E564 Tom Green

27:45And I loved Monty Python and just SCTV. And I just loved comedy. I was doing stand-up comedy in Ottawa when I was 16 years old and like I would go down to watch Norm MacDonald when he was in his 20s. And I was just like it was sort of this amazing thing. And I somehow had this sort of feeling that if I could just get a video camera and go film stuff that maybe I could make a show or whatever. But there's also a skateboarder, you know, and that was sort of skateboarding videos where, holy shit, look at this. This is amazing. How did you find that so fast? Yeah, there, me at 16 years old. Yuck, yucks.

28:30Yeah. How did you find that so fast? I don't even know. You must have had that in advance. That is unbelievable. Is there some sort of weird algorithm here or something like that? I don't know if they did or not, but yeah, it looks great. Wow. Yeah, it looks so. Yeah. Look at that microphone too. It's like, I don't know. They didn't even use the right microphone back then. But I – no, I just – I don't know. I often kind of like think there's something about like – I don't know. I think I've always been really afraid of the concept of like being dead, you know, like being gone and like there being no sort of recollection of anything that you've ever done, right?

29:12Yeah. and I always found it interesting to just kind of document things and just record things and that'll be there, you know, in some electronic way floating around there forever. It sort of feels in a little way like kind of like sort of a weird kind of immortality in a way, you know. I think that's kind of what fascinates me about these ruins in the desert too. Like these people came and built these things in the year 875 and now I'm walking through it and looking at it and filming it and talking about it with you. And so they're kind of in a way kind of remembered, you know. Yeah. And then there was also just kind of the blatant, you know, when I was younger, I was a little, quite a bit different than I am now.

29:53I think I've calmed down quite a bit. Like when I was younger, I really always needed to be kind of like, you know, the center of attention, the class clown, moving around a lot. It was weird as a kid. so to me it seemed like a really good way of just kind of uh you know documenting all of this silliness you know and uh and uh i loved it you know i love filming stuff and showing it to people at school and it was you captured so much you were one of the first people really to just capture shit and just show it to people kind of you know like kind of like not shit but i mean just yeah no shit for sure yeah actually actual shit was involved quite a bit yeah yeah yeah we're gonna capture shit and show it to you yeah what do you mean like this is what we mean and i can totally relate to what you said about um dude i used to when i was i guess probably turning around 20 to probably 28 i would make postcards and i would send them to my kids they weren't even born yet like whenever i was traveling somewhere i would send them i would make them out to my kids i just wanted my kids to know that i'd been i needed there to be some yeah record that i like cared about my children, even though they weren't here yet, which is kind of a crazy thing.

31:07But it made me think about what you're saying. Like, yeah. And I would scrapbook, I would save things. Like I just wanted there to be like some proof that I felt something in the world and that I existed. Right. I think I just didn't, I don't know if I just didn't have a lot of that, like, or I needed an insane amount of proof. And so that's why I did it. But yeah, I could just, I could definitely relate to that to wanting to have some timeline. Yeah. So I, you know, just in case time ever showed up and said, hey, were you here? I could be, well. Yeah, yeah. Yes, here I was, you know. I could show you my homework kind of or something, you know.

31:47Absolutely. Yeah, I can relate to that because I talk a little bit in my stand-up special about not having kids. And I sometimes think it's kind of a bit of a message to my future children that I'm aware that I haven't had them yet. And so I totally understand what you're saying about that. It's – yeah, I mean it's a weird thing because 20 years ago, nobody had – definitely 30 years ago, nobody had video cameras really like they do now. But now everybody with their phones, everything documented. It's so normal now. But I just put this documentary out on Prime, which is called This is the Tom Green Documentary.

32:31It's sort of a play on my old theme song on my show. This is the Tom Green Show was the song, right? So I went through like thousands of hours of video. I'm going back looking at 17-year-old me running around doing stuff. and it was actually kind of a pretty somewhat terrifying experience actually because it was like this opportunity to kind of tell the story of everything that happened with my show and everything that happened with my experience here in LA and I wanted to kind of tell the story right and I've got so much video and combing through all of it was at times somewhat kind of like I would be looking at myself like I'm looking at a completely different person and I can't even believe I'm finding things I don't even remember happening and I'm looking at things that are just so completely bonkers and silly and ridiculous.

33:36I'm like, whoa. Sometimes I couldn't look at the TV. I'm like, oh my, what was I doing? That's how you made us feel. Yeah, exactly. I was doing it to myself 20 years, 30 years later. And no, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody to go make a documentary about yourself. Definitely hire somebody to do that and never watch it. But no, it was fun because I wanted to tell the story the right way. But it was also kind of very surreal. Was it hard to be true to yourself making your own documentary? And no one should probably make your documentary except for you because you're one of the rare cases, it feels like that has so much has documented themselves so much you know like um and i don't even know if it's i don't know if it seemed like an egotistical way i don't think it ever came across like that of your footage it just came across that you wanted to have control over how of yourself you wanted to put yourself out there um but was it hard to make a documentary and not want to like make yourself the hero or something or i've never made a documentary before yeah yeah Was there any of that in it or how do I make this?

34:43It's like the first scene of the documentary, I'm sitting with my mother and she actually says, are you really supposed to direct a documentary about yourself? I mean, can't you kind of whitewash that a little bit? Are you going to do that? Yeah, I'm going to do that. But honestly, I wanted to be – I wanted to be – I did not want to completely put a false story out there. So I think the hardest part was trying to figure out how to not be too self-deprecating. Because you think – when you get to my age, you look back and you think, oh my god, I wish I hadn't done that or I wish I hadn't done that or I shouldn't have said that or I shouldn't have done that.

35:24And I have a lot of those things right there constantly rattling around in my head. And you start to think like, man, maybe this is a good way for me to go and just like apologize for everything that I perceived that I've done wrong in my life, right? And then you have to kind of take a step back and go, well, wait a minute. That might just be in my head. So I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people about people that I know, people I'm close with, about the story of – really, it's the story of the show. and takes us through the story of kind of creating the show and then building, you know, before the show with my music and then after the show with building a, you know, sort of a web TV studio, right, here in Los Angeles.

36:12And it's sort of a telling of that story. But then I wanted to talk a bit about some of the, you know, personal sort of, you know, things that I went through. I mean, I had cancer when I was on MTV. and I talked about that. I made this movie, Freddy Got Fingered, which was not critically, completely embraced.

36:37So it's like I wanted to explain myself a bit, but then at the same time, there's a lot of people now that like the movie, believe it or not. So I didn't want to completely... And hate the critics now. Yeah, yeah. So it's sort of like it was a very tricky balancing act. and uh and then on on top of that there's just so much footage and so many weird little funny clips that only i know are the ones that people like or people have or haven't seen and i kind of wanted to make sense of that all and piece it all together i don't think anyone else would have been able to find it all you know yeah so but uh was there a project that you kind of wanted to do over the years that you didn't really nail or you didn't that something that didn't happen Was there something?

37:20Because you've just done so much stuff. I mean, you know, it's interesting because like, in fact, that's part of what the documentary is about. Because like when I was a – got into making the show when I was growing up, all I could even imagine myself doing was I wanted to be a talk show host. You know, I wanted to do basically a show like David Letterman. Right. I'd have guests on and then I'd go out in the street and, you know, be a nutcase, you know, do goofy stuff, right? And I got to do that, you know, a few times over the years. And, you know, when those shows go away, you know, initially when that happened, you know, that was back in the day of MTV.

38:02You know, the first show I stopped when I got sick. So, you know, it didn't actually get canceled, the Tom Green show. But then when I started – I did a nightly show, it kind of – when it kind of got canceled, I was thinking, oh my gosh, this is the worst thing that could ever happen to me that I could ever imagine that I'm not going to be able to do a nightly talk show. Like this was like – this was devastating to me. And as time marches on and I look at all the things that I've done instead, you know, touring, doing stand-up or moving back to the farm and everything in between, I kind of realize, man, I'm kind of glad that actually didn't work out because if that show had been a big hit, then I would have been going down to the same studio every night for the last 30 years and I wouldn't have gotten to do all these other things, you know.

38:57So, you know, Freddy Got Fingered, of course, was a idiotic movie, you know, purposefully so. Yeah. Did you guys make that yourselves? Yeah. I wrote it with my friend Derek and I directed it. You did? Was it your first time you'd ever directed a movie? It was, yeah. Wow. It was. But it was – we had a budget. You know, it was 20th Century Fox. We had – you know, because the show was doing good on MTV. So they let me direct it. They let me do that, which was probably a mistake. But no, we really pushed it to make it like – we were in our 20s. So the idea was let's make this the craziest movie ever made.

