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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast, More What You

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Hear Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive.
Greg Fitzsimmons is a stand up comedian and

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television writer and producer, a regular
guest on The Howard Stern Show, Chelsea

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Late Lee, The Adam Carolla Show, Joe Rogan, and many more.

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He along with several other comedians,
have gotten together and produced a show called

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The Road Dog, which is available
now on digital and on demand. You

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are a road Dog, Greg,
But what is The Road Dog actually about?

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Well, it's pretty First of all, thank you for having me on.

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I appreciate it. It's a movie
about a guy that has run his

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full cycle in comedy and he's on
the way down. There's no hope,

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there's no someday I'll do this.
It's just a drunk who's going from motel

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to motel and he suddenly is a
approached by a young man who turns out

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to be his son, who wants
to be a stand up comedian, and

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now he is forced to kind of
take him along. And so it's Doug

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Stanhope, who I don't know,
Do you know Doug it all? Yeah?

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Yeah, So Doug stars. Yeah. I mean he's great. He's

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got real acting chops, and the
script is funny, and nobody frowns.

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Nobody frowns like he does. No, he's a good frowner. Yeah,

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yeah, he's a he's just he
just sits in Arizona with a black cloud

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over his little ranch house, and
you know, and people just like the

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whole town comes and and he just
holds court in his living room for all

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these crazy people. And when we
were shooting it, we were hold up

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at a hotel by the airport in
Chicago and the only place to eat for

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like four blocks was an outback steakhouse
connected to our holiday. And he would

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sit there every night and you would
just think, all right, he's gonna

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be so he's gonna be such a
fish out of water. Well, after

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after a week, everybody on the
staff would crowd around him. All the

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guests knew him. He was buying
drinks for everybody, eating these horrible steaks

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every night. I was gonna say, how long did it take to burn

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through the menu? Yeah? Yeah, the the the the onion rings and

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if I have another blue that's what
it was, a bloom, yes,

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And the coconut shrimp and uh so, so we had a blast, And

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you know, it's kind of like
Doug's life. He's a guy who's celebrated

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being a drunk on the road,
who like hasn't sold out, who kind

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of looks down on crappy comedy that's
just trying to trying to get on network

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TV. And uh so it's it's
you know, there's a lot of there's

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a lot of movies that have come
out about stand comedy, but I think

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this one is like, this one
really captures the holiday inn comics, who's

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got nothing left to hope for.
Greg Fitzimmons is with us. The name

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of the movie is The Road Dog. Greg gets about a father and a

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son and the son wants to get
into comedy. I don't have any kids,

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but if my son came to me
and said, Daddy, I want

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to get into radio, and say, okay, I'll help you get in

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if you help me get out,
is it kind of like that. Yeah,

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my son. My son is in
college and last semester he told me,

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Dad, I'm I'm taking an improvisational
comedy class. I'm like, do

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you know the sacrifices that I've made
to put you through college? This is

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what you say improv. I go, here's an improv for you. You're

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at a job interview and you got
no skill. Go go some of the

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things you can hear that are going
to be funny about this movie The Road,

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Greg Fitzsimmons is with us. It
was written and produced by comedians.

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So when you guys are sitting around
a table, is it all laughs or

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is there some friendly competition where everybody's
kind of trying to out comedy the other.

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No, it was very friendly.
There was there was, you know,

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one guy who was very new,
The guy that played the Sun was

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very new, and he really is
a stand up comic, and he was

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like a puppy. He was kind
of taking our lead and trying to you

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know, trying to throw in funny
stuff. But then if it didn't work,

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we would just all, you know, grown annihilate him. And but

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he but he but he was sweet
and he was he was a pretty good

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actor. But like now, me
and Doug have gone back so far.

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We used to work on I don't
know if you remember, but the Man

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Show at Adam and Jimmy. It
was Joe Rogan and Doug Stanhope and so

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I was a writer on that show, and so I go way back with

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Doug, back back too. When
we run on that show, Doug had

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gotten married in the desert in some
kind of mystical peyote ceremony. The marriage

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lasted about forty eight hours, and
then he got thrown out and was living

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in the offices of demand show with
a clothesline running through the writer's room with

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his dirty laundry on it, bathing
an axe body spray every day, Yes,

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exactly. And so we saw him
at his lowest, and I shouldn't

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say that. I bet Doug's got
even lower than that. The Road Dog.

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It's available on digital and on demand, and it stars Greg Fitzsimmons along

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with several others, and it's about
the real experience of stand up comedy.

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Greg. Do stand up comedians know
when they've peaked? Do they know?

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Okay, it's time for me to
start looking for the retirement home in Arizona

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or wherever. That's a really good
question. I mean, I'm at the

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point now. I've been doing it
for thirty three years, and I when

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I was about ten years in,
I was hosting a game show on MTV

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and I had another show on the
USA network, and I had a development

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deal and I got interviewed by the
New York Times and they said what happens

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now? And I said, well, either I make it and I go

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big, or I crash and burn
and nobody ever hears from me again.

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Little did I know that thirty three
years later I would be kind of at

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the exact same level. I crawled
my way to the middle, and I'm

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staying right there. There's just you
know, like I don't. I'm still

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working the same rooms, which I'm
happy to do. You know. There.

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I go in on a Thursday and
I bang out five shows on the

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and I'm home on Sunday. I've
raised a family. It's become the new

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normal for me, and I don't
think it ends. I think it ends

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when I hang up my plates,
you know. I think it's like,

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if you build up a base of
people that like you, especially now that

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everybody has a podcast, you can
maintain contact with those people and give them

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new material and they'll come back and
support you every year, and as long

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as you hold up your end and
give them good shows, you can kind

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of keep on going. Well,
you kind of answered my next question.

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Do many of your brothers continue to
make it at the level of the holiday

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in comic. Yeah, I mean, look, yeah, don't get me

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wrong, there's plenty. There's plenty
of people that have slipped down. You

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know, there's A rooms, there's
B rooms, there's C rooms, and

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then there's the holiday in room.
Yeah. And when you get to that

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level, you're literally making just enough
money to get bus fair to get to

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the next town, or hitch a
ride with another comic. And you know,

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it's all about do I get free
dinner in the greed you know,

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do I get free case idias and
chicken wings in the green room? Can

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I take some home for my lunch
tomorrow? And you know, but at

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the same time, for that hour
that that person's on stage, it doesn't

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matter that it's a holiday inn or
it's a theater. You're still the guy

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or the woman standing on stage with
the microphone that everybody has to shut up

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and listen to. And you're a
star. You know, it's very powerful.

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If it's twelve people, you're still
you're still the headliner. And there's

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excitement to that, and and there's
women with that, and there's drugs with

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that, and there's still like a
crazy life to be lived Greg Fitzimmons,

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let you peek into living that life
in the road Dog. It's available on

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digital and on demand now and thanks
for bringing it to us and joining us

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today. Thank you so much.
I appreciate you having me on. Thanks

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for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember

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to listen to The Drive Live weekday
afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation