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Regan’s comedy central to success |
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Written by Dan England
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Friday, 09 November 2007 |
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 Brian Regan’s heart pounded as the manager of the Fort Lauderdale nightclub took him back into the kitchen to talk about his act.
He had dropped out of college to become a comedian, and he auditioned for the club five times before the manager even granted him a trial period for two weeks.
The manager looked him over and finally said that he was funny. Whew! All that meant was Regan had five minutes each night, all for the price of a cheap drink, but the message was clear:
“It meant I was a comedian now,” Regan said in a phone interview.
That was way back in 1981, and Regan still remembers what he calls his first big break with a smile. That memory would help carry him through years of mild success and bittersweet disappointment of trying to get his own sitcom, only to be rejected while many other comedians got a break and found fame and fortune. Sure, he achieved his life-long dream by performing on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” and he did David Letterman every year and Conan O’Brien. He had a Showtime special or two. But Jerry Seinfeld got his own sitcom and is now worth about $765 billion.
So that’s what makes the Comedy Central offer that much sweeter. He is on a two-year deal, with two one-hour specials, and the channel is sponsoring his tour and also giving him the chance to develop a sketch show. After many, many years of being recognized as one of the better pure stand-up comedians, Regan is getting a chance to prove himself across America.
You can catch Regan’s act at the Union Colony Civic Center on Thursday, Nov. 15.
“It’s nice,” he said. “You can really throw your name out there in a big way. Comedy Central ... is based on comedy, and so they seem to think I have the jets to be able to pull it off. Little do they know I don’t have enough material to do another hour-long special.”
Regan’s only kidding. He IS a comedian, after all. But after you hear his schedule, you might think he’s serious. He prides himself on creating enough material so someone who watched his last Comedy Central special won’t hear the same jokes. That means not only working on his one-hour special but creating new jokes for his act on tour. Oh, and also developing material for his 2008 special. That’s a lot of jokes.
So Regan lives his life and tries to find the humor in it.
“I’m sure I look like a moron chatting into a tape recorder in my car as someone drives by,” he said. “But you never know when something taps you on the shoulder and says this may be a joke.”
His topics may seem as bland as a tuna casserole—he talks about things such as food, a doctor’s appointment or a visit to the supermarket—but Regan likes to present slices of life that most of his audience can relate to.
Whatever Regan does find funny, typically he’ll present it without the F-bombs that sprinkle many other acts these days. He doesn’t want to be known as a clean comedian. Seinfeld’s act is generally clean as well, but people don’t call him that specifically. They just call him funny.
“It’s not like I’m making a statement,” he said. “I just enjoy the challenge of trying to work that way. You can go to a swimming pool, and you can watch two guys on a high-dive board. One guy does belly flops, and another guy does precision diving. They’re both fun and entertaining to watch but for different reasons.”
The F-word can paint comedians into a corner, to the point where it’s hard to get a laugh without using it, Regan said. But billing himself as a clean act is dangerous as well.
“To me it’s like a G rating on a movie,” he said. “People will say, ‘I don’t want to see that candy-ass stuff.’”
Still, Regan doesn’t use many dirty jokes in his act, if any, and that can be more of a challenge than you might think.
“When I’m with my buddies, I can be so crass, people wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “They always say to me, ‘If people only knew how dark you are.’”
Maybe one day they’ll find out, although Regan doesn’t think so. He doesn’t plan on changing his style. He’s stuck with it, and things are going better than ever now. He finally has his TV show, or at least he will soon, when he gets around to developing that sketch show and thinks of enough material for his next one-hour special.
But getting a show was never the goal. He prefers the autonomy of his own act rather than bouncing it off a bunch of suits around a table.
He wanted his own show only so he could continue to do stand-up comedy and maybe play bigger theaters.
“Seinfeld has the following he does because he had that sitcom, but he still does a lot of stand-up,” he said. “I wanted the show so I could do more stand-up.”
Even now, as it was back then in that Fort Lauderdale nightclub, his goal is to be a comedian.
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BRIAN REGAN
Brian Regan performs at 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15, at the Union Colony Civic Center, 701 10th Ave., Greeley. Tickets are $35.75. Go to www.ucstars.com or call 356.5000. For more information, go to www.BrianRegan.com. | Only registered users can write comments.
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