CB: I would describe your comedy as, not necessarily one-liners in the vein of Steven Wright or Mitch Hedberg or Demetri Martin, I would definitely say you’re different than that, but do find yourself compared to those guys a lot?

ZG: Yeah, I think just because we do one-liners, but Steven Wright is a great writer, I sometimes have to rely on uh, where I kind of like element of surprise, I like to change it up a little bit, it’s hard to sustain an audience with one-liners for an hour. You kind of mix in other elements. One-liners are fine and fun, I sometimes just go in and wing it, which is more exciting than sticking to your material, which I do as well. Mitch Hedberg was… I feel to be compared to them is a little bit unfair to them.

CB: There are definitely more and more people who are doing your style of comedy. Is that something that you really care about?

ZG: I’ve seen some comics do some things that, I mean, Steven Wright started all that stuff, and he’s influenced the comics that you mentioned and myself, as far as other comics being compared to me it doesn’t really bother me, I don’t really care.

CB: Do you remember your first paid gig? And how long had you been doing stand-up before you got your first paid gig?

ZG: I think I had been doing it for two years or a year and a half. And my first paid gig was a road gig in Maysville, K.Y. And it was really not the greatest thing, I remember there was a guy who had brought a life-size skeleton and put it in his seat and put a cigarette in his mouth. I guess he wanted me to comment that there was this life-size skeleton with cigarette in his mouth. It was at a bar where, have you ever seen the movie Urban Cowboy, where it’s kind of a very rambunctious environment and there was a beer bottle thrown and that kind of thing, and as soon as it was done there was square dancing right afterwards.

CB: (laughs)

ZG: I bombed so bad, I remember this guy coming up to me and saying (in southern accent), “Man, don’t worry, you were funny, these people are assholes.”

CB: (laughs again) Was that your first DVD that you put out, where it’s you doing stand-up making fun of the guy from Survivor?

ZG: Yeah, I wanted to put out a DVD of me not doing well, or at least being heckled, so I started carrying a camera around and just putting it on a table or something because I think in that one you can only see my legs, and he happened to be in the audience. That DVD was kind of about failure. It’s easy to pull out your punches and your go to material, but it’s a lot more interesting to me to show people that it’s not always that easy, or it shouldn’t be that easy and that’s what that DVD was about.

CB: I noticed that you go on the road, but it’s mostly one-stop gigs, is there a tour coming up?

ZG: Yeah, there is a tour coming up in March, it’s about twenty cities and it will be in rock clubs and some of them are 1200 seat theatres, which will be interesting because it will be a 1200-seat theatre with forty people in the audience.

CB: well…

ZG: I hope not, because I’ve done that before and it is so embarrassing.

CB: Was that Atlantic City show on Comedians of Comedy like that?

ZG: No, that Atlantic City show was packed, but it was, I don’t know if you’ve been to Atlantic City, there were a bunch of old people in the audience and I was like, “Oh God, they’re not gonna get this.” And I don’t care if people get it, I mean I do want people to be entertained…

CB: That was a show where you improvised a lot, right?

ZG: Yeah, I remember that show, yeah.

CB: Do you have any improv training at all?

ZG: No, well I took one improv class, and I wasn’t good at it, because it was like an exercise where we were pretending to throw a fake ball at each other. I got frustrated with it and I think I left during the bathroom break.

CB: Have you taken an acting class since that first acting class that you said was like a therapy session?

ZG: I’ve taken several, but not a lot. I just never found a teacher…actually there was one teacher that I liked a lot, she had one of those, not to be mean, but she had an eye, I don’t know what the term is but an eye, where you can’t tell if they’re looking at you or not? She had one of those eyes, and I couldn’t tell if she was critiquing me or somebody else, so I got confused.

CB: On your IMDB site, it says that you are trying to create a writers retreat in North Carolina.

ZG: Yeah, I have a farm in North Carolina that I’m trying to groom the land for right now. To set up several cabins where people can come and write and hang out with like-minded people. That’s down the road, but that’s my goal. I’m there about half the time and I spend my time on a tractor and just trying to figure out what I’m doing. I’m gonna do that and grow a ton of pot.

CB: Of the comedians out now, who do you enjoy the most?

ZG: Patton Oswalt to me is such a great comic, I mean, he’s a friend, but he’s great. I really enjoy Dave Attell. There is a comic in Los Angeles named Andy Kindler, who to me, is just the best.

CB: Didn’t he recently rant about Dane Cook?

ZG: Yeah, he does a lot of that stuff. But he makes fun of me, he called me, “the smart man’s Pauly Shore.”

CB: (laughs) So is Man Bites Dog gonna have a second season?

ZG: No, it got cancelled.

CB: What do you have upcoming?

ZG: I have a couple movies coming out, one that Sean Penn directed, which was really fun. It’s a serious movie, but I have small part in that. I got to spend two weeks in a hunting lodge. It was just me and Sean Penn and Vince Vaughn and there was little bit of drinking going on, let’s just say that.

CB: Of the movies you’ve done so far, what’s your favorite?

ZG: They’re all pretty bad. I enjoy working on them, they’re fun to work on.

CB: I liked Out Cold.

ZG: Yeah, that movie’s got some funny stuff in it. Sometimes I’ll be in an airport and people are like, “Hey, are you that guy from Out Cold?” And I’ll just be like, “No.” But yeah, that movie was so much fun to work on.

Photo by Krystle Gemnich.