39:35It's literally we actually believed that we could do something like that. And so it gets complicated because then how do you define failure? You know, like it came out, Roger Ebert, and it wasn't Siskel. It was the other guy. He had another guy there. Oh, yeah, the second string. Ebert and Roper. Yeah, Ebert and Roper, they sent that guy in. Yeah, even he didn't like it. He didn't? Even Roper didn't like it. I mean, it wasn't even Siskel. It was Roper, whoever that guy was. But it was they, you know, trashed it. And you're kind of thinking at the time, man, this is devastating. You know, Ebert and Roper are trashing my film, you know?

40:12But – and you think, oh, you start to question, you know, every sort of choice you've made, you know? I don't know. This guy looks like he also likes canned sardines at the same time. And these days, who would – nobody even trusts the critics anyway. So it's kind of funny now that it's like – Yeah. At the time, like, it was the end of, you know, the line if these guys trashed your movie. Oh, yeah. It's like my first movie and all this stuff riding on it. And then these kind of just destroyed it. And I remember just sitting there like watching this, just thinking, oh my gosh, this is it. You know, this is the end.

40:45But, you know, it wasn't, you know, I just kept going, kept doing my thing. And you look back at it and go, it's kind of funny now that they didn't like it, you know? Yeah, it's kind of awesome that they didn't. It's weird because there's a weird sort of counterintuitiveness to it because we set out to make a movie that those guys would not like. And then when they don't like it, you're upset about it. Yeah. It's like I kind of thought that they would sort of see the irony and go, I know we're not supposed to like this, but actually this kid's pretty clever. No, they didn't say that. What was the budget on that movie?

41:16Do you remember? $14 million they spent on that. Plus an additional 10 on promotion and marketing and stuff. And you know what? I will say it made it all back on DVD. Remember DVD? Remember they used to put DVDs out? So I think I heard it made$35 million on DVD. so it actually was a profitable movie. Made$14 million at the box. I'm here defending it now. It made its money back. It made its money back. No, but it did. So it did make its money back. But Ebert and Roper aren't going to tell you that though. They're not going to tell you that. Well, it wasn't the Titanic, you know? No, no, exactly.

41:51It was. I mean, it was in a way, but in the sense that it bombed. But it's funny. It's funny though because - It's cool that you did it though. There was a long period of time there where I was made to feel like it was a really bad decision. And then in the last like 10 years, it's like all I hear are people saying they love it. Someone today showed me they had an x-ray cat tattoo, like it's a character in the movie. So it's like – it is a little confusing when you talk about sort of – I mean your question was how do you handle things like failure and things like that. It's like, you know, it's kind of the more of those kind of things you go through, the more you kind of learn to kind of embrace it in a way.

42:37It's kind of it's almost a good thing, you know. Yeah. David Spitt and I just wrote a movie together, not to name drop or anything, but we did and we just funded ourselves and stuff. And so it's just kind of a scary time, I think. So that's why I'm asking that as well. Not scary. It's exciting, too. But it's also like, yeah, I just one day I'll be like, that's something I tried to do. I was trying to be creative, and we tried our best, and I got to try it with somebody who I love to watch anyway. Oh, that's cool. So you've written it. Are you going to go make the movie with him? We have five days left shooting.

43:08Oh, you're shooting the movie already. We start back tomorrow. Kind of like a Joe Dirt 2, 3 kind of thing? Yeah, it's like a – no, it's a good question. It's like two guys. One of them gets hit by a vehicle. My character gets hit by a car when he's young, and Spade rescues me. Yeah. And he and I become friends then, and he gets me a job. Years later, we're working together at a sewage company. Oh, nice. Like a repo man kind of thing. Yeah, type of shit. Well, you know, the thing is that you're in good hands here because you're with a guy that's done this a lot before. Right, he's done it a lot.

43:44And it's sort of a seasoned. if I had to direct it too I like to chime in with the director and throw in ideas and stuff like that but it's just definitely a big learning curve, it's a lot so I can't imagine, especially in our budget it's just a couple million bucks if it were really big, I feel like it would be scary yeah, I mean back then we were shooting on film, things cost more it was at the time it was considered a low budget movie but But, you know, I think that, I don't know, it just seems like the way things get released these days and the ways people embrace weirdness these days, like I'm assuming it's kind of a weird movie.

44:31Yeah, it's odd. Yeah, it's just funny. It's just like old school funny. Yeah, so like a funny movie, right? Like, you know, you have this incredible thing going with your show here. So you have your audience built in. And so you don't really have to worry about the same things that maybe back in the day when you put out something crazy and sort of in a sea of somewhat normal movies coming out every weekend. All getting funneled through this sort of mainstream cinema release system. Right, this conglomerate, yeah. It's very strange. Like we had to take the movie and focus group it. Oh, wow. And then people would sit there with pads.

45:09And it was in Phoenix. We flew down to Phoenix to focus group Freddy Got Fingered. That's what they do, a lot of them, huh? Yeah, yeah. For some reason, they do them there in Phoenix. And, you know, and like, you know, then someone stands up after the movie and asks them what they didn't like about the movie. Well, with, you know, Freddy Got Fingered, I mean, we're sort of supposed to not like any of these scenes. You're supposed to be, you know, kind of polarizing. Yes. So it didn't really kind of work with the focus group system. And then you had to make changes to it and all that kind of stuff.

45:38but you guys probably have a lot more creative control over things now. I think we'll just make a trailer and put it out. I'm guessing. I have no idea. Part of my brain hasn't even gotten to that thought yet. That's exciting. But it definitely feels kind of, yeah, it feels just like, well, we tried to do it. Who knows what will happen? It's going to be awesome. Absolutely. You and Spade? I'm going to go see that. That's incredible. Well, thanks. I appreciate it, man. Everybody will. Everybody's going to love that. It's going to be interesting. That's what I'll say. That's what I do. Yeah, I do believe that it'll be interesting.

46:13Of course it will. How did you deal whenever there were tough times? Because you had so much of recording yourself, kind of living under your own recording schedule and stuff like that. Were there days off when you would just have your show from home, right? Were there days where you would just take off? What was that shoot schedule like when you were? When I was doing the web show at home?

46:38Well, I mean it was – so there wasn't really sort of a podcasting yet. It wasn't really a thing really, right? So we built the studio and it would basically just stream to my website. I mean there was no Instagram yet. YouTube had just started and people would come and watch it on the front page of TomGreen.com. and we actually had like a company in San Francisco that made like the video playback system, you know, so it was CDN, content distribution network. It was basically, so we would upload a video to that. We weren't uploading it to YouTube and linking it or there was no YouTube really. So it was kind of just a big sort of science experiment that I was doing with, you know, my group of friends

47:32and I had the sort of goal of trying to sort of make it a show that would become profitable, get advertisers and maybe sell it to television, which we did a little bit of that. So I was kind of pretty driven, I guess. And it's kind of what I notice now with like podcasting, which is amazing is like, you know, the people that have these incredible businesses that they've got going, these incredible, you know, artistic visions they have for themselves, they're all kind of have that same kind of drive in them. You know, they get up in the morning, their mind is just like, how are we going to make this better today?

48:14You know, how are we going to make this awesome today? You know? So it was kind of, it was kind of like that, you know, we were getting up and turning on the studio every night and I'd be inviting up rappers and Too Short came up and Jurassic Five and Exhibit and then you'd invite comedians up and Joe Rogan would come over and Norm MacDonald who I became good friends with would start coming over all the time and literally like hundreds and hundreds of people would come over and it became this kind of really fun thing to do. I wasn't doing stand-up at the time. I hadn't done stand-up in years. So I was really just doing that.

48:56And, you know, it was ridiculous. I mean, we were just enjoying the absurdity of it. Oh, yeah. Was it so stressful? Or were you just... It was because I put pressure on myself and I would actually get stressed out about it. And then we would have people that would prank call us. So I had this phone system on the desk, and you could just call it, and it would ring, and I'd hit answer. So we had, like, people trolling us, basically. I remember getting Rickrolled for the first time. And it was like, oh, I kind of felt like, I don't know if I'd ever heard of Rickrolling before I got Rickrolled. It's cool.

49:34And it became kind of like a little bit of a game, you know, like where we were. There was a switch that I'd built with Bill Schnitzer was his name. He worked there and Victor, a couple of the guys that worked there. And we built the switch under the desk. It was like metal. And it was like we got a metal box with a switch and we had wires and we soldered them together. And then the wires ran out to the computer. And then Bill was able to program the computer so that when like I flip that switch, it would like if everything was off, it's the middle of the night in my house. It's quiet night, nobody there.

