User:Lawikitejana/Greg Benson

Greg Benson (born Gregory Charles Benson in Dallas County, Texas ) is an American comedian, actor, and director of short films. His production company, Mediocre Films, promotes its creations via YouTube and MySpace.

History
Born in Dallas, Texas, Benson graduated from W. T. White High School in 1986. Eventually he moved to California, where he has since appeared in several television commercials for companies that included electronics retailer Best Buy, Kia automobiles, Blue Cross Blue Shield medical insurance and Lean Pockets frozen sandwiches. Benson is a sometime member of the ACME Comedy Theater improv troupe in Hollywood, where he first worked with writer/actor Wil Wheaton, who has since appeared in various of Benson's projects.

He started making videos in 2005, initially putting them up on his own Mediocre Films web site. Eventually he moved his distribution from his own site to YouTube, where within one month one of his shorts, "Greg Hits Hollywood," was featured on the site's home page. The video and its sequels feature Benson interviewing strangers as a pretext for hitting them with his microphone, to see "what people will put up with just because they want to be on TV, or even just YouTube." Since then he's become a popular YouTube comedian with over 272,000 subscribers, he's currently number 19 as most subscribed comedians and number 53 most subscribed all time. His most popular video as of early 2009 was episode 1 of the Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, which was selected to be featured on YouTube shortly after being posted February 25, 2007, and subsequently drew nearly 2 million viewers. The series later was picked up by Sony Pictures, who continued the show through two seasons on YouTube as part of its "C Spot" lineup; one reviewer for The Times of London described it as "Pee-Wee Herman meets Monty Python via the hyperkinetic madness of Japanese television." Benson also landed a short segment role as a pet owner on an episode of the reality show "The Dog Whisperer" in 2007. Benson's most prominent directing credit is his work on the Internet series "The Guild," on which he worked again with his wife, Kim Evey, producer of "The Guild" and writer/star of "Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show."

Awards
His first video, "Coming Home," was chosen by Amazon.com customers as one of the top five videos of the Amazon/Tribeca Film Festival's short films division. His short "Phone Call to God" was chosen for second place in the Best Comedy division at the 2006 Evil City Film Fest.