anderswolleck

Its really awesome to pick up the phone and hear the famous voice of H. Jon Benjamin talking to me. For many years I never even knew what he looked like. He was just the disembodied voice that was hysterical on such cartoon shows as Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and the cult hit The Dick & Paula Celebrity Special.

But sadly enough much of Benjamins work has not been available on DVDuntil now. Shout Factory has just released the entire first season of the Adult Swim favorite, Home Movies, on DVD. While the show also had hysterical voice work by its creator Brendon Small and Jonathan Katz, Benjamins Coach McGuirk was the standout.

Buy the first season of Home Movies on DVD here

Daniel Robert Epstein: Hey Jon, hows it going?

H. Jon Benjamin: Its going well. Where are you?

DRE: Im in Manhattan, just like you!

HJB: Can I see you from my window?

DRE: Where are you?

HJB: The West Village.

DRE: No Im not that cool.

HJB: Youll get here.

DRE: Im on the Upper West Side.

HJB: Thats very not cool.

DRE: It used to be dangerous where I am, 98th and Broadway.

HJB: Yeah about 15 years ago. You can make it dangerous again. You can go wilding today. Attack a jogger.

DRE: Bring back Dinkins!

I watched your short film thats on the Home Movies DVD set, Baby Pranks. I thought it was really funny.

HJB: Youve got to do something when you have an actual baby.

DRE: Was that baby yours?

HJB: Yeah the first baby was mine. The second baby belonged to a friend of mine. Its hard to find people who are willing to let me prank their baby. Thats probably not true but for free it is. If I was giving away $50 a pop I would have a line of mothers.

DRE: Did that film play anywhere?

HJB: That was for a show we do at the Marquee Theatre called Midnight Pajama Jam. Me and this guy Bill Buckendorf make a video once a month for that.

DRE: Are you ever going to do a DVD collection of those short films?

HJB: Bill is putting them together right now. Weve done about three years worth of shows so we have about 23 of them and about 15 of them are good.

DRE: In your bio on the IMDB it says that you turn down more work than any other actor.

HJB: I dont know about that. Ive turned down some sitcom work but I dont know if its important enough to note.

DRE: I know that voice work could be quite lucrative.

HJB: Well I turned down Shrek 1 and 2 but I am going to do Shrek 3.

DRE: Like when Dan Castellaneta took over for Robin Williams to do Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar.

HJB: I turned down doing the entire cast of The Simpsons.

DRE: How was doing the commentary for Home Movies?

HJB: Shout Factory was great. The commentary was grueling and was the most work Ive ever done. We did commentary for ten episodes in a row. They just give you food, drink, wine and cocaine and thats it. Then we did video interviews which came out pretty good. For a DVD that had very little money to put the DVDs together, it went well. I think I depleted the budget by insisting that they fly me to LA.

DRE: What do you think of the first season of Home Movies?

HJB: I was literally watching some of the episodes for the first time. So that was a lot of what the commentary was about Oh this wasnt that great.

DRE: Did you purposely not watch them?

HJB: They sent me tapes but I had done Dr. Katz and we did so many episodes so there were so many tapes that I just stopped watching them. I didnt seek out Home Movies on TV. I ended watching some of the later seasons. I thought the first season was cool but I didnt think they were great. They got a lot better as the show went on. I remember making the first episodes and it was a free for all because there was no script.

DRE: I read that Dr. Katz was a bit more scripted than Home Movies.

HJB: Yes but the luxury on Dr. Katz is that we had these huge chunks of comedians doing their standup so you didnt have to fill the whole episode. Starting from creating an entire 25 minutes of a TV show like we did with Home Movies was a lot harder. We couldnt just cut to Patton Oswalt being really funny.

DRE: How long would you guys sit there coming up with the episode?

HJB: Its hard to remember. It was like four or five hours worth of stuff.

DRE: Thats a lot of improvising.

HJB: It was and then there would be a lot of second guessing. When I look back, I like that they did that a lot.

DRE: After Dr. Katz ended and The Dick & Paula Celebrity Special didnt take off. Did you have any trepidation about doing another Squigglevision show?

HJB: Oh no, I was totally into doing it. I dont do much else. It is always fun to do shows like that because you can do what you want and there isnt much supervision involved.

DRE: Did things change at all once it moved to the Cartoon Network from UPN?

HJB: It got a lot easier because Cartoon Network wanted the show while UPN was fairly lackluster about it. I think UPN wanted a companion to Dilbert which was supposed to be their big breakout cartoon so I think UPN could have cared less about Home Movies.

DRE: Boy did Dilbert suck.

Did you ever have to deal with any of the show politics?

HJB: No I never dealt with that. I only dealt with the people on the show.

DRE: How was it working with Jonathan Katz again?

HJB: That was pure magic with a capital M A G I C. It was supposed to be this big event, the moment that Jon Benjamin and Jonathan Katz get back together again. But unfortunately in reality it is not a big moment so it was very anticlimactic.

DRE: How was it working with Emo Philips then?

