comedies…” I just don’t know. Some of them make me laugh, but not the… I’ll tell you why I don’t watch comedy, because they don’t really give a shit about story, you know? They don’t. They just tack on some thing about “We all need good friends” or some kind of really trite bullshit and so that’s why I don’t like them.

Quint: I can see that. Certainly the Apatow stuff is very character and situation driven, which is good comedy, but yeah it’s definitely not story first. Like SUPERBAD is just nerds trying to make it through a night.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I saw one review of this movie and they said that I had killed the kid who would have starred in a Judd Apatow movie. I don’t think Daryl is even that likeable in the movie.

Quint: In the movie! In the movie!

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah, in the movie. Daryl is very likeable.

Quint: I’m a fan of Apatow’s stuff, but that kid wouldn’t exist in an Apatow universe.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I don’t have a beef or problem, I really just don’t go to comedies. I don’t get to see most of the stuff I want to see anyways…

Quint: It might even be good, because I kind of like the voice that you are developing as a filmmaker. Like I said, I’m a big fan of the dark comedy.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I think of the way we make movies, me and my friends, is very naïve and very garage band, you know? I was watching this thing where they showed SHAKES THE CLOWN and it was at the Silent Movie House in LA and Tom Kenny was there and all of the clowns showed up and it actually sold out and there were like clown whores, which I was really pissed, because that would have been pretty funny to have a clown titty bar and a couple of things happened… One, I was watching it like “Wow, I’m a really bad actor,” because my daughter is like “Dad, you are a bad actor.” I’m like “Yeah, dude. I suck.” Then it made me think of when I wrote that movie. I had written it for John Goodman and I really kind of thought, “That would have been good.” I really wished that I had a scene in SHAKES where he starts drinking and I said that last night, because I get really pissed when people think I was trying to make a message movie. Everything in that movie is supposed to be sarcastic, but when I was watching it, it really reminded me of… Did you ever see Timothy Carey?

Quint: No.

Bobcat Goldthwait: He’s the guy that shows up in some Elvis movies. He is in Kubrick’s THE KILLING. He’s got kind of snaggly teeth… You will know him when you see him…

Quint: Yeah.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Well, he made this project for like four years and he plays a guy who shows up… he works at an insurance company and just tells everyone they have the day off and the boss shows up and he’s like “What happened? Where is everyone?” He goes “I told them they had the day off” and then he tells the boss to fuck off and he quits. He decides that he wants to become really wealthy, so he becomes a minister and when that is not fulfilling enough, he becomes a rock star and a politician and just goes all of these things and it ends… I don’t want to ruin it for you here, but it’s like you are watching it going “What the hell is this guy thinking?” It really has that SHAKES quality to it, to me. “What were we thinkin’?”

Quint: We don’t really get movies like that often. I just watched a movie that is a friend of mine’s favorite… he forced me to watch it and I flipped for it. It’s called THE LOVED ONE. Have you seen that? Hal Ashby edited it.

Bobcat Goldthwait: His version is out now?

Quint: I’m not sure, is it out now?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah, that’s what it is. It’s like what he kind of wanted.

Quint: It’s that really insane… like random humor, but like really dark and satirical late sixties, I think…

Bobcat Goldthwait: Late sixties or early seventies.

Quint: It was written by Terry Southern.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Oh sure. Then there is also another one along those lines, LITTLE MURDERS with Elliot Gould. I loved that. With the hand up on the roof… I actually have homage to that in this screenplay I just finished kind of, where they are on this roof shooting people.

Quint: I knew that a film literate person had made WORLD’S GREATEST DAD when I started seeing all of the cool posters in their house…

Bobcat Goldthwait: Some of the stuff is just from the house. SANTA CLAUS VS. THE MARTIANS!

Quint: What about the Italian NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD poster?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah and there’s the Alamo’s THING poster.

Quint: That got a cheer.

Bobcat Goldthwait: And we got clearance, so there was a combination of my production designer and I. I would say “This is what I would love to have in here” and I always think my girlfriend has more nerd cred than I do, because I was saying the age old zombies thing of they should move slow and she remembered the Simon Pegg quote, because that was when I was directing THE KIMMEL SHOW, so that’s how that ended up.

Quint: With all of the zombie talk and with all of the posters and everything, I was sitting there halfway through the movie going “What if he turns it into a zombie movie?”

