We have a soft spot for biographies set in Hollywood. It doesn’t matter if they’re recent or not. (One of our favorites was Dwayne Hickman’s autobiography, which we regret leaving behind on a plane.)
This one was published in 2004 and it can be had for a nickel on Amazon.com! But it’s worth a whole lot more!
We recall seeing Green’s television show when he was working for Canada’s Comedy Network, probably in 1998, probably while we were gigging in Toronto or Montreal, just before he “blew up” on MTV here in the states.
Most recently, we were aware of his internet-only talk show, produced out of his home (with FOS Gabe Abelson writing) in 2006 or so.
Everything in between was a blur.
Among Green’s many obsessions in his early years was standup. He started that in 1986 or so.
When I was fifteen, my friends and I started going down to the local comedy club, Yuk-Yuk’s, and heckling. The way we heckled was kind of weird. For example, we’d all sit in the front row with our hands on our right cheek and every time the comedian would tell a punch line we’d switch our hands to our left cheek at exactly the same moment, wihout laughing. It was like three completely bored people moving in unison. It would, of course, drive the comedian nuts. It wasn’t long before we got kicked out of the club and not allowed back.
Then one day we found out there was an amateur night at the club, so we called in our names an dgo on the line-up. When we got to the club, the manager, Howie Wagman, recognized us as the troublemakers, and he woulnd’t let us in. Then the bouncer, his name was Teebor, the guy who had actually kicked us out of the club, went up to the manager and whispered, “You know, when I kicked these guys out last week, they were, you know, kinda funny.” So the manager relented and said we could go on.
I was fifteen years old, and Yuk-Yuk’s was the first bar I’d ever entered. I guess there must have been a loophoole– the club probably had a restaurant licesae, ut it felt like a bar. My friendks Derek and Phil and I all blended into the shadows of the back of the club. We were afraid, no, wee were scared shitless out of the crowd. Not only was it intimidating to be going onstage in a professional club, but it would be in front of a crowd of drunken college students much older than us.
So I went on and did great (my two friends bombed and left stand-up soon after). I’m sure I scored because I was fifteen and looked nervous and people felt sorry for me. And the material was bad, along the lines of “Have you seen the commercial…”[…]
Still they let me come back, once a week, and it took four months or so before I was even close to reaching the level of that first performance. After six or seven months, I started getting opening spots for the pros who came through Ottawa on the weekends. I was paid twenty dollars per performance. They wrote an article about me in a tiny local paper called The Star, and someone pinned it up at school. There was something about being at the comedy club that made me feel like I was a part of something real. For the first time I was surrounded by other people who actually believed that being funny could be a career. And for the first time I was able to put a label on what had until then been just stupidity. I was no longer just and idiot– I was now a comedian. One day I was doing silly stuff at home to annoy my parents. The next I was getting paid to do it on stage. It was an exhilarating transition.
Green soon abandoned standup for rap… and then abandoned that for the next obsession. (He seems to exhibit a pattern: He latches onto something– skateboarding, standup, radio, etc.– thoroughly immerses himself in it, then goes onto the next thing.)
Of course, most people on the planet know him for his trailblazing video work. It was definitely not mainstream stuff, but it was original and it has since been copied and it can be argued that his work– especially his antics on local access television in Ottawa and his work on the Comedy Network– shaped the way a generation approached the medium of participatory, improvised, reality television.
Green’s on the road, with a live standup tour. Hit his official website, Tom Green, The Channel for his latest productions. He lists many people as his inspirations, but in his most recent iteration, he seems to be most like a post-modern Steve Allen. His Tom Green’s House Tonight show is interesting in that is seems conventional on first inspection, but it’s freewheeling and it uses such devices as Skype to connect the show with viewers throughout the world. And, since it’s not on the airwaves, it isn’t subject to language or length restrictions. And there are no commercial breaks!