![]() He’s clear-eyed enough to see through a lot of the ginned-up controversy currently swirling around the comedy world, as talents fitting Goldthwait’s general profile – male, white, middle-aged – air their grievances over a changing climate. “ half the people are there because they know me and Dana, a quarter are there because of some movies I was in 30 years ago, and a quarter are there because they maybe got a Groupon, or needed something to do for date night,” he laughs. The pair didn’t get too much crowd pushback during the tour that would become Joy Ride, which Goldthwait credits to playing rock clubs with a more self-selecting audience than comedy clubs draw these days. “They love anything about Bigfoot, even the beef jerky commercials. “It’s a little like the Bigfoot community,” he says. His time spent as Officer Zed McGlunk may get him out of the occasional ticket, but he’s still half-amused and half-unsettled that law enforcement would perceive this slapstick lark as being partisan in their favor. Cops and their most ardent defenders have claimed the daffy comedy franchise as their own, and don’t always appreciate the progressive bent of its star’s material when they go see him on stage. One of the key bits in Goldthwait’s set concerns the Police Academy fandom, which has an overlap with the far right that he finds surprising. ![]() What I’m not used to is a row of Proud Boy wannabes with their arms folded, mumbling about how Covid isn’t real. ![]() I go on the road, and sometimes there are people where I don’t know if they’re hangovers from Police Academy or what, but they expect me to have a different ideology than I do … I got started in Boston. “It felt great, but people have become very emboldened – the same kind of knuckleheads that fuck up traveling on an airplane now show up at comedy clubs and decide this is where they’re going to make their anti-vax stand against The Man. “I’ve been back doing standup again after 15, 16 months,” he says. I have an OK set, but people in the audience were yelling, ‘Do the voice!’ It’s my daughter’s favorite heckle.” I was in Nashville, and I actually have footage of me going out for the first time, knowing I just couldn’t do the character. But I know people, they’ve worked hard all week and that’s what they expect, so I probably perpetuated it a little longer than I should have. “I went back on the road after directing the Kimmel show, and I wasn’t looking forward to it … The voice didn’t suit me. “It was a decision I made,” Goldthwait tells the Guardian on a phone call from Los Angeles. It made the comedian, film-maker and actor a star during his tenure in the Police Academy films back in the 80s, but no one wants to be reduced to a bit, and so he retired the quasi-persona in 2018. Anyone who knows his name probably knows that voice, a guttural yowl that makes him sound like a cartoon character being smashed with an oversized mallet. T hese days, Bobcat Goldthwait prefers not to do the voice.
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