Bobcat Goldthwait: That would have been kind of awesome. You know, I always wished there weren’t so many zombie movies. Years ago I started a thing I had never made and there are so many versions of it at this point, but I wanted to do like Martin & Lewis or Hope & Crosby zombie picture, but that’s not that far from SHAUN OF THE DEAD, it was going to be in Vegas… It’s just been played out so much now.

Quint: Another thing I really grabbed on in the movie was a lot of the faces I didn’t know, like the supporting cast. Like Lorraine [Nicholson] for instance is something that I thought was just going to be a throwaway gag and then all of these little throw away regular teen comedy clichés end up being turned on their heads in the second half of the movie.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Thanks. I know that those are very one dimensional characters, but it was just because at that point I was really going for the satire and in order to make them well rounded, I would have had to added another forty minutes to the movie, but Lorraine’s character is funny. She came in and just auditioned and was really funny when she did it and it never changed much, but then other people in this movie, some of the kids and others… I just kept throwing them more stuff, like the bald headed dude who gets the laughs. He’s the one that claps and the bet and all of that… That guy is married to Robin’s assistant, but I’ve known him since he was eighteen years old. He was up in Seattle and I said “Stan, I want you in the movie.” He goes “What do I do?” I go “Just go down the hall.” He gets like two or three really good size laughs in the movie, so that’s how we work. Robin calls working with me the Ed Wood/Cassavetes thing, because everybody is either friends or family. The kids were pretty good. The kid that lays the jock, he had the kid with the long hair shoot his audition tape and I was watching the tape and I see this kid with long hair walking in and out of the frame and I go “I want to hire that kid, but I also want that kid too.” The kid with the long hair didn’t have much, so we just kept doing it. One thing I like is this thing when they all start asking questions about Kyle and did he know Jesus and all of that stuff… I had some stuff that I had written that wasn’t that strong and just tossed it out and we just quickly got into a circle and I was like “What would you really ask?” and they all just started asking questions and that’s really how we shot that.

Quint: I think that’s cool and I think that’s what gives the movie its freshness and a different kind of perspective. It’s more of a collaborative work.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I like being collaborative. I like when things aren’t working and being able to… I told Robin, “Look man, we will work really fast and it will be exhausting and stuff, but I’ll never move on without us both feeling happy that we got it.” The scene on the talk show wasn’t working and we were both like “Argh” and I go “Just play it all live” and he goes “What do you mean?” and I say “Just think about how fucking exhaustive and how fucking stupid this whole thing is.” He did that. That’s what’s in the movie and he goes “I think I had a breakdown.” I was like “Are you OK?” He goes “Yeah.” I go “Well can you do it again?” (laughs) He says this is the safest he felt, but I think normally with folks, when they work with Robin, they go “We will shoot the script, now we will shoot one where you adlib.” That doesn’t even make sense, because then you have to go back and edit this thing together. He and I would talk a lot and figure out what we were going to do. He would go “Hey, can I try it this way?” It was just always pitching ideas. Pitching ideas for everybody. We were always deciding or trying to figure out what it was that each other could do, but he gets really defensive and says “We weren’t adlibbing…” and it’s like “OK, we weren’t adlibbing…”

Quint: From a layman’s perspective, I think when he is focused on something, when somebody is focusing him on a specific goal, I think that might be the difference between something like RV or INSOMNIA or a broader comedy, exactly what you were saying, like “Hey we will do the script and then you adlib” and that’s why those performances sometimes can be odd, because they don’t fit together.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I think it’s just not fair to him. I think it’s like saying “Are we working on this together?”

Quint: You go off and do your own thing and we will figure it out later.

Bobcat Goldthwait: It doesn’t seem right. I hope for folks that the difference between this and other movies he made, is he has done a lot of things, he’s a great actor, but I hope that this is his first… I think it’s a comedy, so I hope it’s his first adult comedy, you know? Where it’s supposed to be funny the whole time and stuff. That’s what I’m thinking about when I make it. It might not work that way for people.

Quint: I think it absolutely does and everybody I talked to at the screening the other day seemed to love it.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I think it’s funny. I really don’t like teenagers, but…

Quint: Obviously.

Bobcat Goldthwait: I really don’t. I think they can go fuck right off, but with that said, I think that people my own age don’t relate to this as much as folks your age and that’s not me kissing your ass, because I notice with critics my age are going [Rolls his eyes], because the message is “Hey man, if you are a middle aged dude and you are not happy, you might need to make some huge changes in your life.” So if you are a middle aged dude and you are writing reviews, odds are that’s not a popular fucking message. (laughs) I don’t see these movies as… I don’t know if I’m cynical. I used to think I wasn’t, but maybe I am, but I don’t know. These movies to me, the last two movies, have life reaffirming messages, just kind of… I think it’d be almost easier to me to make a movie like these and then at the end go “Eh, what the fuck?” and put a cynical ending. I think it’s almost harder and a little more subversive to kind of stay true to the end.

