Brian Posehn on the Pleasures of Stand-Up, Sarah Silverman and Smoking Weed

I've read some articles that label your brand of comedy as alternative. Do you feel like you're part of any particular comedy movement now?

I wouldn't call it a movement but my friends and I all kind of do our own thing. For Patton [Oswalt]'s show, The Comedians of Comedy, we had completely different acts but we sort of fit together in the end. Other friends of ours have varying degrees of popularity now but we are all similar in the idea that Sarah, Louis C.K., Patton, David Cross and a lot of us were different than the main stream comics that we watched when we were younger. I never really thought of it as a movement though. I think it's just us all sticking to our guns and eventually getting our different degrees of success from it.

Do you feel like your humor has become more sophisticated as you've become more successful? I guess your new album is called Fart and Wiener Jokes, so you are sticking with your guns -- or at least your dick jokes.

[Laughs] I do have my fair amount of dick jokes and actually this new record, like you said, I call it Fart and Wiener Jokes for that reason. That came from a review of my last album, which was called Nerd Rage. Somebody gave me grief over the fact that there wasn't a lot of nerd rage on the record so I figured if I called the next album Fart and Wiener Jokes, they couldn't argue with me. But I like to think that I do more than that. My act is pretty much me reflecting on what I want to talk about and what I think is funny and what has happened to me. And yes, sometimes I go to the well. I go to the dick well. [Laughs]

So with Sarah Silverman, I imagine you're not auditioning a lot now. But I'm curious, when you were auditioning, if you were going against a lot of actors with similar looks. You have a pretty distinct appearance --

[Laughs] Are you high?

No! No, I'm not.

That was a stoner-y thing to say.

What I meant is that you're 6'5, with red hair and glasses. I'm wondering if there is this secret subset of actors that are abnormally tall, nearsighted and have red hair.

I wouldn't be in a room full of actors that looked like me. It would be a room full of character-y-looking guys. I used to see my friend Harland Williams in a lot of auditions. Then you'd see one of the DeLuise kids because they're kind of heavy and character-y. You'd just see a lot of the same guys over the years. I remember going for a West Wing audition once where I was going up against a lot of nerdy guys. It was a role as a tech guy. There was a group of Asian guys and they all knew each other. They were there for the part of an Asian senator or something. Then there were all the older guys and they were in for the old guy part. It was really funny to watch all these guys bonding within their cliques.

You brought up weed before. I know that you are pretty open about your use of pot. Does that help you in the writing process?

Um, a little. [Laughs] If done in moderation.

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