Brian Regan and Joe Rogan dive into comedy’s evolution, from vaudeville to modern stand-up, with Regan crediting live refinement over sitcom stagnation. They explore the decline of ventriloquism (Terry Fedor, Otto & George) and hypnosis acts like Frank Santos, who induced real confusion in audiences. Rogan shares his bombing at a show and Regan’s philosophy of lifting energy, while critiquing online trolls and Kanye-style celebrity attacks. The episode ends with Rogan’s praise for Regan’s originality—his Dolby Theatre set on June 28, 2024, offering a rare chance to see a master at work amid Vegas’ chaotic spectacle. [Automatically generated summary]
Yeah, the residencies are very strange because they're intriguing in some way.
I had a conversation with George Wallace about it.
I ran into him at the Comedy and Magic Club.
And he's done with his.
He used to do one.
And the way he described it, it sounded like a lot of fucking work.
Like, a lot more work than you would think.
Like, you would think, well, hey, for him, it's great.
He just has to stay there, and he just kind of, like, does his show there, and it's no big deal.
Now, they, you know, they call it four-walling it, I guess, you know?
So, like, you have to fill that place, and you have to fill it all the time.
So you're always doing promotions, you're always doing this and that, and I don't know how much of that he has to pay for, but I believe a lot of it comes out of his pocket.
He's constantly trying to fill the place up and constantly trying to put billboards up and keep the place popping.
He has to do things in order to get people to remember him because he's not out there.
When you're on tour, you're out there.
You're in Cincinnati.
Brian Regan's in Boston.
Brian Regan's in Maryland.
You know, when you're in Vegas, you're just in Vegas.
I've thought about like a partial, never a residency, I don't really want to live there, but a partial sort of a situation where you do like a once a month show there.
I think a once a month show there would be kind of fun.
They have some pretty decent restaurants in Vegas.
That's one thing that Vegas has...
By far, like, that's the most impressive is the restaurants they have in the casinos.
Like, if you get a steak in Vegas at a big casino, it's going to be a banging steak.
I've never had a bad steak.
Like, Kraft Steak or Strip Steak, you know, the places in MGM and Mandalay Bay, or Nine at the Palms, like, you know, some of the best steaks in the world.
Was in town and texted me, and I had seen him out on the road six months ago or something like that, and said, hey, you want to go to the fight tonight?
And I've never been to a boxing match or a UFC fight.
So I was like, sure, you know, it seemed like something fun to do.
And I started Googling what boxing matches were in law.
I thought it was a boxing match that he invited me to.
The reason I know that there are no state taxes is at night.
You look in the sky over at the airport and you see a string of pearls.
There's about 15 little white lights.
They're all airplanes.
And they're all coming in, and they're landing, and every one of those little white dots is filled with people, and all of their pockets are filled with money, and they're coming to leave it in Las Vegas.
I mean, it's one of the only places we could think of where you're guaranteed you're going to have a bunch of people that are going to be risking their money, like, and then spending it and then going all...
I mean, like, it's a weird place when you think about it that it's based on gambling.
I think it's one of those, like, you know, there's like a house advantage, you know, like the house is like a 54% advantage, you know, like a 54 to, you know, you're 46. You know what I mean?
It's like one of those deals.
So that's probably how they get away with saying it, you know?
There was a weird case recently in New Jersey where a bunch of people, it was ruled they had to give their money back because they won...
A lot of money playing this game, and the dealer had forgot to shuffle, because the cards had come pre-shuffled.
And so somewhere along the line, these players realized that the dealer had forgot to shuffle, and so they just jumped their bets up higher and higher and higher every time, and then they wound up winning over a million dollars.
And then it was revealed that the dealers had made a mistake in some way, shape, or form, and that the players, by realizing that the dealers had made this mistake, were Somehow or another, it was invalid that they won, which is fucking hilarious.
You know, when you walk into, you know, whatever, the Venetian, you know, name a casino, and you see how opulent it is and how beautiful all the decor.
That's a lot of money, man.
They spend a lot of money on those fountains that you're passing.
I like watching occasionally they'll have one of these TV shows where they show how people cheat at the casinos.
And one I thought was pretty intriguing.
The dealer, it was like at a blackjack table or something.
The dealer was in on it with his friend who showed up.
And his friend was a cheater.
They were both cheaters.
So his friend put a cup of black coffee down on the green felt.
So the dealer who's got a black chip or two in his hand, in the palm of his hand, puts his hand on the top of the cup like this and drops the black chips into the coffee cup and says, you can't put that drink here and hands it back to the guy.
And the guy goes, oh, okay, and then takes his coffee cup back, bets $5, loses, wins, whatever, and then walks away.
Okay, you got 52 cards, you're watching the cards that get dealt, they get all shuffled up, and you just do like a mathematical calculation of probability in your head.
That seems to me to be like a thing that you should do all the time in life.
Drew felt they made a mistake, I should take the money back, even though I had lost it, or just leave it out there and bet on that same thing the next time.
Last, like, month before he died, like that month, somewhere in there, I was with him on a plane, just randomly.
