How Tom Green changed TV

With the release of a new documentary, stand-up special and reality show, it's safe to say that Tom Green is having a renaissance.

The Canadian-American comedian first gained notoriety as host of The Tom Green Show, a program known for its particular brand of shock comedy and absurd pranks as well as Green's manic persona.

Today on Commotion, media personality Matt Hart and TV creator Derrick Beckles join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss This is The Tom Green Documentary, Tom Green Country, and how his talk show from the late '90s not only revolutionized television, but also heralded the YouTube era of comedy.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Do you want to talk a little bit about the cultural moment that produced a show like Tom Green, or produced a person like Tom Green? What was happening culturally at that moment, Matt?

Matt: I mean, skateboarding was kind of kicking off in the suburbs. Hip-hop was kicking off in the suburbs in the '90s. And then as far as culturally … technology was becoming a little bit more affordable, too, for people to be able to shoot on-the-street videos. We were seeing a bit of those with Letterman, stuff like that. 

He was just taking that confrontational style that we'd see as far back as Candid Camera, and he'd just put you in a video — and basically, you didn't want to look like that guy…. You didn't want to be the butt of your own joke through your own freaking out. I think that's where we see ourselves in that comedy, and that's why it puts us in a bit of cringe.

Elamin: Derrick, you kind of experienced a parallel career trajectory to Tom. At the same time that Tom was starting out, you were in Montreal. You were making these bootleg compilations of weird TV clips. Matt Hart was talking about one of his favourites right before we started having this conversation, that became known as TV Carnage. That led to you moving to the States. You were writing for people like Johnny Knoxville and Jackass, working on shows like Hannibal Buress's show, The Eric Andre Show, but you came from the same kind of do-it-yourself roots. What do you make of what Tom was doing back then?

Derrick: To Matt's point about cameras being accessible to people … Tom did the thing that so many — for the lack of a better word — weirdos knew to do, right? And he really did it. I've had the pleasure of meeting and knowing Tom. He took this format that was almost exclusively— like, the language of the format was a camera and a microphone. That was for the hoity-toity, right? That was for broadcasters. When somebody rolls up to the camera, it's like, "Oh, this is important." So people were used to that; they see a guy with a camera and a microphone shoved in his face, and they would take it seriously. And then that completely opened the door for him to subvert it and completely screw with them.

At the same time, I was doing things like TV Carnage because it was celebrating and mocking the mundane, and how kind of phoned-in everything was. I feel like a lot of us were connected with how phoned-in the '90s felt, too…. It's like, it's the '80s, but with the president playing saxophone, and more money, and people still phoning it in.

Elamin: I think the thing that made the late '90s counterculture unique is that you could also make money doing that. That was a surprise, that they have someone like Tom Green go from making this show where he's like, "I thought I was going to do these shows once at midnight and then nobody would ever watch it again." And then suddenly he's on MTV, suddenly he's this gigantic star. 

When you're trying to do this subversive thing with comedy in that era, are you thinking that this is comedic genius? Are you actually like, this is just the jokes that we want to tell for a pretty limited audience, and it's not really about trying to become this gigantic comedic genius that everybody references? What was the ethos of that time?

Derrick: You know, he mentions Letterman…. It was so scrappy, and he would have really strange guests on. He would have, like, off-off Broadway— just, people he would not normally connect with. And then he would also hit the streets. I think that was reminding people they could do that, and do their own version of it.

This is the stuff we did with each other to make each other laugh, right? And some of us were good at it. Some of us weren't good at it. And they were even in their own category because they were so bad at it. And then after he became famous, there was no curating, right? ... All these networks were like, "We need our Tom Green." So instead of finding somebody who was in the same realm but would still kind of try and do their own thing, they would just hire the loudest meathead in the room, right? And then it would be a guy who wasn't funny just, like, screwing with people. One of my main tenets or philosophies is when you do hidden camera stuff or when you do street stuff— I used to roll up with my friends with microphones and just talk to people like they were in a scrum. It was the craziest thing. Like, "Was it true that you were eating raw meat last night when your husband was in bed?" 

Matt: No comment, no comment!

Derrick: What I'm getting at is, Tom would do it in a way where it still felt strangely wholesome. At times it was like art, like this weird kind of experimental theatre. But it never crossed that line where a lot of guys still do now…. It's kind of turned into this realm of cruelty where they just turn into these mean jocks. They're the guys who shove you in the locker and spit in your face, which personally has happened to me.

Elamin: I think that's why I look back with such fondness with Tom Green because he was never mean. It was something else.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.