Tag Archives: Brian Posehn

The Circle of Laughs: Comedian and Actor Brian Posehn Returns to His Sacramento Stand-Up Roots

Six months before Brian Posehn turned 21, he rang Laughs Unlimited in Old Sacramento to ask how he should go about getting into stand-up comedy. They told him he needed to be of drinking age, so he spent the next half-year preparing a five-minute set. They suggested the open mic at the old Metro Bar and Grill next to The Crest.

“The week I turned 21 I went on stage my first time and completely destroyed,” Posehn told Submerge during a recent phone interview. “And then I went on the week after at the same open mic and tried all new material. I ate it so hard, but still loved it.”

Those Sacramento open mics laid the first bricks on a path toward a sprawling career that led Posehn at first to San Francisco and later to Los Angeles. If you don’t know him by name, it’s likely you recognize him, whether it be from The Sarah Silverman Program, Rob Zombie’s horror movies or one of the dozens of sitcoms and shows he’s guested on.

Posehn was raised in Sonoma, but moved to Sacramento when he was 17 to attend American River College and live with his grandpa. The initial plan was to become a rock journalist or a DJ, but his foray into stand-up comedy rerouted that course.

He’s written and acted for dozens of shows and movies, recorded comedy albums, written comic books, hosts a podcast and is currently authoring a book about his life and career.

On Jan. 5–7, he’ll circle back to Sacramento for a string of shows at the Punch Line.

“I usually wind up seeing people I haven’t seen in 20 years,” he said of the homecoming. “There are people I worked with at the Tower Records up in Citrus Heights that still live up here and I’ll hang out with some of those dudes.”

Posehn has also stacked the shows with some of his favorite locals, including Ngaio Bealum, a local comedian who writes a popular weed column for Sacramento News & Review and is active in the marijuana-legalization movement.

When did the stand-up comedy segue into an acting career? 
In ‘94 I moved to L.A. with the intention of getting writing jobs. I didn’t move there to act at all. I wanted to write sketch comedy and late night stuff. It must be so frustrating to anybody who wants to act, but I just happened to do a set in L.A. and a casting woman saw me and brought me in the very next day to audition for my first sitcom and I got it. It was a show called Empty Nest that’s gone forever. That was the first thing I did and it was such a fluke.

When you got on board with Mr. Show, could you tell it was something special? 
Absolutely. I knew David Cross first through San Francisco because he was coming up to the city a lot. Through David I met Bob [Odenkirk]. They were just writing these hilarious sketches and they’d go and perform them at night. By the time it turned into Mr. Show, I was such a fan of those two guys. The first four episodes of season one I acted in, but they wrote all of those by themselves. By the time I was hired as a writer I already knew it was going to be the ‘90s generation’s SCTV.

You were in episodes of Friends and Seinfeld. Which show is better? 
Which one did I have a better experience with or which one makes me laugh? Well, actually, it would be the same! I had a better experience with Seinfeld—and the show is better. That said, I was happy to be a part of Friends and it did help at the time and got me other work. Just my sensibility was more Seinfeld made me laugh and still does. 

When did the love for metal music start?
KISS was the first band that I obsessed over. I wasn’t just a casual fan of anything. Whether it’s movies or music or comic books. I would just get into something and completely obsess over it. In the late ‘70s I got into Van Halen and Black Sabbath and AC/DC and all of that stuff. I just sought out heavier and heavier music, and then in the early ‘80s, by the time I was in high school, bands like Iron Maiden and thrash metal was starting. I went from Iron Maiden to Metallica and here I am as a 50-year-old man still into the same music I’ve liked since I was a kid. 

What album did you latch onto early that’s still just as strong?
Oh, there are a lot of them. If I had to pick, it’d probably Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast and then Metallica’s Ride the Lighting. Those are the ones I loved the most. 

How did the Rob Zombie connection happen? 
I’ve known Chris Hardwick since he was like 19 I think. I met him at UCLA for a comic book thing. He was in the first Rob Zombie movie House of a Thousand Corpses and I was a little jealous so I said to Chris, “How the fuck?” He said, “Oh I know Rob. He’s a cool guy. You should meet him.” I was like, “All right! Let’s make that happen.” I went to a party at Rob’s and talked to him and he said, “You’re really funny on Everybody Loves Raymond,” and I’m like, “Rob Zombie watches Everybody Loves Raymond?” That was kind of funny to me. Something about picturing him in those boots just sitting around watching Raymond. 

