Tom Green has cancer. It is early 2000, and he is about to go under for surgery, and guess what? He’s recording the whole thing because he would like to educate you on the world of testicular cancer, and if you can see his internal organs while doing so, so be it. And so there he is at 28 years old in a hospital gown, making jokes while medical professionals get ready to chop off one of his nuts. “This is going to freaking suck,” he says. But, if we know anything about him, nothing is off limits for Tom Green. It was the ultimate combination of tragedy and comedy; you have a young man in his prime facing death while telling the world’s greatest testicle joke. This comedian turned cancer into performance art, which made me believe God might have a twisted sense of humor… kinda like Tom Green himself.

The dude revolutionized a breed of comedy that borders on anarchy, using the boob tube to reveal just how wild and crazy the world can be… all you need is a warrior clown poet willing to go beyond the punch line. The comedy stylizing of Tom Green consists of gross-out reality-based chaos with flare from old-school hip hop and energy from punk rock skateboard culture. But are these jokes still funny? Was Tom Green misunderstood and ahead of his time? Was he trying to tell us something about the human condition through tom foolery and disgusting shenanigans? Is this man still out there influencing the masses? So yeah, WTF Happened to…Tom Green?

But to truly understand what the heck happened to Tom Green, we go back to the beginning. And the beginning began when he was born on July 30th, 1971, in Ontario, Canada, to Mary and Richard, who would be the butt of so many of their baby boy’s pranks. And Tom Green was a skater boy who loved pranks, stemming from a sort of anger against authority, using over-the-top and sometimes vile antics to get a laugh and make us think.

But he would soon find out that just because something was funny in high school didn’t mean it was funny in front of strangers. At least not yet. In college – not long after launching a go at stand-up as a teen, performing at Ontario’s famed Yuk Yuk’s – Green honed his skills with a college radio show. This he spun into a late-night call-in show with eventual MTV sidekick Glenn Humplik.

In its earliest iteration, The Tom Green Show premiered in 1994, airing only in Canada for years until MTV picked it up, debuting in January 1999. MTV was on the cusp of a major transition, nearly ditching the “M” in favour of reality shows. So here was the new standard, and it didn’t take long for Tom Green to make a name, love or loathe him. One week he’s putting a decapitated cow head in a bed; the next, he’s commandeering mall PA systems; the next, he’s putting crap on a mic head; the next he’s repainting the family car into the “Slutmobile”, the next he’s banging an animal carcass, the next he’s sucking milk from a cow’s udder. Tom Green would do anything for a laugh…even if you weren’t laughing. For their part, TV Guide would name The Tom Green Show one of the 50 worst programs ever.

But look at the legacy. Jackass and Billy on the Street and The Eric Andre Show (which he appeared on in 2012) all owe their greenlighting and success to Tom Green. Hell, Jackass even directly stole bits from Green, who was at least smart enough not to mess with a bull.

But none of these had the ill-rhyming skills of Tom Green. Whereas the Jackass boys relied on The Minutemen for their theme, Tom Green performed his own. And in 1999, he released “Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)”, wherein he sang about and executed putting his butt on everything from a step to some cheese. The year prior he had released a 1998 meta album under the pseudonym MC Face, in which he mocked Tom Green…He wouldn’t dabble in music again until 2005 with the album “Prepare for Impact” with songs like “I’m an Idiot” and “Don’t Mess with a Man (After He Takes a Big Poo Poo” (2008’s “Basement Jams” would follow).

In early 2000, Tom Green dressed as Hitler at a bar mitzvah–OK, so that didn’t happen, but many believed that led to the end of The Tom Green Show (and it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility). In actuality, it was a bout with testicular cancer – documented in a widely commended TV special – that cut the cord.

