On hand as just another Con attendee, writer/actor/comedian
Brian Posehn had the misfortune to be walking by as we intereviewed
Tom Kenny. Though he protests that he himself is unfunny,
anyone who has seen him as the ultra-nerdy office boy Kevin
on Just Shoot Me or in his many roles on Mr.
Show know differently.
After much cajoling among Fanboy Planet staff, Brian
kicked Tom Kenny out of his chair and sat down with us, warning
us that he feared he wouldn't say anything funny. Though Brian
has nothing to do with Comic
Book: The Movie, the gang at Creative
Light Entertainment still let us use their booth, and
we appreciate it.
Derek McCaw: Tell me a little about your background.
I didn't realize you had been a stand-up.
Brian Posehn: Yeah. I started in Sacramento and San
Francisco. I was going to school in Sacramento, and a friend
dared me to try stand-up.
I did and then I loved it. Did a lot at The Punchline (San
Francisco's top comedy club), lived in San Francisco until
'93, and moved down to L.A. That's around when I met Bob and
David.
DM: So you met them and they said "we've
got a sketch show…?"
BP: They were doing live scenes around town, around
L.A. first, and I did a couple of different things with them.
That's kind of how I got the writing job (on Mr. Show),
because I did my own sketch show and I had Bob act in a couple
of scenes. So he saw my writing. I mean, he already knew my
stand-up was funny, but then saw that I could write sketches,
too.
I was involved in the very early versions of the show. It
was called "The Three Goofballs" a couple of times, and then
they started calling it just "Bob and David." We did it in
tiny theater spaces in L.A. before HBO stepped in.
DM: Are you involved in this Mark Hamill
project, or are you just hanging out at Comic-Con?
BP: I'm just saying hi to Tom. I just walked by.
Well, obviously, Jill (Talley, Tom Kenny's wife) and
I are good friends. So I came over looking for him.
DM: By the way, Brian is wearing the Bring
On The Bad Guys classic cover.
BP: Yes I am.
DM: So you're a long-time fan.
BP: Oh, yeah. I dropped out of it for a while, because,
you know, when you're a struggling comic you can't really
afford to buy books. Then I got back into it.
DM: So what are your favorites now?
BP: The ones that are currently being made? Powers.
The Authority was amazing. I read Alias.
DM: So a lot of Brian Michael Bendis.
BP: Yeah, Bendis. Were all those Bendis? I really
like Ed Brubaker's Batman. I'm not really reading any X-books
anymore. Oh, no, I actually am still reading Grant Morrison's
X-Men. That's it. And then I collect.
DM: What are you looking for here?
BP: Romita Spider-Man. Any Neal Adams stuff from
the same time. Those are like my favorite guys.
DM: Neal Adams didn't show up this year.
BP: Yeah. I talk to him every year. I've gotten a
couple of drawings. I'm a huge fan. He's probably my favorite
all-time guy.
DM: You worked with Icebox.com, too, didn't
you?
BP: My friend Matt Selman wrote that thing, "Superhero
Roommate." Myself and Dave Foley were in that.
DM: I should have guessed you were a big
fan from doing that.
BP: Yeah. And I've done my share of animation. I
did the Clerks animated series, I did a couple of voices
on that. I'm on this thing that's on Cartoon Network now,
Mission Hill. They just started showing it. We did
it for Warner Brothers like three years ago or four years
ago.
I haven't been funny yet. You haven't asked me anything
where I could go, "HEY! Goofy Answer!"
DM: You're on a weekly sitcom that's doing
well. How has that changed your dating life?
BP: I get way more prostitutes now.
It hasn't really, because I've had a serious girlfriend
the whole time. Girls flirt with me more now, girls that would
never have flirted with me in my entire nerdy f***ing life.
But now it's great, and I'm not doing anything about it.
My friends hope that they can get my backwash. But they
never can make that happen, because my friends are bigger
nerds than me.
DM: Good to know. You're going on the Mr.
Show tour, are you excited?
BP: Yeah, I am. I've never been in a bus doing the
rock thing. It's going to be like we're a band, a band of
really nerdy mean-spirited writer guys.
Half of them smoke pot, and the other guys just drink a lot,
so it's going to be a fun tour.
DM: Do you have a plan for your career?
BP: Do I have a plan? The same plan that I've always
had, just do as many things at once and hope that something's
gonna hit.
I keep pretty busy. I write a ton, and I do stand-up a lot
again. I do touring when I'm not on Just Shoot Me.
I end up at places I hate, and getting paid to be there.
Like Omaha, Nebraska. I shouldn't be there, I have no business
being there.
DM: Has Marvel approached you about writing?
It seems like they've approached everybody else.
BP: I haven't talked to Marvel, but I've talked to
DC about some stuff. I wrote one treatment that was just too
f***ed up, but we're going to do something eventually.
DM: Tell me what was too messed up for
DC…
BP: It was just that they thought they'd get in trouble.
They laughed, and went "aaah, this is a great idea, but no."
It was…do you remember that Treasury Edition of Superman
vs. Muhammed Ali?
DM: Yeeesss.
BP: I did one with another friend of mine, a Simpsons
writer; we came up with an idea that supposedly came out at
the same time, but they pulped it. They never put it out because
it was too offensive. It was Superman vs. Ayatollah Khomeini.
It's just pretty ridiculous. And we would do like a Treasury,
with all these people in the audience watching them. We were
going to follow the same plot as the original, where it's
aliens that have decided to make Superman and the Ayatollah
fight.
It was going to be the battle of the century. Just like the
original book, retarded but in a different way. Purposely
retarded.
DM: Did you propose it at the time that
DC was suffering a lot of bad publicity for pulping books?
Was that part of it, too?
BP: ….yeah, kind of around then, it was like, two
years ago.
DM: A little too controversial and a little
too painful. That should have been in Wizard's "Greatest Stories
You'll Never See."
BP: Someday. Someday.
You can catch Brian as part of the Mr. Show tour this
fall. Check BobandDavid.com
to see if those nerdy drunken potheads are coming to your
town.
