With God Bless America hitting limited release on Friday in the UK, we sat down with writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait (Zed from the Police Academy series and the writer/director of World's Greatest Dad, Sleeping Dogs Lie and Shakes THe Clown) to discuss courting controversy, shooting babies, Diablo Cody and what would happen if he remade Shakes The Clown.

Have you had any reactions from the far right at all? I imagine the IMDB message boards will be a terrible place to visit.

I was looking for those, you know, and then I stopped reading them because it's like sporting teams, "Oh, we've got a new guy we can bash!" For god's sakes, they attack George Clooney, who is perfect. It doesn't bother me. My conservative friends don't have a problem with this movie, "You don't like someone, get a gun and shoot them, that sounds great." They like Frank because Frank owns a gun. He's got a couple of things that are a little conservative about him. My liberal friends are like, "Oh I don't know about this." You can't hug a Glenn Beck fan into reason...

 

Your stories are really fucked up, is being provocative something you shoot for, or do you go for stories that move you first?

I don't really think of them in any terms, the movies I write now in my life, they just come to me and I write them. I don't think, well this will really freak everyone out. After World's Greatest Dad I wrote five screenplays and one of them my wife read and she looked at me, appalled. She was like, "You wrote a family picture?" I don't know how or why. I think of them as fables, I don't think of them as accurate portrayals of anybody's lives. I also don't think the last three certainly... just to make a comedy doesn't interest me. I hope I do make people laugh, but I also want it to be about something. 

 

Are you trying to get a message across?

No, I'm trying usually to work out something in my head. Maybe this movie's saved a lot of lives, prevented me from getting a gun... no! Normally I don't know what it was until a year later, and I go, "Oh! That's my ex!"

 

Did a personal experience inspire you to make a film like this?

One of the tipping point was that I was in London for World's Greatest Dad, and I had never seen My Super Sweet 16, and they were having a My Super Sweet 16 marathon. I thought, these children should die, they're horrible people. It was horrific to me to think this was... you know how some people's opinions of... it would be the equivalent of us only seeing My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. I was terrified. It was a Christmas present to my wife; she really hates babies, so I got her a movie where we shoot a baby.

 

Do you have a favourite part of the film?

Joel always likes to point out the scenes I like are the ones I didn't write. The one where they're sitting around playing Russian roulette with the balloon. My movies are always claustrophobic as they're always inside, but Joel was like, "The sun is really pretty right now, people wait all day for the sun to get like this". My wife had gotten that balloon. It was a Japanese game, all the fun of suicide, but none of the ugly clean-ups. I like the scene where he's teaching her how to shoot a gun. A very sweet scene about learning how to kill people. I love it when Chloe gets killed, I like that it goes wrong. I was really scared when we shot it, as the girl really was in the car with the lit rag. Fortunately she didn't die.

 

I've heard your baby-wrangling skills leave a lot to be desired - how do the parents feel about THAT scene?

First I had to find a baby that looked ugly. I think that baby was too cute - give me a baby that looks like you've shaved a pug. So the baby shows up, and the parents go, "What are we shooting today?" And nobody had said, so the Assistant Director goes "Oh, we're shooting your baby." Clearly no one had told them, and it got really weird and we had to shut down for a while. We explained to them what was happening, and the baby wouldn't cry at all. It just sat there; we gave it a toy, a treat and took it away, and nothing. We'd have the parents walk away and the fucker just sat there. Finally, I would love to say I'm a better man than this, but I did get down on all fours and growl in the baby's face. Finally it cries on camera. I'm putting fake boogers in its nose and everything. I was booger-wrangler too! I always think the punchline will be ten years later, Police Academy will come on the TV and this kid will freak out. 

 

Have the parents seen the final film?

You know it's funny, they weren't at the cast and crew screening. It was pretty funny, as normally we don't have a lot of coverage, but we covered it a lot, with a fake baby and stuff. There was a happy accident, like a drip that looks like a tear. When we went to do the mother side, I asked for a little more blood. And it was blam! A blood tsunami. The effects guy goes, "Eh, it's not an exact science." I think it's okay because it's in a dream state. We couldn't have gone again, as the entire wall was covered in blood. They put like broccoli in it, for when the girl's brains go. 

 

With World's Greatest Dad you had an A-list star, but Joel Murray isn't as well known - why was he so right for the role?

That's the cool thing about the system in my own terms, and small budgets, I do have first and last say about the cast. Joel is in Mad Men, but I've known him since my early twenties and he's a friend of mine. I had back surgery, and he had given me a box set of Mad Men to get caught up on since I was really high. My wife said, "you should use Joel." I was like, that's a great idea. So I sent him the screenplay, but I didn't tell him I wanted him to play Frank as I was too high. He said, "okay, what am I playing? The boss at work?" "No man, you're Frank!" "The guy? I've never been The Guy!" Joel's also a director, so it was great to have another set of eyes.

