Tom Green: Comedy, Cancer, and Leaving Hollywood for a Farm.

27:47I try not to have a drink within 24 hours of going on stage. And when you're touring all the time, you're performing sometimes four or five days a week, that's pretty good for your health, you know, because now I only drink on the weekends, you know. Right. I make up for lost time on the weekends, though, or on a Monday night. Nothing like getting hammered on a Monday night. Okay, what's the Monday night? You do stand-up on the weekends, so, you know, Monday night's your night off. You go and get loaded. Okay, what's the Monday night? You go to a jack-in-the-box, sit in the parking lot in the curb and get loaded.

28:16No, I don't know. I'm actually trying not to drink too much. It's just not as much fun. I don't want to spend too much time talking about not drinking because I'm not really, like I said, I don't think it's ever been a severe problem for me. It's just something that I've found that I'm getting a lot more enjoyment out of life, just kind of scaling back a little bit on that. And what's interesting is I wasn't even planning to ask about it, but I think the reason I did was it's clearly something that, you know, is at least occasionally on your mind. And I also get when, like, you know, your goal is to make the most of your talent, even not considering the health aspect.

29:00Absolutely. You want to constantly tweak to figure out how to continue that progression. If you're on stage in front of a thousand people and you're telling jokes for an hour and a half or so, and then you get off stage and you think, oh man, that wasn't as good as it could have been. It's the worst feeling in the world. It's the worst feeling in the world. And I don't want to ever have to feel that. What has to happen to play Radio City?

29:27That would be pretty cool. I'd like to play there for sure. You said that's a goal of yours. I mean, it would be an awesome, awesome thing. I, you know, I probably, you know, if enough people watch this interview, maybe I'll do that next year. We'll see what happens. Joe Rogan, as you've heard before, credits you with inspiring him to start a podcast. What was your reaction the first time you heard that? I thought it was so cool that he was so, you know, forthcoming about that with me. I mean, he didn't have to say that. He's been a comedian and in this business for long before he met me and a huge star and legend in television and stand-up comedy.

30:11But, you know, there was this time in the early 2000s where I just decided, hey, you can stream live on the Internet now. It just was sort of apparent to me because I sort of had been following it. I had my website up in the early 90s, 94, 95, I guess we started my website. You were a very, very early adapter. And we were posting audio clips on the website in the 90s. And I was always saying with my friends, probably pretty soon you're going to be able to stream video on the Internet. and then like we can just make a show and just make our own show and just put it on the internet. So we're probably waiting for that to happen for about 10 years, you know, and then all of a sudden, you know, oh wow, you can actually upload a video and people can watch it.

31:06And so I started diving into the technology that was out there and reaching out to different people who were doing this technology and just kind of dove into it and built this multi-camera talk show set TV studio in my living room in Los Angeles. And what was involved on kind of your end in kind of figuring out that business model? I don't know if I ever figured out the business model. Joe figured out the business model. Oh, come on. I mean, I figured out how to plug it all in, but it was pretty early. So the business model wasn't quite there yet. I mean, as far as the business model for what I called WeboVision, it was sort of a break-even proposition really for about four or five years, you know, it was generating enough revenue to kind of update the cameras, pay a few employees, like one employee sometimes, one camera person who would be switching the camera in the back of the room.

32:01Because it was sort of the early 2000s, advertising industry hadn't really moved over to web yet officially, you know, sort of starting. To me, it was about how do we just make it work? Technically, how do we make it work? Because, you know, the first couple of years, like, you would, we would go to go live and the stream would crash, you know, because too many people would tune in because it was an exciting time, actually, because there was nobody doing it. So imagine doing a live streaming talk show on the internet, and you're the only live streaming talk show on the internet that's live that night in the entire world.

32:34I mean, it was cool. We were getting millions of people tuning in with no advertisers. But it was really just about making it work. At a very sort of, you know, microscopic level, making little things work. Like I wanted to have tally lights on the cameras so I knew which camera I was looking at when the camera was on me. Because I like to look in the camera, you know, when I'm doing the show. I like to do the sort of Johnny Carson kind of take to the camera, right? And so we sort of initially we set up the camera or how do we cut between cameras? You know, this is in the early days. There wasn't all these switchers and stuff around.

33:15So we found this thing called a video toaster. And we, you know, they were sort of new versions of these sort of prosumer switchers. You know, they'd sell them to schools and churches and they'd use them to, you know, stream the video just for the in-house screen, you know. And so we would run our cameras through that. just sort of video cameras. But then I didn't know which camera to look at. So we had to, we called up the company that made the switcher and this company, New Tech at the time. And they went on to make a thing called a TriCaster. And we said, you need a tally light. So I began sort of working with the company that made the switcher and said, we need to have a way to plug in a light so we can put a light on top of the camera.

33:59So when we cut to camera one, the light comes on and I know I can look at camera one. That's the one that's on me because we're live. We can't cut to it later. so like little in the weeds stuff like that just being able to stream live so you know i was in hollywood hills the internet wasn't very fast up there but even the fastest internet anyone could get in early 2000 wasn't fast enough to stream live but then also take calls on skype at the same time so we i wanted to be able to take video calls so we got two mac you know whatever those old Macs were that their computers and in the monitor we got two of those we had a third one back by our switcher we built a sort of a routing switcher where people would call into this switcher this this computer in the back and then they'd be sent up to this the one on my screen so we had multiple streams happening at once you know the live stream going out in high quality the low, you know, like 720p, but the calls coming in.

35:01So we had to then get a microwave antenna on the roof of the house that would then these bonded T1 lines. And, you know, it was like, you know, the internet bill was pretty high, you know, when there was no budget for the show and you're spending, you know, a bunch of dough to get the satellite microwave set up that would send our internet down to Studio City, where then it would be fired up to the real satellite tower, you know, cell tower or whatever. It was like just foundational stuff just to make it work, which was so, so fun for me. It's kind of funny. There's not really a live setup quite like what we had in my house in 2005.

35:45Like there's the coolest thing about the early Webbo vision, I had my friend who was helping me, who was working with me, who was a bit of a tech. I always found really technical, savvy people who were really, really interested in getting in the weeds technically. And we built a switch that we mounted under the desk, the talk show desk. So this switch, it was a metal switch. We had soldering guns. We were making the switch, you know, we'd switch this switch, and then that would turn on everything. So there was a television switcher on the desk, a small one, that was connected to the bigger switcher at the back of the room.

36:34All the computers were wired in to a central computer, which spoke to all the other computers. This friend of mine, who was a bit of a computer genius, wrote up some code. that told the computer to start recording. The second the switch switched, all the cameras came on, the phone system came on, the Skype calls came on, the lights came on, the microphone turned on, the microphone on the desk turned on, the computer started recording, and I could start switching. So I could get up in the middle of the night, basically, and come out in my house in Los Angeles, sit down at one o 'clock in the morning, and just go click, and this entire TV studio would turn on, and it would go to the front page of TomGreen.com live.

37:22And I'd just start doing a show, and the phone would start ringing. I'd start taking calls. And then when I clicked it off, everything would shut off. And then this computer would take the file. It would upload it and post it on TomGreen.com. I'd wake up in the morning, and 50 % of the time it would have actually worked. You know what I mean? And then we'd have to figure out why it didn't work. Why did it not work? You know, the internet went down while the upload was happening or something like that, you know. And so, but just taking live calls on Skype video and the other thing going through, like being, you know, you see this all the time now, but being, doing a talk show and having a TV screen on the wall with the internet on it.

38:03And you're talking to someone, oh, we're talking about something. Oh, what's that? You're looking it up on the internet. You know, these kinds of things were sort of new ideas, you know, to be actually sort of felt like we were actually inside the Internet a little bit. You know, I'm sitting there talking to my guest and we're looking at something that's on the Internet, able to cut to the Internet and talk about what we're looking at. And then it was it was exciting. And it was exciting because the people watching were a little bit more tech savvy, I think, because you had to almost be kind of tech savvy to even figure out how to watch it.

38:41Right. Because sometimes it wouldn't work. So you had to have faster Internet. It was it was not as universally accessible like social media is today. So there was sort of this feeling of we're doing something new here. This is pretty exciting. What made you continue to stick with it, even in spite of the business challenges? There were little kind of, you know, wins all the time. You know, we ended up getting a television syndication deal at one point, and we changed the name of the show to Tom Green's House Tonight. So the show, if you ever see on the Internet, like old clips, most of it's not online now.

39:22But, you know, ironically, most of it's not online now. But if you saw... By choice. There's reasons for that, by the way. Yeah, well, because one of the things that's interesting about streaming on the Internet when it's not as universally normal to watch Internet television is that there was more room for experimentation because you knew that nobody was watching or the people that were watching were more aware of what this was. Like they were aware this was an experimental thing. So I could get up in the middle of the night. This is where I start to sound crazy. Oh, no, that ship sailed. You already sound crazy.

40:02I'd get up in the middle of the night. There was a thing called the French clown at midnight. Okay, okay. It was the French clown of midnight. And I would get up and sometimes for a personal amusement, would go into the bathroom, I'd put on my clown makeup and my top hat, and I'd go and I'd flip the switch. And then I'd go on and I'd do a call-in show where I would only speak in French, and the callers, of course, didn't know how to speak French, except occasionally someone from France or Quebec would call in, and I'd have French conversations with them, but everyone else was calling in English, and I'd just speak to them in French on my clown makeup.

40:38And this was just so silly and off the wall, right? But, you know, you could get as weird as you wanted to. So it's not that I wouldn't want to get weird on the Internet today, too. But I feel that it's harder and maybe not even weird anymore to be weird on the Internet. That's where it gets really weird. It's not really weird to be weird anymore. It's almost weird to be not weird on the Internet. So that's the thing. the element of surprise was there in the beginning days of the internet or in the early days of the Tom Green show. And so because it's the element of surprise is less present now, that's discouraged you from having that old material online?

