This Is Not Happening - Greg Fitzsimmons - Heckling the Heckler

- Tommy gets off stage and they go,
"Yeah, Tommy, come with us, guy."
And they take him around the corner, and the guy is
handcuffed to a chair, and they go, take a couple rips at him,
there you go, and he--
Tommy just lights this dude up.
[engine revs]
[dark electronic music]
♪
[mouthing words]
[gunshot]
[heart beating]
[roars]
[gunshots]
[growls]
[roars]
[growls]
[roars]
[cheers and applause]
- Hilarious man. You guys are gonna absolutely love him.
He's got his own podcast called "FitzDog Radio,"
give it up for Mr. Greg Fitzsimmons, everybody!
[cheers and applause]
- I wanna tell you a story about Boston, Massachusetts.
I started doin' stand-up comedy there, and it is the place
to learn stand-up because it's not--in Boston,
you don't perform for the crowd, you perform against the crowd.
There's a winner and there's a loser.
And when you first start coming up, it's, like,
you realize very quickly--it's saloon comedy,
and it's guys from Southie.
They go, "What are you--hey, Sully, Fitzy,
"what are you doing tonight, kid?
Let's go downtown, heckle some queers."
[laughter]
"Then we'll go down and beat up some colored kids.
Come on, guy."
So they come out to these clubs, and the comics are,
you know, these are bad-ass dudes.
And they--there was a lot of drugs, and there was a club
called "Stitches Comedy Club," and the comedians used to
sit at the bar and do coke while the watched each other.
They'd get paid 100 bucks cash.
They would immediately hand it to a guy,
guy would give them an envelope of coke, and they'd chop it up.
And the club told them they could no longer do coke
at the bar, and they had a strike for four days.
The comedians went on strike until they were allowed to snort
cocaine at the bar.
And they had a guy--there was
this one guy named Tommy, like, the best comedian I've ever
seen, this guy out of Boston.
I can't say his last name for legal reasons,
because this next story involves him perhaps committing a felony.
He was on stage, and some wise-ass from Southie,
he goes back and forth with him. Guy throws a bottle at Tommy.
Cops are in the back of the club, 'cause the cops
would hang out at Stitches, and so would the prostitutes,
'cause it was in the Red Light District.
So the back of the room was cops who were pretty much
on the take. The mob owned the place,
and so these cops happened to be in the back,
and they grab the guy who threw the bottle,
and they take him out, and I'm just thinkin'
they are throwing a beating on this dude right now.
But then, Tommy gets off stage
and they go, "Yeah, Tommy, come with us, guy."
And they take him around the corner, and the guy is
handcuffed to a chair, and they go, take a couple rips at him,
there you go.
And he--Tommy just lights this dude up--chest, stomach,
and he goes, "Yeah, that felt pretty good, thanks.
Now I'll go do a couple lines off the bar and relax."
So the first time I ever did stand-up comedy was at Stitches
at this thing called--Sunday nights, amateur night--
and they called it Comedy Hell.
That literally would be written on the marquee: "Comedy Hell."
And it was hosted by a guy named George MacDonald,
and he he would start the show off by saying,
"Welcome to Comedy Hell, where the dreams of a handful of
"road comics can soar as high as the lights on Broadway
"or crash and burn in that fiery pit
known only as Comedy Hell."
And I go up, and I remember my first time, I followed a guy
out of Providence who was dressed as a clam.
[laughter]
And he sang "Mannish Boy"-- "I'm a man."
But it was "I'm a clam." Get it?
'Cause he was dressed--I don't know if I mentioned
he was dressed as a clam.
And he kills, destroys.
The place, like... [roaring]
And I'm in the back going like, "Holy shit.
"I have no clam outfit.
I'm fucked."
And so I go up on stage, and I tank it.
I am eating it, and it's going so poorly, I'm between jokes,
and I overhear a woman in the front row say to her husband,
"The poor bastard."
[laughter]
It was worse than being yelled at, 'cause she didn't think
I'd hear it.
And so--so I work this club, and I become a regular.
And then I come in one Sunday night, and there's
a Jewish singles night that's in the club.
So they--all the--you know, these rich kids from Boston
