Tom Green is a comedian, actor, writer and filmmaker. He’s known for the legendary “Tom Green Show” as well as his many movies like “Road Trip” and “Freddy Got Fingered”. His new stand-up special “I Got a Mule!” is out now on Prime Video.
Tom Green joins Theo to talk about leaving Hollywood for the country, why he was so focused on making the wildest content possible when he was young, and how Canada and the U.S. can come back together once and for all.
Tom Green: https://www.instagram.com/tomgreen/
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I have some new tour dates to tell you about.
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Today's guest is a comedian.
He's an actor.
He's a filmmaker.
He's an innovator.
He's a visual entrepreneur who really laid the blueprint for podcasting and prank shows in all types of genres.
He's had one of the most unique and legendary careers in comedy, from the Tom Green show on MTV to his many movies like Freddie Got Fingered, Road Trip.
He just dropped three new projects on Prime Video, a comedy special, a documentary, and a scripted show.
We'll get into all that.
We're excited to welcome Canada's son, Mr. Tom Green.
Shine on me, and I will find a song I've been singing just before.
I'm on the sky.
Tom Green, it's your first day back in LA in four years, did you say?
Yeah, yeah.
It feels good, actually.
Yeah, it was weird.
I just moved four years ago.
It was kind of a somewhat spontaneous decision.
You know, when COVID happened, remember that?
And everything stopped?
And all of a sudden, you know, I've been touring and all of a sudden everybody stopped touring, right?
At the beginning.
Yeah, everything kind of just stopped.
I was trying to remember if it was it just me that stopped or did everyone stop everyone stopped yeah yeah so about the first six months or so of that I was kind of I'm gonna do and then I just kind of realized I well I got this I was telling you about my van I got this van and I started going out into the desert and making videos and stuff here and outside of LA just outside LA and I love being out in the desert so much and just waking up in the morning with a cup of coffee and just looking at the sun coming up over the mountains and
just the peacefulness of that yeah it's out in the Mojave Desert that was like the first day of the trip I think four years ago and so then you know I just decided to sell my house I'd held I'd been in my house for 18 years I sold my house and went back to Canada and bought a farm near where my parents live and just I can't believe four years went by but yesterday was the first day back in Los Angeles in the van we drove back down in the van so I've been touring with my fiancé who you just met I have a fiancé now went back to Canada I've got a fiancé from Canada
now yeah good choice and we came back in the van and just drove into town yesterday and it's pretty weird because it's like it feels like I nothing's really it kind of makes you think about time time is weird you know because I went away for four years and then you come back and I drove past my house that I lived in for almost 20 years and now I'm staying in a hotel right down across from where the house is I can actually see the house from the hotel room I sort of did that on purpose because I thought it would be
weird and and you know I'm going to this I went to Arts Deli you know I lived sort of in the studio city area here and I went to Arts Deli and got my same pastrami sandwich and my my chicken noodle soup and uh and I've been going to some of the same restaurants just been here for a day and it doesn't feel like it's been four years it feels like I actually I'm driving here you know today I was I sort of almost forgot that I didn't live here anymore I kept thinking oh I'll
go back to my house after oh right I don't live here anymore so that's that's a that's a strange thing but on the flip side in the last four years I've got a farm which I've now really settled into I've got these incredible animals which are now I'm really bonded with this mule and this donkey and two horses and chickens and it's just like this it's sort of been an incredible incredible journey the last four years so yeah it's been cool was it something that you always wanted to have you feel like
a farm I guess every human kind of maybe feels something like that I'm gonna get a little bit of land I'm gonna get some animals was it that or was it no it's weird because I never really imagined having a mule um you know like and riding a mule every day I didn't grow up with that you know I grew up in the suburbs of Ottawa Canada I'm outside of Ottawa but but and a mule's kind of like the El Camino of horses in a way you know it's very much the you know what I'm saying it's not it's not me saying hey I'm gonna get a horse it's like I'm gonna get a mule yeah
yeah I sort of thought initially I thought it would be kind of funny and then the mule I happened to find find Fanny is her name and she's this beautiful mule she's this huge animal and and that's Kia the donkey in the background and so and so it's just become this sort of amazing change but yeah I you know I initially I hadn't I hadn't really thought of necessarily getting a farm with a mule and all this stuff but
I wanted to get a place that was kind of in nature really was and then the the the farm happened to have these old barns on it and I thought it would be kind of cool to get a mule in those barns so I now am very much loving life up there I get up in the morning and I saddle her up and ride off into the wilderness it's pretty cool really so does it and that's never something that you wanted that was never like a thing of your whole life like I want to have this thing it just kind of yeah I mean I love I always loved animals I you know I have my dog Charlie and
I've always enjoyed being outdoors but I mean it just it just kind of I know every once in a while you know you know Sometimes when an idea pops into your head and then you just go with it and then all of a sudden you've done it.
This is like that, except it sort of occurred to me afterwards.
You know, as I was doing, I was realizing, you know, I'm going to have this mule for the rest of my life.
You know, like they live to be, donkeys live to be up to 40, 50 years old.
Oh, God, really?
He is only three.
So it's a lifelong commitment.
The donkey could live after you.
Absolutely.
She probably will.
But yeah, so it's so, but it's, you know, it's, it's, I think maybe I was looking for something that would kind of ground me and, you know, give me that home base that I needed.
You know, this is the first, this is the first time I've ever lived somewhere where I know I'm going to be there for the rest of my life.
Wow.
I'm planting trees.
I'm thinking, oh, in 20 years, that tree is going to be, and these trees are going to be bigger.
And I'm kind of sort of plotting out things that way.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I can totally relate with that and what you're saying about LA.
LA just feels like this kind of, it's almost like LA doesn't have a memory in it.
It feels like, I don't know, other places, I think, especially if it's a place that's a little more grounded, it feels maybe more meaningful for some reason.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's weird.
I moved here when I was 28. I think it was 28 or 29 when I moved to LA.
I'm 53 now.
And I mean, I loved it.
I had a great time here.
I wasn't leaving LA because I didn't like LA or anything.
It was more I wanted to be close to my parents, and they were still doing good.
And I wanted to be close to family and stuff.
But yeah, it is a unique place for sure.
People come here from all over the world, pursue their dreams, and there's sort of an energy there that's exciting.
But as I got a little older, I left when I was 50. And not married, no kids.
COVID happened.
I wake up.
I'd been in my house for 18 years.
The real estate market went up.
I was like, oh, maybe I should sell it now as opposed to, you know, five years ago, I wouldn't have wanted to sell it.
So there was a moment in time.
Maybe I'll sell this place, you know, that I've been living in for 20 years, waiting for the right moment to feel like it was time to go.
And because I don't know, I kind of felt like I wanted to be back where I grew up, you know?
I mean, you're not from here either.
So, you know, there's something very sort of, I guess, deep that you feel when you're home.
I'm sure where you're from, Tennessee.
I'm from Louisiana.
I live in Tennessee.
Louisiana.
But yeah, it gives you, yeah, there's this sense of like, yeah, that you've been out of your soil for a long time, you know, that you've kind of.
Like when you go back to Louisiana, you must feel like, oh, now I'm at home, right?
This home.
Oh, there's definitely a ton of nostalgia that I love.
I think it makes sense that a part of you wants to kind of go back where you came into the world at or be there, to see people that care about me.
See people that I care about.
Wonder if you've gotten enough of the adventure out of your system in some ways.
You can still have the adventure, but just have it from there, you know?
And I think also the part like you're saying about this is the first time you'd ever planted plants.
You're like, I'll see these.
I've always felt like my life was very transient.
Like I was just passing by.
I've never been the type of guy to get like a lot of furniture or artwork or anything.
I'm always just like, I don't know how long I'm going to be here.
And it's always, and here I am in my 40s and it's still like, I still kind of operate like that.
But at a certain point, it's like, yeah, you want something that's a little bit more settling.
And if you found a fiancé, I'm sure that kind of helped a little bit.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Amanda's here.
It's her first time in Los Angeles.
Nice.
You could be a host and a tour guide.
It's kind of nice.
Going around my old hometown, my new old hometown, yeah.
Yeah.
And a camper too, dude.
What was that about?
Yeah, so that's been pretty wild.
Because when I got this van, I kind of got pretty good at it, like going to really remote places in the American Southwest, particularly, like in New Mexico, Utah.
Zion?
You go to Zion?
Yeah, I went to Zion.
I didn't camp in Zion, but there's this other kind of land called BLM land.
It's Bureau of Land Management land that is basically all of the desert and land that is owned by the U.S. government.
It's managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and they'll cut roads into the desert, and they'll put sort of campsite areas with fire pits and stuff.
They kind of keep it somewhat organized so that people don't go driving all around the desert and trash in the desert.
They have these roads and stuff.
So you can get, I got this app.
It's called DIRT, D-U-I-R-T.
It's basically an app that gives you all the different locations of these sort of really obscure places that are not even in national parks or anything.
D-U-I-R-T.
Yeah, yeah.
And so it kind of like you find stuff that is just unbelievable.
Like, you know, I sort of can't stop talking about it to people that don't know about it, but like, I mean, you may know about Chaco Canyon, but I'd never heard of it before.
It's in New Mexico.
And in fact, if you go to my last YouTube video on my YouTube channel, that's just a video I shot a couple of days ago.
And you can scroll down to like the second video.
Go to the second video.
This is Chaco Canyon.
So this is like Native American ruins that are essentially like built in the year 875.
It's like, you know, and it's like this, it's a city.
You know, it's like a city in the desert.
And it's just out there in the middle of northern New Mexico.
This is Amanda, my fiancé, Amanda.
Yeah, I think so.
We're just going around making these videos.
But you'll see, like, look at this place.
So it's like, you know, everyone always talks about Machu Picchu in Peru, and they talk about all these incredible things in, you know, ancient, you know, places.
But like the fact that you can just drive out of Albuquerque, you know, drive north of Albuquerque.
Wow, this is there?
Yeah, this is there.
And it's really remote.
Like, it's on the Navajo Nation land.
And so we just were out there camping for four nights and exploring and hiking off into this beautiful desert.
getting some good rest out there?
Do you get good rest when you're out on the road?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Oh, that's nice.
It's nice.
It's quiet.
That's the tough thing to get, man.
Just cooking on the campfire and it's just been fun.
And I enjoy photography, you know.
You're shooting this really, really well.
Yeah, I got sort of lots of different cameras and stuff, and I like to kind of do that.
So there's something about shooting out in the desert that's just so beautiful because you have these long horizons and big open spaces.
And there's an energy there that is just something that's hard to put your finger on.
But it just, you know, I always kind of sort of, I never really kind of really maybe didn't even believe in that when I was younger when people would talk about the energy.
And, you know, Sedona's got this energy.
But, you know, I feel this energy out there that's just of the people that live there, that built that place.
And other places like it.
So it's kind of fun to go seek those places out, you know.
Yeah, you'll meet a lot of women.
You're like, I never have a period when I'm in Sedona or whatever.
And you're like, well, that's, what are we talking?
You know what I'm saying?
But there's some crazy.
You've met a lot of women that have said that?
