Episode 360 - Tom Green

Episode 360 • Released February 10, 2013 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:Lock the gates!

00:00:07Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:08Guest:Really?

00:00:08Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:09Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:10Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:12Guest:Pow!

00:00:12Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:14Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?

00:00:16Guest:What's wrong with me?

00:00:17Guest:It's time for WTF!

00:00:19Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:20Guest:With Mark Maron.

00:00:24Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:25Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?

00:00:26Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:27Marc:What the fucking ears?

00:00:28Marc:What the fuck me's?

00:00:29Marc:What the fuck a Delix?

00:00:31Marc:What the fuck a Stanny's?

00:00:33Marc:No offense.

00:00:34Marc:That's all I'm going to do today.

00:00:37Marc:I'm actually thinking about retiring that whole intro.

00:00:40Marc:I am Mark Maron.

00:00:40Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:41Marc:Thank you for listening.

00:00:42Marc:I appreciate it.

00:00:44Marc:I'm sorry, Boston.

00:00:45Marc:I'm sorry, Chicopee, Massachusetts.

00:00:48Marc:I'm sorry.

00:00:48Marc:It was out of my control what happened out there.

00:00:52Marc:I'll be in Chicopee at the Hooky Lao at, again, no offense meant by my attempt at pronouncing it properly.

00:01:01Marc:I will be at the Hooky Lao at,

00:01:04Marc:on march 29th and at boston at the wilbur at uh march 30th that was yeah all right so that's basically the rescat it's a postponement the uh march 30th wilbur shows will be a live wtf and a stand-up show uh some other dates coming up i should get out out right now we've got uh

00:01:28Marc:Cincinnati, Ohio with Bogarts on Thursday, this Thursday, February 14th.

00:01:32Marc:We've got the Columbus, Ohio Capitol Theater on February 15th.

00:01:36Marc:I'll be up in Vancouver doing a live WTF on on February 16th.

00:01:40Marc:I'll be in Vancouver doing a live stand up show on February 17th.

00:01:44Marc:I'll be at the Aladdin Theater in Portland, Oregon, February 28th.

00:01:47Marc:I'll be at the Neptune Theater in Seattle, March 1st.

00:01:50Marc:I'll be at the McDonald Theater in Eugene, March 2nd.

00:01:53Marc:At the Music Fest Cafe in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, April 19th.

00:01:57Marc:And at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 4th.

00:02:03Marc:Where's that San Francisco date?

00:02:05Marc:There it is.

00:02:05Marc:Palace of Fine Arts, April 13th.

00:02:08Marc:That should do it for that.

00:02:10Marc:Did I mention Tom Green is on the show?

00:02:13Marc:Tom Green, who I had a personal aversion to, to be quite honest with you.

00:02:18Marc:pow look out just shit my pants that's just coffee.coop available at wtfpod.com as as you know this is a good way to support the show it is a good way to uh to do something that a lot of us forget to do and end up kind of on the way home you get that bodega bouquet and try to pull that off don't fucking i yeah i look i've done that all right and it didn't end well it cost me

00:02:43Marc:a lot of money at the end, probably because of those bodega flowers and the fact that I yelled.

00:02:49Marc:Other stuff.

00:02:49Marc:But look, we're beyond that.

00:02:51Marc:So Tom Green is on the show.

00:02:53Marc:I have some issues with pranking in general, but he happens to be a genius at it.

00:02:59Marc:Now, there's something about very articulated and thought-out pranks that there is nothing funnier than that.

00:03:05Marc:But I've been on both sides of that.

00:03:08Marc:And sometimes it's hard for me to differentiate between...

00:03:11Marc:Doing a prank on somebody and just being a douchebag bully fuck face.

00:03:16Marc:And and I don't like to be on the short end of the stick on that one.

00:03:21Marc:I've gotten my feelings hurt by being set up for bullshit.

00:03:24Marc:Everyone gets a big laugh, but that feeling of being the one.

00:03:28Marc:That the prank is being played on that horrible kind of punch in the chest feeling as you're surrounded by people who are laughing and laughing and you're just expected to suck it up and go, oh, you got me.

00:03:40Marc:I don't know.

00:03:41Marc:That's a tall order for me.

00:03:42Marc:I'm not saying I don't laugh when other people fall down or that when other people get pranked.

00:03:47Marc:But I've been pushed into a couple of situations where I've been played.

00:03:50Marc:uh you know i remember i was kind of cajoled by all my friends in high school to ask this cheerleader to homecoming i should have known they gave me this impression that it was a done deal and they had talked to her and it was going to happen and i walked up to her and she goes no way and then i was just uh you know completely uh crestfallen uh to the soundtrack of my five friends you know trying to hold their laughter in with their hands and

00:04:16Marc:There's been other situations.

00:04:17Marc:I mean, fuck, I worked with Sam Seder for a year, one on one, and that guy lives for it.

00:04:21Marc:Some people love to do very even long form pranks that can take months to unfold.

00:04:27Marc:And he used to do that shit with me all the time to the point where you can't trust a person because you don't know whether or not they're fucking with you.

00:04:33Marc:Now, arguably, I have that issue without the fear of pranking with people that I should theoretically trust.

00:04:38Marc:But, you know, to me, life is one big prank and I'm going to get fucked at the end of it anyways.

00:04:42Marc:Aren't we all?

00:04:43Marc:That's there you go.

00:04:44Marc:There's the existential reality of this situation.

00:04:47Marc:The big prank is you don't quite know how you're going to go.

00:04:50Marc:You can just hope it's not that funny.

00:04:55Marc:But Tom, I had a little issue with because I've appeared on television with him.

00:04:58Marc:I was on Comics Unleashed, Byron Allen's horrible show with Tom Green.

00:05:01Marc:When I saw he was going to be on, literally I had this moment where, well, there goes this fucking appearance.

00:05:05Marc:Not that it mattered, but Tom Green is not generous with the stage.

00:05:11Marc:You know, especially the younger version of Tom Green.

00:05:13Marc:It's just he's going to get out there.

00:05:14Marc:Not unlike anybody who does balls to the wall, who the fuck knows what's going to happen type of comedy.

00:05:20Marc:It's just going to step all over everybody.

00:05:22Marc:And sure enough, he did.

00:05:23Marc:And I resented him for it.

00:05:25Marc:And I carried that for a while.

00:05:27Marc:And then finally, I had him on because I do.

00:05:28Marc:I think he really is kind of an unsung genius of the prank.

00:05:32Marc:But I just I guess I don't know how to prank.

00:05:34Marc:Look, I'm not beyond being a bully.

00:05:37Marc:I've unleashed on people on stage.

00:05:40Marc:I've said hurtful things for a laugh.

00:05:45Marc:But generally, my pranks are not planned.

00:05:47Marc:They're usually surprise pranks if we're going by the hurtful things to get a laugh.

00:05:53Marc:When I do something horrible or bullying or at the expense of somebody else, I'm usually equally as surprised as they are.

00:06:00Marc:And nine times out of 10, someone is crying.

00:06:03Marc:And eight times out of 10, it's the woman I'm living with.

00:06:06Marc:So not funny.

00:06:07Marc:That's not funny.

00:06:08Marc:And we're getting better at that.

00:06:10Marc:OK, but Tom, I was happy to talk to time because, as I said, I believe that he is an inspired performer and comedic mind.

00:06:21Marc:And I was a little concerned that once he came over here, I would have to, you know.

00:06:25Marc:just wait until he sort of simmered down and turned down the volume of whatever his Tom Greenism is.

00:06:32Marc:And I think you'll find that, that we did, we had a great conversation and I'm looking forward to you guys hearing that.

00:06:38Marc:All right, let's talk to Tom Green.

00:06:46Guest:I'm not going to do it in my living room anymore.

00:07:10Guest:Why?

00:07:11Guest:Why?

00:07:11Guest:I don't know.

00:07:12Guest:It was all these cameras and stuff.

00:07:16Guest:It was a lot of cables, a lot of cameras, a lot of computers, computers breaking down all the time.

00:07:23Guest:A lot of guys going like, I got it.

00:07:25Guest:I'm on it.

00:07:26Guest:It never worked.

00:07:27Guest:It wasn't a very simple technical setup.

00:07:31Guest:When did I start the thing?

00:07:33Guest:I don't know, 2007 or something like that.

00:07:36Guest:uh you know the web streaming technology was pretty new so it didn't really work that well right and then and then then it started started to work better but i'd always have to buy all this new equipment stuff i just kind of uh wanted to take a break from it but you always had like uh there was always just there's always been a tom green fan base that was uh ready to fucking follow you anywhere into every any pit of hell yeah you decided to travel to

00:08:02Guest:Yeah, no, it was cool.

00:08:03Guest:I mean, we had a lot of people watching.

00:08:06Guest:Actually, really what it is, I started touring and doing stand-up, and I just kind of am addicted to it now.

00:08:10Guest:As you know, it's something that you just can't sort of stop doing.

00:08:14Marc:Yeah, for better or for worse.

00:08:16Marc:I mean, when it's all you do, yeah, it's like I can't stop doing this because I don't know what else I'm going to do.

00:08:22Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:08:23Marc:But you sort of came back around to it.

00:08:25Guest:Yeah.

00:08:26Marc:I mean, were you ever a legitimate stand-up?

00:08:29Guest:It's hard to say.

00:08:31Guest:I mean, I started doing it when I was quite young.

00:08:33Guest:Like how old?

00:08:34Guest:15, 16, 17, 18 years old, like way back.

00:08:37Marc:When you were in high school.

00:08:38Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:08:39Guest:In Canada.

00:08:40Guest:Yeah, and at Ottawa's Yuck Yucks.

00:08:42Marc:Yeah, I know, for Mark Breslin.

00:08:43Guest:Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

00:08:45Guest:And I love doing it.

00:08:46Marc:But were you like one of these kids here again?

00:08:48Marc:The wonder kind.

00:08:49Marc:Because as a stand-up, when kids would come in who had it, who started doing it, everyone sort of impressed the fact that he's a kid.

00:08:58Guest:They called me Little Tommy Green from down the street at the club.

00:09:02Guest:Started out, I'd go down to watch Harland Williams and Norm MacDonald and Jeremy Hotz when they'd come through town.

00:09:08Marc:Yeah, I do.

00:09:09Marc:I do very few impressions, but Harland Williams, you can do his style, but just taking two or three sort of disjointed references and then doing crowd work.

00:09:18Marc:Like, hey there, Mr. Beard, how's the spaceship doing with the jelly?

00:09:22Guest:Yeah, Harland is one of my best friends.

00:09:24Guest:Isn't that his style?

00:09:25Guest:Yeah, well, yeah.

00:09:27Guest:At the time when I was a kid, I'd never seen anybody be so non-sequitur and ridiculous.

00:09:34Guest:Where are we getting muffins?

00:09:36Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:09:36Guest:It was just outrageous stuff.

00:09:38Guest:And he was so silly and I loved it.

00:09:40Guest:And I sort of looked at that and I said, well, you know, I kind of could see myself wanting to try to do that.

00:09:45Marc:Well, what were you doing when you were like 15?

00:09:47Marc:I mean, what was your structure?

00:09:49Guest:Yeah, I was talking about like, you know...

00:09:52Guest:saturday morning cartoons were you no i don't know like weird tv commercials sure sure have you guys seen this one yeah you know stupid stuff like that i can't really remember a lot of my material i had some jokes about like kids being when you see kids uh i'm trying to remember a joke from 20 years ago now i can't really remember them or do them justice all you gotta do is drop the needle in the groove tom the groove is still in there somewhere that opener is still in there somewhere yeah yeah yeah

00:10:19Guest:Yeah, it was weird.