Quint: I actually anticipated Robin getting away with everything completely in the movie and I think that would have been a little bit more cynical.

Bobcat Goldthwait: But it was set up that way. That was the idea.

Quint: When the big revelation comes it’s like “it’s going to be that scene,” but then just the combination of using “Under Pressure,” the way you shot his kind of exuberance of him coming out of a cocoon almost…

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Bobcat Goldthwait: When he did that, like when he came around that corner, and I know which shot you are talking about, when he came around that corner I was sitting there and I was like… That’s under-cranked and it was just loud noise and he’s coming around regular speed, but even then I was watching it and of course I was playing music which is so… whatever. And I was watching it and it was like “Hey, this might work” when I saw his face light up, because really that’s the first time you see him smile sincerely in the whole movie. So I was like “Maybe this will work.” But yeah I always hear how Cameron Crowe would go “That was good, but I think you need to do it a little bit more like this…” and he plays a song. I think as an actor, I would tell someone to fuck right off. Then smash cut to me on the set “I think it needs to be like this!” There was so much of the music that I would just play that is in the movie while we were filming and it really helps everyone, or I think it does… no, I do know it. It helps them… “This is what’s going on in this scene and this is the song,” suddenly all of the departments go “Oh, that’s the tone of this scene,” so you don’t have people pitching things that aren’t going to be in the movie.

Quint: It saves time.

Bobcat Goldthwait: It kind of does. It’s short hand. By the way, I would be really respectful if an actor thought it was stupid, I wouldn’t do it, but Robin would always ask me what I was thinking and I would play it and he would get really excited. That Akron family, when the kid dies, that song… I better have liked it, because it ended up being married to our sound track, because I kind of wanted that scene… Everything is from Robin’s POV up until then and I kind of wanted to slow everything down and kind of start watching the movie at that point instead of following him around. The reason the music is there, I just wanted to stay away from (overly dramatic) “My boy!” You know? (laughs) He is a phenomenal actor, but it just seems like it’s really delicate between being sincere and being a movie of the week.

Quint: And it gives more impact, too. It’s the equivalent of not showing all of the monster with horror. Whatever he is screaming sounds much worse in your mind.

Bobcat Goldthwait: If you show the monster, then it better blow my ass threw my face and it never is as awesome as scary as you are.

Quint: Cool, well what are you working on at the moment?

Bobcat Goldthwait: I’m not trying to suck up, I really forgot we were doing an interview. (laughs)

Quint: Sorry.

Bobcat Goldthwait: No, that’s nice! I am just finishing up this SPREE KILLER movie, the screenplay for that, and then I spoke with Ray Davies of THE KINKS about getting his permission to go make SCHOOL BOYS IN DISGRACE, this Kinks album from the seventies, into a musical, so I’m trying to get that to make sense. I got to get the screenplay into shape and then go back to him and hopefully… He already gave me his blessing to go on, now I’m trying to make it work, but I’m a big Kinks fan, so finally I just said “Did you ever see the Chris Farley sketch when he had the Chris Farley Show and he was talking to Paul McCartney?” “Remember when you were in the Beatles? That was cool.” He goes “Yeah” and I go “Remember when you wrote Lola?” (laughs) Then he finally got how nervous I was, because really I was sweaty and stuff. After that he was like “Well, who would go see this?” and I go “All of the kids that fucking hate HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL!” Then I finally got him and then he went and watched this movie and said “Tell Bobcat to go ahead.”

Quint: I think it’s really cool that you have, I wouldn’t say transitioned, because I still like seeing you, like when you popped up in the movie for instance and I still like seeing you up on screen, but I definitely think that you are proving yourself as a very good director and I’m very much looking forward to seeing the rest of the movies that you pump out for us.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Well I hope I can keep making them. I do know that this new screenplay was the first time when I was writing that I went “Whoa, this is kind of dark” and I’m not kidding, because when I write these movies I don’t think of them as dark, but this one I was like “Fuck, this is kind of dark,” so we will see.

Quint: Sounds right up my alley. It was good meeting you. Thank you so much.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Thank you so much.

Hope you guys liked the interview! Now it’s all about BNAT prep as friends start coming into town from all over the world! Lots of trips to the airport in my immediate future! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com Follow Me On Twitter