I mean, I just think you meet a lot of women who are a very specific thing for a lot of people to have said, but yeah.
A lot of women who are keeping crystals in the wrong places, probably, you know.
But yeah, you meet a lot of wow people who are into that sort of thing.
But I think that's probably like, I mean, the natives, it always feels to me like the natives are probably so in touch, more in touch with the earth and locked in on like the feeling of like the best places to be.
That's why they love being in like the Dakotas and in the Black Hills and stuff like that.
And so to be able to go to one of those ruins, I bet, I bet there's still a lot of like, just a lot of prehistoric or like native connection that's just looking for souls to pass through, you know?
Yeah.
What you just said is like really interesting because I was talking to basically an archaeologist the other day and he said exactly what you just said.
Like there's this thing called intuitive archaeology where they go because there's still stuff out in the desert that people haven't even found yet.
Like it's how big it is and how vast it is.
And so they go out into these canyons in northern Arizona and Utah looking for signs of ancient settlements and stuff.
And they're sort of taught to intuitive archaeology.
If you're in a place that feels like it would be a nice place to have lived, a beautiful place, there's a good chance that feeling is correct.
And then you should sort of listen to that instinct and start looking for signs of ancient civilization.
But it's pretty amazing because you do feel something out there.
I don't know.
I was talking about this friend the other day, too.
You ever go in an old comedy club that's been Zane's in Nashville or downtown Chicago is an old club, you know, and you see all the old pictures from the comics from back in the 70s and 80s.
And you know that club's been there forever and you kind of feel the energy of comics that have passed away on the wall and you say, oh my God, Sam Kinison performed here, you know, and I can sort of feel that energy of the performance in the room, you know?
So that's from 40 years ago or whatever, but now you take it back to the year 875, you're out in the desert and this place, Chaco Canyon, was a whole society where they did trading and people came from all over North America there.
So it's a very peaceful thing.
I do enjoy it quite a bit.
And is that something that you and your fiancé have kind of something you've really is that something you guys have found you like doing together?
I mean, to go camping, a lot of people would end up getting separated usually, I feel like.
This is her first time actually really coming through a lot of the United States too.
So she's from Canada and hasn't been out to the desert before.
So but she's, I mean, we're having fun.
You know, we're having fun out there.
But it's, you know, we just have, this is our first trip doing this, so it's been cool.
Was it scary to get engaged?
Because you've been married before.
Briefly, yeah.
I was briefly married, yeah.
And then you a long time ago, too, yeah.
And you hadn't been married since, though?
No, no, no.
Okay.
First time engaged since.
You know, no, it was not scary because.
Because that was Drew Barrymore, right?
It's 27 in the early 2000s or something.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
But no, it wasn't scary because Amanda's amazing, you know, so I knew it was the right thing, the right, this was the thing to do.
This had to be done.
That feels like the hardest decision.
Yeah, I think that's the thing like, yeah, I would like to get married, you know, and I'm just thinking like, man, that day when you're like, all right, I guess I'm going to get married today.
That sounds crazy when I say that out loud.
You're a young guy, too.
To think that.
There was a lot of things that happened that, you know, I don't know if you want to talk about, you know, I'm talking a lot about energy, but coincidences and synchronicity and things like this.
I moved back to Canada and I have a pond on my property.
And in the winter, it freezes over.
And I shoveled the snow off the pond and I was playing hockey on the pond, like skating, playing hockey on the pond.
Shot a video of that and put it up on the social medias.
There we go.
Wow, that's beautiful.
Here we are out at the pond.
Wow, you've got a fast guy on the draw out there on the, I just literally just said that and he instantly found, yeah, so we're drilling a hole in the pond here, and that's, then we can pump the water out of that back on top of the pond and give it a nice smooth, icy.
That's my friend Ryan.
Oh, wait.
So what are you using here to do this?
Okay, so that, so you take the hole and then you can.
Then we got a pump, we're going to stick a fire hose down in there, and we pump water out of it, we pump it up on top of the ice and just basically flood the ice, and then it freezes because at night, and then we get some nice smooth ice out there.
How long does that process take?
Just a day, you know, this just took a day.
The next morning was completely frozen.
But then you get two feet of snow, and then you've got to do it all over again.
which kind of puts a damper on it.
Wow, this is so cool.
So, that right there that you're on is a lake.
It's a pond.
It's a pond, yeah.
Okay, so that's a pond.
There's the dock.
So, usually it's water.
Yeah, yeah, it's water.
Right now, you cut the holes, you're pumping the water out of the pond onto the top of the ice, which is on the top of the pond.
Yeah.
And then it gets, it's cold, you know, it's below zero.
So then the next morning it was pretty much ready to.
Now, normally you would shovel it off first, but we just kind of were kind of a little lazy about that, I guess.
And we just flooded it instead, which it ended up working out fine.
But probably would have been better if we'd shoveled it off first, but that seems like that would have been a lot of work.
Yeah, you know, you can do that.
But there you go.
See?
And then, so yeah, so we were doing this, and then I was shooting these videos playing hockey.
There we go.
This is the next day?
Yeah, it's like probably the next day.
So this is a common practice in Canada?
Well, you know, if you have a pond, I mean, those are the barns in the background.
That's my house up there behind there.
And so, you know, we used to do it in my backyard when I was a kid.
Like, we used to flood the backyard.
Yeah, Gretzky talked about that when he was on it.
He talked about flooding his backyard.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Pretty cool.
That's amazing.
The great one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we.
I saw him at the inauguration.
He lost a tooth.
Okay.
At the inauguration, he lost a tooth.
Yeah, I chipped my tooth, and I walked up to him.
I was like, man, I chipped my tooth.
And he's like, oh, yeah.
And he showed me this, and he freaking lost one.
Him and his wife were looking for it on the ground.
Oh, okay.
But it had been knocked out previously in a hockey game of some sort.
Something, I think, yeah.
He didn't get punched out at the inauguration.
No, I think he could have been shocked by some things he saw and maybe that took it out.
But yeah, he was just missing a grill piece at the inauguration.
It was just pretty bizarre.
Man, that's cool.
Dude, that's amazing.
So these are the types of things you're spending time doing up there.
You really document it really beautifully.
And a lot of that doesn't even have a lot of audio with it.
It's really just seeing.
I've noticed this in some of your videos.
It's just kind of seeing what's going on.
Yeah, yeah.
I kind of like to just kind of do these sort of ambient sort of things to kind of just kind of bring you into a certain place.
It's sort of like I like photography.
This is just doing it with video and being there.
But after I posted that video, Amanda, my fiancé, she saw it and she sent me a message on Instagram.
This is how we met.
And it was a video of a Zamboni, a do-it-yourself Zamboni, which is what a Zamboni is what you use to clean off the ice in a hockey rink, right?
And so it was this homemade one.
And we started, I just started talking to her because I thought it was a funny thing to send.
And we turns out we went to the same elementary school.
And yeah, it was just sort of, it was, it was, it was just went from there.
Cool.
Congratulations.
Yeah, thanks, man.
And did you meet your parents yet or no?
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Were your parents happy to have you back home?
What was that like?
Yeah.
No, they are for sure.
Yeah.
No hesitation.
They were excited for me to come home.
Believe it or not, you know, because sometimes people wonder, you know, because I used to do a lot of pranks on them.
Do they still talk to you?
But my parents, we were always very close.
Even when I was doing my show on MTV and, you know, doing pranks on them and, you know, annoying them with the video camera, they would sort of laugh afterwards.
And we've always had a very close relationship.
They're actually in my new show on Prime.
It's sort of about me moving home.
Shows about me moving home.
That's not the I Got a Mule.
That's not that, is that?
No, that's my stand-up special.
Okay, that's the stand-up special.
That's on Prime as well, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's a documentary on Prime and then the show called Tom Green Country.
And it's sort of about me settling in at the farm.
And they're hilarious.
I mean, they really make the show.
Like, there's something about their sense of humor is they're kind of rousing me and the new show more than me pulling pranks on them.
I don't do that anymore.
Kind of full circle.
They've retired from being pranked.
From being a victim?
Yeah, absolutely.
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When you look back on it, do you ever able to figure out a reason why you liked to record things or like what you got out of like, you know, because as we get older, you kind of start to get a little bit of a like an overview kind of of ourselves even, you know, in the world, maybe a little bit, a little bit of an idea of what we have been doing in the world.
You ever able to figure any of that out, kind of like the reasoning behind some of it?
Like why you liked capturing things or why you liked like pulling the wool over people's eyes?
Or, you know?
Yeah, I think there's kind of a few layers to that for sure.
And that's a cool question.
It's a great question because like one thing was we never really had a video camera or when I was I grew up in the 80s.
So we didn't have a video camera or even a film camera.
We didn't even take a lot of photos.
And it was kind of expensive.
People that had a video camera, they had a lot of money to have a video camera.
We never had a video camera.
And so when all of a sudden they became somewhat attainable, I would sort of sign one out at school.
And I found that it was kind of a, first of all, I loved comedy.
So I loved David Letterman.
I loved watching him go out in the street and do stuff.
And I loved Monty Python and just SC TV.
And I just loved comedy.
I was doing stand-up comedy in Ottawa when I was 16 years old.
And would go down to watch Norm McDonald when he was in his 20s.
It was sort of this amazing thing.
And I somehow had this sort of feeling that if I could just get a video camera and go film stuff that maybe I could make a show or whatever.
But there's also Skateboarder, and that was sort of skateboarding videos were, holy shit, look at this.
This is amazing.
How did you find that so fast?
Yeah, they're me at 16 years old.
Yuck yucks.
Yeah.
How did you find that so fast?
I don't even know how you must have had that in advance.
That is unbelievable.
There's some sort of weird algorithm here or something like that.
I don't know if they did or not, but yeah, it looks great.
Wow.
Yeah, it looks so good.
Look at that microphone, too.
It's like, I don't even, they didn't even use the right microphone back then.
But I, no, I just, I don't know, I often kind of like think there's something about like, I don't know, I think I've always been really afraid of the concept of like being dead, you know, like being gone and like there being no sort of, you know, recollection of anything that you've ever done.
Right.
And I always found it interesting to just kind of document things and just record things and that'll be there, you know, in some electronic way floating around there forever.
And it sort of feels in a little way like kind of like sort of a weird kind of immortality in a way, you know.
I think that's kind of what fascinates me about these, these ruins in the desert, too.
Like these people came and built these things in the year 875 and now I'm walking through it and looking at it and filming it and talking about it with you.
And so they're kind of in a way kind of remembered, you know?
Yeah.
And then there was also just kind of the blatant, you know, when I was younger, I was a little, quite a bit different than I am now.
I think I've calmed down quite a bit.
Like when I was younger, I really always needed to be kind of like, you know, the center of attention, the class clown, moving around a lot.
He was weird as a kid.
So to me, it seemed like a really good way of just kind of, you know, documenting all of this silliness, you know?
And I loved it.
You know, I loved filming stuff and showing it to people at school.
And it was just.
So much you were one of the first people really to just capture shit and just show it to people kind of in a way, like kind of like, not shit, but I mean, just capture.
Yeah, no, shit, for sure.
Yeah.
Actually, actual shit was involved quite a bit.
