photos by Sarah-Maria Vischer-Masino

Where did you grow up? What did your parents do for a living?
I grew up in Worcester, MA, son of Howard and Shirley Benjamin — good, hearty, i.e. sickly Jewish stock. My mom was a ballet teacher and my dad owned an electrical supply shop (Benjamin Electric). It was a great mix of influences. Many days hanging out with electricians, who I remember all seemed to fit the stereotypical construction worker mold of yelling at women to sit on their faces and other days hanging out with my mom at rehearsals with ballet dancers, then going to the doctors for a hepatitis b shot (hep b — that’s my cute nickname for hepatitis b). It was the gay disease of the seventies/early 80’s. I remember a lot of hep b shots. It might sound totally trite, but what I do now is really just play characters based on the people who surrounded my childhood, like, I’m pretty good at characterizing electricians and dancers or misogynists who can move well.

Did you always know you would go into show biz? Were you a drama kid in high school and that sort of thing? How did you first get into performing as a comic?
I was never interested in doing theater or comedy growing up. I was sort of funny, but never outwardly funny. You had to really know me to get something funny out of me. My real talent was lying. I loved to lie, not to be funny, but more to try and be interesting or to entertain myself. I must have been left alone a lot as a child. In college, I found people who would also like to lie and that was how we had fun. We would get drunk, go to parties and lie to people just to fuck with them. I remember going to a party with my friend Sam Seder and we would pick who we were going to be before we went and I chose dental student and he chose something like a guy who worked designing missile systems for huge defense contractor. And we would stick with those characters for the whole party. The first person I got into a conversation with was this girl who asked me what I did and I said I went to Tufts dental and she said, “Oh my god, I go to NYU dental.” So, we talked about some new dental instrument for like five minutes until I finally had to tell her I was lying because I knew nothing about dentistry. And she was like, “Why did you lie?” I don’t know. My friend and I lie to people for fun. But, a few years later, Sam started doing stand-up in Boston while I was going to grad school in Chicago. After I finished my year, I moved to Boston and really got into comedy through him. But I was really reluctant to perform and he was fearless, so finally we started doing this thing where we would be introduced as this comedy duo called Sam and we would come up and he would tell jokes and I would sit behind him and read the paper. And then we would just leave, never explaining my presence. That turned into a more developed act, then we met David Cross and joined his group. Now, twelve years later, I just sit back, recount the old stories, and count my millions.

So how did you get into doing voice acting for cartoons? What sort of job did you have prior to voice acting?
I never sought out to do voice work. It really was just a product of getting hired to do this show Dr. Katz and from that I’ve done a few other cartoons for the same company. But, it was really more of a side thing for me, with my main interests being shopping and playing video games. But, Dr. Katz was my first job in television and things have pretty much bottomed out since then. At the time I began Dr. Katz, I was working in the Cambridge public library as a book stacker, which exposed me to all sorts of dirty books (note: not dirty in the sense of racy, but dirty as in ‘not clean’), and the occasional masturbator in the stacks. The Cambridge library did have open stacks and the floors were like metal grates so you could stand on one floor and look up to see a masturbator on the floor above. That was one of the perks.

photos by Sarah-Maria Vischer-Masino

How did it end up that you, David Cross and Todd Barry started doing the Tinkle nights together?
Dave and I have known each other for a while. I used to be in his sketch comedy troupe in Boston called ‘Cross Comedy.’ I think I just wrote the word ‘troupe.’ Oops. ‘Group’ is better. And Todd I met on Friendster. But we were sitting in this new club (at the time) called Pianos one afternoon and we saw the back room and all thought we should start a show there. I often think, “Man, what if it were just David and Todd sitting in that bar on that humid afternoon and not the three of us. Man, then this weekend I wouldn’t be performing on a shitty booze cruise for four hours tomorrow night, where I will be desperately sea sick the entire time. Thanks Tinkle, you cruel rapacious bitch.”

