1dougbenson.jpg

In this week's print edition I wrote a feature on comedian Doug Benson, who's performing at 8:00pm tonight at the Aladdin Theatre. We spoke for quite some time and covered some great stuff that could fit into the paper, especially Doug's take on why live comedy is either amazing or excruciating:

This is how I feel about live theatre: when I see a play that's amazing, there's nothing that's more entertaining to me. I love a great play or musical if it's really well done and entertaining, I just find that fantastic, seeing people do that right before my eyes.

But when you're seeing a play that is boring or terrible, it's a suffering you have to go through as an audience member. It's very hard to sit through someone standing right in front of you doing something you're not enjoying that you have to sit there and watch.

And when you see a comedian you hate it reflects more on comedy and comedy clubs than movies, because people have a little idea of what they're going to see with a movie—they've seen the trailer, or they like the star, they like the genre. With standup comedy they just walk up to a comedy club and say, 'well, let's see if this is fun.' And then maybe they get a comedian they didn't necessarily enjoy. Like if you hated country music, you wouldn't go to a place that played country music. And that's essentially what happens with comedy. People go in thinking they're going to see something clean or really dirty and they don't turn out to be either of those things. It's really easy to be disappointed by it and give up on it.

Read the entire interview after the jump—there's a Tommy Chong story and more

MERCURY: You recently went on the MEDICAL MARIJUANA TOUR—13 shows where medicinal marijuana is legal in 13 days. How gnarly was the trip?

Doug Benson: It was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I really thought that the airlines would trip us up at some point or the weather would be a problem or something would happen to make it difficult to get to—we essentially went from Rhode Island to Hawaii with 11 states in between in 13 days.

We started east and worked our way west. We managed to make it to every date and, of course, Portland was one of the highlights. That was one of the most fun shows on the tour that was all fun shows. The Portland crowd was boisterous and yet polite at the same time. I'm excited to come back with a little less travel pressure on my back.

Why do it in 13 days?

It was just me being stupid. I thought that it just sounded exciting. It had a 'look at this achievement a dumb stoner can make.'

We were talking about shooting it as a TV show or movie. I basically wanted to do the 13 day thing just to give it a dramatic tension of a difficult trip. Since we didn't film it, we could've had some days off. But it was still fun to go out there and hit all these places that had legalized pot...

I'm going to try and another route and go all the places where it's gonna be on the ballot soon—like in November South Dakota is gonna vote to determine if it's going to be legal for medicine or not. And in California, it looks pretty good that in November there's going to be something on the ballot about out-right legalization. But that's not definite yet.

You said in "Super High Me" that you didn't consider yourself an activist. Has that changed?

I consider myself an activist in the sense that I pay more attention to what's going on and have lots of opportunities to share what I know. But the bottom line is I'm still more of a comedian than an activist. Fortunately people like to hear pot jokes. So it works out. I'm sort of preaching to the converted. I don't really have to convince anybody of anything when they come out to my shows other than the fact that I have to make them laugh. That's still my job. I think it's kind of cool to have a political point, especially one so close to me as legalizing marijuana.

With all the pot and drug references surrounding your show, have you ever had difficulty with a venue because they knew weed would be in abundance?

I haven't really had that yet. The biggest screw ups in my career, as far as getting fired or not asked back to a particular gig, I blame all that on alcohol.

For whatever reason for me, performing while high isn't an issue. The audience sort of excepts it. Any time I perform high—because that does happen—afterwards they'll come up to me and say, 'you were so high!', because everything is from that viewpoint.

But I don't ever try to pretend to be high or not high—I'm just me. I have an act, I perform it and audiences seem to like it.

I imagine people give you a lot of pot?

A lot of people give it to me, and that's awesome. Especially in places where it's legal or at least decriminalized. I love that. But a lot of times people want to go get me high at their place, because at a lot of clubs you can't just stand outside and smoke. That gets a little tricky because then you've got to go places with people and there's usually more than one asking before a show so it's like, I don't want to play favorites. I can't be everywhere at once so that makes it difficult to smoke with everybody.

It's kind of a 'be careful what you wish for' thing, you know. Everybody wants to get high with you but you don't have time to get high with everyone. It's too hard logistically. But occasionally I'll perform somewhere where they don't mind everyone just smoking in the parking lot after the show and just have a big smokeout.

What are the downsides of being so intertwined with stoner culture?

As much as I appreciate people giving it to me it's not something I expect. That's mostly an upside.

Sometimes it can be frustrating. Like I'll be at airport security or something and somebody will yell out 'Super High Me!' And I'm just like, 'hey, be cool.' Away from all the security.

The downside would be, maybe giving people that I'm just a dumb stoner and don't try very hard and don't have anything to offer. I'm sure there's people that feel that way. That's kind of frustrating. But at the same time, there are a lot of people who do like what I do, so it's not like I really have to please everybody.

But it could be seen as a downside. In terms of as an actor, people only come to me to play the stoner parts. I don't mind the fact that I would play something close to who I am.

On Best Week Ever and Last Comic Standing I didn't even mention pot. So I got fans from places that don't smoke pot and they don't care one way or another where I do. So when I talk about it, the jokes have to be good, no matter what they're about.

How does doing TV and movies compare to stand up in your mind?

