WILMINGTON — Fans of FOX’s hit animated series “Bob’s Burgers” will have the chance to see Tina Belcher this May — sort of. The voice actor behind the socially anxious, boy- and zombie-obsessed 13-year-old will be performing live at the Dead Crow Comedy Room.
A stand-up comedian, voice actor, and writer, Dan Mintz is touring through Wilmington May 1 and 2 to perform his quippy, one-hitter jokes as a part of his “Well Rounded Entertainer” tour. He explained to Port City Daily during an interview he does not home in on his own life experiences when it comes to writing one-liners but tries, instead, to relate to other people’s experiences.
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“The setups for a one-liner, you want to be a very widely known, relatable trope,” he said.
Often he will focus on topics like relationship issues, such as with parents or a partner. For example, on “Late Show with David Letterman” in 2013, Mintz quipped: “Whenever I ask my parents who their favorite kid is, they always say they don’t have a favorite — which kind of hurts my feelings as an only child.”
Mintz writes his comedy like a series of short stories, so it could be multiple 1-minute jokes instead of a 5-minute elongated bit.
“If each joke is like its own story, each joke has its own character,” he added. “They still all kind of are me or a version of me, in terms of the point of view and the misunderstanding of reality or an obliviousness to it.”
Mintz began doing standup as a teenager but got his start as a writer for the Comedy Central show “Crank Yankers,” featuring puppets conducting prank calls. It ran for six seasons and was nominated for an Emmy and Shorty award.
He has since worked on several programs — “The Andy Milonakis Show,” “Lucky Louie,” “Nathan For You,” “The Premise,” “Indebted” — and starred in “Adventure Time” as TV. He also has done the late-night circuit and had his own Comedy Central special, executive produced “The Awesomes,” and earned a WGA Award nomination for “A Taste of Zephyria” on “Son of Zorn.”
Port City Daily was able to speak with Mintz ahead of his Dead Crow show to talk about his work as Tina Belcher on “Bob’s Burgers,” as well as his standup and a new animated special. Mintz is on tour in support of his upcoming “Dan Mintz: Well-Rounded Entertainer,” a special debuting on YouTube on May 20.
Tickets for his Dead Crow show are $30 general admission and can be purchased here. Mintz’s conversation below has been edited for clarity only.
Port City Daily: You got your comedy start with ‘Crank Yankers’ and have since written for numerous other shows. How has working on these shows helped you evolve as a comedian? Are there any aspects of your comedy that you can trace back to your time working on them?
Dan Mintz: Being a comedy writer for television, it’s pretty different from writing stand-up, in a good way where they each kind of complement each other. I feel like when you’re writing for someone else or for a TV show — even when it’s your own TV show — there’s a lot you don’t have total control over. It’s a constant struggle to suppress your “this is not exactly what we should be doing,” and go along with creating someone else’s vision. While you’re doing that, stand up is a great outlet to have where it’s all your own thing and all your own vision.
But I also say writing jokes can be kind of frustrating because you don’t get momentum, at least the type of standup that I write. You just kind of stare at a blank page until you think of a joke, and then you’re staring at a blank page again until you think of the next joke — I guess it’s not blank after you wrote down the first one.
Whereas writing a script, if you’re in a writer’s room, someone says something and then that makes someone else think of something and then that makes you think of something. So, I think it’s great to have both as creative outlets.
PCD: Was it ever difficult to differentiate between the voice you write with for other shows and your own voice?
DM: When I moved out here many years ago, one of the first things we were supposed to do is write a spec script — just a script of an existing TV show. I was kind of intimidated by this; I’d never written anything like this before. And I was amazed at how fast it went.
I think at that time, I wrote a Bernie Mac script — that was a popular show at the time — and it seemed like a good thing to do samples of. And when you watch the show, the characters just live in your head, and you can hear what they’re saying, and it’s pretty easy to just kind of shift your brain into that world.
I mean, the other nice thing about writing for someone else is, it’s not your responsibility to decide what the finished thing is. You’re just pitching an idea and hopefully your boss likes one of your ideas. You don’t really worry too much about getting the tone exactly right. You just want to give them as many options as possible.
PCD: Do you have any favorite tropes you lean toward more in your standup?
DM: There’s an efficient market for comedy where there’s things that are easier to make funny. Obviously, anything to do with relationships or sex or using — stuff that’s inappropriate makes people laugh more. But they’ve also been picked over more, so it’s harder to find something new that hasn’t been done. It’s like trying to find gold.
If you go to the place where you heard there’s a lot of gold, a lot of people have been there already. If you go to a random place, probably no one’s been there already, but it’s going to be harder to find. And then it reaches an equilibrium. I do have a lot of jokes about relatable things like family and relationships and stuff. I kind of do prefer to stay in that area and just do the work to hopefully think of something no one else has done yet.
PCD: Can you walk me through your process of creating one-liners — or characters and short stories?
DM: Part of the reason I like one-liners is, you always know where you stand with the audience because you tell a joke and either they laugh or they don’t. Longer bits, it’s not always clear when they’re supposed to laugh, that instant feedback. If I know that they don’t like me, that’s fine. If I’m going for a long time and there’s not even a place where people are supposed to laugh, then I start spiraling and wondering what they’re thinking.
