bobcat goldthwait Tagged Articles at Cinematical

You may have heard about Bobcat Goldthwait's current film, World's Greatest Dad, possibly from all the raving various people at Cinematical have done about it. It's an outrageously dark comedy -- but that should be no surprise if you've seen any of Bobcat's previous films, including Sleeping Dogs Lie, which I've chosen as AOL/SlashControl's free flick of the day.

Sleeping Dogs Lie premiered under its original title, Stay, at Sundance in 2006, where its perverse subject matter was taboo even by Sundance standards. It's about a young woman who has fallen in love with a guy she hopes to marry, but she's not sure whether she can ever tell him about a certain embarrassing moment in her sexual history. It involves a dog, that's all I'm sayin'. Finally she takes the plunge and tells her boyfriend, and that's when the squirm-inducing comedy really takes off.

Not surprisingly, Goldthwait had a hard time finding a distributor for the movie. The best it ever got was a two-week run on six screens, grossing $15,745 in the U.S., but another $622,000 internationally. (Apparently this sort of thing plays better in foreign countries. Make of that what you will.) It's obviously not for everyone, but if you like bawdy, clever, shocking comedy, it's worth watching. It will almost certainly make you feel better about whatever shameful secrets you have in your own past.

Watch Sleeping Dogs Lie at SlashControl.

By Scott Weinberg (reprint from Sundance Film Festival 2009)

You hear it in lots of (usually sad) movies, and I'd say it's probably one of the truest things ever spoken: "There's nothing more tragic than having to bury your own child." But, just for the sake of argument, let's pretend -- for just a second -- that (in one specific case) it wouldn't be the end of the world. As a matter of fact, let's further pretend that the death of a child could somehow lead to several wonderful and life-changing results.

Sick, I know, but that's one of the ideas that runs through the twisted-yet-amusing dark comedy World's Greatest Dad. Written and directed by the consistently unpredictable Bob Goldthwait (he also gave us the similarly strange Shakes the Clown and Stay), and anchored by an unexpectedly strong Robin Williams performance, World's Greatest Dad is indeed about a high school poetry teacher who finds his life blossoming after his son accidentally commits suicide.

The Bobcat Goldthwait I knew from watching cable as a kid was not the same Bobcat who greeted me at the Magnolia Pictures office and offered me a cookie. It's hard not to refer back to the "old" Bobcat that squawked and spazzed his way to stand-up stardom in the '80s, as well as three Police Academy movies and other flicks that took advantage of his off-the-wall stylings, although it is, in fact, lazy. Goldthwait is now a writer and a director, with three indie movies under his belt. And no, he doesn't really talk like that.

Goldthwait's first movie, Shakes the Clown, has become what people affectionately call a cult movie; Goldthwait plays the main character, an alcoholic womanizing clown mired in an equally bizarre clown subculture. His second outing as a writer and director, Sleeping Dogs Lie, examined the nature of truth in relationships and how much we really want to know about those we love, especially when one's fiancée might reveal she performed oral sex on her dog in college because she was bored one night. It played well at Sundance, but didn't get the same traction from the festival and word-of-mouth that his current film, World's Greatest Dad, is enjoying. Maybe because dog BJs – even implied ones – are gross and could impede viewers from sitting through the first five minutes.

Currently available on-demand and opening in limited cities August 21st, World's Greatest Dad stars Robin Williams as schlubby Lance Clayton – a poetry teacher who has had countless manuscripts rejected, a sad sap with a smile that looks more like a grimace, and the father of one of the most loathsome teenagers to grace the screen in a non-horror movie in quite some time.

Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad is getting a theatrical release on August 21st, but -- as we told you back in April -- you can watch it in the comfort of your own home starting this week, as the film has appeared on video-on-demand services around the country.

It's pretty remarkable how the practice of releasing smaller films On Demand simultaneously with, or even in advance of a theatrical release has spread (also currently available: Pontypool, Dead Snow and the fantastic Flame & Citron). But I'm not trying to shill for Comcast. I am trying to shill for World's Greatest Dad, which I ordered on Friday and enjoyed immensely.

Oh, Robin Williams. You furry, awesomely funny freak. We've missed you! And Bobcat Goldthwait -- sorry, Bob Goldthwait -- yeah, some of us have missed you too. If you're ready to visit a very dark and funny place, check out this red band trailer for Goldthwait's new movie, World's Greatest Dad.

Williams stars as a failed writer slash poetry teacher who endures horrible haikus about menstruation, professional humiliation, and abject failure when it comes to publishing. He also has pretty much the worst kid in the world. Kyle looks at (and is aroused by) German sheiser porn. He takes pictures of his dad's girlfriend's underwear with his cellphone under the dinner table and sends it to his friends. He's generally horrendous and creepy. I'm so looking forward to seeing a movie that shows Robin Williams telling his teenage son, "If you don't act right at dinner, I'll stab you in the face."

So take a look at this very naughty trailer after the jump and read Scott Weinberg's review of the film from Sundance. Or you can check out Williams' upcoming Disney flick Old Dogs, co-starring John Travolta and directed by the dude who inflicted Wild Hogs (and soon its sequel!) on the world.

Recently, someone and I -- it might've been Weinberg -- were discussing the fact that Magnolia seems to be replacing Lionsgate when it comes to a studio's willingness to put out the seemingly untouchable stuff.