41:27I feel like at the time, it was just, what am I looking at here? You know, like when I go back to the early days of the Tom Green show on public access TV and then MTV, and I would pull these pranks on my parents. You can go on TikTok now, and it's nonstop kids pulling pranks on their parents, painting their house, painting their car, barging into their bedroom in the middle of the night, putting animals in the house, doing all those pranks, right? And innovative, funny, hilarious new pranks, right? And they're funny, but when we were doing that in the early days, people would come up to me and say, Are those your real parents?

42:06They didn't even understand it was real. Like it was just sort of so out there that somebody would film their parents for real and put it on television. So it had a bigger reaction. So I wanted to shift gears and ask you about COVID because that's going to lead to here. In the early days of the pandemic, how long did you go without seeing another human in person? you know I think maybe like a little bit too much has been made of this like because I know sort of I asked that because it seems like you get self-conscious whenever it's brought up

42:52I hate to say it but it's because it's become political oh really yeah I'm not a political person. And so the fact that, you know, I, as a cancer survivor, in the beginning of the worldwide global pandemic, which sounded serious to me, because it's a worldwide global pandemic, decided to listen to what they said you're supposed to do. And, you know, I, you know, wore the mask and wore rubber gloves and, you know, sprayed my groceries down with Clorox bleach and, you know, just made sure that, you know, like I, you know, didn't eat anything unless I'd sprayed bleach on You know, just all the normal things you're supposed to do.

43:27I remember getting groceries early on in the pandemic. Wiping the groceries. Wiping the outside of your ragu spaghetti sauce bottle. You know, I eat good. But, you know, so, you know, it seems silly now. But in the early days of it, I was sort of maybe took it a little more seriously than some people. Because I am very aware that, you know, s*** happens, right? I got testicular cancer right in the middle of my show being, you know, a successful show on MTV. And then I got sick. And so I realize life throws curveballs at you. I'm prepared for that. And so when I hear there's a pandemic, there's this thing.

44:08You know, you remember in the beginning, you know, people didn't know what was going to happen, how far it was going to go. And first it was going to be a week. Maybe it went further than people wanted it to. And as it became more, you know, we became more sort of aware of how the disease work, people became frustrated with the restrictions and things like that. But in the beginning, I was thinking, OK, I'm just going to err on the side of caution. Now, to be honest with you, I also lived alone, right? I was, you know, not married. I don't have kids. I was living alone. And so I was already living alone.

44:49and my stand-up comedy tours were all canceled. So the shows were all canceled. So I wasn't going and performing every night. And I would say, admittedly, I kind of leaned into the absurdity of it without like, I'm not saying that I wasn't actually isolating for real, but I also found it quite interesting, to be honest with you. selfishly I found it interesting to lean into the idea of being home alone and streaming on the internet and you know I decided I'm going to learn how to play piano so I decided to I didn't really know how to play piano and now I can kind of play because like at the beginning of COVID I would go live every every night and for the first couple of months basically which was but those are the guinea hens.

45:41Those are not wild hens. Those are my pets. And they're going to be with us for the rest of the interview, probably. I probably shouldn't have let the guinea hens out this morning, but that's cool. It's natural sound. But perfect, right? It's perfect. I'm trying to think if there's anything I can do about that. The answer might be no. So is there any way we can put those up? If you want to break the fourth wall here for a second and I can just go. Yeah, we're going to take the camera and follow you. Okay, yeah. So. Hello. These guys are great. Hello, guys. Let's see if I can, maybe we can walk them down to their coop and if we're lucky they'll get in the coop.

46:30Come on this way, guys. Nope, nope, nope. Other way, other way, other way, other way, other way. Come on, come on. Come here, guys. Come up there. Go in. Come on. Go in there, buddy. Go in. In here. In here. In here. In here. Oh, in there. Go in your thing. Come on. Let's see. Let's just see if they go in now. Oh, it's our lucky day. One ran out. Should I? One's out. It's a bit of a counterintuitive thing. You almost want to let it decide to go in on its own at this point. You should just run this as the entire interview. Just us staring at a bird.

47:12Here we go. Here we go. Wait, just don't, maybe it'll go in on its own. No. I'd say there's at least a 35 % chance we're gonna pull this off. Should I walk towards it or no? Yeah, maybe sort of walk sort of towards, yeah. but slowly yeah that feels good slowly

47:36this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks gemini and chrome is here for it ready to make anything online make sense There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends and now that's next level.

48:11Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

48:39Got her. All right.

48:48So up until COVID, you had always been back here at least once a year to Ottawa. Yeah. Obviously, here, here is an hour and a half outside. But what made you decide to move back? Yeah, it was like a combination of things all happened at once. You know, my tour was stopped during COVID. And I'd been kind of thinking of moving back to Canada for a few years, probably. Why? I just kind of missed my family, really. I missed being close to my parents, you know. I have a close relationship with them. And, you know, we're friends and we hang out all the time. And even though I pulled those pranks on them when I was a kid, they still talk to me.

49:39So I missed them. touring doing stand-up now has become sort of almost something i've been doing full-time now for almost you know almost 20 years now you know like it's not like back when i was doing the show on mtv i wasn't doing stand-up when i was doing my show on mtv but now i'm always traveling and doing stand-up and so when i go home from doing stand-up i'd rather go somewhere like this you know out out in nature and close to my family and where I'm from um and so you know when I wasn't touring doing stand-up I could I you know I'd come home and visit for longer periods of time and uh so it just kind of uh just kind of felt like uh I wanted to have a nice calm place to live when I'm not working right um but uh you know lots of factors happened into why specifically did it at that moment.

50:35Also at the beginning of the, you know, I was, I got this camper van and I was going out into the desert filming videos. And I just realized how much I like being outdoors and in nature, but also just, I kind of like being alone sometimes. Like I like getting up in the morning and walking out the sun's coming up and it's just a cup of coffee and it's quiet and and it really is very peaceful relaxing thing for me and I've really figured that out when I was going out into these really remote areas of the American Southwest in my van and getting up in the morning and making my coffee and I'd be all alone in the middle of the desert thinking this is just so cool and you know I didn't grow up on a farm right I grew up in the city of Ottawa and the suburbs and skateboarding and always around, you know, people.

51:30And it's not, it's not like I grew up with a mule and a donkey and chickens. And this is all kind of new and exciting for me. You know, I've been here a couple of years now, but three years now, actually. But what was involved with finding this place? you know it was uh i really am sort of i think often how lucky i am to have found this specific place because you know i just love it here so much and it's uh i'm never gonna move i'm gonna live here for the rest of my life i just know i am i mean i just love it here it's the first time i've ever lived somewhere somewhere where i know i'm not leaving and i'm gonna i'm planting trees here I'm just sort of you know I'm settling in here but what is it about this place you think that makes you feel that the place specifically and also just sort of the stage in my life that I'm at you know I'm 53 years old I you know grew up in Canada not far from here I started my show we moved down to MTV We moved down to L.A.

52:38I lived there for 20 years. I really sort of started realizing I missed living, you know, not in L.A. really and home where I'm from. There's so many things about being back in Canada that sort of remind me of where my personality came from, where my comedy came from, who I am as a person. And so I was starting to miss that. You know, I was starting to miss the feeling of, you know, like when I started my rap group when I was a kid or when I started doing stand-up comedy as a kid, it was really weird to be doing something like that. You know, it was not a normal thing. I wasn't surrounded by other people making music and doing stand-up comedy.

53:22I grew up in Ottawa. It was a government town and sort of conservative place. And people weren't doing this sort of weird, wacky stuff, which made it much more fun for me. you know, because it was even more strange, you know. And so then living in Los Angeles, all of a sudden it became like, oh, everyone's sort of doing this, you know. Everyone's out there jumping up and doing stand-up and making music and performing and acting and started to kind of make, you know, the art of it all sort of seem somewhat formulaic. And that was sort of always what I was kind of rebelling against, right, was trying to do something that was kind of like breaking down the mold of how things are made.

54:09So then getting away from that and now not being kind of completely influenced by my surroundings, but more just thinking, okay, this is this canvas here now of creativity. We just chased some guinea hens. That would not have happened in Los Angeles. I've got my mule and my donkey and learning about all that. But it's just kind of a lot of factors, a lot of factors. What, if anything, do you miss about L.A.? You know, first of all, I'm not like sort of hating on L.A. or anything. Like I feel like I don't really miss anything about it. I miss some of my friends down there. I have a lot of friends there.

54:51But, you know, I can go see them and some of them come visit me here. um i um you haven't gotten them all up yet uh not everybody's come to visit but you know i've you know it's uh time flies so fast when you get older you know i can't even believe like three years has gone by since i've been here but uh but uh um you know a few of my friends have come to visit my friend gabe abelson who's a writer who i've worked with over the years has come up to hang out a bit. And a lot of my friends also live up here too. But I want to take you back to when you were a kid, growing up.

55:35Describe everything you recall from the laugh you got when running for student council. My speech was on humor, comedy, really, was the subject for my speech.

55:53And it was kind of a big deal in the sixth grade at my school, the public speaking competition, because the winner for the class would then perform in front of the whole grade. And then the winner, you know, there was judges. They would judge your speech. And then the winner of that would go perform in front of the whole school in the auditorium. and then the winner of that would go perform regionally and represent the whole school. And so, you know, I think it was around the third grade was the first time we had to do a public speech and I did mine on rocks, right? Igneous metamorphic and sedimentary rocks, you know, like something pretty sort of, you know, just sort of somewhat boring subject.

