Bobcat Goldthwait

Bobcat Goldthwait is perhaps best known as the screechy-voiced actor from the Police Academy series—or he was, anyway. But Goldthwait has undergone a kind of professional renaissance in the past few years, dropping his trademark character in favor of his own witty, surprisingly soft-spoken persona and doing more work behind the camera. Most recently he has written and directed two excellent films, Sleeping Dogs Lie and World's Greatest Dad, thoughtful and nuanced comedies about bestiality and autoerotic asphyxiation, respectively. He's coming to Acme this week to help the club celebrate its 20th anniversary, and for the first time in a long time, he says, he's looking forward to doing standup. "I do standup now—I jokingly refer to it as the alimony tour—I do it to pay the bills so I can keep making small indie movies. But the new thing for me is I'm really enjoying it because I find myself not doing the persona that folks know me for, and just going at it with my own voice. There's always the pressure onstage to deliver, so I'd have people who were coming out to see me and they had these preconceived notions of what I was going to do and who I was. If that's material people don't agree with or that's just more personal, well I was just going to do it." But, he adds with a chuckle, "There's still probably some bullshit in it." 18+.
Nov. 12-14, 8 p.m.; Nov. 13-14, 10:30 p.m., 2009