H Jon Ben­jamin: ​‘When I’m Bob, I’m a ham­burg­er cook and not a singer’

Since 2011, H Jon Ben­jamin has brought the beef as the voice of Bob Belch­er, exas­per­at­ed pater­fa­mil­ias on the restau­rant-set sit­com Bob’s Burg­ers. The fix­ture of TV ani­ma­tion has now super-sized itself for a fea­ture-length movie, and though the recipe has been slight­ly tweaked for a cin­e­ma-ready look, the com­e­dy is still both rare and well done.

LWLies: Aside from a longer run time, how is Bob’s Burg­ers dif­fer­ent in movie form?

Ben­jamin: I hate to say this so sim­ply, but it’s much more filmic. In its look, I mean. They spent a lot of time, which a movie allows for, to push the style of the ani­ma­tion, the colour, the ​‘cam­era’ moves. The light­ing is even its own thing. The show is a big pro­duc­tion on time con­straints, and so you can’t always obsess over all that. Not that the show doesn’t look good, because it does, but you have to set some things aside when you’re on tight dead­lines. They’ve also amped up the dra­mat­ic con­ceit, kind of a big­ger sto­ry than usu­al for Bob’s. I think you could watch this if you haven’t seen much of the show, and still enjoy the movie as its own very strange com­bi­na­tion of mur­der mys­tery, com­e­dy, and musical.

What’s the process for record­ing an episode, and did that have to be changed in pro­duc­ing a film? The rhythm and rap­port between char­ac­ters are so cen­tral to the show.

Since the begin­ning of the show, it’s been all group ses­sions, even in the demo for the pilot pre­sen­ta­tion to Fox. We were all in the booth, which could be a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion, because you don’t want bleed-over in the audio. We used lots of par­ti­tions, but every­one did the scenes togeth­er, still do. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to the pan­dem­ic, we couldn’t do that with the movie. This was a lit­tle more tra­di­tion­al, in that they backed into the audio record­ing which is usu­al­ly done first. This time, they had to ani­mate first, which I assume is like most ani­mat­ed movies. For us, total opposite.

It’s fun­ny, when you sing in char­ac­ter as Bob, you’re on pitch, but you also have the flat affect of the way he talks. Do you sing as Bob the same way you sing as yourself?

First off, I take issue with your asser­tion that I’m on pitch. There’s just no way. Maybe they’re Auto-Tune-ing me, some kind of pitch cor­rec­tion. I’d guess they do that for many of the cast mem­bers. But fine, I’ll give it to you that I may occa­sion­al­ly hit the cor­rect note. But I give myself a wide berth because when I’m Bob, I’m a ham­burg­er cook and not a singer. The show has got­ten more and more musi­cal as it’s gone on, and the movie has three real­ly big num­bers in it. They’re stuck in my head. But I don’t think I should sing, pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Maybe a John­ny Cash sort of con­ver­sa­tion­al thing.

What the Ger­mans call sprechge­sang.

Yes, thank you. That can be the name of the first album: ​‘Jon Benjamin’s Sprechgesang’.

Hav­ing lived with him for more than a decade, what’s your favourite thing about Bob Belcher?

Bob’s not entire­ly a pos­i­tive per­son, but he’s not a skep­tic. I like his decen­cy, his sup­port­ive nature, his will­ing­ness to learn from his fam­i­ly. He likes to encour­age the peo­ple around him, except for Ted­dy, and even then he comes through when­ev­er it real­ly mat­ters. I like the pos­i­tive qual­i­ties that he can embody. He’s a good person.

I only learned while prep­ping for this inter­view that cre­ator Loren Bouchard orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived this show as about a fam­i­ly of cannibals.

It’s pret­ty ground­ed now, but yeah, it start­ed off with a more arch con­cept. Fox talked him back off that ledge. The last hint of that is in the first episode, where there’s the scare about serv­ing human meat in the burg­ers. But it still goes to some more adult places, like the one where Bob dri­ves the taxi, meets the sex work­ers, smokes crack. We were part of this adult ani­ma­tion block Fox did on Sun­day nights, and so that worked for Loren, who came from Adult Swim. His work there pushed a lit­tle fur­ther. And yet still not real­ly a dark show, Home Movies.

Except for the inte­ri­or of your char­ac­ter Coach’s life, that is.

Heh, yeah. Coach is a far more mor­bid char­ac­ter than Bob. I think as Loren and I got old­er, his major note was often ​‘maybe let’s take it down a notch in terms of dark­ness, this doesn’t have to be a tragedy.’ I just tried to play Coach like a very sad alco­holic, like most of the coach­es I had when I was younger, play­ing ten­nis or basketball.

Bob’s Burg­ers has been pret­ty con­sis­tent for twelve sea­sons now. What’s the key to the show’s longevity?

To the cred­it of Loren, [exec­u­tive pro­duc­er] Nora Smith, [pro­duc­er] Bernard Der­ri­man, and the oth­er peo­ple run­ning the show, they’ve stayed close and hands-on through the run. It comes down to the writ­ing, and this is out of the ordi­nary in that I believe we still have most of our orig­i­nal writ­ing staff. There’s a lot of turnover, and we’re not total­ly out­side of that, we’re see­ing peo­ple who’ve been on the show for twelve years going off to make their own series. But on the whole, there’s a gen­er­al continuity.

Last thing – how do you take your burger?

I take it like a man, is how I take it. I shove the whole thing in my mouth. Usu­al­ly, I’ll try to eat it in one bite. And I’m not talk­ing slid­ers, either; a reg­u­la­tion burg­er. If I go to any num­ber of ham­burg­er-based chains, you’ll see me there as the man cram­ming the entire burg­er in his face. Maybe with a small sip of milk­shake to get it all down. That’s how I’ve always done it, and how I’ll con­tin­ue to do it. Until I choke to death, of course. Which has been the plan all along! Death by ham­burg­er. And that’s how they’ll know it’s time to end Bob’s Burgers.