And he just happened to be sitting right in front of me.
We chatted a little bit.
He was always, you know, pleasant.
But I know he was troubled.
That's just that one hit me hard because when I was a kid, he was a big influence.
He was one of my favorites when I was first starting out.
He was...
He was on Tonight Show back then.
I believe it was Johnny Carson.
It was Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.
And, you know, I used to watch him on TV on all those evening at the improv type shows or whatever it was, or HBO. And then I got to see him a couple times live.
He was really good.
He was really, really such a good joke writer.
And when he died, and it's just...
It just bummed me out.
It bums me out when people don't feel appreciated and you think they're awesome.
He was one of those guys.
He always wanted to be like Jim Carrey.
He always wanted to be some Jerry Seinfeld type guy that had his own show.
Instead, he was a big-time headliner on the road, selling out theaters and clubs, doing a lot of the stuff that you're doing, essentially.
But for whatever reason, he wasn't appreciated, or he didn't feel that he was appreciated.
But it was depression that led to what he did, and it's hard to know whether it was a career-related depression or just something so much deeper that people who don't have depression can't even relate to.
I mean, you could not have a more successful career than Robin Williams, and he kills himself because of depression, so clearly it's not necessarily career-related.
It's a much deeper thing that people have difficulty understanding.
And he's a guy that had this horrible reputation as being a joke thief.
I think in his case, talking to people that were victims of him doing that, in his case, that guy just had this deep desire to be loved and deep desire to please and deep desire to kill.
Some comedians, they just get kind of addicted to the killing.
And they're just trying to figure out what are the buttons I have to press to get this audience to light up.
As opposed to, say, a guy like Pryor, who, what he was trying to do was express himself in this way that you would think was funny.
And I used to feel bad for Robin Williams whenever he was doing little interviews, whether it was on the local level, you know, or promoing a movie.
Like he had to be funny in every moment.
And I used to feel for him thinking he's created this monster that when he's doing little local...
Not that that's a bad thing to do local interviews, but whenever he was being interviewed, I felt like he felt he had to have his foot on the gas with...
100%.
And it's like, I kind of wish he felt he could just be real and calm down and just answer without having to go...
You know what I mean?
So, I don't know.
And that's why I like the way...
Things are progressing.
I love this podcast concept.
I love the fact...
These kinds of atmospheres are allowing people to relax.
You can be funny within not having to be funny.
And I think up until...
This transition started happening.
There was a lot of pressure on comedians, you know, doing morning radio and stuff like that to just, all right, lights on, be funny.
Yeah, it's a fucking, man, I've been on, I was on one just a couple of years ago, it wasn't that long ago, where this fucking guy, man, this producer guy came back, and I would imagine what it would be like to be a young comic and to deal with this guy.
So the guy comes back with a clipboard, I said, alright, the guys want to know what bits you want to set up, what topics you want to discuss.
I go, dude, I'm not doing bits.
He looked at me like, what do you plan on doing on the radio?
I did a radio interview a long time ago, and, you know, I was trying to play the game, and it's like I set the guy up on a bit, and it was just this old bit I used to do, saying I went through the Burger King drive-thru, I felt like an idiot, I ordered a cheeseburger, they said drive around, so I drove around for about a half an hour.
But there's also a lot of shitheads that wish they were comedians.
And there's a lot of shitheads that, like, they kind of, like, they...
They either wanted to be comedians, they didn't have the balls to do it, or they're judging comedians, like, whatever it is, but you'll see them, like, trying to fuck with you while you're on the air.
There's also some people that think that there's only one way to get attention is through conflict.
You get those guys, too.
I've been on those morning shows, and they're just fucking...
God, it's just like...
But that's just what happens when you're out there on the road, you know, you're doing these local shows trying to pump up your performances.
And if I get into an atmosphere where I feel it's adversarial or they're trying to, I don't know, push buttons or see if I can come back at little lighthearted insults or whatever, I kind of shut down.
I just like to be a...
You know, fairly decent guy, nice guy.
I want to do my comedy.
You know what I mean?
I don't want to hurt anybody, and I don't want to be into those awkward situations.
When you have instant access to podcasts on your car, right from the car stereo, right from the factory, which you're starting to see now with Stitcher, and you're starting to see these integrated apps, and I know I'm...
Pretty aware that there's quite a few other companies that are interested in getting into it.
They're starting to prepare to integrate themselves with radios.
And a lot of cars come with Wi-Fi in the car, like cellular Wi-Fi.
But one of the things that was crazy was the guy was explaining to me that it has built-in cellular connection for Wi-Fi.
So you could set up a Wi-Fi hotspot in your car.
You could work from your backseat with your car acting as a Wi-Fi spot.
So if your kids are in the backseat, if it has a rear entertainment system, or if they have an iPad and they want to download apps or a movie or whatever, you can download it from your fucking car as you're driving.
I remember the first time I rented a car that had that GPS thing when it was first coming out.
And it showed, like on a map while you were driving, it had like a little triangle which represented your car, right?
And then it's showing a map as you're going.