But as far as the process, I would say for the first five years I was doing standup, I would just think of a joke and then write it down, and I never had to actually try to write, which was great. And then at a certain point that I stopped, I went to the computer, like, ‘Wow, I really don’t have any new jokes ever recently.’ So I had to figure out the process.
I just open up a Google Docs, and it’s like a guided free-write, where I just write down every thought that comes to my head. And by thought, I just mean I’m looking for kind of like tropes. It’s just two-line expressions and whatever, and sometimes something will just strike me as, ‘that seems promising.’ … Eventually, I have the heart of a joke. It’s like a concept that could be funny, but it’s not necessarily funny yet, and then you have to figure out: Is there a way to raise the stakes or shift the point of view so that it’s actually funny?
I think every joke, when it starts out, is just a dad joke, a joke that you recognize why it’s funny, but an audience wouldn’t laugh at it. And some of them I never figure out and I never crack how to make them funny, but sometimes you have to make it be a little bit more like a story where I, as a character, get my comeuppance.
PCD: You talked about gauging audience reaction and you’ve also said you have natural stage fright. How have you managed that hurdle or are you still dealing with it?
DM: I wouldn’t even call it a hurdle. It’s like an asset. It’s part of my personality. I remember it was the first time I did standup. I was obviously more nervous than I would ever have ever been. And as soon as I started talking, my voice kind of shaking, people were laughing at it. I realized, all the public speaking I’d done up to that point, like debate in high school, my anxiety was getting in the way and making it harder to do the job. Now it was making it easier. Sometimes now, if I get too comfortable and I feel like I’m not at all nervous, and I’m confident, is when I actually have the biggest struggle.
PCD: So about your new animated comedy special: Why choose animation?
DM: I did standup for much longer than I’ve been on ‘Bob’s Burgers,’ but that’s what people really know me from, is from being an animated character. So, it seemed like it made sense.
I started thinking about what I could do, and I liked the idea, visually. I thought I could make it visually more appealing. I could do like a million different camera angles — and that’s not even getting to the fact you can obviously do absurd things with animation. You can do anything. … In the live show that we recorded to animate, just talking about, “This is actually an animated special, so I can do all the stuff that I wouldn’t be able to do in real life.”
I was like: “I’m jealous of one-liner comics that can play the guitar to their jokes.” I thought it’d be cool; I can’t play guitar, but I could have someone else play it, and then draw out like I’m doing it. … I could make it look like I was in different venues and levitate. So it was really about trying to have the live audience watch the same show as the at-home viewer, except they would have to imagine what was going to be animated instead of actually seeing it.
PCD: Who are you working with to do the animation?
DM: Bento Box, the same company that does “Bob’s.”
PCD: What was the process of creating the animated special?
DM: I already had a relationship with them and I asked if I could hire them to do it, and it was so cool to see what they did. They just send, ‘“’Here’s our ideas for the designs with theater,’ and then I’m like, ‘“’Well, I was thinking this actually or this,’ or, ‘Oh, yeah, that works.’
And then when the designs are done, you do an animatic.
It’s the same process for making any animated show. The animatic is basically a live storyboard. So you see a still frame from an angle and you already have the whole audio recorded.
PCD: How long did it take to put together?
DM: Not too long. The animation was five months.
PCD: Is the animation the same sort of style as ‘Bob’s Burgers’ then? And are you still on a stage or are you gonna take yourself out of a stage every once in a while?
DM:
It’s on a stage. We didn’t try to really capture the actual venue. It’s kind of its own theater club-type place. The animation is kind of like ‘Bob’s Burgers’-ish. It’s not that similar, but I told them: ‘Feel free to, as much as you’re legally allowed to do, make it look like ‘Bob’s Burgers.’’
PCD: I do have a few questions regarding your role as Tina Belcher, if that’s alright. You’ve mentioned that while Tina is bad at math, you’re not. Is there any future wherein Tina gets better at math?
DM: Oh, wow. I guess she could because, over the years, the kids stay the same age, but also everyone changes and the world changes. I think they probably wouldn’t do that. Maybe I’ll try to ad-lib little math equations in her voice and see if anything makes it.
PCD: Do you see Tina ending up with Jimmy Jr. at all, or do you see that as being a pipe dream?
DM: Well, I don’t necessarily see her being happily married with two kids. I see them kind of off and on dating and having a complex relationship.
PCD: Do you have a favorite episode or Tina plotline?
DM: I personally really liked — it was early on — her thirteenth birthday, where she actually did end up having her first kiss with Jimmy Jr. I just really like that they, out of the gate, gave her a win.
PCD: Tina has grown so much throughout the show, from her relationship with Louise to finding confidence in herself. How do you want to see her grow more?
DM: I do love how much she has grown from being seen as a pretty simple character at the beginning to really being this multidimensional, fascinating person. And I love that she’s gained so much confidence. I think she’s in a pretty good spot now. I don’t know if I need her to change anymore.
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