Playboy Interview: Tom Green

It isn't easy being Green. Directing a multimillion-dollar film, planning a wedding with Drew Barrymore, getting over cancer, hearing too many jokes about losing one of your testicles--Tom Green's life is as strange as anything you've seen on MTV's The Tom Green Show. On a recent Saturday in Los Angeles, the 29-year-old gross-out king was juggling commitments to Barrymore, to Playboy and to his new movie, Freddy Got Fingered, while trying to find time to make a party where he'd finally meet Eminem.

Only three years ago he was a public access cable TV host, a cult hero without much of a cult. His smash MTV show didn't begin until 1999, and plenty of people over 40 still couldn't pick him out of a lineup (hint: He's the tall, skinny one holding a severed cow's head). But almost everyone else has seen something Green and loved it. He's the guy who got his grandma to lick a sex toy and had a lesbian sex scene painted on his parents' car, the notorious Slutmobile. He has used blood, urine, semen, cockroaches and his own intestines as fodder for comedy. Last year, his first big movie, Road Trip, became a surprise smash, largely because he hilariously tongued and mouthed a mouse in the film. Now Green can write his own ticket, and he has: As co-writer, director and star of Freddy Got Fingered, he wants to give moviegoers more laughs and bodily fluids than most auteurs spew in a lifetime.

Born in Pembroke, Ontario in 1971 to upstanding citizens Richard and Mary Jane Green, Tom got bounced from town to town while his father worked on computers for the military. The family settled in Ottawa, where Tom became a skateboard punk, the scourge of mall security guards. He was also a fan of oddball humor. Alongside the Tony Hawk posters in his room were an ax embedded in the wall and a slice of toast taped to it.

By his midteens he was the kid comic at Yuk-Yuk's, an Ottawa nightspot. "Little Tommy Green from down the street," they called him. In 1990, still a teenager, he hosted Rap Show, a community-college radio program that evolved into a screwball talk program. Midnight Caller. Then came the first incarnation of The Tom Green Show on public access cable. It was as if fellow Canadian Mike Myers' Wayne's World sketches on Saturday Night Live had come to life, except that Wayne and Garth never humped a dead moose. Many adults found Green's act disgusting--a view his suburbanite parents often shared, particularly after the Slutmobile and the "Mom and Dad Have Anal Sex" statues Tom put in their yard one night. But to his fans Green was a hero, a loose cannon demolishing decades of lame TV traditions. In 1998 The Tom Green Show went national on the Comedy Network in Canada. It was an instant hit, and he was the talk of the land after he appeared on a popular chat show carrying the maggot-ridden carcasses of a squirrel and a raccoon.

In January 1999, MTV brought Green's madness to millions of Americans. Again he was an overnight sensation. Drew Barry-more liked his show so much that she offered him a small role in Charlie's Angels, and they fell in love. She stood by him during his scary bout with testicular cancer, the subject of his surreal Tom Green Cancer Special on MTV Last year, on their favorite beach in Malibu, he asked her to marry him.

Green began 2001 at a mad clip, flying back and forth between Los Angeles, where he lives with Barrymore, and New York, where he was putting the last creepy touches on his movie. We asked Kevin Cook, whose Playboy Interview subjects have included Johnny Depp and Conan O'Brien, to meet up with Green in LA. Cook reports:

"Tom Green is the first star I've met who showed up early. He apologized for not being wacky in person and kept fretting about his answers to my questions: Were they good enough? Should he try again?

"We talked about comedy, sex, true love, cancer, money, skateboarding, mouse piss and how hot Drew Barrymore looks in a cowboy outfit. At one point he spilled a can of mixed nuts. Staring with mock horror at the peanuts and pistachios on the floor, he referred to his testicular cancer: 'It's always about nuts!' Then Mary Jane Green's polite son got down on Ins hands and knees and helped pick up the nuts.

"Green's comedy is all about reality--tweaking TV traditions from the man-on-the-street report to the stalkerazzi. In our first few minutes he was already poking and prodding the form of the magazine Q. and A., wondering how 'real' the result would or should be. I left that stuff in because Tom, of all people, should be real."

Green: I'm kind of worried--you'll print everything I say, right?

[Q] Playboy: Not everything. The highlights.

[A] Green: Oh, thank God. There'll be boring crap coming out of my mouth--so you'll take the boring stuff out, and hopefully there'll be something left.

[Q] Playboy: Right.

[A] Green: Because I want to look cool in Playboy. When I was growing up, my dad always said, "You look like the kind of man who reads Playboy." He still says that.

[Q] Playboy: A lot of kids found the magazine in Dad's dresser drawer. Was that part of your growing up?

[A] Green: I found one once. That was exciting. But not nearly enough. I would have liked to find a lot more. Don't remember reading the interview, though. I was 14.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us about your movie. You're the co-writer, director and star of Freddy Got Fingered. What's the most important of those jobs?

[A] Green: Working on the script as it evolves, making sure it stays whacked out, crazy and messed up.

[Q] Playboy: Are you a tough director? Do you throw fits to keep the actors in line?

[A] Green: No, no. It's a comedy, so I wanted a fun set. I'm a quiet person when I'm not being an idiot on camera, but I did have an assistant director with a megaphone. I'd whisper in his ear, "Geez, this isn't really working," and he'd go scream at somebody.

[Q] Playboy: The movie's about a guy in his 20s who lives with his parents. His dad keeps telling him to quit goofing off and get a job. It's familiar turf for you--except for the promiscuous wheelchair-bound rocket scientist.

[A] Green: That's my love interest in the movie. She's an interesting character. All she wants to do is give blow jobs. But Gord, my character, he's shy and maybe not that experienced with women.

[Q] Playboy: He's never been pursued by a girl scientist in a wheelchair?

[A] Green: We don't really mention the wheelchair. When we screened the movie there were people in wheelchairs there, and they laughed. It's sort of empowering to handicapped people. You'd think it would be all she-can't-walk jokes, but we can be semiproud of ourselves that we didn't go for the lowest common denominator, the shock joke.

[Q] Playboy: Were there blow job logistics? Does he have to be lowered on pulleys?

[A] Green: She just grabs at his pants and he resists. He says, "Why don't we go for a walk?" And she says, "I can't walk." So . . . hmm, maybe we do make fun of it.

[Q] Playboy: What about the dog swordfight?

[A] Green: There is no dog swordfight in the movie. You heard there was? That shows how a script evolves. There was going to be a dog swordfight, and we actually built rubber dogs you could use like swords. Rip Torn, who plays my father, kicks an electronic keyboard and electrocutes his two dogs. The dogs die on the floor, then a fight erupts. We pick them up and have this elaborate, choreographed duel with the dogs.

So we built these dogs--they probably cost $100,000--and then I said, "You know, these dogs look so stupid!" I don't want to say stupid--people worked hard on them--but when you start swinging rubber dogs around, it can look fake. This isn't a cartoony Airplane-type movie; it's supposed to look like reality. That broke the reality. I mean, if we can have a swordfight, with dogs, we might just flap our arms and start flying.

[Q] Playboy: Is it fun having the money for toys like that?

[A] Green: It was exciting for me and my friend Derek Harvie, who wrote the script with me. Three years ago we were going to the thrift shops in Ottawa for props. We'd buy an old lawn mower and throw watermelons at it. Now we're dropping a sailboat from a helicopter into a giant wood chipper.

[Q] Playboy: A big change in scale.

[A] Green: It's funny--you're working on the script and you write, He takes sailboat and drops it from a helicopter. Then you shoot the movie and people are actually building the boats. Now, real sailboats are too heavy for a helicopter to pick up, so they built three balsa sailboats. Then you have to build a wood chipper half the size of a basketball court. All this for one joke, and you're thinking, Jesus, three years ago some shaving cream and a pork chop was my property budget for a week.

[Q] Playboy: It's better having millions.

[A] Green: It's different. A movie is larger than life. My TV show is guerrilla comedy. It's video, and you want it to look raw. When we do more television shows, I'll want to use pork chops.

[Q] Playboy: Will you do more of The Tom Green Show on MTV?

[A] Green: For sure. MTV is great for my kind of television. I'm not planning to do the show regularly for a while, but I'll do specials for them. Right now, I'm writing another film.

[Q] Playboy: You and your dad--

[A] Green: [Chewing a bagel] Are my answers boring?

[Q] Playboy: No, not at all.

[A] Green: Tell me if they are. Say, "They're boring. Make them better."

[Q] Playboy: OK. Your dad used to blare the radio to wake you up in the morning and tell you to quit goofing off and get a job. Then you made a career out of goofing off. Did he ever say, "Son, I'm sorry. You were right all along"?

[A] Green: My parents are a little surprised at how things have turned out. They were surprised when I got on a national network in Canada. But it was gradual. There was never a day when they said, "Holy shit, it worked!" First I had a radio show. Then it was public access TV for three years. Finally, my show became a hit in Canada on the Comedy Network. I got a raise, and my parents were, "Oh wow, he's actually paying rent and he has a lease on a Jeep!" Now I'm doing Letterman and the Playboy Interview, but the whole thing has gone on for 10 years, a long period when my parents' skepticism was slowly chipped away.

[Q] Playboy: Do they think you're funny?

[A] Green: They're fans, but they don't fully understand the dynamic. There are points in my comedy, if that's what you call it, that embarrass them. If my parents get mad, if they think what I'm doing is obscene or stupid, that's when I feel like I'm on the right track. I'll think, Good, it's working. Because I like making people uncomfortable. If nobody's hiding their eyes, putting their knees in front of their face, then I'm doing something wrong.

Freddy Got Fingered is not for everybody. There will be people walking out of the theater. And when I see somebody getting upset about my film, or grossed out or disturbed, I get pride from that. To see an entire audience scream and cover their faces--that's as good as a laugh.

[Q] Playboy: There's been a recent move toward PG-rated movies, but yours is rated R.