Yeah, we're going to capture shit and show it to you.
Like, what do you mean?
Like, this is what we mean.
And I can totally relate to what you said about, dude, I used to, when I was, I guess, probably turning around 20 to probably 28, I would make postcards and I would send them to my kids.
They weren't even born yet.
Like, whenever I was traveling somewhere, I would send them.
I would make them out to my kids.
I just wanted my kids to know that I'd been, I needed there to be some record that I like cared about my children, even though they weren't here yet.
Which is kind of a crazy thing, but it made me think about what you're saying.
Yeah.
And I would scrapbook, I would save things.
Like I just wanted there to be like some proof that I felt something in the world and that I existed.
Right.
I think I just didn't, I don't know if I just didn't have a lot of that, like, or I needed an insane amount of proof.
And so that's why I did it.
But yeah, I could just rely, I could definitely relate to that to wanting to have some timeline.
Yeah.
So I, you know, just in case time ever showed up and said, hey, were you here?
I could be, well, yes, here I was.
You know, I could show you my homework kind of or something, you know.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I can relate to that because I talk a little bit in my stand-up special about not having kids.
And I sometimes think it's kind of a bit of a message to my future children that, you know, that I'm aware that I haven't had them yet.
And so I totally understand what you're saying about that.
It's, yeah, I mean, it's a weird thing, you know, because 20 years ago, nobody had, definitely 30 years ago, nobody had video cameras really like they do now.
But now everybody with their phones, everything documented, it's so normal now.
But I just put this documentary up on Prime, which is, it's called This is the Tom Green Documentary.
It's sort of a play in my old theme song of my show.
This is the Tom Green Show was the song, right?
So I went through like thousands of hours of video.
I'm going back looking at, you know, 17-year-old me running around doing stuff.
And it was actually kind of a pretty somewhat terrifying experience, actually, because it was like this opportunity to kind of tell the story of everything that happened with my show and everything that happened with my experience here in LA.
And I wanted to kind of, you know, tell the story right.
And I've got so much video and combing through all of it was at times, you know, somewhat kind of like I would be looking at myself like I'm looking at a completely different person.
And I can't even believe, you know, I'm finding things I don't even remember happening.
And I'm looking at things that are just so completely bonkers and silly and ridiculous.
I'm like, whoa, sometimes I couldn't look at the TV.
I'm like, oh my God, what was I doing?
That's how you made us feel.
Yeah, exactly.
I was doing it to myself 20 years, 30 years later.
And no, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody to go make a documentary about yourself.
Definitely hire somebody to do that.
Never watch it.
But no, it was fun because I wanted to tell the story the right way.
But it was also kind of very surreal.
Was it hard to be true to yourself making your own documentary?
And no one should probably make your documentary except for you because you're one of the rare cases it feels like that has so much, has documented themselves so much.
And I don't even know if it's, I don't know if it seemed like an egotistical way.
I don't think it ever came across like that of your footage.
It just came across that you wanted to have control over how of yourself.
You wanted to put yourself out there.
But was it hard to make a documentary and not want to make yourself the hero or something?
I've never made a documentary before.
Yeah.
Or was there any of that in it?
Or how do I make this?
It's like the first scene of the documentary, I'm sitting with my mother and she actually says, are you really supposed to direct a documentary about yourself?
I mean, can't you kind of whitewash that a little bit?
Are you going to do that?
Yeah, I'm going to do that.
But honestly, I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to be, I didn't not want to completely like, you know, put a false story out there.
So I think the hardest part was trying to figure out how to not be too self-deprecating.
Oh, yeah.
You know, because you think, you know, when you get to my age, you know, you look back and you think, oh my God, I wish I hadn't done that or I wish I hadn't done that or I shouldn't have said that or I shouldn't have done that.
And, you know, I have a lot of those things that are constantly rattling around in my head.
And you start to think like, you know, man, maybe this is a good way for me to go and just like apologize for everything that I perceived that I've done wrong in my life.
Right.
And then you have to kind of take a step back and go, well, wait a minute, you know, like that might just be in my head, you know?
So I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people about, you know, people that I know, people that I'm close with, about the story of really it's the story of the of the show.
And takes us through the story of kind of creating the show and then building, you know, before the show with my music and then after the show with building a, you know, a sort of a web TV studio, right?
In my, here in Los Angeles.
And it's sort of a telling of that story.
But then I wanted to talk, you know, a bit about some of the, you know, personal sort of, you know, things that I went through.
I mean, I had cancer when I was on MTV and I talked about that.
I had, you know, I made, I made this movie, Freddie Got Fingered, which was, you know, not critically, completely embraced.
So, you know, so it's like, I wanted to explain myself a bit, but then, you know, at the same time, there's a lot of people now that like the movie, believe it or not.
So I didn't want to completely, you know.
And hate the critics now.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's sort of like it was a very tricky balancing act.
And then on top of that, there's just so much footage and so many weird little funny clips that only I know are the ones that people like or people have or haven't seen.
And I kind of wanted to make sense of that all and piece it all together.
I don't think anyone else would have been able to find it all, you know?
Yeah.
So, hmm.
Was there a project that you kind of wanted to do over the years that you didn't really nail or you didn't, that something that didn't happen?
Was there something?
Because you've just done so much stuff.
I mean, you know, it's interesting because like, in fact, that's part of what the documentary is about.
Because when I was a got into making the show, when I was growing up, all I could even imagine myself doing was I wanted to be a talk show host.
You know, I wanted to do basically a show like David Letterman, right?
Have guests on and then I'd go out in the street and be a nutcase, you know, and do goofy stuff.
And I got to do that, you know, a few times over the years.
And, you know, when those shows go away, you know, initially when that happened, anyway, that was back in the day of MTV.
You know, the first show I stopped when I got sick.
So, you know, it didn't actually get canceled, the Tom Green show.
But then when I started, I did a nightly show, it kind of, you know, when it kind of got canceled, I was thinking, oh my gosh, you know, this is the worst thing that could ever happen to me that I could ever imagine that I'm not going to be able to do a nightly talk show.
You know, like this just was like, this was devastating to me, you know?
And as time marches on and I look at all the things that I've done instead, you know, into, you know, touring, doing stand-up or moving back to the farm and everything in between, I kind of realized, man, I'm kind of glad that actually didn't work out because if that show had been a big hit, then I would have been going down to the same studio every night for the last 30 years and I wouldn't have gotten to do all these other things.
So Freddy Got Fingered, of course, was a idiotic movie, purposefully so.
Yeah.
Did you guys make that yourselves?
Yeah, I wrote it with my friend Eric and I directed it.
You did?
Was it your first time you'd ever directed a movie?
It was, yeah.
Wow.
It was.
But it was, we had a budget, you know, it was 20th Century Fox.
We had, you know, because the show was doing good on MTV, so they let me direct it, you know, they let me do that, which was, you know, probably a mistake.
But no, they, no, it was, you know, we really pushed it to make it like, you know, we were in our 20s, you know, so the idea was, let's make this the craziest movie ever made.
You know, it's literally, we actually believed that we could do something like that, you know.
And so it gets complicated because then, you know, how do you define failure?
You know, like it's, it came out, Roger Ebert, and it wasn't Siskel.
It was the other guy.
He had another guy there.
Oh, the second shot.
Ebert and Roper.
Roper, they sent that guy in.
Yeah, even he didn't like it.
But even Roper didn't like it.
I mean, it wasn't even Siskel.
It was Roper, whoever that guy was.
But anyways, they trashed it.
And you're kind of thinking at the time, man, this is devastating.
Ebert and Roper are trashing my film, you know?
And you think, oh, you start to question, you know, every sort of choice you've made.
I don't know.
This guy looks like he also likes canned sardines at the same time.
And these days, nobody even trusts the critics anyway.
So it's kind of funny now that it's like.
Yeah.
At the time, like it was the end of, you know, the line if these guys trashed your movie.
It's like my first movie and all this stuff riding on it.
And then these kind of just destroyed it.
And I remember just sitting there like watching this, just thinking, oh my gosh, this is it.
You know, this is the end.
But, you know, it wasn't, you know, I just kept going, kept doing my thing.
And you look back at it and go, it's kind of funny now that they didn't like it.
Yeah, it's kind of awesome that they did.
It's weird because there's a weird sort of counterintuitiveness to it because we set out to make a movie that those guys would not like.
And then when they don't like it, you're upset about it.
Yeah.
It's like I kind of thought that they would sort of see the irony and go, I know we're not supposed to like this, but actually this kid's pretty clever.
No, no, they didn't say that.
What was the budget on that movie, you remember?
$14 million they spent on that.
Plus an additional $10 on promotion and advertising and stuff.
And you know what?
I will say it made it all back on DVD.
Remember DVD?
Remember they used to put DVDs out?
So I think I heard it made $35 million on DVD.
So it actually was a profitable movie.
Made $14 million at the box.
I'm here defending it now.
It made its money back.
It made its money back.
No, but it did.
So it did make its money back.
But, you know, Ebert and Ropert aren't going to tell you that, though, right?
They're not going to tell you that.
Well, it wasn't the Titanic, you know?
No, no, exactly.
It was.
I mean, it was in a way, in the sense that it bombed.
But, you know, it's funny.
It's funny, though, because there was a long period of time there where I was made to feel like it was a really bad decision.
And then in the last 10 years, it's like, you know, all I hear are people saying they love it.
Someone today showed me they had an X-ray cat tattoo, you know, like a character in the movie, you know?
So it's like, it is a little confusing when you talk about sort of, I mean, your question was, how do you handle things like failure and things like that?
It's like, you know, it's kind of the more of those kind of things you go through, the more you kind of learn to kind of embrace it in a way.
It's kind of, it's almost a good thing, you know?
Yeah, David Spit and I just wrote a movie together, not to name drop or anything, but we did and we just funded ourselves and stuff.
And so it's just kind of a scary time.
I think so that's why I'm asking that as well.
Not scary, it's exciting too, but it's also like, yeah, I just one day I'll be like, that's something I tried to do.
I was trying to be creative and we tried our best and I got to try it with, you know, somebody who I love to watch anyway.
Oh, that's cool.
So you've written it?
Are you going to go make the movie?
We have five days left shooting.
Oh, you're shooting the movie already.
We're going to start back tomorrow.
Kind of like a Joe Dirt 2-3 kind of thing?
Yeah, it's like a.
No, it's a good question.
It's like two guys, one of them gets hit by a vehicle.
My character gets hit by a car when he's young, and Spade rescues me.
Yeah.
And he and I become friends then, and he gets me a job.
Years later, we're working together at a sewage company.
Oh, nice.
A repo man kind of thing.
Yeah, type of shit.
Well, you know, the thing is that you're in good hands here because you're with a guy that's done this a lot before.
He's done it a lot.
And it's sort of a seasonal.
If I had to direct it too, I like to chime in with the director and stuff like that and throw in ideas and stuff like that.
But it's just definitely a big learning curve.
It's a lot.
So I can't imagine, especially in our budget, it's just a couple million bucks.
So if it were really big, that'd be really, I feel like it'd be scary kind of.
Yeah, I mean, back then we were shooting on film.
Oh, yeah.
