We recently connected with Tim Bennett and have shared our conversation below.

Tim, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

In the 4th Grade I realized I could get a laugh from fellow students, but age 10 me had no roadmap for going from class clown to esteemed expert in the comedy arts. Fortuitously, there was a sketch troupe at the state university I attended–in fact, it’s (arguably) the longest-running college comedy troupe in the world, although now the kids exclusively perform improv, I believe. My friend Paul served as director and producer, running each week’s show as a (semi)-professional endeavor, with individual writers and writing teams coming up with material on Saturdays, a Sunday meeting to pitch those sketch ideas and collaborate, a Monday rehearsal to determine which sketches had legs, a Wednesday rehearsal to fine-tune, re-tool and/or cut bits that weren’t working, a Thursday night speed-through, and the live show Friday at noon for an audience of 400 adoring fans (with nothing better to do between classes.) Not only did putting together this weekly show 13-weeks a semester cement the notion that this could be a career, it also monopolized my time. Hours probably better spent on classwork and planning for the future. I was left with no other option but to pursue a path toward the highly-lucrative and respected comedy field.

Tim, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I sold my first joke to the Enquirer when I was twelve. Eight years later, I earned another fat paycheck in comedy, performing snarky, referential stand-up at a biker bar in southeastern Arizona. I trained in the farm team of the Chicago theatre community, getting called up to The Bigs in Los Angeles, where I co-created and ran the first daily comedy show on the Internet. I’ve worked in theatre, film, television, radio, streaming and print. A decade ago, I partnered with animation veteran Bob Harper to develop cartoons and comix. As a seasoned writer, director and performer, mentoring and consulting brings me the most joy.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Whenever I could carve out a few minutes between side-hustle gigs, I scribbled out my very first feature script long-hand on yellow legal pads. Probably 100 drafts and 25 years later, the film was finally produced, premiering at Cinequest Film Festival and going on to have a remarkably successful VoD run for a low-budget feature.

I constantly revisit my archives to breathe new life into comatose projects. Sometimes, it’s an experiment in the cringe-worthy, but more often, it’s creatively inspiring.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Not “knew about” as much as “existed” when I first started on my creative journey.

Today, we can shoot feature film quality with our phones and edit, color grade, sound design and score on laptops. The capabilities of the Internet for research, learning, connecting globally, finding an audience, c’mon!

Back in the day, I had to rent or borrow videocameras of varying formats to shoot shorts and experimental films that I might be able to screen at a film festival or a local bar or public access TV if I was lucky.

Performing live sketch comedy in Chicago in the early 90s, sometimes we’d have two people in the audience. Today, a troupe can upload a sketch as professional-looking as anything on TV or the streamers and get a minimum of a thousand views, with a high probability of going viral. If that kind of global reach had been available when I was starting out, my sketch comedy collaborators and I would’ve run a comedy content empire.

Contact Info:

• Website: timbennetthuxtable.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timbennettamusements/

Image Credits
Bob Harper Ryan Penington