[A] Green: I'm not moving toward PG. There's a lot of blood in Freddy, and not so much of the poo-poo humor. This is the bloodiest slapstick, goofball comedy you've seen.

[Q] Playboy: You do your own skateboarding stunts. How good are you?

[A] Green: Still solid on the board. I started in the Eighties, so I'm doing old-school tricks. The sad thing is, nobody I know skateboards anymore. It's a social sport in a weird way, like skiing. You go skiing, and at the end of the day you go to the chalet. You go skateboarding, you hang out at the convenience store. You sit in front of the 7-Eleven with your buddies and try to jump off the stairs all day. But then everybody grows up and becomes an accountant, and you're the last guy holding your board, going, "Where'd everybody go?"

[Q] Playboy: What are your best old-school tricks?

[A] Green: Power slides, ollies, jumping off stairs. I can do a kick-flip ollie, where you jump up and kick the side of the board and it spins in the air.

[Q] Playboy: You can do that? What's your medical status these days?

[A] Green: Oh, fine. Actually, I'm still thinking of my last answer. I can do a kick-flip ollie about 50 percent of the time.

[Q] Playboy: That was a jarring segue to your medical troubles.

[A] Green: [Laughing] Yeah. You say you can do a kick-flip ollie? Cool. How's the cancer? It's fine, fine. I'm basically clean. I got lucky--they diagnosed it early, and testicular cancer is curable. It's the good cancer. If you want to get cancer, this is the cancer you want. Lose your testicle, you still have one more. I didn't have to have chemotherapy, but they did take my lymph nodes out. That's fairly invasive, and it floored me for a few months.

[Q] Playboy: You did an MTV show on it--your Cancer Special.

[A] Green: The special helped me because I stop being my introspective, sappy, weird self when there's a camera on me. I turn into a guy who makes silly faces.

[Q] Playboy: It was therapeutic to be on camera?

[A] Green: It was. Before I decided to do that special I was whimpering around the house, thinking I was going to die. Thinking, Oh God, it's the irony of all ironies. I work my whole life to get my TV show, then people like it and then, boom, die. It's funny the way we're talking about it here today, but when it's going on, when you really mean it in your head, it's not as funny. But when I turned it into a joke, I knew where I was. I'm getting fitted for a suit and saying, "Mom, I want you to bury me in this." Now it was joke driven, shock-Mom-and-Dad driven, the same mischievousness I enjoyed on my TV show. That made the whole thing easier.

[Q] Playboy: Ironically, your special is saving lives. There are men walking around who would be dead if not for you.

[A] Green: That wasn't the main plan. I was just hoping we'd get away with bringing cameras into the hospital. But the doctors surprised me. I'm used to barging in on authority figures like doctors and security guards, but they were all, "Come on in!" Doctors kept saying, "It's great what you're doing." We're used to getting kicked out of places, but all of a sudden Glenn Humplik [Green's friend and sidekick] can dick around with my testicle on camera, and it's great because we're spreading awareness.

This is a disease that men from 15 to about 35 get. You would never suspect you have cancer at that age, so you don't get tested. Also, kids tend to be bashful about that part of their bodies. You might be embarrassed to tell the doctor, "Hey, man, I've got something on my nut." And that's the killer. You don't go to the doctor because you think it'll go away. But it never does, and then it spreads all over your body and you could die. So I hope the show made kids realize that testicular cancer isn't embarrassing. It's fucking hilarious. Feel your balls!

[Q] Playboy: Which testicle did you lose?

[A] Green: The right one.

[Q] Playboy: So you still have the left one. Does it remain the left one, or--

[A] Green: It's now the middle one.

[Q] Playboy: Really?

[A] Green: No, it remains the left one. Your scrotum has two compartments, so they never interact. That's why the cancer won't spread from one to the other.

The weirdest thing to me now is that it doesn't feel different down there. It's not like an empty sack. I think scar tissue forms, so it feels like you have a normal set of balls. I'm quite proud to announce that to the world.

[Q] Playboy: Did your sperm count drop, or does the left one take up the slack?

[A] Green: They tell me I have a high sperm count. That's another thing I'm proud to announce in Playboy.

[Q] Playboy: You and Drew Barrymore have yet to announce your wedding plans. Do you want to announce that you're going to have kids?

[A] Green: I do plan on having kids. When Drew and I have a child, we won't tell anyone. We'll just hide somewhere for a year, and then there will be a baby walking around with us.

[Q] Playboy: Is it difficult to be engaged to another famous person?

[A] Green: It can be complicated. For instance, right now I'm being careful about what I say. I'm sensitive about saying or doing anything that might embarrass Drew. I put our relationship ahead of my career. I've had girlfriends before, but I'd be off working 80 to 100 hours a week, going on trips and not calling. Eventually they'd say, "What's more important, your relationship or your job?" And I'd say, "My job. See ya!" But this is different. Drew and I spend every minute together when we're not working, and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. This is the first time I've asked anyone to marry me, and I don't take it lightly.

[Q] Playboy: Was it instant love?

[A] Green: I think I knew right away. She laughs a lot, which is nice because I talk a lot, and some of my jokes are pretty stupid. When you're getting laughs with your bad stuff, it's a relief.

[Q] Playboy: What sort of wedding will you have?

[A] Green: Small. Friends and family.

[Q] Playboy: Have a date set?

[A] Green: [Smiling] You know, I could be honest with you, or I could lie like I have with everybody else who's asked about our wedding plans. I've told people we already got married. I've said we broke up. I've said we're still going out but we're not engaged anymore. I've told every conceivable lie, which I find really fun. It's not the usual response. Everybody loves Drew and I'm this gross-out weirdo on MTV. When I talk to Entertainment Tonight or Rolling Stone and the personal stuff comes up, it tends to get very serious. So I lie. Whenever you see me talking about Drew and me, you can assume I'm lying.

[Q] Playboy: Do you plan your lies, or just lie off the cuff?

[A] Green: Going into an interview, I always decide what the joke's going to be. Now in this one, I am being honest. Honesty can be fun, too. This is a more detailed interview, so that's going to be my bit here. The joke is that I'm being honest. Nothing is funny except for the fact that it's true.

[Q] Playboy: Drew was a fan of yours, and she asked you to be in Charlie's Angels. You hit it off instantly.

[A] Green: We're the same person. She's the female version.

[Q] Playboy: Give it up about the wedding. Where and when?

[A] Green: [Lying] Actually, we got married last week in Cleveland. In Shaker Heights. We like Shaker Heights.

[Q] Playboy: When you were in the hospital for your operation, did you two get a fame perk? You got to sleep together.

[A] Green: Just lucky. There was no one in the bed beside mine. She came by in the middle of the night, we slid the beds together and nobody ever said anything.

[Q] Playboy: Was that a platonic night? It's not a sexual situation--

[A] Green: Not when you just had your testicle taken out, no. I was healing.

[Q] Playboy: How long is a guy out of commission after he loses a testicle?

[A] Green: Sexually? About a week. I was hurting more when they took out my lymph nodes. But removing a testicle is pretty simple. They suck it out through a little tube. It's like shucking an oyster.

[Q] Playboy: Drew was present for your postop exams, wasn't she?

[A] Green: That was interesting. We'd only been going out for three or four months. It made me nervous to have a bunch of doctors check my ball--my ball--with my new girlfriend sitting there beside me. After the lymph node operation I couldn't move, couldn't even turn my back, and there she was, watching seven men and women fondle my nut.

[Q] Playboy: They thought you might need chemotherapy, which could sterilize you, so you had to produce some sperm to freeze and save for later.

[A] Green: It's a bizarre place, the sperm bank. You go into a little room and watch a porno movie.

[Q] Playboy: Which one?

[A] Green: You don't get to choose. You have to wash your hands first, and you must be careful not to touch anything, because you don't want any contamination of the sample. You go in and watch the movie and whack into a bottle. People are waiting on the other side of the door. You walk out and hand them the bottle.

[Q] Playboy: It's not romantic. Did you have any trouble getting aroused?

[A] Green: No. I can get in and out of that situation pretty quickly if I want to.

[Q] Playboy: How long did it take?

[A] Green: About four seconds.

[Q] Playboy: Could the sperm donation process be improved? Better ambience?

[A] Green: I'd have to say it was pretty comfortable. I even went back a few times when I didn't have to, because I enjoyed whacking off to porn in a closet.

[Q] Playboy: Let's go back to your Canadian boyhood. What's the first thing you remember?

[A] Green: Sitting on a tree stump. I was about three. My father was in Vietnam. He was in the Canadian military--went over there with the UN peacekeepers. He wasn't fighting, just overseeing the American troops' withdrawal, and my mother and I went to stay at my grandparents' place. I went for a walk with my grandmother, and we stopped and sat on a tree stump. Sitting there, watching ants crawl around, that's my first memory. I thought the ants looked cool. After that I don't remember anything till I was about 13 years old.

[Q] Playboy: You were only 15 when you made your comedy debut at an Ottawa club called Yuk-Yuk's.

[A] Green: I had been studying comedy. In grade school we had to do a public speech every year, and I'd done one on rock formations: igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. They're still the three biggest words I know. Another year I gave a speech on the forms of comedy: slapstick, satire, irony.

[Q] Playboy: You were the class cutup, the one who was always falling off his chair to get a laugh. With your dad in the service, you had to move a lot when you were a kid, and you wanted the attention--

[A] Green: At home I'd put a bottle of water on top of the door so it'd fall on my parents when they got home. Pranks and shit. But that school speech was the first time I really thought about comedy. So at 15 I got up and tried it out at Yuk-Yuk's. Thursday was amateur night. Me, Derek Harvie and Phil Giroux--the guy in my window on the TV show--we'd been going as hecklers, just to fucking cause shit and get in trouble. We'd sit in the front row and not laugh. We'd try to start arguments with the guy onstage. We'd sit with our hands on our chins, then switch hands simultaneously at the punch line.