50:16And if I were to get up at one o 'clock in the morning by myself and put clown makeup on, which I often did, and a top hat and walk out into my living room and flick the switch, the switch would turn on the lights, would turn on the cameras, would turn on the computers. This computer would tell this computer to start recording. The phone system would turn on. It would send it to the front page of my website. Just one switch. I haven't done anything. All I've done is put on some clown makeup and flipped a switch, right? You don't have to put on the clown makeup, but I did do that often. It was called the French clown of midnight.

50:49I'd speak in French in a clown makeup. And you wonder why it didn't work out. But then the phone would start ringing and I'd just be doing the show. I'd have a switcher on the desk so I could switch the cameras. And I would just start taking calls. And it was really the only live video on the internet. Like really, like there was no Instagram live or anything. So it was like, you imagine when I was a kid, I wanted to do prank. I like prank calling the radio station. I like to call into the radio station. And I would call into the radio station and I'd record it. And then I'd call into the radio station and I'd pretend I was like my friend's father and I'd call and I'd start complaining about my son and I'd use his name and I'd play the tape back to him and it was hilarious to me, you know.

51:35And so I loved that, like, pranking a radio station. And I kind of started to realize, like, we're the only live show on the internet right now with a phone with no call screener. all these people like me around the world could now call in and prank me, you know? And so we kind of got into this little sort of war, basically, you know, which was fun because I would get angry about it. But then also I kind of didn't have to turn the phone on, you know? So it was really fun. And, you know, I got to meet a lot of great people. you know I mean that's where I really got to hang out with you know Joe Rogan for the first time really and uh and Norm who I became really close with and and so many other people and you know it was it was amazing so did Norm um did you talk to him much in the later years yeah well at the at the very end I did not know that he was sick I didn't know he was sick so that was that was uh seemed like he kept that from everybody yeah and he's from my hometown he's from Ottawa, Canada and he started at the same comedy club that I started at, at Yuck Yucks in Ottawa Howard Wagman, who's the still owns the comedy club in Ottawa Yuck Yucks, which is like all across Canada it's kind of like the improv of Canada I've been at one of them, I think so he's awesome and you know he put Norm on the stage for the first time and tells his story about how Norm got off stage the very first time he did stand-up he was in his 20s and he didn't think he did well and he was walking down the street i'm never going to do that again and howard chased him down spark street in ottawa and stopped said you got to come back tomorrow and you know he made him come back because he saw he saw his uh his genius right yeah nobody was like him they just had they were just talking about him uh i just watched the snl monologue that he did one time yeah that was pretty great where he's like they fired me from the show but now they want me back you know yeah which is and how it just didn't even make any make any sense and he just kind of shit on the show Yeah.

53:43It was weird because like – it's weird. Like I find myself sometimes now talking about 2005 like it was like 50 years ago or something like that. But it really is – things have changed so much in the last 20 years with social media that it does really feel like kind of a different world. Like I remember Norm would come up and the first time he came up, I just couldn't believe I was going to hang out with him and hang out with him. for two hours on camera, sort of in some ways kind of doing a make-believe talk show, even though there were people watching. It was kind of like experimental talk show, and he was getting into that.

54:27And then the show would end and we'd go on YouTube and go look at videos. And I remember it was like YouTube was so new that it was just the strangest thing. I'd be sitting with Norm MacDonald after doing this for two hours, and we'd be sitting there watching crazy clips that he would find, like baby versus cobra, with the cobra's mouth sewed together. Those are good, yeah. Grape lady falls. I remember watching these videos with Norm and just dying of laughter in the middle of the night and just thinking, this is cool. Now it's just so normal to look at viral videos and stuff. But back then we thought we were just – have you ever seen this video?

55:08I've never seen this. Oh, man. I mean, it's a little bit – can you play the audio too? Is it possible? Because the audio is sort of important for this one. These are filled with Chamberson grapes. And the winner this Saturday is some music, eating international foods, having wine tours and tasting, vineyard tours, seminars, arts and crafts. It's a lot of fun, a whole day. Stop. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, stop. Oh, stop. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, I can't breathe. Stop. Stop. Oh, no. So, yeah. Yeah. Ouch. Ouch. They're struggling not to lie here. I hope she was okay. And that lady has the smallest head as well.

55:57If people's heads are real small, they should not talk a lot. I love that. That's your takeaway for this. Her head size as well. It is true, though, by the way. I'd never noticed that. That lady has a very small head. When people with small heads talk a lot, it feels like they're cheating the system a little bit. I just feel like a regular head, you get a regular amount of words. Small head, less words. Don't do too much. Right. Or at least just talk in sort of the amount of words that your head should justify, your head size should justify. Yes. Don't be a crazy little head just doing a bunch.

56:34Yeah. I dated a girl one time for a while with a small head, beautiful girl. Great girl, but knew when to talk, when not to talk. You wouldn't see her just yammering on like some big head. Yeah. You know? So I fucking... Did you notice right away that she had a particularly small head, or was that something that sort of dawned on you later? She had big hair, big kind of Italian-ish hair. Right. And every now and then I would feel her head, and I was like, oh, I feel like there should be a little more head here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So once you got under that, that hair was puffed out probably purposefully.

57:06We probably knew that her head was small. It was an SBA. It was a mirage. Yeah. Hiding it a little bit. Yeah. Probably a little self-conscious of it. Yeah. Could have been. But yeah, cool girl, small head, but knew how to use it. Right? Yeah. Not somebody that was ambivalent to their head size and is just running around just squawking at the moon every chance they get. This is pretty wild that Morgan and Morgan has just filed a first of its kind lawsuit against food industry behemoths. That's the truth. The lawsuit alleges that these companies engineer their ultra-processed food products to be addictive and market those products towards children, allegedly causing chronic disease in children.

57:52The complaint details the strategic and calculated actions that these companies allegedly took to target children with addictive ultra-processed foods, including internal memos, strategic meetings, and the extensive research they allegedly conducted to leverage our biology and neurology to create addictive substances. We've all been hearing for years and maybe speculating that a lot of ultra-processed foods could be addictive. and I just think it's fascinating to finally see this possibility coming to light. Morgan and Morgan is committed to fighting for the people and for the families. If your child has been diagnosed with one of these diseases, you may have legal options.

58:37They've helped thousands of families seek justice against big corporations and they're ready to fight for you too. Learn more at forthepeople.com slash Theo. that's f-o-r the people.com slash t-h-e-o did you um yeah what did i do oh yeah i just went to the snl 50th dude oh yeah that's amazing yeah i know that must have was that incredible it was cool you got to host it i did i know that's amazing i was on tour i wasn't able to go i would have loved to have gone to that that must have been wild i went to the 40th and i remember that was that is just the most surreal uh thing i i mean if it's anything i imagine it was like just everybody is there right yeah i'll get to go to the music night and then um i'm buddies with louis ck he took me to uh chris rock's birthday party oh nice on saturday night which was crazy because chris rock is always like my favorite comedian growing up and um so just to even be able to be there i definitely felt like out of place whatever but it was also cool you know just to like you know kind of fly on the wall there.

59:45So did you do really actually feel out of place there? Yeah, 100%. And why do you think that is? Just like, it feels like kind of fancy, you know? I mean, I could tell right when I saw Chris Rock, how I felt. Like some people, you don't get nervous on them or you've seen them a couple of times. And so there becomes a little bit ambiance, you know? But I just didn't know him. And so, yeah, I think that created some of the nervous energy. Some other people I did know, so it wasn't that bad. but I got introduced to people that I didn't know. And so you're always like, I don't know, I don't usually say a lot then.

1:00:19I'll kind of just be a listener. Yeah. You know? See, I get like that too, and I wish I didn't. This sort of social anxiety when you're in an environment like that where there's just all these people that you admire and respect and are around you and everybody, I kind of don't even feel like myself. It's sort of a very stressful thing for me. Yeah. So in some ways I was kind of— That's a good word. It's stressful. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know why that is. Why is that? Well, I think it's because you're a little bit probably, I don't know how I fit in this circle. There's a lot of circles in the world where I get it.

1:00:51But you're on top of the world right now. You just interviewed the president of the United States. I mean, everybody, you've got this incredible show. I mean, I'm sure everybody was super excited to see you there. So you probably don't really have any reason to feel nervous, but you still do, right? Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah, I just didn't know. I hadn't been in that circle before. It's kind of like, I guess, when you're in a, I don't know, when you're in, just feel like you're in a new water. You're figuring out the temperature. You don't know, you know, you want to make a lot of noise at somebody's birthday party.

