By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait recently had his premiere of the half-hour television series, Misfits & Monsters, in which Jewish actor Seth Green played a voice actor whose character Bubba The Bear comes alive. The Bear proves to be murderously angry at Green’s character for giving him such a stupid sounding voice.
Goldthwait’s comedy is madcap, satirical, and often quite dark. In the second episode, comedian David Koechner – who most recently played the character “Tuch” in Superior Donuts – is cast as a used car salesman from Texas who becomes a candidate for President of the United States, despite being a secret werewolf. The satire on an outsider saying anything that comes to his mind had obvious parallels to Donald Trump.
Meeting with reporters at a Comic-Con round table, Goldthwait said he thought he’d have more trouble selling the anthology series to truTV than he did. “I started telling them some of the stories, and mid-pitch, they were saying ‘stop talking’ and I thought this is going bad,” Goldthwait recounted. “But, no, they really wanted to do the show.”
He said he tried to imagine his interviewers then going to the higher ups at truTv to recommend the show that now occupies the network’s 10 p.m. Wednesday evening slot.
“We talked to Bob Goldthwait.”
“Isn’t he dead?”
“No, he’s alive and he want to do a show.”
“Is he in it?”
“No”
“Well, what is it about?”
“We’re not sure; it changes every week. He talks about racist mermaids and Harvey Oswald as Jerry Lewis.”
The thing is, Goldthwait likes to “mash up” his comedy, taking some archetypical characters and having them do weird things.
He said he has been drawn to the bizarre ever since Time/ Life Books came out with a series on unexplained phenomena. “I would read it on the john as a little boy. All these stories sparked this thing within me, gravitating to any kind of fables or fairy tales. That is my wheel house, that and things like Abbott and Costello.”
As the round table interview at Comic-Con was starting, Goldthwait mischievously looked down at the array of digital recorders in front of him, and confided that one time when he and the late Robin Williams were publicizing The World’s Greatest Dad, “there were a bunch of recorders like this, all identical, and we started playing Three-Card Monty with them, and it wasn’t funny, everyone was furious!”
Reporters next checked their digital recorders to make sure they had remained in position.
While the first two episodes featured monsters – a manic bear, and a werewolf—Goldthwait said he does not want Misfits & Monsters to be thought of as the ‘Monster of the Week.” So, he says he’ll be mixing genres, with one episode to be completely animated. That will feature the voices of Jewish actors Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld of Jake and Amir fame. They are transformed into a pair of bees whereupon they get an entirely different perspective on the world.
So many different kinds of ideas, some clearly ‘off the wall.’ What kind of demographic does Goldthwait aim for?
“Fifty-six year old comedians?” he deadpanned.
“It’s nice that the shows are now out there. It’s like I am meeting all the other star-bellied sneetches, who are reaching out to me.”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com