A long time before Stephen Colbert and the notion of
“truthiness,” Depeche Mode touched upon some of the same ideas of candor’s
malleability and, conversely, slippery slope perils when, in the early 1990s,
David Gahan sang on Violator, “You’ll
see your problems multiply/When you continually decide/To faithfully pursue/A policy
of truth.” After all, complete and unvarnished honesty can be just like handing
someone a cudgel if they don’t like what you have to say.

Writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (yes, that Bobcat Goldthwait) explores this idea in the
unconventional-to-say-the-least romantic comedy Sleeping Dogs Lie,
a surprisingly deeply felt movie that takes a gross-out sex humor nugget and
grinds it down in purposefully awkward fashion into the shag carpet of the real
world. Melinda Page Hamilton stars as Amy, a seemingly normal young girl,
adored by her parents and golden-boy fiancé John (Bryce Johnson). Her future
looks bright until John suggests they tell each other their most intimate
secrets. When Amy finally relents — telling John about a time in college when
she performed fellatio on her dog — her connections to those she loves falls
apart.

That the movie is rated R for “strong and aberrant sexual
content,” (!) as well as drug use and language, is a given, but Sleeping Dogs Lie
isn’t shallowly explicit, unlike so many gross-out teen comedies. Rather, the
movie extrapolates forward from its premise in surprisingly effective if visually
threadbare style. In conjunction with the film’s recent DVD release — from First Look, and including an audio
commentary track from its writer-director — Goldthwait took some time to answer
a few questions via email, and even include a picture of his alleged inspiration. The chat is excerpted below:

Brent Simon: What sparked the initial idea for the movie?

Bobcat Goldthwait: It was this guy (below). I can’t resist
him. I’m attracted to smart people, so the glasses really got to me. When he
left me I was just so broken up about it that I had to memorialize it somehow.

BS: In your opinion, how long does one have in a new
relationship before unspoken policies about honesty’s proverbial
line-in-the-sand are hardened? Or is it that in matters sexual, there’s always
going to be a double standard, and/or hang-ups that come back to haunt and
complicate things?

BG: I just think a lot of bad or hurtful things are done in
the guise of just being honest. Some people have this idea that disclosing
terrible things makes them a good person — like just by confessing it, you are OK.
I don’t agree with that.

BS: Was Melinda Page Hamilton — who I thought summoned up just the right touch of an early Renee Zellweger’s crinkled-nosed angst — someone you were previously
familiar with, or did you cast her through an audition/general meeting?

BG: I had never met Melinda before she came in to audition,
but as soon as we saw her it was clear that she was far and away the best
actress for the job. I was so afraid that some manager or family member was
going to tell her not to do this movie. Actually, I know at least one of her
close family members tried to talk her out of it by telling her she could never
marry a politician with a scandal like this on her résumé, but thank God she
ignored them and came on board. We could not have made this movie without her.

BS: I’m intrigued by the much-undiscussed flipside of deceit
that the film tangentially raises — that it’s trying to live up to the lies we
tell about ourselves that ultimately makes us better people. What if any
“mistruths” have you told and then tried to live up to, sort of on the fly?

BG: “I’m a director.”

BS: What’s similar about episodic television directing and
film directing, and what’s the biggest difference or challenge?

BG: Well, the TV show I’ve spent the most time directing is Jimmy Kimmel Live, and that’s more like
being an air traffic controller with monkeys screaming in my ears — it’s a lot
of snap decisions and crazy, but ultimately pretty satisfying. Making a movie
is a little different, but mostly because I only have to look at one monitor at
a time.

BS: You shot Sleeping
Dogs Lie in
two weeks and some change, which must have been a crazy pace. What was the
worst day like?

BG: In hindsight it all seems really fun. I know we all had
a lot of laughs every day we were shooting or we never would have made it
through. Any bad example I can give you has a pretty good ending — like, when
we were shooting at one of the producer’s houses and someone unplugged his
fridge without telling him, and everything started to go bad and stink. But
then Bryce (who plays John) took out all the meat and started barbequing it in
the backyard.

BS: Sleeping Dogs Lie is set in the
awkward, messy confines of the real world, which is a long way from some of the
outlandish comedy for which you’re best known. Is there anything to the notion,
then, of the secret life or tears of a clown, which is to say that many if not
most comedians operate from a place of angst, uncertainty, self-loathing, anger
or some combination thereof?

BG: Yeah, comics are piles.

BS: What’s up next for you, and is there some great scoop
that you’d like to bestow upon me, thus garnering the site a bump in traffic?

BG: Well, I’ve written a few more things I’m trying to get
made, but as far as a scoop I guess I can break it here that the during the
filming I was having an on-set affair with Rose McGowan.