An interview with Bobcat Goldthwait about his peculiar and rather charming film ‘Sleeping Dogs Lie’.

Published in the ‘Marie Antoinette’ issue of Little White Lies.

 

LWL - What unholy events influenced this film?
Bobcat Goldthwait: A lot of it is autobiographical – my ex blew her dog!

- How many times have you used that line this week?
No, it’s the first time. I’ve been waiting to say that. I usually tell people that my dog’s really hot.

- Isn’t your dog called Stephen Baldwin?
No, I nearly called him Stephen Baldwin, but I called him William Holden instead. I’m glad I didn’t, although my dog is a born again Christian so it would have made sense – Stephen Baldwin just found Jesus. Apparently he was in Long Island.

- Jesus?
Jesus and Stephen Baldwin. That’s where they hooked up. No, the two ideas hit me at the same time; a woman blows her dog and to make a film about honesty.

- Big day!
It was a very big day! I think the kind of influences would be Neil la Bute or something like ‘Chuck and Buck’.

- That’s a kinda creepy film…
I find it sweet. That’s the kind of stuff that interests me; the comedy that comes from being uncomfortable. In America if you want to go and see a comedy you’re stuck with broad character comedies – which I’m not going to criticise considering that’s how I made my living in the Eighties, or you end up going to an indie comedy and those always wrap up with ‘life’s fucked, man – why bother?’, so I thought it was more subversive to make a comedy aimed at adults with an upbeat ending.

- What’s your take on honesty, because it seems that you’re kind of against it.
I think a lot of damage is done under the guise of honesty. ‘I have something rotten, I tell you, now I feel better and you’re burdened with all this weird shit.

- You shot the film in sixteen days. How much directing can you do in that time?
Well, I’m not really a fan of fancy camera moves because they take m out of the movie so I was more concerned with getting the performances down and getting the script shot than I was with creating a piece of ‘art’. The only thing you can take credit for is hiring the right people.

- It did well at the Sundance Festival.
Yeah, people liked it. When we first got there we really were the turd in the punch-bowl. People had heard it was a dog blowjob film from the guy from ‘Police Academy’. By the end we were turning people away.

- It’s your third film, the first being ‘Shakes the Clown’ which Martin Scorsese has hailed…
‘The ‘Citizen Kane’ of drunk clown movies!’ Someone was interviewing him about film preservation and said ‘What, you want to preserve every film, even ‘Shakes the Clown?’ To which he replied ‘I love ‘Shakes the Clown’. I read that interview about twenty times. My daughter asked me why I kept reading it over and over and I said ‘Look you’re daddy’s never going to win an award. This! This is my award!’.