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Tom Green makes friends with an unsuspecting cow
in Freddy Got Fingered.
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Tom Green is one shaggy dawg. His mop of brown hair appears to be intentionally tangled. A thick goatee droops from his lower lip. Even his clothes seem disheveled. Add a pair of shifty eyes, and you have the perfect look for a comic madman. It's a safe guess that the 29-year-old Green had problems getting past the doorman of a swank Beverly Hills hotel for his morning interviews. No conscientious business would welcome somebody who looks like Green through their doors. The MTV comic is trouble waiting to happen, and his new film Freddy Got Fingered proves it.
"I think I'm walking along a line, and when it's comedy it's different," Green says. "In order to hopefully make people laugh, you have to walk along this line and flirt with this line. It's an edgy movie. But is it a shocking movie? Maybe. Sort of. Could it have been more shocking? I think so. Look at a lot of movies where people are going around with guns hurting people and killing people. These sort of things don't happen."
Green is a habitual liar when it comes to speaking to the press. It's his method for deflecting pesky questions about his supposed wife Drew Barrymore.
But Green is blatantly honest when it comes to defending his gross-out epic, Freddy Got Fingered (opening nationwide on Friday). After all, Green is both the star and director of this cinematic exploration of bad taste. A semi-autobiographical tale about a slackerish twentysomething who refuses to move out of his parents' basement, Green spins a newborn baby by its umbilical cord in Freddy. He wears a gutted deer like a winter coat. And when the star is not busy caning his wheelchair-bound girlfriend (Marisa Coughlan), he stays busy masturbating a horse and an elephant. Basically, Green just wants to have fun. The problem is that his version of fun makes a lot of people cover their eyes.
The impact of Green's lunacy was felt at a recent screening of Freddy at a West Hollywood multiplex. The twentyish crowd was appropriately rowdy. They laughed at the film's squishy sight gags and looked away when matters turned exceptionally gross. Freddy is a chaotic barrage of blood, guts, slime and semen. It's hard to imagine what scenes were cut out of the movie in order to earn its R rating. Green says he wanted Freddy to be unlike any gross-out comedy that's ever been done before. Of course, he still wants audiences to laugh.
"I like it when people feel a little bit uncomfortable," Green says. "I like it when people aren't sure what's going to happen next. That's walking along that line, and then when it comes out on the positive, then people can take a breath. Hopefully they like the character and think he's kind of a goofy goof guy, and they'll go on to the next scene and laugh again."
Green's cultish fans insist that he's witty and clever. Unconvinced bystanders grudgingly admit that Green's in-your-face comedy has a unique, caustic wit. The release of Freddy hopes to answer one pertinent question: Just how vast is Tom Green's army of admirers? Actually, there's another relevant question. Can Green's disgusting antics be categorized as comedy?
"What's Chaucer or Rabelais?" asks veteran actor Rip Torn, who plays Green's fed-up father. "That's classic comedy, too. Punch-and-Judy shows. What is that when people are whacking each other all the time? I'm not an apologist I thank god that some of the things they have in store for me they didn't do.
"But to me, he's (Green) a very decent human being. He's very shy and intellectual and a good director. I do think he is pushing the envelope.
"He could be a leading man ..."
After appearing for two years on Canada's Comedy Network, The Tom Green Show jumped to MTV in 1999. It easily captured the title of television's most outlandish talk show. Green even poked fun at his own battle with testicular cancer with an MTV special. Small film roles in Superstar, Charlie's Angels and Road Trip followed. Green quickly began work on Freddy. His first starring role appeared inevitable. The shock was when Green convinced Freddy's producers at New Regency to choose him as the replacement for the film's exiting director. Stepping behind the camera allowed Green to protect his two-year project. He's convinced that another director would have taken out all of the gross gags that make Freddy a Tom Green movie.
Green also has a message for those critics who insist that Freddy's absurd gags can cause societal harm. Nobody should take seriously a movie this absurd.
"I grew up riding a skateboard all the time and listening to alternative music and not being caught up with mainstream culture," Green says. "Interestingly enough, I think that sort of mentality has gone into the mainstream. This movie is coming from that place.
"I said let's do something different here. Let's not go make another teen comedy, another gross-out comedy or just another formula-driven movie. I think somebody a little different and edgy and weird, a little off-the-beaten track, will be the audience for this movie, and that tends to be college-age people who are out on their own for the first time and into messing with the system."
Stepping aside from the shock comedy, Green points out that Freddy is essentially about his own life. He moved back to his parents' basement as an adult when he was practicing his comedy on cable access. He knows what it's like to be misunderstood by one's family. He still is.
When Green returns to his hometown of Ottawa, he's treated like a celebrity. A New Year's Eve visit by Green and Barrymore was covered on the front page of the city's newspapers.
"I always drew a different line with my parents," he says. "I did break into my parents' house and painted their car and threw bloody cow heads into their bed. I had a different line with them, because my parents deserved it. They made me do my homework and shovel the driveway and stuff like that. They took my skateboard away, and I couldn't skateboard for two weeks."
Freddy allows Green to creatively make peace with his parents. For Freddy's audiences, the fight is just beginning. Then again, Freddy could also be a gooey disaster. If Green is going to fail, at least he'll fail with a big, disgusting splat. ©