And I had never seen that.
This was, what, 15 years ago when those first came out?
And I was like, wow, that's amazing.
And I wanted to see what would happen if I drove in circles.
So I got off the highway and went into like a Holiday Inn parking lot and just started driving in circles because I wanted to see if the triangle went in circles or if the whole map shifted, you know?
I want to try Apple Play, which is where it pretty much just takes your Apple screen on the GPS. So you have all the Spotify or whatever you have on your phone.
Like, They have these adapters now for, like, cars, so, like, a lot of, like, mine has, like, my health reports are all built into my stereo, so we're, like, uh...
You know, it seems like technology, things get easier to use, like more user-friendly, and then they go to another level where they get more challenging again.
You know, like when computers first came out, you couldn't work a computer unless you took a computer class and figured out how to work those deals.
And then they became user-friendly, where they're very visual and you just click, click, click, click, click.
Talk about televisions.
Televisions have gotten so complicated, I don't even know how to work my TV. Yeah, like inputs and shit.
Every single thing, you know, it's like...
Why is there like nine different configurations of the screen?
You want letterbox, you want widescreen, you want normal screen, you want 5 to 2 ratio, 3 to 7 ratio.
I don't even know, why isn't there just one thing?
Like drop cam, those little cameras, I put one in my bed so I can record myself sleeping to see how many times I wake up because it's got motion control so it will show when you move or when you make a noise.
And it's crazy how many times I will wake up and say something and then go back to bed.
It is crazy because, like, I talk a lot in my sleep, I guess, and when you do talk, it's like somebody else is talking but using your mouth and voice, and you have no recollection.
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Like, you weren't doing it.
Somebody else is controlling your body is what it seems like.
I've gone into his room before, like, when we're on the road together.
And I'm like, well, there's fucking penguins waddling out of here.
It's ridiculous.
Like, he takes his AC and he cranks it to the bottom.
He will take it, like, if you go to a hotel and it gives you, like, 30 degrees or whatever, he will literally try to get his hotel down to 30 degrees.
He's fucking crazy.
I've always thought, because he's, you know, he's very overweight, and I always say, like, it was probably, like, if you're walking around everywhere wearing, like, 10 jackets, like, you would want everything to be colder in your room.
There's actually some various work that's been done on creating some sort of a pill that makes it like where your body completely resets and you don't need it anymore.
There's a bunch of different options that the people have worked on, but I don't think they totally understand what's going on during sleep.
I think people that don't sleep, like they've done some tests on people where they've forced them to not sleep for like three or four days in a row.
I just wonder what the, I'm sure there are dream experts who work on this, but I'm fascinated with What's going on when someone's dreaming?
What is the purpose of the dream and what is it helping you with when you're awake?
If you have a dream that has anxiety in it or if you have a dream where you're being chased or any of these typical dreams that people have, I just wonder what is the purpose of that?
Your brain and your body is doing that for a reason.
Those work-related dreams are almost always related to actual concerns that I have in real life.
Like, I'll have work-related dreams that I forget my material, and it might be because I haven't been working.
Like, I took a week off or something like that.
And although I know, like...
Externally, I know like or I shouldn't say externally like I know consciously that like if I'm gonna do a show like say on Friday and I haven't worked for a week or so I'll do a few tune-up shows I'll do a show on Wednesday or show on Thursday I'll go over my material listen to recordings, but my brain doesn't trust that I'm actually gonna do that So if I haven't worked for a week my brain like dude, you don't even remember your new shit on stage Bunch of people hate to see you.
You don't even remember this new shit.
You're working on and In my brain, I'm like, I didn't remember my new shit.
Your brain's like, listen, fucker, you better stay on the ball constantly.
Any little weird thing that you might have in the back of your head that could possibly go wrong, that'll be brought to the forefront while you're sleeping for some reason.
They have those dream dictionaries or Bibles where, like, if you're flying, that means you're trying to reach something in your life that's, you know, hard to get to and stuff.
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Have you ever looked at one of those and tried to...
And I used to have the flying dreams, which I don't have anymore.
When I was young, I used to have this very bizarre recurring dream that I was the only one that figured out how to fly.
And it was all about, no, no, no.
It was a very gentle flight.
It was trusting a gentle breeze.
That's so bizarre.
I was the only one that knew it could be like a three, four mile an hour breeze.
I knew how to face it.
And trust it.
I had to lean forward into it, and then just lift my feet, and then I would just start kind of going up like a balloon, very gently, and everybody would go, what the hell is going on here?
It's a hotel that's really, really tall, and the elevator is really fast, and it's just like this old haunted hotel, and I always go to the same hotel, and it's not a real hotel that I think of.
But ever since I was a kid, exact same hotel.
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And I'll have that dream like once a year where I go to this weird hotel.
And he tells you the whole story about these people that got zapped by electricity, and a lightning bolt came and hit the elevator and killed them and turned them into ghosts, and now they're fucking haunted, and the elevator's haunted, and you go flying up, flying down.
Yeah, literally, your ass comes off the seat.