56:41But, you know, it was something to talk about, I guess, when you're in the third grade. Rocks. And then, actually, that might have been the fourth grade was the first year we did speeches, the fourth grade. In the fifth grade, I did, how am I going to change my school? And that was sort of a funny speech. And we're going to put Coca-Cola in the water fountains type of thing, you know?

57:06You know that hack bit that everyone does in their fifth grade speech about changing the school, putting coke in the water fountain bit. But so then grade six, we say grade six in Canada, not sixth grade. So it's hard for me to stop saying grade six. But in the sixth grade, I just decided to do my speech on humor. And it was about structurally talking about how comedy works and slapstick comedy. and, you know, this, you know. And, but I ended up winning for the class and then the grade and then I went and competed in front of the school and in front of the whole auditorium. You felt like you were going to puke, right?

57:44Yeah, probably, yeah. I mean, I like, just sort of like every night when I get on stage, you know. Is that the case? No, no, it's not that extreme now. But like I said, you do get a little anxiety before you go on stage, which is good. A little adrenaline, a little nerves, you know, build up. So, which is a good thing, which is why it's fun. it's like anything, you know, it's fun because it's exciting, you know, but, um, but, um, so I, I did my speech and then the judge asked me a question. I could tell she was trying to, like, it was one of the teachers, right? I could tell she was trying to stump me, you know, she's like, she didn't like me.

58:20I remember her asking, I have like photographic memory of her asking me. And she asked me, you said in your speech that sometimes you can use comedy to get out of a difficult situation. Give me an example of a time you have used comedy or humor to get out of a difficult situation, right? But I remember something popped into my head and I had an answer and I said, you know, well, you know, here's an example of when I can use comedy to get out of a situation. I remember when I got my report card last year, I brought it home and I said to my dad, I said, Dad, here's my report card, but I got to tell you, my marks are underwater.

59:02And my dad said, what do you mean? I said, they're below sea level. Okay. So like this was some joke that I'd read in a joke book, right? But I think there was like a nervousness from the entire school of fourth and fifth graders and sixth graders worried for me, you know, that I wasn't going to come up with a good answer. so they just like it got the biggest laugh because I just came up with something you know on the fly and uh and it was such a relief you know and such a huge laugh from the crowd and I went out in the schoolyard at lunch and everybody was coming up to me saying you know that was so how'd you come up with that so fast and that was the moment where I realized I wanted to be a comedian it was in the sixth grade and the rest is just that laugh just been chasing that laugh for the rest of my life.

59:47So you're 25 years old and decide to move back in with your parents. Yeah, yeah. Something like that, yeah. Parents didn't seem to like that too much. I was talking to your mom, Mary Jane, about that the other day. Explain what they would do when you would take showers. Oh, wow, yeah. Yeah, see, because my parents said I could move back in because I was working on the show. I'd started the show at that point. So I was working on public access TV, but it was voluntary, right? The Tom Green show was, I didn't get paid to do it for the first several years. And so, and I'd studied broadcasting in school and they knew I was sort of applying myself to something that was sort of, had some potential of turning into something.

1:00:42So they said, okay, yeah, I can move back in. So I didn't have to pay rent, didn't have to get a job. Essentially, I was able to just focus on making this show all day, you know. And, but, you know, I think, I think like my parents didn't like, I mean, it's, it's funny now as an adult, I sort of, I sort of understand what, what they were doing when they said, Oh, why are you leaving the lights on all the time? You know, it's like, well, they're lights, you know, I don't like seeing leaving the lights on all the time. So they would tell me to turn the lights off or they didn't like me taking long showers you know because like cost to heat the water you know literally like you know was my parents were kind of you know didn't want me taking long showers they didn't like the fact and in fairness to them you have taken some really long showers really over the years did they say that or no but i mean you've talked about how i mean this is these are the extreme examples but like before letterman for the first time or before your MTV pitch.

1:01:40Okay, yeah, that's true. Like four hours. Yeah, maybe a bit of an exaggeration. Okay, yeah. But, well, yeah, for some reason, like when I was doing Letterman, the first time I got asked to go on Letterman, I mean, I just moved to New York. The show was brand new. This was the first talk show that I really was on. That and Oprah was the first one I was on. Letterman was the first one to ask. Those aren't a bad first two. Yeah, yeah, and I was just kind of, I was terrified, you know. But Letterman especially, because he was my sort of hero, you know. And here I was going on his show. So, I mean, to me, it was just like the anxiety of, you know, the warm water over my head was kind of like trying to kind of keep myself from losing my mind before I went on Letterman.

1:02:25But at home, it was kind of your only way to get some privacy, basically. And I think my parents were like, you know, even though I was living there doing the show, oh, my dad wanted me to get a job and go get a real job. And then he'd get up in the morning and I'd be in the shower. And he's like, why is he sitting in the shower? He should be getting a job. So they'd turn the hot water off in the house and then the water would get cold. So they were kind of pranking me too. Now that you mention it, I recreated that moment in my movie, Freddy Got Fingered, when I'm in the shower in scuba equipment and the door's locked and Rip Torn plays my father and he's knocking on the door.

1:03:04What are you doing in there? Get in that shower all day. You got to get out and get a job. And then he sort of went and he turns the hot water off. Yeah. And your dad was a tank commander back in the day in the Canadian military. Yeah. How do you think that impacted him? Well, it was definitely like his father was in the military. He was in the military. It's a very structured authority sort of, you know, driven kind of occupation. I mean my dad was known to be a bit of a you know of a prankster himself I believe back in the day and he was sort of but he you know he did understand that sort of you know the idea of getting up at the crack of dawn and going for a jog and then going and going to work was you know it wasn't sort of an an artist's lifestyle you know where you could sort of make a video and be up at night making music in a nightclub and then sleep in till 11 o 'clock and, you know, kind of roll out of bed.

1:04:07No, it's like, get up at 6 a.m. What are you doing? You're not sleeping here all hours of the afternoon. You got to get out and get a job. I mean, that was literally the mantra, you know, so. And even over the summer, that was, he was waking you up at 6. Yeah, he would wake me up in the morning and I started finding places I could sleep in the house that were, you know, like that he didn't know about. You know, so I'd set my alarm for like 6.30 a.m. And I'd get up just before him and then I'd go move in my sleeping bag over behind the furnace or something like that. And I'd sleep there till he went to work.

1:04:40And he'd come down looking for me. I wasn't there. And that worked for a couple of months, you know. And then I'd go back to bed and sleep till noon, you know, and then go and work on the show all afternoon. Well, speaking of him being a prankster, do you remember the hot pepper prank when you were like four years old? I don't actually remember that. No, no. But I think I've heard him talk about that. What was that again? Sounds pretty traumatic. What, he was putting hot pepper in my food or something? Something we'll have to ask him about today. What I remember was that they would put sardine, he would make me a sardine sandwich when I would go to school one day.

1:05:16Because what he did was he always made egg salad sandwiches. My dad would make my sandwich for lunch for me the night before. And he'd always make me, you know, my brown bag lunch, you know. Yeah. And he'd make me like a, he'd always make these egg salad sandwiches. And like, I love egg salad sandwiches now, but when you're in the third grade, the fourth grade, and you go to school and it's time for lunch and everyone's got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and then you open your egg sandwich and it smells like eggs all around, and then you're like the egg guy. It's embarrassing. So I'd always complain about now it's ridiculous.

1:05:50I mean, I had a delicious egg salad. I remember my teacher, Mr. Mozion, he was a young guy too. He was probably in his 20s. And so he'd always come trade his peanut butter sandwich with me for my delicious egg sandwich that my dad made. And I was so happy to get rid of it. Then I'd go home and complain about my egg sandwich. I think my dad was offended. So he started, he made me a sardine sandwich one day. I remember I got to school and I opened up, there was like fish heads sticking out between the bread. Mr. Mozion did not trade his peanut butter sandwich for that. I want to run through some notable pranks and just what comes to mind.

1:06:23Get you to recall some of the moments. the first one being the statues of your parents. Yes, they don't really like me talking about that one, actually. So that's the one that they really don't like talking about. For some reason, they're very offended by that. So in fairness to them, they really don't like that one, so I'm not going to talk about it too much. Genuinely. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Can I ask what they don't like about that? Because it's so blatantly a joke. I don't know, really. I think it's just that it's just... I'm trying to choose my words carefully here because I don't want to make it worse by talking about it.

1:07:03But I don't know. I just think that it's like... Maybe my parents are a little more conservative than I thought they were. So the idea of it being kind of... The imagery was something that they were not happy with. I don't know if I should be laughing or not. But one... I mean, it was supposed to be funny. One would think out of all the stuff you have done that that. I think it was on the front lawn. The neighbors could see it. The imagery was embarrassing to them. Whereas, you know, painting the house plaid or, you know, things like that was sort of a less. Or having a lesbian. But it was sex scene on their car.

1:07:49But they were anonymous lesbians. right? They weren't actually them. Lifelike images of them, you know, with facial features exactly the same. It's three o 'clock in the morning, and I think my parents really like lesbians. So to show my parents how much I love them, I've turned my parents' vehicle into more than just a vehicle. I've turned it into the slutmobile. Won't mom and dad I'd be surprised and overwhelmed tomorrow morning when they get up to go to work. And I think this was sort of like, this was the time where, you know, the show had moved to the U.S. and they maybe were thinking that the pranks were going to end and then we flew back in the middle of the night.

1:08:32Now we had a budget and we, you know, showed up with sort of elaborate things, so. They threatened MTV over that, didn't they? Yeah, that's true. It was very different than any of the shows that followed it. Even going as far as the Osbournes or the Kardashians, or Osborn's was on MTV. Families, you know, joking around with each other, everybody on camera, everybody getting paid, right? Everybody had a contract with MTV. Not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying this was genuinely, they were so surprised when we pulled into the pranks, like they didn't even really know there was a show at first, you know?