HJB: I met him but we barely worked together. Im kind of a fan of his.

DRE: Its hard to be a fan of someone who doesnt work that often.

HJB: Yeah it was definitely weird when he walked in. I was a fan of his in college. Hes that guy I used to listen to in my dorm room and jerk off to.

DRE: [laughs] Its hard to roll with that.

HJB: I like to go against the grain. Im not a typical just jerk off to Jenna Jameson kind of guy. I like obscure slow talking comedians.

DRE: I know you and Jonathan once did a live Dr. Katz years ago in 1997. How was that?

HJB: It was alright. It was definitely a little strange because it was obviously more suited to the comedians. It was fun to do in the sense that it was really hokey but we didnt want to reach that point where we were doing it On Ice!

DRE: Would it work for Home Movies?

HJB: No, its the kind of things where we had a lot of fans of Dr. Katz so the response was good. But beyond that I dont know if its worthwhile. The idea of me dressing up in Coach McGuirks outfit with a whistle is horrifying.

DRE: Did you contribute anything to the design of Coach McGuirk?

HJB: No, it was completely the artist which was the same for Dr. Katz. They made the audio track first then they give it to the animators. When I saw my character I was thrilled because they made him really fat and dumpy while I am this tiny balding Jewish guy.

DRE: Im one of the few people on earth who has seen Martin & Orloff. You have some really funny stuff in it. Its hard to forget a character that keeps on shitting in the sink.

HJB: That was a good through line. You cant lose with that.

DRE: How was doing that movie?

HJB: Ive done a lot of stuff with [Upright Citizens Brigade founding member] Matt Walsh because hes been at Midnight Pajama Jam. Doing Martin & Orloff was good because those guys are great. There almost wasnt enough improvising.

DRE: How did you first meet the Upright Citizens Brigade?

HJB: I think it was when they came to New York. I dont actually remember how I met Walsh. It might have been through my friend Jon Glaser who works with them a lot and was a writer for Conan OBrien. I was friendly with Jon through working with him in Los Angeles.

DRE: I speak to a lot of people that are better known in the television industry than they are

HJB: In real life.

DRE: You dont have a lot of Created by credits. Have you done a lot of work that we havent seen, like pilots?

HJB: Ive written a bunch of pilots. The only pilot Ive written that got made was for Comedy Central called The Half Hour Network with someone else in 1997. It was a sketch show that was like a whole network in a half hour.

DRE: Do you do ghost writing on scripts or TV?

HJB: I write occasionally for TV. I wrote a pilot last year for a sitcom with Sam Seder. Maybe every other year I will get a deal to write a sitcom and thankfully they have never happened.

DRE: Do you not have any desire to do sitcoms?

HJB: I have no desire to be in one or produce one but I dont mind writing them because it takes about a day.

DRE: Are you that good at it now?

HJB: Im that bad at it actually. I dont mean to sound crass but it usually takes about a day then it comes back and you have to rewrite it which takes about another day. Its a good job.

DRE: I did see that you worked on The Nick & Jessica Variety Hour. I thought parts of it were really funny.

HJB: Really? Which parts?

DRE: There was sketch you were in where you were a guy in front of mirror getting shaved.

HJB: That was Nick LeShave. Nick Lachey would come and shave you.

DRE: Right and there was a cowboy bit that was funny. I like old variety shows.

HJB: That was what they were going for but they did it all wrong because there was no fun involved. They made us watch those old time variety shows. Its funny how bad they were. Sonny and Cher in particular seemed to know how bad it was which was part of what made it funny. They would always be winking at this shitty material they were doing. Nick and Jessica are just this celebrity machine so they were hitting their marks and doing great work. Its so opposite of the spirit of those variety shows.

DRE: I dont know if they have the talent to pull off letting the audience know they are in on the joke.

HJB: All the winks were planned. When you watch Sonny and Cher, Sonny is drunk and they obviously never rehearsed. They would just walk in and do it.

DRE: How did you get that job though?

HJB: It basically comes from this one guy whose name is Satan.

DRE: Is that Joel Gallen?

HJB: Yeah aka Satan. Hes actually a nice guy but he does all these shows. I met him when I worked on The Jenny McCarthy Show. To be honest working with him is pretty good because he doesnt force me to write stuff I dont want to write. Not a lot of it gets on but hes never been horrible to me. One time I was going out to LA to write something else with a friend which I wasnt getting paid to do. I just called Joel and asked him if I could come work on the thing he was doing without even knowing what it was. He was like Yeah, howd you know about it? He ended up paying for my flight. Anyone who is writer can just call him.

DRE: I read that you and David Cross are working on something together.

HJB: Yeah were working on a cartoon for Comedy Central. We just started writing it a couple of weeks ago.

DRE: Is it a Squiggle cartoon?

HJB: No it isnt. Its called Freak Show. Its about a traveling freak show that works for the president.

DRE: Will you be doing voices for it?

HJB: Im pretty sure Im locked in to do a voice for a premature baby and Cross is locked in to do the voice of a log cabin Republican.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck