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Page 1 of 2  Here’s an attention grabber: On a whim one dateless night, Amy, a pretty, intelligent, and practical coed, performs fellatio on her pet dog. She never does it again and it is her dark, dark secret until her boyfriend coaxes it out of her and soon he and her family has turned their backs on her. That’s the uniquely outrageous premise of “Sleeping Dogs Lie,” and considering that the original wild man Bobcat Goldthwait is the director, everyone was expecting this indie to be an outlandish, over-the-top, and beyond-offensive comedy.
Instead, as critics discovered at film festivals, Goldthwaite wrote and directed what he reluctantly admits is a sweet, gentle, and sometimes serious comedy, and leading lady Melinda Page Hamilton turned Amy into one of the most appealing and sympathetic female characters in memory. Let sleeping dogs lie, but, film lovers, wake up to a real sleeper, a minor gem that is not only sweet but also is surprisingly profound. For seventeen minutes, I tried to let Bobcat in on this secret.
 Bobcat Goldthwait on set  Bryce Johnson and Melinda Page Hamilton in "Sleeping Dogs Lie"  It's true, Bobcat was huge in the 80's, making his screen debut in "Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment"
BG: The reality is that I showed the script around a little, but when someone would ask, “Can the girl just jerk off the dog?” I would think, “This is insane, I’m not going to rewrite it to get backing.” I made it because Sarah de Sa Rego, who was one of the co-producers, said, “This is a good script, we should shoot it.”
I said, “We don’t have any money.”
Q: Melinda Page Hamilton gives a terrific even tender performance as Amy. She had done mostly regional theater and television before you gave her the part. Did you see her play the sexy nun on “Desperate Housewives?"
BG: No, I didn't.
Q: I don’t think she did either because she claims not to have a television.
BG: I believe that because while we were working together she’d hear stories about me and go, “What is this about your setting a fire on the set of the “Tonight Show?’”
She would hear all kinds of things about what I’d done on television and she’d say, “How can that be true? Bob is so quiet and nice.”
When Melinda came in and auditioned, that was the first time I felt, “Maybe this will be okay, maybe this will work.”
Then I got freaked out because I worried a family member would tell her not to do the movie or that an agent would get to her.
Q: Was she queasy about the premise when she auditioned for the film?
BG: Not at all. I don’t want to bum out anyone who auditioned, but what happened was that people would come in and for some reason—and maybe it was because I was attached—they’d play it for the wrong kind of laughs. Melinda came in and made it really realistic.
I’m so happy she did the movie. If someone didn’t do as well as she did as Amy, I know the movie would never have gotten to Sundance and never would have gotten released. I really credit her a lot for the small amount of success we’ve already had with the movie.
Q: You've given a lot of credit to Melinda, the rest of your cast and cinematographer Ian Takahashi for the tone of the film. Are you giving yourself enough credit, because when you started writing the script, didn’t you know that there would be a balance between comic and somewhat serious moments? BG: The challenge when I wrote this was keeping things small by not adding comedic elements that didn’t seem realistic just to get a laugh. It would have been easy to add slapstick and shock elements, but I didn’t do it. That was different for me.
Q: That‘s like when Woody Allen made “Annie Hall” and forced himself to cut funny stuff that didn’t fit.
BG: I didn’t know that, but, yeah, I had to fight the impulse to deliver punch lines all the time and make the humor too broad. The goal was to make a movie with an outrageous subject but what she did, her secret, is kind of a McGuffin that is there all the time causing discomfort but is rarely a source for comedy.
Q: Right, the discomfort everyone feels is where much of the humor and the darker stuff comes from instead. When you first thought about writing the script did you think you wanted to make a movie in which a girl has a secret of sucking off a dog or did you first come up with the premise of a girl with an extreme sexual secret and then came up with the worst secret imaginable?
BG: It was more like the second case. I think I decided on the dog idea for the simple reason it wouldn’t involve another human being. Because then there would have been this other character that I would have had to deal with, if you know what I mean. Sooner or later he or she would have to show up. I just wanted the secret to be about Amy, no one else.
Q: Amy has a line at the beginning of the film that I assume you thought was needed by viewers: “I’m not into bestiality in any way.”
BG: Right. I wanted it clear that she’s not into dogs despite her one act. What she did was just a lapse of judgment. It’s like when you know something is hot and touch it anyway. You get burned and then you wonder, “Why did I do that?”
You don’t know the reason. She is alone and maybe she’s lonely, but I believe it’s still just curiosity that causes her to suck the dog. I certainly do things when I’m all alone that I wouldn’t do or even discuss in front of other people. Q: She’s a school teacher of young kids. Is that your way of showing that despite being someone who once committed an act society would frown upon, she’s an ideal teacher? BG: No, I wasn’t making any statement. I made her a teacher because I wanted her to be altruistic.
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