1:09:09Or they didn't really know that we were coming and they weren't being paid. They weren't part of it. and we would, it appears we were barging into their house every day, but really it was more like, you know, every couple of weeks we'd go in and do a prank and then, you know, over time, you know, over years, we'd had, you know, dozens and dozens of these pranks we did to them. But I do understand just the, any kind of negative feelings they had about the pranks at that time were kind of lessened after Oprah called. Right? I mean, that kind of, in a weird way, made a big difference. Yeah, and, you know, in all fairness, like, my parents were really excited and proud of the show.

1:09:59As they should have been. There was never a moment where my parents were sort of, you know, disowning me because I pulled pranks on them or anything like that. You know, there was never a moment where there was real, real negativity about it. There was moments where they were upset about something for a couple of days, but there was never sort of a long-term period where my parents were like, you know, we don't want to talk to you anymore or anything like that. It was always, they were always, they would always kind of snap out of it after a few days and realize, oh, you know, that painting the house was actually really funny when they saw it all put together and on TV.

1:10:30But yeah, when Oprah called, it was sort of a moment where they realized that things maybe were actually working out for me. Because the show had moved to New York. I hadn't been on any other talk show yet. And then all of a sudden, Oprah called and wanted to fly my parents to Chicago and talk about all the pranks. and we played like, you know, the car and the house and the midnight waking up pranks on Oprah and watched them. And Oprah would laugh, really laugh really hard, you know, and my parents were there with Oprah and Oprah's laughing at me painting the pornography on my parents' car and like, oh my God, this is actually, this is actually funny, you know.

1:11:19No, they knew it was funny, but now it was a new level of acceptance by the sort of something that, you know. and then to top it off at the end of the interview, Oprah, you know, sort of set it up where I would give them these, this, a trip to, you remember Oprah always gave away a car? Well, now I gave my parents a trip to Tahiti and they got this all-inclusive trip to Tahiti for, you know, 16 days and they're like, whoa, you can see their look on their face and she's sort of like, Oprah's got her arm around her and she's sitting there like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening, you know?

1:11:51and so that was kind of, there'd been little sort of smaller sort of things that had happened along the way that sort of indicated that my life was moving in a good direction but I think when they got, came to Chicago, we went on Oprah and then they got flown off to Tahiti and they realized that maybe they could stop worrying about me for a minute. I wanted to bring up two other pranks that just involve family members and get what you recall. The first one being the one your mom brought up, the cow's head. Yeah. Yeah, I was just, we just happened to have a cow's head. What do you mean you just happened to have?

1:12:37Well, we had zero budget, right? The show was something that we were essentially volunteering to do. An hour a week with no money to produce it. No money to produce it. It's three o 'clock in the morning right now. My parents are inside sleeping. My parents love the movie The Godfather, so I'm going to wake them up in a Godfather-style fashion with this dead cow's head. They're going to love this. We're always looking for props that were something strange that we could get for free or cheap, you know. So, you know, we, oh, one day, I don't know, maybe we could go down to an abattoir and get some decapitated cows' heads and throw them in my parents' bed or something like that, you know?

1:13:22So, you know, okay, that sounds like a good idea. And so that's what we did. This is a message from Don Corleone. It says, Luca Brazzi sleeps with the fishes. That was one where she called me the next day. Actually upset. Still aired it, but I felt a little bad about it. You know, she felt like, you know, I felt like, oh, this is sort of, you know. Honestly, I didn't quite understand why she was so upset because I was sort of thinking, oh, you see what we're doing here, right? Like it's got to do something weird for the show or it's not going to get a reaction, right? And the more stuff you would do, the more it would take to get a reaction, right?

1:14:07So you're just waking them up in the middle of the night with a funny premise of some sort wasn't enough anymore. So Monica Lewinsky barging into their bedroom in the middle of the night was when I knew they were no longer going to be surprised by anything anymore. Because we'd been in L.A. Monica Lewinsky was friends with some people who worked on our show. And we decided to fly up to Ottawa and run the entire media on a wild goose chase with Monica Lewinsky at the time was like the biggest thing in the news. And nobody could get an interview with her. And nobody could get an interview with her.

1:14:51But she was, what had happened was we got invited to the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game in Los Angeles. And Tony Hawk was as big of a figure to you as anybody. As anybody, yeah. And we got there and Monica Lewinsky was there. And then one of our writers and her sort of started talking. And I think they went out for a little while. And then she was friends with us. And we ended up shooting that bit. But it was, I thought it was a pretty cool example of doing stuff with the Tom Green show that was, doing stuff with the show that was kind of had a deeper subtext to it than just being wacky.

1:15:36wacky, you know, like we were making a political commentary about the nature of the media and how they were sort of obsessing over this woman who's been in this situation and, you know, chasing her around and making sort of, you know, jokes at her expense, you know, which is sort of the polar opposite of the world we're living in today, where it was, you know, here was a young woman who'd been through something that was debatably sort of, or probably would be considered sort of abuse, really, in a way, you know, or whatever. I don't know what word you want to use for it, but it was, you know, she's a young girl put through a tough situation, right?

1:16:18And to have everybody making fun of her on every single talk show, including talk shows that I loved, you know, was probably a traumatic thing for her. And so here we are, one of the weirdest, sort of goofiest, strangest shows on TV that's a talk show. And we took her up to Canada and we made the media the butt of the joke. The media that was making fun of her, now we, with her, made fun of the media by showing the absurdity of the sort of the pack nature of journalism, right? where we went on a local public access show at my old station to make an announcement, right? And everybody thought, we sort of teased it like the announcement was we were going to get engaged, right?

1:17:02But really, it was sort of a sleight of hand. We were trying to make them want to get this big announcement. And then we went on the public access station and we made an announcement that tomorrow we're going to be making another announcement. That's the announcement today because we wanted to get the media to come. And then we went to this location in Ottawa, and international media from all around, hundreds of satellite trucks came around, and then the announcement was some bogus announcement that we were here to find fabric for her handbag company. And we barged into my parents' bedroom in the middle of the night and got their bed sheets and made some handbags out of it.

1:17:40My dad got up and said, oh, Monica, how you doing? And he was not surprised, and that's when I knew, okay, the pranks are coming to an end here. By the way, I don't know if you were joking when you said this or not, but your then partner, Drew Barrymore, did she actually think you were seeing Monica? There might have been a moment, maybe. I mean, it was sort of like... Because you said in your book it took, like, years to convince her that you, in fact, never did see or never did date Monica Lewinsky. Yeah, I remember one point she asked if I had, because, you know, I guess it was just sort of, we had sort of teased the idea that we were in the show.

1:18:25Right. That's what was happening. But no, no, she was friends with some other people that worked on the show. Her brother was a huge fan of the Tom Green show. And I believe she was, you know, a long time ago, but I believe she was actually dating one of our writers is actually what was going on. So, I mean, that is what was going on. But the four years where you're on Rogers Community Cable and just mentioned, you know, no budget, you're producing. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

1:19:09Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub, followed by ice-cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today. In an hour, a week. Yeah. What do you think it taught you? Well, I was editing all the clips myself.

1:19:51And I went to school for broadcasting. I learned how to shoot video and do lighting and audio and edit and all that stuff. And you'd drive from college to the station to then just... My last year of college was the first year of the Tom Green show, so we were sort of doing them both at the same time. A lot of my classmates were working on the show with me. It became apparent early on that the funny part wasn't the thing that I was doing on the street. It was the people's reaction. It was the joke. It was the punchline, right? Which sort of was something that I started to really figure out in the editing room, you know, I'd be editing the clip where I'd go downtown Ottawa with some crazy contraption or, and we'd get back to the editing room and, you know, I didn't have the reaction shot, you know, and I'd get back and go, no, we got to see that, you know, lady on the street kind of confused, you know, you can get the shot of me all day, you know, but make sure you're always looking one eye open, you know, making sure you're looking to the side who's reacting.

1:20:55When we first went to MTV, there was a lot of creative push and pull in those first few months because the MTV editors and producers would tighten everything up and they would cut all their reaction shots out. MTV at the time had a policy that they didn't want anyone over the age of 35 appearing on camera on their network. Well, all their reaction shots were from old people because they reacted more. They were more confused by the bizarre things. So I had to convince them to use the shot of the old lady or the man on the street who's over 35, like getting mad at me and doing all that kind of stuff.

1:21:34So we squeezed that back in. So that was probably the one thing that was probably the most important thing in those early days was because there wasn't really a lot of TV back then where people were just going out in the street. like letterman went out on the street but he went out on the street with a professional crew from nbc and it was sort of but this was me and my buddy you know well you talked about before have you know your gen y you've the kind of internet generation and uh yet all the tv still kind of looked the same yeah yeah back then and then here you guys burst onto the scene explain the $5 ,000 offer that you got.

1:22:18Treatment for a pilot? Really?

1:22:25So pre-NTV? Oh, with the CBC? Yeah. Is that how much it was? Yeah. That's what you said, at least. Is it my book or something like that? Okay. Yeah. I wrote the book 20 years ago, so the memory's fading a little bit, but that does sound like a lot of money, you know, because it was a local. At the time, I'd never seen$5 ,000 before in one place. So it was pretty exciting. But it'd be a good deal now, to be honest with you. Anyone who want to give me$5 ,000, I'd be happy to take it. But you said it is very easy, especially when there's money involved, to trust someone else's instincts more than your own.

