Patton Oswalt Reveals a Hidden Message in This Stanley Kubrick Classic

3 hours ago 3

Published Feb 14, 2026, 7:01 AM EST

Summary

Collider's Steve Weintraub talks with Patton Oswalt for GOAT.
Oswalt discusses trying out baby goat yoga with his castmates and how Sony Pictures Animation keeps bringing their A-game every time.
He also discusses influential filmmakers, his favorite films, and shares a hidden message in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sony Pictures Animation’s upcoming action-comedy GOAT not only brings together an all-star vocal cast of talent, led by Stranger Things' Caleb McLaughlin, but it also assembled a massively talented crew of artists to yet again prove that animation is an underestimated medium. In tandem with Sony, the animators behind Netflix's most-watched original feature, KPop Demon Hunters, and the Oscar-nominated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have made another slam dunk, and Patton Oswalt, who plays Coach Dennis in the movie, may have zeroed in on why they just can't stop winning.

From director Tyree Dillihay (Bob's Burgers) comes an all-new original animated feature about Will Harris, voiced by McLaughlin. Will is a little goat with big dreams, whose dreams come true when he’s selected to join the roarball pros with his childhood heroes. Unfortunately, this high-intensity sport is dominated by the fiercest animals, who aren’t exactly thrilled to welcome a goat to their team. But Will is determined to prove that even little guys can score big! GOAT also features the talents of Gabrielle Union, Aaron Pierre, Jennifer Hudson, Nick Kroll, Nicola Coughlan, and David Harbour, as well as producer and NBA star Stephen Curry.

In this interview with Collider's Steve Weintraub, Oswalt, who plays Coach Dennis in the movie, discusses his favorite films from directors Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, and Stanley Kubrick, why goat yoga with baby goats wasn’t the cute exercise he expected it to be, and how Sony Pictures Animation is changing the game for animated features.

COLLIDER: We've talked a number of times, and I'm a really big fan. I've been asking this of a whole bunch of people recently, and I know you're a cinephile, which is why I can ask you this. Do you have a favorite Christopher Nolan movie?

OSWALT: My knee-jerk instinct is to say The Dark Knight, but I recently just rewatched Following, his first movie, which is barely over an hour long. From the get-go, when that guy had no money, he knew exactly how to make a movie. So, it's one of those things where sometimes you see a filmmaker's first film, like Blood Simple from the Coen Brothers, and you’re like, “Oh, out of the gate, they were amazing.”

100%. The next one is, do you have a favorite Spielberg?

OSWALT: I just rewatched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and I had forgotten — because when I was growing up, it's like, “Oh, it's this alien thing. It's all these spaceships and great special effects” — the stuff in the middle with Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr and their family coming apart and the government mapping out this… It's a huge summer studio film with some of the darkest, most John-Cassavetes-like and Don DeLillo darkness. That is an extraordinary film that I don't think gets the credit it deserves, because it's so entertaining. Sometimes, when films are so entertaining, people are like, “Well, this can't be a great film. It's too entertaining.” No, a great film can be truly entertaining, and Close Encounters is perfect.

Last one. I'm a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick. Do you have a favorite Kubrick?

OSWALT: Oh, gosh.

This always breaks people.

OSWALT: He's made great films, but I just don't see anything beating Strangelove in terms of classicness, rewatchability, timelessness. That movie is in its own category.

Every one of his films, to me, you could make the argument, from Barry Lyndon to 2001. Especially with 2001, and how ahead he was with AI. It's crazy.

OSWALT: You know that hidden thing in 2001, the HAL 9000 computer? If you go to the next letter of the alphabet in the name HAL, "H" is "I", A is "B", L is "M." So, there's a little hidden message in that.

I actually didn't know that.

OSWALT: Oh, you didn't know that?

No, and I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable Kubrick fan.

Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge holding a glass of milk in 'A Clockwork Orange'

"It is so much more alive."

One of the things that I found funny when researching to talk to everyone from this film was that you guys did this cast thing with goats, where you did yoga with goats. What is it like when the studio says to you, “We're going to do a promo thing right now, and you're going to be with some goats?”

OSWALT: Well, I was excited because they were baby goats, and I thought they would be really cute. I didn't realize how aggressive even baby goats are. They will bite each other. If you're the one holding the little food pellets, and you're feeding a goat, the other ones have no problems coming in and physically butting the other dude out of the way to get the food pellets. And also, the way they defecate was very interesting because it basically is dry pellets coming out. It looks like a pellet dispenser.

You've done a lot of promotion over the years. Was that the weirdest or coolest thing you've done, or what's the weirdest promo thing you've done, whether it be animals or something else?

OSWALT: That was one of the weirder, coolest things I've ever done. I mean, just doing yoga by itself would have been weird, but doing it with goats, that was pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm going to put that up there. That's up there with the weirdest-slash-coolest ones.

Will looks determined as he holds a basketball during a game.

Sony Pictures Animation has really impressed me over the last few years with their animation, in terms of Spider-Verse, KPop, and now this. They have a very unique style. Can you talk about your reaction to seeing the finished film, and what Sony's doing with their animation?

OSWALT: What Sony is doing with their animation, which is amazing, and it's been amazing since Into the Spider-Verse, is that they are questioning the whole bog-standard computer animation and how it's supposed to look. They're bringing back, "Can't there be hand-drawn elements? Can't there be weird clashing styles where it's CGI colliding into, like, street art, colliding into 2D comic book art?" It is so much more alive because they're embracing not just computer animation, they're embracing the whole history of animation, every little side alley that they do. And especially in terms of editing and cutting and composition, it reminds me of early Scorsese stuff, the way he would cut Woodstock with all the different frames. You are very much pulled into the action of their stuff, and even more so with GOAT, because you are traveling on the roarball courts. It's almost like you're experiencing the same dangers the players are experiencing, and it's amazing to watch.

GOAT is in theaters now.