1:01:20They are seeing friends that they know. It's not a huge group of people. So you just want to kind of, you know, you don't want to overstay your welcome, you know, kind of type of type of energy, you know. I don't need to tell a big story. They all, they know each other. I'm just happy to be here. Happy to be able to see somebody celebrate their birthday. to witness people that I admire from a little bit of a way, from a little closer than I'm usually allowed to get to them, online or on TV, I guess. But the SNL thing was, we went to the music. They had a music show. At Radio City. Yeah, and that's the part that I got to go to, and that was pretty cool.

1:01:57Just seeing different bands, Jelly Roll performed, and so I know him. Nice. And so there was, yeah, and I got to bring a friend, and so I knew my buddy was, you know, we were just kind of milling around, running into some people that we knew and meeting some new people, but it was pretty chill. So when you went to the, you went to the inauguration too, right? Yeah, I went to the inauguration. So like when you go to the inauguration and you've already, now you know the president of the United States because you'd had this interview with him. Yeah. Like you could kind of hang out with him at the inauguration or?

1:02:27No, no. I didn't see any of them. I was in like the second tier of humans there or something, you know, like there was a first tier and then I was in like this second tier of humans that were there. But that's got to be kind of still interesting nonetheless to be there. Oh, it was interesting. Very interesting. You don't even know if the process is real. You see it on TV, but it's like who knows if that shit's real? Who knows what's real anymore? So to witness that was pretty cool. Just to be in Washington, D.C. is always pretty neat with all the architecture. But I don't know Trump like that.

1:03:02I'll message with his daughter sometimes, Ivanka. So I'm able to communicate with her. What do you guys talk about? She'll just send me a book that she thinks I would like. Really? We went to dinner one time. She's so smart. Yeah, okay. It's mind-blowing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so... Go to dinner with her a lot or... No, I only went one time. That's pretty cool. Was her husband Jared there or was it just you two? He wasn't. It was other friends of hers. Okay. Yeah. Not trying to break any news here, but it sounds interesting. Not at all. I wish there were news to break, dude. She's stunning. She's awesome.

1:03:34And then there's like a middleman who worked with the, I guess, I guess he worked with the Republican Party and he got to invite some people. Yeah. So it was just a motley group of strange people that went to the inauguration. So how did that work? So can I ask you questions? Yeah, sure. Yeah. So when he came on your show, right, it was right before the election and he was doing a lot of podcasts and stuff. Did they approach you or did they call you? His son is a fan of your show, right? Is that what it is? Yeah, that's what he said. He said Barron was a fan of the show, and I tried to get to see Barron, but I didn't get to meet him.

1:04:07So you just got a call one day, and Trump wanted to come on the show? Well, I'd met Trump a couple times at UFC. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. UFC, I think, had everything to do with winning the election probably for the Republicans. Yeah, yeah. Because Dana White is just such a facilitator. He just gets things done. He kept his sport going while all the other sports were shut down. A lot of them were shut down or having to practice really intense methods during COVID. He was able to keep his sport going. And so he brought Trump to a lot of his events because they've been friends for a long time. And so I'd met him there a couple times.

1:04:47And then I knew his brother died of alcoholism. So I was like, well, let me call him and let me ask Dana if Trump would ever talk about his brother. I didn't know about it. And just to see what he's like. Like, is he just all a business guy? Does he think about other things? because when you're, you don't get a lot of, you don't hear a lot about his feelings, Trump's feelings. And if you do, he doesn't communicate it in a way where it's very emotional to people. I don't feel like, right? So I was just curious about that. So yeah, I called up Dana and he said, we'll make it happen, you know? And then two days later, he called back and he said, all good, somebody from his group's gonna reach out to you.

1:05:24So - And you went to him, right? And we went to him up in New Jersey, yeah. And we offered, we would have loved to have But Harris and Walls, we're still trying to get Walls on. We tried to get Harris on even after the election, but they just didn't want to come. Yeah. And so it was kind of a bummer, you know, because I think. Seems like that was a pretty big mistake. They didn't go on a lot of the shows. Yeah, I think it would just let them be more normal. I think people are, if something's too much behind the glass these days, people don't trust the glass. I don't even think that they don't trust the person behind the glass.

1:05:54I think they just don't trust the fucking glass, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Wow. No, it does. Yeah, so I guess that was all kind of interesting. I'm kind of out of sorts with the way that they're handling the Gaza-Palestine stuff. That shit really, I think, is insane to me. But that's just, you know, I don't know. That's just my thoughts. It's kind of an endless sort of quagmire you can find yourself in once you start talking politics. When you get into it too much. I agree. In this world we're living in now because it's like you go on the road, you do stand up all around the country and everybody's sort of divided in a way, right?

1:06:38And then you start sort of firmly choosing a side and all of a sudden half the audience doesn't want to have any fun anymore, right? So it's kind of like we got to make these choices now like, okay, well, do I want to give my opinion anymore about what's going on in the world? and then you have to choose one of the set of opinions that are on this side or the set of opinions that are all evenly and neatly put on this side. And as soon as you state your opinion about one of these issues that just happens to be on this side, then anybody that doesn't agree with you no longer wants to fuck with you and come to your show or have a good time or have a laugh with you.

1:07:18So it's just such a shitty thing to have to deal with that, right? Yeah. So how do you kind of like juggle that? Because as a Canadian, it's like right now in Canada, people are pretty upset with Donald Trump because he's putting these tariffs on Canada, right? And saying they're going to make us a 51st state. Saying they're going to annex Canada. People aren't too happy about the idea of being taken over by the United States of America, doesn't it? Yeah. It's not something that people are super excited about hearing. So you kind of go – it's funny because sometimes I think like – well, I think a lot of Americans who don't think about it that much might think like, oh, Canada is going to be the 51st state.

1:08:00I bet you everyone in Canada must be really excited about being the 51st state of the United States. But I'm kind of saying, well, no, it will probably be the first state in America that nobody in it wants to be American. So – because we've got our own country. It's not that we don't love it. America. I love America, but we sort of have our entire different culture. You go to Canada all the time, right? Yeah, I love it. And I'm glad it's Canada. We're different, right? It's a different thing. Yeah, it's different. You're nice to have, you know, people will be, somebody will walk across the street in Canada and just come tell you they're sorry and then go back across the street and then nothing even happened.

1:08:37They're not even. They just came off just to apologize. There's no even, you've never seen them before, you know? But it's Canada's the best. I think Canada gives me hope for humanity a lot of times. It's good people. You know, like I love Canada. I wish that there was times I've wanted to be Canadian even. Do you remember the first time you went to Canada? Yeah, Vancouver. And was that somewhat recently? Brothel or a hostel. I slept at a hostel. Okay, yeah, yeah. How many years ago would that have been? That was probably 15, 18 years ago, 17 years ago. And it was great, man. I had a great time.

1:09:13Were you doing stand-up there? I hadn't started. I just almost started stand up. I was doing I was traveling. I was left out of there on a school floating university left out of Vancouver called Semester at Sea. Yeah. And it went around the globe and we left out of Vancouver. But I went up to Whistler. I went and caught a ride. Some guy took me hitchhiking up to Whistler. I drove me up there. And the dude, the guy who drove me, he was a caretaker for Superman who had died. Remember Superman who got in the wheelchair? Yeah. Christopher Reeves. Christopher Reeves. He was his caretaker. this guy Michael and I think I met him I was at some shop right around there and he was saying he was in the area he was like I'm taking the drive up to Whistler I was like can I roll with you he's like yeah so he took me up to Whistler man brought me back we stopped along the way went on some hikes and stuff it was amazing but I've always enjoyed Canada I used to have a dream that I would meet a wife in Toronto but I went and did two weeks of comedy up there didn't meet anyone Yeah, yeah.

1:10:13Well, it could still happen for sure. It could still happen. Yeah. You find the audiences react differently. They're great. Halifax was one of my favorite shows I've ever had in my life. Yeah, yeah. Dude, I even made – my little nephew made up this joke. He said – oh, I told it on stage. I was like, yeah, I heard one time that there wasn't any more fish up here. And so they changed the name to No Fish Scotia. and nobody laughed right that's why i'm laughing because i can imagine the reaction sometimes there's something great when they don't laugh oh sure there's some little thing in there it's like oh that's pretty good yeah absolutely you know yeah but uh but yeah always had a great love for canada i think it's bizarre that trump would say something like that and it's also like Like, it just – but what do you expect out of him, you know?

