porting a wild comic persona well-suited to his professional name, Bobcat Goldthwait's career as a punk rocker quickly fizzled, but he instead went on to make a name for himself on the comedy club circuit in the early 1980s. With his bizarre ranting and seemingly half-strangulated voice, he was very much a "love him or hate him" item, but his appeal was deemed sufficient for Hollywood to come calling. Starting off with supporting roles in three "Police Academy" sequels, Goldthwait established something of a name for himself, but when his star vehicle "Hot to Trot" (1988) bombed, his film career took a hit. He kept busy nonetheless with various comedy tours and assorted antics that sometimes landed him in trouble with the law. He also began to direct, first with the cult comedy "Shakes the Clown" (1991) and then a lengthy stint directing episodes of "The Man Show" (Comedy Central, 1999-2004) and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" (ABC, 2003- ). He also returned to directing features and with "Sleeping Dogs Lie" (2006), "World's Greatest Dad" (2009) and "God Bless America" (2011), firmly established himself as a filmmaker willing to take on very unusual and potentially offensive subject matter, but with surprising restraint, delivering more than just uneasy laughs from dark themes and situations .