Through that we became friends and then he wrote me into The Devil’s Rejects. He asked, “Do you want to be a roadie and you get shot in the face?” I’m like, “Yeah man. Whatever you want me to do.” I was there for five days. I acted two days, got shot the third day and played dead the next two. It was a fun experience. 10 years later it’s still one of those things I’m most recognized for, among that group of horror fans and metalheads. 

You performed at the Insane Clown Posse’s Gathering of the Juggalos. How was that?
I was working at Metalocalypse with a good buddy of mine, Brendon Small, the head writer of the show, and I got a text from my agent asking if I’ve ever heard of the Gathering of the Juggalos. I’m like, “Yeah, yeah I have.” He told me what the money was and I walked back into the writing room and said to Brendon, “Dude, I just got asked to do the Gathering of the Juggalos and the money is this.” He goes, “You gotta do it!” I probably would have done it for one-third of the money just for the experience. 
It was crazy. Performing at four in the morning in a field out in the middle of nowhere to people wearing face paint and baggy clothing. There was blood on the stage because they had backyard wrestling before. We were being taken around in a golf cart by a clown. I think his name was Fartso the Clown or Yukko the Clown. You’d think it would have stuck with me.

Why do you keep your Twitter feed private? 
I don’t go on there to share jokes with people because I got kind of burnt out on the whole thing. Sorry to get negative, but that’s just how I feel at this point. I feel like it’s important to advertise myself, but other than that I kind of hate what a time suck it is.

You’re a comedian, actor, writer, podcaster and more, while also closely associated with metal, nerd culture and horror movies. What drives you to so many pursuits and passions? 
I’m super lucky that I’ve been able to carve a career out of doing all of these things that I love. There’s not one thing I do that I don’t want to do. I have fun at all of it—voiceovers, writing coming books, being in horror films, telling fart jokes into a microphone. Not that I just tell fart jokes, though. I never went “Hey I’m going to move to L.A. and do 20 different things.” I just moved here to make a living and that’s the way I still look at it.

Catch Brian Posehn live Jan. 5–7, 2017, at Punch Line Sacramento, located at 2100 Arden Way. Shows start at 8 p.m. all three nights, with additional 10 p.m. shows on Friday and Saturday. For tickets and more info check out Punchlinesac.com

**This interview first appeared in print in issue #229 (December 19, 2016 – January 2, 2017).

Jokes & Tokes with Doug Benson

Comedian Doug Benson Returns to Punch Line

Humoredian Doug Benson has it made. While you and I sit at home angered by celebrity antics, cursing the television, while we watch movies and comment to our friends on merits, while we get stoned and laugh at silly nonsense, Benson has signed some deal in blood to get paid for these slacker pastimes.

Benson is currently on tour, so I called him at a Hampton Inn in St. Louis (proving he is not too famous for our little publication). He had just finished an appearance on the Great Day St. Louis morning show and returned to his room to escape the “hella hot” Midwest forecast. Upon hearing a familiar, often abused, Northern California slang term, I asked Doug if he was from our territory. “I just hear a bunch of words and repeat them,” he replied. “It’s not habit.”

This August, Benson will be at Sacramento’s Punch Line, a venue he has played before. He was particularly intrigued with the strip mall location of the Punch Line, which probably looks a little different now. “It’s the strangest comedy club positioning I’ve ever seen,” he said. “There [was] like a foam store, a TJ Maxx and a mattress store. It’s like a one-stop shopping center for a pimp. He’d be able to get all his shit there.”

Those still unfamiliar with Doug Benson might need to take a morning or two off from wake-and-baking. In 2006, High Times named Benson Stoner of the Year, aka your hero. His film, Super High Me, took the premise of Super Size Me and exchanged it with pot. He is the co-creator/writer/star of The Marijuana-logues, which is self-explanatory. He once saw a vagina smoking a joint.

Along with his pot-related accolades, he is a talking head on Best Week Ever, finished top six on Last Comic Standing, has a podcast called I Love Movies, a comedy album called Professional Humoredian—and he said I was a good interviewer.