1:11:09And what do you expect about the media to spotlight things and make it whatever it is, even if it's a seed of something, to grow it into a million plants, you know? Yeah. No, it's interesting. I think, you know, there's a thing that's going on, the hockey games in Canada now where the USA and Canada are playing. Yeah, the Four Nations, right? Yeah, the Canadian fans were booing them. Booing them. At them, right? You know, sometimes I go like, well, I don't – based on the reaction on social media, I sort of feel like maybe not everybody in the US necessarily understands why that's happening. Totally.

1:11:41They don't know it's about the tariffs. They're not booing the national anthem. They're booing the fact that these tariffs are being put on, which is going to, of course, devastate – the economy on both sides will suffer from that, right? I'm sitting here talking about it like I know about it. I should probably know more about it. But it's like – I think people are just kind of like, why are you guys doing this to us? So it's kind of an interesting thing. But you want to talk about issues sometimes and then you go, OK, I've just waded into this sort of hornet's nest and I'm never going to hear the end of it.

1:12:15So it is interesting. What was it – when you're at the inauguration, after the inauguration, where you're like kind of just – are you kind of – who are you hanging out with there? like i went who did i meet i met this kid alexander wang we just had a podcast episode with him he created this company called scale ai he's like this ai he's the youngest billionaire ever this chinese kid oh my gosh from new mexico wow fascinating dude um self-made billionaire self-made billionaire yeah so i ended up having lunch with him that was probably the neatest thing that happened that weekend and pick up the tab or i think i paid actually i didn't know he was a billionaire oh my gosh yeah i was just that's why he's a billionaire he's letting everyone else pick up the tab i was just happy to be dining with the chinese you know yeah yeah that's amazing and oh it was great man and um and then who else something else happened at night oh i saw wayne gretzkew lost his tooth wow and then anything i saw joe rogan for a few minutes i saw tony hinchcliffe from kill tony yeah yeah and then that was kind of it and then i went home it was too much like too hard to get around.

1:13:23I saw Lex Friedman. That was pretty neat. I'd never met him. He's a podcaster. Yeah, I've met him at the mothership before. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. So it was just, that was kind of, those were some of the neat parts of it. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. Just getting to see some different folks. Yeah, I think they're having issues even in America. They're having, I just saw that there's a part of Oregon that wanted to secede from Oregon. Yeah. They're going to become Canada's 11th province. Good. I would love it if we started trading pieces of our trading. Now that I'm totally for. New York and California come join Canada and take one of them.

1:13:56You guys can, you know, take, I'm not going to say who you guys can take, but, you know, because we, but. No, I knew who you were talking about, dude. I've got to be political. Sacre bleu. Okay. That's all I'll say, brother. No, no, just be in Quebecois, actually. Je parle français. I lived in Quebec a lot in my life. You did? Yeah, so I grew up in Quebec, so I love Quebec, yeah. Yeah, you must have been up to the Montreal Festival over the years or. Yeah, we went there a couple times. I love Quebec. It's fun. Yeah. Edmond, we got some other places we're going to. Calgary and Ottawa and Winnipeg we're going to go to this year.

1:14:27Oh, yeah. So when you're in Ottawa, maybe if you're rolling past the farm and the tour bus, come by the farm and we'll go ride some mules or something. How far outside of town are you guys? About like an hour or so. Oh, wow. Yeah. So sort of not too far. I'll come pick you up in my pickup truck. We'll go hang out. Do you think you'll have now that you're kind of feeling settled out there, do you start thinking about starting a family or no? Yeah, definitely. I'm getting married, so knock on wood, everything goes well with that. Maybe there'll be some... We'll see. We'll have to ask my fiancée.

1:15:04Oh, yeah. I think she would want to do that. Yeah, you gotta include her. Yeah. Yes, yes, for sure. No, I think that's a possibility for sure. For a while, did you think that that wasn't going to be a part of your life? I was starting to question whether or not it was going to be part of my life because, you know, I mean, I think you kind of alluded to this earlier, you know, you want to, you know, if you're going to get married, you want to get married to somebody that you, you know, love and actually think that this could, you know, last forever, right? I was starting to question whether or not that was maybe possible.

1:15:44I wasn't sure if that was possible anymore to find somebody that I thought would last forever with. But when I met Amanda, she's outside. I hope I'm getting some brownie points here. But I realized this is the one. Wow. But until you meet that person, it does start to feel kind of like, geez, it's getting a little kind of uncertain here. Yeah, like I'm just watering. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's how I think about it because I think when you're younger, like you have this feeling of like this young love energy type of thing and that starts to it feels that feels less possible the older we get kind of you know it just starts to dissipate or it's like oh well i just i'm too wise now or i've had too much experience now that i'm never gonna have that sort of like whimsical feeling of like you know that a 17 year old or a 23 year old would have you know um but it's nice to know that that can kind of sneak up and surprise you you Yeah.

1:16:39I think kind of – I mean I think being home where I'm from helped because it's like – I don't know. I mean if you're not from Los Angeles, then it's kind of a weird place. If you're from Los Angeles, it's normal. But if you're not from Los Angeles, it's kind of a weird place. So you're here probably focused on your career and your work and so many other people are. it's kind of hard to, I think, find a good, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems like it is kind of harder in this environment to find somebody that you can, I mean, I don't know. Are people watching going, are we going to be taking relationship advice from me?

1:17:25I don't know. I don't know if that's. No, well, no, it does make me think that. I think there's this feeling in LA that if you meet somebody, you're going to have to eventually get them to leave here, right? I've always felt that thing like, well, if I met somebody, would they ever leave here with me? Cause I'm not going to stay here forever. Right. You know, that's exactly what I was trying to say. So that's, so that I think is a, yeah, I think that's totally common. But you're, you're, you said you, you, you don't live here full time now. I live in Tennessee. I moved during the pandemic too.

1:17:53In Nashville or? Yeah. Oh, cool. I moved during the pandemic. What was true? Whenever Trump was talking about Canada, what was, can you bring it up? Nick, I just want to know what he even was saying. Like, what were they threatening? They were threatening to tariff Canadian goods, just so our listeners can know what exactly, was even going on. Yeah. They're going to put a tariff on everything. You know, Canada is the largest trading partner of the United States. Nice. And so much of the goods that come into the United States from Canada are being brought in by American businesses to, you know, like wood.

1:18:28You bring wood and lumber in to build houses, right? So when you put a 25 % tariff on lumber, that means everybody that... Flannel. If you're a big flannel company, making flannel pajamas, all of a sudden flannel pajamas are going to be 25 % more expensive. So it's really – it's going to affect businesses on both sides of the border, obviously, not just Canada. But also everything will go up in price. So – and I'm not exactly sure the reason for it to be honest with you. He was really saying they weren't helping out with border security. Yeah. And that's what – the 30 days probation period, they did put a bunch of people at the border.

1:19:07Absolutely. And I don't think there's a real border security problem between Canada and the United States though. It's – but that's – It's the hardest country to get into in the world I think is Canada. Yeah. I mean it's – Going that way there isn't. That's for sure. Yeah. It's – the claim that there's fentanyl coming into the United States from Canada I think is a little bit exaggerated because I don't really think that that's actually the case. Something like a very small amount is coming in from Canada. Tariffs are a central part of Trump's economic plans. He promised to introduce import duties against some of America's main trade partners during his election campaign.

1:19:47He said tariffs will boost U.S. manufacturing and protect jobs as well as raising tax revenue and growing the economy. Fentanyl is linked to tens of thousands of overdose deaths, taking bold action to hold Mexico, Canada, and China accountable to their promise of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country. It just seems kind of vague. Yeah, I think it's sort of like... But what would you do? I'm trying to say, say if you bring a bunch of stuff into my country, right? Say if you and I live in different countries and you bring a bunch of stuff into my country or I bring a bunch of stuff into your country, and then you say, okay, I'm going to tax that more.

1:20:24I'm going to charge you more to bring that in if you don't help stop the fentanyl that's coming in. I just, I don't know. How would you then do that? What would you then on your side, would you say, okay, we'll put more, what, drug dogs and security along the border? I think that's what they're, I think that's what he's asking them to do. You know, and I think we already do have, again, I'm not, I don't, I'm not a representative of the Canadian government, but I do, I do think that we already do have a lot of, there's only so much you can do to seal off a border, right? And I don't think there is that much fentanyl coming in from Canada really.

