Lane Sperkus

My favorite comedian is Bobcat Goldthwait. As a teen in the 80's, I was among those who loved his HBO specials and Letterman appearances. His act was quite the amalgam: wild energy, obnoxious screaming, left-wing rants, scathing sarcasm... I couldn't get enough, and rewatched his performances often. I even tried to persuade friends and family to appreciate Goldthwait— alas, those efforts bore little fruit.

Isn't he the one with the affected yelling? Yes, that was his signature. And it was funny, especially back then, to see someone who appeared highly unstable trying to do comedy(1). But you didn't have to watch "Bobcat" long to understand his screaming wasn't a psychological condition. It was just part of Goldthwait's combustible comedic persona. He'd start a set with primal wailing. After that, guttural expulsions might take prominence. Then various emotions would surface: anger, sadness, frustration. The constant through-line was always a sense of child-like confusion. And perspiration.

Goldthwait had a punk rock sensibility(2). In the seventies, punk reacted against disco fluff, endless guitar solos, and banal pop. Punk kids viewed the world as brutal and extreme and they believed music should acknowledge those realities. Similarly, Goldthwait rebelled against hokey, formulaic show business routines. They felt stiff and outdated. Aside from Steve Martin and George Carlin, Goldthwait hated most comedy. It was too dull and unfunny. He preferred artists pushing the edge of the form, like Andy Kaufman and Brother Theodore(3).

In that experimental vein, a young Bobcat would take the stage and yell at the audience ("Shut up!"), or he would slice open rotten fish and disgust the front row, or he would hold an impromptu garage sale of his belongings... Anything to subvert expectation.

Stale standup tropes were not spared, either:

Bobcat: "My wife is so fat."
Audience: "How fat is she?"
Bobcat: "I don't have a joke for everything."

Was it all just yelling and anti-comedy performance spectacle? Did he have a real act with actual jokes? Not according to Jerry Seinfeld. In an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Seinfeld loses his cool at the mere mention of Bobcat, and launches into a tirade claiming Goldthwait had no act(4). This clearly made his guest, Bridgett Everett, uncomfortable, yet Seinfeld kept the segment in the show despite bleeping out Goldthwait's name.

Seinfeld is wrong. Goldthwait had real jokes and developed an act. Multiple specials and late night appearances attest to it. In the early 90's I saw Bobcat headline a club back when he was still doing the persona(5). Then, last summer I saw him at Limestone Comedy Festival(6). He's still funny and fearless! And he'll be in Lafayette next month— get your tickets.

Doing a standup character is currently out of vogue, but one of the comedic advantages to a strange persona is that it serves as an abiding "premise" that doesn't require verbalization. Where a conventional comedian might say "I'm looking for roommates" as a setup, for the seemingly-disturbed Goldthwait of the early-80's, that same line was a devastating closer(7).

But let's remove the roaring delivery and focus strictly on Goldthwait's material. Take, for example, this bit from his "Meat Bob" album:

Blaming Ronald Reagan for the way things are today is kind of like blaming Ronald McDonald if you get a bad cheeseburger— neither of them run the company.

What’s a better joke than that? Replace Reagan with the president of your choice, and it's evergreen.

Or consider this one-liner from Goldthwait's Is He Like that All the Time? special: "America is one of the finest countries anyone ever stole." Some would call that a political one-liner. I'd just categorize it as observational humor, because it's essentially a recognition of historical fact. (Observational comedy needn't only concern itself with mundane topics like breakfast cereal and laundry detergent, right?)

Goldthwait made a very powerful film honoring his hero and mentor Barry Crimmins (8). Crimmins, like Goldthwait, was from upstate New York and was dissatisfied with most standup. He thought it could and should be better. Crimmins moved to Boston and founded a vibrant comedy scene that produced all-time legends like Steven Wright and Paula Poundstone, among many others. Goldthwait was part of that scene until he got picked to do Letterman. Goldthwait would move to San Francisco— another incredible fount of comedy talent— and met comic legend Robin Williams, whom he'd later befriend (and direct).

Simply put, Goldthwait couldn't have impressed Crimmins, nor emerged as a headliner from the Boston and San Francisco comedy scenes of the 80's, without real jokes and an act.

Granted, Goldthwait would piss people off. He wanted to title his first album “Byl Cosby is a Sexual Predator.” Let that sink in for a minute. The album was recorded in 1987, and he wanted to use it to call the biggest television star in the world a predator. Why? Because Bill Cosby had behaved in a "really uncool" way with one of Goldthwait's close friends. Goldthwait believed her, and thought people should know that the Coz had a dark side. In recent years, Patton Oswalt confirmed that Goldthwait would go on stage and talk about Cosby's creepiness— decades before allegations against Cosby received widespread notice.

Sylvester Stallone wanted to “rip [Goldthwait's] fucking heart out” after Goldthwait chastised him for asking “are we gonna win this time?” in one of the Rambo movies. (During the Vietnam War, Stallone had spent time in Europe as a physical education instructor at a private school. He was also in a porn film, which Goldthwait wanted to play during his comedy shows.)

At the height of their popularity, Guns N' Roses released an album that was criticized for racism, misogyny, and homophobia. One of the many stupid lyrics on the album was "immigrants and [gay slur]... they come to our country..." Goldthwait mocked lead singer Axl Rose's apparent belief that gay people aren't born here, and must immigrate to the U.S. from their native "Homoslavia," presumably.

