The Playlist

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Interviews

Review: 'God Bless America' Looks Incendiary, But Is Actually A Self-Congratulatory One-Note Screed

By The Playlist
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May 11, 2012 10:04 AM
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2 Comments

News

Former shrill-voiced comedian turned acidic writer/director/satirist Bobcat Goldthwait may just be one of the most simultaneously electric and frustrating indie filmmakers working today. When it comes to deliciously wicked and acerbic premises, there might not be a better conceptualist. A devilishly arch comedic mind, Goldthwait has thus far come up with three succulently mordant, often morally taboo narrative inventions: a girl who tries to repair her relationship after she reveals to her partner she's engaged in sexual acts with her dog ("Sleeping Dogs Lie"); a struggling and untalented author who parlays his son's fake suicide note into a writing career ("World's Greatest Dad") and his latest, "God bless America," a pitch black societal missive about a disenfranchised man and an all-too-willing and fed-up teenage girl who go on a cross-country killing spree aimed at the shallow, the insipid and the repellently vacuous.

By Kevin Jagernauth
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March 12, 2012 2:35 PM
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0 Comments

News

Bobcat Goldthwait has always walked the road of comedy right on the edge. From this early days as a member of the "Police Academy" ensemble, but his current work as a filmmaker which has seen him bring deliriously dark, demented and funny works like "Shakes The Clown" "World's Greatest Dad" and "God Bless America" (recently unspooling at SXSW) to the big screen. But his passion project may surprise you -- it's a musical based on the The Kinks album Schoolboys In Disgrace and it has been a project he has been developing for a while. The last we heard about it was nearly a year ago when it was reported that Jack White would be helping to re-record the music, with Warp Films throwing their weight behind the project as producers. But The Playlist member Aaron Hillis caught up with Goldthwait in Austin and he revealed a bit more about what we might expect.

By Edward Davis
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January 31, 2012 12:01 PM
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12 Comments

News

When it comes to molotov cocktail-like film premesis, perhaps none are greater, more deliciously wicked than comedian turned filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwait's incendiary and hilarious societal screeds. Always testing the limits of good taste Goldthwait's films have chronicled light beastiality ("Sleeping Dogs Lie") and deep, shameful immorality in a picture about a father who fake's his sons suicide note and then becomes a famous author in the process ("World's Greatest Dad"). His comedies are always pitch, pitch black.

By Kevin Jagernauth
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September 20, 2011 1:40 AM
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9 Comments

Oscar-Winning Screenwriter Finds Herself Part Of 2 Movies At TIFFFor some reason, Diablo Cody seems to have the knives pointed at her more easily (and unfairly) than other screenwriters. Say what you will about the Oscar-winning pen behind "Juno," but her voice is unique and frankly we'd take a Cody project over something from overrated, middle-of-the-road scribes like Allan Loeb or Aline Brosh McKenna any day of the week. But it certainly reveals something about Cody's presence in Hollywood that she has found herself part of two movies that recently played TIFF and in one case she's not happy, while in the other it seems she's apparently less concerned.

By Gabe Toro
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September 9, 2011 4:37 AM
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2 Comments

Well, this is incendiary.

By Oliver Lyttelton
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May 12, 2011 5:40 AM
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3 Comments

Update: A representative from William Morris Endeavor has told us that Screen Daily's report was incorrect, and that Jack White is in no way involved with the project. Well, there we go.