00:10:20Guest:There was no point of reference, though, to really entertain a group of drunken college students when you're 15, 16, 17 years old.

00:10:28Guest:So it was kind of, I did well, but it was that cute kid on stage.

00:10:33Guest:What's he doing?

00:10:33Guest:That's cute.

00:10:34Guest:He's a kid.

00:10:34Marc:They were willing to offer you a pass in a way.

00:10:37Marc:They weren't going to like, give him a break.

00:10:39Marc:He's 15.

00:10:40Marc:Yeah.

00:10:40Guest:It kind of started to feel a bit like that, so I stopped for some time.

00:10:44Guest:I went to school, took broadcasting, and started the show and did that for a long time.

00:10:49Marc:What, the public access show?

00:10:50Guest:Yeah, I started the public access show.

00:10:52Marc:So you grew up in Canada?

00:10:54Guest:Yeah.

00:10:54Marc:What part?

00:10:55Guest:Ottawa, Canada, yeah.

00:10:56Marc:And I have no point of reference for that as an American, really.

00:10:59Marc:I've been to Canada.

00:10:59Guest:It's about an hour and a half from Montreal, which I'm sure you know Montreal.

00:11:02Marc:Sure, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto.

00:11:06Marc:I've been to all those.

00:11:08Marc:Edmonton I've been to.

00:11:09Guest:Yeah, Ottawa's the capital.

00:11:10Guest:It's right between Toronto and Montreal, sort of.

00:11:13Guest:Normal childhood?

00:11:15Marc:You got sisters and brothers that you like?

00:11:18Guest:Jeez, do you mind if I smoke?

00:11:20Marc:No, go ahead.

00:11:21Marc:There's an ashtray right there.

00:11:22Marc:Oh, you got one of those.

00:11:23Guest:It's electric.

00:11:23Guest:Yeah?

00:11:24Guest:Just got it.

00:11:25Marc:Yeah, you like it?

00:11:25Guest:Yeah, I do actually.

00:11:28Guest:And I don't even smoke real cigarettes.

00:11:30Marc:You never smoked real cigarettes?

00:11:31Guest:I found myself starting to smoke cigarettes.

00:11:34Marc:So you got one of them?

00:11:34Guest:And it's been worrying me.

00:11:36Marc:Yeah?

00:11:36Guest:Because I get stressed out a lot in my life.

00:11:39Marc:Yeah, I got a couple of those.

00:11:40Marc:Someone sent me a couple of these ones.

00:11:43Marc:They're disposable electric cigarettes where you just smoke them out.

00:11:46Marc:You don't have to replace the cartridge.

00:11:47Marc:They go for a couple weeks.

00:11:48Guest:Is that what that is?

00:11:49Guest:This is a rechargeable one.

00:11:51Marc:Oh, so you've got the whole packet.

00:11:53Guest:I had a disposable one, but then I picked this up.

00:11:55Guest:I've got menthol-flavored canisters as well.

00:11:58Marc:I used to smoke.

00:11:59Marc:I eat nicotine lozenges.

00:12:01Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:12:02Marc:And I have been for like 10 years.

00:12:03Marc:Not really.

00:12:04Marc:Yeah.

00:12:04Marc:So I've tried those.

00:12:06Marc:Yeah.

00:12:06Marc:It takes me back.

00:12:07Marc:Like I've gotten past the mouth hand thing.

00:12:12Marc:So I just assume not enter that back in.

00:12:15Marc:Yeah.

00:12:15Marc:You know, like I don't think about cigarettes anymore.

00:12:17Guest:It's amazing how much it works.

00:12:20Guest:It really does work.

00:12:21Guest:You get a good little buzz off of it.

00:12:22Marc:Yeah, I got nauseous the first time I did it.

00:12:24Guest:Yeah, I like it.

00:12:25Guest:I'm going to take my jacket off.

00:12:28Marc:Tom's taking his jacket off.

00:12:31Marc:Tom Green is here.

00:12:32Guest:Got a knife here, which is good.

00:12:34Marc:Yeah, there's a lot of stuff I leave there so people can fidget with if necessary, but you, I should have probably put the knife away.

00:12:41Marc:I did one show with you once, and I didn't know what the fuck was going to happen.

00:12:44Marc:I was kind of mad at you, actually.

00:12:46Marc:What happened?

00:12:47Marc:When?

00:12:47Marc:When was that?

00:12:49Marc:It was Byron Allen's ridiculous show.

00:12:54Marc:Oh, wow.

00:12:54Marc:And I said, who's on with me?

00:12:55Marc:And they're like, Tom Green, whoever.

00:12:57Marc:Holy cow.

00:12:57Guest:And I'm like, oh, fuck.

00:12:58Marc:Tom Green's on, so no one's going to be able to say anything because he's going to do something.

00:13:01Marc:Oh, I forgot about that.

00:13:03Marc:Within five minutes, I think you were in a fish tank.

00:13:05Guest:Wow, wow.

00:13:06Guest:Yeah, I've thought about that many times since.

00:13:10Guest:Seriously?

00:13:10Guest:Yeah, because I've gotten to this sort of place in my life where I sometimes look back at that period of time

00:13:19Guest:Where I just sort of really wonder what the heck was I thinking a lot of the time, you know?

00:13:24Guest:But wasn't that part of the thing?

00:13:25Guest:Yeah, it was part of the thing.

00:13:26Guest:But, you know, it was sort of like I was in a very sort of developmental phase of what exactly the thing was, right?

00:13:34Guest:And there was a lot of, you know...

00:13:37Guest:Things happening in my life.

00:13:39Guest:And all of a sudden I'm on these shows and, you know, it was very overwhelming.

00:13:43Guest:And then you're, you know, on Byron Allen with a bunch of other, you know, great comedians in a warehouse.

00:13:48Guest:It was like a warehouse here.

00:13:49Guest:I'm supposed to tell some jokes and I haven't got jokes.

00:13:52Guest:So I'll just get in the fish tank.

00:13:54Guest:Yeah, I'll go run up into the.

00:13:55Guest:audience you know here right george wallace is sitting there looking at me like who the hell is this kid it was george running around in the fish tank you know tell some jokes jerk i think it was me you uh george wallace and orney adams yeah yeah i think that's what it was john lovitz was there too right was he i think he was backstage okay yeah waiting to do the second taping i remember after that i walked backstage and they were doing all these tapings and there was all these other comedians there and i remember some people looking at me like they were kind of mad at me or something like yeah yeah

00:14:21Guest:And I started getting.

00:14:23Guest:I was mad at you.

00:14:23Guest:Yeah.

00:14:24Guest:Yeah.

00:14:25Guest:You were the one.

00:14:26Guest:Yeah.

00:14:27Guest:Yeah.

00:14:27Guest:So I don't know.

00:14:28Guest:It was it was it was an interesting, interesting thing.

00:14:31Guest:I don't really do that anymore.

00:14:33Guest:You know, go on.

00:14:34Guest:I had this thing like when I was a kid doing my public access show.

00:14:38Marc:And how old were you when you started that?

00:14:40Guest:I was 24 when I started Public Access TV.

00:14:44Guest:I was doing my radio.

00:14:46Guest:I did college radio.

00:14:47Guest:Started that when I was about 18.

00:14:47Guest:And what was that show?

00:14:49Guest:It was the radio show?

00:14:51Guest:Yeah.

00:14:51Guest:I called it the Midnight Caller.

00:14:53Guest:I did it every Friday night from midnight till 2 a.m., and we took phone calls.

00:14:57Guest:Real phone calls?

00:14:58Guest:Real phone calls, and I did prank calls and stuff like that.

00:15:03Marc:And then you went to Public Access?

00:15:05Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:15:06Guest:And what was the idea of that show, just to turn a talk show inside out?

00:15:09Guest:Pretty much, yeah.

00:15:10Guest:I loved Letterman.

00:15:11Guest:Yeah.

00:15:12Guest:And I wanted to get access to video cameras and stuff.

00:15:16Guest:Uh-huh.

00:15:17Guest:And I went to school, took broadcasting.

00:15:21Guest:A couple of my buddies and I went and started the show.

00:15:23Guest:Yeah.

00:15:24Guest:We wanted to do basically a crazy version of Letterman, basically.

00:15:29Guest:And so going out in the streets.

00:15:31Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:15:32Guest:But pushing it.

00:15:33Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:15:35Marc:And that's what made you famous.

00:15:37Yeah.

00:15:37Guest:Yeah, well, it sort of was a slower build.

00:15:41Guest:What happened was I did the show for about seven years on public access in Canada, living in my parents' basement, and then MTV picked it up, and that was really sort of the explosive moment for the show.

00:15:50Guest:So you lived in your parents' basement until you were 30?

00:15:53Guest:Yeah.

00:15:53Guest:No, I was in and out of there until I was about... I moved to New York with the show when I was 28.

00:16:01Guest:I had moved out a couple of years before.

00:16:05Guest:I moved out when I was 19, moved back in again when I was 24 for a few years, so I could just...

00:16:10Guest:And were you welcomed back with open arms, or were they like, ugh?

00:16:16Guest:They wanted me to get a job.

00:16:17Guest:I wanted to do the public access show.

00:16:20Guest:They were happy that I was focusing on something, so they let me live in the basement, right?

00:16:25Marc:Were you a problem?

00:16:26No.

00:16:27Guest:Well, yeah, because I was barging into the house with the cameras all the time, sort of really overstaying my welcome.

00:16:34Marc:But as a younger kid, were you a concern?

00:16:36Guest:Yeah.

00:16:37Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:16:38Guest:Why?

00:16:39Guest:I think I'm still a concern.

00:16:41Marc:What were the red flags, Tom?

00:16:44Guest:I think they were just really, really concerned that I was never going to be able to support myself and that they were going to have to support me for the rest of their lives.

00:16:51Guest:And they were more concerned about themselves, I think.

00:16:54Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:16:55Guest:No, they were worried about me because I was always a goofy kid and whatever, goofing off and stuff.

00:17:00Marc:Do you have brothers and sisters?

00:17:02Guest:I have a younger brother, yeah.

00:17:03Guest:And is he a goofball?

00:17:04Guest:Is he on the level?

00:17:05Guest:No, he's not so much a goofball.

00:17:07Guest:He's a different kind of guy.

00:17:09Guest:He's working?

00:17:10Guest:Yeah.

00:17:10Guest:They're not concerned about him anymore?

00:17:11Marc:Yeah.

00:17:12Marc:No, not really, no.

00:17:15Marc:So the public access went on for seven years, and you didn't have any real plans for it?

00:17:20Marc:You just liked doing it?

00:17:21Marc:There was no money coming in?

00:17:22Marc:Did you build up a following in Canada?

00:17:26No.

00:17:26Guest:I wanted to turn it into something.

00:17:28Guest:I mean, I did.

00:17:29Guest:And we would edit promo tapes together and send them off to the CBC and to the local television stations with a little letter asking if they'd give us a pilot.

00:17:43Guest:And eventually someone did give us a pilot.

00:17:44Guest:In Canada.

00:17:45Marc:Yeah, in Canada.

00:17:46Marc:If you hang out and you're persistent enough, it seems that everyone gets an opportunity in television.

