My Chat With Brian Regan: Comedy, Wordplay, and Kindness
Audio / transcript
Issue No. 34
This week, I chat with one of comedy’s all-time greats—Brian Regan. Truly, a comedian’s comedian. I got his thoughts on wordplay, truthfulness in art, the craft of comedy writing, and kindness.
Here’s a short sample of the recording. Paid subscribers, you can listen to the full audio recording of the conversation at the very bottom of this issue. (I’m a huge fan of his, so forgive me for being a bit nervous.) I’ll send out a separate audio-only issue to paid subscribers a little later today.
Kindness is a big reason I was drawn to Brian’s work two decades ago. He has remained consistent with acts that bring everyone along for the ride. I admire anyone who can be top of their game and also not lose sight of the most important thing under heaven, in my view—the well-being of the individual human.
Brian is currently touring. You can find his tour dates at brianregan.com. I’m really excited to see him perform live for the very first time.
AA: I wanted to start with language, Brian, since it's a big part of your act. I heard you once say that your first experience with comedy was you seeing a funeral procession and asking your dad if he had ever seen a “real-live dead man” before. And your dad couldn't stop laughing, and that's when you realized the oddness of language. From that point on, how did you develop that sensitivity to language that you're known for, or did you find that it came naturally?
BR: Words are very important. And I was always interested in how—George Carlin felt the same way. George Carlin always talked about words and how important words were. So as far as my act, I'm thinking this through as you're asking it, because part of it feels like it's natural to me to want to pick a more interesting word, but I know that in my comedy, I also apply a craft to it and that I go out of my way to try to find a more interesting word to convey something.
For example, like if I come up with a joke and the idea of the joke works I might try it on stage and go okay the idea of that joke worked then the next day I will say what is a more interesting way to say that are there words that will pop better than what I said the previous night and it's—I like knowing the fact that there's a huge dictionary filled with thousands and thousands of words. Why not try to use them?
AA: I know one thing you do is you kind of try and take words and then interpret them literally. And then sometimes that makes them funny. Sometimes you kind of use words that don't make sense next to each other and you put them next to each other. Do you have a catalog of patterns that you kind of have in the back of your head and that you look for?
BR: I try to resist figuring out how to do comedy because I want it to be coming from different perspectives, even the style of comedy.
There are jokes that I do where I want to be the naive person in the joke. And then there are other jokes where I want to be a smart observer in the joke. And so I never want my audience to feel like they can figure out a pattern.
I want to be able to do one joke that is an observational joke and then the next joke to be something silly and offbeat that doesn't fit with the previous joke and I find that it's more fun for me to do it that way and I find that it keeps an audience engaged, you know, they can't figure out a pattern. I don't want it to be a pattern and I don't want the audience to figure out a pattern
AA: I love that phrase you used—the smart observer—I've heard you use it before in interviews. Did that come about as a reaction to people trying to pigeonhole you, or was it always kind of your intention to have that be your onstage persona?
BR: When I first started to become kind of known, if you will, I remember early articles about me focusing on, he's the dumb guy—he plays the dumb guy, he's the victim. And that was true, but I didn't want the comedy to be only from that perspective. I wanted people to realize that I am aware that I feel dumb.
I don't want to be naive. I don't want the person on stage to be a naive person that the audience laughs at. I want the person on stage to be cognizant enough to know what I'm experiencing. Yes, I might feel dumb, but I'm aware of it.
And then I moved beyond the feeling dumb jokes to being the observer who makes fun of other people who might be dumb.
I don't want to be the only dumb guy in the world in my comedy.
AA: Yeah.
BR: There are other people who need to be made fun of as well.
One of my favorite compliments after a show, obviously comedians want people in the audience to think that their stuff is funny, and that's a tremendous compliment. But one of the compliments that I really enjoy hearing is, wow, a lot of what you did was new.
So they were hearing stuff that they hadn't seen me do before. I want it to be funny as well, but I like knowing that it's new and under the umbrella of new. Hopefully, I'm hitting things from a perspective that they weren't familiar with.