[Q] Playboy: The poor comic.

[A] Green: We didn't care. We wanted the attention ourselves. But doing that stuff almost kept us from getting onstage, because they knew we were the hecklers. It was the bouncer who helped us, a guy named Tibor, the same guy who kicked us out every week. He went to Howie, the manager, and said, "These are the assholes who heckle every week, but I gotta say they're pretty funny."

[Q] Playboy: It was a nightclub. You were underage, weren't you?

[A] Green: I wasn't allowed to have a beer, but there was free Coke. I thought that was cool. I was nervous on my first night, but it went well. I kind of killed. And I went back every week--me in my dad's suit, with beige pants because I was trying to look like Letterman. Eventually, I got paid $15 a night. But I wasn't in my element as a stand-up. I get better reactions interacting with people, as opposed to making a witty observation.

[Q] Playboy: What's a joke you told that first night?

[A] Green: It was stupid stuff. I remember a lame joke about Trix cereal: "They say Trix are for kids. What, do you need ID to buy this shit?"

[Q] Playboy: Did you get heckled?

[A] Green: Only a couple of times in the three years I worked there. You can always use one of those lame comeback lines every comedian uses: "Well, do I come to your work and take the dick out of your mouth?" But I would make a weird face.

[Q] Playboy: By day you were a mild-mannered high school student at Ottawa's Colonel By High. Who was Colonel By?

[A] Green: One of the city's founding fathers. He was an engineer who built the big canal that runs through Ottawa.

[Q] Playboy: What do they call the school teams, the By-Sexuals?

[A] Green: You know, it's weird that nobody's ever said that. You should print that so people can use it to destroy the school.

[Q] Playboy: Were you popular in high school?

[A] Green: Got elected to the student council every year. But I wasn't popular with the cool clique. I was into things that weren't popular yet. Everyone else listened to New Order and Huey Lewis and the News. I thought they were fine, but I was more into the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy. And I was definitely the oldest skateboarder at my school. Everybody else in the 12th grade was like, "Grow up. Stop skateboarding and covering yourself in salad dressing onstage." It was the younger kids who thought I was cool for causing hell.

[Q] Playboy: You got elected to the student council by giving a speech while pulling vegetables out of a briefcase and making a salad. Were you an effective leader?

[A] Green: The reality of student government is that there's nothing you can do. You spend a whole year organizing a bake sale to pay for the school dance. Hiring a DJ for the dance--I was effective at that. And making the Christmas concert a little different. I mean, here I was with these very straight student council people, and I made our Christmas concert like the Letterman show. Got a band and a Hammond organ, and I hosted it from a desk on the stage. I'd spent three months getting the head of the AV department to put a big-screen TV in the auditorium and hook a telephone into the speaker system so that during the Christmas concert, between bands, I could call the Home Shopping Network and razz the shit out of them about the cubic zirconium ring. I'd go into the audience, find a cute girl, call her house and say embarrassing stuff to her parents. Or call teachers' homes and talk to their wives.

[Q] Playboy: There's a story about how you discovered David Letterman.

[A] Green: I talk about Letterman so much in interviews--he probably hates me. Next time I'm on his show he'll probably say, "Stop fucking talking about me, you fuck! You're not funny. So don't go around saying I'm funny--people will think I'm not funny if they think you think I'm funny."

[Q] Playboy: It's funny how you discovered him.

[A] Green: Yeah, I broke my toe. I was about 14, and I already had a broken arm from skateboarding. One day I'm just bugging my dad and he starts chasing me through the house. Not like he's going to kick the shit out of me, but he was mad. I ran--I was barefoot--and nailed my foot on a coffee table. Now my toe's bent way back. I freaked, because skating was life. Straightened the toe back out, taped it to the other toes, but that didn't work. All of a sudden I'm the idiot in the emergency room with a broken toe and a cast on his arm.

I couldn't sneak out my bedroom window and skateboard till four in the morning anymore, so I started watching late-night TV. Letterman, yes.

[Q] Playboy: Your military father really thought you were a goof-off, didn't he? Some of the hostility in The Tom Green Show was real.

[A] Green: Yes. But it's not like he was the stereotypical military guy. He's kind of a goof ball, too. At the same time he was telling me to get a job, he'd be dressing up as a ballerina for an office Christmas party. But when summer came--that was the big conflict time: "You're not sleeping until the afternoon and skateboarding all day and night! We want you in bed at 10:30 on weeknights." It was summer, but my parents kept the rules of the school year! I had to get up in the morning when they did, and they'd drop me off at the employment center. I'd get a job and keep it for two or three weeks.

[Q] Playboy: What sort of job?

[A] Green: Carpenter's helper. I'd go into a room that was filled with two-by-fours. Hundreds, thousands of them. They'd say, "Carry all those two-by-fours upstairs and stack them there." I would carry them eight at a time, eight hours straight, every day. It was exhausting. Then I'd get a paycheck, maybe $300 for two weeks' work, and quit and skateboard for a couple of weeks.

[Q] Playboy: You had some run-ins with mall security guards.