1:20:58I'd never heard that that was a thing. Yeah I think it mostly does come in from the southern border. That's what I would think. I wonder if maybe that you guys got grandfathered into some you know some late night Trump rhetoric there. Who knows? It feels a little bit like that but you know hopefully it'll resolve itself. I do think that it's probably going to end up causing a lot of economic problems on both sides of the border and probably they may not go for it. but you know sports exciting for a while though yeah exactly that's a side effect it was a good fight right off the top of the game the other day you know it's pretty cool we like a good hockey fight so that's cool and it is nice when countries sometimes don't get along a little bit in sports right i've always i've always admired that yeah that's why that's one thing i don't like about the nba anymore that all the players it just seems like they all know each other nobody's really playing for their squad sometimes okay so i like a little bit more of that animosity more fights in the NBA with good physical fights.

1:21:50Yeah, look at that. Oh, definitely. I believe both those players are American too. I'm not sure how quickly your researcher can tell us that, but even though the Canadian team... Canada didn't get the win in this game. I know that. Maybe that's not true at all what I just said, but... I don't think Canada got the win in this game. But that's okay. Yeah, we lost the game, absolutely, which is really kind of... I know. But it is nice to see everybody having a good time watching a hockey fight, for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. you know so um what else did i see in the news that i just saw was happening oh yeah it was that contraception begins at erection now so there's a law that they're pushing ohio democratic lawmakers propose conception begins at erection okay yeah they're trying to put it on the men a little bit more so what exactly are they going to do about this now well a new bill in ohio would make it a crime for men to ejaculate without intending to have a baby oh wow that is that's definitely something that I could see a lot of people probably would be guilty of for sure.

1:22:53Hey, shoot or shoot, you know? Yeah, I could see that being, I mean, I don't want to get into too much personal detail, but I think I'd probably be locked up for a long time. Hey, yeah. Oh, we're going to visit Tom this weekend again. Yeah, he's behind bars. Yeah, my gosh. I thought he was going to get paroled. Plenty of time to break the law in jail, though.

1:23:15and they put a monitor like wraps around your wiener and it just like if it it just goes off if it gets too hard now i'm assuming this is a parody site but the world's so crazy right now that i'm actually asking this for real is this a real article this is a real article right there yep let's zoom in on i'm going to read it a little bit okay so this is not the onion or something like that or mad magazine or something no this is one of those good radishes that they about their conception began and it rhymes nicely to conception begins at erection act i mean that it's a nice rhyme to it which is also nice if you're going to penalize someone for an unwanted pregnancy why not penalize the person who is also responsible for the pregnancy now i i can't say i don't agree with this it's like then you're gonna have a lot more people ten thousand dollars per discharge whoo that's who but here's the thing sometimes it's just running around skeeting or whatever they call it, and I don't know what they call it in different countries, but they're not going to have an extra 10K on them.

1:24:14You're going to have, the court system would be filled with every kid in the world, every 14-year-old kid. Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming, yeah, does this, I don't know how much I want to talk about this in detail with you, to be honest with you. No, look, I'm going to say, you don't get pregnant on your own. Representative Anita Somani, Democrat Dublin said. A felony for men to discharge semen without the intent to fertilize. That is an amazing, amazing idea. I mean, I actually would love to see that sort of applied that law just to see what would happen. I mean, it would be interesting to see what would happen.

1:24:55It's genital communism in a way, I guess. It's genital communism. Is it? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. She introduced legislation that would make it a felony to discharge semen without the intent to fertilize. So Monty and state representative Tristan Rader joined forces to propose a bill nicknamed Conception Begins a Direction. There are some exceptions, such as when protection or contraception are used during sex. It also wouldn't apply when an individual is masturbating. Oh, okay. Donating sperm. That's a relief. Yeah. Or if the intercourse has taken place between members of the LGBT plus community and this doesn't produce ova.

1:25:29So gay people would be able to just jerk off on each other, and they don't suffer any of the consequences. But if a couple of straights get caught, you know, discharging. This is unfair on so many levels. Well, it's just – it's beyond ridiculous what's going on here. Republican activist Austin Beigel laughed. It's a mockery of the most basic biological conceptions. and now I still I'm sort of kind of can't believe this is a real article well I think their purpose in this was saying if you think it's absurd to regulate men that you think you should think it's equally absurd to regulate women so Monty responded I'm guessing that there was a an original idea that I see I see okay of course yeah about I understand taking on reproductive rights for women absolutely so I don't know man good idea I'd run up a tab I know that they're making a valid point when you put it that way.

1:26:25Absolutely. I'd run up a tab. Did you, when you hosted SNL, what was that like for? Do you recall kind of some of the energy of that night? It was, it was a wild, somewhat terrifying experience. You know, I, I had just gone through some pretty, I'd gone through, just gone through surgery like a few months ago. From testicular cancer? Yeah, yeah. And I'd had this lymph node dissection and I was kind of like, it had affected my sort of energy levels a lot. So it was kind of – there was a lot going on in my life when I actually got the call to do that show and to do Saturday Night Live. And it was really cool though.

1:27:09The thing that was cool about it was Lorne Michaels, who's Canadian, and I was just so kind of overwhelmed that I was asked to do it, right? Yeah. And I had a couple of friends who I grew up with who worked on my show with me. And I said, can they come in and kind of work with me and help write some skits and stuff? So they gave us a little office and stuff. We went in there. We were sort of writing skits up and everything. And, you know, they actually kind of ended up giving me a lot of kind of creative freedom on the show to kind of write sketches and stuff. And, you know, in hindsight, I kind of wish they hadn't.

1:27:54Like they had just written them themselves? Yeah, well, because we really kind of made some really weird fucking sketches, you know. I think maybe it would have been cool if maybe I had just gone in and done the stuff that they had written. But like I was sort of definitely – Freddie Got Fingered hadn't come out yet. So like I was still kind of riding high on this hit show and we come in and we say, OK, now let's write some crazy sketches, right? And I mean the stuff we wrote was really, really weird, you know? Were you intent on making it weird? I think we were, yeah. Like how weird can we make this?

1:28:32It's SNL. Let's make it ours. I think so. I think so. And sometimes I think there was a misperception maybe among some of the cast that I brought my own writers in, which wasn't really the case. It was more like – it was my buddies and they'd come up with me with the show. It was kind of like we were – when we made the show in Canada, some of my friends came down with me to the States to – Like this is part of the team. It's not just Tom Green. I want them to be included in the show. So we kind of went in and did that. But I mean it was an amazingly exciting experience. I mean my parents were there on stage with me.

1:29:09It was one of those things where you kind of can't believe that it actually happened while it was happening. And I did a lot of sketches with Will Ferrell. Here's an example of something that I – I wouldn't say I regret this, but I kind of regret this. So there was a sketch where I'm a wizard and I'm holding a pig, like an actual pig. And it was Molly Shannon and Will and I'm a wizard. And I didn't really have any lines in the sketch or many lines in the sketch. It was mostly Will and Molly were doing this sketch. But I noticed during rehearsal that if I just kind of lightly sort of tickled the pig's belly with my finger, that it would start to squeal extremely loud, right?

1:30:01Okay. And so I did that once during rehearsal and then somebody said, oh, you better not – she'll squeal if you touch her belly. And so I said, okay. Oh, yeah. And there's a rehearsal show and then there's the actual show, right? And, you know, I kind of maybe regret this, but I did note that, okay, let's get through the rehearsal show. But then live, I'm going to make that pig squeal. Yeah. Oh, yeah, sister. It did kind of. Sorry, I meant pig. Yeah. No, but it was kind of, it kind of threw the sketch off a little bit. You just fucking kept squealing that? I realized that it did kind of throw the rhythm of the comedy off a little bit.

1:30:41How many times did you squeal it? It just sort of became sort of a bit of a mess. And were you getting a squeal every time he touched his belly or did you have to really? No, I just had to kind of just lightly sort of pet her there and she would just try. But it was amusing to me, but I'm not sure if anybody else enjoyed it that much. Oh, yeah. Her sister's like that. If you touch her lunch, you know, she fucking gets a little animated. If you grab any of her takis out of her little dish. Right. It was like that. Yeah. So – but it was an amazing experience. I was total honored to be able to do it and I mean I – it was cool.

1:31:19I mean the cast was Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, Molly Shannon, Anna Gasteyer. Dang. Tracy Morgan and – there was – it's a weird environment like Saturday Night Live, Especially when you're young and you don't really know – like we were talking earlier about going to Chris Rock's party and like you didn't know how to act or whatever because there's all these people here and it's kind of complicated. Yeah. So you're getting thrust into an environment like that and then it's – even as the host, it sort of felt like kind of a competitive environment because all the cast members are trying to write sketches and get them on the air.

