Fresh from the critical re-evaluation of his disgusting film debut Freddy was fingeredTom Green sat down wwith Graham Bensinger for an extensive interview about his life and career, up to and including the time he teamed up with Monica Lewinsky to troll every media outlet in North America.
They also discussed the early years of The Tom Green Showand how he had to fight MTV over its content. Not because the network had a problem with potentially offensive jokes, like the time he turned his parents’ car into “The Slutmobile.”
No, they just didn’t want horrible old people on air. You know, like a 36 year old.
Green explained that when the show first started on Ottawa’s local public broadcaster in 1994, he was still at university studying television broadcasting. This meant he could edit segments himself, which quickly led him to realize that Tom Green wasn’t actually the best part of it The Tom Green Show. “It became clear early on that the funny thing wasn’t what I did on the street, it was the reaction of the people,” Green explained. “(That) was the joke. It was the punch line, something I only really discovered in the editing room.”
That experience as an editor allowed Green to direct the camera crew to focus more on bystanders while filming public pieces. But when the show was picked up by MTV in 1999, they weren’t too keen on the idea. “When we first went to MTV, there was a lot of creative pressure and pull in those first few months,” Green recalls, “because the MTV editors and producers would tighten everything up and take out all the reaction shots.”
Even worse, according to Green, “MTV had a policy at the time that they didn’t want anyone over the age of 35 to appear on camera on their network.”
While we can’t confirm Green’s story, it’s true that there weren’t many older people on MTV in the ’90s, with the exception of Beavis and Butt-Head’s Hank Hill-esque neighbor.
Green didn’t seem to be joking. He further claimed that this statement turned out to be a problem The Tom Green Show because “all the reaction shots were from old people, because they reacted more. They were more confused by bizarre things. So I had to convince MTV to use the photo of the old lady, or the guy on the street who is over 35 and gets mad at me.”
Ultimately, Green won and was able to include photos of people over 35 in his show. MTV didn’t even require him to air a disclaimer warning young viewers that some scenes might include scenes with the inevitable ravages of time.
