Kelowna

Tom Green stopped by the Castanet Studio for an interview about his upcoming show on March 7th at the Kelowna Community Theatre.

Rob Balsdon (RB): Welcome to the Castanet Studios. I’m Rob Balsdon, joined by a very special guest today – this is really exciting – Tom Green!

Tom Green (TG): Thanks Rob!

RB: Thanks for coming; I know it’s not your first time…

*Audience applause*

RB: Yeah there is an audience, this is crazy! I’m getting a little nervous.

TG: Welcome to the Okanagan Valley.

RB: We live here.

TG: Yeah, I’m welcoming myself to it.

RB: I would like to welcome you here.

TG: It’s great to be here in the Okanagan Valley right now.

RB: Not your first time.

TG: No.

RB: I know you filmed a movie up at Big White before.

TG: Yup, Shred… and Shred 2. We did the original and the sequel all at once. That’s how much of a hit we knew Shred was going to be – that we shot the sequel before it even came out!

RB: Great, and were they both successful movies?

TG: It was great, really cool with Dave England from Jackass and we spent a few weeks up there – I spent a few weeks – they were up there for longer, but I spent a few weeks up at Big White. Got some runs in, always great to be here in Kelowna… in the heart of the Okanagan Valley, right on the banks of Lake Okanagan.

RB: You’ve done your research. Are you going to do any skiing while you’re up here?

TG: I’m just in and out here. I’m doing the show Thursday night at the Kelowna Community Theatre at 8 p.m., and then I’m off to Victoria and Nanaimo. I was just in Whistler a few weeks ago and did some snowboarding up there, which was cool. I like to ride the snowboard and it’s cool. I’m on a tour, a world tour.

RB: So this is a comedy world tour?

TG: Yeah!

RB: So most people know you from television, movies… stand up comedy for you has only been in the last few years that you’ve sort of hit the live stage again, is it not?

TG: Well, sort of, it’s when I’ve started to do it again full time three or four years ago, but I started doing standup when I was a kid. I was like 15 years old at Yuk Yuk’s in Ottawa and I did it for many years there before my show, and then when the show got going I kind of stopped focusing on it and did The Tom Green Show for years before it got on MTV. The last few years I’ve been focusing on touring, it’s been fun.

RB: Now you’ve been known as a stunt guy on TV and in the movies you do some wild stuff, but how about your standup sets?

TG: It’s just ridiculous and outrageous comedy, you should come see it! If you like standup comedy, you’ll like the show. If you liked my old TV show, you’ll also like the show. It’s got something for everyone in there. I mean, I think I’m a bit older now – obviously we’re all getting older. When you get older, you have more opinions. More things that you want to communicate to your audience and I think standup has always been a place to talk about social issues and political things as well as just make people think about the world we live in a little differently, so I’m enjoying it a lot.

RB: Now, are you still doing television and movies or are you just focusing on…

TG: I’m in the new Trailer Park Boys movie – I just shot that. It’s coming out this year, its called SwearNet. It’s hilarious, we’re gonna git er done there, eh?

*Cheers*

TG: That was a lot of fun and I just did a new TV episode of this new Canadian TV show called Seed, which is coming out this year and going to be a great show. And I just launched a new podcast a month ago; it’s called Tom Green Radio. You can get it on iTunes and on tomgreen.com and it’s one of the top comedy podcasts in the world after only one month. It’s doing really well, so download it and listen to it today – it’s a radio show.

RB: Who have you had on so far?

TG: I’ve interviewed comedians and people. I had Kat Von D and Deadmau5 on. They’re engaged and Deadmau5 is Canadian. And I had Steve-O from Jackass on, I had Andrew Dice Clay on the show, I’ve got Harland Williams coming up on an episode soon – we’ve just done a few episodes, just getting started.

RB: You’ve done everything it sounds like. You started as a rapper…
TG: I did some rapping when I was in high school and was nominated for a Juno Award.

RB: And you won a Much Vibe best rap video award.

TG: Yeah, won a CMVA (Canadian Music Video Award) in 1992 for “Check the O.R”. When I did that song, I didn’t realize it at the time, but I got sucked into an East Coast/ West Coast Canadian hip-hop beef. It was kind of a Canadian version of Biggie/Tupac, except without quite the disastrous of a result. The Westcoast group “The Little Rascals” had beef with us and I didn’t find out about this until later but it was scary, I almost got popped by Spanky and Alfalfa.

RB: Comedy, how does it rank up there with everything you’ve done? With television shows, movies… do you prefer the live audience?

TG: Yeah, I do actually. It’s the most fun thing because you have an adrenaline rush you get from the crowd. Especially in Canada.

You can see Tom Green appearing live tonight at the Kelowna Community Theatre at 8 p.m. Tickets are available through Keynotetickets.com