Brightest Young Things

originally published August 9th 2010, but being rerun now, since Tom Green is in DC all weekend long.

all photos: Dakota Fine

Staying relevant in a post-Jackass, A.D.D.-addled, Youtube-fueled culture isn't easy when you're Tom Green.  The kids today, they might have faint recollections of some goateed guy humping dead animals or screaming 'Unleash the Fury' on the Jumbotron at Washington Capitals games, but that doesn't mean they're following your every move.  Or are they?  Green's not gone away, he's been touring the world doing stand up for the last nine months, filming an internet talk show from his living room for the past six years and his 2001 comedy, Freddy Got Fingered, was tapped for a Razzie (Golden Rasberry Award), nominated as one of the Worst Films of the Decade.  Quite an honor when you realize that Tom Green was probably shooting for that exact trophy when he dreamt up the film.

We caught Tom Green on his 39th birthday, between a pair of Friday night sets at the D.C. Improv that muse heavily on Facebook, Twitter, Death and a whole bunch of scenes from movies that he's been in.  Aging, raw, possibly a bit depressive, funny as hell and wiser for the ware after a bout with testicular cancer, a bout with marriage, a near drowning experience and countless broken bones from assorted tomfoolery, Green is about as open and honest an interview as you'll get.

BYT: So are there any particular scenes in Freddy Got Fingered that people really respond to?

Tom Green: Daddy would you like some sausage and the Backwards man, for some reason.

BYT: Not the horse cock scene?

Tom Green: They don’t really yell that one out that much.  Maybe they’re afraid to. People more like the Lebaron, there are certain lines.

BYT: How did they set up that shot though? Did they build an artificial horse?

Tom Green: What about the elephant cock? You’re not interested in the elephant cock?

BYT: Elephant cock? I don’t remember the elephant cock.

Tom Green: At the end of the movie I jack off an elephant cock. It has payoff. It pays off at the end. I learned to jack off a horse at the beginning, and at the end when my dad’s chasing me through the desert I run into the Bedouin’s camp.

BYT: Well was it a real horse? Was it real?

Tom Green: You know what? I don’t want to give that away. I don’t want to give away any secrets.

BYT: Well that kind of brings me to my next question. Do you feel like a bit of the slave to the quotations?  To these certain scenes? We were at the show tonight and people would yell out these certain things. Do you like that?

Tom Green: Yeah I like it, I like it. It’s my first year doing stand up, so I’m embracing and celebrating a lot of these crazy little skits and videos and things that are on Youtube and people remember them.  Absolutely, yeah.  I’ve been doing the tour for about eight months now, and I’m starting to integrate more social commentary-type stuff into the show, sort of slowly pulling out some of that kind of stuff. But you know, for the first year touring, I’ve basically gone to every city in America – not quite yet, but almost, at least half of the big cities in America. All of Australia. I’m going to do Canada. I’m going to talk about a lot of the old bits and kind of reintroduce myself to people as a standup comedian, and by next year I’ll have probably a completely different set. A lot of the material, a lot of the newer stuff I’m doing, is the stuff that I did off the top of the show about Facebook, about text messaging, about cell phones, about technology, about how the world’s changing. That’s kind of the new direction I’m going to go on with it.

BYT: It seems like it’s not even necessarily stand up as we know it, but more almost spoken word, with less jokes and more you talking about stuff that happens to be funny, but not with a normal punch line.

Tom Green: I don’t know if there’s necessarily any kind of rules about what it should be. I like to talk about real stuff, stuff that’s real to me, things that are affecting people in a real way. Like when I’m talking about Facebook affecting marriages, I mean that’s actually a real thing, it really is a real issue. People come up to me after the show sometimes after I talk about that. I had a woman come up to me after a show recently in California and she was very upset because she wanted me to go talk to her husband and really tell him that that was true and he really should cancel his Facebook page. She was very concerned and they clearly had been arguing about this. I think that’s something that’s going to become a much bigger issue in the next five, ten years, as this gets even more and more common and more and more a part of our lives. I find that interesting, you know, because it is interesting to see that sometimes there’s a little rumble through the crowd from people who’ve obviously been arguing about this.

BYT: Yeah, that’s what I mean. It’s not necessarily one hundred percent laughs. It’s real shit that you’re talking about.

Tom Green: Yeah. But I think, personally, that that’s what the best comedy comes from is real stuff. When I say, “Is it going to ruin high school reunions? Before you were wondering what Stephanie Miller looked like, now you know what Stephanie Miller looks like; you’ve been jacking off to her family vacation photos for five fucking years,” that’s a joke, but it’s also true. People know that if you’re putting your pictures up on Facebook, all these girls are putting their pictures up on Facebook in bikinis, when I was a kid just getting a glimpse of one of the girls from school in a bikini, that would be like incredible, that would be incredible! Now, you just sit down at your computer, and you can flip through all the different…so it’s a sick and twisted world we’re living in. It’s disgusting. (everyone laughs)

BYT: So is it ever hard to talk about certain things? You’re pretty open in talking about things like your divorce. Is it difficult to open up to strangers?

