Sometimes the stage material is allowed to stand on its own, in a committed if fragmented and arbitrary-seeming way. Some of it is knock-down brilliant, particularly Gould's routine about the viciousness of chimpanzees, but a lot of the rest might make you wonder if this was really the best material they had. Other times the standup bits segue into autobiographical stories from one comic or the other about their obsessions, upbringing, and hangups. Goldthwait and Gould come from similar backgrounds—they're both middle-aged American white men from Roman Catholic households in upstate New York that could be generously described as dysfunctional—which, by their own admission, is a big part of the reason they click. 

Biography-wise, Gould appears to have gotten the worst of it. There are harrowing stories of his mother, a homegrown religious fanatic, praying to the televised image of evangelist Oral Roberts, and the scenario that Gould acts out to demonstrate his ingrained terror and shame about masturbation is one of those moments that could break up a gathering of friends who thought they were sharing warmhearted childhood anecdotes until one of them told a tale that made everyone else's blood run cold then capped it with a grin and an aw-shucks laugh. That being said, Goldthwait's family situation wasn't typical, either. His father was an amateur entertainer who sounds like an anonymous 1970s suburban answer to Goldthwait hero Andy Kaufman. The story about his dad and a jack-in-the-box yields a punchline image worthy of the Joker.

The film is directed by Goldthwait, a 1980s shock comic, or anti-comic, who eventually pulled back from standup to become a writer/director. He infuses the material with the mordant humanist sensibility that he brought to movies like "World's Greatest Dad." He talks a little bit about the decision to switch careers here, and it's impossible not to respect his choice when you hear him talk about how he really doesn't care whether other people consider him a success any more, as long as he gets to make art on his own terms. (He likes to brag that his films make "hundreds of dollars.")

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