This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast, More What You
Hear Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Greg Fitzsimmons is a stand up comedian and
television writer and producer, a regular guest on The Howard Stern Show, Chelsea
Late Lee, The Adam Carolla Show, Joe Rogan, and many more.
He along with several other comedians, have gotten together and produced a show called
The Road Dog, which is available now on digital and on demand. You
are a road Dog, Greg, But what is The Road Dog actually about?
Well, it's pretty First of all, thank you for having me on.
I appreciate it. It's a movie about a guy that has run his
full cycle in comedy and he's on the way down. There's no hope,
there's no someday I'll do this. It's just a drunk who's going from motel
to motel and he suddenly is a approached by a young man who turns out
to be his son, who wants to be a stand up comedian, and
now he is forced to kind of take him along. And so it's Doug
Stanhope, who I don't know, Do you know Doug it all? Yeah?
Yeah, So Doug stars. Yeah. I mean he's great. He's
got real acting chops, and the script is funny, and nobody frowns.
Nobody frowns like he does. No, he's a good frowner. Yeah,
yeah, he's a he's just he just sits in Arizona with a black cloud
over his little ranch house, and you know, and people just like the
whole town comes and and he just holds court in his living room for all
these crazy people. And when we were shooting it, we were hold up
at a hotel by the airport in Chicago and the only place to eat for
like four blocks was an outback steakhouse connected to our holiday. And he would
sit there every night and you would just think, all right, he's gonna
be so he's gonna be such a fish out of water. Well, after
after a week, everybody on the staff would crowd around him. All the
guests knew him. He was buying drinks for everybody, eating these horrible steaks
every night. I was gonna say, how long did it take to burn
through the menu? Yeah? Yeah, the the the the onion rings and
if I have another blue that's what it was, a bloom, yes,
And the coconut shrimp and uh so, so we had a blast, And
you know, it's kind of like Doug's life. He's a guy who's celebrated
being a drunk on the road, who like hasn't sold out, who kind
of looks down on crappy comedy that's just trying to trying to get on network
TV. And uh so it's it's you know, there's a lot of there's
a lot of movies that have come out about stand comedy, but I think
this one is like, this one really captures the holiday inn comics, who's
got nothing left to hope for. Greg Fitzimmons is with us. The name
of the movie is The Road Dog. Greg gets about a father and a
son and the son wants to get into comedy. I don't have any kids,
but if my son came to me and said, Daddy, I want
to get into radio, and say, okay, I'll help you get in
if you help me get out, is it kind of like that. Yeah,
my son. My son is in college and last semester he told me,
Dad, I'm I'm taking an improvisational comedy class. I'm like, do
you know the sacrifices that I've made to put you through college? This is
what you say improv. I go, here's an improv for you. You're
at a job interview and you got no skill. Go go some of the
things you can hear that are going to be funny about this movie The Road,
Greg Fitzsimmons is with us. It was written and produced by comedians.
So when you guys are sitting around a table, is it all laughs or
is there some friendly competition where everybody's kind of trying to out comedy the other.
No, it was very friendly. There was there was, you know,
one guy who was very new, The guy that played the Sun was
very new, and he really is a stand up comic, and he was
like a puppy. He was kind of taking our lead and trying to you
know, trying to throw in funny stuff. But then if it didn't work,
we would just all, you know, grown annihilate him. And but
he but he but he was sweet and he was he was a pretty good
actor. But like now, me and Doug have gone back so far.
We used to work on I don't know if you remember, but the Man
Show at Adam and Jimmy. It was Joe Rogan and Doug Stanhope and so
I was a writer on that show, and so I go way back with
Doug, back back too. When we run on that show, Doug had
gotten married in the desert in some kind of mystical peyote ceremony. The marriage
lasted about forty eight hours, and then he got thrown out and was living
in the offices of demand show with a clothesline running through the writer's room with
his dirty laundry on it, bathing an axe body spray every day, Yes,
exactly. And so we saw him at his lowest, and I shouldn't
say that. I bet Doug's got even lower than that. The Road Dog.
It's available on digital and on demand, and it stars Greg Fitzsimmons along
with several others, and it's about the real experience of stand up comedy.
Greg. Do stand up comedians know when they've peaked? Do they know?
Okay, it's time for me to start looking for the retirement home in Arizona
or wherever. That's a really good question. I mean, I'm at the
point now. I've been doing it for thirty three years, and I when
I was about ten years in, I was hosting a game show on MTV
and I had another show on the USA network, and I had a development
deal and I got interviewed by the New York Times and they said what happens
now? And I said, well, either I make it and I go
big, or I crash and burn and nobody ever hears from me again.
Little did I know that thirty three years later I would be kind of at
the exact same level. I crawled my way to the middle, and I'm
staying right there. There's just you know, like I don't. I'm still
working the same rooms, which I'm happy to do. You know. There.
I go in on a Thursday and I bang out five shows on the
and I'm home on Sunday. I've raised a family. It's become the new
normal for me, and I don't think it ends. I think it ends
when I hang up my plates, you know. I think it's like,
if you build up a base of people that like you, especially now that
everybody has a podcast, you can maintain contact with those people and give them
new material and they'll come back and support you every year, and as long
as you hold up your end and give them good shows, you can kind
of keep on going. Well, you kind of answered my next question.
Do many of your brothers continue to make it at the level of the holiday
in comic. Yeah, I mean, look, yeah, don't get me
wrong, there's plenty. There's plenty of people that have slipped down. You
know, there's A rooms, there's B rooms, there's C rooms, and
then there's the holiday in room. Yeah. And when you get to that
level, you're literally making just enough money to get bus fair to get to
the next town, or hitch a ride with another comic. And you know,
it's all about do I get free dinner in the greed you know,
do I get free case idias and chicken wings in the green room? Can
I take some home for my lunch tomorrow? And you know, but at
the same time, for that hour that that person's on stage, it doesn't
matter that it's a holiday inn or it's a theater. You're still the guy
or the woman standing on stage with the microphone that everybody has to shut up
and listen to. And you're a star. You know, it's very powerful.
If it's twelve people, you're still you're still the headliner. And there's
excitement to that, and and there's women with that, and there's drugs with
that, and there's still like a crazy life to be lived Greg Fitzimmons,
let you peek into living that life in the road Dog. It's available on
digital and on demand now and thanks for bringing it to us and joining us
today. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on. Thanks
for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation