Doug Benson
Douglas Steven "Doug" Benson (born July 2, 1964) is an American comedian, marijuana advocate, and actor who has appeared on Comedy Central Presents, Best Week Ever and was a contestant on Last Comic Standing in the show's fifth season.
In 2007, he starred in the film Super High Me, a documentary about marijuana usage. Benson also currently hosts the popular Doug Loves Movies podcast along with his weekly marijuana video podcast show Getting Doug with High. His Comedy Central series The Benson Interruption ended its first season in December 2010 and was turned into a monthly podcast in January 2011.
Personal life
Benson was born and raised in San Diego, California, to parents Wendy (Young), a pharmacy clerk, and Robert Matthew Benson, a former English teacher turned salesman. After attending Grossmont College, a community college in El Cajon, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Benson was raised Methodist.
Career
Early career
While in Los Angeles, Benson began doing stand-up after he and two other friends dared each other to. One of them didn't show, and the other one signed up too late. Benson claimed that "I went in anyway and did my three minutes of whatever I could come with and people actually laughed." At the age of 22, Benson began performing regularly as a stand-up comedian; however, it wasn't until 28 that he became a stoner, after a week's worth of gigs smoking pot afterwards alongside Brian Posehn and Greg Proops. He made his earliest television appearances as a stand-up in the late 1980s and early 1990s on programs such as Comedy Central's The A-List and Two Drink Minimum and was one of the featured comedians in the cast of Joel Hodgson's sketch-comedy pilot The TV Wheel which aired on Comedy Central in 1995. One of Benson's earliest jobs in television was writing for the MTV game-show Trashed in 1994.