Dan Mintz will perform standup Friday, May 1, and Saturday, May 2, at The Dead Crow Comedy Club in Wilmington, NC. Show and ticket info is available at www.DanMintz.com. Dan’s new animated special "DAN MINTZ: WELL-ROUNDED ENTERTAINER," which will premiere on YouTube on May 20.
Benjamin Schachtman: So I want to start, for people who maybe have not followed the show Bob's Burgers as closely, you are the voice actor behind Tina Belcher, the 13-year-old oldest daughter. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about, you know, this has been on the air, I think, 16 seasons now. How has this evolved over the years?
Dan Mintz: I mean, I think that Tina's evolved a lot, especially early on, you know, at first, when they told me I was going to play a girl, but with my voice, I thought it was going to be kind of almost just like a gimmick, like, it's not the voice that you expect. And early on, it did seem like she's kind of like supposed to be a weird person to say weird things for for comedy, but it I was really kind of impressed by how they they started to, right away, just make her like a real, relatable character, and just keep adding more layers. I would never thought when I first got this role that, you know, people would come up to me years later and say, I relate to Tina so much. But it happens all the time.
BS: I also hear that — my friends and family are big Tina fans. So Tina was initially supposed to be Daniel, correct.
DM: Yeah. And I actually, I didn't really find this out until later, but they were going to, I think Fox wanted to cut my character, so there only would have been the two kids, and there and [creatpr] Loren [Bouchard]
had the idea, well, what if we change it up a little bit, and then they change it to to a girl, and then I got to not have my character be cut. And I, you know, I very vividly remember the phone call when he called and he said, at first I thought that they were recasting, you know, someone else. The character said, 'No, it'll be you.' And I said, like, 'I don't really do voices.' He says, 'it's fine, it can be in your own voice.' And then I was kinda skeptical, but they showed me an animation test and it somehow worked.
BS: So this has been on the air for many years, and there's a little bit of The Simpsons problem, right, where the children aren't aging, but you obviously want to keep it fresh for viewers. How have you tackled that problem?
DM: I mean, luckily it's not my problem. I think that I'm not jealous of the writers having to deal with that. I do think it's interesting. And I noticed this as a viewer of The Simpsons, how as society changes, the kind of changes subtly creep in. And I think at the beginning, they really did not want to have any even, like a cell phone or anything in this world. And then kind of eventually, well, we need to do something. And they started kind of gradually, without even realizing it, changing like, okay. Now they have an emergency cell phone that they use occasionally. Now they're actually, like, going on YouTube and whatever. And I think that they do a good job of it. It's hard for me, I've watched many TV shows and seen how they evolve. Being on the inside, it's really hard to tell. A big issue for a lot of shows is they're just a huge kind of turnover of writers, the writers come in and you kind of lose the initial vision, and there's been almost no turnover with the writers on Bob's over the years. And I think that is kind of why it's been able to keep the quality up.
BS: Do you think that's part of why these characters, like resonate with people so deeply, like everyone has a character on that show that is them.
DM: Yeah. I mean, Loren, the creator, is so good at, from all his work, at really just creating this really kind of realistic, natural sounding dialog, and these interesting characters that are just not at all based on classic tropes, and they're, yeah, really just something for everyone,
BS: Specifically about Tina Belcher, I mean, there's obviously a huge fan base for this character, as sort of odd of a bird as she is, between erotic fan fiction, sometimes including horses, and her unique social style. What is it about Tina that you think just, I don't know, gets people?
DM: If I compare her to how I was, you know, in middle school, or even how I still am, I have a lot of the same kind of awkwardness and things, things that were weird about myself that — and I think most people feel like we kind of need to hide these and, try to be normal. And she's just so, like, unapologetic about her quirks. I think that's really inspiring to people.
BS: So I do want to talk a little bit about some of the other work you've done, written for the The Eric Andre Show and Nathan For You, which is one of my all-time favorites, and that's a little harder to get people to watch with you. It can be odd in a delightful way. So what is, what is that work been like when you do get to craft some of the language and some of the show.
DM: I've never just like had my own show that I created, so writing for other people's shows is very much like the art of kind of reading their minds, which is impossible, of course, but just kind of figuring out what they would want the character to say. And Nathan For You, was one of my favorites — I was good friends with Nathan. I met him as writing on the Demetri Martin show a few years before. And I feel like we, in some ways, we have such a similar sensibility, but also we're work the way that we're so different. I mean, his shows are engaging with real people, and in the real world. And my sensibility is so kind of like absurd and not dealing with the real world. So I feel like I would always be pitching stuff that [he would say, 'this will never work in the real world. Like we could never actually if you tried to have a real person do that, it would never happen.' And that was the challenge there. So you're always the challenge of trying to think like someone else.
BS: Yeah, I can see that being a really specific kind of challenge. What about your own stand up? You know, how do you approach that?
DM: My stand up is, well, you know, I only have one voice. So if you know me from Bob's Burgers, I would sound like Tina, except I'm a 45-year-old man instead of a 13-year-old girl. But I just do pretty much only, like one-liners. I do kind of serve one-liners, like Mitch Hedberg is like my biggest inspiration, but like, as a kid, I loved "Deep Thoughts" on SNL, and so, writing for yourself is very satisfying after, you know, writing for someone else and just being able to do your own vision. Writing one-liners is kind of demoralizing, because if they're not connected, you don't get any momentum — as a writer thinking of this funny thing, 'this leads to this' and 'this leads to this' and then you have nothing — you just have a blank page. And then you think of something that's great, and then now you have nothing again, until you think of the next joke.
BS: The one-liner is such, for me, an amazing art form, if only because every time I walk by an escalator that is closed for repairs, I think of Mitch Hedberg, And like, if you do it really well, it'llstick with you forever if you land it,
DM: That's another fun thing about stand up versus writing for for someone else — and when you have a good joke, you can tell it many times. Eventually people expect new material, but you get a lot of mileage out of it.
BS: Yeah. So you're coming to Wilmington on May 1 and 2. Have you been to town before?
DM: I have not. I haven't consistently been a touring comedian, you know, I would, every few years, I'll go out and do a tour. So I haven't been to that many places, but, but I'm very excited everyone I've mentioned Dead Crow Comedy Room to is impressed, because I'm supposed to be a great club — so, yeah, very excited.
BS: Well, we look forward to having you in town, and we wish you luck. Anything else you would want people to know before I let you go.
DM: I guess, I mean, the reason I'm doing this tour is I'm promoting a special. I have a comedy specil, "Dan Mintz: Well-rounded entertainer," coming out on May 20. So if you like the show at Dead Crow Comedy Room, you could watch that too.
BS: And where can people catch that?
DM: That would be on YouTube.
BS: Okay, awesome. Well. Dan Mintz, thank you very much for your time this afternoon, I appreciate it.
DM: Thank you.
