Exclusive: the grass is Greener

A comedian, director, testicular-cancer survivor, actor and Drew Barrymore's ex-husband, Tom Green is anything but ordinary. Which, you can kind of gather just by looking at him.

He is currently in Australia for the first time doing a bunch of stand-up shows and I caught up with him last week. Despite being as quirky and humorous as I had expected, he was also very anti-establishment…which was, er, intriguing. Here’s what he had to say on:

Australia –

"I’ve never been to Australia. I’m really excited to do sand-up comedy here. I know Australians always seem to be pretty fun and absurd, crazy people like myself so I'm excited to see how the jokes translate. I didn’t know what to expect when we initially booked this tour but after doing all these interviews, everyone seems really excited and the tickets are selling. Which is good, because I always like to have actual people at my shows.

I want to hug a duck-billed Platypus and I’m generally just really curious about everything. I'm looking forward to having some beers with the Freddy Got Fingered fans and generally having a good time. I'm excited to see my first Kangaroo in the wild, have my first beer in Adelaide, then my second, third, fourth, fifth, and watch the toilet flush in the opposite direction."

Freddy Got Fingered –

"Making Freddy Got Fingered was saying `look, we did everything wrong here, we smashed the mould and wanted to show you don’t have to everything by these conventional rules or make a cookie cutter comedy movie.’ I purposefully set out to make a movie that was the craziest, weirdest movie. I don’t know if people would say that about it or not.

Everything has got so mainstream and corporate and over-produced now, there’s not so many surprises in comedy as there used to be. It’s (my stuff) for people looking for something anti-establishment."

Stand-up comedy –

"I have always wanted to this in this in some sort of capacity and do it seriously. I did it for a few years as a teenager but I was too young, I was in high school. All those years in Hollywood, doing shows, I just wanted to go and do stand-up. It's the purest form of comedy, there's no teleprompter, no scripts, no boss coming in and telling you what you can and can't say. I got in to comedy so I didn’t have someone telling me what to do all day and then I have a TV show and people are telling me what to do all day."
Movies –

"It’s funny, I never really set out to do movies, it was never really my goal. I always liked television and was a huge fan on comedy on TV. I started my show in a completely independent way with no rules and on a community access station with no executives telling me what to do. After the show did well and got picked up on MTV I did Road Trip. I did a lot of improvising and tried to always do what would be the most ridiculous thing possible.

It depends what kind of movies you want to make, but I never want to be a serious actor. I wouldn’t have an insight to that. I spend a lot of my time studying great comedians from the 60s and 70s and getting inspiration from that."

Why the heck he has so many cameras with him –

"It’s for my show; you can watch all the shows online. It occurred to me about a year ago what better way to promote the show and build on my audience than with the stand-up comedy. My show is so international, with people calling in on Skype, and I thought it would be neat to get my camera and take it with me. I brought a small camera crew, myself and one other person, so we can document parts of my trip here."

His favourite movies –

"Growing up my favourite film was Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life. It didn’t have a solid plot throughout the whole thing, but a combination of the most outrageous skits you could ever see. As a kid growing up in Canada I thought `wow, you can vomit on TV and play with guts and have babies fall out of dresses?’ It was very exciting and inspirational to me. To a hyperactive 14-year-old it seemed like the dream. I also liked unconventional movies full of wacky skits and weird stuff like Aeroplane and Top Secret. They were always my favourites.

Recently…I liked Avatar a lot, I saw that. The Hangover was a hilarious movie, directed by my friend Todd Phillips who did Road Trip. I was just really happy for my friend Todd. He started out in a very independent way making documentaries and that kind of thing and has a very distinct point of view. As someone who writes and directs, I’m excited to see him keep making movies the way he wants to. It’s good to see a free-thinking person come from outside of that Hollywood, pre-packaged model.

I don’t see movies as often as I would like to, but when I do I pick something I think I’m going to like."



You can watch Tom Green's online show and find out all about his tour dates etc HERE.