Since my act is a goofy reflection of what's going on in my life, I started doing pot jokes, and I noticed that audiences invariably love pot jokes. Even people who don't smoke pot think it's a funny subject. So when I started getting laughs, I started doing more material about it. When people come to see my shows, there are a lot of stoners in the audience, but there are also a lot of people who just like me. So I try to give a healthy mix, where people aren't going "There are too many jokes about pot!" or "There's not enough jokes about pot!"
Doug BensonI get a message from Stephen Falk saying, "Hey, if I wrote a part for you in You're The Worst, would you do it?" I was like, "Yes!" And then, of course, later I found out it's going to be me playing myself sort of Larry Sanders-style where I'm the total opposite of what people would expect me to be. I was just like, "Okay, what the hell." But it's really funny to portray me as somebody who is pretending to be a stoner just to succeed.
Doug BensonI was immediately into all the great movie comedians - Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder. Everything those guys had anything to do with, from I don't know how young. Super young.
Doug BensonNo one really needs to defend drinking. That's something that frustrates me as a comic: I have to play clubs where selling booze runs the business, so crowds get drunk and yell out a bunch of stupid stuff at me.
Doug BensonI know there's a lot of nasty humor directed at celebrities, but my feeling is, in most cases, they deserve it.
Doug Benson