 

Tara's incredible as well.

She's amazing, I love Tara. There was an old movie called The Sterile Cuckoo with Liza Minnelli, who was probably the same age as Tara, and that's who I based the character on when I was writing it. Tara came in with the same energy. I didn't want her to be a cliché goth, or a Lolita, she had to be some kid who was ostracised because she was smart. That's why she's invisible too; I've noticed smart kids try not to bring any attention to themselves to make it through the school system.

 

So why did you call it God Bless America?

It was a pretty snarky title, and it's like World's Greatest Dad and Sleeping Dogs Lie, I guess all my movies could fit on a coffee mug, they're like t-shirts. The next movie would be I'm With Stupid I guess! 

 

After World's Greatest Dad, did producers approach you with similar themes?

Yes. It's really funny how predictable it is. Suddenly I was getting all these faux dark movies. What they were, was that terrible things happen to people, but at the end it wasn't about anything. It was the equivalent of, instead of a slob comedy, there were movies with death as a punchline. Now with [God Bless America] I'm getting action movies, which is so funny! 

 

Would you ever work from someone else's script?

Yeah, if it was a good script I would be super into that. It's a catch-22. I don't really get offered the better projects. After the first time I was at Sundance, I did get a lot of interesting screenplays, but none of those movies have gotten made yet. In the mean time, I was able to go off and make two more movies. I like to write, I write all the time. Actually, I don't like to write, but get the screenplays on paper. Right now I'm sitting on five or six ones. 

 

Which one could get in production first?

I don't know. There was this horror one, but I think that's going to have to wait until next year. I might make a found-footage movie just so I'm making something, as I'm a little bananas right now!

 

Robin Williams said in December he was really interested in working with you again, is that one of the things you've written?

Yeah, I wrote another feature for he and I, which is, uh... I'm sure we'll make it. I write the screenplays, but I'm not interested in making them if I have to compromise how they're going to made. If I was willing to go through the studio system I'd have Robin, but I might have to give up stuff. I've been trying to do it outside the system again with Robin. His character is, to me, very like a Being There character, it's really against type. It'll be interesting to watch him be someone that's shut down. Hopefully we'll make it.

 

What should be done about people who whip out their phones during films?

Well, it is their world. When I went back and did stand-up comedy, there'd be people who weren't watching the show, they were recording it. It used to annoy me, but I'm an old fart, and this is their world. I just try to go to movies where I don't think it's going to happen, but then I see it's 3D, and think, fuck, I'm not going. For me, the movie is not about if we got rid of X, Y and Z the world would be a better place. It's about why have we become so interested in being distracted all the time. It's either the iPhone or it's talking about things that aren't really important. I'm not saying every conversation should be some political thing, but... I don't watch the Kardashians, but when she got married, I knew. Like, people say Frank could turn off the TV, but it doesn't matter. I also believe I'm guilty too, and Frank is, and the wheels fall off. I think people wonder why I didn't make a movie where for 90 minutes Frank just kills people we hate. It's not a very upbeat ending, but if I did it the other way, I wouldn't have people going, "I'm part of the problem."

 

The moment when Frank gives a monologue in the office is amazing. Is that based on your own experiences, or do you know people who have felt isolated in their places of work?

I don't know why I set it in the office, but I felt it was a good location for him to feel out of sync with everyone else. It seems funny, because one of the women is his wife in real life. I was like, "Joel, do mind shooting your wife?" He just looked at me and smiled. I think that says more about the cacophony of numbversations that are going on around you. I like the guy who plays opposite Joel in that scene. He's a perfect foil. They're meaning less in the States, but is there an equivalent of the shock radio here? So many people get their news filtered through a right wing show or a real low common denominator. I'm not an elitist. I did a film about a dog blow job for god's sake. I went to see 21 Jump Street, and there's a scene where a guy gets his penis severed and it ends up in someone else's mouth. Now, it's a million times more shocking than anything I've put in my movies. But if it was my movie, it would've been what happened to him afterwards, how it affected his love life, know what I mean? That's a whole movie, a man getting his penis severed, but it's just a punchline.

 

Frank seems to have a moral element, with his relationship with Roxy.