Things cost more.
You know, it was, it was, at the time, was considered a low-budget movie, right?
But, you know, I think that, I don't know, it just seems like the way things get released these days and the ways people embrace weirdness these days, like I'm assuming it's kind of a weird movie in a way.
It's odd.
Yeah, just funny.
It's just like old school funny.
So like a funny movie, right?
Like, you know, you have this incredible thing going with your show here.
So you have your audience built in.
So you don't really have to worry about the same things that maybe back in the day when you put out something crazy and sort of in a sea of somewhat normal movies coming out every weekend all getting funneled through this sort of mainstream cinema right this conglomerate.
It's very strange.
We had to take the movie and focus group it.
And then people would sit there with pads.
And it was in Phoenix.
We flew down to Phoenix to focus group Freddy Got Fingers.
That's where they do a lot of them, huh?
Yeah, yeah.
For some reason, they do them there in Phoenix.
Then someone stands up after the movie and asks them what they didn't like about the movie.
Well, with Freddie Got Fingered, I mean, we're sort of supposed to not like any of these scenes.
You're supposed to be polarizing.
So it didn't really kind of work with the focus group system.
And then you had to make changes to it and all that kind of stuff.
But you guys probably have a lot more creative control over things.
I think we'll just make a trailer and put it out.
Yeah.
You know, I'm guessing I have no idea.
I'm just, I haven't, part of my brain hasn't even gotten to that thought yet.
You know, that's exciting.
But it definitely feels kind of, yeah, it feels like just like, well, I wanted to, you know, we tried to do it.
Who knows what will happen, you know?
No, it's going to be awesome.
Absolutely.
You and Spade, I'm going to go see that.
That's what we're doing.
Thanks.
I appreciate it.
Everybody will.
Everybody's going to love that.
It's going to be interesting.
Yeah.
That's what I'll say.
That's what I do.
Yeah.
I do believe that it'll be interesting.
Of course it will.
How did you deal, whenever there were tough times, like because you had so much of like recording yourself, like setting, you know, like kind of like living under your own recording schedule and stuff like that.
Were there days off like when you would just have your show from home, right?
Were there days where you would just like take off?
What was that shoot schedule like when you were doing the web show at home?
Well, I mean, it was so there wasn't really sort of a podcasting yet wasn't really a thing really, right?
So we built the studio and it would basically just stream to my website.
I mean, there was no Instagram yet.
YouTube had just started and people would come and watch it on the front page of TomGreen.com.
And we actually had like a company in San Francisco that made like the video playback system, you know, so it was CDN content distribution network.
It was basically, so we would upload a video to that.
We weren't uploading it to YouTube and linking it or there was, there was no YouTube really.
So it was kind of just a big sort of science experiment that I was doing with my group of friends.
And I had the sort of goal of trying to sort of make it a show that would become profitable, get advertisers and maybe sell it to television, which we did a little bit of that, you know.
So, you know, it was kind of pretty driven, I guess.
And it's kind of what I notice now with like podcasting, which is amazing, is like, you know, the people that have these incredible businesses that they've got going, these incredible, you know, artistic visions they have for themselves, they all kind of have that same kind of drive in them.
You know, they get up in the morning and their mind is just like, how are we going to make this better today?
You know, how are we going to make this awesome today?
So it was kind of like that.
We were getting up and turning on the studio every night.
And I'd be inviting up rappers and Too Short came up and Jurassic 5 and exhibit.
And then you'd wrap up comedian, invite comedians up, and Joe Rogan would come over.
And Norm McDonald, who I became good friends with, would start coming over all the time.
And literally hundreds and hundreds of people would come over.
And it became this kind of really fun thing to do.
I wasn't doing stand-up at the time.
I hadn't done stand-up in years.
So I was really just doing that.
And it was ridiculous.
I mean, we were just enjoying the absurdity of it.
Oh, yeah, was it so stressful?
It was because I put pressure on myself and I would actually get stressed out about it.
And then we would have people that would prank call us.
So I had this phone system on the desk and you could just call it and it would ring and I'd hit answer.
So we had like, you know, people trolling us basically.
I remember getting Rick rolled for the first time.
You know, and I was like, and it was like, oh, I've kind of felt like, I don't know if I'd ever heard of Rick rolling before I got Rick rolled.
Cool.
And it became kind of like a little bit of a game, you know, like where we were, there was a Switch that I'd built with Bill Snitzer was his name.
He worked there and Victor, a couple of the guys that worked there.
And we built the Switch under the desk.
It was like metal.
And it was like we got a metal box with a switch and we had wires and we soldered them together.
And then the wires ran out to the computer.
And then Bill was able to program the computer so that when like I flipped that switch, it would like if everything was off, it's the middle of the night in my house.
It's quiet night, nobody there.
And if I were to get up at one o'clock in the morning by myself and put clown makeup on, which I often did, and a top hat, and walk out into my living room and flick the switch, the switch would turn on the lights, would turn on the cameras, it would turn on the computers.
This computer would tell this computer to start recording.
The phone system would turn on.
It would send it to the front page of my website.
Just one switch.
I haven't done anything.
All I've done is put on some clown makeup and flip the switch, right?
You don't have to put on the clown makeup, but I did do that often.
Oh, yeah, you better.
It was called the French Clown of Midnight.
I'd speak it in French in a clown makeup.
And you wonder why it didn't work out.
And then the phone would start ringing, and I'd just be doing the show.
I'd have a switcher on the desk so I could switch the cameras and I would just start taking calls.
And it was really the only live video on the internet.
Like, really.
There was no Instagram live or anything.
So it was like, you imagine when I was a kid, I wanted to do, I like prank calling the radio station.
I'd like to call into the radio station.
And I would call into the radio station, and I'd record it.
And then I'd call into the radio station, and I'd pretend I was like my friend's father.
And I'd call in and I'd start complaining about my son.
And I'd use his name, and I'd play the tape back to him.
And it was hilarious to me, you know.
And so I loved that, like pranking a radio station.
And I kind of started to realize, like, we're the only live show on the internet right now with a phone with no call screener.
All these people like me around the world could now call in and prank me, you know?
And so we kind of got into this little sort of war, basically, you know, which is, which was fun because I would get angry about it, but then also I kind of didn't have to turn the phone on.
You know?
So it was really fun.
And, you know, I got to meet a lot of great people.
You know, I mean, that's where I really got to hang out with Joe Rogan for the first time, really, and Norm, who I became really close with, and so many other people.
And it was amazing.
Did Norm, did you talk to him much in the later years?
Yeah.
Well, at the very end, I did not know that he was sick.
I didn't know he was sick, so that was – Yeah.
And he's from my hometown.
He's from Ottawa, Canada.
And he started at the same comedy club that I started at Yuck Yucks in Ottawa.
Howard Wagman, who still owns the comedy club in Ottawa, Yuck Yucks, which is like all across Canada.
It's kind of like the improv of Canada.
I've heard of it.
I've been to one of them, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
So he's awesome.
And he put Norm on the stage for the first time.
And he tells his story about how Norm got off stage the very first time he did stand up.
He was in his 20s and he didn't think he did well.
And he was walking down the street.
I'm never going to do that again.
And Howard chased him down Spark Street in Ottawa and stopped and said, you got to come back tomorrow.
And he made him come back because he saw his genius, right?
Yeah, nobody was like him.
They were just talking about him.
I just watched the SNL monologue that he did one time.
Yeah.
That was pretty great where he's like, they fired me from the show, but now they want me back.
And now it just didn't even make any sense.
And he just kind of shit on the show.
It was weird, like, because it's weird.
Like, I find myself sometimes now talking about 2005, like it was 50 years ago or something like that.
But it really is.
Things have changed so much in the last 20 years with social media that it does really feel like kind of a different world.
Like I remember Norm would come up and the first time he came up, I just couldn't believe I was going to hang out with him, you know, and hang out with him for two hours on camera, sort of in some ways kind of doing a make-believe talk show, even though there were people watching.
It was kind of like, you know, experimental talk show.
And he was getting into that.
And then the show would end and we'd go, you know, on YouTube and go look at videos.
And it was like, I remember it was like YouTube was so new that it was just the strangest thing.
I'd be sitting with Norm McDonald after doing this for two hours and we'd be sitting there watching, you know, crazy clips that he would find, you know, like baby versus Cobra, you know, with the Cobra's mouth sewed together.
Those are good, yeah.
Grape Lady Falls.
I remember watching these videos with Norm and just dying of laughter, you know, in the middle of the night and just thinking, this is cool.
Now it's just so normal to look at viral videos and stuff.
But back then we thought we were just – I've never seen this video.
Oh, man.
I mean, it's a little bit, you kind of, can you play the audio too?
Is it possible?
Because the audio is sort of important for this one.
These are filled with chambers and grapes.
And the winner this Saturday who's Stump Music, eating international foods, having wine tours and tasting, vineyard tours, seminars, arts and crafts.
It's a lot of fun, a whole day.
Stop.
Oh, stop.
Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, stop.
Oh, I can't breathe.
Oh, no.
Oh, dear.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Ouch, ouch.
You're struggling not to.
That lady is a smallest head as well.
If people's heads are real small, they should not talk a lot.
I love that.
That's your takeaway from this.
Her head size as well.
It is true, though, by the way.
I'd never noticed that.
That lady is a very small head.
When people with small heads talk a lot, it feels like they're cheating the system a little bit.
I just feel like a regular head, you get a regular amount of words.
Small head, less words.
Don't do too much.
Right.
Or just at least just talk in sort of the amount of words that your head should justify, your head size should justify.
Don't be a crazy little head just doing a bunch.
I dated a girl one time for a while with a small head, beautiful girl, great girl, but knew when to talk, when not to talk.
You wouldn't see her just yammering on like some big head.
Yeah.
You know?
So I fucking.
Did you notice right away that she had a particularly small head or was that something that sort of dawned on you later?
She had big hair, big kind of Italian-ish hair.
And every now and then I would feel her head and I was like, oh, I feel like there should be a little more head here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So once you got under the hair, it was puffed out probably purposefully.
We probably knew that her small surprise.
It was an espionage mirage.
Yeah.
Hiding it a little bit.
Yeah, and you'd totally self-conscious of it.
Yeah.
Could have been.
But yeah, cool girl, small head, but knew how to use it, right?
Yeah.
Not somebody that was ambivalent to their head size and is just running around just squawking at the moon every chance they get.
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Did you, yeah, what did I do?
Oh, yeah, I just went to the SNL 50th.
Oh, yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah, I know.
Was that incredible?
It was cool.
You got to host it.
I did.
I know.
That's amazing.
I was on tour.
I wasn't able to go.
I would have loved to have gone to that.
That must have been wild.
I went to the 40th.
And I remember that was, that is just the most surreal thing.
If it's anything, I imagine it was.
Like, just everybody is there, right?
Yeah, I guess go to the music night.
And then I'm buddies with Louis C.K. He took me to Chris Rock's birthday party.
Oh, nice.
On Saturday night, which was crazy because Chris Rock was always like my favorite comedian growing up.
And so just to even be able to be there, I definitely felt like out of place or whatever, but it was also cool, you know, just to like, you know, kind of fly on the wall there.