[A] Green: That's an irritating type of person. They could get a little scary--they'd grab you and put you up against a wall and say they were going to call the cops. But they didn't. It's only now that I realize why. They were just 24-year-olds and they were afraid of the cops. You don't call the cops because some 16-year-old is riding a horsey on the little carousel ride, or dropping bits of wet paper towels off the balcony onto people's heads, or dropping a cup of water on someone. When you're 16 that seems like the worst thing in the world, but it's probably not a criminal offense.

[Q] Playboy: Was there other mall anarchy?

[A] Green: I was banned from the Rideau Center in Ottawa for screaming. I'd be walking along and then I'd turn and scream into a store as loud as I could. Startled the shit out of people, and I'd crack up because it was such an absurdly loud, obnoxious thing to do.

I was jumping in their fountains, too. Going into fountains wearing scuba equipment.

[Q] Playboy: You filmed that for your Canadian TV show.

[A] Green: And they got pissed off about it. They took me downstairs to the mall office and said, "If you come back within a year, you will be charged with trespassing and the cops will come." OK, so it's seven months later and I'm walking through the mall, going to a movie with a girl, and the mall guy basically arrests me. It was the most embarrassing thing ever. I said, "Look, I'm not wearing scuba gear." Everyone knew who I was by then. I had a national talk show. But they kicked me out.

[Q] Playboy: You got back at the ultimate authority figures, your parents, by waking them up on camera, filling their house with barnyard animals and getting a lesbian sex scene painted on their car--the famous Slutmobile show. Were there off-screen talks about that stuff? Did you ever say, "Sorry about the Slutmobile"?

[A] Green: The stuff I did to them was not mean-spirited. I painted their car, but the next day we painted it back. There was no permanent damage. Of course now they can't go to the grocery without people saying, "Hey, Slutmobile!"

[Q] Playboy: Is that fair? Your parents didn't ask to be made fun of on national TV in two nations.

[A] Green: It's a weird kind of double-edged thing. No, it would not be fair if they didn't like it, but they're just saying that. I know they do like it. If they didn't, would they fly to New York and go on Saturday Night Live with me?

(continued on page 152)Tom Green(continued from page 74)

They like it for different reasons. My mom wants to look like a supportive mother, so for her the jokes about her are redeemed because she ends up supporting her son. My dad just loves goofing off on camera. And he always gets laughs, too. See, my parents are actually funny people. They're characters. If they were different people it wouldn't work, but when I barge up to them with a camera, they react. They give me something to work with. My dad will throw a joke back. My mom's a different kind of funny--she'll be more upset, and she'll lock herself in the bathroom.

[Q] Playboy: Do they think of themselves as performers? Did they ever say, "I should have done that better"?

[A] Green: My dad started doing that toward the end of the past year, and we scaled back on the parent stuff because it stopped working

[Q] Playboy: Solve a mystery for us: There's a subspecies of guys living in their parents' basements, but you don't hear of girls doing that. You never hear of a young woman who's 25, she's been to college, had a couple jobs that she didn't like, and now she's back in her folks' basement.

[A] Green: That's essentially what my movie's about--a 28-year-old guy who moves back in with his parents. He wants to be a cartoonist, but his father doesn't think he can do it.

Maybe guys pick unrealistic goals: "I'm going to be in a rock band. I'm going to be a race car driver, or a stand-up comic. I'm going to host a TV show." Girls tend to be realistic and smart. Boys are probably lazier. Maybe they resist joining the real world--that's why I moved back in with my parents after college. I didn't want to spend 40 hours a week working at a telemarketing company to make rent money. I wanted to spend that time working on my television show.

[Q] Playboy: You watched a lot of TV in those days.

[A] Green: Like the O.J. trial. That was the weirdest period in the basement. I'd made a pilot for the CBC, the Canadian national TV network, and waited for six months to hear from them. My parents would come home from work and say, "What the fuck are you doing, watching O.J. Simpson on TV? You can't just bum around waiting for the CBC to call. They're not going to pick up your stupid show. It's too weird." And they were right. The CBC didn't pick up my stupid show. It was too weird. But that pilot wound up helping. When the Comedy Network started up I said, "Look, we did an established pilot for a real network!" The Comedy Network picked up my show, and that's how I got on national television.

[Q] Playboy: Why is comedy overrun by Canadians? From the old Second City and SCTV to Saturday Night Live, you people are everywhere

[A] Green: It's somewhat bizarre. There are only 30 million people in Canada, fewer than there are in California. But there's Jim Carrey and Mike Myers. There was John Candy. There's Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short and Dan Aykroyd. Norm Macdonald is from Ottawa--he went to Gloucester High, our big rival, and grew up a couple of blocks from my house.

Maybe it's national insecurity. We feel like we can't do anything right. We're overwhelmed by America. For instance, hockey is our national sport, but practically every Canadian hockey team is going to go out of business in the next 10 years. They can't compete with American teams and the American dollar. So if you're Canadian, you grow up with a subtle feeling like, Damn, we've got problems up here.