00:17:50Guest:Yeah.

00:17:50Guest:Yeah, just don't quit.

00:17:51Guest:That's what I always figured.

00:17:53Guest:Just don't quit.

00:17:53Guest:Something's going to happen.

00:17:54Guest:And you got the pilot?

00:17:55Guest:Got the pilot for the CBC.

00:17:57Guest:Yeah.

00:17:58Guest:They waited a year to not pick it up.

00:18:00Guest:That was in 1997.

00:18:02Guest:And then it got picked up by the Comedy Network in Canada, which was the first year of that network.

00:18:08Guest:Right.

00:18:09Guest:And they gave us 13 episodes.

00:18:10Guest:And that was it.

00:18:12Guest:And then we went to MTV.

00:18:13Guest:Yeah.

00:18:13Marc:Actually, we did 26 episodes there.

00:18:16Marc:Do you consider yourself sort of the... You must be sort of the godfather of what became modern punking, that there was some element that you took it to this degree that no one thought you could really do, like all the Letterman pranks or whatever, that you were imposing on real people, you were fucking throwing yourself into things.

00:18:34Marc:It was sort of punk rock, and I have to assume that you were before Jackass and before Punk'd and before all that shit.

00:18:40Marc:I think you set some sort of standard.

00:18:41Marc:Do you ever think of it that way?

00:18:43Guest:You know, I was into skateboarding videos and Letterman, and I had done stand-up, and I loved really outrageous movies and TV shows like Monty Python and things like that.

00:18:59Guest:I think I figured there's no way I'd ever really be able to get a TV show through traditional methods.

00:19:07Guest:So I had to do something that was just so off the deep end that somebody would have to look at it, and then maybe we'd find a little niche thing or something.

00:19:15Marc:So when you went to MTV, you became sort of like a rock star, kind of like a fucking balls-to-the-wall punk rock comedy rock star, and yet all these kids were like, fucking Tom Green.

00:19:24Marc:Yeah, it was crazy.

00:19:25Marc:It was a crazy time.

00:19:25Marc:And then like you just it sort of skyrocketed.

00:19:28Marc:And I always I don't talk to many people who have gone as far up and as dramatically down as you in the sense that you had a real arc.

00:19:37Marc:Yeah.

00:19:37Marc:I mean, there was like, you know, you were culturally visible a lot, you know, with MTV.

00:19:42Marc:And then you did a few movies and then you ended up with you Barrymore.

00:19:45Marc:And everyone's like, oh, fuck that guy.

00:19:47Guest:Yeah.

00:19:47Guest:He's got it made.

00:19:48Guest:Yeah, it was definitely was an odd sort of shift in attitude when the tabloid stuff started.

00:19:55Guest:Yeah.

00:19:55Guest:Because before before the tabloid stuff started, everybody basically just loved the show.

00:20:00Guest:Right.

00:20:00Guest:And then immediately people sort of sort of turn on you because, you know, we are with a movie star or whatever.

00:20:06Marc:And they think you're you turned in your punk rock cred.

00:20:08Guest:Yeah, I guess so.

00:20:09Guest:I guess so.

00:20:10Guest:I never really considered myself much of a punk rock kind of.

00:20:13Guest:I mean, I like hip hop music.

00:20:14Guest:I mean, just in terms of the attitude.

00:20:16Guest:Yeah.

00:20:16Guest:I guess we had that.

00:20:17Guest:I guess we did.

00:20:18Guest:Anarchy.

00:20:18Guest:I was always too much of a nerd, though, to consider myself really punk, you know?

00:20:22Guest:Yeah.

00:20:23Marc:But what you were like, were you a childhood nerd?

00:20:26Guest:Yeah, kind of, yeah.

00:20:27Marc:What was your thing?

00:20:28Guest:I was just a goofy kid at school.

00:20:31Marc:Like chess, science, Dungeons & Dragons?

00:20:33Guest:Not science, no, not chess.

00:20:36Guest:I was into skateboarding and stuff, but back then skateboarding wasn't cool.

00:20:39Guest:Could you do pools?

00:20:40Guest:No, just street skating.

00:20:42Guest:Oh, okay.

00:20:44Guest:All the pools in Canada are vinyl.

00:20:45Guest:They're lined with vinyl because they freeze in the winter.

00:20:49Guest:It's a little more challenging.

00:20:50Guest:They can't make concrete pools, so they're soft.

00:20:53Guest:They're plastic.

00:20:54Guest:But, yeah, it certainly was interesting and has been interesting, and I actually kind of feel a little bit better and more in my comfort zone now than I did when things were, like, flying high on MTV because, you know, you don't have everybody critiquing every little thing you do.

00:21:14Guest:When I did my web show the last few years, you know, we were having lots of people watching it and stuff, but you're not getting sort of, you know, ripped a new asshole by, you know,

00:21:23Marc:people magazine and you're sort of a maverick you know you can you can have complete control of your own shit yeah and you've built a pretty good army of people i imagine that liked you yeah so they were all there because i remember checking in with it occasionally yeah because i was like how's he doing this yeah yeah is it working yeah but you found that did you find that you could build an audience and get keep people watching

00:21:43Guest:Yeah, we had a lot of people watching.

00:21:45Guest:And it's kind of what led me to want to start touring because I was getting a lot of viewers from all over the country and places like Australia and everywhere I've been touring.

00:21:54Guest:And I just thought maybe I should just go take it on the road.

00:21:57Guest:You know, it was the only thing I was doing was the web show.

00:21:59Guest:Right.

00:21:59Guest:And I wanted to get up in front of people.

00:22:02Marc:When you did music, were you serious about it?

00:22:06Guest:Yeah.

00:22:06Guest:Well, that's sort of... When I was a kid, we had this record deal in Canada.

00:22:10Guest:Yeah.

00:22:10Guest:And I did this rap album.

00:22:12Guest:Yeah.

00:22:13Guest:And we got a record deal.

00:22:14Guest:And that was sort of after I... That's kind of why I stopped doing stand-up.

00:22:17Guest:We got a record deal.

00:22:18Marc:At what, 18 or 19?

00:22:19Guest:When I was 18 years old, I had my first away gig was booked with Yuck Yucks.

00:22:26Guest:They booked me a club in Montreal.

00:22:28Guest:I think there was some of the club that I... Yeah.

00:22:31Guest:I don't think it's there anymore, but...

00:22:33Guest:And I was all set to go.

00:22:34Guest:And then we got this opportunity to go to New York with my buddies who were like 17, 18 years old and record for the summer.

00:22:43Guest:So I canceled my first away gig and went to New York for six weeks to record a demo.

00:22:51Guest:And came back from that and was so ashamed that I had canceled that away gig that I didn't really go back to the club for about five years because I was just completely embarrassed and ashamed.

00:23:03Guest:Really?

00:23:03Guest:Yeah, ashamed and that I canceled my first big gig.

00:23:09Guest:I'd been doing sort of middle spots in Ottawa, but I hadn't really gotten into the touring yet.

00:23:16Guest:And that was always sort of the dream, really, for me as a kid, was to be a road warrior, a comic, and going out there and doing what Harland and Norm were doing.

00:23:25Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:23:25Marc:Well, what was the rap song?

00:23:27Marc:I mean, were you serious?

00:23:29Marc:You and two friends had a whole rap entourage there, and you were doing- We were kind of trying to do the Beastie Boys, our version of the Beastie Boys.

00:23:38Guest:So kind of funny, goofy- Canadian suburban Beastie Boys, yeah.

00:23:41Marc:Did you get any traction with that?

00:23:43Marc:Did you release some singles?

00:23:45Guest:Yeah, we had a hit record in Canada.

00:23:48Guest:Really?

00:23:48Guest:Yeah, it was played on all the record radio stations.

00:23:51Marc:Did you cash in a little bit?

00:23:52Guest:No, we made no money.

00:23:54Guest:We did a pizza commercial for a local pizza chain and got $1,200 that we split three ways.

00:24:00Guest:And we thought that was a lot of money, too.

00:24:02Guest:Free pizza?

00:24:03Guest:Yeah.

00:24:04Guest:I have a couple of free pizzas.

00:24:05Guest:Yeah.

00:24:06Guest:But, uh, you know, we were really into it.

00:24:09Guest:We were, we were excited about it.

00:24:10Guest:We, but, uh, it, uh, it sort of fizzled out after an album.

00:24:13Guest:Yeah.

00:24:14Guest:It was weird though, because, you know, at 18 years old in Canada, 10 years before the show was an MTV, you know, we had this, this song went to number one in certain cities.

00:24:22Guest:It was, we won the award on much music, which is like MTV awards for a rap video.

00:24:28Guest:Okay.

00:24:29Guest:1992.

00:24:29Marc:So you did how many of the MTV shows in your arc there?

00:24:37Marc:How long were you on the air over there?

00:24:39Guest:On MTV, probably 26 episodes.

00:24:45Guest:And then when did you get the testicular cancer?

00:24:48Guest:Right when the show was basically the number one show on MTV, I got testicular cancer.

00:24:52Guest:I think we were the number two show on MTV after The Real World.

00:24:55Guest:We were like a hit show.

00:24:56Guest:How old were you?

00:24:59Guest:I was 28.

00:25:00Marc:And how did you figure that out?

00:25:03Guest:I had a sort of a...

00:25:06Guest:numbness, swollen feeling in my right testicle.

00:25:10Guest:Yeah.

00:25:11Guest:Went to the doctor.

00:25:12Guest:Doctor misdiagnosed it as epididymitis.

00:25:18Marc:Yeah, when it gets tangled up.

00:25:19Guest:Yeah, put me on antibiotics.

00:25:23Guest:Went to my hometown with Monica Lewinsky and shot an hour-long episode with Monica Lewinsky in my hometown in pain.

00:25:31Guest:Yeah.

00:25:31Guest:And shot a couple other episodes, kept going back to the doctor, going, this isn't going away.

00:25:35Guest:Yeah.

00:25:35Guest:And then he did an ultrasound, told me it was cancer then, and then I switched doctors immediately.

00:25:41Guest:Fuck you.

00:25:42Guest:Yeah.

00:25:43Guest:Immediately began researching, you know, testicular cancer, found out the best doctor in the world, basically, was in Los Angeles here at USC.

00:25:54Guest:Yeah.

00:25:54Guest:And went over there and...

00:25:57Guest:I was fortunate enough to get in there.

00:25:58Guest:Dr. Drew actually set me up over there because we had the same manager at the time.

00:26:03Marc:Yeah, wasn't that interesting?

00:26:04Marc:Show business meets medicine.

00:26:06Guest:Yeah, Howard Lapidus, who you probably know.

00:26:08Guest:Yeah, the manager guy.

00:26:09Guest:I remember him.

00:26:10Marc:But like testicular cancer is like, that's bad.

00:26:13Marc:I mean, if that goes, it can get your whole body pretty quickly, right?

00:26:17Guest:Yeah, it's bad.

00:26:18Guest:It's really bad.

00:26:19Guest:I mean, it's not a fun thing to deal with.

00:26:21Guest:It takes a lot out of you physically.

00:26:25Guest:Getting the testicle removed is pretty simple.

00:26:27Marc:And you put that all on camera, the whole process of this.

00:26:30Guest:Yeah, and I've been putting a lot of stuff up on my website recently, and most of the stuff I put up on my website is from the old public access show, but I did put the cancer special on there, and we filmed and documented the whole...