have got the room for the night.
And so the room is filled with these kids, and then there's
one table for four up front with only one person at it,
and he's heckling everybody.
And it turns out that he is this guy from the Israeli Army
who's a cabdriver, and he heard "Jewish singles night,"
and thought, "I am real Jew! They will love me!"
It's like, no, they love the Jew-ish guy,
not the Jew-guy,
they want the guy--the pre-med Jew-guy.
And so he's heckling everybody, but here's the thing:
he's good.
He's like a heckling savant. He goes inside people's heads,
and he breaks them down.
There's a girl on stage,
and she--and she's bombing and he goes--he goes to her,
"You have loneliness in your eyes."
[laughter]
[screams feebly]
And another guy--another guy gets up, and he says
to this other guy, "You lack basic confidence."
You can't come back from that. Once you're told that, it only
gets worse as you try to say, no, I do have confidence.
And so I'm watching this, and I'm like, "Shit."
But I--what I've learned from watching Boston comedy
is you fight for that space.
You don't give that shit away.
So I'm ready, and I go on, I'm three minutes into my act,
and he goes, "You are [bleep] man."
[laughter]
Like I'm a superhero, like I should have an F on my chest
and--and leap over dicks, and so,
and I--and it does make you think, all right,
if he was so on the money on these other guys,
is that what people think about me,
that I'm a [bleep] man?
And I'm angry, but I'm angry at myself.
Maybe I should have--whatever, so--
so now, he calls me this, and so then I just go right after him.
I go, "All right, pal, you want to get in my head?
How 'bout I get in yours?"
I go, "You"--this is the worst thing you can say to a Jewish
person--"You are a bad Jew.
You left Israel."
[laughter]
And he says to me, he looks at me,
and he says, "Nothing more."
I said, "Really--nothin' more?" I go, "I want you to think
"about this: every time you're driving your cab down Com Ave,
"and some ugly American gives the 'Heil Hitler' sign,
you pull over, and you give them a ride."
[laughter]
[laughs] And the flames come out of his
eyes, and he just jumps up on stage, fist clenched,
comes straight at me, and so I've got the microphone,
and it's, like, it's, like, this kind of wire mesh,
but I don't know if you remember back in the '90s,
they were--it was big steel.
It was like a--it was like a "Game of Thrones" weapon.
And so I just take it, and I just--
I crack him across the forehead, and he is bleeding
all over his face. And the audience is like,
"What the fuck is happening?"
And then he comes at me, but now he's this stocky dude from the
Israeli Army, and he gets me-- he gets me into a headlock,
and does some Krav Maga shit, turns me around, and now my ass
is towards the audience, and they just see him pummeling
me while my ass goes in the air, and then he starts
spinning me like a helicopter. My legs are flopping around
the front row, tables are goin' down, drinks are smashed,
I'm screaming, crowd's screaming, bouncers--
bouncers are--they're out back smokin' a joint.
So it takes about three minutes of beating before finally
these guys come on stage, and they grab this guy,
who's name was Simpka, by the way.
I remember his name was Simpka, 'cause I remember telling him
that was the name of the village idiot in Woody Allen's movie
"Love and Death," so...so they grab Simpka,
and they throw him out of the club.
And I'm standing next to the stage, and my neck is
on fire, and the club owner comes over to me, and he goes
like this, he goes,
"All right, Fitzsimmons, you got five minutes left."
[laughter]
So the MC--the show is now stopped.
The MC then reintroduces me,
and I walk up on stage,
and I get up there, and the crowd jumps on its feet,
my first standing ovation of my life.
[cheers and applause]
Because-- 'cause this is Boston.
They'd rather see a fight than a comedy show
any night of the week. So they calm down, and I just
look around the crowd, and I go, "All right, who's next?"
All right, you guys have been great, thank you very much.
[dark electronic music]
♪

This Is Not Happening - Greg Fitzsimmons - Heckling the Heckler - Uncensored

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