There might be an advantage to starting out in Canada. I mean, my TV show-sucked for about four years, but I had those four years to figure out how to do a show, to work on my bag of tricks, before I got to MTV. That might be the thing with Jim Carrey and Mike Myers and Norm Macdonald, too. They did comedy in Canada for eight or 10 years before they came to the States, so they got to do their screwing up in isolation. That way nobody down here sees you as a shitty, fledgling stand-up comic.

[Q] Playboy: What did you do that sucked?

[A] Green: Hundreds of things. But then I learned to be a better comedy editor. To get in and out quick, that a five-minute piece that's no good might work at a minute-thirty.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk specifics. Where did you get the cow's head you dumped in your parents' bed? You can't go to a butcher shop and ask for a head.

[A] Green: Derek, my writing partner, called slaughterhouses until one of them gave us five heads. Under the table, for free. He drove over and picked them up. They were really heavy. We had a van from Rogers Cable, the community TV station--

[Q] Playboy: So here's the Rogers Cable van rolling through town with a cargo of cow heads.

[A] Green: We didn't plan to put one in my parents' bed. The heads were for a segment called "Cow Brain Boat." We've probably done 1000 segments and that's my favorite one: I was a hip-hop character teaching kids to make a boat out of cow brains. Hitting cow heads with an ax, pulling the brains out, pouring gasoline over them, lighting them and melting them onto a Styrofoam boat. It never aired in the States; it was too intense.

After the shoot, Derek and I were throwing the heads into a Dumpster behind a school. It's one in the morning, and I look at him and say, "We're like a block from my parents' house." My mom and dad liked The Godfather, so we gave them a special treat.

[Q] Playboy: The "Cow Brain Boat" was only one of the hip-hop bits on your show. You also founded a goofy rap group, Organized Rhyme, that had a semihit in Canada. So what's your take on Eminem, who talks about you in The Real Slim Shady? Is he good or bad hip-hop?

[A] Green: He's funny. He dresses up like me in his video and does The Bum-Bum Song, which I think is hilarious. It's strange that you mention Eminem--I was going to meet him today, but I have to go to New York to edit my movie. But I want to meet him and ask him to do a song with me. He's an amazing rapper. And he pushes people's buttons--that's what I do on television and that's what he does with his music.

[Q] Playboy: But you say it's important that your gags aren't mean-spirited. You don't damage anybody. Can you say that about the way he trashes women and gays?

[A] Green: It's so funny how he gets people in an uproar: "Oh, he's saying horrible things!" That's exactly what he wants. I haven't met him, but I'll bet you he's a hilarious guy who totally knows what he's doing: messing with people and laughing his head off. What Eminem says about homosexuals--he probably doesn't feel that way at all. What he says about me or Christina Aguilera or Carson Daly--he's trying to get us riled up. When I listen to his album I can't believe the stuff he's saying, slamming MTV, the people who put meat on his table. I think he's funny.

[Q] Playboy: How about Monica Lewinsky? Is she funny?

[A] Green: She's normal. That was a unique situation, the way that Monica Lewinsky and I got together for a show.

I'm a skateboarder, so Tony Hawk was always my hero. He liked my MTV show and we got to be friends. One night he's at a party in Los Angeles and he calls me and says, "Monica Lewinsky's here. You've got to barge in with your camera and pull some shit." But I was leaving for the airport that minute--going to shoot Road Trip. So Glenn Humplik took a camera to the party. He actually asked to interview Monica. Of course, she said no. But she ended up talking to one of my writers, and they exchanged phone numbers. It had nothing to do with my show--Monica was interested in the guy, and he thought that getting to know Monica Lewinsky would be weird and intriguing. They started dating. Then Monica stopped dating him, but she stayed friends with Tammy, my best friend's wife. Now, at this point, I'm this guy from Ottawa who's just moved to Los Angeles, and every time I go to my best friend's house, Monica Lewinsky is sitting there in his living room. That's surreal.

The Monica show was her idea. Monica's brother was a fan, and one day she says, "I'd like to go to Ottawa and wake up your parents." So we did.

[Q] Playboy: Is it possible to talk to Monica without picturing her with Bill Clinton and a cigar? Is she ashamed of her past?

[A] Green: I think she's a little freaked out by what happened, but not ashamed.

[Q] Playboy: Some animal-rights people freaked about the mouse you put in your mouth in Road Trip. Then there were dogs and pigs on Saturday Night Live--you got blamed for terrifying them.

[A] Green: Can they prove that the dogs and pigs were terrified? I don't think so. And I never mistreated a mouse. The mouse in Road Trip crawled into my mouth and snuggled. It liked it in there. We shot that scene 20 times, and after 10 times it would put its little paw on my lip and walk right into my mouth. I could see a problem if I had bitten its head off, but I'm not Ozzy Osbourne. I've got three dogs, and I would never hurt an animal for a joke. Except for worms. I ate worms once. And I did put cockroaches in little hot-air balloons. I think it's all right to kill insects. But mammals, birds, reptiles, they're all safe with me.