The conversation mostly concerned horror fare, natch, but I suspect that Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad falls particularly well into Magnolia's fold, and they seem to agree, as they're all set to have a video-on-demand premiere before a theatrical run in late August, according to The Wrap.

James Grey's Two Lovers was recently released in a similar manner, and Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience looks to be getting a likewise treatment at the end of this month. So far as I can tell, it's a strategy that works to their favor (that is, until everyone inevitably moves to either New York or Los Angeles). As far as the film itself is concerned, it certainly garnered its share of raves out of Sundance, but its subject matter -- Robin Williams capitalizes on his son's suicide -- had put off distributors until now. Here's hoping that Magnolia can tap into the niche audience for blacker-than-black comedy... right in their own living rooms.

Okay: Bobcat Goldthwait + Robin Williams + a title like World's Greatest Dad = run for the hills. Right? I mean, I had to suppress a shriek upon reading that headline. But then I read further and ... this looks kind of awesome. I'm not joking.

Here's the pitch: Williams plays a high school poetry teacher and failed writer whose son dies in a freak masturbation accident. Stay with me here, folks. Not wanting to expose his family to the embarrassing publicity of a freak masturbation accident resulting in death, Williams' character decides to cover it up by writing a fake suicide note and claiming that his son took his own life.

This week, the celebrity grapevine is twirling all its little tendrils around Angelina Jolie. My goodness, she's getting more news time than Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson combined. First, she and her family tried to take a rickshaw ride in India but had to stop due to excessive media coverage. Then her driver in India hit a pedestrian while trying to avoid paparazzi. (It was discovered later that she wasn't in the car at the time.) And now a photographer is claiming that he was punched and threatened at gunpoint by a bodyguard on the set of A Mighty Heart, in which Jolie is portraying Mariane Pearl, widow of journalist Daniel Pearl.

Fortunately, if you sift through the mountains of Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt news (I refuse to do that name-combining thing), you can find some other celebrity activity this week:

• More celebrities considering adoption: Rumors have been flying that Madonna is in the process of adopting a year-old boy from Africa. She doesn't actually have the child yet, and Malawi law prohibits non-residents from adopting the country's children, so we'll see what happens.

A pretty girl sits on a couch reading, her face spotted with zit cream, her dog stretched out on the floor at her feet. She gets up, chain locks the door, and turns to look at her pet, splayed out on his back, his genitalia in full view. The next thing we know, the girl is running for mouthwash to the accompaniment of one of the best voice-overed opening lines in recent cinema history: "My name is Amy, and yes, in college, I blew my dog."

Bobcat Goldthwait's Stay isn't about bestiality as a fetish or a lifestyle – Amy's, um, indiscretion was a one-time thing, borne from boredom and unsatisfactory at best – but it uses the ultimate taboo as a male adolescent-approved in to talk about the role of honesty in contemporary relationships. Amy has kept this secret for years, but when her boyfriend John asks her to marry him, she starts to wonder if there's room for such a secret in a marriage. Weighing the advice of her co-worker and her mother (both of whom have their own sexual secrets), Amy must decide whether or not to break down and let the dog out of the bag. Her eventual decision backfires, and Amy finds herself hated by the very people she was trying to please. Matters are made worse by the interference of Amy's meth-addled brother Doug, whose casual hatred is at once racially charged (he didn't lose his job; it was taken by "the kikes and the niggers and their quotas'") and indiscriminate. Things are looking dark indeed, until a family tragedy touches off an unexpected, and unexpectedly satisfying, resolution to Amy's moral quandary.

Melinda Page Hamilton plays Amy, and it's a breakout performance if I've ever seen one. The actress is best known for playing a nun on Desperate Housewives, which gives her work here as the sexually voracious but morally conflicted Amy a nice little tweak. Hamilton, with her thin blonde hair and sapphire blue eyes and skin so pale it's almost clear, looks a lot like Renee Zellweger might look – if she was pretty, radiant and smart as a whip. Hamilton accomplishes things here with a blank stare that most contemporary actresses her age need a page of monologue to convey.

The press screening on Sunday morning started out packed, but journalists trickled out throughout. The 75% of the audience that stayed seemed to enjoy Stay quite a bit, although the experience was undeniably hampered by a crap digital projection that painted orange noise on almost every shot of Hamilton's otherwise stunning face.

Word around town has it that the film's "edgy" content is scaring off buyers. The very fact that the plot hinges on dog fellatio aside, I wish the suits weren't so afraid. Stay is an adult comedy about a girl who blew her dog and lived to regret it, but it's also an incredibly sweet and insightful adult comedy about a girl who blew her dog and lived to regret it. Bobcat Goldthwait has somehow produced a script that understands something about the gulf between what men claim they want from women, and the way they behave when we give it to them. Its careful balance of old-Hollywood melodrama (the score is hilarious, by turns silent film tragic and 50s soap opera subtle) and college humor charges the film with a bizarre kind of energy that I'm not sure I've ever seen on screen. Stay deserves to be seen.

Others on Stay: The Hollywood Reporter's Duane Byrge calls it a "carnal, crazy and, most amazingly, heartwarming love story," while Todd McCarthy at Variety feels the film "far exceeds the limits of how far a one-joke comedy can be extended," and describes a theatrical run as "a real long shot."