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IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN (p. 2 of 3)

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We’re living in a Tom Green world. This seems as improbable as his Hollywood Hills house and flush bank account, but the Greening of popular culture is impossible to deny. A decade ago, Green’s gross-out antics made him a lone voice in the wilderness – the wilderness being, of course, the best place to eat worms and lick dead mammals. What, then, is reality TV if not workaday schlubs behaving like Tom Green in the hopes of winning enough scratch to buy a large pool? Then there’s Jackass, MTV’s smash-hit series-cum-movie franchise and the bane of safety-conscious parents everywhere. The no-budget premise: Skate punks pull stupid pranks and execute stupid stunts. Sound familiar? (Jackass even scooped Green’s old film crew, left in the lurch when he was diagnosed with cancer. And now it has its own knock-off: Punk’d.) Green takes umbrage at the popular perception that he’s merely a gross-out artist ("We did seven or eight bits on each episode of the old show, and only one of them would involve, you know, poo on a microphone"), but accepts his props.

"The Jackass guys are really cool and very funny," he graciously offers. "But there were times when I’d look at that show – when they’d be waking up their parents or putting animals in their parents’ house – and think, ‘I did that same bit.’ Many times. And that was a little bit weird. It’s not to say they weren’t doing that stuff on their own before, but the influence was there.

"There’s always been gross-out comedy, but eight years ago, there wasn’t a Fear Factor, there wasn’t a Survivor, there weren’t bleeding cows and people eating worms on television – all the things I was doing."

Which makes the low-key, 1950s throwback feel of The New Tom Green Show even more surprising. Just when the rest of the culture had gone Green, Green went grandpa.

The New Tom Green Show had far too specific a vibe to be simply one more entry into the "next Letterman" sweepstakes. Working with veteran TV producer Burt Dubrow (a childhood friend of another hard-to-peg comedian, the late Andy Kaufman), Green made calculated references to the golden age of the late-night talk show. The mod set was an exact replica – right down to the desktop supply of double-eraser pencils – of the one Johnny Carson used in New York City before The Tonight Show decamped to Burbank. Green delivered his monologue perched on a stool (a nod to the late Jack Paar) and did live commercial spots (ahoy, Steve Allen). This was not your father’s late-night talk show; it was the talk show of Green’s spiritual TV fathers.

To prepare for the show, Green spent four days a week, for six months, at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills. There he studied old Paar, Carson, Allen and Ernie Kovacs tapes, noting the finer points of talk-show hosting – everything from talking to walking. Green says his motivation was pure ("I’ve been given this opportunity, and I don’t want to blow it") but admits his research took an unexpected philosophical turn. Slowly, the career shift began to make sense: Having spent a lifetime figuring out how to get on TV, Tom Green turned to TV to help figure out his life.

"It was therapeutic," he says without a trace of irony. "Reading about how Jack Paar got knocked early in his career made it a little easier to not pack my suitcase and move back to Ottawa just yet. Which I’ve certainly thought about doing."

Say what? For serious? Leave the pool behind?

"Oh yeah." Green pulls thoughtfully on his Corona. "Look, there’s only so many times you can read how you’re the least funny person on the planet. Or you’re a horrible comedian. Or they’re bashing your private life. Especially because I’d gotten nothing but the ‘cute little underdog cable show’ good reviews up until that point."

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