1:23:04And almost every time that happens, you end up kicking yourself for doing it. Mm-hmm. I mean, later in life when the show was a hit, you know, there was definitely times where you'd have an opportunity to do something because there was a paycheck involved. And, you know, it's not always the worst thing to do either. You know, I mean, I think in hindsight I go like, you know, maybe I'm glad I sold out a few times. You know, I got this nice farm now. It's okay. No one thinks about that movie anymore anyways. When you were in the process of, you know, you've done this pilot for the CBC, as I understood it, like you, in a like semi-joking way, would like talk a lot about suicide, like if the pilot didn't get picked up.

1:23:54I guess maybe that was me just trying to explain how important it was to me that this thing worked because I had no plan B whatsoever. Like, I did not know what I would possibly do with my life if I wasn't able to work in television. I don't think I was ever, I don't think I ever would have seriously contemplated that because I had no intention to ever quit pursuing, you know, my dreams or what have you, you know. But it was always jumping off the Ottawa Four Seasons. oh is this is are you talking about the bit where i was standing up on the of the roof of a hotel yeah and i did i joke about that or uh i mean joking about suicide is something that's sort of pretty pretty normal for me and but it's it's just a joke but it was never meaning like just the concept of suicide is something that's obviously very serious and uncomfortable for people because it's such an intense thing to think about our own mortality so but going back to that time when you were talking about there was never anything there more than just a joke?

1:25:04I think that people in comedy who joke about death probably love life more than people that don't think about it. I'm so terrified of the idea of everything coming to an end because I I love life so much that the only way that I can make sense of it is to make a joke about it, right? The only way that I can make it seem, you know, less terrifying is to say something about it and get a laugh at the expense of the fact that we are all going to die at some point, right? So I think that's always been true in comedy, you know. So anytime I've ever joked about suicide or something like that, or joked about death or, you know, uncomfortable things.

1:25:50It's, I think, always coming from a place of this is the worst possible thing I could think of, so let's make a joke about it. But, you know, the root of it, you know, was, I mean, if I'm thinking of what you're getting at from memory from 25 years ago, you know, I knew that that TV show, we had a pilot on the CBC and it... It took nine months to get any decision. Yeah, and if it didn't get picked up, like I was back to square one. You know, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. This was supposed to be the moment where it launched it. You know, okay, now of course we do the pilot for the CBC.

1:26:26And now, okay, now we're going to get the big network deal. And then we're just going to. And so when, you know, the idea of there being a setback there was terrifying. But I'd had some setbacks like that before. When I was 19, we got dropped by our record label with my rap group, right? You know, that was. So it was just a matter of like, okay, got to go back and keep going. We were fortunate we got a deal with the new Canadian Comedy Network after the pilot, and we did 26 episodes for them. The role Marilyn Reed played in your life was what? She's great. We're still friends. She's actually in the documentary.

1:27:06She's a producer in Ottawa who worked at a studio called Animation Studio in Ottawa. and we had this sort of loosely sort of ready to go idea for a pilot with the CBC and then I went down to this animation studio. Somehow I found out about this animation studio and told her about the idea of the show and I think having an adult there who was an actual producer who's actually produced big shows, They did this show called The Raccoons, which was an internationally syndicated show about little raccoons. Anyway, so it was a real TV company, and that sort of probably gave CBC the confidence to give us a budget.

1:27:58We brought in a sponsor from Molson Canadian Beer, and we went and made this pilot. She was very instrumental in helping us get that all put together. The one other time I think you took a four-hour shower was the Mondrian Hotel preceding your MTV pitch. Take me into that room where you had the pitch. Into the shower? Oh, no. Well, you can. Yeah, no. Well, let's go to the other room. So the MTV would. Probably wouldn't have been much to see after a four-hour shower. No, absolutely. Absolutely not. No, it's not pretty. It's not pretty.

1:28:42So the show was on in Canada, and I had done this talk show called Open Mic with Mike Bullard in Canada. And his manager was a man by the name Howard Lapidus, the late Howard Lapidus, who's a good friend of mine, was my manager for many years. He passed away a few years ago. So he... Big industry figure. Yeah, he was, you know, he had his own independent management company. He represented Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew, and they were doing the show Loveline. And he was, you know, he was Norm MacDonald's manager also and others. And I believe Carson Daly also. So he had Carson Daly on MTV and Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla on MTV.

1:29:36And I met him in Canada and he saw what I was doing. And then he brought our tapes to MTV. And so they saw these tapes and they were kind of like, do you have any more of these tapes? And we're like, well, yeah, I've got about 2 ,000 more of these tapes, you know. And so that really piqued their interest because it was sort of the first time I think MTV had kind of gotten an independent show that has... Because the show had the pieces out in the street, they were able to sort of say, oh, we could take the stuff out of the street and then repackage them in our studio, right? So they sort of saw, oh, that could work.

1:30:13But before they really got to that point, I had to pitch the show to them. There's a process you had to... They flew me down to... MTV saw the few tapes Howard had given them. They flew me down to L.A., and they had these pitch meetings at the House of Blues. on Sunset, and they put me up in the Mondrian Hotel. I was like, man, I'm in Hollywood. This is the Mondrian Hotel. It's pretty fancy. And that hotel was as big as it got back then, too. Yeah, absolutely. And it's just a lot different than the travel lodge that I stayed at when we were traveling around shooting the show. But, no, it was cool.

1:30:47So I had to go pitch the show, and I went into this House of Blues pitch session with all the MTV executives there, and I pitched the show. and that ended up resulting in us getting picked up by MTV. But I was, again, terrified about that pitch going wrong. So I did one of my now apparently notorious long showers. I didn't even realize I showered so much. I thought I was unhygienic until this interview. I feel much better about myself. No, no, this is good. What ultimately led to the MTV show stopping? Well, I mean, the truth be told, I quit the show because I got cancer. Initially stopped production.

1:31:35Yeah, so the show was basically, it may have been the number one show on MTV that year. There wasn't many shows on MTV at the time, remember? There was The Real World, there was Road Rules, and there was Celebrity Deathmatch and Us. You were, and they'd run you a million times a day. They'd run the show all day. So the show was a hit. All of a sudden, we'd just moved to Los Angeles. So it was a lot of things changing. Like the show was in New York for the first year and then. But you found you couldn't do like the same bits in New York anymore. It was very difficult to block. Because of the mob scene that would start.

1:32:11Yeah, it was, the show was so popular that we would go out to film in Manhattan. There's so many people per square block in Manhattan that, you know, The second the camera came out, everybody would see me and they'd start crowding around and couldn't sort of – there was no element of surprise for these pranks anymore, right? You were no longer the anonymous figure you once were. Yeah, so we had to kind of go to a city where at least there was fewer people per block and I could walk down the street and find somebody that maybe didn't recognize me right away and then kind of mess with them, you know.

1:32:44And there was also an element of I was getting these movie offers. I now just shot the movie Road Trip, which hadn't come out yet. With Todd Phillips, who you had been in a Pepsi commercial with. That's right. Todd Phillips, who's gone and made The Hangover and The Joker and all these movies. And some of the biggest comedy directors today, you know, this was his first movie. And he put me in these Pepsi commercials and then this movie. So that was happening, and I kind of also just kind of thought it would be kind of fun to move to L.A. I mean, the truth is, I'm going to just sort of be kind of like, you know, I'm giving you the straight-up truth.

1:33:23I kind of wanted to buy a car, you know? Like I really, I just made money for the first time in my life, and I was living in New York, and nobody in New York has a car, you know? Like, I mean, some people have, it's like, you don't drive in New York, you know, you take a car. I wanted to get a car. So I went to move to L.A. near my manager and my agency and go do these movie deals and get a car. So that's why I moved to L.A. Then we literally just moved to L.A. We'd been there for a few months and I got cancer. The whole half the crew moved out with me. People gave up their apartments in New York.

1:34:03The show was a hit. We were going to be on for years as far as we were concerned. and then I got cancer and that was sort of a major curveball right and we filmed the last show was the cancer special we filmed an episode of me dealing with cancer that took about really about a year to really deal with there was some some pretty invasive lymph node dissection surgery where they cut you up here, and it was very painful and kind of a recovery time. And I will ask you. I didn't really necessarily want to be running around on the street filming with my body cut open. There was a lot of physical comedy in the show.

1:34:46I could be always falling down and doing sort of stuff that was quite running from security guards and things like this. They had to try everything possible to talk you out of quitting the hit show, right? You know, I mean, regardless of if, you know, you were sick, I'm sure they said, well, you can come back when you get better. Yeah, I think it was sort of more along the lines of taking, of stopping the show. I had now been doing this show for like seven or eight years or something like that, you know, like getting up, going out in the street, pulling pranks, doing this stuff. It had been my show for so long.

1:35:28Now we had a big network there and they were, you know, very intense about how they wanted to edit it. And it was sort of always a push and pull. There was a lot of pressure from the sort of the way. Television was a little different then, you know. You're doing a show on MTV, you know, it's different than it is now with streaming and so many places for content, right. they had a very intense sort of level of sort of engagement with the creative process on how you would, what actually got on the air, you know, like notes. The nicest way possible you could have said it. And there was a couple executives there, one in particular that was pretty aggressive with the way that, you know, what I was allowed and not allowed to do.

1:36:21Was this a teleprompter guy? It just got intense because I very much wanted to do things one way. And there was a lot of sort of creative push and pull there, which was frustrating. You got sick of the bullsh**? A little bit. And at the same time, you know, I mean, this is me being completely honest. I had like probably about three movie deals on the table that were paying me a lot more money than MTV was paying me. And I thought, you know what, I'm going to take some time off running around on the street, getting chased by security guards and injuring myself. I'm in a lot of pain. I've just written a movie, Freddy Got Fingered.