You have to strap in, but your ass literally comes up off the seat because you go down so quickly.
No one has any idea what the fuck is going on when you close your eyes.
You wake up in the morning and you've got a whole new day.
That consciousness, whatever it is, you know, unconscious consciousness, that state of mind, whatever it is, while you're sleeping, is very, very...
Like poorly understood we know that there's all sorts of chemicals floating around inside the brain while that's happening There's REM sleep and all these different neurotransmitters that are buzzing around your your system But we don't really know what's going on We don't you know when you have a deep we assume that it's connected to various Anxieties and wants and needs and those are like the source of your dreams But at the end of the day, it's a lot of fucking speculating a lot of speculating as to what's happening while you're dreaming mm-hmm software updates It could be.
It could be that we have this idea.
This is where it gets real weird, right?
We have this idea that everything that is in this world, where you touch things, and you pick things up, and you weigh things, you measure things, that that's the only way things can be real.
The only way things can be real is if you can measure them, weigh them, and put them in a box and carry them around.
But that's our own prejudice because that's how we live most of our conscious life.
We live most of our conscious life with very hard physical things.
But if you could just abandon that for a moment and just imagine a world where you don't have physical things that you pick up, would it be possible to exist only in a state of thought?
Would it be possible that The mind is another environment, or what you're thinking about in your imagination is another environment.
I've had many moments in my dreams where I'm trying to decide if it's real or not, and I come to the conclusion that it is real.
Okay?
In my dream.
And then when I wake up, you know, we're in a different plane of existence where I go, okay, that was a dream, but why wasn't that real while it was happening?
If I came to the conclusion that that was real while I was experiencing it, I mean, that was as real at that time as later when I'm awake.
Well, one of these days, I'm going to figure out how to do lucid dreaming.
I'm going to sit down with someone who actually is a real, legit lucid dreamer and have a conversation with them about it because there are techniques that you can practice and there are states of mind that you can get yourself into, allegedly.
I've never experienced it other than accidentally.
But when you have dreams, you can control those dreams.
And that you could navigate and create things that happen in your dreams be aware of the fact that you're doing it like that It's a skill and that you could develop it.
Yeah, I've never I've had dreams that are lucid dreams, but totally accidentally and One of the ways that I learned was one of those movies was wacky movies Like what the bleep do we know one of those through the rabbit hole or something like that?
But the guy was talking about lucid dreams and he was saying That you have them all the time, you just don't realize you're having them.
One way to determine it is in your real life, in your conscious state, when you walk through a doorway, Knock on the side of the door and say, am I dreaming?
Like every time you walk through a doorway, go, am I dreaming?
And because you do it consciously all the time, if you do it all the time, am I dreaming?
Am I dreaming?
You're going to do it in your sleep.
And in your sleep, you're going to get to a doorway and you're going to go, am I dreaming?
She said she would go somewhere in her head, but like leave her physical body and she'd be above her body and go somewhere else and be aware of it, and then she could come back into her body.
Either you're creating this artificial reality or maybe Look, you're seeing things, right?
Just because you can't, again, put those things on a scale and weigh them and measure them doesn't mean you're not having that actual experience.
So when you're closing your eyes, you're meditating, and you project yourself above your body, who knows what the fuck is really going on?
Obviously, we think that you're just imagining shit and the shit that you're imagining is not real, but it might very well be that we're just so enamored by this state of things being solid that we don't think that unless you could touch something and feel it and put it on a scale and measure with a tape ruler, it's not real.
Well, I contest that in the sense that people want to do things to make themselves feel better, and sometimes they feel if they look better, they're going to feel better.
Nobody questions somebody when they comb their hair or brush their hair or wear contacts instead of glasses or shave their beard.
You know, those are things that, you know, could be considered selfish and vain.
But when you see someone and their face is no longer a human face, it's like a weird mask, a frozen mask that doesn't communicate right.
It gives you a creepy feeling.
The signals are all wrong.
If you talk to someone and you talk to, like, Really old person and there's lines all over their face and you're talking to them you realize wow this guy has lived 90 years 90 years on this planet like you could see it in his face But if you talk to that same guy and he's just frozen mask with silicone his lips Everything like it's fucking strange because you're not you're not getting in there.
You're not seeing it It's like it's like you're talking to him through a really thickly tinted window Like I could see there's a person in there and they're talking to me, but I don't I'm not exactly sure what kind of expressions they're making.
You know?
You know that weird...
There's a weird thing that people do when they shut off the expressions of their face.
Did you hear the thing recently, this was like a day before the Oscars, that he was at a gym at 3 in the morning in Hollywood, and this guy was working out, and then Travolta just comes up and introduces, like, hey, how's it going?
The guy said that it was really awkward because at three in the morning this guy just comes up to him and holds out his hand and starts introducing himself.
And the guy was like, you know, I felt what he was doing.
It is every Celebrity encounter is a story, not necessarily something that gets into the media, but I remember living in New York and taking a train out to Chuckles in Mineola, I think.
And they put you in a place where they put you in a cab.
It's like five people have to share a cab from the train station to the town.
