He set a guest chair on fire on The Tonight Show, becoming the first guest in the show's history to face criminal charges. Yet that same chaotic figure is a Sundance-acclaimed director, the beloved voice of children's cartoon characters, and a man sober since age 19. The spectacle and the reality seem entirely divorced.

This episode goes inside the misunderstood world of Robert "Bobcat" Goldthwait, who pulled off one of Hollywood's stealthiest reinventions. He operates like a human Trojan horse — luring you in with a raspy voice or a chaotic stunt, then revealing a deeply sensitive, dark, and thoughtful artistic mind.

• How a Syracuse kid told by nuns he wasn't funny built the loud "Bobcat" persona as a bulletproof shield — a name that began as a sincere tribute to mentor Barry Crimmins
• His friendship with Kurt Cobain, open ...