Known to many as the mustachioed Deputy Travis Junior on the farcical Reno 911!, Robert Ben Garant first made an impression with audiences on the sketch-comedy show The State, which ran on MTV from 1993 to 1995. The show's bizarre and outlandish sensibilities gave viewers a taste of what was to come with Garant, who would take a break from film and television during the late '90s, only to return in 2003 to help create, write, and act in Reno 911!, which was a hit on Comedy Central. Garant then re-teamed with his writing partner Thomas Lennon to pen the scripts for Herbie: Fully Loaded, The Pacifier, and Night at the Museum. In 2007, Garant and the rest of the cast of Reno 911! brought their show to the big screen, with Reno 911!: Miami, and that same year, Garant put on both the writer's and director's hat with the over-the-top ping-pong comedy Balls of Fury. In 2009 he wrote the script for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
Robert Ben Garant
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- Described himself as a "punk kid" in high school, complete with a spray-painted car and a green Mohawk.
- Stated that his high-school theater classes are what got him interested in acting and writing.
- Got his start in the early 1990s writing for Jon Stewart's short-lived MTV sketch show You Wrote It, You Watch It, which acted out viewer-written mail into sketches.
- Cocreated Reno 911! with Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney; also collaborated with Kenney, Lennon and others to develop MTV's cult-classic series The State and Comedy Central's Viva Variety. The three met while attending New York University.
- Along with coauthor Thomas Lennon, published a guide to writing screenplays in July 2011 called Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!