AA: I think it was the Netflix special that I watched where I felt like there was a lot of new material there, things that I'd not seen you do before. So I saw you talk about topical events like the war in the Middle East, and political stuff I'd not seen you touch on.
But even when you did that, I felt it was masterful because it was so balanced and it didn't split the room, which I think is a gift that you have. I'm curious what goes into the writing process or the editing process to ensure that your comedy, even when it veers into the topical or the potentially divisive, everyone's still laughing and enjoying themselves.
BR: Well, I appreciate that very much. I never want someone in my audience to say to themselves, I wish I had not come tonight. I don't ever want to belittle anyone’s point of view. That doesn't mean I don't have a point of view, and I like to uh hint at where I stand on things.
My point isn't to have people agree with me, my point is to have people understand that there are different ways of looking at things. And if we can all laugh at something, no matter what side you're on, hopefully that's cathartic.
I'm doing jokes lately in my act about guns. And, you know, right when I bring up the topic, I can feel the audience pulling back like, oh boy, where is he going with this?
And one of my jokes that doesn't get as big of a laugh as I would like but it means something to me, is I say, “I'm the only person I know in the middle on guns,” and I say, in fact, I went to a convention for people in the middle on guns, and I was the only one in the ballroom. And I just do a visual of a guy just standing there by himself, having a cocktail, looking around, and nobody's in the room.
And I like it because I feel like it makes a statement, you know. The pro-gun and the anti-gun people are obviously louder and everyone knows about them, but there are people who are kind of on the line and they exist as well, but they don't get the attention.
AA: You mentioned George Carlin earlier, and I read somewhere that he was an influence on you. I think you and Carlin are excellent at shining a light on the absurdity of language. So Carlin had his “soft language” routine that I think is timeless. One difference between you and Carlin is that I feel you never tell the audience what to think, whereas Carlin was more of a critic, maybe even a cynic sometimes about the world. Was that an intentional choice on your part to focus on describing the world as it is versus making a case for how it ought to be?
BR: Well, in some ways I do, at least in terms of etiquette and behavior. I think I try to push in there the way I think things ought to be in terms of human behavior. You know. I wish we were all considerate of each other and I like to poke fun of boorish behavior.
But, yeah, it's, it's always been an interesting—I don't know, my whole career, I've always wondered, well, what is my, what am I doing on stage? Am I trying to teach? Am I trying to have people think what I think, you know, at the end of the day— obviously, it's just to make people laugh, but that's such a wide net, you know.
Of course every comedian wants everybody to laugh in the audience but I like people to feel good, you know. There's a difference between laughing at and laughing with. And I've always preferred the laughing with kind of comedy.
I never liked the kind of comedy where there's 10 people in a circle and one person makes fun of one person in the circle and nine people laugh. But the person who was made fun of isn't, and they don't feel good, and it hurt that person. I don't like that kind of comedy, even though 90% are laughing at it. I want everybody laughing, even the person you're talking about.
Growing up, my dad was a very loving man, but he was a very funny man, and he was that way. Like, he could make light of people, but in a way that they laughed and felt good. Once you cross the line into making fun of somebody where they don't also laugh, I've never been into that.
AA: I think that's why it's so universal, at least for English-speaking audiences. Which brings me to another question, Brian. Do you know if your work has been translated?
BR: Well, it's interesting. I've never really looked into that. I think it's something that I would like to try to figure out, how people respond to it. And when it's translated into another language.
Occasionally I'll be doing a show and there's a signer who is signing to a person who can't hear and I know certain jokes are like puns or whatever, and I'm curious, well, how do you translate a pun in sign language, you know?
And I remember one time, I'm on stage, and there's a signer on stage, a woman off to my right, and she's signing to a person in the audience. And I'm doing something where I'm making like a really goofy face in the joke. And I remember wondering, I wonder what she's doing?
And I looked over at her, and she was just pointing at me. She's like—I'm not going to try to duplicate that. Look at his face. And I found that so funny. I was like, okay, that's one way to interpret it. Just point at the guy making the silly face!
AA: Just look at the comic.
BR: Yeah!
