Have you entered Vancouver is Awesome's giveaway to win tickets to Tom Green (Friday) or Edge of the Fest (Saturday) featuring a slew of awesome talent including Tig Notaro and Neil Hamburger (Saturday)? There's still time! Go HERE and get 'er done.
It seems a bit backwards - Tom Green finally stepping into the stand-up arena now, after all the success he's enjoyed. As it happens Tom started doing stand up when he was a 15 year-old kid, putting in three years at Yuk Yuk's in Ottawa before he had his fabled show on Rogers Cable. “It was difficult. I had no perspective on life. On the world. What kind of authority can you bring to the table as a 15 year-old talking to a bunch of 25, 30, and 40 year-olds? I was running on adrenaline and gusto at that time. Now being older I've been through a lot of stuff and had crazy experiences. I've had to think about them and formulate opinions and think about what it is I want to say about them – life, illness, work, technology, the world, the media – and it's actually a lot more fun now. I've gained a lot more experience in 20 years and have learned to control that nervous energy. That is the hardest part about doing comedy; controlling that intense nervous energy or, at least, putting it in the right place.
On the phone from his home/internet TV studio in Los Angeles, Tom describes dipping his toes into the stand up pool again at a comedy club in LA. “I instantly realized this is what I should be doing. It was a quick 5 minute set and everybody had a great time.” After a successful, sold-out tour in Australia and shows in England and the US, any trepidations he may have had have more-or-less evaporated. “I realized that when you're performing as a headlining comedian everybody is coming out to see you – they all bought tickets to the show! You have a pretty receptive audience. It's almost like a celebration every night, and that's why I can't wait to come to Vancouver. The last time I did a show in Vancouver it was probably one of the more odd tours I've done. I was doing a rap tour and everybody came out expecting comedy and we did a crazy rap show. Now I'm coming back and people are probably going to go to The Vogue Theatre expecting me to do a rap concert and I'm going to come out and do comedy"
I take a moment and explain Vancouver is Awesome to him – that is is a federally incorporated non-profit, community-based organization dedicated to promoting arts and culture in Vancouver with a decidedly positive spin. "Is that really what it's called?" he jokes. "That's awesome, I love that! I always think that that's a good way of approaching things. If you're gonna do a story about something, you might as well do a story about something that's good and that you like. So many people do a story about something and then slam it. What's the point in that? How about you do a story on something you don't wanna slam!"
You've spent some time in Vancouver in the past - Freddy Got Fingered and Bob the Butler were both shot here. I was in school at the time, but I did work as a PA for a few days on Freddy. We were shooting in the Lougheed Mall. I recall enjoying the surf-and-turf.
I didn't fire you or anything did I?
No. I was way at the bottom of the totem.
My directorial debut! I had so much fun making that movie. Being from Vancouver and having worked on it you should know it's turned into a global phenomenon. It's hugely popular everywhere I go on the planet. I just did a tour of Australia and everywhere I went people were talking about it. I don't think I can call it a cult following because everybody likes it. Which is funny, because the media came down do hard on it and there's a perception that it was badly reviewed but it's become this thing, a great experience for me. On tour the second I mention – and I do mention – Freddy got Fingered [Tom then proceeds to oh-so-sweetly serenade with “Daddy do you want some sausage? Daddy do you want some sausage?” - RF], instantly the entire audience just start screaming and singing it with me. It almost becomes like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with people yelling out their favourite moments from the movie. It's definitely had a massive resurgence – it sold 1 million DVDs!
That must be gratifying for you, because it did get hammered.
Except for The New York Times, which gave it an amazing review. I like that review so much that you can read it on the box cover of the DVD! I think The Times called Freddy Got Fingered “brilliant” if you really want to know the truth.
Journalists can work in packs sometimes. I think people are like that in general. It's something I've made a point of rebelling against it throughout my life and with my show – taking on the status quo and making fun of the hypocrisy that people have. Everyone encourages you to be different and then you go out and do something different and then they slam you for it.
When the Tom Green Show aired on The Comedy Network in Canada, I recall it as being quite revelatory at the time, almost galvanizing the Canadian TV audience. That never happens ... except with hockey. When the news surfaced about your moving to MTV in the States, we were all sad that you were leaving Canada and that we would no longer be able to watch the show.
As you get older you realize that that's just human nature – and it's also a very Canadian thing that you're talking about as well.
Canadians don't always celebrate success as much as Canadians do. I think that Americans celebrate success whereas Canadians celebrate anti-success. My show was a very anti-establishment show which is what people were very excited about and then when it went to MTV it may have been a bit confusing to fans. But you have to remember I went to MTV, not NBC, and I essentially fought with the network for a year and changed the way they do television. I showed them that people like seeing crazy, outrageous stuff that they haven't seen before.
I am actually very proud of that, that I was able to accomplish some huge dreams I had in my life. I mean, I got to host Late Night with David Letterman, for crying out loud! I got to host Saturday Night Live! On one hand you can go, “Oh geez, I hope the people back in Canada aren't mad at me because I'm hosting the David Letterman show and I'm hosting Saturday Night Live. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this.” No, that doesn't really go through your mind. What goes through your mind is that you're actually accomplishing your dream! You know the people in Canada are actually going to be happy about it. Like when I would see people that I loved going to the States and becoming successful.
