Tom Green Transcript Tom: So it’s the first time I’ve been in a school in a while so, it’s scary being in a school but thanks for having me come out and talk to you guys. Host: You’re welcome Tom. Just by way of introduction although I don’t think there’s anybody here. Is this on? Yep. Although I don’t think there’s anybody here who doesn’t know who Tom Green is, but just to set this up we’re here at Humber College at The Humber College School of Comedy and we’re talking to Tom Green who's our special guest. We talk a lot in the program, we talk a lot about the spirit of innovation, so let’s just see the kind of innovation we’re talking about I think is encapsulated by the gentleman who’s sitting here with me. Think about this, reality TV, I think he got there before just about anybody, shock comedy, got there just about before anybody, prank comedy, got there just about before anybody, comedy on the internet, got there before just about anybody, the fusion of rap music and comedy, got there just about before anybody. A pretty impressive life and a pretty impressive comedy resume. Tom Green. Tom: Wow! Thank you, Mark. Thanks. Clapping Host: Andrew, why don’t you ask, throw out the first question? Andrew: Well, I’m going to start. You’re from Ottawa, I’m from Ottawa and I went back over some old articles we’d done and found your grade seven report card. Tom: Oh really? Andrew: Which stated, Tom must learn to pay attention and not distract others. So, I mean this is a bit of a trope as a question but, growing up as a kid do you remember that moment when you started to realize that making people laugh was important or was it something that kind of happened later because I know, we talked a little bit before about Yuk Yuk’s and when you were fifteen doing comedy, and that’s pretty early. Tom: Yeah Andrew: Do you remember as a kid then, always wanting that attention Tom: Yeah Andrew: that comic attention? Tom: Yeah Andrew: And what was it always at school or through the family, or what kind of stuff were you doing? Tom: It was at home, it was at school. I was very hyper, I was a very hyper kid. I was an army brat, grew up in CFB Petawawa and we moved every year for the first seven years or so before we settled in Ottawa so. Host: And your father, he was a tank, he was a tank commander right? Tom: Yeah, he looked after the tank. Laughter Host: Yeah, but it’s, he looked after the one tank in the Canadian army. No, so there was a lot of discipline, right and was that sort of it? Tom: Yeah, there was a strict military thing happening but also, he was a funny guy. But, very strict, lots of rules, lots of chores. But, I think, basically it started at school though, it was just sort of this way of fitting in, new kid in class way of fitting in. I did a speech on humour and comedy in the sixth grade, and I decided I’d do my speech, I figured it would be a good excuse to get up on stage and tell some jokes. So, I went up in grade six and won for the school, I won the speech contest for the school but, I remember I got the biggest laugh in front of an audience that I think I’ve probably ever had, at least at the time. It was an amazing experience, I was a little kid and the judges asked you a question after the speech and in my speech I said, you know in one of the things in my speech I said comedy is a good thing to use to get out of a bad situation and I didn’t give an example and the judge stood up after and said in front of the whole school and said, okay give us an example of how you can use comedy to get out of a bad situation. And, I sort of started to panic and I had no idea what to say and I thought of a joke that’d I’d read in some 101 Dumb Jokes joke book that’d I’d been scouring as I’d been writing my speech and I said “well I brought my report card home to my dad and I used comedy to get out of a bad situation there.” And they said “How’d you do that?” I said, “Well I brought my report card home to my dad and I said dad, here’s my report card, my marks are under water. And my dad said, “well what do you mean they’re under water, I said they’re below “C” level. Laughter Tom: So it was… Host: Thus was born… Tom: It really was a huge laugh, I think just because people were just sort of worried for me. They were worried that I wasn’t going to have an answer and I pulled something out and the whole school was laughing and I felt that was probably the best feeling I had ever felt in my life up to that point so, that was probably around the time when I thought I might want to try to do something creative with my life. Host: Yeah Tom: Yeah Host: And it’s interesting, just to sort of go ahead because a lot of the humour that you were doing, especially with your show starting out was very much about having that sense of what’s going to happen, wether it was planking right, in 1994 I think there’s that video of you online planking right, for the first time? Starting the craze. Tom: Yeah, CNN wrote an article about it saying that I was the forefather of modern planking. Laughter Tom: Pretty proud of that. Host: Maybe you could explain, maybe for somebody who might not know. Tom: Yeah, after the class we can go plank in the hall or something. We, I didn’t call it planking, I called it dead guy and it was this thing that I was doing in high school before we even filmed it I would just lie down on my face for no reason and between classes, people would be walking to class and I’d just be lying on my face. Motionless and it was always fun to confuse people, to me I thought it was funny just confusing everybody and I was a very strange kid in high school, I would do strange things in high school all the time to kind of draw attention to myself and started doing stand up when I was fifteen years old at Yuk Yuk’s in Ottawa. That was really when I first said “Hey, there’s an actual business here, you know people actually do this for a living. But, planking, yeah that, that was fun. We filmed it in 1994 from the roof of a, of a building in the market in Ottawa and the joke was that I was just going to go lie down on my face and see how long it would take for somebody to call an ambulance, basically and it took about 20 minutes. Laughter Tom: But when I saw everybody planking last summer I just kinda got a little angry about it, I said that’s my move. So I went and found the video, it wasn’t on YouTube and posted it on YouTube and CNN called and did this big article about it so now everyone’s given me credit for the worst thing ever. Laughter Host: Ottawa’s stand up community then is pretty small you’re gonna be watching guys, we talked to like Harland Williams and Norm McDonald. There’s a lot of funny people that have come out of Ottawa. Do you have any theories about the city or it just beside the point, because it seems to breed a kind of smart, but subversive comedy. You know what I mean? Tom: Yep, I think in all honesty I think the Yuk Yuk’s has a big part of that, they were very encouraging over there. Mark had a great club there and Howie was always very encouraging to people. I initially, when I went to Yuk Yuk’s when I was fifteen I got kicked out for heckling. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this but… Host: No, you never told me this. Tom: I would go and me and my friends would go and we would sort of try and find creative ways to you know be shit disturbers basically because we just didn’t really have any inkling or notion that we could even get on stage so this was our way of sort of getting some attention as goofy fifteen year olds. So we’d go there and we’d all sit in the front row, the three of us, we’d sit in the front row like this and every time the comic would say his punchline we’d switch our hands. Laughter Host: The other part of that story Tom is that you were underage in a licensed establishment. I don’t know how that might have happened.