00:26:44Guest:whole scary procedure process my parents down there in the hospital everything filmed the surgery the crazy part of the surgery for me was a lymph node dissection where they they cut you from you know basically they they gut you like a fish right they take your intestines out and set them on the table just eight hour surgery this is on camera yeah yeah you showed this shit yeah yeah you can see it all sort of like it looks like one of these you know so you're out and you've signed a release for them to be able to do that

00:27:13Guest:Well, actually, what we did, no, I wasn't quite that crazy.

00:27:18Guest:We filmed everything leading up to the surgery, everything immediately after the surgery, but the hospital actually has a camera mounted over the operating table.

00:27:27Guest:So we just got those tapes and used the close-up of my intestines getting taken out.

00:27:32Guest:And everyone's seen this on MTV?

00:27:34Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:27:35Marc:I got to watch it now.

00:27:36Marc:I think I can handle it.

00:27:37Marc:I don't know.

00:27:38Guest:It's a really crazy show.

00:27:39Guest:I mean, it actually was a very positive show, and it's gotten a lot of great feedback from people who've had cancer, and a lot of people actually diagnosed their cancer because of the show, and I get people come up to me all the time now.

00:27:56Guest:everywhere I go and say, you know, I went and saw that show.

00:27:59Guest:I went to the doctor.

00:28:00Guest:It's weird having been so public about it because on one hand, it feels good because, you know, everywhere I go when I'm on tour, there's always inevitably one kid every weekend will come up to me and go, hey, man, you know, I have testicular cancer.

00:28:12Guest:I had it and we talk about it and it's sort of an emotional thing.

00:28:15Guest:Wow.

00:28:15Guest:But then the other hand, every time I go anywhere, someone else will probably yell out of a cab or say, hey, how's your nut, Tom?

00:28:23Guest:You know, how's your ball doing, buddy?

00:28:25Guest:You know, which happens...

00:28:26Guest:So frequently that you wouldn't even believe.

00:28:29Guest:And people think they're being funny.

00:28:31Guest:They think I'm going to be like, ha, ha, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:33Guest:Thanks a lot for bringing it.

00:28:34Guest:That's funny.

00:28:34Guest:Because I made a joke about it myself.

00:28:36Guest:Right.

00:28:36Guest:But I don't think people always realize that part of the reason I think we make jokes sometimes about things that are scary is because we're sort of using it as a self-defense mechanism, a self-cathartic mechanism.

00:28:48Guest:Sure.

00:28:48Marc:Well, not to fall into a pit of darkness and fear.

00:28:51Guest:Yeah.

00:28:51Marc:Worse than everything.

00:28:52Marc:I mean, I can't imagine that the diagnosis.

00:28:54Marc:I mean, that moment where you hear cancer, it's got to be like, fuck.

00:28:57Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's scary and crazy and and sort of surreal.

00:29:03Guest:And it changes you forever.

00:29:06Guest:You know, sort of realize that.

00:29:07Guest:We could potentially be dead at any moment.

00:29:11Guest:And on one hand, you're like, okay, this is great.

00:29:13Guest:Let's live life for the moment.

00:29:15Guest:Let's be positive.

00:29:16Guest:Let's enjoy every moment because life is short.

00:29:18Guest:And on the other hand, you're sort of grateful.

00:29:21Guest:You're grateful, but then you're also in a panic now.

00:29:23Guest:I'm in a panic now.

00:29:24Guest:That's why I'm smoking these electric cigarettes.

00:29:26Guest:You feel that sort of very real possibility that something could go wrong with your body, which you don't normally think about when you're 28.

00:29:36Marc:It's going to.

00:29:37Guest:It's definitely going to happen, but I always assumed it would be, okay, I'll live to be 80 with my grandparents.

00:29:42Guest:I got a long time to screw around until then.

00:29:45Marc:Now, do you have to go get screened every year, or what do you do?

00:29:48Guest:Not anymore, because it's been about 12 years, so I'm completely free, cancer-free, and there's no issue or no chance of it returning, basically.

00:29:57Marc:And they put a prosthetic ball in there?

00:30:00Guest:I, uh, that's elective and I chose not to.

00:30:03Guest:So you're just one bald.

00:30:04Guest:I'm not, yeah.

00:30:05Guest:That's all right.

00:30:06Guest:You know, they go in through the, um, they go in from above.

00:30:10Marc:Yeah.

00:30:10Guest:They don't, they don't, uh, like hack apart your scrotum or anything like that.

00:30:13Guest:I don't have like a stitched up scrotum.

00:30:15Guest:Disfigured scrotum.

00:30:16Guest:Yeah, they don't cut that part.

00:30:18Guest:The sack is completely intact.

00:30:20Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:30:20Guest:They go in from above and they kind of reach in and they, I say, this is what I say, they shuck it out like an oyster is what they do.

00:30:26Guest:But, um...

00:30:27Guest:So, you know, it's really kind of somewhat... Did you look at the prosthetic balls, though?

00:30:32Marc:Did they bring them in and say, like, you know, different sizes?

00:30:35Guest:I looked at them.

00:30:36Guest:My doctor said, you know what?

00:30:38Guest:You know, some people elect to do this, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's important.

00:30:42Guest:I'm glad I didn't do it.

00:30:43Guest:I've talked to a lot of young people now who've gotten them and who don't like it.

00:30:47Guest:Why?

00:30:47Marc:Because it just feels weird?

00:30:48Guest:They just find themselves...

00:30:49Guest:like rubbing it all the time.

00:30:50Guest:I can't imagine having a piece of plastic in there because you'd be squeezing it all the time, but then you'd be probably squeezing like the scrotal skin would be probably getting all bruised up.

00:30:59Marc:You'd be squeezing it because you can?

00:31:00Guest:Yeah, right?

00:31:01Guest:You'd be like pumping away on it.

00:31:03Guest:Look what I can do.

00:31:04Guest:Don't feel nothing.

00:31:05Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:31:06Guest:So I don't... I'm glad I didn't get it.

00:31:09Marc:And after that special, I mean, how did the MTV thing end?

00:31:14Marc:Did they decide that you had...

00:31:16Marc:That was the end of it?

00:31:17Marc:No, no.

00:31:18Marc:Were they happy with that show?

00:31:19Guest:They were happy with the show.

00:31:20Guest:The show didn't get canceled.

00:31:21Guest:The show was one of their most successful shows at the time.

00:31:27Guest:I had been doing the show for 10 years, including all the public access stuff.

00:31:34Guest:Um, and I just, uh, had some other opportunities to go make a couple films.

00:31:40Guest:Yeah.

00:31:40Guest:And, uh, I decided, you know, I was, I was physically drained from the, from this thing.

00:31:45Guest:And I just, uh, said, you know, I think I'm going to, going to go another direction.

00:31:48Guest:And I went and made, you know, road trip and Freddie got fingered.

00:31:52Guest:Is that when he met drew?

00:31:53Guest:Uh, I met her when, uh, she, um, she contacted me, uh, cause she wanted me to be in Charlie's Angels.

00:32:04Guest:Right.

00:32:04Marc:So, so that was after the ball cancer.

00:32:07Guest:That was, um, it's funny.

00:32:10Guest:I, uh, don't, I rarely talk about this, this element of my life because it's like one of those things where it's like,

00:32:16Guest:Yeah, you know, first of all, it's a weird, but I want to talk about it with you because I think this is a fun, a good forum for this.

00:32:25Guest:Yeah.

00:32:26Guest:Where I can just sort of talk about it.

00:32:27Guest:Yeah.

00:32:30Guest:You know, it was it was it was right when I got cancer was exactly the exact same time that we started dating.

00:32:37Guest:Right.

00:32:38Guest:And so I was doing the movie Charlie's Angels.

00:32:40Guest:We started dating.

00:32:41Guest:I had a swollen ball.

00:32:44Guest:You know, I was, you know, kind of living in a new country.

00:32:48Guest:Yeah.

00:32:49Guest:New life.

00:32:49Guest:Things were surreal at the time, you know.

00:32:51Marc:Everything was good except for the ball.

00:32:53Guest:Except for the ball, yeah.

00:32:54Marc:The ball was a problem.

00:32:56Guest:Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

00:32:57Marc:And so you just started dating her and it was great?

00:33:01Guest:It was.

00:33:02Guest:We lived together for about two years and dated for two and a half years, and it was great for a good chunk of that.

00:33:13Guest:But then it wasn't great, and then we broke up.

00:33:15Marc:But she was with you throughout the cancer and stuck with you through that.

00:33:19Guest:Yeah.

00:33:20Marc:That's good.

00:33:20Marc:Yeah.

00:33:21Marc:She seems like a pretty nice person in general.

00:33:23Guest:Nice enough to marry for five months at least, you know?

00:33:27Yeah.

00:33:29Marc:I've been married twice, man.

00:33:31Marc:They were both three and a half years.

00:33:33Guest:I think the thing is you've got to imagine what would it be like for you.

00:33:39Guest:What's your first wife's name?

00:33:41Guest:Kim.

00:33:42Guest:Yeah.

00:33:43Guest:What would it be like for you if every time you left up your house, every day, for the rest of your life,

00:33:51Guest:Between five and ten people, between the time you left your house and got back home, came up to you and said, hey, how's Kim?

00:33:58Guest:You talked to Kim lately?

00:33:59Guest:Oh, yeah, I remember you were with Kim.

00:34:01Guest:Weren't you married to that Kim?

00:34:04Yeah.

00:34:05Guest:Welcome to my life.

00:34:08Guest:So I'm guilty of it.

00:34:10Guest:A constant thing.

00:34:11Guest:Yeah, and that's expected because I'm here and we're talking about my life and stuff, and I understand that.

00:34:15Guest:But when you're pumping gas or eating a sandwich at Subway or something, and the people like to loudly talk about it in front.

00:34:28Guest:Hey, man, you're that Barrymore, huh?

00:34:31Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:34:31Marc:yeah yeah yeah yeah well i i i'm sort of fascinated about you know how things fucking go shitty yeah you know and like i don't always know like i know what happened my first marriage the second marriage sort of got away from me yeah you know now i'm with somebody now so like it's just a different perspective and and everybody so i think with celebrities and and someone like her who everyone's had some sort of relationship with in this country since she was like nine yeah exactly yeah

00:35:00Marc:You know, it's sort of like, well, what the fuck happened?

00:35:03Marc:Whose fault was it?

00:35:04Guest:And it's the oddest thing because, you know, as somebody that has always put my personal life out there with my parents on the show and making fun of myself and doing all the things I've done, you know, I've always, you know, the tendency is to want to just rant about it.

00:35:19Guest:Right.

00:35:20Guest:Sure.

00:35:20Guest:But it's just it's just so not.

00:35:24Guest:Really a viable option to go around ranting about why it went wrong.

00:35:27Guest:First of all, I'm sure she has a completely different opinion about why it went wrong.

00:35:30Guest:You're different people now, too.

00:35:32Guest:Yeah.

00:35:32Guest:And so, you know, we don't really have any sort of relationship anymore.

00:35:36Guest:I haven't talked to her in probably seven or eight years.

00:35:39Guest:Is that wild?

00:35:40Marc:We don't have kids.

00:35:42Guest:We were living together.

00:35:43Guest:We're married.

00:35:47Guest:When she left the house that day, when we decided to get a divorce, I have never seen her since.

00:35:54Guest:That was over 10 years ago.

00:35:57Guest:But still, her name gets brought up every day.