1:32:05everyone every week and and I didn't really know how it worked really at the time and in hindsight I now realize how it works and I might have done things differently but you know when we were trying to put these sketches on the air that we were writing maybe that was kind of pushing another sketch off and we didn't really I wasn't really thinking of it like that so it kind of created it kind of it's kind of a weird environment and you know the more I kind of you know sort of hear people on podcasts who've been on the show talk about the show it seems like everybody's gone through that experience who's been on that show where it's very competitive and and stressful for people and that made that makes me feel a little bit better about my experience there because you know it was it was kind of uh you know a stressful experience you know because you know everybody's going to be watching the show it's live and uh you know i'm uh you know you're doing all this weird stuff that's not necessarily you know i'm i'm a little bit out of my element i didn't do sketch comedy yeah that's scary so it was it was it was but it was cool it was good it sounds like it's par for the course a little because yeah i mean even adam sampler the other night was singing he had a musical tribute that he did to the 50 years and um he referenced a couple times about people having sketches that they wrote that didn't get on the show so i think that seems like it was just a weekly occurrence and of course you want to go in there with a little bit more comfort zone for yourself you know it's like yeah if we We can write a couple of them or we can have some manipulation over them.

1:33:29It's probably going to make you feel more comfortable. Another thing that was weird that happened on the show. So there was a sketch that I did. It's called a sketch like I did with Will Ferrell where we're both dressed as eagles. And this was one of the ones that my friends and I wrote. It's sort of hard to sort of say that we wrote it. But the sketch was Jimmy Fallon and Molly Shannon are looking at Will and I who are eagles, right? We wrote this out, by the way, on paper and handed it in and then they said to do it. And then Will and I decide to fly up into the audience, OK? And I thought it would be fun to go in the audience.

1:34:13So we fly into the audience and then we chew up carrots. and then I believe Will chews up a carrot and I believe he sort of spits the carrot into my mouth and then kind of we end up sort of – because you know how baby birds will chew up the food and feed it – mother birds will chew up the food and make it easier for the baby to eat. So this was the sketch we did. Oh, yeah. But so – Oh, God. So somehow I kind of maybe probably would have been better if we just kind of did the sketches that their writers had written. Oh, God, huh? And these are both males, huh? Yeah, so we're doing this. Yeah, exactly.

1:34:56So we're doing this. What zoo is that at, huh? That's what I'm talking about. That's the West Hollywood Aquarium right there, brother. I'll tell you that, huh? Yeah, so we're doing this sketch, this skit. And so when you host the show, you've got to run to get ready for the next sketch because you've got to take off your eagle costume and put on another costume, right? And so I'm running down the stairs and I'm running through the backstage area and just sitting in the darkness, you know, just backstage, Tom Hanks is just sitting there in front of a monitor watching the show. And I'm in the eagle costume.

1:35:29I'd just done that. I make eye contact with Tom Hanks. So now I'm like, oh, I was already kind of nervous. Now, like, I got Tom Hanks in the dark watching and I'm going like, how did that eagle sketch go, you know? and sort of getting ready for the next sketch. Not sure how the Eagle sketch went and Tom Hanks is watching. So it kind of throws you a little bit. But then there's a big after party after the show and Tom Hanks was real nice and he was hanging out talking to my parents and stuff. And so it was pretty cool. But no, it was an amazing thing. It's a kind of thing though, like it's kind of like you go, geez, it would be nice to be able to do it again someday because I think like doing it the first time is sort of so, I don't know that that would ever happen, But probably in an alternate universe, I might be able to do it again someday.

1:36:18But like you go, OK, I sort of understand how the system of it works now. And it would be probably – I probably would not have done that. Yeah, but also it's great that you did though. It's so epic. And yeah, I think you're right about – that's like a lot of things in life. If you're like, man, I wish I had gotten a trial run or had a little bit of an idea of how the feelings were or what the energy was like in that space or that room or like, man, there's been things you go out on a stage, part of a show or a banquet, some type of thing, and you just play the room totally wrong. That didn't seem like that, but there's definitely times like that in life and you wish you're like, man, I wish I'd get one more swing at it.

1:37:03Yeah, yeah. And I think that generally you can at least take those lessons and apply them to something else. Oh, yeah, for sure. Was Michael Jackson there whenever you guys played? Who was y 'all's musical guest? No, it was not Michael Jackson, but that would have been amazing if it was Michael Jackson. No, it was David Gray. Oh, yeah. But, man, it would have been amazing. Nothing against David Gray, but have you ever had Michael Jackson? I've seen David Gray play. Have you ever interacted with Michael Jackson in any way? No. No. I mean, that would have been amazing. But yeah, he was great. I would love to see – Another weird thing that happened on the show.

1:37:48Michael Jackson. One thing that was weird that happened on the show. So I was backstage getting ready for the – I don't know if I should tell this story. I don't even know if I should tell this story. Maybe it's not. Let's talk about something else. Okay. It's a weird story. No worries. yeah Tom Hanks was there the other night I didn't get to see him oh I got to see Madonna she's little okay where was that such a little baby carrot she was at that SNL thing oh okay yeah so were you chatting with Madonna no no no no she's quite interesting on TikTok these days oh is she she does some pretty sort of out there stuff on her TikTok I gotta follow her I gotta check her out When you have these You beat cancer right Has it flared back up What's that been like No it's completely gone Do they have to take out one of your gonads or not One testicle yeah My right testicle And some lymph nodes as well And what are the lymph nodes like Is that actually in the testicle No the lymph nodes are actually Behind your intestines And they have to like They cut me up here And they have to remove those And that was just a check To see if the cancer had spread into them Wow And the only way they could really check and know for 100 % sure if it had spread was to take them out and look at them under a microscope and stuff.

1:39:05So they had not spread. So then that meant I did not have to have chemo and stuff. But they did take my right testicle, which was honestly like when I found out – the show was on MTV at the time. And you have it still? Yeah. I did not keep it like indefinitely, but that is it in a plastic bag right there. How many ounces is it? Do you know? I don't remember weighing it exactly, but I know it's quite heavy for sure. Oh, hell yeah. I can give you that. Fuck yeah. We don't have no light testicles around here. But we filmed the whole sort of surgery for a show on MTV. That's actually the whole show there, the Cancer Special, which is on YouTube.

1:39:48But it's in my documentary on Prime, too, where it kind of walks through that whole. That's Glenn Humplick, who is my friend and co-host on the show. And here he is sort of after my surgery coming down and playing with my testicle. A little bit of sashimi there. Yeah, it's a little sashimi. Yeah, that's what he says. It sort of looks like chicken. And then my mom says, I don't know what kind of chicken you're eating. Yeah, so that is my cancer-infected testicle right there. But I still have the left one. It's the middle one now. Yeah. I can still ejaculate just a little. No, it's pretty good, actually.

1:40:17Heck yeah, dude. It's going to cost you$10 ,000 if you drive over to Ohio and do it. I'll tell you that, bro. So, look, why don't you stop in Mishawaka and do it? Only five grand for me. Oh, yeah, that's true. Which is a benefit in Ohio to have testicular cancer. You can kind of - God, brother. The tariffs they would rack up, they'd make a million bucks a night in that state. That's not a bad idea. No, not a bad idea for sure. Did you ever wear a prosthetic testicle? It was offered and I refused to do it. I did not refuse, but I just sort of opted out on the prosthetic. prosthetic. Did you ever look at him at least?

1:40:54I think I did. Yeah, I think I did. This was, you know, 20 years ago, but I, I, I'd heard the doctor kind of said, you know, a lot of people get them, don't like it. And they say, it kind of sort of feels weird or whatever. So I just figured now I don't need one. So, you know, but I mean, I don't know how much you want to talk about my ball sack, but I mean, it doesn't really seem that much different like down there. Like, I mean, Oh, I could imagine that too. It kind of all just kind of sort of sort of morphs into kind of like Like, because, like, they don't actually, like, go through the scrotum to get the testicle.

1:41:30You know that? Like, they don't actually cut the scrotum. Oh, nuh-uh. No, they go in. They cut you, like, sort of up here, like, under your pubic hair kind of thing. Under your pubes. Uh-huh. They go in there, and then they kind of go in, and they just sort of shuck it out like an oyster from above. Yeah. So it's sort of not really, like, the scrotum is completely intact. You know, like there's not some sort of, you know, sort of scarred scrotum or anything. Like I don't have a scarred up scrotum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's totally normal scrotum. Yeah, good. Yeah, like there's a little scar up here.