Tom Green: It’s honestly cathartic to talk about testicular cancer.  When I know that probably a lot of people in the room know about it and are thinking about it, and then being able to talk about it. You know, that’s the stuff that I’m going to start doing less of, because it’s sort of an anti-comedy thing to do. It’s a risky thing to do, because you’re taking the audience down to a dark place, and I don’t necessarily have to do that. I can keep the energy up high all the way through, which I’ll probably do in the future. I find humor in taking those kinds of risks. I do find it, personally in the first year of doing the show, that this is stuff that weighs heavily on my mind, and so to be able to get up in front of people and just vent about it, get it off my mind, I enjoy doing that. But I’m not going to talk about that next year, or forever. The first year of doing standup here, touring like this, I’m thinking, “Ok, well, what do I do if someone yells out, ‘how’s your nut?’ you know? Oh, I know what I’ll do, I’ll just talk about it before they yell it out, that’s what I’ll do.” You know what I mean? It’s something that I was doing more of eight months ago. I used to do that material right off the top, which was completely crazy, because I’d come out and have all this energy and then I’d BANG, bring it right down, and then I’d try to dig my self up out of it, which I would, which was the challenge to me. Now I’m slowly pushing that stuff back, pushing it out. And next time I come around I’ll keep that energy high all the way through the show.

BYT: You’ve got more hecklers per minute than any comedian I’ve seen. Is it difficult to do the back and forth? Not necessarily hecklers, but just people yelling shit out.

Tom Green: Uh, you know…It’s funny because people are yelling out good stuff. That’s the thing, they’re yelling out their favorite bits, and–

BYT: But, I mean, I assume you’ve developed a routine. That’s a lot of what comedy is; it’s a set, right? When anyone yells something out, it must take that off course slightly.

Tom Green: A little bit, yeah. Yeah it does take it off slightly. They don’t always yell as much. They were particularly – I was surprised, actually, because I’ve never played DC before ­– that the people knew a lot of the old material. They were yelling out things like Glen Humplick, you know, the Slutmobile, Japan 4. When people start yelling that stuff out, to me, it’s actually a bit of a relief, because I know, “Ok, these people are excited, they know all my old bits so this is good. I’ve got a crowd here that’s really in the palm of my hand. They’re so excited about my old stuff that they’re yelling it out.” It’s when they start yelling out, “You suck” that I’m gonna start getting nervous about it. No one’s yelled that yet, so that’s cool. I haven’t had a bad experience yet in hundreds of shows all around the world. It’s very similar, whether it’s Australia, Canada, all over the US. I think there’s a certain amount of nostalgia. People here, they’re in their twenties, thirties, are remembering when they were in high school watching the show, and their coming out and celebrating all this. You know you’re talking to people about Freddy Got Fingered, so it’s kind of a fun thing. I don’t really want to stifle that enthusiasm from people. I do feel that as I do this more and more and more – I’m working on a comedy special right now that’s going to come out and have all of my standup on it – people are going to see that, they’re going to get used to see me on stage doing comedy, they’ll be, even my audience, even my crazy, zany fans, will be more apt to listen, just listen for the jokes instead of yelling out stuff.

BYT: Let’s talk about Canada for a second. Did you watch the Olympics at all? The opening ceremonies?

Tom Green: I did watch, I watched the hockey game.

BYT: Didn’t watch the opening ceremony, with the slam poetry?

Tom Green: You know, I did not watch the opening ceremonies. I did not. I actually didn’t.  I was doing a show at the time, I don’t remember what city it was, but I was actually on stage at the time.  But I watched the closing ceremonies and I watched the hockey game, [enunciates] the Canada-America hockey game where we won the gold medal. That was amazing.

BYT: You wanna say that right into the microphone?

Tom Green: I DID GET TO WATCH THE CANADA-AMERICA HOCKEY GAME WHERE WE, CANADA, WON THE GOLD MEDAL.

BYT: Your TV show that you’re broadcasting out of your living room, who’s the best guest that you’ve had on it?

Tom Green: It’s kind of hard to say who the best was. Ok, my favorite: Ed McMahan. He was my favorite. He came to the show three times, the show’s modeled after The Tonight Show, he was on The Tonight Show for thirty years, and I considered it a real honor that he would come up not only once, but three times. I considered him a friend of mine. It was very nice of him, a very generous guy. I’ve had a lot of great guests that I’ve had on the show Val Kilmer did the show a couple of times. He was very cool, a very interesting guy. Brooke Shields, yeah. Jimmy Kimmel is amazing. He came up, brought his band us. Kathy Griffin was funny. I really like it when Steve-O from Jackass comes on. Andrew Dice Clay is always one of my favorites. Norm McDonald and Harland Williams are two of my favorites. I’ve literally done hundreds and hundreds of shows now, probably about three or four hundred shows out of my living room now, with really cool people, a lot of people I’ve never met in my life before when they came up, most of them, and then a lot of friends of mine as well. A lot of people have become much better friends over the years doing the show, so it’s been pretty cool.

BYT: I kind of see some similarities to Andy Kaufman in your standup. Is he an inspiration?

