It’s not easy being Green

  Photos from Regency Enterprises Tom
Green suckles on a cow’s teat in "Freddy Got Fingered," a
movie he co-wrote, directed and stars in. Audiences can expect more
of Green’s brand of extreme gross-out humor.

By Suneal Kolluri
Daily Bruin Contributor

On his MTV show and in numerous movies, Canadian comic Tom Green
regularly goes to extremes to get a laugh. Green has subjected
himself to such gruesome acts as sucking milk from a cow’s
udder, putting mice in his mouth, and having a testicle removed in
front of the nation.

It’s not easy being Green.

In “Freddy Got Fingered,” a movie Green directed,
co-wrote and stars in, Green once again uses his brand of extreme
gross-out humor to elicit a reaction from audiences.

“I like to do something that gets a genuine reaction from
people,” Green said at a Los Angeles press junket.
“Whether it’s on my television show interacting with
real people on the street and the reaction is actually on camera
“¦ or if it’s in this movie where people are reacting to
the movie.”

  Tom Green has an emotional moment after
retrieving soap-on-a-rope from a toilet in his latest feature film,
which opens tomorrow in theaters nationwide. “Freddy Got
Fingered” tells the story of Gord (Green), a 28-year-old loon
who has to move back in with his parents after quitting his job at
the cheese factory to pursue his dream of becoming an animator.

His father (Rip Torn) sees him as a slacker and is angered by
Gord’s decision to return home. Gord’s wild antics
disturb his father even more, until a wild family feud erupts.

Throughout the movie Gord participates in some rather disturbing
activities, such as the use of a gutted deer carcass as a costume,
the biting of an umbilical cord, and the sexual molestation of
different forms of wildlife.

“It’s real elephant spunk,” Green said.
“We didn’t want to use tapioca pudding or anything like
that because that would be too unrealistic.”

Green acknowledged that some viewers of the film may be
disgusted by his onscreen antics.

“It’s really fun when you have an extreme reaction,
and sometimes you’re not laughing so much at the joke, but
then you might laugh afterward about how much you reacted to the
joke,” he said.

Green is definitely no stranger to such wild antics. Five years
ago, Green was living in his basement, working on getting
“The Tom Green Show” off the ground.

“The Tom Green Show” features Green running around
the streets like a lunatic, videotaping various shenanigans. When
the show eventually found its way onto MTV, Green had the chance to
gross out viewers on national television.

“I think there’s an indication that people like what
I did on my TV show. There’s a certain type of people that
laugh at this stuff,” Green said. “Young people,
college-age people and people that are into things that
aren’t necessarily mainstream and like to see things that are
a little different or off the beaten track “¦ tend to like
what I do.”

Writing, directing and starring in “Freddy Got
Fingered” allowed Green to have much more creative control
over the content in the movie.

“I wanted to direct this movie so I could argue for
certain scenes and keep them in the movie “¦ which is
difficult if you want to masturbate a horse,” Green said.
“That’s not necessarily the most clever bit of comedy
you’ve ever heard of before, but the act of getting it to
actually remain in the movie is somewhat difficult.”

Although Green maintains that pushing the envelope makes a film
more original, he said that he does walk a line when creating
material for his show or the movie.

“I think if something becomes mean-spirited and hurtful
then I don’t think it’s funny, and the goal is for it
to be funny,” he said. “That’s the difference
between shocking for shock’s sake and shocking for
funny’s sake.”

Either way, Green aims to shock viewers. He is comfortable doing
things that would make most anyone squirm.

Green uses this comfort, and a strange oral fixation, to elicit
reactions from his audience.

“Probably I could put anything in my mouth and not be
grossed out,” he said. “I did a bit where I put poo on
a microphone and went around and interviewed people. That’s,
I guess, kind of gross “¦ I don’t know, I wouldn’t
care.”

In “Freddy Got Fingered,” Green even convinced
veteran actor Rip Torn to participate in the zaniness. One scene in
the movie shows Torn’s character baring his backside while
screaming rather graphic obscenities at his son.

“I think they digitally amplified some of my
posterior,” Torn said. “They might have put somebody
else’s bum in there for a while. Nurses tell me whenever
I’ve had to drop my shorts for examinations,
“˜You’ve got a really tight little tush
there.'”

Although he experienced firsthand some of Green’s wilder
material, Torn also complimented Green on his other abilities.

“He has the ability to shift gears,” Torn said.
“It’s not all the crazy stuff or the gross-out comedy.
He’s very good at verbal comedy, he can play serious scenes.
I think he’s got a lot of arrows in his quiver.”

Green also sees himself improving as an entertainer.

“I’m proud to say that there’s no poo in the
movie and no pee in the movie so I feel like we’re really
spreading our wings and growing as writers,” he said.

FILM: “Freddy Got Fingered” opens
tomorrow in theaters nationwide.