Well, three people, I guess.
So we're in the cab, and the guy goes, so where are you headed?
And I said, I'm going to Chuckles.
And they go, oh, you're a comedian?
Yeah, you know, you get into that awkward conversation.
And so this cab driver says, I had Roseanne Barr in the car.
And I remember driving by, and she was looking out the window, and she was intrigued by a mailbox that she saw in front of one of the houses.
And, you know, so there's like a nothing story.
But I'm thinking, Roseanne Bard doesn't remember this story.
But this guy, that's his Roseanne, well, Roseanne Arnold now, but, I mean, that's his story.
So, like, if anybody gets into an elevator with a celebrity, they will tell that story.
For the rest of their life.
The celebrity is not going to remember that particular elevator ride, but if you happen to be in an elevator one time in your life with Paul Newman, anytime Paul Newman's mentioned, that's your story.
I had a story that I talked about on the podcast because a guy in an elevator, me and my friend Eddie were in an elevator, and some guy was in the elevator, and apparently when the guy left the elevator, he said, take it easy or something like that, and we didn't respond.
Or if I did respond, he didn't hear me, I don't know what happened.
But he wrote this long, crazy post on this message board about what a douchebag I am.
Of bile, like spewed by this guy, but in some people's minds, like these encounters, like you talking to Roseanne Barr about a fucking mailbox, like it's like, eh, Roseanne Barr shits on people's mailboxes.
What kind of mailbox you got in Bel Air, you fucking cunt.
Like, for whatever, that's a strange mailbox.
Maybe she's just trying to make small talk, you fuckhead.
You could run into people, man, and just you zig when you should have zagged, and you run into someone who's completely out of their fucking mind, and then they become a part of your life.
I mean, that can happen.
You could definitely run into the wrong people, especially if it's a girl, especially if you're single.
You just, for whatever reason, start talking to someone, and it turns out they're fucking crazy, and then you, you know, that's the problem with men.
Men are willing to look past a lot of shit if a chick's hot.
Like, I know a lot of guys that have gotten involved with girls that are just completely out of their fucking mind, but they're pretty.
And they're just like, oh, you know, she's a little weird, but no, no, no.
Well, I used to live in a house in a cul-de-sac, and so there was more interaction with the neighbors, and now I live in one of those, you know, condo kind of deals.
So now I have less interaction with the other people in the condo.
But in the cul-de-sac, you know, one thing I liked about it and didn't like about the neighbor thing One, I'm not the kind of guy that just wants to have a conversation when somebody else feels like having a conversation.
I always felt weird about pulling up into the driveway and then Joe Blow wants to just walk up and just start talking about the water pump or something that has to do with the cul-de-sac.
Or even small talk.
It's like, well, I don't want to do that right now.
But one thing I did like about it is because it...
It was so non-show busy.
You know, I've got a lot of friends in show business, and I love them.
And, of course, they're going to be interested in their careers, and that's what people are going to tend to talk about.
When I lived in L.A., there was just a disproportionate amount of conversations about auditions that people went to and what they're up for and how they feel about an agent or this or that.
And that's okay, but it's nice to be away from that.
And one thing I loved about this just very suburban kind of cul-de-sac in Las Vegas was, you know, I'd come back from the road, right?
So I'm doing comedy and I'm doing show business, and I come back from the road, And there's neighbor kids riding their bikes in the cul-de-sac.
And the dad's saying, yeah, I put her bike together yesterday.
And it's just very real.
And I liked having the showbiz life balanced with a real grounded kind of world where not everything is about, you know, furthering careers and stuff.
There are times when I think, you know, I have the proper amount of just low-key thing, but I know there's a little piece of me, that little ego part of me that needs to participate.
You know, it like comes out of me sometimes.
Like if somebody has the wrong idea of Maybe what I've been able to do as a comedian.
I'm fortunate in that the people that come out to see my show, they're pretty cool people, man.
You know, I like meeting them after the show and they're nice people, you know, so I have no complaints there.
But every once in a while you're going to get a curveball.
And I was working at the Improv down in Irvine.
And I remember I had a pretty strong set, felt pretty good.
I walked off stage.
And this guy, like, walks, like, just beelined back to me, who was in the middle of the audience, and I felt, okay, I just made people laugh for an hour, you know?
I felt like I did my job.
And he goes, hey, didn't I see you bomb on Arsenio, like, ten years ago?
Some in that weird environment of the those shows doing stand-up on one of those fucking shows is so brutal It's so hard to first of all I don't know like if you feel comfortable doing like a real short set But I always feel real weird when I do five minutes like five minutes to me It's like I don't that's I have long bits like five minutes to me is just exploring a premise.
It's a whole different animal, you know I I like the challenge of it, but it's so different from doing an hour set, especially an hour set in front of people who you know they're there to see what you do.
But if I do Letterman or something like that, I'm walking out to a group of people who have no clue who I am.
Maybe a handful of people in the audience do, but for the most part it's like, you know, here's a comedian and you're walking out and on Letterman you get four and a half minutes and It's a very, very challenging thing to...