[Q] Playboy: What's the worst thing you've ever tasted?

[A] Green: Mouse urine is salty. But it's not the worst. Palmolive detergent is worse. For some reason I thought it would be funny to fill my mouth with soap, but I started vomiting. Soap is one thing you can't put in your mouth. I was tasting Palmolive for days.

[Q] Playboy: You've got another specialty--sneaking into movies.

[A] Green: Now I find that I pay occasionally, and I'm disappointed in myself. I think, God, am I becoming an adult?

[Q] Playboy: Why do you do it?

[A] Green: Because it's so damned easy. It's body language--you walk right past the guy taking tickets. Pick a point 100 yards away and stare at it. Wave at that point as if you see someone. The main thing is to walk 10 to 15 percent faster than normal. If you run it looks like you're doing something wrong, and if you walk normally he'll have time to grab you. A little faster than normal looks like something important is happening, and remember--this guy has other people to deal with. He's got to make a choice: Does he take tickets from the people behind you, or chase the guy who's already 15 feet into the theater? Is he going to yell at you and maybe get into trouble with his boss? This guy's making eight bucks an hour. He's going to let you go because he doesn't care.

[Q] Playboy: Should your fans sneak into Freddy Got Fingered?

[A] Green: No. They should pay their eight bucks. And now that I'm in the movie industry, I want theaters to tighten security.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have a favorite Drew Barrymore film?

[A] Green: I like The Wedding Singer. Charlie's Angels, too. And the other night we were at home watching TV when Bad Girls came on, so we watched it together. I said, "Wow, you look hot in this movie." She always does, but she looked really hot as a cowgirl.

[Q] Playboy: You're the hot comic that companies such as Pepsi use to reach kids. Performers of 20 or 30 years ago might have called that selling out. Even as you save people from testicular cancer, are you causing some cavities?

[A] Green: Not with Pepsi One. Diet drinks probably save people's teeth.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever worry about getting hurt on the job? Chevy Chase did so many pratfalls that he nearly ruined his back. You're always throwing yourself around, too.

[A] Green: You wipe out a lot on a skateboard, so I learned how. And I'm light like a bird. I'm 6'3" and I weigh 150 pounds, so there's not enough weight to crush my bones. You could probably throw me at the ground as hard as you can and I'd just bounce.

[Q] Playboy: Another part of skateboarding, for many skaters, is marijuana. Was pot part of your skate-punk days?

[A] Green: I was in school in the Nancy Reagan "Just say no" and "This is your brain on drugs" years. Smoking pot--I think people were afraid of it. It was when I was leaving high school that some rap bands glorified it. I'm sure everybody's into it now. I don't do it myself.

[Q] Playboy: Never?

[A] Green: Once or twice. Someone was passing it at a party. But I like to be in control. Even after my operations I got off the painkillers really fast. People get addicted to Vicodin and Percodan, but I hated that stuff. It made me an emotional wreck, getting upset about weird little things. I stopped taking it and just went with the pain.

[Q] Playboy: What do you watch on TV?

[A] Green: Nothing.

[Q] Playboy: What about reality shows like Survivor II?

[A] Green: To be honest, that's one reason I'm excited about going ahead with movies. Reality TV--The Real World, my show, now you've got Survivor and a lot of shows jumping on the bandwagon--is getting to be a fad, and there's going to be a lot of bad shit on the air. They think, We'll follow people around with a video camera. It'll be so real! They don't understand that a good reality show needs as much attention to story as a sitcom. When we did the Slutmobile segment, there were story elements. We knew my dad would walk to the bus stop, and if I drove the car there it would be embarrassing because his neighbors would see it.

[Q] Playboy: You needed keys to his car, too, if you were going to drive it.

[A] Green: A week earlier I'd told him the muffler on my car was busted and I needed to borrow his. We got copies made of the keys. And since the paint on his hood wouldn't dry instantly, we actually bought the hood of another 1992 Honda Accord. Took it to a paint shop, got it painted. Then I stole the car in the middle of the night, took it to the body shop, replaced the hood and drove it back. So it wasn't "Hey, let's chase a guy around with a video camera and he'll be wacky." There was a lot going on behind the scenes.

[Q] Playboy: There's one more Drew scene to talk about. We heard you got caught making out with her in a closet at a movie theater.

[A] Green: That's true.

[Q] Playboy: What was the movie?

[A] Green: Believe it or not, it was Road Trip. Right after Charlie's Angels wrapped, Drew and I went parachuting in Perris, California with her friend Cameron Diaz and Cameron's boyfriend. Drew and I had seen Road Trip but Cameron and her boyfriend hadn't, and they dragged me into it.

[Q] Playboy: Did you sneak in?

[A] Green: I believe that we did, and about halfway through the movie Drew dragged me out of the theater and into a broom closet. And some kids found us in there.

[Q] Playboy: You were hugging and kissing?

[A] Green: [Lying] We were both completely naked.

[Q] Playboy: You and Drew--that must have been a thrill for the kids.

[A] Green: Well, not when they were looking at me.