Tom Green: I love Andy Kaufman. I didn’t know who he was until around 1999, 2000, with the Man on the Moon movie came out. Really when my show went on MTV, a lot of people started saying, “Hey, that’s like Andy Kaufman,” like when we drove the audience home on the bus, or a lot of the things we did. Plus I had cancer right around the same time, so a lot of people started bringing his name up. For some reason, I missed that. I never liked the show Taxi. I never liked that show. I think it was because I was too young when it was popular. I was too young, and I didn’t get the jokes. So I didn’t really watch that show. I was too young to watch Saturday Night Live. I think I was maybe five years too young. I missed Andy Kauman and what he was actually doing, and I’ve since gone back and watch as much of his stuff as I could. I’ve actually become pretty good friends with a close friend of his, who was someone who really loved the guy and really has a lot of amazing things to say about him. I definitely like him, a lot, yeah, and I really respond to what it is he was trying to do. I’ve always had certain elements that were obviously purposefully confusing to the audience, purposefully doing things that people are not going to get, purposefully doing things that people might misinterpret as a mistake or poor performance or error, just to get people off guard. I’ve always done that kind of stuff, and that’s the kind of thing that makes me laugh, you know? So that’s why I like Andy Kaufman.

BYT: You kind of alluded to God when you were talking about cancer and talking about after you were diagnosed, and you leave it kind of ambiguous in the end how you walked away feeling in your spirituality.

Tom Green: Well I definitely…I definitely…um. I definitely was being very sincere when I was saying that on stage. I remember, very clearly, praying to God, desperately hoping that he existed, and that he was listening, because it was a scary fucking thing. It was right in the middle of the most exciting year of my life, I was working so hard to get that show on for years, and then all of the sudden we were on the air, and so it was right in the middle of that exciting time. It was a shock to have this happen. I was just thinking, “How can this happen now?” I remember desperately – I wouldn’t say that I was somebody who was a religious person before, and I’m not saying that I’m a religious person now, but I’m definitely more spiritual in the sense that I’m often contemplating what does it all mean, why are we here, what’s this all about, how long is it going to last, could this possibly make any less sense, you know? So in that sense, it does change you, getting cancer, it really does change you. I’ve had a couple of near death experiences now. I was almost killed by a wave in Costa Rica three years ago. I was literally thrown off a ledge by a massive wave and I broke a couple ribs, I was hospitalized and I literally don’t understand why I didn’t die from that. So I really do have this very constant thought in my head that any moment something can happen. When you’ve had cancer, you realize that you can wake up one day and all of the sudden there’s some thing growing on your body, right? It’s like eating you away from the inside. And suddenly you see your body as a ticking time bomb, essentially. You start thinking about that way, way too much, like constantly. Every time I’d get a cold, a zit, a fucking cough, a giant wave, any little thing sends me into a panic, you know? Because of that you start to think a little more, well maybe there is something else. This is all so bizarre, all this stuff that is going on, all this energy that’s around, all these things that couldn’t possibly...it really seems like a sick, twisted, ironic, sarcastic prank of some sort, to do all this stuff to us people, to make us work so hard, to make us do all these things, be good, work hard, make it to the top, be successful, and then just when you start to relaxed and figure it out, you die some horrible, wheezing death.  So because of that being so absurd, you like to think that’s some kind of practical joke being pulled on us and we’re gonna find out what the punch line is when we die. I don’t know. But I do think about that kind of thing a lot now, post cancer, whereas before I was thinking, “I’m going to live forever, man. I can do anything I want. I’m going to skateboard and jump off fifteen stairs, and if I don’t land it, well…” And I’m completely paranoid now about skateboarding, I broke my leg three years ago.

BYT: You don’t skateboard at all any more?

Tom Green: No, I do skate around, but I don’t do any big tricks anymore because I just feel like, I don’t want to risk breaking my neck and getting killed, getting hit by a car, or something like that.  It’s a life-ruiner. To be honest with you, when I say onstage that sometimes I wouldn’t trade my experience with cancer for anything. And then I think no I’d trade it for my right testicle. The first part of the joke is true, you know. I actually sometimes do think that I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything, and then I think, the second part is true, well actually, shit, I would like that testicle back. The positive side of it is the change in perspective that it gives you. That realization that you better do what you gotta do right now, because you could wake up tomorrow and you can have cancer in your lungs or wherever and it’s over, so it’s like, jeez, I hope I did everything that I’m meant to do, say that I’m meant to say to everybody, today.

BYT: Thank you, Tom Green, on that note, would you like to go ride my motorcycle without a helmet?

Tom Green: Sure!

Previously in BYT interviews:

• 2/7: Wots Pumpin? A Die Antwoord Interview
• 2/6: BYT Interviews: Theophilus London
• 2/6: Style Profile: Emily Wall - Here & Now
• 2/2: BYT Interviews: TYCHO
• 2/1: Simon Doonan Interview
• 1/31: Interview: Terry Gross
• 1/27: Interview: Class Actress
• 1/25: Nick Dillenburg of "Two Gentlemen of Verona"
• 1/24: Reuben Wu of Ladytron - Interview
• 1/20: Asghar Farhadi talks "A Separation."