I describe it to people as...
People think of comedy as knocking down the pins.
Well, the hard part is setting up the pins.
There's no pins set up.
You're walking out to nothing.
You're walking out to nothing.
And you have to set up pins quickly and then knock them down.
It's one of the harder jobs as far as stand-up goes, is doing a talk show set.
It's one of the harder gigs.
It's like opening up, because when you go on stage cold and there's no one who warms up the crowd before you, you have to get everybody into the mindset.
There's like...
There's a thing going on.
The way I describe it is, it's almost like a mass hypnosis.
Like, when I'm watching a Brian Regan show, when you're killing, I'm thinking the way you're thinking.
I'm not thinking in my mind, like, man, he's doing...
Like, if I was in my own head, I was like, man, I don't like the way he dresses.
This guy fucking walks weird.
You know what I mean?
Like, if you have, like, you're going to get out of the mindset.
When a guy's killing, when you're up there and you're letting it loose, and everything's flowing, I'm thinking like you.
I'm allowing you to sort of control where my thoughts go, and you're surprising me with your statements, and those surprises are often really funny, and that's how you kind of get comedy going.
But when you're just starting out, like, ready, go, and you're doing four minutes, You don't get a chance to hypnotize anybody.
You just kind of got to hope that they're kind and they're receptive and then they think that your first few words are reasonable enough to allow you a certain amount of access to their funny thought.
I worked with a guy one time, and he had a bit, and it was a pretty good bit.
And I remember thinking, ah, it's a good idea, and he needs to, you know, work on that, you know, tighten it up and then get to that point a little bit quicker or whatever.
Years ago, I started at the comic strip in Fort Lauderdale, and Rodney Dangerfield was performing at the Sunrise Musical Theater.
And he came into the comic strip to do a guest set, like warming up for his big thing, you know, down the road.
So, of course, a small comedy club in Fort Lauderdale.
We're honored to have him.
He goes on stage.
Crowd goes nuts.
You know, it's a small audience, you know, 200 people or whatever.
He's like, hey, you know, thanks for...
I want to work some stuff out.
You know, I appreciate it, you know.
He takes his glasses out.
And I'd been doing comedy like six months at this point.
You know, I worked there as a busboy, and they let me go on late at night.
Now, here I get to watch Rodney Dangerfield.
He goes on stage.
He tells the audience that he wants to work on some jokes.
He takes glasses, little reading glasses out.
He takes out about 20 little 3x5 cards, and he reads them, half performing them, half reading them, you know, going, I just want to get a feel for these things, you know.
And he does them, and some laugh, some work, some don't work.
And then he leaves.
And I'm like, wow, that was interesting.
You know, he's working on his act.
I'd never seen a star comedian work on his act.
He came in the next night and said, hey, you know, can I do a guest set?
Of course.
He goes on.
Now there's no glasses.
There's no three by five cards.
Of the 20 jokes, he's doing about eight of them.
And they're tighter versions of what he had done the night before.
And it...
I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.
It's like when it dawned on me, this is an art form.
This is a craft.
And you can work at this.
You can...
Anybody can watch Rodney Dangerfield's end result and just laugh.
I don't know how to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen and come up with stuff.
I don't know how to do that.
The original inspiration has to be external.
I just have to...
Experience something or see something or read something.
So I just go through my normal day or life the way I normally would and things jump up and down.
It's like a kid in gym class, you know, pick me to be on a basketball team.
Something in life jumps up and down and you go, oh, that's weird.
And then you have your initial weird comedic view of it.
So the inspiration comes from an external source.
And then, all right, now I have the nucleus.
Then I can write.
Then it's like, okay, now I know what the thought is, the idea.
Now what words am I going to apply to it to get from beginning to middle to end?
And then that part could take a year or longer, you know, going on every night and changing the words, changing it, tightening it, switching it, you know, things like that.
I don't want to have that overly figured out either.
I don't want to lose that weirdness of hitting something right off the bat that I don't know if it's going to work or not.
It's a temptation to go to a surefire laugh.
And I usually do.
But every once in a while I'll say to myself...
I need to go out and do something relatively new that I've never opened with and see how it flies because I want to keep Exercising every muscle, you know, I mean there's a lot of guys out there who just Always open with the same thing and always close with the same thing and it's like I want to keep switching that up,
you know, you're also in is this place where you're doing these big crowds and You don't do other stuff like you're not doing a lot of television shows as far as like sitcoms or you're not doing a lot of movies You're doing a lot of these things so it's like You're constantly performing.
You're constantly, like, adding to this sort of database of jokes and material, you know?
I think it's really cool, because you were, like, trying to do the sitcom thing for a while, like everybody else, and then you're just like, well, fuck this.
Well, that's one of the cool things about what you've been able to achieve, where you do these really big places, but you're in this reasonable celebrity mode, where it's very reasonable.
I've hung out with you.
You walk around the casinos, and occasionally people will recognize you and everything like that, but it's nothing weird.
You know, you don't have to hide, you're not getting overwhelmed, you don't get chased and hawked, but you're packing these giant fucking places.