00:36:00Guest:So it's an odd thing.

00:36:01Guest:And you want to go, oh, this is what went wrong, and this has happened, and she did this, and she did that, blah, blah, blah.

00:36:06Guest:And then you just sound like some jerk walking around.

00:36:09Marc:That's a choice, isn't it?

00:36:10Guest:Complaining about, you know, America's sweetheart.

00:36:14Guest:And so it's just kind of like, you know what?

00:36:15Guest:I just choose to say nothing until now where I've gone off on a rant with an electric cigarette.

00:36:21Marc:But it wasn't really a rant.

00:36:22Marc:The weird thing about because I noticed this about my second wife as well is that.

00:36:25Marc:As angry as I was, there's things that happened there and personal things about her that as much as I fucking hated her for the time I did, I will not share that stuff.

00:36:37Marc:And it's got nothing to do with me.

00:36:38Marc:It's actually out of respect for them.

00:36:41Marc:That even when your heart is broken, there's some sort of weird like, well, that's really low and I'm not going to bring that up.

00:36:46Marc:I mean, fuck her, but I'm not going to do that.

00:36:50Guest:Exactly.

00:36:50Guest:And I've kind of I don't know if I want to say that I've matured, but I want to try to just move forward and be positive and not necessarily dwell on things that have happened in the past.

00:37:03Marc:And did the cancer do that to you, too?

00:37:05Marc:I mean, was there after you sort of came through that tunnel where you're like, you know, I've got to fucking, you know, not be dragged into the darkness at bullshit.

00:37:13Guest:Yeah, it did.

00:37:14Guest:It did.

00:37:15Guest:I mean, the thing that happened with the cancer, which I think is something that I'm really only kind of figuring out now, and I'm still kind of coming to grips with it, is that it was just a physically very demanding thing.

00:37:32Guest:It took a major toll on my body, on my body.

00:37:36Guest:a physical uh energy level yeah and so i went from being this sort of really hyper person to being sort of a more of a a calm uh i have a bit of a uh you know a lack of energy i remember the first time i went snowboarding again after i got sick and uh i used to be really into snowboarding and skateboarding and you know we'd

00:38:00Guest:go snowboard all day.

00:38:01Guest:And I went snowboarding.

00:38:02Guest:I couldn't even get to the bottom of the hill without having to sit down, take a breath.

00:38:06Guest:And it took quite a while for me to kind of realize that I was kind of going through some stuff that wasn't really anything about beating the cancer.

00:38:16Guest:It was just I have to kind of find a way to kind of get my body healthy again.

00:38:19Guest:So in the last couple of...

00:38:22Guest:Really only in the last year or so, I've really kind of figured I have to get out there and do exercise and not look after my health a bit more.

00:38:32Marc:Well, that's good, man.

00:38:33Marc:I mean, it's weird when you get to, I mean, you're younger than me by like eight years.

00:38:37Marc:What are you, 41, 42, something like that?

00:38:40Marc:41, yeah.

00:38:40Marc:Yeah, I mean, you start to realize like, wow, I'm halfway done.

00:38:43Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:38:45Marc:How do I maintain this?

00:38:47Marc:Yeah.

00:38:47Marc:But when did you get to do the Letterman Show?

00:38:51Marc:When was that guest hosting gig?

00:38:52Guest:Uh, that was later.

00:38:53Guest:That was, that was pretty cool.

00:38:55Guest:That was, uh, that was like, uh, six or seven, seven years ago, maybe.

00:39:00Marc:And what was the setup for that?

00:39:01Marc:I mean, did you, was that something you aspired to?

00:39:03Marc:Did you feel like you were in the running that there was a, you know, that you could do a traditional show?

00:39:08Guest:I always have loved interviewing people, and that's why I really wanted to come on your show.

00:39:17Guest:Well, I hope I'm doing it.

00:39:18Guest:I really love your show, and I love listening to your show.

00:39:22Guest:Well, thanks, man.

00:39:23Guest:And this has been awesome and pleasant so far.

00:39:27Guest:You're making me feel good and comfortable, which I think is important because I think a lot of people don't do that.

00:39:34Marc:That wasn't really your angle, was it, originally?

00:39:36Guest:Yeah.

00:39:36Guest:Not originally, but then when I did my web show, I figured that out.

00:39:40Guest:Yeah.

00:39:40Guest:And I like to interview comedians.

00:39:44Guest:I like to let people be funny and set them up for a laugh and all that.

00:39:48Guest:That is a new you, Tom.

00:39:49Guest:Yeah.

00:39:50Marc:Yeah.

00:39:52Marc:You're going to surrender the stage a little bit.

00:39:54Guest:Yeah, well, and I think that's part of the reason why I want to start doing stand up, because after doing the web show for five years, I kind of started getting a little antsy of being the straight man.

00:40:01Guest:I want to go out and go wild and be wacky again.

00:40:03Guest:And that's that's my stand up is a lot more physical and loud and energetic.

00:40:07Guest:And I'm being, you know, provocative and talking, talking more.

00:40:12Guest:You're getting that out now.

00:40:13Guest:Yeah.

00:40:14Guest:In that venue.

00:40:14Guest:Yeah, and not just asking questions and setting people up for the laughs and stuff, which I love doing too.

00:40:20Guest:So the Letterman, they called me out of nowhere is what happened.

00:40:24Guest:I wasn't lobbying.

00:40:25Marc:I was actually... Was that the contractual time where he was balking or was that the open heart surgery time?

00:40:33Guest:This was an odd one-off time where he just... I'm not sure why he wasn't doing the show that day.

00:40:42Guest:Right.

00:40:42Guest:He wasn't sick because he was actually, it was done on the Friday, the day they do the two shows.

00:40:48Guest:Yeah.

00:40:48Guest:And he had done the one show and then I came in and did the second show.

00:40:52Guest:That's bizarre.

00:40:52Guest:But they called me the day before.

00:40:54Guest:Yeah.

00:40:55Guest:And said, you know, can you be in New York tomorrow?

00:40:58Guest:I was in LA.

00:40:58Guest:And they said, can you be in New York tomorrow?

00:41:00Guest:It was actually my, Howard Lapidus called him.

00:41:03Guest:He said, hey, are you sitting down?

00:41:04Guest:Yeah.

00:41:05Guest:Why?

00:41:05Guest:He said, oh, you're hosting Letterman tomorrow.

00:41:07Guest:What?

00:41:08Guest:It was a whirlwind from there.

00:41:10Guest:And I had to write my monologue.

00:41:13Guest:They said, you've got to write your monologue.

00:41:15Guest:So I just started coming up with jokes.

00:41:17Guest:Some friends of mine who are comedy writers.

00:41:20Guest:Who are those guys?

00:41:21Guest:My friend Gabe Abelson.

00:41:22Guest:I know Gabe yeah well he writes for Letterman yeah he had written for Letterman for years and he was writing on my show and we immediately started thinking of some some stuff and it was it was probably the most surreal 24 hours of my life because you know you know

00:41:40Guest:It's a dream.

00:41:40Guest:It was like a dream.

00:41:42Guest:It was definitely even more bizarre than being a guest on the show for the first time.

00:41:48Guest:Yeah.

00:41:48Guest:They play the music.

00:41:49Marc:You got to sit in the driver's seat.

00:41:51Guest:Paul Schaefer was there playing the theme song.

00:41:54Guest:They announced your name in the Ed Sullivan Theater.

00:41:56Guest:I'm walking out.

00:41:57Guest:Yeah.

00:41:58Guest:It was just very, very odd.

00:42:00Guest:And me, I get very nervous always before I go on stage or do anything.

00:42:06Guest:So this was compounded by about 100%.

00:42:08Guest:Yeah.

00:42:09Guest:So 100 times.

00:42:09Guest:And how'd you do?

00:42:11Guest:I think it went good.

00:42:12Guest:I had a good time.

00:42:13Guest:Dave, actually, I didn't...

00:42:17Guest:Talked to him there backstage.

00:42:18Guest:I got to talk to Paul a bit backstage, but he wrote me a nice letter and said, you know, thought I did a great job.

00:42:25Guest:Thank you.

00:42:26Guest:You did a great job.

00:42:26Guest:It was a little typed-up letter, and it was a really, really cool thing to have.

00:42:30Guest:Who were the guests?

00:42:32Guest:The guests were Scott Stevens from the New Jersey Devils, a hockey player, and Jolene Blaylock from Star Trek Babylon 5, Deep Space Nine, one of those shows.

00:42:45Guest:Uh-huh.

00:42:46Guest:The hockey guest was good because the New Jersey Devils had just beaten the Ottawa Senators in the playoffs, and that's my team.

00:42:54Guest:That's my home team.

00:42:55Guest:So I had a bit.

00:42:57Guest:We came up with a bit to do, which was pretty fun.

00:43:00Guest:I wanted to move around the show a bit, so I pulled out a hockey jersey.

00:43:06Guest:I set it up with Scott Stevens before, but I pulled out a hockey jersey from the Ottawa Senators.

00:43:11Guest:I pulled out a Devils jersey, gave it to him.

00:43:13Guest:He's known to be an enforcer, one of the physical, violent players.

00:43:19Guest:He'll take you down.

00:43:21Guest:And I said, I'm from Ottawa and I'm a little upset about this and I'm Canadian.

00:43:25Guest:I want to show you how Canadians play hockey.

00:43:27Guest:And I pull out a stick and I hand him a stick and I walk over to the center of the performance area and throw the puck on the ground and start stick handling around it.

00:43:36Guest:And then he

00:43:36Guest:You know, the bit is then he basically body checks me and slams me all the way across the room and into Paul's organ.

00:43:42Guest:So, yeah.

00:43:44Guest:So it was cool.

00:43:45Guest:Did you play hockey?

00:43:46Guest:I did.

00:43:46Guest:I grew up playing hockey.

00:43:47Guest:Yeah.

00:43:48Guest:So it was, you know, you have to play hockey in Canada.

00:43:51Guest:That's the thing about every kid pretty much plays hockey.

00:43:54Guest:I started playing hockey, ice hockey when I was four years old.

00:43:57Guest:And you can't, and you're playing on, it doesn't really work when you're four years old, but they strap the skates on you anyway.

00:44:04Guest:You're just waddling around the ice.

00:44:07Guest:A kid gets the puck, shoots it, it goes to the other end, and then they all waddle back the other way like a bunch of penguins chasing this thing around.

00:44:15Guest:Hockey is weird because then you get good at it when you're around 10 years old.

00:44:19Guest:You start to get good at it.

00:44:21Guest:They train you to skate.

00:44:23Guest:They train you to stick handle.

00:44:24Guest:And you got to get good at shooting.

00:44:26Guest:And you learn all these skills.

00:44:27Marc:Who's the they?

00:44:28Marc:There's a national organization.

00:44:31Guest:Your dad, your teachers, your coaches.

00:44:32Guest:It's all about hockey.

00:44:33Guest:It's all about hockey.

00:44:35Guest:Uh, you know, if, if you wanted to go to the outdoor rink at the end of every, everybody has an outdoor rink in their neighborhood.

00:44:41Guest:Right.

00:44:41Guest:And if you want to go and stay up till one o'clock in the morning, they leave the lights on, you know, on a school night, as long as you're practicing hockey, you can stay up.

00:44:49Guest:So we might need that kid.

00:44:51Guest:Yeah.

00:44:52Guest:Your dad, every, every kid's father secretly hopes you're going to be the next Daryl Sittler.