So did you do really actually feel out of place there?
Yeah, 100%.
And why do you think that is?
Just like, it feels like kind of fancy, you know?
I mean, I could tell right when I saw Chris Rock how I felt.
Like some people, you don't get nervous on him or you've seen him a couple times.
And so there becomes a little bit ambiance, you know?
But I just didn't know him.
And so, yeah, I think that created some of the nervous energy.
Some other people I did know, so it wasn't that bad, but I got introduced to people that I didn't know.
And so you're always like, I don't know, always, I don't usually say a lot then.
I'll kind of just be a listener.
Yeah.
You know?
See, I get like that too.
And I wish I didn't.
This sort of social anxiety when you're in an environment like that where there's just all these, you know, people that you admire and respect and are around you and every, everybody, it's, I kind of, I kind of don't even feel like myself.
You know, it's a sort of a very stressful thing for me.
Yeah.
So in some ways I was kind of.
That's a good word.
It's stressful.
Yeah, yeah.
And I don't know why that is.
Why is that?
Well, I think it's because you're a little bit probably, I don't know how I fit in this circle.
There's a lot of circles in the world where I. But you're on top of the world right now.
You just interviewed the president of the United States.
I mean, everybody, you've got this incredible show.
I mean, I'm sure everybody was super excited to see you there.
So you probably don't really have any reason to feel nervous, but you still do, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah, I just didn't know.
I hadn't been in that circle before.
It's kind of like, I guess, when you're in a, I don't know, when you're in, just feel like you're in a new water, you're figuring out the temperature.
You don't know, you know, you don't want to make a lot of noise at somebody's birthday party.
They are seeing friends that they know.
It's not a huge group of people.
So you just want to kind of, you know, you don't want to overstay your welcome, you know, kind of type of, type of energy, you know?
Yeah.
I don't need to tell a big story.
They all, they know each other.
I'm just happy to be here.
Yeah.
Happy to be able to see somebody celebrate their birthday, to witness people that I admire from a little bit of away, you know, from a little closer than I'm usually allowed to get to them, you know, online or on TV, I guess.
But the SNL thing was we went to the music.
They had a music show.
At Radio City, yeah.
Yeah.
And that's the part that I got to go to.
And that was pretty cool.
Just seeing different bands jelly roll performed.
And so I know him.
Nice.
And so there was, yeah, and I got to bring a friend.
And so I knew my buddy was, you know, we were just kind of milling around, running into some people that we knew and meeting some new people, but it was pretty chill.
So when you went to the inauguration, too, right?
Yeah, I went to the inauguration, yeah.
So like when you go to the inauguration and you've already, now you know the president of the United States because you'd had this interview with him.
Yeah.
Like do you get to kind of hang out with him at the inauguration or no, no.
I didn't see any of them.
I was in like the second tier of humans there or something, you know, like there was a first tier and then I was in like this a second tier of humans that were there.
But that's got to be kind of still interesting nonetheless to be there.
Oh, it was interesting, very interesting.
Cause I never, you don't even know if like the process is real.
You see it on TV, but it's like, who knows if that shit's real?
Who knows what's real anymore?
So to witness that was pretty cool.
Just to be in Washington, D.C. is always pretty neat with all the architecture.
But I don't know Trump like that.
Like I'll message with his daughter sometimes, Ivanka.
Okay.
So I'm able to communicate with her.
What do you guys talk about?
She'll just send me a book that she thinks I would like.
Really?
We went to dinner one time.
She's so smart.
Yeah, okay.
It's mind-blowing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so.
Go to dinner with her a lot or?
No, I only went one time.
That's pretty cool.
Was her husband Jared there or was it just you two?
He wasn't.
It was other friends of hers.
Okay.
Not trying to break any news here, but it sounds interesting.
Not at all.
I wish there were news to break, dude.
She's stunning.
She's awesome.
And then there's like a middleman who worked with the, I guess, I guess he worked with the Republican Party, and he got to invite some people.
Yeah.
So it was just a motley group of strange people that went to the inauguration.
So how did that work?
So can I ask you questions?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
So when he came on your show, right, it was right before the election, and he was doing a lot of podcasts and stuff.
Did he approach you or did they call you?
His son is a fan of your show, right?
Is that what it is?
Yeah, that's what he said.
He said Barron was a fan of the show.
And I tried to get to see Barron, but I didn't get to meet him.
So you just got a call one day and Trump wanted to come on the show?
Well, I'd met Trump a couple times at UFC.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
UFC, I think, had everything to do with winning the election probably for the Republicans.
Yeah, yeah.
Because Daniel White is just such a facilitator.
He just gets things done.
He kept his sport going while all the other sports were shut down.
A lot of them were shut down or having to practice really intense methods during COVID.
You know, he was able to keep his sport going.
And so he brought Trump to a lot of his events because they've been friends for a long time.
And so I'd met him there a couple of times.
And then I knew his brother died of alcoholism.
So I was like, well, let me call him and let me ask Dana if Trump would ever talk about his brother.
I didn't know about it, you know?
And just to see what he's like, is he just all a Business guy?
Does he think about other things?
Because when you're, you don't get a lot of, you don't hear a lot about his feelings, Trump's feelings.
And if you do, he doesn't communicate it in a way where it's very emotional to people.
I don't feel like, right?
So I was just curious about that.
So, yeah, I called up Dana and he said, we'll make it happen, you know?
And then two days later, he called back and he said, all good.
Somebody from his group's going to reach out to you.
And you went to him, right?
And we went to him up in New Jersey, yeah.
And we offered, we would have, we would have loved to had Harris and Walls on.
We're still trying to get Walls on.
We tried to get Harris on even after the election, but they just didn't want to come.
Yeah.
And so it's kind of a bummer, you know, because I think.
Seems like that was a pretty big mistake.
They didn't go on a lot of the shows.
Yeah, I think it would have just let them be more normal.
I think people are, if something's too much behind the glass these days, people don't trust the glass.
I don't even think that they don't trust the person behind the glass.
I think they just don't trust the fucking glass, if that makes any sense.
Yeah.
No, it does.
Yeah, so I guess that was all kind of interesting.
I'm kind of out of sorts with the way that they're handling like the Gaza Palestine stuff.
Like that shit really, I think, is insane to me.
You know, but that's just, you know, I don't know.
That's just my thoughts.
It's kind of an endless sort of, you know, quagmire you can find yourself in once you start talking in this world we're living in now because it's like you know you go on the road you do stand-up all around the country and you know everybody's sort of divided in a way right and then you start sort of firmly choosing a side and all of a sudden half the audience doesn't want to have any fun anymore right so
it's kind of like you got to we find we got to make these choices now like okay well do i do i want to give my opinion anymore about what's going on in the world uh you know and then you know you have to choose one of the you know set of opinions that are on this side or the set of opinions that are all evenly and neatly put on this side and as soon as you state your opinion about one of these issues that just happens to be on this side then anybody that doesn't agree with you no longer you know wants to wants to fuck with you
and and and come to your show or have a good time or have a laugh with you you know so it's just such a shitty thing to have to deal with that right yeah so how do you how do you kind of like uh you know juggle that you know because i you know as canadian you know look it's like right now in canada people are pretty upset you know with uh you know with donald trump because uh he's putting these tariffs on canada right and saying they're going to make us a 51st state saying they're going to annex canada people aren't too happy about the idea of uh you know being taken over by the united states of america it doesn't mean it's not something that people are super
excited about hearing you know so you know you kind of you kind of go it's funny because i sometimes i think like well i think a lot of americans who aren't don't think about it that much might think like oh canada is going to be the 51st state i bet you everyone in canada must be really excited about being the 51st state of the united states but you know i'm kind of saying well no it'll probably be the first state in america that nobody in it wants to be america you know so uh so because you know we've we've got our own country it's not that we
don't don't love america i love america but we you know we sort of have our our our entire different culture you know you go to canada all the time right yeah i love it and i'm glad it's different we're different right it's a different thing yeah it's different you're nice to a you know people will be somebody will walk across the street in canada and just come tell you they're sorry and then go back across the street and then nothing even happened they're not even they just came off just to apologize there's no even you've never seen them before you know um but it's canada's the best i think canada gives
me hope for humanity a lot of times it's good people you know like um i love canada i wish i i wish that there was there's times i've wanted to be be Canadian even what's uh you remember the first time you went to Canada yeah Vancouver yeah and was that um recently or brothel or hostel I slept at a hostel okay yeah yeah and how many years ago would that have been that was probably 15 18 years ago 17 years ago and it was great man I had a great time stand up there or were you I hadn't started
I just almost started stand up I was doing I was traveling I was left out of there on a school floating university left out of Vancouver called semester at sea yeah yeah and it went around the globe and we left out of Vancouver but I went up to Whistler I went and caught a ride some guy took me hitchhiking up to Whistler I drove me up there and the dude the guy who drove me he was a caretaker for Superman who had died remember Superman who got in the wheelchair yeah Christopher Reeves Christopher Reeves he was his caretaker okay okay this guy Michael
and I think I met him I was at some shop right around there and uh he was saying if he was in the area or something he's like I'm taking a drive up to Whistler I was like oh can I roll with you he's like yeah so he took me up to Whistler man brought me back we stopped along the way went on some hikes and stuff yeah yeah yeah it was amazing yeah but I've always enjoyed Canada I used to have a dream that I would meet a wife in Toronto yeah but I waited two weeks of comedy up there didn't meet any wives yeah well it could still happen for
sure yeah you find the audiences react differently they're great halifax was one of my favorite shows I've ever had in my life yeah yeah dude I even made my little nephew made up this joke he said oh oh I told it I told it on stage I was like yeah I heard one time that there wasn't any more fish up here and so they changed the name to no fish scotia and nobody laughed right still it
was fucking funny that's why I'm laughing because I can imagine the reaction sometimes there's something great when they don't laugh no sure there's some little thing in there it's like oh that's pretty good yeah absolutely you know yeah but uh but yeah always had a great love for Canada I think it's bizarre that Trump would say something like that and it's also like I it just but what do you expect out of him you know and what do you expect about the media to spotlight things and make it whatever it is even if it's a seed of something to grow it into
a million plants you know yeah no it's uh it's interesting I think you know there's a thing that's going on the hockey games in Canada now where the USA and Canada are playing and you know they Canadian fans were booing the anthem right and You know, sometimes I go like, well, I don't, you know, based on the reaction on social media, I sort of feel like maybe not everybody in the U.S. necessarily understands why that's happening.
You know, they don't know it's about the tariffs.
You know, they're not booing the national anthem.
They're booing the fact that these tariffs are being put on, you know, which is going to, of course, devastate, you know, the economy on both sides will suffer from that, right?
I'm sitting here talking about it.
Like I know about it.
I should probably know more about it.
But it's like, you know, I think people are just kind of like, why are you guys doing this to us?
So it's kind of an interesting thing.
But you want to talk about issues sometimes and then you go, okay, I've just waded into this sort of hornet's nest and I'm never going to hear the end of it.
So it is interesting.
What was it when you were at the inauguration, after the inauguration, where you're like kind of just, are you kind of, who are you hanging out with there?
Like I went, who did I meet?