Like you have these fans, there's like this hardcore group of dedicated fans that will come to see you because you've earned them by traveling over and over again back and forth to these same spots and packing these same places.
It's a very bizarre situation because I don't know what the percentages are, but I truly feel like if you polled 100 Americans just at random, I swear I think 98 of them and showed them a picture of me or something like that, 98 of them would not know who I am.
Maybe 99. Right.
Yet, I do have enough people that will want to go to these venues.
I'm not exaggerating when I say how strange it is for me to be in a theater.
Say there's 2,000 people there.
And I do my show.
I could go a half a mile down the street to a Burger King afterwards and walk in, and nobody in there knows who I am.
And I'm like, how do these two disparate things...
How can I be big man on campus a half a mile that way, and in here nobody knows who I am?
And I realize, too, that anonymity is a commodity.
You know, there are there are celebrities who probably might not want to be as famous as they are in terms of just being able to go out and having a meal or something like that.
And it's like, you know, I don't have that issue, man.
I mean, I remember when you first started, like, really going on the road hard, and you started moving from clubs to theaters.
It was all based on repeat customers.
It's all based on people going to see you, really loving your material, really laughing, having a great time, and then say, oh, Brian Regan's back in town.
And then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and it slowly started building up.
And then, you know, I'd heard, I mean, I don't know how many years ago you started, like, packing these large theaters.
But I'm like, I kept hearing, like, dude, Brian Regan is just fucking killing it on the road.
The difference being that if you had a sitcom, like, maybe you would get people to come see you, but you would not have nearly as much time to perform and to work on your material, and your sets probably wouldn't be the same.
You wouldn't have the same level of competency on stage that you do now because, you know, you've been hammering that samurai sword for fucking, you know, decades now.
There's guys, and I don't want to name any names, but it's sad when you see a guy who took seven, eight years off to do a successful sitcom, and then they start doing stand-up again, and you realize they got soft.
Not just soft, but it's atrophy, just waste.
Not only did they not get...
Better?
They got worse.
Whatever that muscle is that allows you to do comedy and hypnotize those 4,000 people in the theaters that you're performing in, they don't have that muscle anymore.
It doesn't exist anymore.
It's all just sort of like slipped away from them, and there's like a ghost of what it used to be that they're trying to reestablish these embers they're trying to blow on and, you know, add good analogy.
Yeah, I mean, that's really what it is.
I mean, we were talked into believing that the only way to be successful as a comic was to do it the way Roseanne had done it or the way Seinfeld had done it, is take that stand-up and use it to parlay it into a sitcom.
Yeah, we just talked into a long time ago, like I said, especially in the 90s, we were talked into thinking that this is not it.
This is just it that gets you to something else.
Because that's something else like a lot of times a lot of fucking money like more money than you're ever making doing stand-up at the time Like they put you on a sitcom like when I was on news radio like all of a sudden I was on the sitcom and that was a great experience for me, but this it's being on a great sitcom is Even though it's a lot of money, this is not nearly as much fun as doing stand-up.
It just never will be.
It's also not nearly as much fun to watch.
If I had to choose between going to see you doing stand-up or watching you in a sitcom, there's no comparison.
And even though the stuff that you do, especially, your act is squeaky clean.
You're one of the rare guys.
It's universally respected as being one of the most hilarious guys out there as a stand-up by comics.
I did a show somewhere, and this family came backstage, including their grandmother, like this 80-year-old woman, and she said, So how long have you been in vaudeville?!
Yeah, I've worked with him a number of times over the years and, you know, it's interesting the way he...
I mean, I like that there are different people doing different things and he's like a joke joke guy and takes a lot of pride in that and that's fun to watch.
When I used to work in Charlotte, he used to live there.
And he would come out, and he was always very...
Cool and friendly and you know he was a college act at that time and you know I think he kind of knew the rap you know how many people like what some people think about prop stuff but I don't know I I like to feel like hey man there's all different ways of doing comedy sure you know and funny funny yeah he does he does props Great.
He's great at that.
And if you want to go there and just buy into that experience, he's going to be holding things up and it's going to be silly and funny.
I'll open the door to the possibility of hypnosis in the sense that, you know how like when you're watching a football game and all of a sudden the other team has the ball and you're like, I don't remember them punting, yet I've been staring at this TV screen for five minutes.
Obviously my brain went somewhere.
I missed the last few plays.
So maybe in life that can happen where somebody has the power to make your brain go away for a while.
I used to think it was total bullshit, until I watched this guy do it over and over and over again, week after week after week.
And then I became friends with him and talked to him.
He was hypnotizing people for weight loss and quitting smoking and stuff along those lines.
He just knew how to do it.
He just knew how to do it.
He'd done it a long time and he knew when people were under and when they weren't under.
I don't think you are, but I think there's some people that are just really open to suggestion.
And I think there's also something that happens when you put them on stage.
Because I think people get really weirded out by the fact they're on stage, the lights are on them, and it makes maybe perhaps some people even more vulnerable.
