Jon Benjamin Heads To Black Cat, But Not In A Van

Jon Benjamin Heads To Black Cat

WASHINGTON -- Now that the show is over, the van is going on the road. Star of "Jon Benjamin Has A Van," Jon Benjamin, along with Leo Allen and Nathan Fielder, are headed to the Black Cat Wednesday night.

The voice of Archer from "Archer" and Bob from "Bob's Burgers" and a bunch of other excellent Comedy Central and Adult Swim shows will be presenting his style of anti-comedy. A mixture of filmed pieces, some sketch and mostly stand up, there's a reason the show is being staged at a rock venue and not a comedy club.

The Huffington Post caught up with Benjamin right before he boarded a plane from Boston to D.C.

The Huffington Post: Tonight will be the second night of the tour.

Jon Benjamin: I'm already really exhausted.

HuffPost: Why are you doing the tour?

Benjamin: Sounds like you're trying to talk me out of it. It sounds like something my father would say, "Is this helping you? Is this making you happy?" I do comedy so it makes sense. I wanted to show it to people.

HuffPost: Why music venues over traditional comedy spaces?

Benjamin: I haven't toured that much and to be less snarky in my answer, we planned to tour to support the Comedy Central show which has since been cancelled. It was the initial impetus for the tour. The booker books people like Eugene Mirman so it's a more natural way to do it.

HuffPost: When did you find out the show was canceled?

Benjamin: Maybe three or four weeks ago. We started conceiving the tour in the late fall so we figured it would start when production started.

HuffPost: I've read that "Jon Benjamin Has A Van" had a pretty difficult schedule.

Benjamin: We were a low budget show. We had a very fast schedule to do it. It was very concentrated. We had to write very quickly. There was just two of us (Benjamin and Leo Allen) so that was hard. We didn't have a lot of time to fool around. We had a couple months to write all ten, started shooting the street pieces where I fuck around with people almost right away. The bulk of the show was shot in LA which was pretty inconvenient.

HuffPost: Is there anything that you wanted to shoot but didn't?

Benjamin: Season 2.

We wrote season 2 and I was really happy with it. We wrote them more tightly, more writerly, they were more confident.

HuffPost: Are you going to try to do another television show right away?

Benjamin: I'm trying to do another TV show. It'll be less like a sketch show and more parody.

HuffPost: Any chance the Fuggedabuddies (a comedic duo Benjamin performs with Jon Glaser) making a return?

Benjamin: We just talked about putting a special together. Not just the Fuggedabuddies but a lot of the other stuff that hasn't been seen by most people. Sort of a spectacular. A lot of stuff from Invite them Up, one off stuff that only 75 people have seen.

HuffPost: Do you approach your stand up different than your character work?

Benjamin: I don't really write as a stand up. I never did. I sometimes collect ideas and I'll keep them, write them down, but I've never operated like a real stand up where I have to write jokes. It's a pretty loose version of stand up. It's very discursive, I'll tell some personal stories, it's pretty lackluster.

HuffPost: Do cartoon nerds get upset that your voice over work is all the same voice

Benjamin: I'm always disappointed in myself for not being able to do different voices. I really enjoy it when people come up to me and say, "It's amazing how different "Bob's Burgers" is from "Archer"! It's crazy." I'm always like, "It isn't. But thank you. For lying."

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot