If you have to pigeonhole a stand-up comedian (ewww, that’s gotta hurt), the genre known as observational comedy is the best way to go, because everything is fair game and the topics are universal. George Carlin took a scatological approach while Jerry Seinfeld is famous for mining something out of nothing, and their respective shticks will be forever timeless. Brian Regan is in good company here, as his Everyman grabs guffaws from everyday stuff. He’ll bring his current tour to the Mulroy Civic Center’s Crouse-Hinds Concert Theater, 411 Montgomery St., on Sunday, Nov. 11, for a 7 p.m. show. Tickets are $37.75; call 435-2121 for details.
Since many previous interviews with the comic have accentuated his taste for clean chuckles, it might have been a relief for Regan not to have to answer similar questions during this telephone chat. From his home at a Las Vegas condo, Regan instead talked about his wonder years in Miami as the fourth kid out of eight siblings. “I do have that middle-child syndrome where I try to be the placater and make everybody happy,” he said with a sense of tongue-in-cheekery in his voice, “and pull everything together with laughter.”
Regan is no stranger to Central New York, having played the Crouse-Hinds three other times, and also logging long-ago gigs at the Wise Guys Comedy Club. And when he returns to Nevada, “I get into family mode. Other people are enjoying the Vegas nightlife, and I’m at Chuck E. Cheese with my kids.”
This interview was conducted after Hurricane Sandy made landfall, when David Letterman was telling mild one-liners about bad hurricane names to an empty theater. So it seemed like a starting point for the questions, especially since his supporting comedian was affected by the tempest. “I was in Detroit performing in East Lansing Sunday night {Oct. 28} and my opening act lives in Boston and couldn’t get home, but I was able to fly this way without any problems. But I know it’s a rough situation back that way.”
Q: When something like a Hurricane Sandy happens, do comedians say, “Oh, wow, fresh material for my show?”
A: You always have to be careful when something becomes tragic, when there’s loss of life involved, and you have to handle things with kid gloves. I remember years ago performing in southern California when there were some horrible fires that were out of control, and I was able to get laughs out of how the media was portraying it, you know, because I was making fun of the media. So it all depends on your point of view: If you’re going after something like that {the media}, it’s OK, but clearly, if you’re making fun of people losing their homes and stuff, it’s a different animal. So you always have to be careful.
I also performed, like, five nights after 9-11and that was one of the weirdest nights because I remember driving to the show and thinking, “This is ridiculous. Why are they doing a show?” And when I got to the comedy club, the place was packed. And you realize that sometimes people are looking for a diversion. It isn’t that they want to laugh at what’s going on; they’re overwhelmed with sadness and they just want to take a break from it for a moment. So sometimes comedy can be therapeutic.
Q: You mentioned an opening act. Will this be the same person you will bring to Syracuse?
A: I have about four or five different comedians I like to work with. I have a Northeast guy, a Southeast guy, a Northwest guy and a Southwest guy. {Laughs} I mean, that’s the rule of thumb. I have a guy in Boston, a guy in New York City, a guy in Florida, and then Los Angeles and Seattle. So depending on where I am in the country, I tend to use the guy who is closest.
Lemme see, Syracuse, who’s that gonna be. . . that’ll be Joe Bolster from the New York area. Funny guy.
Q: What performers did you open for?
A: Well, the biggest name would be Jerry Seinfeld. I was fortunate enough to open for him a handful of times over the years. It was interesting because I opened for him, like, the second year his sitcom was on, when his sitcom had not exploded into what it ended up becoming. We would fly from gig to gig and he was able to walk through the airports, sit at the gate, the whole nine yards.
But then I opened for him a couple years later when the show had become a huge hit, and it was like a different world. He couldn’t go to the gate and sit; they had to shelter him away and put him on the plane at the last second. Then he was starting to fly private planes more. It was interesting to watch that transition from just a really good comedian to a superstar.
Q: Years ago comedians knew they had “arrived” when they performed on The Ed Sullivan Show or Johnny Carson’s Tonight show. It’s not quite the same these days. Did you know when you arrived, so to speak?
A: It is much less clearly defined now, to give you an awkward phrase. {Laughs} Anyway, you are correct. Years ago there was no Internet, and only a handful of TV channels, so if you did The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, or The Ed Sullivan Show prior to that, it was a huge thing, it made your career. Now everything is a lot more fragmented. There are so many different ways of getting content to the people, but very few things give you that big splash anymore. It has to be more of a cumulative type of thing.
So like for me, I never really had a moment when I said {in a pompous voice}, “Today I’m a star and yesterday I wasn’t.” In fact, I don’t even feel like a star {laughs}, I feel like I’m just a comedian who is fortunate enough to have a following. But the average Joe Blow has no clue who I am.
I sort of have the best-of-both-worlds kind of thing. I could do my show and say “good night” to a lot of people in the audience, and then I could go a half-mile down the road to a fast-food place and nobody knows who I am. And I’m like, “Man, what a difference a half-mile makes!” Anyway, I think I gave you nine answers to one question.
Q: If you weren’t doing comedy, what would you be doing?
A: I would hope to be doing something creative. When I was a senior in college, I had a cartoon strip in the college newspaper and I tried to get it syndicated, but I had not yet learned the concept of tenacity. {Laughs} I sent my strip to one syndication company and they sent me a rejection letter, so I said, “Well, I guess I’m not allowed to be a cartoonist!” I wasn’t smart enough to just keep trying and trying. But if I wasn’t doing something creative, it would probably feel stifling.
Q: In a 2004 Syracuse New Times interview with George Carlin, he explained how he would create his latest tour, as he stayed on the road and kept dropping older stuff and adding new stuff along the way, and after a couple months he would have a new show. What’s your process in creating a new stand-up show?
A: Well, I’m not gonna try to compare myself to George Carlin. But oddly enough, when you were saying that, I was thinking, “Wow, that’s my answer. But instead of two months, it’s more like two years!” {Laughs} It takes me a couple years to come up with a new hour, and that’s about right for me. Every couple years I want to record something, whether it’s a CD, DVD or TV special, and then I feel like I can psychologically move on from that material. It’s like, “OK, that material is fully baked, it’s done, it’s recorded so it’s there for posterity, and I can move on to new stuff.” But yeah, you’re constantly coming up with new stuff and then old stuff is always falling by the wayside.
Q: But you’re not doing “take my wife, please” type jokes either. You’re doing longer, in-depth bits.
A: Yeah, the word is “bits,” I guess, some people use that. But I remember scripting out my act one time and coming to the realization that my jokes are really vignettes. I tend to have these little plays that last about a minute {laughs}; it’s me and a flight attendant, or it’s me and a doctor, or it’s me and an inanimate object, like an ironing board or a microwave oven. It’s a tiny little scenario that I act out and exaggerate. That’s sort of what my act is; I mean, I have other things as well, but that’s a big part of it.
Q: Yeah, I guess “bits” is something you would hear at the Friars Club. {Regan laughs.} How many road shows do you do in a year?
A: I’ve never counted them but I work every other weekend, and it’s four nights a weekend. So it’s probably a little over a hundred, which sounds like a lot but there’s 365 days in a year, so I’m home more than I’m away.
Q: What comics, past and present, still make you laugh?
A: Past: Steve Martin. I enjoyed him in a way that I didn’t enjoy other comedians. There was this mixture of silly and smart, like the character was an idiot but the comedian was a genius, and you would laugh on both levels.
As far as today, there are a number of comedians out there doing interesting things. Bill Burr is very funny and making a name for himself. Maria Bamford is a woman who does these off-the-beaten-path characters. So anybody who is doing their own unique thing, I tend to gravitate toward.
Q: Did you do any high school or college theater productions so you would be more comfortable on a stage?
A: In high school I was on the jock side of the tracks and played football and ran track. In college I straddled both worlds. I was a jock and played football for four years, but then I was in theater the second semester of each year. So it was weird; I wanted to wear tights year-round. The guys on the football team had no idea I was into theater, and the guys in the theater department had no clue that I played football, and both worlds were so disparate and it was fun to experience both of those animals.
The first play that I was in was Dracula, but I had the comic relief role of Mr. Butterworth, and that might have been one of my first experiences feeling that buzz of getting laughs. I had a very small role but every time I went out on stage I did these lines and the audience would laugh like crazy. And when I walked off the stage, I said, “Man, that was a blast!” So that was one of my first forays of into that standing-on-stage thing and going, “Man, I love this!”
Q: What costumes did you wear as a kid at Halloween?
A: Uhhhh, when I was a kid we used to have a box in the attic filled with Halloween costumes. I tell the story that I wore a pirate outfit five years in a row and my mom always likes to corrects me, saying, “Son, I wouldn’t have let you be a pirate five years in a row,” but that’s the story I tell and I enjoy telling it. {Laughs} So we didn’t go out and get a lot of new stuff, we just recycled old Halloween costumes.
Q: You did voice work on the Comedy Central cartoon Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist. Would you like to do more animation, like East Syracuse-bred comic Tom Kenny has done?
A: It’s
hard to say what vehicle is best for comedy. Some people find something
that works for them and some people don’t, at least in terms of
something beyond stand-up. Look at Seinfeld and how he was able to find a
TV show that was an extension of his stand-up. Then you look at Tom
Kenny, who was able to make a way for himself by playing this voice {as
SpongeBob Square
Pants}, and he’s great at it. Then you have Mark Maron, who has been
around for a long time and he finds this podcast niche that works for
him.
Some people are fortunate to find a vehicle that best utilizes their skills. I don’t know if I would ever find something like that, and if I did what would it be, but it would be nice to get something on TV that reflects my comedy.
Q: Can you remember the first joke you ever told?
A: I remember one of the first jokes I told was inadvertent. As a kid, I was in the station wagon and my dad was driving; he has a very good sense of humor and laughs at all kinds of things. We were driving past a funeral procession and I said, “Dad, have you ever seen a real live dead man?” And he just laughed for a half-hour {imitating his father’s voice}: “I honestly tell ya, I’ve never seen a real live dead man, son! I don’t know how your brain works! How do you think of these things?” And I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t meaning it as a joke, and then I put it together in my head: “Oh, a real live dead man. I guess that’s humor and I guess that was a joke.” {Laughs}