I have heard rumors circulating that you guys might be trying to turn Tinkle into a TV show. Any truth to that?
Tinkle has no plans to be a TV show, but we are considering all pitching in to buy a townhouse together and putting cameras all over the place and streaming it on the web. I think a lot of people will want to see how Todd Barry brushes his teeth and how David Cross jerks off into thimbles.

Do you have a role in booking the bands for Tinkle (recent guests include Ted Leo, Nada Surf, etc.)? Who is on your wish list of bands to book if you could book anyone?
We do have someone book the music for the shows, but some of them usually know one of us — mainly Dave. I was instrumental (Yay, finally, a pun!) in trying to book David Clayton Thomas of Blood, Sweat and Tears for the booze cruise, but he declined. I would love the original Van Halen to reunite at Tinkle. They’ve been through so much and it’s time for them to heal the wounds and make some much-needed money. Eddie, if you’re reading this, please learn how to read! Other than that, there are so many bands I would love to get to play... Good Charlotte (acoustic), Lenny Kravitz (shirtless), The Go-Go’s, the soundtrack to Coyote Ugly. Actually, I would like some other types of music at Tinkle. I recently saw this dj, Ted Shred and he was good at dj-ing. And that seven year old concert violinist... He’s cute and talented.

You haven’t done the Midnight Pajama Jam recently. Do you have plans to keep doing it?
I don’t do them much anymore... mainly because it got quite difficult to perform in a one hundred and fifty seat theater for an audience of six. The last show at the UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade) had a mom and her two kids, three writers for The Onion and a seventy year old couple who I think had passes to the theater that existed in the space before it became UCB. So, that was something of a death blow. But, it was a fun show to do. It seemed like no one wanted to see it though. Too bad for them and me.

On behalf of all the female readers of Chunklet, I have to ask if it is true that you were in an episode of Sex and the City, first season? If so, which one of the girls did you screw? If you could choose any of the four main women on the show to sleep with, which one would you choose?
I was in one of the episodes in the first season and had one scene with Miranda. We did not have sex. If I were to imagine who (in real life) out of the four TV characters in Sex and the City I would have sex with, then I would probably try to kill myself, wind up in the emergency room, then imagine myself fucking the (real life) nurse who puts in my IV.

Can you tell me about some of the movies you’ve appeared in, other than Wet Hot American Summer? When I google your name it comes up with all sorts of incomplete listings. I know you’ve been in a few movies that haven’t made it to theaters yet, like Martin & Orloff, alongside a lot of the Upright Citizens Brigade folk.
I’m livid at Google right now. We are not talking. I’ve been in a few other films, one called Next Stop Wonderland, which is only worth mentioning in view of the fact I am sometimes parenthetically credited for that, like Jon Benjamin (Next Stop Wonderland). Otherwise, I’ve been in many movies that never made it to movie theaters, but were shown to me by the respective directors in their studio apartments. I was in Martin & Orloff and I don’t know if that’s just another one that will only be shown in the director’s apartment. I must say, though, that the director of Martin & Orloff had the nicest apartment out of all the other directors I have worked with.

Your IMDB listing is sort of fishy. According to it, you have been in some movie called Puppet.
Puppet?! I have no idea what that is! Get me a copy. I hope it was a thriller and I played Daniel Baldwin’s crazy/funny friend.

Who are some of the comics you look up to or have been inspired by? Any newer comics you would recommend to our readers?
Doing Tinkle, I see a lot of really good comedians, some who I know and have always liked, like Louis C.K., Dave Attell, Marc Maron and new performers who I’ve met more recently, and are great like Eugene Mirman, Demetri Martin, Vernon Chatman and Fred Armisen.

Do you have any upcoming projects to plug?
Let’s plug Puppet. I don’t think it ever got the attention it deserves. Soon, I’m doing a cartoon with David Cross for Comedy Central called Freak Show about a group of freak show freaks who work for the president. Or should we call that show, “The Bush Administration?” HA, HA, HA, HA, HA HA HA HA AHA A HA A HAHAHAHAHA HA HAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHHAHAH (continuous loud laughter for several minutes)!!!!!!!q