00:44:56Guest:Yeah.

00:44:57Guest:Yeah.

00:44:57Guest:My dad would freeze the backyard.

00:45:01Guest:Oh, really?

00:45:03Guest:Just so you could skate around in circles?

00:45:04Guest:Yeah, you flatten all the snow down in the backyard, then you spray water on it, and then it turns into a rink, and you spray water on it every day so you can go out in the backyard and take slap shots against the fence, right?

00:45:14Guest:Wow.

00:45:14Guest:It's a Daryl Sittler would stay out till four o'clock in the morning practicing a slap shot.

00:45:19Guest:You can stay out there.

00:45:20Guest:And so basically you couldn't go to bed or you can go out and stand in minus 40 degrees and shoot a rubber puck against the, uh, what did you do?

00:45:29Marc:Did you, uh, did you, uh,

00:45:31Guest:I was into it, but then when you get to be about 13 or 14 years old, you sort of don't want to do it as much anymore, but you're caught up in sort of the peer pressure of it all.

00:45:42Guest:And then when you're 15, the whole game changes and it becomes about physical contact.

00:45:47Guest:Before that, physical contact is not part of the game.

00:45:50Guest:It's about stick handling and shooting.

00:45:52Guest:Building your skills.

00:45:53Guest:No body checking allowed.

00:45:54Guest:Right.

00:45:54Guest:Then all of a sudden you hit puberty and the biggest kid basically slams you into the boards.

00:46:01Guest:I got my arm busted the first year of physical contact and never played again.

00:46:05Marc:Was that in a school game or just in a community league?

00:46:08Marc:In a community league, yeah.

00:46:09Guest:Oh, my God.

00:46:10Marc:I was never a sports kid.

00:46:12Marc:Were you a wrestling fan?

00:46:13Guest:um not really no no i i i always no i never really got caught up in wrestling i got i got into skateboarding and uh i'm just thinking about the way you perform and was uh was kaufman an impression on you dandy kaufman shit oh well you know kaufman yeah you know i really kind of uh discovered him later yeah um and uh

00:46:36Guest:I think I might have been just a little bit too young when he was hitting his peak there.

00:46:44Guest:I didn't really know about him until after my show went on MTV, actually.

00:46:50Guest:They start comparing you?

00:46:53Guest:Well, there were little things we did, like I drove the audience home once on my show in Canada, and then everyone said, oh, Andy Kaufman did that.

00:46:59Guest:I said, oh, really?

00:47:00Guest:And then the Man on the Moon movie came out, and I got cancer at the same time as that movie was coming out, and it was all very strange.

00:47:06Guest:So I became a huge fan of his after the fact.

00:47:10Marc:Did you think it was beyond coincidence that Kaufman is mystically taking revenge on you from the grave with the movie?

00:47:19Guest:You know, I...

00:47:21Guest:The thought crossed my mind.

00:47:25Guest:I did think about, you know, you do think about things like that when you get sick.

00:47:28Guest:You know, you think about, you know, like I had a very strong connection with Andy Kaufman at that point because you're very emotional, you're scared, and then this movie's out, and I would go watch that movie, and you're weeping in the movie, you know, watching.

00:47:44Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:45Marc:In that moment though, were you brought up with the God thing?

00:47:50Marc:When you're facing cancer, did you have anywhere to go with the fear or were you more practical about it?

00:47:58Guest:I actually remember, not remember, I, yeah, I remember sitting in the shower in my house that I was renting from William Shatner, who was my landlord.

00:48:13Guest:Still?

00:48:13Guest:No, but at the time, who I'd been living in LA for a year.

00:48:17Guest:I'm dating Drew Barrymore.

00:48:20Guest:Shatner was your actual- William Shatner's my landlord.

00:48:22Guest:A hands-on landlord, not a management company like you had- No, he was a hands-on landlord.

00:48:26Guest:He'd come pick up the check.

00:48:27Yeah.

00:48:28Guest:Captain Kirk would come pick up the check occasionally.

00:48:31Guest:He was a nice guy.

00:48:32Guest:He was a really cool guy.

00:48:33Guest:And a Canadian.

00:48:34Guest:Super cool, super nice.

00:48:35Guest:He's Canadian, right?

00:48:36Guest:Yeah.

00:48:37Marc:Is that how you got the house?

00:48:38Marc:I mean, did you know you were renting from William Shatner?

00:48:40Marc:How do you get William Shatner's house?

00:48:42Guest:It just...

00:48:43Guest:Got lucky, man.

00:48:44Guest:He had a house, one of his properties that he owns, and it was for rent.

00:48:49Guest:And I went there, and while they're showing you their house, they're like, by the way, your landlord's William Shatner.

00:48:54Guest:Really?

00:48:55Guest:I'm in.

00:48:56Guest:Yeah, absolutely.

00:48:57Guest:It was very surreal.

00:48:58Guest:There was so much surreal stuff happening.

00:49:00Guest:And I remember, but I was sitting in the shower, sitting down in the shower, just kind of scared.

00:49:06Guest:Yeah.

00:49:06Guest:Really assuming death was imminent.

00:49:10Guest:Right.

00:49:11Guest:I mean, I figured if I'm so unlucky that I'm going to get testicular cancer now while all this great stuff is happening, then I'm going to be, you know, one of the ones that dies from it too.

00:49:20Guest:Right, right.

00:49:21Guest:And literally just panic stricken.

00:49:24Guest:And I remember praying to God.

00:49:26Guest:Yeah.

00:49:27Guest:Yeah.

00:49:27Guest:For real.

00:49:27Guest:Yeah.

00:49:28Guest:You know, like he was listening to me and he was actually, you know, going to possibly do something about it.

00:49:33Guest:And you're at that point where, you know, I went to church Sunday school when I was a kid till I was about six or seven.

00:49:40Guest:Catholic?

00:49:41Guest:Protestant.

00:49:42Guest:And then we stopped and we weren't really super religious, but weren't religious.

00:49:48Guest:Yeah.

00:49:49Guest:But...

00:49:49Guest:There was a certain amount when you're a kid where they want you to learn about it from a historic perspective.

00:49:57Guest:Right, right.

00:49:59Guest:But then all of a sudden it just goes like, okay, well, if there is a chance that this is real, I'm not going to take any chances here.

00:50:09Guest:I'm going to pray to this person.

00:50:11Guest:God right now.

00:50:12Guest:Getting his good graces now.

00:50:13Guest:And I did that quite a bit.

00:50:14Guest:And I'm alive, so.

00:50:16Guest:Who knows?

00:50:17Guest:I've thought about that quite a bit.

00:50:19Guest:And I'm not somebody that goes around and says I don't believe in God.

00:50:23Guest:I'm not somebody that sort of reads the Bible every day either.

00:50:25Guest:But I know there's enough things that have surprised me in my life.

00:50:30Guest:enough things that have happened where i'm just like oh wow that's that the world is completely different than i had perceived it at one point not that long ago so and there are so many things that are uh unknown yeah that i i can't really sort of sit around and say oh there's no god right i don't do that you just keep quiet and yeah pretty much don't don't engage with that shit pretty much just don't talk about it that much yeah so so i'm trying to like who are your your pals you still got showbiz pals

00:50:58Guest:Yeah, I guess so.

00:50:59Guest:I've met a lot of people doing my web show.

00:51:02Guest:I mean, it's a great way to make friends.

00:51:04Marc:Wasn't Andy Dick on there a lot?

00:51:05Guest:Andy Dick came on a lot.

00:51:08Guest:I'm friends with Andrew Dice Clay, I've become good friends with.

00:51:11Guest:He's a good guy.

00:51:12Marc:Seth Green?

00:51:12Marc:Was Seth Green one of your guys?

00:51:14Guest:No, he didn't do the show, but I've met him a few times, so he's not somebody I hang with, but I actually hang out with Dice and...

00:51:22Guest:I've got a lot of friends that are not in show business, too.

00:51:26Marc:Dice is an interesting guy.

00:51:27Guest:Harland Williams is one of my good buddies.

00:51:29Guest:He's a good guy.

00:51:30Marc:I was in Ireland with Harland.

00:51:31Marc:Yeah.

00:51:32Marc:Yeah.

00:51:33Marc:He's a trooper.

00:51:34Guest:Yeah.

00:51:35Guest:Steve-O.

00:51:36Guest:Hang with Steve-O a little bit for Jackass.

00:51:38Marc:That makes sense.

00:51:38Guest:we're doing some shows together in vegas a double bill in vegas oh really we're doing three uh three weekends over the course of uh three months in the new year so january february march we're doing he's a sober guy now yeah yeah it's cool we go he's a good influence on me why are you a boozer i have been known to have a drink yeah and i'm trying it's one of these things i'm trying to cut back on yeah

00:52:01Guest:Had too many of these sort of situations in the last few years where I go, I wake up the next day and I say, you know what, that was just, I was out of control there.

00:52:10Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:52:10Guest:And I've always, you know, being Canadian, you grow up.

00:52:12Marc:What would be an example of Tom Green being out of control?

00:52:17Marc:I mean, how do you judge that?

00:52:19Guest:well when you're not in control of you're out of controlness yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly that one got away from me yeah yeah exactly you know the show was always i was never i never drank when i did the show right i don't drink when i when i do stand up i don't drink on stage i don't drink before i go on stage but i drink after i get off the stage sure

00:52:44Guest:And because all the stuff I did on the show was, like you said, it was controlled out of controlness, really.

00:52:51Guest:We were trying to make it look out of control.

00:52:54Guest:But it really was pretty structured and thought through, believe it or not.

00:52:58Guest:But, you know, well...

00:53:02Guest:I've talked about this before, but... Sorry.

00:53:05Guest:When I went and did The Apprentice with Donald Trump, the Celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump, Celebrity Apprentice, I got fired on the third episode because I went out boozing with Dennis Rodman the night I was the project manager.

00:53:19Guest:Right.

00:53:19Guest:And I...

00:53:20Guest:It just turned into such a wild night, Rodman and I, out at strip clubs and just going nuts.

00:53:30Guest:I was the project manager.

00:53:31Guest:I had to sell wedding dresses the next day.

00:53:33Guest:I was competing against Joan Rivers for the ladies team.

00:53:36Guest:I should have taken it more seriously.

00:53:38Guest:Obviously.

00:53:39Guest:But I'd been on this show for three weeks, and everybody on the...

00:53:44Guest:The guys team had sort of created an alliance against me, Andrew Dice Clay, and Dennis Rodman.

00:53:53Guest:So I had Clint Black, Brian McKnight, Jesse James, Herschel Walker, and Scott Hamilton.

00:54:00Guest:all kind of teaming up against us.

00:54:03Guest:And they were being... Everyone was really being quite... Really a bunch of jerks, basically, to each other.

00:54:09Guest:Everyone was just being real jerks to each other.

00:54:11Guest:And I'd gone on the show because I liked the show.

00:54:13Guest:I thought it was a hilarious show.

00:54:14Guest:I like watching Trump, and I think it's funny, and I thought I could...

00:54:18Guest:win the thing.

00:54:19Guest:And all of a sudden, you know, you're in this fake world, in a fake boardroom, and you got Scott Hamilton screaming at you because he thinks it's real, right?

00:54:30Guest:And he's screaming at you because, you know, you didn't put enough sugar in the cupcake batter in some challenge you're doing.

00:54:36Guest:You've been there for 16 hours, asked to make cupcakes.

