Mike Epps has taken his act to Hollywood

If Mike Epps lacks anything as a comedian, it isn't confidence. Epps, who plays the Comedy Connection on Sunday and Monday, says he first started telling jokes when he was 19. Two weeks later he decided he needed to leave his native Indiana for a bigger city to make it as a stand-up. That's when he set off for Atlanta with dreams of being the hottest comic in town. When he got there, though, he found a scene already swinging with talented young performers at the beginning of their careers, formidable talents such as Chris Tucker and Bruce Bruce.

"I went down there and tried to be the man, but I was a little green," Epps says. His learning curve proved steep, but he graduated to the New York scene at 21, where he says he learned his chops for a run at Hollywood and a film career. Now 33, Epps has logged 10 movie appearances in four years. He credits his years in the clubs with sharpening his acting skills.

Epps is sometimes gruff, always plain-spoken, and far from some of the characters he has played in Ice Cube's last two "Friday" movies or in last year's "The Fighting Temptations." Acting is his career goal, stand-up is therapy. "I get to go onstage and talk about my problems and make them funny. But the [stuff] ain't funny to me, really, on the inside," he says, laughing.

As an actor, Epps is still finding his way. He'll play comic relief in this fall's "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" and will start filming the Art Carney role in a film adaptation of "The Honeymooners" in August opposite Cedric the Entertainer, but Epps would welcome the opportunity to do something more serious. "I'm still young in the business and young in the game," he says. "I'm trying to become a better actor. And if I could have the opportunity to do something a little avant-garde and a little different than what I had been doing, that'd be appreciated, too."

A clean breakthrough? The other half of this weekend's Comedy Connection bill is Brian Regan, who plays tonight through Sunday. Regan is amid the throng of comedians trying to get his own sitcom. He's a veteran of the process, having had several such opportunities, but he has never scored a pilot that saw network air time.

He's hesitant to talk about details involving a prospective show's premise or network and imagines out loud what an article might say about him right now.

" `Brian has some sort of thing maybe might be happening sort of,' " he says, laughing and apologizing.

Suffice to say that Regan thinks he finally has a team behind him that knows his comedy, and he likes his chances this time around. "At least I'm going to be able to get a crack at the plate," he says. "We'll see what happens with that. I've had these deals before, and obviously, they haven't panned out so far."

Regan is somewhat of a rarity on the stand-up circuit -- he's a devastatingly funny comic who also happens to work mostly clean. He's an everyman talking about everyday things without ever lapsing into trite observational territory. In a post-wardrobe-malfunction world, that may be a combination networks can't afford to pass up. But his clean reputation could also work against him. Talent doesn't get nearly as much attention as controversy.

"Maybe that'll make it easier for people to envision having a show around me, where they don't have to worry about things being too edgy or too biting for the general public," he says. "But at the same time, I still want to feel like whatever I do is edgy, if not in a dirty sense, but in a creative sense."

The end of "Friends" and "Frasier" and a dearth of bona fide new hits leaves a lot of room for Regan to slip into the schedule somewhere, but Regan is wary and hopeful at the same time and can't help adding a little sarcasm at his own expense. "The landscape is right now for Brian Regan to hop into prime time and take over the creative world," he says.

Around town Ira Proctor opens for Brian Regan and Dominique for Mike Epps at the Connection. . . . Monday is "Comedy Cover Night" at the Milky Way Lounge and Lanes, starring Peter Dutton, Dan Sally, Alana Devich, Dan Sulman, Myq Kaplan, Gregg Thibodeau, Lainey Schulbaum . . . The Walsh Brothers have brought back "The Great and Secret Show" Thursday nights at 10 at ImprovBoston in Inman Square. The brothers had retooled the show, hoping to work on their duo act, and dropped the name in February. They've taken up the name again, and their supporting cast will be contributing sketches.