Most comedians, or people for that matter, are forced to keep their personal habits ambiguous—possibly telling pot jokes or laughing at pot jokes, but not too frequently so they don’t arouse suspicion. Benson has managed to become a renowned toker, yet makes appearances on local morning shows without network hesitation. “They keep it clean and family-style, but it’s also live,” Benson said. “Sometimes when I’m talking, I can see in the eyes of the host that I’m being too risqué for morning television.”

He admits he does not mind the interviews that dodge his pot humor, since he has plenty to talk about beyond marijuana. Yet, his core fans remain a faded following. On Twitter the night prior to our interview, he thanked a St. Louis kid, whose name he could not remember, for smoking him up in his car. I asked Benson if it was bothersome to be loved by a group of people so eager to share their budding wealth. “It’s an exciting thing to have in my life if I am just wandering around and someone offers to smoke me up,” he said. “At shows I get so many offers I can’t say yes to everybody. People get bummed out, which is kind of a drag. I’d be happy to smoke with everybody; unfortunately I’ve got things to do. I certainly didn’t start telling jokes about pot to get free pot, but it’s been an amazing side benefit.”

Benson began his stand-up career on a dare from a friend, while working as a stand-in and extra in Los Angeles. That was 23 years ago. Benson made new friends through comedy by becoming part of the Comedians of Comedy, a group he has toured with extensively. In Super High Me, several of his comedian friends smoke weed on camera, specifically Sarah Silverman and Brian Posehn. Benson has admitted that he did not smoke weed until age 27 when he started working with Bay Area comedians who toke after every show. Now, Benson can’t be seen in public without accusations of being blunted beyond belief; even followers on Twitter that day accused him of being high on a morning show, to which he attested, “No I just woke up and did a show. I’m not one to set the alarm for 15 minutes earlier so I can wake and bake before a show.”

“I do have naturally squinty eyes,” he said. “And I do smoke a lot of pot. So I don’t blame them for thinking I’m high. I can make jokes even when I’m not high. I’m that good at it.”

Truly Benson is capable of entertaining beyond cannabis conversations. His I Love Movies podcast, which he records at Los Angeles’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, has a simple premise. Benson and his comedian friends record their rants on movies in front of a studio audience and play the Leonard Maltin game or the Name That Tune game show’s Bid-A-Note round, but with movies.

A fan of the summer blockbuster push, he said he is disappointed with this season thus far. “Terminator was disappointing, Wolverine was disappointing,” he said. “I watched five minutes of Angels and Demons, then got up and left. I was like ‘I can see Star Trek again.'”

Still he found Star Trek was not a perfect movie beyond criticism. In fact, Benson raises an interesting point regarding the story. “I didn’t have the excitement over it that I hoped to have,” Benson said. “It did a good job reinventing all the characters.” Benson immediately broke into a rant with possible spoiler alerts, “Why do they always have to bring time travel into it? Now that they’ve introduced time travel and old Spock tells young Kirk what to do, why can’t old Spock just show up all the time when there’s a problem.” He went on to compare it to Superman spinning the world backwards to turn back time.

Benson included The Hangover in the short list of summer movies he’s enjoyed so far. Show stealer Zach Galifianakis is a member of the Comedians of Comedy and makes an appearance in Super High Me as Benson’s friend. “Well, I take a lot of credit for breaking Zach’s movie career with his appearance in Super High Me,” he said. “Things have been going great for him ever since. I look forward to riding his coattails.” Benson expressed his own interest in pushing into feature films, but admitted he is not prepared to do the full frontal nudity that Galifianakis bared. “I’m a little shy when it comes to public nudity,” he said.

Benson’s current tour is in preparation for his new comedy album, Unbalanced Load, on Comedy Central Records. He is performing an “evolving set” that includes new material. “Certainly anyone who saw me when I was last in Sacramento can expect a lot of new material,” he said. “I will be doing a lot of material from the record that week.” Benson said he usually reserves some time near the end of his set for requests from the audience outside of “more jokes about pot.” He just encourages enthusiasts to shout their favorite bits without tampering with the joke. “The best way to ask for a joke during the show is to not yell out the punch line of the joke,” he said. “Where do I go from there?”

Doug Benson Interview