1:37:06It was purchased. They were going to let me direct it. That was going to take a year. So I kind of just said, we're going to stop the show and take some time off the show. And I went and made, you know, Frey Got Finger and Stealing Harvard and Road Trip came out and did a few other movies after that. And then it was a good decision. And then when I decided I wanted to go back to MTV, I did go back to MTV and made a talk show. So the new Tom Green show. You said, I think this is specific to the films. In hindsight, would I have done everything the same? I probably wouldn't have because I would have known the effect it would have on me.

1:37:42what what do you mean there's been an evolution on uh there's or there's been some sort of a changing sort of mindset or mindset about about about that movie freddie got fingered because when when i wrote that book i mean you know it was sort of like um you know it was you know this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it.

1:38:19Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+. The perfect lunch combo. That first bite of your favorite sub followed by ice cold Pepsi. Add a couple of friends, and now that's next level. Suddenly, the laughs get louder, the stories keep flowing, and the food tastes better. Because Pepsi brings out more flavor, more fun, and more of the moment. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

1:38:56There's a lot of harsh criticism of the movie, and now I can't really walk down the street without somebody yelling, Daddy, would you like some sausage at me? Or some crazy line from the movie. and people like the movie now. But at the time when I wrote that, I was thinking, oh, geez, maybe I shouldn't have made this movie, you know? But with 20 years perspective on it, I mean, it's kind of a big part of, kind of a sort of trajectory of my life, you know? If I had made sort of a more down the middle mainstream comedy movie, I probably would have made a whole bunch more of those if I was lucky.

1:39:31And then, you know, Or even worse scenario, because I turned down movies to make Freddy Got Fingered. And they were more sort of mainstream movies that kind of came and went with no real... They weren't horribly reviewed, but they also weren't beloved either. So it could have been just a big nothing burger. Instead, it was a shocking, weird, polarizing thing, which at the time kind of hurt when people... When Roger Ebert said that it was the worst movie ever made or whatever. But now, like, you know, 20 years later, people talk about it and like it. And I stuck to my guns and got to make a weird, crazy movie.

1:40:08I got to write and direct it and do a lot of things I would have never gotten to do. So it was pretty cool. How do you think that period influenced future business decisions you made?

1:40:22When you're young and things are going great and everybody's, you know, sort of, you know, there was a period of time, right around that time, when the show was a hit and, you know, basically, there was less sort of creative pushback, you know, could kind of do whatever we wanted for a minute there. And, you know, I think I was maybe a little less collaborative than I, you know, am now. Because, you know, sort of like in my head, I was thinking, you know, we got to push this and make this as creative. If someone said, maybe you shouldn't do that or maybe you shouldn't do this, you know, it was like kind of, but I think I've grown to kind of like being more collaborative in my approach to making television and making comedy.

1:41:15What? Because I kind of think that like, you know, I realize that I don't know it all. now, you know, but when you're, when you're, when you're 28 years old and you got a hit show and, you know, it's been a sort of only an upward sort of trajectory and nobody's ever said that, you know, you sort of think, oh, well, I just got to keep going with my general immediate instinct. Now I kind of take my initial instinct and I, you know, still weigh it with what other people are saying and then kind of like make sure that we're borrowing ideas from others around me and, you know, and making sure that my initial instinct is exactly where I want to go or do I want to kind of collaborate and create something together with people.

1:42:10So I think, you know, I think that's just part of getting older too. It might not even be anything to do with the movie or the show. It It might just be getting older, you start to learn. Because you fail. As you get older, you fail. You're going to fail at things. And every time you fail at something, then you go, well, why did that fail? And then you go, oh, if you're careful about it, you might think, oh, why did that fail? Maybe I won't do that again. Maybe I'll do this way instead, or maybe I'll do this way. Some people don't ever change, though. Some people don't learn from mistakes. and they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again.

1:42:52But I find that when I make a mistake or fail at something, I sort of tend to analyze what went wrong and try something different. Okay, here's one for you then because I was going to ask you about relationships. What do you think marriage taught you about yourself? I don't know I wasn't married for that long I don't know if I had a lot of time to really learn anything but no no come on you know I I wasn't really married for very long you know so it's sort of like it wasn't like I was married for a long period of time it was like when it was six months or something I was married or something like that so but you know so I don't know I mean And it was obviously, you know, we're talking about Drew, and it was a very unique experience, right?

1:43:51Because I was brand new in Los Angeles, and she'd, of course, been there her whole life. And so, to me, a lot of things were sort of hard to understand, you know, just sort of the whole nature of being thrust into that sort of, you know, center of the show business kind of, you know. ether. You once called it a tornado those three years? Yeah, and I had cancer at the same time, and my dad had cancer at that time, and movies coming out and shows coming out and all that stuff. So it was a lot to process. I don't know if I could really say that it was a typical marriage, so I don't know if I really learned anything about marriage so much.

1:44:38Oh, come on, really? I mean, because I would have to think. Well, not marriage as a general way you explain what a marriage is. It's like I don't know if I experienced that. I experienced sort of more of a bizarre kind of whirlwind of stuff happening all at once, which was maybe more than my young, naive kid was able to process or handle. How about the most bizarre thing that happened during that period? When I did the movie Charlie's Angels with Drew. That's how I met Drew was. I went and did the movie Charlie's Angels. She asked me to be the movie. I did the movie. By the way, do you think she was recruiting you for the movie because she had a crush on you?

1:45:25No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I just think that the show was doing well and she thought it would be funny to get this goofball in the movie. And then the better the show went, the more people wanted to kind of increase your exposure in their films. Yeah, yeah. It's sort of the nature of I was doing a few movies and it was kind of a – I'd already shot Road Trip and then they asked me to do that. But so I was – I remember I was hosting Saturday Night Live, okay, which seems just crazy to me. Even today, I can't believe that I got to do that. You were in a bathtub with Lorne Michaels, right?

1:46:08I was in a bathtub with Lorne Michaels and Will Ferrell and Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey and Chris Kattan and Molly Shannon and this incredible cast, right? And I'm this goofy kid on MTV in there and just kind of completely amazed that I'm going to do this. But, you know, I remember Charlie's Angels was coming out around the same time as I was hosting Saturday Night Live. And I remember we hosted, I hosted SNL. And then the next morning, Drew and I got on a plane to London, England, where we went to the royal premiere of Charlie's Angels and then had dinner with, you know, King Charles, at the time Prince Charles.

1:46:49And it's like, one day you're in Saturday Night Live, next day you're in England having dinner at St. James Palace with the future king of England, and you're thinking to yourself, this is pretty weird. This is surreal. And you're present enough even then to realize the insanity. Yeah, yeah. And particularly growing up Canadian, you know, where you had the silver jubilee and every kid gets a silver dollar with the queen on it. And royalty is a bigger deal here in these Commonwealth countries. So for me, that was probably one of the most unbelievable things, to get to hang out with Prince Charles and talk about Peter Sellers and Monty Python.

1:47:32Yeah, it was pretty cool. Okay, last Drew question. Was it awkward going on the show after all those years? Because it seemed like when I was watching a clip of it, it seemed a little uncomfortable. but what do I know? It was weird, yeah, it was pretty weird. It was cool, it was interesting. I mean, we hadn't talked in quite a few years and so she invited me on her talk show and I came on and basically sort of reconnected with her for the first time on television, which was, I thought, positive. It's good to have positive energy out there, you know, in regards to everybody. As I get older, I don't like to have negative energy.

1:48:12When you're young, you go through things, that don't work out, whether it's with business or in personal life, and you can kind of walk away from it. You can carry around negative energy your whole life, thinking, oh, man, I'm mad at this person or whatever. But I don't like to carry around negative energy like that. So it was good to be able to kind of get that out in the open. We're supportive of her show and proud of her, happy she's doing well. and it was a funny way to go reconnect with her, yeah. Since you posted about her on social, can I ask about Amanda? Sure, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

1:48:50How long have you guys been together? It's been a couple of years, yeah. She actually grew up in the same small military-based town that I lived in when I was a kid. She's from a military background in Canada, in Petawawa, where I grew up when I was a little kid before I moved to Ottawa. We went to the same elementary school, not the same year. We weren't there at the same time. She's a little bit younger than me. She's, you know, but, you know, she's, I was going to make a ridiculous joke there, but I'm not going to make a joke. Yeah, okay, how much younger? No, she's not that much younger than me.

1:49:28I mean, she's 35 years old, so, yeah, and I'm 60. No, what am I now? I forget. I'm 53. You said the 50s have been your best decade so far. So far, yeah. I'm loving being in my 50s, yeah, for sure. She posted something that she'd lost like 115 pounds. Yeah, she's got an incredible story. And she's worked as a personal trainer, and she's a very healthy, health-conscious person with her diet and with her exercise. And it was good. It's helping me actually be more health-conscious. Your mom says she will occasionally get in your ear that, you know, kids, they coming. She said, I think Tom still wants them.

1:50:19Yeah. We'll see what happens. I mean, I think that would be fun. I mean, it would be a great place to have kids and raise a family out here. This would be the coolest thing ever, right? Chasing the chickens around. And it's, you know, it is nice to be back in Canada, kind of close to where I grew up. So I could see it would be a fun thing to do. But we'll see what happens. You know, I mean, you know, I can still have kids, supposedly. You know, I have one testicle. I still have one. So still works. That would be like the coolest. Still works. So, you know, just since you asked. What you went through with cancer, explain what the doc initially thought it was, and then how it quickly progressed from there when you first realized something was wrong.

1:51:08Yeah, yeah, well, because it was misdiagnosed when I first sort of felt that there was some sort of, you know, something wrong down there. And they said it was epididymitis, and they gave me some antibiotics. And we went off and filmed a bunch of episodes of the MTV show while I was waiting for these antibiotics to kick in, and then they never kicked in. So I went back to the doctor again and he said, oh, sorry, my bad, it's actually cancer. So, you know, it's made me kind of very conscious of, you know, my health and my awareness of, you know, I'm always kind of like, I mean, like I said, when COVID happened, I took it real seriously because not only is, you know, it possible to get sick, but it's also possible to get sick and then be told that you're not sick or, you know, it's complicated.