When I was 15 years old and doing stand up comedy my heroes were Harland Williams and Norm MacDonald. I remember when they did their first appearances on Letterman and it was like, “Oh my God! They're on Letterman! This is amazing!” You have to celebrate that stuff. Whenever something becomes popular you become a target – it's the sign that something's successful. I had that happen with my rap group, Organized Rhyme. We had our rap album when I was a teenager in high school. We packed clubs all around Ottawa.
But the fact of the matter is I played Calgary and Edmonton this year and we sold out both weekends and the audiences were the best I've had in the whole world. I love performing in Canada because the people that come to my shows remember those early days, Rogers Cable and The Comedy Network, and they were all there with me before MTV and they're still here with me after. There's a much longer history of me doing crazy stuff with Canada and it ends up making for the best shows I have anywhere. It's awesome!
I totally remember watching this on the Electric Circus. Surely, I'm not alone here. I'm looking at you, Monika Deol!
A lot of what you did seems to have inspired Jackass and Punk'd and even, to some extent, Sacha Baron Cohen's popularity. Do you feel like you should get more credit?
Actually, I feel like I do get credit for it.
Everybody knows. Every time I do an interview or people come up to me in the street they tell me that I started that stuff and I feel very proud of it. Steve-O from Jackass comes on my web show all the time and tells me how he used to watch every one of my shows on VHS and that he was a huge fan.
I try not to have any bitterness in my life. The fact of the matter is is that if you do anything that's cool and interesting and fun people may be inspired and may or may not borrow from it. I'm not saying they did or didn't although I know they did. When I was on MTV I got cancer – I had to stop doing my show. It wasn't canceled, it was the number one show on MTV and I got cancer. They started Jackass with my crew.
Anyone that's really paying attention knows. If you look at what I did on my show: I'd go out on the street on crutches and fall down and they did that on Jackass. I woke up my parents and did pranks on my parents. They did that on Jackass. I lit myself on fire. I swam with sharks. I did suck gross stuff out of cows' udders. Sometimes I think, “Geez, it would be kinda nice if I had a cut of the Jackass movie. That would be nice.” But at the end of the day I have done well. I've gotten to go and make movies and that's more than a lot of the guys in Jackass have gotten to do.
Everybody chooses their own path. I'd been doing television for ten years and wanted to go make some movies. I really had to think about whether I wanted to throw my body around. I'd just been cut open like a fish and I was in a lot of pain and my show was very physical and I wanted to do something that was just in a bit more of a controlled environment for a few years.
Almost 4 million hits can't be wrong: Tom totally skools Xzibit.
You're something of a pioneer, Tom Green. With your comedy and certainly with the growing success of Tom Green. com. Do you think of yourself as innovative?
I'm absolutely very excited about my web site and what I'm doing with the internet. I'm definitely always thinking ahead and that's what happened with my show. When MTV launched it people weren't shooting television shows with small home video cameras yet. I convinced them to shoot with these smaller cameras and be more "lean and mean" and that wasn't the way comedy was shot. Now you can build a whole TV studio and go live in your living room and stream live and go two way and have people calling in on Skype video from anywhere in the world! It's very exciting to me.
What I love about TomGreen.com is that it's my own television business. I don't have some executive telling me what I'm allowed to say and do. That's what I think is going to be the biggest change in television, that suddenly it's not being controlled by these giant corporations because they're the only ones that can afford to produce it. Everyone's going to be watching this stuff on their phones, on their iPads, on their televisions, on their computers and it's all going to converge into one medium and then playing field is completely leveled at that point. If somebody sits down and they want to watch some live stuff they can, they just type it in and it's going to come up on the exact same box.
I look at the future of television like this: you don't need to have this staff of 200 people to make a TV show. You can have a staff of two people! Your business model has completely changed and you don't have to attract a broad audience in any given place. You don't need every single person in every city in the country watching your show every night. But if you get 1000 people in every city in the world watching, you still get more viewers. I call it “narrow casting” in some ways; I'm doing a show that's very specific and that appeals to a very specific type of person. There's probably a lot fewer of those types of people per capita but worldwide you still have enough people to draw millions and millions of viewers every week. If you have three employees and three million viewers you're actually doing better than when you have two thousand employees and ten million viewers. It's all going to change. I think over the next five years the networks are going to get a lot smaller and there's going to be more of them. Like what cable did to network television, internet television is going to do to television in general. It's going to really benefit people who are independent thinkers and people that want to do something really different. I've been doing it for four years – it's the longest running talk show on the internet and I have no plans on stopping. I needed to change the cadence of what I am doing comedically a little and that's why I am going out on the road with stand up. It's very different getting in front of real people, seeing the world ... getting out of the house! Next year I am really going to merge the two together.
What's the difference between a good night onstage and a bad night for you?
First of all, I haven't had a bad night, which is - knock on wood - a great thing. I literally have not had a show that did not go really well yet. I'm sure that could happen at some point and I probably shouldn't even say that out loud!