I get off stage, and then I see table tents on all the tables, you know, comedy hypnosis night, and people were coming up to me going, how come you didn't make us act like chickens, you know?
And I'm like, that's when I found out, you thought I was a comedy hypnotist.
I did an hour of total confusion for this audience.
Those moments when you're fucking tail spinning, those are some of the most painful and confusing moments in a comics career.
But in my opinion, those are like really important because they have all the big growth moments of my early career came after I bombed Bombed and then said okay.
I never want to fucking experience that again.
I gotta figure out.
What did I do wrong?
Like why did I what did I open with it sucked?
Did I not get them right off the bat?
Did it where's up?
Was I not loose enough?
Was I not comfortable enough?
Was I not having enough fun?
Like what the hell was it?
What what was I too cocky?
Was I too meek?
Like what what are the what's the what's the numbers?
You know, do you sometimes think it's the audience completely the audience like just you know that it's Friday night 10 o'clock show These people are all just in a kind of a the The audience can play a part in whether or not you have a good set or a great set, but the audience cannot play a part if you are really, unless it's just the worst.
Fucking horrendous group of fucking convicts, out on parole, all on meth.
It is possible.
But a lot of times you'll have a bad audience, but you can still get them.
And you'll have a good set.
You can still have a good set.
Sometimes you just go out there and it's magic.
Sometimes you go out there, and you just feel so loose, and the audience is so ready right off the bat that everything is just flowing and amazing.
Like, that was this weekend in Portland.
I did Helium, the comedy club.
I'm trying to work on some new material.
I'm tightening things up, so I like to go to comedy clubs when I do that.
I like to do a whole weekend at a comedy club.
You're doing those two shows on Friday, two shows on Saturday, and it was just so fun.
It had been sold out for months.
It was like all this energy in the air, and everything was great.
But then I did the Comedy Store like two Wednesdays ago.
There was no energy in the room.
Maren was on before me.
He was saying the same thing.
He got off stage.
I think he even said something.
You guys, you were there.
He said that, saying goodnight.
It was a weird lack of...
It was almost like one of these cross-armed audiences where they're like, They're not going to put out too much energy.
It's a Wednesday night at 1030. There's not much there.
I was at the improv one night, and it was a late show.
It was like a 10 p.m.
show on a Friday, and the crowd was kind of tired, and Brody Stevens went on, and he was on like last, and he took his shirt off and started running through the crowd.
He made them play music.
He took his shirt off, started running through the crowd, and he was taking his shirt and spinning it over his head like a helicopter.
I wouldn't say it's my favorite facet, but the thing about Brody is that facet, even though I don't necessarily like watching warm-ups that much, Brody has turned that into like a proving, not a proving ground, but like a training ground for him.
Like he's so comfortable just free-balling about anything and everything, and he knows how to like hit it and turn it into comedy.
He's a very unusual talent, Brody Stevens, and he's really good at that, that late-night spot.
Since I've been back at the Comedy Store, I've seen him do four or five of those late-night spots, and particularly I just waited around, waited so I could watch Brody.
They don't get anything out of it, but they're not balanced people.
They're not thinking about what they get out of it.
They're not looking at their life objectively, like, what is the effort to reward ratio to what I'm accomplishing here, or am I accomplishing anything?
And it's also the world where people have a voice that never had a voice before.
You used to have to earn your voice.
You know, if you were a great writer or a great critic, you were respected by all these people that sought out your opinions on things.
And so when they read your opinion on something, it was like, oh, this guy is a very thoughtful, well-measured person, and his opinion on blank will be interesting to read.
But now everybody gets to put their opinion out there.
I'm not saying that you need to confront people who are being negative, but I'm saying that the person who wants to be negative out there, it should be that person's name.
You know, in Facebook, it's very difficult to have a fake name.
But I think that ultimately, where this is leading is going to be this dissolving of all the boundaries between people.
People can reach you.
They can contact Brian Regan where they never could before.
People can reach, you know, someone and make fun of their celebrity speech, their acceptance speech.
People can do things, they can get closer to you than they've ever been able to do so before.
And I think, ultimately, the good thing about that is things like podcasts and things that couldn't have existed before, they take down this, like, There's a boundary between people expressing themselves and that expression being reached by other people.
You know, if someone has really funny tweets, if they're a really funny Twitter person, those really funny tweets can get spread around and all of a sudden they have 100,000 followers.
There's a lot of people like that.
They're just regular folks at regular jobs, but they're really funny.
And so just by quality, just by people, their ideas resonating with people, they have a vehicle that never existed before.
So it doesn't always have to be negative.
I think it's just so many people are disenchanted, and they just don't like life, and they're just depressed, and they don't like their existence.
And so they're looking to, like, shit on people and spread negativity as much as possible.
But what it shows is just that this vehicle exists.
This is something that we're navigating for the first time in human history.
And this has never existed before.
The ability to leave a YouTube comment, the ability to have a fake Twitter handle that's just an egg that they can shit all over Brian Regan after a show.
unidentified
Yeah, you don't think hypnotizing is real, you asshole?