“Below the bottom of the barrel”: Examining how Tom Green ruined his own career
Comedy has changed significantly since humanity crossed the border into the new millennium, with the winds of change bringing different styles of humour that either strike a chord with audiences or die an instant death. In the 1990s, an increasingly technological society where the internet would soon chokehold the zeitgeist led to subversive humour in several forms, with the zany mania of Jim Carrey, Rik Mayall and Tom Green setting the standard.
While Carrey remains a Hollywood icon despite his decreased industry relevance, and the late Mayall is still a beloved figure in contemporary British society, Green has understandably been lost to the decade that made him a star. Perfectly reflecting the disruptive nature of ‘90s comedy, Green went from being an underground icon to an industry pariah deemed too outlandish for the mainstream.
Rising to fame in the latter half of the decade, Green became known for his cable show The Tom Green Show, a variety programme that relied on shock factor and weird skits. Running initially as a public cable access programme, Green’s show was later picked up by The Comedy Network and, later, MTV, with the latter station helping him to gain global recognition for his barmy antics, which included one iconic skit where he ‘humped’ a dead moose.
Running for eight seasons, the show, which would exist in the tightly regulated world of modern comedy, wasn’t too different from the other irreverent programmes that MTV was putting out at the same time, such as Jackass, with the era speaking to a certain nihilism that was pervading amongst the younger generations. Just like Jackass, too, Green soon found his subversive kind of comedy on the big screen, appearing in such movies as 1999’s Superstar and 2000’s Road Trip.
But neither of these movies would become as memorable as 2001’s Freddy Got Fingered, a film that, arguably, was engineered by Green to sabotage his whole career. Directed and co-written by Green, the film told the story of an unemployed cartoonist who is forced to move back in with his parents, only to accuse his loved ones of abuse in an effort to stay living under their roof.
Just like his TV show, Freddy Got Fingered was essentially a string of weird skits that put a middle finger up to convention and normality, with critics despising the result. Roger Ebert called the film “below the bottom of the barrel”, and he wasn’t alone, with the sheer critical failure of Green’s film forcing him into Hollywood obscurity, where he has stayed ever since.
But seeing as Green was born out of a generation of skaters whose entire ethos was self-destructive, the audacity of his $14million insult to contemporary cinema feels more like an act of purposeful sabotage. Making no attempt to make his comedy accessible, the entirety of the release of Freddy Got Fingered was considered a joke, with many even comparing his performance in the film to avante-garde physical art.
“I think there’s definitely a desire to, as you said, give the middle finger to the standard cookie-cutter movie,” Green later told The Film Stage while reflecting on the movie, making reference to the other filmmakers like Spike Jonze who were brought up in the same subculture. “They were tired of seeing the same sort of predictable story and predictable style of shooting and predictable music,” he added, “I definitely wanted to kind of change things up. Probably explains why I’m living in a van right now. I want to find new ways of doing things”.
Whether intentional or not, Green’s refusal to translate his style into the mainstream led to his own downfall, and, over 20 years later, his film feels more like a protest against the industry rather than a genuine attempt at comedy.