I met this kid, Alexander Wang.
We just had a podcast episode with him.
He created this company called Scale AI.
He's like this AI.
He's the youngest billionaire ever, this Chinese kid from New Mexico.
Wow.
Fascinating dude.
Self-made billionaire.
Self-made billionaire.
Yeah.
So I ended up having lunch with him.
That was probably the neatest thing that happened that weekend.
Did you pick up the tab?
I think I paid actually.
You paid?
I didn't know he was a billionaire.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
That's why he's a billionaire.
He's letting everyone else pick up the tab.
I was just happy to be dining with the Chinese, you know?
Yeah, that's amazing.
And, oh, it was great, man.
And then who else?
Something else happened at night.
Oh, I saw Wayne Gretzky lost his tooth.
Wow.
And then anything.
I saw Joe Rogan for a few minutes.
I saw Tony Hinchcliffe from Kill Tony.
Yeah, yeah.
And then that was kind of it.
And then I went home.
It was too much, like too hard to get around.
I saw Lex Friedman.
That was pretty neat.
I'd never met him.
He's a podcaster.
Yeah, I've met him at the mothership before.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, so it was just, that was kind of, those were some of the neat parts of it.
Yeah, yeah.
It's amazing.
Just getting to see some different folks.
Yeah, I think they're having issues.
Even in America, they're having, I just saw that there's a part of Oregon that wanted to secede from Oregon.
Yeah.
They're going to become Canada's 11th province.
Good.
I would love it if we started trading pieces of art.
Now, that I'm totally for.
New York and California.
come join Canada and...
Take one of them.
You guys can, you know, take...
I'm not going to say who you guys can take, but, you know, because we...
You've got to be political.
Sacre bleu.
That's all I'll say, brother.
No, no, it's just me in Quebecois, actually.
Je-Paul Fraser.
I lived in Quebec a lot in my life.
You did?
Yeah, so I grew up in Quebec.
So I love Quebec, yeah.
You must have been up to the Montreal Festival over the years.
Yeah, we went there a couple times.
I love Quebec.
It's fun.
Yeah, Edmonton, we got some other places we want to, too.
Calgary and Ottawa and Winnipeg, we're going to go to this year.
Oh, yeah.
So when you're in Ottawa, maybe if you're rolling past the farm and the tour bus, come by the farm and we'll go ride some mules or something.
How far outside of town are you guys?
About like an hour or so.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, yeah.
So sort of not too far, you know.
I'll come pick you up in my pickup truck.
We'll go hang out.
Do you think you'll have a now that you're kind of feeling settled out there, do you think, do you start thinking about starting a family or no?
Yeah, definitely.
You know, I'm getting married, so might it, you know, knock on wood.
Everything goes well.
And with that, and, you know, maybe there'll be some, we'll see.
We'll have to ask my fiancé if I think she would want to do that.
Yeah, you got to include her.
Yes, yes, yeah, for sure.
No, I think that's a possibility for sure.
Was it for a while, did you think that that wasn't going to be a part of your life?
I was starting to question whether or not it was going to be part of my life because, you know, I mean, I think you kind of alluded to this earlier.
You know, you want to, you know, if you're going to get married, you want to get married to somebody that you, you know, love and actually think that this could, you know, last forever, right?
I was starting to question whether or not that was maybe possible.
You know, I wasn't sure if that was possible anymore to find somebody that I thought would last forever with.
But, you know, when I met Amanda, she's outside.
I'm hoping I'm getting some brownie points here.
But I realized this is the one.
So, but it's, you know, until you meet that person, you know, it does start to feel kind of like.
Jeez, it's getting a little kind of uncertain here.
Yeah, like I'm loitering.
Yeah, yeah.
So, but.
Yeah, I think that's how I think about it because I think when you're younger, like you have this feeling of like this young love energy type of thing.
And that starts to, it feels, that feels less possible the older we get kind of, you know, it just starts to dissipate or it's like, oh, well, I just, I'm too wise now or I've had too much experience now that I'm never going to have that sort of like whimsical feeling of like, you know, that a 17 year old or a 23 year old would have, you know?
But it's nice to know that that can kind of sneak up and surprise you, you know?
Yeah.
I think kind of, I mean, I think being home where I'm from helped, you know, because it's like, I don't know, I mean, if you're not from Los Angeles, then it's kind of a weird place.
If you're from Los Angeles, it's normal.
But if you're not from Los Angeles, you know, it's kind of a weird place.
So, you know, you're here probably focused on your career and your work, and so many other people are.
It's kind of hard to, I think, find, you know, a good I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems like it is kind of harder in this environment to find somebody that you can.
I mean, I don't know.
Are people watching going, are we going to be taking relationship advice from me?
I don't know, I don't know if that's...
I've always felt that thing, like, well, if I met somebody, would they ever leave here with me?
Because I'm not going to stay here forever.
Right.
That's exactly what I was trying to say.
So that, I think, is a, yeah, I think that's totally common.
But you said you don't live here full-time now?
I live in Tennessee.
I moved during the pandemic, too.
Nashville?
Yeah.
Oh, cool, cool.
I moved during the pandemic.
Whenever Trump was talking about Canada, what was, can you bring it up, Nick?
So I just want to know what he even was saying.
Like, what were they threatening?
They were threatening to tariff Canadian goods, just so our listeners can know what exactly was even going on.
They're going to put a tariff on everything.
You know, Canada is the largest trading partner of the United States.
Nice.
And so much of the goods that come into the United States from Canada are being brought in by American businesses to, you know, like wood.
You bring wood and lumber in to build houses, right?
So when you put a 25% tariff on lumber, that means everybody that flannel.
If you're a big flannel company making flannel pajamas, all of a sudden flannel pajamas are going to be 25% more expensive.
So it's really going to affect businesses on both sides of the border, obviously, not just Canada, but also everything will go up in price.
So I'm not exactly sure the reason for it, to be honest with you.
He was really saying they weren't helping out with border security.
And that's what 30 days probation period, they did put a bunch of people out the border.
Absolutely.
And I don't think there's a real border security problem between Canada and the United States, though.
The hardest country to get into in the world, I think, is Canada.
Yeah.
I mean, it's...
Yeah, it's you know, the claim that there's fentanyl coming into the United States from Canada, I think, is a little bit exaggerated because I don't really think that that's actually the case.
Something like, you know, a very small amount is coming in from Canada.
Tariffs are a central part of Trump's economic plans.
He promised to introduce import duties against some of America's main trade partners during his election campaign.
He said tariffs will boost U.S. manufacturing and protect jobs as well as raising tax revenue and growing the economy.
Fentanyl is linked to tens of thousands of overdose deaths.
Taking bold action to hold Mexico, Canada, and China accountable to their promise of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country.
It just seems kind of vague.
You know, I think it's sort of like.
But like, what would you do?
Like, I'm trying to see.
Say if you bring a bunch of stuff into my country, right?
Say if you and I live in different countries and you bring a bunch of stuff into my country or I bring a bunch of stuff in your country.
And then you say, okay, I'm going to tax that more.
I'm going to charge you more to bring that in if you don't help stop the fentanyl that's coming in.
I just, I don't know.
How would you then do that?
What would you then on your side?
Would you say, okay, we'll put more, what, drug dogs and security along the border?
I think that's what he's asking them to do.
You know, and I think we already do have, again, I'm not a representative of the Canadian government, but I do think that we already do have a lot of there's only so much you can do to seal off a border, right?
And I don't think there is that much fentanyl coming in from Canada, really.
I never heard that that was a thing.
Yeah, I think it mostly does come in from the southern border.
That's what I would think.
I wonder if maybe you guys got grandfathered into some, you know, some late-night Trump rhetoric there.
It feels a little bit like that, but hopefully it'll resolve itself.
I do think that it's probably going to end up causing a lot of economic problems on both sides of the border, and probably they may not go for it.
It'll be sports exciting for a while, though.
Yeah, exactly.
That's a side effect.
It was a good fight right off the top of the game the other day.
You know, it was pretty cool.
We like a good hockey fight, so that's cool.
And it is nice when countries sometimes don't get along a little bit in sports, right?
I've always admired that.
That's one thing I don't like about the NBA anymore.
All the players, it just seems like they all know each other.
Nobody's really playing for their squad sometimes.
Okay.
So I like a little bit more of that energy.
Maybe more fights in the NBA with good physical fights.
Yeah, look at that.
Oh, definitely.
I believe both those players are American, too.
I'm not sure how quickly your researcher can tell us that.
But even though the Canadian team Canada didn't get the win in this game, I know.
Maybe that's not true at all, what I just said.
I don't know if Canada got the win in this game.
but that's okay.
Yeah, we lost the game.
Absolutely.
Which is really kind of, But it is nice to see everybody having a good time watching a hockey fight, for sure.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
What else did I see in the news that I just saw was happening?
Oh, yeah.
It was that contraception begins at erection now.
So there's a law that they're pushing.
Ohio Democratic lawmakers propose conception begins at erection.
Okay.
So they're trying to put it on the men a little bit more.
So what exactly are they going to do about this now?
Well, a new bill in Ohio would make it a crime for men to ejaculate without intending to have a baby.
Oh, wow.
That's definitely something that I could see a lot of people probably would be guilty of for sure.
Hey, shooters shoot, you know?
Yeah, yeah, I could see that being.
I mean, I don't want to get into too much personal detail, but I think I'd probably be locked up for a long time.
Hey, yeah.
We're going to visit Tom this weekend again.
Yeah, he's behind bars.
Yeah, my gosh.
I thought he was going to get paroled.
Plenty of time to break the law in jail, though.
And they put a monitor like wraps around your wiener, and it just like, if it just goes off if it gets too hard.
Now, I'm assuming this is a parody site, but the world's so crazy right now that I'm actually asking this for real.
Is this a real article?
This is a real article right there.
Yep.
Let's zoom in on.
I'm going to read it a little bit.
Okay.
So this is not The Onion or something like that or Mad Magazine or something?
No, this is one of those good radishes that they have out there.
Conception begins, and it rhymes nicely too.
Conception begins at erection act.
I mean, it's a nice rhyme to it, which is also nice.
If you're going to penalize someone for an unwanted pregnancy, why not penalize the person who is also responsible for the pregnancy?
Now, I can't say I don't agree with this.
It's like, then you're going to have a lot more people $10,000 per discharge.
But here's the thing.
Some dudes are just running around skating or whatever they call it, and I don't know what they call it in different countries, but they're not going to have an extra $10,000 on them.
You're going to have the court system would be filled with every kid in the world, every 14-year-old kid.
Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming, yeah, does this, I don't know how much I want to talk about this in detail with you.
I'm going to say, you don't get pregnant on your own.
A felony for men to discharge semen without the intent to fertilize.
