The friendship between Bobcat Goldthwait and Dana Gould hasn’t always been a cut and dry relationship, and they’ll be the first ones to tell you that. And now they’re returning to their old stomping grounds to do so, in their own way, as they bring us along for the ride.
With their new film, Joy Ride, which screens at Cambridge’s Brattle Theatre as part of IFFBoston on Saturday (October 23) — read our full preview here — Goldthwait and Gould bring us on a journey. Not only does the film bring us on the road with them as they embarked on their joint tour a few years back, but it also pulls back the curtain on a decades-long acquaintance that started in Boston in the ‘80s, as well as how far the two comedy legends have come, both together and as individuals, over the years, overcoming personal struggles and obstacles that have not only made their comedy stronger, but also the bond that they share.
We had a chance to catch up with the legendary duo ahead of the premiere to chat about the inspiration for the film, the long and winding road of their bromance, and how it feels to return to their comedy alma mater to re-live both with the IFFBoston crowd.
Check it out.
Jason Greenough: Hi, guys! I’m glad we could all connect for this. A lot has transpired since the last time we chatted, so I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t start off by asking how you two have been doing.
Bobcat Goldthwait: Dana and I have been promoting Joy Ride, and fortunately, we aren’t getting along, so I think we’ll have enough for a sequel.
Dana Gould: [laughs] I just don’t think this is the time or the place to talk about the movie.
Well, hopefully we can put our differences aside for a bit and talk about the aforementioned new movie, Joy Ride. We have the Boston premiere coming up at The Brattle Theatre on the 23rd as part of IFFBoston. What’s the feeling as you guys come back for the weekend?
Goldthwait: I’m excited, and I’m really happy they’re playing it. I’ve had a nice relationship with them over the years, as they’ve played my movies, and it’s always nice to go back to Boston. The crowds have also been very supportive and nice over the years, but it’s also great for Dana and I to see it in Boston, because that’s where we met, and that’s where our comedy was formed, basically.
Gould: There’s so much Boston in the DNA of our comedy. It’s very much forged in Boston.
What was the driving force to make this into a film? You guys had been touring, and we all chatted to hype your stop in Somerville on that tour, but you guys were on the road for a lot more dates, and you’ve been friends for a long time. At what point did the idea for a film to detail all of that come into play?
Goldthwait: When we were in Somerville, we hadn’t really figured out the show yet. We’d come out and basically flip a coin and decide which one of us was going to come on the headline that night, and we’d do our shows separately. But Dana and I noticed that when we were just dicking around together at the beginning of the show, people seemed to enjoy that almost more than our individual sets. We just jettisoned that idea, and we would get on stage together. I think a lot of people think that when you do a two-man act, it’s going to like Abbott and Costello or something, but neither of us was playing the dumb guy. At least I don’t think?
Gould: Well, we were both playing the dumb guy, and we just didn’t know it.
Goldthwait: Right. Maybe, I’m the dumb guy that’s just being nice. [laughs] But I’m not too sure, Dana. When did we decide to make this into a movie?
Gould: We were in Maryland when we decided that we would stay on stage together for the whole show and see what happened. That was literally the way we decided. Once it really gelled into a show, it wasn’t very long before we thought it would make a great special. It wasn’t until [Bobcat] started editing it during the pandemic that it became something other than that.
Goldthwait: We had filmed in multiple cities, so if the pandemic hadn’t happened, I would’ve just cut into a stand-up special. But because of the pandemic, I was able to take all the interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, and there’s so much of it footage in this that makes it so much more than a normal stand-up show. [At one point] Dana and I are talking about Bob Hope and how horrible the commercial went when Dana was filming a Bob Hope commercial, and it actually cuts to the raw footage of that, and low and behold, the story is absolutely true.
It’s also probably the only movie that has both Bob Hope and Kurt Cobain in it.
I’d hope it’s the only one, or else the CIA has some crazy footage of something going down.
Goldthwait: I’d like to see that comedy act.
Now, the camaraderie you guys have — it’s evident in this film, and in this conversation, and in the years of chemistry you’ve cultivated. It’s really a wonderful thing to see.
Goldthwait: Well, Dana and I had not been friends, and I was really vicious to him. It took a long time before we became friends, and that’s explored, hopefully in a comedic way, but also in an honest way. So, I had to myself the antagonist when I looked at the film, because in order to have a narrative, I’ve gotta let people know how much of an asshole I was to Dana.
Gould: But that’s not to say that the film is bereft of any embarrassing behavior on my part, because that would be a misnomer.
Goldthwait: It explores mine and Dana’s relationship, but it also explores mine and Dana’s relationships with our families, and our relationships with comedy. Around almost the same time, I was acting out and being destructive onstage, and at that same period, Dana was being self-destructive. There’s footage of all of that. There’s footage of Dana coming out of a hospital to perform, four days after he had been hospitalized for a week for mental issues, and then you get all the shenanigans of me shooting a fire extinguisher up Kathie Lee Gifford’s skirt and stuff.
Everyone wants to see chaos and extreme behavior or whatever you want to call it, but I really think that it pulls back the curtain on you guys in a deeper way that shows not only how powerful you guys were as comedic forces back then, but it also shows how much you guys have grown since then.
Gould: That’s well put, thank you. Another thing it shows, I think in terms of being comedians specifically, is that if the same brain that comes up with all the good stuff is really strong, guess what? The bad stuff is going to be really potent too. Bob and I are both living testaments to that.
Now, in the description of the film, it highlights the accident you guys were in a few years back. How did that experience together play into the approach to this project?