00:54:39Guest:And everyone's mad at each other because you're not following the instructions properly.

00:54:44Guest:And this is like an Olympic gold medalist.

00:54:47Guest:Herschel Walker wanted to kick my ass.

00:54:49Guest:Literally, physically was intimidating me.

00:54:52Guest:He came at me at one point.

00:54:55Guest:And after three weeks of that, because it takes about a week to shoot each episode...

00:55:00Guest:I just didn't really want to be there that much anymore.

00:55:02Guest:And Rodman was so much fun.

00:55:05Guest:And he said to me on camera, hey, you want to go and get a drink?

00:55:09Guest:And I saw the camera sort of as we were walking out in that last shot.

00:55:12Guest:And I'm editing it in my head.

00:55:14Guest:You knew what was going on.

00:55:15Guest:Oh, they're going to use that.

00:55:16Guest:Yeah, let's go get a drink.

00:55:18Guest:And I think I kept the show going after they stopped taping.

00:55:21Guest:We just went too far.

00:55:22Guest:But I got fired because of it.

00:55:23Guest:And I sort of woke up after that and said, you know, there's an example of how I sort of, you know, sometimes as a sort of a, I don't know, sometimes I think I've failed at things on purpose.

00:55:38Guest:Like, I'm not saying that this is exactly a metaphor for my movie, Freddy Got Fingered, because people really love the movie now.

00:55:46Guest:But at the time, we were thinking, okay, we've got to make this more disgusting than anything we've ever seen.

00:55:53Guest:We've got to make it more...

00:55:54Guest:outrageous, we've got to push it so far that we're going to get in trouble, that the studio's going to get mad, then we're going to go fight with the studio to convince them more blood, more jizz, more, you know, we want to piss off everybody who's watching the movie.

00:56:08Guest:We don't want to make everybody laugh.

00:56:09Guest:We want to make at least half the people hate the movie.

00:56:12Guest:That was funny to us.

00:56:14Guest:And I think also like on the Byron Allen show, when I go on and I was going ape shit, at the time I think what it was is, okay, I think a lot of

00:56:25Guest:Young people do that, actually.

00:56:26Guest:Young people listening out there.

00:56:29Guest:If you're listening to me, when you're young, I think sometimes there's this sort of insecurity of, I don't really know what I'm doing, so I'm going to just...

00:56:42Marc:do it wrong but i'm going to do it so wrong that it becomes right because i don't know how to actually just go do it right but you're also defying people yeah yeah like there's that idea where you know if you can cause as much shit yeah you've accomplished something yeah i didn't want to go make there's a guy crying and someone's yelling at me i did something yeah exactly exactly

00:57:02Guest:And, and, and, and that, that was what you tried to do.

00:57:05Guest:And, uh, and I think doing standup as, you know, and focusing on that has really kind of, and being older and having thought about this stuff for a few years has really made me realize, you don't want to get up on stage in a comedy club and have half the people laughing really hard and the other half of the people walking out and discussed.

00:57:21Guest:I mean, I, I like to have everybody or at least, you know, 99% of the people really enjoying themselves.

00:57:26Guest:so much more of a fulfilling thing.

00:57:28Guest:So, you know, I haven't done as much of that polarizing stuff.

00:57:34Guest:I'm more trying to talk about, I mean, I still talk about controversial things, but I'm trying to do it in a way where people, you know, understand and get what you're trying to say.

00:57:46Marc:So this is the immaturity.

00:57:48Marc:This is your version of maturity.

00:57:49Marc:It's like I'm not going to see how much I can gross out or upset or aggravate people.

00:57:56Guest:Yeah.

00:57:57Guest:Yeah.

00:57:57Guest:And the other thing is, is once you've done that a few times, it becomes like you want.

00:58:02Guest:I always like to try something new, too.

00:58:04Guest:You know, it's sort of like when I started the show on public access 15 years ago or whatever.

00:58:10Guest:Yeah.

00:58:10Guest:The first bit I did was going around in the street.

00:58:13Guest:I like doing man on the street bits with a handheld mic.

00:58:15Guest:I tape meat to my head and I go interview people deadpan as if there was nothing wrong.

00:58:19Guest:Right.

00:58:19Guest:And that was outrageous.

00:58:20Guest:Yeah.

00:58:20Guest:We did a lot of stuff like that.

00:58:21Guest:Then we went through a phase where we would do stuff with roadkill, and that was crazy.

00:58:26Guest:Then we did some pranks.

00:58:28Guest:We went through a pranking phase.

00:58:29Guest:And each phase would get sort of boring after you'd done the bit 10 times.

00:58:35Guest:I don't really want to make another gross-out movie.

00:58:38Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:58:40Guest:People have asked, you know, I thought about making a Freddy Got Fisted, though.

00:58:43Guest:It's been requested by people to make a sequel.

00:58:47Guest:Freddy Got Fisted.

00:58:48Marc:Now, are these people that have been fans since they were 14 are now in their late 20s, you know, still coming up to you?

00:58:56Guest:A lot of that, yeah.

00:58:56Marc:Do you find that they're evolving at all?

00:58:59Marc:Is there something about your audience when you see somebody who got on board in their teen years because of how over the top you were, do you find they come up to you as grownups and they're still that guy?

00:59:11Marc:Or is there people that have matured along with you?

00:59:14Guest:Yeah, it's a bit of both.

00:59:20Guest:I have people coming to my show who...

00:59:23Guest:Sometimes people get dragged to the show by somebody that is a big fan and then they come up to me after and they say, oh, I wasn't expecting to really like it so much.

00:59:33Guest:And I'm like, oh, yeah, you people have low expectations.

00:59:36Guest:Thank you.

00:59:37Guest:Thank you for that.

00:59:39Guest:But then the people that were expecting it to be sort of some gross-out thing are still – I'm still being loud and high-energy.

00:59:49Marc:But some people do come up and say, like, we thought you were going to – I haven't had that so much.

00:59:54Guest:No, because I think that it's still – I'm still sort of trying to maintain some element of outrageousness to my stand-up.

01:00:01Guest:But you want to be liked.

01:00:02Guest:Yeah.

01:00:03Guest:Yeah.

01:00:04Guest:This is a new thing for you.

01:00:05Guest:I think so.

01:00:05Guest:Do you think you always wanted to be liked when you were just sort of defying people to like you?

01:00:09Guest:I think so.

01:00:10Guest:Do you like me now?

01:00:11Guest:Yeah, I think so.

01:00:13Guest:I think it's always been something that you sort of grapple with when you do comedy because, you know, you have –

01:00:23Guest:From the very first day of doing the show, there was a thing called a viewer... It was pre-internet, right, when we started the show, pretty much.

01:00:30Guest:1994, right?

01:00:31Guest:It wasn't really internet, as we know now.

01:00:36Guest:And there was a viewer response line at the station, an answering machine.

01:00:41Guest:And the station would... People would call, and they would leave comments.

01:00:45Guest:Right.

01:00:46Guest:And then the station would print out the comments and leave them at the front desk for all the people working at the station to read.

01:00:51Guest:Yeah.

01:00:51Guest:And our show, from the very beginning, was 50% of people loved it and 50% of the people hated it.

01:00:57Guest:So from 1994, I've gotten used to reading these sort of criticisms of myself.

01:01:02Guest:Yeah.

01:01:03Guest:And you sort of start to go, okay, people like this, people hate this.

01:01:06Guest:Oh, but I like that they hate this.

01:01:07Guest:They were supposed to hate this.

01:01:08Guest:Right.

01:01:09Guest:And, you know, now it's sort of now the internet, it's just so much worse.

01:01:15Guest:Yeah.

01:01:15Guest:That you're on Twitter and you inevitably have somebody tweeting you every day going, oh, I thought you were dead.

01:01:22Guest:Why don't you just kill yourself?

01:01:24Guest:Oh, great.

01:01:25Guest:Thanks a lot.

01:01:25Guest:And then you have also people calling you a legend.

01:01:28Guest:Oh, well, geez, I'll kill myself.

01:01:30Guest:And they love the show.

01:01:32Guest:And do you engage with it?

01:01:33Guest:I block every negative comment on Twitter instantly.

01:01:37Marc:You block anybody who does a negative comment?

01:01:39Guest:Pretty much, yeah.

01:01:40Guest:That's my new non-engagement.

01:01:44Guest:Does it hurt your feelings?

01:01:46Guest:Not anymore, no.

01:01:47Guest:No, because it's become so normal to understand that sometimes when I sort of start to feel a little bad about it, I'll go on YouTube and I'll look up some Tom Hanks videos and I'll read the comments and somebody will be, ah, Tom Hanks is a goof loser.

01:02:03Guest:And I'm like, oh, I feel so much better.

01:02:04Guest:Yeah.

01:02:04Guest:You go read the biggest movie star in comedy history.

01:02:10Guest:You go read the comments under their thing.

01:02:12Guest:Oh, they're dissing Sandler and Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis, too.

01:02:17Marc:That's what those people do.

01:02:20Marc:They don't care who.

01:02:21Marc:That's what they do.

01:02:22Marc:They go onto a board and they shit.

01:02:24Guest:Yeah.

01:02:24Guest:The trolls are alive and well.

01:02:27Guest:And it was actually a fun thing on my web show because I purposely sort of gave them this forum.

01:02:34Guest:You baited them?

01:02:35Guest:Yeah.

01:02:35Guest:I got a phone line and said, call me.

01:02:38Guest:And essentially turned it into this place for trolls to call in and tell me to fuck off, basically, and tell my guests to fuck off.

01:02:47Guest:Yeah.

01:02:47Guest:You'd swear on this, right?

01:02:49Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:02:50Guest:But did you get a lot of calls?

01:02:52Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:02:53Guest:It was constant.

01:02:54Guest:People loved it.

01:02:55Guest:Yeah, it was sort of a thing where we had this online group called 4chan, which has essentially now gone on to become an online terrorist organization who's called in bomb threats on the San Diego football stadium.

01:03:08Guest:But back then, they were just telling me to fuck off.

01:03:10Marc:So you inspired something.

01:03:11Guest:Yeah.

01:03:11Guest:it was cool and i was to me i'd always when i was when i was young i'd like to call into uh phone in radio shows and do characters and freak out the host that was that was what what we did back then yeah yeah so i sort of uh i i i i understand trolls but i just i i find on on twitter and on the internet once you engage it just becomes something every time like you know you're

01:03:37Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:03:38Guest:Well, you fuck off.

01:03:39Guest:Well, you fuck off.

01:03:39Guest:And then all of a sudden it grows and grows and grows and it just becomes this sort of negative thing.

01:03:44Guest:So I just block them.

01:03:44Guest:And you can't win.

01:03:45Guest:Yeah, you can't win.

01:03:46Guest:Because even when you do win, you sort of lose because- Because you're engaging.

01:03:50Guest:You're engaging and it grows.

01:03:52Guest:Yeah.

01:03:52Marc:So now the stand-up, what do you got?

01:03:54Marc:You bring one person out with you?

01:03:55Marc:Are you doing a straight-up three-man show?

01:03:57Marc:Or how does it work usually?

01:03:58Marc:Yeah.

01:03:58Guest:I've done it a few different ways.

01:04:01Guest:Last year, sometimes I'll just go with a buddy, but usually I just go often by myself and pick up a local comic to open the show for me, which I like doing.

01:04:13Guest:And what do you do, an hour, hour and 15?