That is an amazing amazing idea i mean i actually would love to see that sort of applied that law just to see what would happen i mean it would be interesting to see what would happen it's genital communism in a way i guess it's genital communism is it absolutely yeah absolutely she introduced legislation that would make it a felony to discharge semen without the intent to fertilize so money and state representative tristan rader uh joined forces to propose a bill nicknamed conception begins at erection there are some exceptions
such as when protection or contraceptions are used during sex it also wouldn't apply when an individual is masturbating donating sperm or yeah or if the intercourse that's taking place between members of the lgbt plus community and thus doesn't produce ova so gay people would be able to just jerk off on each other and they don't suffer any of the consequences after rape but if you're not yeah what's up if a couple of straits get caught you know this is just charging yeah this
is unfair on so many levels well it's just it's beyond ridiculous what's going on here republican activist austin bigel laughed it's a mockery of the most basic biological conceptions um and now i i still i'm sort of kind of can't believe this is a real article well i think their purpose in this was saying if you think it's absurd to regulate men that you think you should think it's equally absurd to regulate women so money responded i'm guessing that there was a um an original idea that i see i see okay
of course yeah about i understand taking on reproductive rights for women absolutely so huh i don't know man a good idea i'd run up a tab i know that they're making a valid point when you put it that way absolutely i'd run up a tab um did you when you hosted snow what was that like for do you recall kind of some of the energy of that night or it was it was uh a wild somewhat terrifying experience um you know i um i
had just gone through some pretty i'd gone through just gone through surgery like a from yeah yeah and i'd had this lymph node dissection and i was kind of like it had affected my sort of uh energy levels and a lot so it was kind of there was a lot going on in my life when i actually got the call to do that show um and to do saturday night live and um you know it was really cool though the thing that was cool about it was um you know lauren michaels who's
canadian and i was just so kind of sort of kind of sort of uh overwhelmed that i was it was asked to do it right yeah and uh i had a couple of friends who i grew up with who worked on my show with me and i said you know can they come in and like kind of work with me and do some help write some skits and stuff so they gave us a little office and that stuff we went and then we used sort of writing skits up and everything and uh you know they actually kind of ended up giving me a lot of
kind of creative freedom on the show to kind of write sketches and stuff and um you know in hindsight i kind of wish they hadn't no like they had just written them themselves yeah well because because we really kind of made some really weird fucking sketches you know i think maybe it would have been cool if i maybe i had just gone in and done the stuff that they had written but like i was i was sort of definitely you know freddy got fingered hadn't come out yet so like i i was still kind of riding high on this hit
show and we come in and we said okay now let's write some crazy sketches right and uh i mean the stuff we wrote was really really weird you know and um and uh were you intent on making it weird do you feel like i think we were yeah like how weird can we make this yeah it's snow let's make it ours i think so i think so and uh you know sometimes i think there was a miscon misperception maybe amongst some of the cast that i brought my own writers in which wasn't really the case it was more like um it was my buddies and
i was they'd come up with me with the show you know it was kind of like we were you know when we made the show in canada they some of my friends came down with me to the states to like this is part of the team it's not a lot of fun so let's come on and i want them to be included in in the in the in the show so we kind of went in and did that but i mean it's uh it was an amazingly exciting experience i mean my parents were there on stage with me you know um you know there was it was one of those things where you kind of can't believe that you actually that it actually happened
while it was happening you know and uh i did a lot of sketches with will farrell one one of the like here's an example of something that i i wouldn't say i regret this but like uh but um i kind of regret this um so so there was a there was a sketch where i'm a wizard and there i'm holding a pig like an actual pig and uh and it was molly shannon and and will and i'm a wizard and i didn't really have any lines in the sketch or many lines in the sketch it
was mostly will and molly were doing this uh sketch and but i noticed during rehearsal that if i like if i just kind of lightly sort of tickled the pig's belly with my finger that it would start to squeal extremely loud right and so i did that once during rehearsal and then somebody said oh you better not um you know she'll squeal if you touch her belly and so i said okay oh yeah and there's a rehearsal show and then there's the actual show right and you know i kind of maybe
regret this but i did note that okay let's get through the rehearsal show but then live i'm gonna make that pig squeal right yeah so it started kind of uh no but it was it was kind of uh it kind of threw the the sketch off a little bit squealing i realized that it did kind of throw the rhythm of the of the comedy off a little bit but uh how many times did you squeal it it just sort of became sort of a bit of a a bit of a mess
but uh and were you getting a squeal every time he touched his belly or did you have to really no i just had to kind of just lightly sort of pat her there and she would just start you know so it was but it was amusing to me but i'm not sure if anybody else enjoyed it that much but yeah but uh sister's like that.
If you touch her lunch, you know, she fucking gets a little animated if you grab any of her talkies out of her little dish.
Right.
It was like that.
Yeah.
So, so, but, um, you know, it was no, it was an amazing experience.
I was total honored to be able to do it.
And, you know, I mean, I, I, I, you know, it was cool.
I mean, the cast was Jimmy Fallon, Tina Faye, Will Farrell, Chris Katan, Molly Shannon, Anna Gastire, Tracy Morgan.
And, you know, you know, there was, it's a weird environment like Saturday Night Live, especially when you're young and you don't really know.
Like, you know, we were talking earlier about like going to, you were talking about going to Chris Rock's party and like you didn't know how to act or whatever because there's all these people here and it's kind of complicated.
Yeah.
So you're getting thrust into an environment like that and then it's even as the host, it sort of felt like kind of a competitive environment because, you know, all the cast members are trying to write sketches and get them on the air everyone every week.
And I didn't really know how it worked really at the time.
In hindsight, I now realize how it works and I might have done things differently.
But when we were trying to put these sketches on the air that we were writing, maybe that was kind of pushing another sketch off.
And we didn't really, I wasn't really thinking of it like that.
So it kind of created, it's kind of a weird environment.
And the more I kind of, you know, sort of hear people on podcasts who've been on the show talk about the show, it seems like everybody's gone through that experience who's been on that show where it's very competitive and stressful for people.
And that makes me feel a little bit better about my experience there because it was kind of a stressful experience because you know everybody's going to be watching the show.
It's live.
And you're doing all this weird stuff that's not necessarily a little bit out of my element.
I didn't do sketch comedy.
That's scary.
So it was cool.
It sounds like it's par for the course a little.
Because, yeah, I mean, even Adam Selmer the other night was singing.
He had a musical tribute that he did to the 50 years.
And he referenced a couple times about people having sketches that they wrote that didn't get on the show.
So I think that seems like it was just a weekly occurrence.
And of course, you want to go in there with a little bit more comfort zone for yourself.
You know, it's like, yeah, if we can write a couple of them or we can have some manipulation over them, it's probably going to make you feel more comfortable.
Another thing that was weird that happened on the show, so like, so there was a sketch that I did, oh, it's called a sketch, like I did with Will Farrell, where we're both dressed as eagles.
And this was one of the ones that my friends and I wrote.
Okay.
It's sort of hard to sort of say that we wrote it, but the sketch was, you know, Jimmy Fallon and Molly Shannon are looking at Will and I, who are eagles, right?
We wrote this out, by the way, on paper and handed it in.
And then they said to do it.
And then Will and I decide to fly up into the audience, okay?
And I thought it would be fun to go in the audience.
So we fly into the audience, and then we chew up carrots.
And then I believe Will chews up a carrot, and I believe he sort of spits the carrot into my mouth.
And then kind of we end up sort of, because you know how baby birds will chew up the food and feed it, mother birds will chew up the food and sort of make it easier for the baby to eat.
So this was the sketch we did.
Oh, yeah.
But so somehow I kind of maybe probably would have been better if we just kind of did the sketches that their writers have made.
Oh God, huh?
And these are both males, huh?
Yeah.
So we're doing this.
Yeah, exactly.
So we're doing this.
What Zoo is that at, huh?
That's what I'm talking about.
That's the West Hollywood Aquarium right there, brother.
I'll tell you that, huh?
Yeah, so we're doing this sketch, this skit.
And so, you know, when you host the show, you got to run to get ready for the next sketch because you got to take off your Eagle costume and put on another costume, right?
And so I'm running down the stairs and I'm running through the backstage area and just sitting in the darkness, you know, just backstage.
Tom Hanks is just sitting there in front of a monitor watching the show.
And I'm in the Eagle costume.
I'd just done that.
I make eye contact with Tom Hanks.
So now I'm like, oh, I was already kind of nervous.
Now like I got Tom Hanks in the dark watching and I'm going like, how did that eagle sketch go?
And I'm sort of getting ready for the next sketch.
Not sure how the eagle sketch went and Tom Hanks is watching.
So it kind of throws you a little bit.
But then there's a big after party after the show and Tom Hanks was real nice and he was hanging out talking to my parents and stuff.
And so it was pretty cool.
But no, it was an amazing thing.
It's a kind of thing, though, like it's kind of like you go, geez, it would be nice to be able to do it again someday.
Because I think like doing it the first time is sort of so I don't know that that would ever happen, but probably in an alternate universe, I might be able to do it again someday.
But you go, okay, I sort of understand how the system of it works now.
And it would be, you know, probably, you know, I probably would not have done that.
Yeah, but also it's great that you did, though.
It's so epic.
And yeah, I think you're right about that.
It's like a lot of things in life.
You're like, man, I wish I had gotten a trial run or had a little bit of an idea of how the feelings were or what the energy was like in that space or that room or like, man, there's been things you go out on a stage, part of a show or a banquet, some type of thing, and you just play the room totally wrong.
That didn't seem like that, but there's definitely times like that in life and you wish, you're like, man, I wish I'd get one more swing at it.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, I think that, you know, that generally you can at least take those lessons and apply them to something else.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
So, yeah.
Was Michael Jackson there whenever you guys played?
Who was y'all's musical guest?
No, it was not Michael Jackson, but that would have been amazing if it was Michael Jackson.
No, it was David Gray.
But, man, it would have been amazing.
Nothing against David Gray, but you had to have David Gray play.
Have you ever interacted with Michael Jackson in any way?
No.
No, that would have been amazing.
But yeah, he was great.
I would love to see another weird thing that happened on the show.
One thing that was weird that happened on the show.
So I was backstage getting ready for the show.
I don't even know if I should tell the story.
I don't even know if I should tell this story.
Maybe it's not.
Let's talk about something else.
It's a weird story.
No worries.
Yeah, Tom Hanks was there the other night.
I didn't get to see him.
Oh, I got to see Madonna.
She's little.
Okay.
Where was that?
Such a little baby carrot.
She was at that SNL thing.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was just interesting.
So were you chatting with Madonna?
No, no, no, no, no.
She's quite quite interesting on TikTok these days.
Oh, is she?
She does some pretty sort of out there stuff on her TikTok.
I got to follow her.
I got to check her out.
When you have these you beat cancer, right?
Has it flared back up?
What's that been like?
No, no, it's completely gone.
Do they have to take out one of your gonads or not?
One testicle, yeah.
My right testicle and some lymph nodes as well.
And what are the lymph nodes like?
Is that actually in the testicle?
No, the lymph nodes are actually behind your intestines.
And they have to, like, they cut me up here, and they have to remove those.
And that was just to check to see if the cancer had spread into them.
Wow.
And, you know, the only way they could really check and know for 100% sure if it had spread was to take them out and look at them under a microscope and stuff.
So they had not spread.
So then that meant I did not have to have chemo and stuff.
But they did take my right testicle, which was honestly like when I found out, the show was on MTV at the time.
And you have it still.
Yeah, I did not keep it like indefinitely, but that is it in a plastic bag right there.
