Bobcat Goldthwait

The Clown Who Wanted to Be a Writer

Robert Francis Goldthwait began performing at comedy clubs before finishing high school. His character was a nervous guy who could barely get a word out without his voice cracking. That chaotic energy quickly caught the attention of Hollywood casting directors.

He landed the role of Zed in the sequel to Police Academy in 1985, and his career took a new direction. Audiences loved the wild man with the squeaky voice, but Goldthwait hated being typecast in that human cartoon register.

The audience loved the wild man with the squeaky voice.

So he used the money from big studio productions to fund his own stories (much darker and more twisted). In 1991 he wrote and directed Shakes the Clown, a black comedy about an alcoholic clown accused of murder. Critics were merciless at first.

Over time, the film gained a following on the cult circuit for its brutal honesty. He took voice-acting jobs in series such as Hercules in 1998 to keep his creative independence. Thanks to that, he could turn down mediocre roles in mainstream movies and focus on writing scripts no one else dared to shoot.

And the gamble paid off.

The Darkness Behind the Camera

His era as a prestige filmmaker began in 2006 with Sleeping Dogs Lie. It was an uncomfortable story about a woman who confesses a sexual secret from her past to her fiancé. The script avoided moral judgment and focused instead on the hypocrisy of absolute honesty.

In 2009, he shot World's Greatest Dad with Robin Williams as the lead. The movie grossed just over one million dollars in the United States, but it earned the best reviews of his career up to that point.

Williams played a father who fakes his son's suicide note to gain literary fame. It was a slap in the face to Hollywood sentimentality. Goldthwait proved he could direct top-tier actors without losing his acidic, pessimistic identity.

He kept exploring social violence in 2011 with God Bless America, then moved into pure horror in 2013 with Willow Creek. In the latter, he used the found-footage format to chronicle the search for Bigfoot in the forests of California. The film was shot on real locations to save on production costs.

A Haven in the Small Format

From 2015 on, he focused on television and documentary directing. He directed several episodes of the series Misfits & Monsters in 2018 for the truTV network. His visual style became cleaner (less frantic than in his early days), but his themes stayed the same.

In 2021, he premiered the documentary Joy Ride, following his friend Dana Gould's stand-up tour across American highways. The film blends the nostalgia of the old guard of comedy with reflections on mortality after a car accident that both of them survived.

The production was shot with lightweight digital cameras to make filming easier during night transfers.