It's just the instant reaction you get. Obviously sometimes when you're filming something there isn't an audience, but there are people there working with you so you get sort of instant feedback. But nothing beats the instant feedback of standup comedy because the audience is there and you find out immediately.

On thing I like about Twitter, and one of the reasons I tweet so much, is because I love the fact that not everyone's going to look at it the minute I sent it, but enough people are that I get a reaction almost immediately. I have enough followers that somebody somewhere looks at it and sends feedback right away. That's the next best thing to being onstage somewhere.

Have you ever used Twitter to test jokes?

Yeah. Now if I think of a joke and it's tweet-able—like it's short enough and not too disgusting—I will send it off and if a lot of people re-tweet it I immediately get the impression that it's something people enjoyed. It might not translate to stand up comedy so I'll try it on stage and see what happens. It's gotta be molded, but it works.

I like to think there's no established rhythm because what makes people laugh is surprise. So I try not to have it all be uniform in length and style.

You, as a growing army of comedians, have a podcast. Is it one of the better outlets to come along for people who do stand up? I mean, it's not like you can listen to a comedy record over and over like you can as one from your favorite band.

All of us comedians, we don't necessarily have our own TV shows or movies or even radio shows. You feed the best. People will listen to as much podcasting as you put out there—everyone won't listen to all of it, but some people will. That's the biggest complaint I get: make more episodes and make them longer. That is just so encouraging.

It's exciting for a comedian. In my case I do (the podcast) in front of a live audience so the live audience could groan or not laugh at something I say, but other than that it's just me doing my thing and NOBODY can get in the way of it.

I don't have to answer to Anybody. I just do my thing and put it on the internet and everybody who wants to can listen to it. It's fantastic. Even in a comedy club if you said something horrible on stage the owner might say something to you but standup is still way better than every other form of entertainment in terms of the free speech you have. There's no censorship in standup. I've never been told by a comedy club owner not to say something. But podcasting takes it even further. You can get away with anything.

I know a number of people who've never been to a live comedy show before, yet they love funny movies and TV shows, and obviously like to laugh. And at the same time, almost every goes to concerts. What would you say to people to get them to give live comedy a try?

I see it every time I'm out on tour. People say, 'this is the first comedy club I've ever come to and you're the first comedian I've ever seen live.' And I go, 'didn't you love it?' And they're like, 'yeah!' They're just so surprised at how much fun it is. Once people do it I think they want to do it again. I think the danger is, if the next time they do it the

This is how I feel about live theatre: when I see a play that's amazing, there's nothing that's more entertaining to me. I love a great play or musical if it's really well done and entertaining, I just find that fantastic, seeing people do that right before my eyes.

But when you're seeing a play that is boring or terrible, it's a suffering you have to go through as an audience member. It's very hard to sit through someone standing right in front of you doing something you're not enjoying that you have to sit there and watch.

And when you see a comedian you hate it reflects more on comedy and comedy clubs than movies, because people have a little idea of what they're going to see with a movie—they've seen the trailer, or they like the star, they like the genre. With standup comedy they just walk up to a comedy club and say, 'well, let's see if this is fun.' And then maybe they get a comedian they didn't necessarily enjoy. Like if you hated country music, you wouldn't go to a place that played country music. And that's essentially what happens with comedy. People go in thinking they're going to see something clean or really dirty and they don't turn out to be either of those things. It's really easy to be disappointed by it and give up on it.

I think the thing that really keeps it moving is how much TV and Movie exposure comedians tend to get. Because once people know you, then that's the reason they'll try to go to a comedy club for a first time. That's why I always encourage people to, again, even if they don't know the comic, because there's a better chance you'll have a good time there than at many of the mediocre movies.

I think someone should try to start a new club in Portland. I have a great time every time I perform there. And if there was a room that had shows, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I know comics who would really make a go of it there.

Do you have any memories of the times you've been in Portland

I've been doing stand up for a while and (Portland) has always been one of those cities that never had a club where I ended up working. Because I'll basically work where people ask you to come or you ask to come and it's never worked out.

The very first time I was supposed to come to Portland was when were on tour with the Marijuanalogues. First it was a Broadway show for a year then Tommy Chong joined on.

We went to Vancouver first, great show, the audience went crazy and threw a bunch of joints on stage after the show. It was a wonderful time. The next night we're in Seattle—the same thing happens.

After the show, the next morning, Tommy gathers everybody who's on the tour in the lobby and says, 'I have to quit the tour.' And we're like, 'what?!' He was on probation at the time from the jail time that he did. He said that being around people smoking pot and people throwing pot on the stage, that was a direct parole violation and he didn't want to have to go back to jail because he was performing in the Marijuanalogues.

At the time it was a crushing blow because we had 15 or 20 cities lined up. Performing on stage with a legendary pot guy, we were on top of the world. When he pulled out...

We just all went to Portland and checked into the hotel. It was a Sunday night. We didn't have a show, we didn't know anybody there, nothing was going on.

If Twitter existed at that time because our show got cancelled, but who wants to hang out? But there was no way to reach out to the community because it was several years ago so it was a boring night in Portland. But I've been back since and I've had a great time.

Doug Benson plays the Aladdin Theater Friday at 8:00PM