01:04:15Guest:Yeah, about that.

01:04:16Marc:Just depending on... And you got a regular show you do or you try to kind of keep a lot of room to fucking dick off or what?

01:04:23Guest:Yeah, I'm writing new stuff.

01:04:26Guest:I definitely sort of go in and out of material, but I do like to do a lot of improv with the crowd.

01:04:33Guest:I...

01:04:34Guest:I shot a special this year that's running on Showtime now.

01:04:38Guest:It's the first stand-up special I did.

01:04:39Guest:And the first two years of touring, I was sort of trying to write that and put that together.

01:04:44Guest:And so I was thinking of it in a more structured way those first couple of years because I was sort of getting ready for the first special.

01:04:50Guest:Right.

01:04:50Guest:I wanted it to... Had it come out.

01:04:53Guest:I think it turned out great.

01:04:55Guest:I mean, I'm happy with it.

01:04:56Guest:I've had some good response to it.

01:04:57Guest:So it was...

01:05:00Guest:Yeah, it was fun.

01:05:01Guest:I've had a lot of great response to it.

01:05:02Guest:I enjoyed doing it.

01:05:04Guest:Shot it at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston.

01:05:06Guest:That's great, yeah.

01:05:07Guest:Had a great time, and the crowd was great, and I was really happy with it.

01:05:10Guest:But it was also a relief to be done that special because now I'm sort of doing a lot more spontaneous stuff.

01:05:18Guest:I'm improvising more.

01:05:19Guest:I'm talking more just off the cuff about things that are kind of on my mind.

01:05:22Guest:And then, you know...

01:05:25Guest:I mean, I don't want to give away all the roadmap to what I'm doing to the listeners.

01:05:30Guest:Because you have bits that you just know are going to work.

01:05:36Guest:Yeah, it's being a professional.

01:05:37Guest:And I go into those and go out of those.

01:05:41Guest:But I don't really like people to know exactly that.

01:05:43Marc:Sure, the best thing they can know is not know which ones are which.

01:05:46Guest:Yeah.

01:05:47Guest:And then they're like, you just made that all up.

01:05:49Marc:yeah yeah i did and since the specials aired i thought okay now they know all the bits so i'm really kind of trying to new hour think of new ideas and uh talk about things that i think are what drove you i mean what's uh what do you because your career is certainly you know had these uh you know really different phases and you know you you sort of got close to the grail and you were living in it for a while and then

01:06:12Marc:You were in Siberia for a while, and you kind of made your own way.

01:06:17Marc:So what's the hope?

01:06:19Marc:You just loving the stand-up, or do you feel like you're driven by desperation or pleasure?

01:06:24Guest:No, I love the stand-up.

01:06:26Guest:It's my favorite thing that I've ever really done.

01:06:30Guest:A big thing with me and the show was always about trying to do something that I'd never seen on TV before, really.

01:06:40Guest:And the process was always complicated because you have a television network that wants it to look like television.

01:06:48Guest:And I wanted it to look like something that shouldn't be on television.

01:06:51Guest:So there's an automatic conflict there.

01:06:54Guest:And you're being creative, and you're trying to be artistic about it, and then you're still having to deal with... And again, at that time, I was in that phase where I really wanted to do that.

01:07:07Guest:Provoke people.

01:07:08Guest:Provoke people.

01:07:09Guest:And now with stand-up, I still want to provoke people, but you don't have to run it past anybody.

01:07:14Guest:You don't have to write it and send it to some executive to change it.

01:07:17Marc:And also, when you do it, if it's for one bit, if you do something that's like, this is going to fucking...

01:07:22Guest:provoke something yeah then you're still standing there and then you got to see how well you can you know dig out of it or move through it yeah which is excited oh it's very exciting and an adrenaline rush and addictive and i love it and uh and i i also really have loved the feedback i'm getting from people because you know you know

01:07:46Guest:The fact of the matter is I have people out there love the show and they're still out there and it's not like things really went to shit for me.

01:07:55Guest:I'm actually – I have this audience of people that loves the show and loves Freddie Got Fingered and loves Road Trip, loves the movies.

01:08:02Guest:And they come out and they're really excited and it's a real positive thing.

01:08:06Guest:It's a lot nicer than sort of being in a vacuum where you're not sure if anybody is really paying attention to my web show and stuff.

01:08:16Marc:That it wasn't limited to MTV.

01:08:18Marc:It wasn't limited to age necessarily.

01:08:20Marc:You weren't some flash in the pan that people like your sensibility and they've grown up with you.

01:08:25Marc:You're a guy that's continually sort of creating and growing your thing.

01:08:29Marc:I don't think anybody ever got the sense that they know you.

01:08:32Marc:They're just like, he's that fucking guy that's going to do that crazy shit.

01:08:35Guest:Yeah.

01:08:36Marc:Yeah.

01:08:36Marc:So I guess as long as you provide some of that, they're not going to leave you.

01:08:40Guest:Yeah.

01:08:40Guest:No, it's been it's been real good.

01:08:42Guest:It's been real good.

01:08:42Guest:I love doing stand up and, you know, I'm I'm I just I'm starting to take a lot of my old old material and put it up onto a YouTube channel on my website and things like that.

01:08:53Guest:So you make money with that.

01:08:56Guest:I just launched this new YouTube channel really just a few weeks ago, actually.

01:09:02Guest:And, you know, so it's brand new.

01:09:07Guest:With the Google money?

01:09:08Guest:Yeah, it's just sort of a small following on there now that's starting to percolate.

01:09:13Guest:Yeah.

01:09:13Guest:The web show, when I was doing it, I made a bit of money doing it.

01:09:18Guest:And it cost a lot of money to do it because of the technology involved and stuff.

01:09:23Guest:We sold the show to Canadian television and did some stuff like that that made it really kind of a cool thing.

01:09:28Guest:Right.

01:09:30Guest:But I think it's definitely more about just kind of...

01:09:35Guest:I enjoy getting all that content that I've done for 15 years of videos.

01:09:39Guest:And you own it?

01:09:40Guest:Yeah.

01:09:41Guest:That's great.

01:09:41Guest:Most of it I do.

01:09:42Marc:What, from the public access stuff?

01:09:43Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:09:44Guest:Well, the thing is, all the stuff that aired on MTV, I'd shot, well, 75% of the stuff that was on MTV we'd shot previously in Canada.

01:09:51Marc:Oh, so you showed up with it.

01:09:52Guest:We showed up with it.

01:09:54Guest:Oh, that's amazing.

01:09:55Guest:And just repackaged it.

01:09:56Marc:So you don't got any of that cease and desist shit.

01:09:58Guest:Yeah.

01:09:58Guest:Like the Slutmobile when I painted my parents car.

01:10:01Guest:That was from Canada.

01:10:03Guest:Right.

01:10:03Guest:Yeah.

01:10:04Guest:So.

01:10:04Marc:And you had an agreement with MTV that you that was yours.

01:10:07Guest:Yeah.

01:10:07Guest:I just licensed it to them basically.

01:10:09Marc:Oh, that's fucking genius.

01:10:11Marc:Yeah.

01:10:11Guest:Yeah.

01:10:11Guest:It was sort of a different time, I guess.

01:10:13Marc:But you knew enough to do that.

01:10:14Guest:Yeah.

01:10:15Marc:They usually just sort of like, no, it's ours now.

01:10:17Guest:Yeah, it was like a different time because it was the very first time, I think, that people independently had video cameras and could go and film a bunch of stuff on their own.

01:10:28Guest:Right.

01:10:28Guest:And so, you know, I came to them.

01:10:31Guest:I sent them my 10 favorite videos.

01:10:33Guest:I said, do you have any more of this stuff?

01:10:34Guest:I said, oh, yeah, I actually have about 800 videos.

01:10:37Guest:And they said, send it all.

01:10:37Guest:We sent it all.

01:10:38Guest:And they literally flew me to New York a couple weeks later.

01:10:41Guest:We were in the studio in Times Square just...

01:10:45Marc:throwing to all of my old videos and that's sort of why the show kind of came out of nowhere when it had on mtv because i was taking my best stuff from seven years and putting it down to 10 episodes even if it had aired on the public access yeah it all aired yeah no that's fucking awesome so you were just curating your shit yeah yeah well it sounds like so ultimately the the the end game for you is to sort of build your own place on the internet that you have complete creative control over and and ride it out

01:11:11Guest:Yeah, that's what I've been doing.

01:11:13Guest:And I'm just sort of taking a little – taking a different – took a little beat on the web show.

01:11:19Guest:I'm starting it up again in the new year.

01:11:21Guest:I'm going to start the web show up again.

01:11:23Guest:I don't know.

01:11:23Guest:I really still kind of feel like I'm just focusing on stand-up.

01:11:26Guest:I also – I just shot a couple of –

01:11:29Guest:doing some fun stuff.

01:11:30Guest:I was on that show Workaholics.

01:11:32Guest:I shot an episode of that yesterday.

01:11:34Guest:I just shot some stuff.

01:11:36Guest:I was just in the new Trailer Park Boys movie that's coming out.

01:11:39Guest:Oh, people love those guys.

01:11:40Guest:They're Canadian guys.

01:11:41Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:11:41Guest:They have a new movie called SwearNet, so I was up in Canada doing that.

01:11:45Guest:You're working.

01:11:45Guest:Keeping it going, you know, keeping it going.

01:11:47Marc:Well, thanks for stopping by, buddy.

01:11:49Guest:Yeah, thanks, man.

01:11:55Marc:You see that?

01:11:56Marc:There's a heart there.

01:11:57Marc:There's a guy in there.

01:11:58Marc:There's a real dude.

01:11:58Marc:That was nice, man.

01:12:00Marc:That was nice.

01:12:01Marc:He's an edgy cat.

01:12:02Marc:And I'm glad we had that conversation, to be quite honest with you.

01:12:06Marc:Let me give you some stuff that he's doing.

01:12:08Marc:He's going to be at the Starlight Theater at the Riviera in Las Vegas with Steve-O.

01:12:12Marc:That's this Thursday through Sunday, February 14th through 17th.

01:12:16Marc:Tom will also be at the MCM Hotel in Midland, Texas next week, February 22nd and 23rd.

01:12:22Marc:You can also get his podcast at TomGreen.com.

01:12:25Marc:I'm sorry about the buzz, but...

01:12:43Guest:Bye.

01:12:57Bye.

01:12:57Guest:there you go that's some guitar center noodling for you I hope you enjoyed that I'll turn that off now

01:13:17Marc:So that's the story.

01:13:18Marc:Look, folks, go to WTFPod.com.

01:13:22Marc:Get all your WTFPod needs met.

01:13:24Marc:Get the app.

01:13:25Marc:Upgrade to the premium app.

01:13:26Marc:Kick in a few shekels.

01:13:28Marc:Get some merch.

01:13:28Marc:There's some new posters up there.

01:13:31Marc:I will be bringing the posters I had made for the Wilbur Show to the next Wilbur Show.

01:13:34Marc:I guess I'll scratch out the date and put the new date.

01:13:37Marc:You can leave a comment.

01:13:39Marc:Thanks again for all your wonderful feedback on the Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner episodes.

01:13:42Marc:I hope you're having a good time.

01:13:43Marc:I hope everybody in New England is shoveling out okay and everybody is okay.

01:13:49Marc:And that's all.

01:13:50Marc:I love you guys and I miss you when we're not talking.

01:14:04you