Gould: Well, for a very brief instance, we were physically closer than we had ever been before. [laughs]
Goldthwait: Yeah, we broke our ribs on each other. It was like the origin of a super villain. I think this is the kind of stuff, not to over-dramatize the car accident, but it helps forge a relationship with that thought of ‘hey, we almost died, wasn’t that funny?’
Traditionally, whenever I make a movie, I usually start with something like a minor bit of beastiality or shooting a baby with a shotgun, but with this movie, I thought I would start with a car accident, where we’re physically injured, and then see what happens.
The lighthearted stuff! I like it!
Goldthwait: You got it.
Like you said, you’ve been friends and comics for a long time, but you also weren’t friends for a long time. Having gone through everything you’ve gone through together, both inside and out of this project, what was your biggest takeaway from not just the journey in the sense of the travelling itself, but also putting this film together as a whole?
Goldthwait: I’ve found that if you’ve been through all the stuff that Dana and I have been through together, you either wind up close, or you wind up hating each other. I’m grateful that it turned out that we’re really closer for it.
Gould: I would agree. Even if I didn’t agree —
Goldthwait: ‘I think Bobcat is full of shit.’ [laughs] This is a more exaggerated character than the one he used to do.
Gould: What Mrs. Goldthwait just said aside… [laughs]
Goldthwait: I think the most shocking thing I’ve heard so far came while we were doing an interview with a reviewer who had already watched the movie, and they said ‘Bobcat, you’re really well-adjusted,’ and that is probably the most startling thing that was revealed in this movie. As it turns out, I’m Fred Rogers at the end of the day.
So what do you hope viewers take away from it? It’s comedy, with a little bit of drama in there, as well as the documentary aspect, so it has the potential to collect a lot of different demographics.
Goldthwait: I hope the folks who watch it are entertained, and that they laugh. And I hope the narrative that’s added to this prevents the normal fatigue that happens when you watch a normal special. I don’t care how funny someone is, you stop laughing about forty minutes in, then you’re just watching the person. That goes back to when I was a kid and I would watch Richard Pryor and George Carlin. A comedy special is a person with a microphone talking about how they see the world, but this more along the lines of ‘this may be how he sees the world, but let’s look at the facts.’
Gould: First and foremost, it’s a comedy special, and there’s a lot of performing and a lot of material in it. And as a bonus, related to the material, you get to see not how we became comedians, but why we became comedians. I think it’s a good example of how people become comedians. There are things that Bob and I discovered as we became friends, like how our backgrounds are crazily similar.
Goldthwait: We just went down two different roads. There are two types of Irish catholic people, where you have the oppressed Conan O’Briens and Dana Goulds, and then there’s my kind where I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I cry, and I get into fights, and I fall in love, and I go to jail. We definitely grew up in similar trains with families that hunt, and we have similar parents and big families. We just have all this weird stuff in common.
But at the end of the day, the movie hopefully is a comedy. Folks have started to watch it, and one of the things I’m happy about is how a few have said they had to watch it more than once. There’s very little music and no montages or any of the normal documentary things, because I kind of want Dana’s and mine performances, words, and the things we were saying and doing to be the thread, and without sounding too pretentious, the music that carries you from one scene to the next.
Like when Dana and I are talking in the car, and I’ll say something, and he’ll say something about how he has a bit about that, and then it cuts right to him doing it on stage. That kind of stuff. If you’re a comedy student, you’ll probably see a little bit about a birth of a bit, and the other thing that I’m happy about with this documentary is that while we shot it over multiple shows, there are genuine chunks that are genuine adlibs, and Dana and I playing off of each other. That kind of stuff just goes up in the ether, and you think about how you were on that night, but nobody sees it, so I’m happy that some of that is filmed and out there for pos–prosperity?
Gould: Posterity. The word ‘prosperity’ does not appear in our business plan.
Well, I’m excited to see it, because I for one love seeing the inside baseball of comedy.
Goldthwait: I had purpose with the way it was shot. The cameras are often behind us or next to us, and the reason for that is I wanted Dana not to be performing for the cameras so you genuinely capture us. We’re not on, and if you’re laughing at our conversations, it’s because they’re brutally honest, and not because we’re doing a movie or a podcast.
And that isn’t a slam on your podcast, Dana.
Gould: Click! [laugh]
Well, I guess that ends it. We’ll print it there, huh? [laughs]
Goldthwait: That right there is the origin of Joy Ride 2.
Gould: You saw it here first!
Well, that’s all I have for you guys. Is there anything that I may have missed that you wanted to touch on?
Goldthwait: Just the fact that Dana and I are gonna be there, and we look forward to doing a Q&A. My buddy Tony V is going to moderate it, so it should be a lot of fun.
Gould: He said it perfectly. See, it’s Bob’s movie. I’m just in it. Bob made it, and I’m not the biggest fan of watching myself, but when I did see it, I was really impressed at how the story really just flowed naturally. I think he did an amazing job. I’m a writer, and I get to decide what the story is before the cameras show up, and Bob had to create this movie out of the footage that we had, and I just think he did a spectacular job. I was impressed.
Goldthwait: I can return that with the fact that I couldn’t have done this movie with anyone else, because Dana allowed himself to be super vulnerable and super exposed, and you get to see as close to what the two of us are like in real life, for better or for worse.
IFFBOSTON PRESENTS ‘JOY RIDE’ :: Saturday, October 23 :: Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St. in Cambridge, MA :: $15 ($12 for IFFBoston and Brattle members, and students) :: 9:15 p.m. :: Ticket info