1:51:54It's not just sort of an easy black and white thing to understand, and even a doctor can not diagnose you properly. What was the single scariest moment during that period? Well, it was definitely like the moment of realization that I could potentially die from this. I was sort of sitting there sort of devastated because the show was kind of my life at that point, and I realized I was going to have to stop the show. It was sort of this sort of devastating thing where it's like, you know, what the hell's going to happen here? I mean, it just seemed like such a bizarre curveball to be getting testicular cancer at this time, you know, after everything had led me to this moment where things were going great, and then I get testicular cancer.

1:52:45So I just assumed the worst, you know. The assumption was if I got testicular cancer, well, I'm probably not going to survive it either. You really thought that? I pretty much thought that you can't help but go there. I mean, you're sitting there, you've got cancer in your body, you know, you're looking at the statistics and you go, okay, they're pretty favorable, but it's not 100%, you know. So, you know, and me being sort of, you know, at times can be a pessimist. You know, I like to, I like to, I'm very much, you know, I always assume the worst, right? And then I try to avoid it. But because I'm aware that it's possible, I think is how I avoid some of these things, you know.

1:53:28You always assume the worst. I think so, yeah, yeah. Why do you think that is? I think I'm very fear-driven. Like, I mean, like, you know, like we talked earlier, oh, if the show doesn't get picked up, what am I going to do? Well, you know, I'm assuming, well, the show's not going to get picked up. So, you know, the odds of it getting picked up are so low that, like, it's terrifying. So I got to really put the afterburners on to try to make things happen because I'm assuming that it's the likelihood of things happening, positive things happening is not always great. So you got to kind of, you know, use your fear as a way of motivating yourself to work hard and get things done, you know.

1:54:12And so it was like three or four year actually recovery process. as I understand it, because I think the public was probably less aware of the stress and the pain you were in at the time. And then I guess there was nerve damage connected to some of the surgery. So what did that recovery process mean? Yeah, it was extreme pain, really. Waking up from the lymph node dissection was really the one that was the pain, not the test. Strangely, it's, you know, surprisingly, it's not the testicular cancer operation, removing the testicles pretty easy, right? They just go in and they cut you up here, up in your abdomen, and they go down and they just kind of shuck it out like an oyster, as I've said in past stand-up performances, but it's sort of like it's not too invasive of a surgery.

1:55:00But the lymph nodes dissection where they had to go in and check my lymph nodes just to see if there was, you know, any cancer in there, which was an elective surgery because you do an MRI, the MRI doesn't see anything, that means there's still a 1 % chance it's in there, but it's too small for the MRI to see it. So then you're given the choice, okay, you're going to wait, you know, come in every two weeks for the next five years to get your lymph nodes checked. And then if you see it, you'll get it early and we'll do chemo. Or we can just take a piece of lymph node out right now and look at it under a microscope and then you'll know 100 % whether you have cancer or not.

1:55:43And so I elected to do that and they took it out and I did not have cancer in my lymph nodes. So I did not have to have chemotherapy. But the surgery itself was so shockingly painful when I came out of it. And then it really probably took many, many, many years actually to really fade. You know, it sort of went from extreme pain to dull pain and then you're sort of dealing with a dull pain for the next five years or more of your life which sort of becomes normal but in those initial years um you know it was uh it was pretty traumatic to be honest with you because you're sort of I'm you know when I was hosting Saturday Night Live you know like um you know I've never talked about this publicly before um I sort of allude to it a little bit in the documentary that's coming up, but I've never, and I don't even get into detail, but a little more detail is this, like, you know, your entire body has just basically been through a traumatic thing.

1:56:45And now you're sort of somewhat in pain, but also exhausted. Like I had, I had a lot of energy issues. And at the same time, you're also terrified because you're like, oh my God, is this going to stop? Is this going to go away? And then you're also at that moment in my life had a lot of attention on me. I'm hosting Saturday Night Live, you have to show up and be happy and positive and funny. And in your mind, you're scared that you're not recovering and you're in pain and you don't want to really talk about that. You want to sort of, you know, there was this sort of idea. I think society has changed a lot since then but there was this idea of like oh I don't want to look like I'm weak or I don't want to look like I'm sick so I have to pretend that I'm completely recovered instantly you know because I want to work and I want to you know take advantage of all these great opportunities that are here in front of me of you know and so I don't want people to think that I'm you know any less funny happy or or you know alive than I was six months ago when I my show was on the air.

1:57:53So you're sort of struggling through gritted teeth as you're trying to pretend that you're doing great, but really you're not. So how would you privately cope with that at the time? Well, it was tough. It was tough. All gamut of emotions, scared, sad, angry, physically in paint and at the same time you're kind of uh you know getting hit by all sorts of different uh sort of things from you know just the position that I was in with the show at the time so it was it was it was it was it was uh very difficult to navigate you know because everybody wants a piece of you commercially and well and then also like the move when Freddie got finger came I got the bad reviews and then you know things you know things weren't necessarily everything wasn't going great all of a sudden you know we had a lot of eyeballs on me at that moment you know with the cancer and the show and the movie and and personal relationship with Drew and all that stuff it was kind of like you know and so then you're sort of trying to put on a brave face but really inside you're kind of like you know this is right this is not that pleasant you having this sort of burning sensation running down my entire spine, basically, is what it felt like.

1:59:12It felt like my entire spinal cord had hot chili pepper poured all over it for about two or three years. They didn't understand why I was still in pain. It was sort of very, very odd. Was there a single lowest point for you during that period? Just sort of a good year there where I was just kind of really just terrified that I was going to be in this kind of pain for the rest of my life. And I was feeling that I wasn't going to be able to kind of keep doing what I love to do, which is perform and be funny. And you got to be in a good mood when you're doing comedy. You got to be happy. You got to have a smile on your face.

1:59:57You got to feel good physically. And it was hard for me to do that. I had to kind of power through there. So it was just terrifying. Who do you confide in? Or is there, like back then, was there somebody you were truly kind of sharing? I think my parents have been extremely important to me in my life. They've always been people that I, you know, my mom and dad are there for me always. I trust their judgment. yeah and uh and i value it and they've they've always guided me well through through things they've always made a lot of decisions with their with their uh with their advice and counsel so it's been it's been it's been good and correct me if i'm wrong that's in part because well you know health care costs are way less expensive here than in the the states and everybody has that amazing benefit the challenge is there's longer wait times yeah yeah i mean it's I mean, it's a complex conversation to talk about universal health care and the American health care system versus the Canadian health care system.

2:01:08And, you know, there's, you know, I was fortunate. I had a few bucks, a little bit of expendable income at the time. And I was able to, you know, pay for my dad to get his surgery about three months faster than he would have had it in Canada. Which is a huge deal when you have cancer. Yeah, I mean, it's not, well, the thing is, it was a slow-growing cancer. Truth is, he could have stayed here and he would have been fine. We've got a great healthcare system here. But me being sort of, having just gone through cancer and being sort of aggressively proactive and having had some extra funding to move it up three months, I just wanted to do that just to get it over with.

2:02:04And I had just been through the hospital and I knew everybody and we just navigated through the whole system. But, you know, so, I mean, we can talk about health care for another. We can do an hour about health care at some point. Because on the flip side, you know, I have so many friends down in the U.S. who are, you know, working on my shows and working with me and comedians and people who don't have health care, you know, because they, you know, can't afford to spend the monthly amount of money it costs to have real. real all-encompassing health care, you know. So there's pros and cons to both systems, for sure.

2:02:41Do you think there was any connectivity to your dad's cancer and what he was exposed to in Vietnam? I don't know. It's probably impossible for me to say. I don't think so. I don't think so. But I think it's just the luck of the draw, you know. Well, yeah, because you've said publicly before that it impacted, or the thinking is that it could have impacted your brother, right? Yeah, I mean, it's possible. Yeah, it's possible. I mean, my dad was, you know, exposed to Agent Orange when he was in Vietnam. So he was drinking the water and eating the local food. And Agent Orange, of course, had been spread into all of the jungles out there and stuff.

2:03:32My dad was there with Canadian military as a peacekeeping sort of task force, overlooking the withdrawal of the U.S. troops in the early 70s. But so it's possible. Yeah, it's possible it affected things. but uh you know yeah it's not a good topic or uh yeah it's yeah it's just it's not my story to tell you know it's more about my brother and my dad and so yeah yeah i just kind of you know it's up to them to talk about that i think yeah okay yeah yeah yeah yeah if somebody was in that same position debating whether or not to do what you had done with the lymph nodes would you recommend it or would you say hold off?

2:04:22Yeah, I would recommend it even though it was... I mean, that's a very good question, actually. You know, so you don't know what the answer is going to be, right? Like, I mean, in hindsight, like, okay, they took my lymph nodes out and they found out that I didn't have anything in there. So then you're like, ah, I didn't even have to do that surgery, you know? But, you know, the truth is if I hadn't done it, I would have had to go back and get checked every two weeks for five years. until they and so then with the surgery i only had to go back and get checked every six months for the next five years so you imagine having to drive through hollywood traffic for every two weeks you know no so that was the reason that went into the decision you know now if i had known that there would be as much pain afterwards i don't know it would have been a very tough call you know but i'd say that ultimately like but looking back now even knowing the pain you went through you would say.

2:05:24Well, it's also, it's a very complicated question because also having gone through that pain actually has made me who I am in a certain extent, you know, like I'm a different person because of it, right? And so, and I, and I like who I am now, believe it or not, you know, I mean, you may wonder why that would be the case, but I do, I do, I do have, I do think it's given me a different sort of perspective on life, having to go through something that challenging, you know, which is good. So, you know, I hate to say it to people, but if you get your lymph node dissection, you'll find out whether you have to have chemo or not right away.