1:41:59But I'd had a hernia operation before when I was like, you know, younger. So they just went through the same thing. So it's like you wouldn't need just a little scar there. Yeah, so. A lot of hernias in Canada too. What country has the most hernias, you think? Yeah, that is interesting. I never thought of it about that. But is there a lot in Canada? A lot of my friends in Canada have had hernias. A lot of your friends in Canada have had hernias, really? Yeah, I'm just wondering. I'd be curious to see if there's more in Canada. That would be certainly an interesting statistic for sure. According to available data, countries in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa tend to have the highest prevalence of hernias, particularly in regions with lower socioeconomic status, with countries like India and parts of Tanzania showing significantly higher rates compared to high-income nations.

1:42:43This is largely due to factors like limited access to health care and higher rates of manual labor. I gave myself a hernia on my show live on the public. It was on the public access version of the show years before we were on MTV. And it was kind of a strange episode, probably one of the weirder ones, where we said, okay, I'm going to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest fingernails. You ever seen those? Oh, yeah. We used to see them all the time. This is a strange bit. And the Chinese kid on the bikes. Remember that? That world record book? Yeah. They'd have a 15 or 16, a whole just a starter pack of Asians hanging off a bike.

1:43:22Exactly. So for whatever reason, this doesn't even sound like it could even possibly make sense to describe it. But the idea was, okay, I'm going to – it was Glenn and myself. It's a live show. It was on community cable. It was not on a big network. So it was sort of late at night. And we said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to try to break the record for longest fingernails. I had a bunch of milk, calcium, and I set it up all very seriously and then I start drinking milk. And then for the entire hour, I just basically drank milk and kind of stared at my fingernails for an hour and didn't do anything, right?

1:44:02Just kind of progressively got a little bit more kind of sort of weird. And then towards the end of the show, I kind of stood up and started thrashing around sort of somewhat violently. I don't know. There's no real logical reason for it. It was like a milk overdose or something. And I started doing this thrashing, and I hit the desk, and I flipped the desk over, and I felt something pop in my abdomen. And then we went off the air, and I went up to the bathroom, and my intestine was like pushing out through my abdomen. And I went to the hospital, and I had given myself a hernia. So that's how that happened.

1:44:41Was that probably the worst accident you ever endeared? No. The worst one ever was just two years ago. I stepped on a fire on the beach in Costa Rica. The old fire step, huh? It had been buried under sand. And I walked up to this bonfire and the edge of the fire had been buried and my foot went into it. And yeah, I got third degree burns. I thought that was a couple to-go sandwiches. Yeah. No. Yeah. It was – that was maybe the worst. And that was just three years ago. I almost lost my foot. So that was – You just had to lay in bed for a while, huh? For 10 days in a Costa Rican hospital. And then I was medevaced on an air ambulance back to Canada actually.

1:45:35and spent another week and a half in the hospital there. And yeah, my foot's pretty messed up right now, but it's better, it's better. Not 100%, but I've had a few good injuries. That was, oh, there they go, there they are. Yeah, oh my gosh. You found the unedited version, yeah. Yeah, that, wow, look at that. Yeah, it was, and look at this, the top of my foot. The bottom of the foot ain't good either. Those are sexy. I'll spend 10 grand on those things, huh? look out Ohio geez yeah my god yeah yeah yeah those are my feet right there that was just that was maybe coming up from three years ago now so yeah that was that was maybe the worst injury ever so yeah so the show that you have now you have the special it's out yeah yeah it all came out just in just a few weeks ago the 28th or something was it yeah yeah on it's It's all on Amazon Prime.

1:46:31On Prime. This is the Tom Green documentary. And then the stand-up special. It's called I Got a Mule. I'm talking about my life on the farm and getting my mule. And then the show, which is a four-episode sort of series of me moving to the farm called Tom Green Country. And I recorded all the music for the show as well. There's a country album that I put out, which is the soundtrack for the show, which is called Home to the Country, which is on Spotify. It's called what? It's called Home to the Country. Home to the Country. It's the name of the album. And that's out on music, wherever you get music now.

1:47:07And then I'm on tour. I'm actually on tour. I'm getting back in the camper van, and we're going to start do a little bit more camping and touring around with my fiance up through the desert. And then we'll be picking up the tour again March 14th in Colorado. and it'll be Colorado Springs, Aspen, upwards to, you know, up through, where are we going? Indianapolis, St. Louis. All the dates are on my website, but to Chicago and so touring and driving back to Canada and then I'll be riding my mule all summer. So when are you in Ottawa? I'm going to be in Ottawa. I'm not sure actually. I think sometime before the, I guess May maybe.

1:47:44Oh, cool, cool. But I have to let you know before I'm going to come. It'd be so cool to come see the farm. Do you think like with a lot of the new stuff you're shooting now or some of the stuff that I see on your YouTube channel, it's a little bit more artistic in some way. I don't know if that's a word. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely like not something that I expect to really go viral in a lot of ways because it's like very long form stuff that I just really like shooting like that. I mean. Yeah, do you notice you – like it almost seems like it's almost – like you'd want to shoot like a feature, like a movie.

1:48:16I can't tell. I don't know because sometimes we have things that start to happen and then it becomes something else, you know? But when I'm watching it, I feel like I'm getting into a world. That's what it feels like. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool to know that you watched it because it's not like a mainstream comedy sort of piece that I'm putting on my YouTube channel right now. I want to kind of just capture what it feels like being out in the desert and in these amazing places or being on the farm with the animals. And so I like shooting and capturing images that are sort of calming and beautiful.

1:48:59And it is the kind of thing that – the show is not like that. The show is – there's a lot more going on. But there is something nice about just kind of putting it on and sitting back and just kind of like – it's like an ASMR type of thing. Yeah, that's what it feels like. It's like ASMR for your eyes kind of. Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. I mean, I think a lot of it started just as me kind of like really trying to experiment with the cameras and just trying to figure out how to make these cameras work and capture the sort of the cinematography the way I want to capture it. And I think that maybe it may evolve into something a little bit more faster paced at some point.

1:49:34But right now it's just a lot of this sort of slice of life stuff that I put up on the YouTube channel. And, you know, I have a podcast which I do, you know, one episode every six months or something like that. I might start doing the podcast again and putting that up to kind of give people something a little bit more familiar to watch. But right now, yeah, that's what it is. And I just – I kind of just enjoy taking people to these places. I mean I find it interesting that like everything is so fast-paced now. Like, you know, everything is so – people's attention spans are so short now that it's kind of interesting to sort of do something that's kind of not that.

1:50:16And again, it's not – you know, the algorithm doesn't really work in its favor. You know, you have to say something shocking within the first 10 seconds and then, you know, put some words on the screen and do all these things that you can do to really capture large audiences. But if you do watch it, you sort of do kind of get sucked into a little secret universe in a way. There's even little messages sometimes I'll put like 45 minutes into a video that will – if you made it that far, then you might say something in the comments and then I'll know that you actually watched 45 minutes. And so there is a lot of people that do get it, which is fun.

1:50:55And it's kind of neat to – it's impossible to capture the energy of what it's like out there in nature by doing something fast-paced because so much of what's amazing about it is just the calm stillness of it also. That's what it is on the YouTube channel. It's a bit different but – I think people are as desperate for that as they've ever been in some ways. I think things have gotten – we're operating at a speed that we don't even feel comfortable in sometimes. Our brains are having to. but yeah that's what it feels like it feels like some type of an ASMR or some it feels calming man yeah it feels like and yeah I'm just curious because you're always you've just always been a creator you know you're just always creating you're always finding some way to to I don't know if it's in fact to incite to get a reaction out of people in some type of way.

1:51:51It's cool. It's weird today because there's so much energy online, so much craziness and pranks and just the insanity that you can see every day on your phone. Before you get out of bed, if you pick up your phone and you get that in your head too early in your day, your whole day can be just kind of... But you started it. Well... That was just crazy. But it's okay. It's not a judgment. You know, technology was changing at the same time. We're glad you did, man. We're glad you did, man. Tom, thanks so much for all the entertainment over the years. And yeah, man, I just appreciate you spending time with me.

1:52:31Congratulations on the new engagement. Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show, Theo. I mean, it's awesome, man. I love the show and just appreciate you having me on. Y 'all want to come pet that donkey, man, when I get up there. Absolutely. Come pet the donkey, man. You will. I'll be out there. Okay. All right. Thanks, Tom. Thanks, man. I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna tell you