Comedian turned film-maker Bobcat Goldthwait’s first documentary profiles a comedian who was raped as a child. Despite the tough subject matter, the film is Goldthwait’s most mainstream effort to date. Just don’t tell him that

Bobcat Goldthwait is worried.

The bad boy comedian turned adventurous filmmaker has long prided himself on being edgy. Hell, John Waters himself awarded him with the Filmmaker on the Edge award at the Provincetown international film festival in June. But Goldthwait’s new film – and first documentary – Call Me Lucky, threatens to soften the edge that’s distinguished his output since he turned heads with his twisted comedy Shakes the Clown.

Since premiering in January at the Sundance film festival, where it was warmly received by critics, Call Me Lucky has gone on to garner the kind of widespread warmth that Goldthwait is not accustomed to. This is a man who set Jay Leno’s couch on fire during his heyday, when he was best known for playing an oddball cop in the Police Academy movies – and whose sophomore feature, Sleeping Dogs Lie, introduced bestiality to the romantic comedy genre.

“I’m really panicked about it,” Goldthwait admits. He agreed to lunch at a vegan restaurant in Silverlake, Los Angeles, a block down from where he recently moved. The roar of a loud juicer in the room made him hard to hear. “[This noise] should be in a movie during a breakup, or when someone’s telling their partner they have an STD.”

Up until now, Goldthwait has cherished being an under-the-radar director. “Judd Apatow, who I haven’t spoken to in 20 years,” he says, “has been a big help in telling me to enjoy it and not take it too seriously, and remind me that I’m not disappointing everyone.”

Goldthwait wasn’t just name dropping: the two recently bonded over their mutual love for the subject of Call Me Lucky, comedian Barry Crimmins, whose hellfire brand of politically charged comedy inspired Goldthwait as a young comedian in Boston. Goldthwait was 16 when he first met Crimmins, who was hosting an open mic night at a comedy club in Skaneateles, New York, and let the young aspiring comic take to the stage. He credits Crimmins – who has a high profile in Boston, but is nowhere near to being a household comedy name – for launching his career.

Bobcat Goldthwait: 'I'm not going to make a film with Justin Bieber' Read more

Call Me Lucky tracks Crimmins’s rise as a leftwing comedian, aided by interviews with many of today’s top working comedians – including Maragret Cho, Patton Oswalt and David Cross – all of whom cite him as an inspiration. After introducing Crimmins, Goldthwait pulls the rug out to reveal that the comedian was the victim of rape as a child. Following that horrifying reveal, Goldthwait switches gears to document Crimmins’s battle with AOL to shut down chat rooms in the mid-90s that allowed for child pornography to be shared.

“It’s not like a spoiler, because tonally I hint that there’s something wrong,” Goldthwait says of the surprising turn of events. “If this was a made for TV movie or some 48 Hours special, it would have started out with: ‘Raped at four...’”

Extreme tonal shifts are nothing new for Goldthwait: World’s Greatest Dad, his 2009 film starring Robin Williams, plays like a commercial feel-good comedy before the main character’s son dies of autoerotic asphyxiation. But because Call Me Lucky is a documentary, the shocking developments don’t play like a twist meant to provoke; which likely accounts for why Call Me Lucky is not eliciting the extreme reactions usually met by Goldthwait’s work – something that still surprised the director.

He says: “I made a movie about a leftwing progressive comic that people aren’t too familiar with, and it’s about his child abuse – so I really did think it would be my least accessible movie. I really thought I was telling Barry’s story, and I am, but I wasn’t aware of how prevalent, the amount of sexual abuse, the amount of sexual rape ... so it’s really hit a nerve.”

“With that comes responsibility,” Goldthwait adds. “The movie ends with: ‘If you’re a victim or abuse or know somebody, tell everyone.’ I would have added: ‘If you’re not, just listen.’ ‘Cause listening is really hard – and it’s become the responsibility that’s come with the movie.”

Call Me Lucky also ends with a dedication to his World’s Best Dad star, Robin Williams, Goldthwait’s best friend of 33 years. After struggling for years to write a screenplay about Crimmins life, it was Williams who suggested that his friend instead make a documentary. To get Goldthwait started, Williams gave him some money.

The one year anniversary of Williams’s death is next week, on 11 August. While Goldthwait is still visibly affected by his friend’s sudden death (he grows solemn when discussion veers to Williams), he’s happy to talk about him (He reasons: “If any my other dear friends passed away, I would talk about them.”)

Last year was not an easy year for the filmmaker. On top of coping with Williams’s death, he divorced his second wife. “And then I would spend eight to 12 hours editing a baby rape documentary,” he laments. “At least I had that to pull me through … I’m joking, but in a weird way it did. It’s a bit of a cliché, but often I’d think: ‘What would Robin want?’ I knew he’d want me to finish the movie.”

Avoiding eye contact, Goldthwait recounts how he rings in every year by asking what the coming year will bring, then jumping into the ocean with two close friends. He jokes that he usually just asks for new snow tires. This year, Goldthwait says he had planned to ask: “What else could happen to me?” But instead, he asked for “more pain”. “Once I thought of that it shifted everything for me,” he says. “I went from being the walking wounded to being whole again.”

Goldthwait says he often remembers that moment when he’s feeling down, and that thinking about Williams helps pull him through. “He wanted people to be happy, and he wanted me to be happy,” Goldthwait says. “So that’s what keeps me going.”

Call Me Lucky opens on 7 August in the US