God Bless Bobcat

In Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America, a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde – a laid-off forty-something salaryman (Joel Murray, AKA Bill's brother) and a vicious teenage vamp (Disney/Nickelodeon child-star survivor Tara Lynne Barr) – go on a killing spree across America, gunning down all that they see as evil. Reality TV stars, Westboro-styled hate preachers, neo-con TV talking heads, people who use 'party' as a verb. It's hysterical, comic cry of rage from those who dismay the toilet bowl of 21st century culture in America, which suddenly becomes far less funny in one scene.

In it, the pair, on the lam and guns in hand, grow tired of the loudmouthed blowhards in the cinema behind them, wielding their rudeness like a weapon. So, they turn around and gun them down. It's a kind of meta-joke for those in the crowd – who could be suffering through rude audience-members as they watch God Bless America – and in keeping with the provocative, profane, prurient nature of the film's fantasy fulfilment. But watched mere weeks after the very-real massacre of Dark Knight Rises viewers at a midnight screening in Colorado, it's impossible not to feel confronted by this weird phenomenon, of real-life tragedy imitating fictional comedy. “You can't take healthy people and turn them into killers through a motion-picture,” says Goldthwait, the 50-year-old comedian-turned-filmmaker, when asked about his cultural culpability, and how recent events have changed how the world should view his film.

“The current events – all the things that happened before and after this movie – would've happened anyway, regardless of whether or not I made this movie. I don't believe I've influenced the world in a violent way,” Goldthwait offers. “The event with the Batman thing was so crazy that the media actually didn't do their usual routine: they didn't point the finger at video games and Marilyn Manson. People were just scratching their heads; it was just so hard to believe.” Did he feel some kind of responsibility – or pressure – to retroactively change his movie? Like the producers of the depression-era gangster epic Gangster Squad, who've gone in for much publicised reshoots to remove a scene where guns are turned on a cinema audience? “I think it's far more irresponsible to make films in which violence is made safe in these fantasy worlds that don't reflect the current state of contemporary America,” Goldthwait retorts, on the attack. “The people who are re-shooting that movie should be ashamed of themselves. Like, they thought showing people getting shot in a cinema was okay, but then something like that actually happened so it wasn't? They're just a bunch of cowards. They're just worried about taking a hit at the box office. They're not people that have anything to say, cinematically; they're just a bunch of pussies trying to make a lot of money, and real life just happened to get in their way.”

God Bless America is screening on Thursday 6 to Sunday 9 September. Drum Screenings of Hit So Hard and God Bless America on Sunday 9 September, The Factory Theatre