I wanted people to empathise with him. If he was crazy, people would've been, "Eh, it's just a crazy guy." I felt it would be more awkward if you empathised while he was killing. Eventually everybody should be called out in the movie. I think people confuse it with a list of things I don't like. I like Green Day! Like when Tara's character goes after Diablo Cody, I don't sit around going, "Grrr Diablo Cody." I don't really care about her, or know much about her, and just know that my daughter is really funny, and when she's funny people go, "You're like Juno." She goes, "Dad, I want to stab them in their throat when they say that." That's why that's in there. Most movies have no opinions, or they're so afraid of offending people - they have no problems cutting off a penis, but they have problems with having an opinion. That is so foreign in a movie, that when a character has an opinion, people think it's mine. My opinion on Diablo Cody is even worse, she doesn't even exist.

 

How do you find low-budget filmmaking in the digital age?

The cool thing is that nothing prevents you from making a movie now. If you have access to a digital camera, you can make a movie. I have a feeling the next one I make might be like that, as I want to make another one quickly. That is cool. Sleeping Dogs Lie, the crew was from Craigslist, we shot in two weeks. Although, when I was making World's Greatest Dad, I thought it was the last time I would shoot on film, and I saw it a couple days ago at a festival and thought, "Mmmm, film does look pretty."

 

Your sense of humour can be broad, slapstick and quite dark - do you find yourself being a critic of your own work?

Yeah, everyone who is fortunate enough to make movies, you cringe when you watch them. This one, Joel and my wife were like, you've got to leave it alone with editing. It was a little bananas. That's the downfall of digital. We showed it in Toronto, and I put stuff back in when people were really going along for the ride.

 

Does that mean there will be even more on the DVD?

There is more television. There was a baby pageant show called the Jersey Shorties, things like that. There's a lot of ad libs done by the cast of the Chloe show which were funny, but the tone was a little bit more Christopher Guest, and it just didn't fit. We cut a six-minute version of that show. All the TV stuff was grounded. There was a show called Tough Girls that became Bad Girls, I didn't see someone throw a tampon, but I saw one girl urinate in another one's food. A mother lifting up her skirt and asking her daughter if her tampon string is showing. None of that was too far off the truth. That was shot on the first day, "Did you motherfuckers poop in my food?", in someone's house. My wife's the costume designer and my daughter works in the costume department, and I had to ask them to make a tampon that looks bloody and tape it to that lady's leg.

 

Do you have any interest in going back in front of the camera?

No. I jokingly say I retired the same time people stopped hiring me, so that worked out well. A friend just asked me to do some acting. It's a combination of that I don't think I'm a very good actor, and I'm not too interested in perpetuating myself as a personality. I know that seems like I'm full of shit as I'm doing an interview. I'm happy to make movies and sit in the back. I think I'm lying, I don't know. Making movies is all the perks of being in showbusiness without the bullshit. You're anonymous but you can still be a blowhard.

 

It's quite a family unit you've got going on.

In this movie I kill all of my best friends. My friend Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob, I've known since I was six. He's the one in the office who pokes his head out and gets shot. I know if I put a squib on Tommy, he's really uncoordinated and he'd touch it and blow his hand up. So I put it in the wall, and he pulls the whole wall down because he's just a big spazz. I love working with my friends.

 

Where does Shakes the Clown fit in with your body of work?

Tommy and I went to a screening in LA, and it was surreal, people were dressed up like these characters, women dressed as slutty clowns. A third or more of the room were drunk, people had memorised the dialogue. Tom leans over and says, "What the fuck were we thinking?" A coke-sniffing evil clown? My daughter leans over and says, "Dad, you're a really bad actor." I think what's missing from Shakes is a plot. It's an angry movie, but it's not about anything. If I were to make Shakes today, I don't think anything good would happen to Shakes. He would get in a little car accident, maybe commit suicide. It would be funny to see a clown hang himself. 

 

You've got quite a voice in cinema, but are there any other filmmakers or writers you admire?

Yeah I like a lot of people: Wes Anderson, Todd Solondz, John Waters. I do go to a lot of movies, but, I'm not an elitist, I don't go to a lot of studio comedies. They just disappoint me a lot.

 

You work with your friends, but are there any actors out there you admire and would like to work with?

Oh yeah, plenty of them. I like the same people everyone else does. Gary Oldman's awesome. I don't know if I exist to these people though, that's not me having a pity party. One of the movies I'm trying to get going is The Kinks Present Schoolboys in Disgrace. I have a handful of English friends, but none of them are young and can sing. This is where I have to get people attached to get money, as it's much bigger that my other movies. I would hate to make Schoolboys and have Ray Davies be disappointed. It would be the worst thing ever for me. He's my childhood hero.

 

God Bless America is out in cinemas in the UK on July 6th, and on DVD, and digital download from 9th July.