Tom Green would soon cut the umbilical cord…with his teeth in Freddy Got Fingered (2001). This was the feature that would solidify Tom Green (by way of the movie) as “offensive”, “witless”, “tragically awful”, and below the creativity of a sideshow act. But what does Tom Green care about critics? He was going to the Razzies! Freddy took home five Razzies that year: Worst Picture, Actor, Director, Screenplay, Screen Couple (Green and the animals he abuses). And yes, he accepted those honors (wearing his wedding tuxedo), having to be taken off the stage because he wouldn’t stop playing the harmonica. Anything for a laugh. But thanks to the dudes at Red Letter Media, people are now looking at this film in a whole new way. This may be a brilliant social commentary on how the Hollywood studio system operates when a new silly man becomes popular. They give these goofballs millions and let them totally mess around, and mess around is what Tom did. Some call it anti-comedy, some call it satirical genius, and some call it stupid, but sometimes you gotta be smart to be stupid.

Before Freddy Got Fingered, Green landed an oddball supporting part in Road Trip (2000), where he got to lick a mouse, and Charlie’s Angels (2000), playing boyfriend to real-life girlfriend Drew Barrymore. After a marriage stunt on SNL when Green hosted, the two actually did wed in July 2001…filing for divorce that December. But somehow, he would be trusted to co-lead another movie post-Freddy, Stealing Harvard (2002) alongside Jason Lee.

Maybe the film medium wasn’t for Tom Green. He would play the occasional lead, as in 2005’s Bob the Butler (which premiered on Disney Channel of all places!). Still, he mostly stuck to supporting roles that even most Green aficionados probably couldn’t rattle off: 2008’s Shred (a skate shop owner), 2016’s Total Frat Movie (reversing roles as the responsible one), 2017’s Bethany (a horror flick where Green plays a doctor), 2019’s Iron Sky: The Coming Race (as a cult leader)…But the small screen was his forte.

And so Tom Green settled behind the desk not long after his cancer battle subsided, leading The New Tom Green Show in 2003. Here, he leaned more into his admiration for Letterman (although his biggest guests were WTF faves Marilyn Manson and Andy Dick…); He even got the shot to guest-host for The Late Show icon in June of that year. Interestingly, he would later end up working for rival Jay Leno as a correspondent, which is pretty good considering he got shitfaced on Jagermeister during a 2002 appearance. The New Tom Green Show lasted just three months.

But we saw a more mature Tom Green – and we’re hesitant here, but it’s not inaccurate – mature Tom Green. Gone were the days of destroying drug stores and rubbing his butt on strangers. This was a man who went on USO Tours in 2003 (Kosovo) and 2004 (Persian Gulf). He is no Bob Hope, but it was admirable to use his comedy skills in such a way.

The small screen got even smaller for Tom Green – but not because his fandom had died down. He invited us into his home for 2006’s Tom Green’s House Tonight (starting as Tom Green Live), filming in his living room. For this go at an interview program, he won a coveted Webby for Best Variety Show. He would later host a podcast.

It turns out that maybe people like seeing Tom Green or at least want to know what he might do now that his shtick has mellowed. But he also can’t help himself. When he appeared on season eight of Celebrity Apprentice (2009), he was fired in the third episode for showing up late after an all-night bender with Dennis Rodman. When he partook in Celebrity Big Brother 2 (2019), he was almost refined in his odd antics, still wacky but slightly less perverted, I guess. What, really, could we expect? This guy has had so much fun being himself…even when he’s a cyborg version of himself, as he was on Workaholics (2013).

But there’s nothing outrageous anymore – even his America’s Got Talent stunt where Green becomes engulfed in flames was revealed to be a stuntman. How can he be? Where has our Tom Green gone? This is the man who brought the obnoxious jerk with no limits back to the mainstream, pre-dating those idiotic TikTok pranks that have gotten people shot. Social media has sucked out the artistry and the punk rock edge of prank videos. Nowadays, pranksters seem motivated by views and clicks, but Tom was motivated by his love of comedy. Performance art is dead, taken over by desperate “internet clout.” They won’t have legacies, and you probably don’t know their names, but you will never forget the name Tom Green.

And not to put him on some golden pedestal, but Tom Green, the little udder-sucker that could, remains. He even continues stand-up to this day, tossing in variations of past MTV bits and movie scenes. But it seems now that podcasting is really his thing, and it seems to really make him happy. His dedicated fans still tune in to hear this man’s hilarious, wise words, broadcasting from his farm… that’s right, Tom Green is a farmer now… as foretold in his brilliant satire Freddy Got Fingered.

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