AA: Do you improvise at all on stage? I feel like your act is so well scripted. And sometimes when things are so well scripted, they feel like they're improvised. But do you improvise at all on stage?
BR: A little bit, not that much. I do like to not know how I'm getting from one chunk to the next. You know, if I do five minutes on sports, I don't necessarily want to know where I'm going after that so that the transition is natural and real. I always want to make sure that I'm in the moment on stage when I'm telling the jokes, of course, but the moments in between.
I see acts sometimes and I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but sometimes I'll watch a comedian and I feel like they're reciting. They're reciting their memorized show to the audience and I feel like they're not getting as much out of it as they could. When you're saying something on stage you want to make it feel like you're saying it for the first time even though you may have said it a thousand times.
And as far as improvising, that's why I try to have the enough moments in there where I do have to improvise, to be real and in the moment. And I think people are drawn into somebody actually being there in front of them.
AA: Are there things that you've taken out of your act, either because they didn't work or you had second thoughts about them? I remember, I think it was, I forget which interview it was, where you said that you would tape your earlier shows, early in your career.
BR: Yeah, yeah. I've... You know, I've had jokes... some years ago, you know, when I first started, I've always tried to be kind and a good person, but when I first started, I was kind of naive and not realized that certain things that I was saying might be hurtful to people. Even though in my mind there, something might just be silly or goofy, so I have dropped some things over the years where I'm like, even if something gets a laugh, if it's hurting someone, it's not worth it, you know?
I was telling my girlfriend the other day that I had a joke a long time ago and I did kind of like an over-the-top stereotypical Asian-like accent And a comedian friend was doing a guest set, Henry Cho. And he, when we got off stage, he was like joking with me, you know, going, making fun of the fact that I was doing this accent. And he goes, you know, when are you going to drop that out of your accent? And I did.
You don't want cheap, easy stuff. You want it to be earned. And then when you realize, well, maybe somebody could be offended by that accent. So I'll drop it. You know what I mean?
AA: One last question, Brian. Did you ever think when you were starting out that you would end up many years, many decades later at a place where you've influenced so many comedians and had such an impact on people?
BR: Certainly not when I started, no. No. Gosh, I just—I hoped to be able to make a living at it.
When I first started, my fantasy was to be able to go around the country and do comedy and if they would give me a hundred dollars at the end of the night I'd be set and so that was that was my goal was to get to where I could make a hundred dollars doing my comedy.
And then along the way, I was fortunate enough to develop a following amongst fans, which is great. To have the respect of my peers means the world to me. It means that, gosh, I must be doing something right.
It's incredibly rewarding to do something and find out that other people who do what you do tip their hat your way. And it's a very, very satisfying feeling.
AA: Well, I'm grateful for your work, Brian, and I've really enjoyed this conversation, and it's great to hear about your perspective on various things. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really enjoyed it.
BR: Absolutely. I really enjoyed it very much. You have a terrific day.
One last thing
I open-sourced the project I shared last time about the oddness of Silicon Valley vernacular. You’ll be able to tap through all 100 playing cards right from the website.
There wasn’t enough interest in the physical project to justify the manufacturer’s minimum order quantity of 1,000 boxes. I’ll keep the Kickstarter launching soon page active and will definitely follow-through on the idea to make a physical version of the game if I see an uptick in interest.
Scrivener is an editor I’ve been using for writing, off and on, for the past decade. The last time I seriously used it was over the summer, when I had a personal goal of writing 70,000 words in under two months. It comes with excellent tools to help you focus while writing, to help you track your progress toward a target every day, and to help you move sections and chapters around with ease. I highly recommend it. (The link is an affiliate link. If you click it and end up buying the app, I’ll get a small fee.)
Want to feature your product here? Email 💌 press@almossawi.com
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
―Aldous Huxley
I’m putting together a lineup of guests for this coming year. They’ll be interviews with experts who despite coming from different disciplines, all work with language (how we talk to ourselves and each other) and with thinking (how we think about ourselves and each other). If you have suggestions for guests I should talk to (even if it’s you), feel free to reach out to me at ali@almossawi.com.
Until next time.
Be well,
Ali
The audio recording of my chat with Brian:
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