2:06:01You might have to endure like three or four or five years of extreme pain, but then 20 years later, you'll be a person that you might actually be happy with because of it. So I think it's an individual choice between someone and their doctor because it's too complicated. And there's probably been medical advancements and stuff that have been made since then that probably would make it easier to make that choice too so right it's it's really complicated i get i get asked a lot about testicular cancer from people that have just gotten it and and uh you know i i give my opinions but i always say go to your doctor talk to your doctor do your own research don't listen to me although it is whatever if I would imagine if you're somebody in that position, it's valuable to have the benefit of talking to somebody who's gone through it.

2:06:50And as young guys, obviously, you get it. And as younger people get testicular cancer, you wouldn't think you're getting cancer when you're 15 years old. So if you get a pain in your testicle, often what happens with young people is they don't go tell anybody because they're embarrassed. And then they walk around with cancer for a year and then it's spread too much and they actually could die from it. So I've had a lot of people come up to me over the years at my stand-up shows and say they went to the hospital because of this cancer special that we did on MTV and diagnosed it. I've had quite a few emotional sort of reunions or interactions with people who kind of felt that that episode of the show kind of saved their life.

2:07:32It's been quite heavy at times, actually. Which is to be the best feeling ever, though, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I want to run through some of kind of the notable folks that you've crossed paths with over the years. The first Letterman appearance and what comes to mind there, because obviously I think Dave was somebody you used to dress up as back in the day. Yeah. How do you dress up as Dave Letterman? know khaki pants adidas shoes and a blazer and a tie and I would do stand-up comedy sort of dressed in that way when I was I was a kid and probably even mimicking his sort of cadence and his delivery a bit you know um you know I would host the school talent show with you know a musician from the school who had a hammered organ with a Leslie amp and he would he'd be Paul Schaefer and I'd be Letterman we'd put a desk on the stage and I would do a little talk show and introduce all the bands and stuff at the school.

2:08:32So yeah, I loved Letterman and grew up. And my documentary that's on Prime covers that and follows me into my sort of whole sort of lifelong sort of admiration of David Letterman and me eventually getting to go on a show. But it was surreal. And hosting the show too. Yeah. A few years later, it was surreal because like MTV was sort of just sort of realizing that the show was a hit. And then all of a sudden Letterman called and it was just sort of put it over the edge, you know. That's one thing that happened with the Tom Green show, right? It's this little thing that they picked up from Canada.

2:09:09We threw it on the air and then within weeks, Todd Phillips and Pepsi called and I'm doing the commercials they ran during the NCAA tournament, you know, the basketball, college basketball, which popped the awareness of me. And then Letterman called And MTV was just kind of like, what the hell? This is just supposed to be some goofy little show we're putting on. And now it's in Letterman. In New York, everyone loved Letterman. But in New York, he was just the king of New York. So people were just kind of, my bosses at MTV were starting to realize, oh, this show is important. He's doing Letterman.

2:09:50That's cool. So that was amazing. I remember standing in the side of the stage and Biff Henderson comes out. He's actually the floor director of the show. and I'm like, I'm about to go on and Letterman's over at the desk and I somehow mustered up the nerve to wave at him before I went on and he looked over and he goes, hey, and I was like, oh my God, Letterman just looked at me. And then I walked out and did the show and it was awesome. Couldn't believe it. But yeah, it was cool. That was one of those things that you just can't believe. At the time, just could not believe that was happening. All right, here's somebody who's in the news right now for all the wrong reasons.

2:10:26you get a call from the office of Puff Daddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah. What stands out from that? When the show first got picked up by MTV and we were on the air, we got a call from Puff Daddy to come, and he wanted to meet me. So I went over to Bad Boy Entertainment, to his recording studio, and me and one of the writers of the show, and I went over there, and he sort of played some of his music. And, you know, I'd been in a rap group when I was a teenager, so I was kind of pretty excited. But, you know, I mean, you know, I don't even want to smile talking about the story and we're sort of like, you can't even really talk about it anymore in a way.

2:11:13In the new context of what's going on, it's a different story now. It's a different story now. Like, oh, it was so amazing, you know, But it's like what's going on now, you sort of don't know what to think about what's happening. But at the time, I sometimes think I was a little bit naive to the way show business works. A lot of show business is about relationships and all this type of thing. And I didn't really realize that. And I was so driven to shoot the show. We went over to the studio. And at the end of the visit there, he said, I'm having a party this weekend. and you want you to come to the party.

2:11:55And he gave us a couple of passes to this party in the Hamptons, right? And I went back to the office, and the party was like, on the day we were supposed to go shoot some goofy bit on the street. And I just sort of said, well, we can't go to Puffy's party. We've got to go make our bit on the street. We've got to go film our funny bit, you know? So then one of the producers or something went to the party, and it was just like him and his kids and four people there hanging out at his house. And the producer showed up at the pass thinking it was going to be some big party. And anyway, so I always felt at the time I always thought, oh boy, I probably should have gone to that party.

2:12:33But I was too busy like, you know, delivering a fake pizza to somebody and getting chased by a guy with a hammer in Long Island, you know. How about the connectivity between you and Eminem? Yeah, that was cool too. I mean, that was crazy. Like, when the Bum Bum song came out, which was my song, we set out to make the stupidest song ever. I think we accomplished that. We put it on the show. It went to number one on Total Request Live. Got you a record deal. Got me a record deal, yeah. Which, that record didn't come out because of my cancer, but I did get a big record deal with Virgin Records. But can you imagine an entire record of Bum Bum songs?

2:13:19I mean, what we missed out upon on there as a society, I think, is just horrible. You had the number one song on the planet. Yeah, yeah. It was crazy. And then Eminem's next single was him dressed up as me in the Bum Bum song, Slim Shady. If you watch that video, he's running around with a superhero costume on, the same exact superhero costume. And he raps about me humping a dead moose. Unbelievable. President Trump, what stands out from your experience with him on The Apprentice? You're talking about Dennis Rodman? No, you're talking about Donald Trump. I'll ask you about it after that. Rodman's awesome.

2:14:01We had fun. I probably got fired because of how much fun I was having hanging out with Dennis Rodman. We would go out drinking on the nights we were supposed to be working and stuff. It was pretty fun. If you get to go drinking in New York City with Dennis Rodman, don't pass that up. That's a lot of fun. He knows how to have a good time, that guy. Best person you've ever partied with? I mean, in terms of, like, most fun you've ever had? Well, we were in New York, and he's Dennis Rodman, and he's... First of all, you walk in a room, and everybody immediately sees this Dennis Rodman. But, no, he's a fun guy.

2:14:42Yeah, a fun guy to hang out with, yeah, for sure. But, yeah, Donald Trump was, you know, it's true I was on The Celebrity Apprentice. That's true I got to hang out with the president of the United States. But, unfortunately, I went out drinking with Dennis Rodman, and I screwed the whole thing up. So I got fired. But you got back. And then he brought me back, yes. I wrote a letter to Donald Trump after I got fired on Trump Tower stationary. We were staying in Trump Tower. I wrote a letter. I said, Mr. Trump, you know, I'm a comedian. And I know I got fired because I went out drinking with Dennis.

2:15:20But honestly, I thought it would be funny for the show. And I wish you all the best with the show. I just wanted the show to be funny. And thanks for having me on kind of thing. But completely genuine. Genuine, yeah. Absolutely genuine. And the next day I got a call from the producers and they wanted to bring me back. So they brought me back for the final challenge. So I have the distinction of being, you know, they always bring people back for the final episodes who were fired. But they bring like two people back or something. Yeah. But I have the distinction of being the earliest person to have been fired to get brought back.

2:15:50They usually bring someone that stayed on to like episode seven and then got fired. They bring them back. I got fired episode three. I mean, that is cool. It's pretty cool. Yeah. It's a pretty cool thing. All right. And lastly, your most memorable interaction from having William Shatner as your landlord. Yeah. So when I moved to Los Angeles, I rented a house to live in and it happened to be the William Shatner owned the house in his neighborhood that he rented out. and he was my landlord. And, well, a couple of things. I've had a few. He's Canadian, so it was, like, very exciting to meet this Canadian icon who I grew up watching on Star Trek and now he's my landlord, literally would come over to pick up the check from me, like, once a month, like, a couple times.

2:16:38He would just look, come over, here you go, you know.

2:16:44And, you know, paying my rent to Captain Kirk here, you know. But then he actually came in and met with me to play my father in Freddy Got Fingered. And I met with William Shatner, James Woods, John Voight, and Rip Torn. And, you know, truth be told, I mean, we had written the movie with William Shatner in mind, actually. And so this was somebody we really wanted. And then the studio really, really wanted me to use Rip Torn. And I was like, well, that'll be awesome too. But I do also remember one day I was sitting in front of my rental house still, in my rental house, and I just found out that we were going with Rip Torn.

2:17:32And my landlord pulls up and his Jaguar, and I'm standing there and the window goes down. He goes, so what's going on with the movie? I go, oh, yeah, actually, the studio wants to give it to Rip Torn. He said, okay. and drives off. Really? Yeah. That was my last interaction with my, no, I used to see him around town too. I don't think there was any hard feelings, you know. That does it for my chat with Tom Green. But our sit down was just one part of our full day with him on his beautiful property. Though some of his animals did create quite a disturbance at one point. We had a first in in-depth 15 year history, guinea hens interrupting the chat.

2:18:16So if you want to see that or anything else from our day on the farm with Tom Green, youtube.com slash Graham Bensinger. And if you get a chance, give us a rating and review. Thanks again for listening.