How many ounces is it?
Do you know?
I don't remember weighing it exactly, but I know it's quite heavy for sure.
Oh, hell yeah.
I can give you that.
Fuck yeah, no, we don't have any light testicles around here.
But we filmed the whole sort of surgery for a show on MTV.
That's actually the whole show there, The Cancer Special, which is on YouTube.
But you'd see my documentary on Prime too where it kind of walks through that whole...
And here he is sort of after my surgery coming down and playing with my testicle.
A little bit of sashimi there.
Yeah, it's a little sashimi.
Yeah, that's what he says.
It sort of looks like chicken.
And then my mom says, I don't know what kind of chicken you're eating.
Yeah, so that is my cancer-infected testicle right there.
But I still have the left one.
It's the middle one now.
I can still ejaculate just a little.
No, it's pretty good, actually.
Heck yeah, dude.
It's going to cost you $10,000 if you drive over to Ohio and do it.
I'll tell you that, bro.
Look, why would you stop in Missowaka?
Only five grand for me.
Oh, yeah.
Which is a benefit in Ohio to have a testicular cancer.
You can kind of.
God, brother.
The terrorists they would rack up.
They'd make a million bucks a night in that state.
That's not a bad idea.
No, not a bad idea, for sure.
Did you ever wear a prosthetic testicle?
It was offered, and I refused to do it.
Not refused, but I just sort of opted out on the prosthetic.
Did you ever look at him at least?
I think I did.
Yeah, I think I did.
This was, you know, 20 years ago.
But I'd heard, the doctor kind of said, you know, a lot of people get them, don't like it.
And so it kind of sort of feels weird or whatever.
So I just figured, no, I don't need one.
So, you know, but I mean, I don't know how much you want to talk about my ball sack, but I mean, it doesn't really seem that much different down there.
Oh, I could imagine that.
It all just kind of morphs into kind of like a...
You know that?
Like, they don't actually cut the scrotum.
Oh, no.
You know, they go in, they cut you up here, like on your, like under your pubics, hair kind of thing.
Under your pubes.
They go in there and then they kind of go in and they just sort of shuck it out like an oyster from above.
Yeah.
So it's sort of not really like the scrotum is completely intact.
You know, like there's not some sort of, you know, sort of scarred scrotum or anything.
Like I don't have a scarred up scrotum.
Yeah, yeah.
It's totally normal scrotum.
Yeah, good.
Yeah.
Like there's a there's a little scar up here, but I'd had a I'd had a hernia operation before when I was like, you know, younger, so they just went through the same thing.
So it's like you wouldn't need just a little scar there.
Yeah.
So a lot of hernias in Canada, too.
What country has the most hernias, you'd think?
Yeah.
That is interesting.
I never thought about that.
But is there a lot in Canada?
A lot of my friends in Canada have had hernias.
A lot of your friends in Canada have had hernias, really?
Yeah, I'm just wondering.
I'd be curious to see if there's more in Canada.
That would be certainly an interesting statistic for sure.
According to available data, countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa tend to have the highest prevalence of hernias, particularly in regions with lower socioeconomic status, with countries like India and parts of Tanzania showing significantly higher rates compared to high-income nations.
This is largely due to factors like limited access to healthcare and higher rates of manual labor.
Wow.
I gave myself a hernia on my show live on the public.
It was on the public access version of the show years before we were on MTV.
And it was kind of a strange episode, probably one of the weirder ones where we said, okay, I'm going to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest fingernails.
You know, you ever seen those bingo?
Oh, yeah.
We used to see them all the time.
This is a strange bingo.
And the Chinese kid on the bikes, remember that?
The world record book?
Yeah.
They'd have a 15 or 16, a whole just a starter pack of Asians hanging off a bike.
Exactly.
So for whatever reason, this doesn't even sound like it could even possibly make sense to describe it.
But the idea was, okay, I'm going to, it was Glenn and myself.
It's a live show.
It was on community cable.
You know, it's not on a big network.
So it was sort of late at night.
And we said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to try to break the record for longest fingernails.
And I had a bunch of milk.
It was calcium.
And I set it up all very seriously.
And then I started drinking milk.
And then for the entire hour, I just basically drank milk and kind of stared at my fingernails for an hour and didn't do anything, right?
Just kind of progressively got a little bit more kind of, sort of weird.
And then towards the end of the show, I kind of stood up and started thrashing around sort of somewhat violently.
I don't know, there's no real logical reason for it.
It was like a milk overdose or something.
And I threw my start doing this thrashing and I hit the desk and I flipped the desk over and I felt something pop in my abdomen.
And then we went off the air and I went up to the bathroom and my intestine was like pushing out through my abdomen.
And went to the hospital and I had given myself a hernia.
So that's how that happened.
Was that probably the worst accident you ever endured?
No, the worst one ever was just two years ago.
I stepped on a fire on the beach in Costa Rica.
The old fire stepped buried under sand.
And I walked up to this bonfire and the edge of the fire had been buried and my foot went into it and yeah, I got third degree burns.
I thought there was a couple to-do sandwiches.
Yeah, no.
Yeah, that was maybe the worst.
And that was just three years ago.
I almost lost my foot.
You just said to lay in bed for a while, huh?
For 10 days in Costa Rican hospital, and then I was medevaced on an air ambulance back to Canada, actually.
And spent another week and a half in the hospital there.
And yeah, my foot's pretty messed up right now, but it's better.
It's better.
Not 100%, but I've had a few good injuries.
Oh, there they go.
There they are.
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
You found the unedited version.
Yeah.
Yeah, that, that, wow, look at that.
Yeah, it was, and look at this, the top of my foot.
The bottom of the foot ain't good either.
Those are sexy.
I'll spend 10 grand on those things, huh?
Look out, Ohio.
Jeez, yeah.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, those are my feet right there.
That was just, that was maybe coming up from three years ago now.
So, yeah, that was maybe the worst injury ever.
So, yeah.
So, the show that you have now, you have the special that's out.
Yeah, yeah.
It all came out just a few weeks ago.
The 28th or something, when was it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's all on Amazon Prime.
On Prime.
This is the Tom Green documentary, and then the stand-up special.
It's called I Got a Mule.
I got a Mule.
It talks about my life on the Farm and Getting My Mule.
And then the show, which is a four-episode sort of series of me moving to the farm called Tom Green Country.
And I recorded all the music for the show as well.
There's a country album that I put out, which is the soundtrack for the show, which is called Home to the Country, which is on Spotify.
It's called what?
It's called Home to the Country.
It's the name of the album.
And that's out on music, wherever you get music now.
And then I'm on tour.
I'm actually on tour.
I'm getting back in the camper van, and we're going to start do a little bit more camping and touring around with my fiancé up through the desert.
And then we'll be picking up the tour again March 14th in Colorado.
It'll be Colorado Springs, Aspen, upwards to, you know, up through, where are we going?
Indianapolis, St. Louis.
All the dates are on my website, but Chicago.
So touring and driving back to Canada.
And then I'll be riding my mule all summer.
So when are you in Ottawa?
I'm going to be in Ottawa.
I'm not sure, actually.
I think sometime before the, I guess May maybe.
Oh, cool, cool.
But I'll have to let you know before I'm coming.
It'd be so cool to come see the farm.
Do you think like with a lot of the news up you're shooting now or some of the stuff that I see on your YouTube channel, it's a little bit more artistic in some way?
I don't know if that's a word.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's definitely like not something that I expect to really go viral in a lot of ways because it's like very long form stuff that I just really like shooting like that.
I can't tell.
You know, I don't know because sometimes we have things that start to happen and then it becomes something else.
But when I'm watching it, I feel like I'm getting into a I'm getting into a world.
That's what it feels like.
Yeah.
That's cool.
That's cool to know that you watched it because it sort of is sort of, it's not like a mainstream comedy sort of piece that I'm putting on my YouTube channel right now.
I want to kind of just capture what it feels like being out in the desert and in these amazing places or being on the farm and with the animals.
And so I like shooting and capturing images that are sort of calming and beautiful.
And it is the kind of thing that, you know, it's, you know, the show's not like that.
The show is, there's a lot more going on.
But there is something nice about just kind of putting it on and sitting back and just kind of like, it's like an ASMR type of thing.
That's what it feels like.
It's like ASMR for your eyes, kind of.
Yeah, yeah.
So it's interesting.
I mean, I think a lot of it started just as me kind of like really trying to experiment with the cameras and just trying to figure out how to make these cameras work and capture the sort of the cinematography the way I want to capture it.
And I think that maybe it may evolve into something a little bit more faster paced at some point.
But right now, it's just a lot of this sort of slice of life stuff that I put up on the YouTube channel.
And I have a podcast, which I do, you know, one episode every six months or something like that.
I might start doing the podcast again and putting that up to kind of give people something a little bit more familiar to watch.
But right now, yeah, that's what it is.
And I just, I kind of just enjoy taking people to these places.
I mean, I find it interesting that like, you know, everything's so fast-paced now.
Like, you know, everything is so, people's attention spans are so short now that it's kind of interesting to sort of do something that's kind of not that.
And again, it's, it's not, you know, the algorithm doesn't really work in its favor.
You know, you know, you have to say something shocking within the first 10 seconds and then, you know, put some words on the screen and do all these things that you can do to really capture large audiences.
But if you do watch it, you sort of do kind of get sucked into a little secret universe in a way.
You know, there's even little messages sometimes I'll put like 45 minutes into a video that will, you know, if you made it that far, you know, then you might say something in the comments and then I'll know that you actually watched 45 minutes.
And So there is a lot of people that do get it, you know, which is fun.
And it's kind of neat to, you know, it's impossible to capture the energy of what it's like out there in nature by doing something fast-paced because so much of what's amazing about it is just the calm stillness of it also.
So that's what it is on the YouTube channel.
It's a bit different.
I think people are as desperate for that as they've ever been in some ways.
I think things have gotten we're operating at a speed that we don't even feel comfortable in sometimes, you know, or our brains are having to.
But yeah, that's what it feels like.
It feels like some type of an ASMR or some it feels calming, man.
That's what it feels like.
And yeah, I'm just curious because you're always, you've just always been a creator, you know, you're just always creating.
You're always finding some way to incite to get a reaction out of people.
Yeah.
In some type of way.
Yeah.
It's cool.
It's weird today because there's so much energy online, like so much craziness and pranks and just, you know, like, you know, just the insanity that you can see every day on your phone.
Like before you get out of bed, you're just like, you know, if you pick up your phone and you get that in your head too early in your day, your whole day can be kind of.
But you started it.
Well, it's just crazy.
That's okay.
It's not a judgment.
You know, technology was changing at the same time.
We're glad you did, man.
We're glad you did, man.
Tom, thanks so much for all the entertainment over the years.
And yeah, man, I just appreciate you spending time with me.
Congratulations on the new engagement.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me on the show, Theo.
I mean, it's awesome, man.
I love the show.
I appreciate you having me on.
I'm going to come pet that donkey, man, when I get up there.
Absolutely.
Come pet the donkey, man.
You will.
All right.
Thanks, Tom.
Now, I'm just footing on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of mind I found I can feel it in my bones.