Serving a comeuppance to gay-bashers was nothing new for Goldthwait. But there were precious few "edgy" comics like him taking the same approach. As Barry Crimmins would say, "The biggest suckheads" are those who posture as politically-incorrect rebels when all they are doing is "reinforcing the oppressive status quo." Indeed, it makes you wonder why so many comedians opt to transgress in ways that harm afflicted communities, rather than skewer the comfortable.

So it's in this context of shit-stirring that we return to Seinfeld's critique. The real issue isn't Goldthwait's act or lack thereof. Seinfeld's dislike of Goldthwait centered around Bobcat going after him for being a "spooky" guy who dabbled in Scientology and dated a teenager when he was 38. This tiff receives treatment in Goldthwait's latest film, "Joy Ride," which is entertaining throughout.

One might say that lambasting the biggest stars in movies, television, comedy and music might have been calculated to a degree. (Need we mention the infamous Tonight Show stunt where Bobcat set a chair on fire, and Jay Leno got squeaking mad?) Sure, Goldthwait got press from these antics, but he also made a lot of enemies.

His career was always going to be full of tensions, and that's partly what makes it so interesting. Goldthwait reacted against traditional standup, but then he's suddenly on Letterman at age 20. He wanted to do punk performance spectacle, but also sling trenchant political darts. He created a character that made him famous, but eventually got trapped in it. He literally trashed late night shows, but had to get on those shows in the first place. He wanted to do good movies, but got a starring role in a talking horse flick....

Trying to navigate an anti-show business career while making a living in show business would always be a path fraught with contradiction. And it's not like Goldthwait was unaware of these absurdities. He knows he's not perfect. Over the years he has often said "You are what you hate"(9). In his recent film, Joy Ride, he cast himself as the villain(10). He can laugh at himself. Back in the 80's he created a short mockumentary called “The Making of Bikini Babes 3,” that was a thinly-veiled roast of the Police Academy movie franchise. In Shakes the Clown, he captured the petty, alcoholic misery of standup in a cult classic that few appreciated at the time(11).

Today, Goldthwait is making movies on his own terms and is still delighting crowds with his funny storytelling. Rather than being a footnote in comedy history, his body of work looks more prescient, interesting and relevant as each year passes.

Long live Bobscratch Goldfarb!

=============

Notes:

1. At least that was my experience -- many others wondered if he "was really like that." It seemed obvious to me that his screaming persona was a style, or a way to freak the audience out, or a protective shell, or just extreme behavior he enjoyed.

2. As a young teen, Bob was in a rock band called the Dead Ducks. He and childhood friend Tom Kenny would do comedy opening for bands like the Pop Tarts and the Plasmatics. (Those couldn't have been easy gigs.)

3. In "Was this Man a Genius?", by Julie Hecht, Kaufman says: "I like the type of humor where nobody knows what's going on. I just want real reactions… I want people to laugh from the gut. I want them to get angry from the gut." (As teenagers, Goldthwait and his friend Tom Kenny saw Kaufman perform in Syracuse.)

Penn Jillette on Brother Theodore: "I don’t know of any comic right now who is as deeply in-character, where you don’t really know what you’re getting, where you don’t know what’s real and there’s no wink, as Brother Theodore. I think everybody in comedy now wants to be the kind of politician you can have a beer with and not the kind of creep you’re a little afraid to be in a room with. To me, personally, I want to sit in a room with someone who I feel is standing naked and is so deeply strange and different from me and yet touches my heart with the kind of humanity that we share. I’m really missing that now."

4. Seinfeld, it should be noted, said he liked Andy Kaufman. So his criticism of Goldthwait isn't merely a stylistic preference. It's pretty funny to see him get worked up over a person he claims he hasn't thought about in years. Also, Seinfeld's comedy is arguably weirder than most assume.

5. This was at a club called Sneakers, in San Antonio. But "Sneakers" was written like the Snickers candy bar logo. Goldthwait made fun of that right out the gate. Now, contractually, he would not be able to because he did a candy bar commercial.

6. He was part of a two man show with the wonderful Dana Gould in Bloomington, IN. They started off with a hilarious five minute rant about a popular podcast personality.

7. See Barry Katz's podcast description of a Goldthwait performance at the Comedy Connection in Boston, circa 1980. (Goldthwait was born in 1962). Industry Standard with Barry Katz — Bobcat Goldthwait (Part 1 of 2); 4:30 -8:15.

8. "Call Me Lucky" is a documentary directed by Goldthwait. It details Crimmins' life, his abuse as a child, and his fight against U.S. government policies, the Catholic Church, and online pedophiles.

9. For a while he was engaged to a much younger tv co-star.

10. Bobcat's the "villain," but there is an aside in the film about how Bob Hope allegedly amassed his real estate fortune, and if true it's one of the most dastardly things I've ever heard. If you're unfamiliar with Goldthwait's cinematic ouevre, it can get dark and uncomfortable. You may want to start with World's Greatest Dad, starring Robin Williams.

11. Director Martin Scorsese liked it. Shakes has been called “the Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies." But I didn't understand it until I realized the clown cultures were analogous to different standup cliques. "The jealousy, substance abuse, clannishness, backbiting and stylistic peculiarities are all here in their red-haired glory." The scenes of these depressed clowns (read: comics) vying to replace the decrepit host of a long-standing legacy clown show seems remarkably accurate —whether it be the jockeying Leno and others did to secure late night host spots, or what occurs on smaller scales in local comedy scenes. Bob's childhood friend Tom Kenny deserves special mention: he brings a compelling intensity to his character, Binky. The performance inspired an REM song title.