Name: Looking Back on "The Tom Green Show" 30 Years Later
Uploaded: 2025-03-07T15:00:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Looking Back on "The Tom Green Show" 30 Years Later' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-03-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Looking Back on "The Tom Green Show" 30 Years Later' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-03-07. Transcript available.

It's a weird thing, you know, because 20 years ago, nobody had, definitely 30
years ago, nobody had video cameras really like they do now, but now everybody
with their phones, everything documented, it's so normal now, but I just put
this documentary out on Prime, which is, it's called This is the Tom Green
Documentary, it's sort of a play on my old theme song on my show, This is the
Tom Green Show, was the song, right?
So I went through like thousands of hours of video, I'm going back looking at,
you know, 17 year old me running around doing stuff, and it was actually kind
of a pretty somewhat terrifying experience actually, because it was like this
opportunity to kind of tell the story of everything that happened with my show,
and everything that happened with my experience here,
You're in LA, and I wanted to kind of, you know, tell the story right, and I've
got so much video, and combing through all of it was at times, you know,
somewhat kind of like, I would be looking at myself like I'm looking at a
completely different person, and I can't even believe, you know, I'm finding
things I don't even remember happening,
And I'm looking at things that are just so completely bonkers, and silly, and
ridiculous, and I'm like, whoa, I like, sometimes I couldn't look at the TV, I'm
like, oh my, what, what was I doing, you know?
That's how you made us feel.
Yeah, exactly, I was doing it to myself 20 years, 30 years later, and no, I
wouldn't recommend it to anybody to go make a documentary about yourself,
definitely hire somebody to do that, never watch it, but no, it was fun,
because I wanted to tell the story the right way, but it was also kind of very
surreal, but, you know.
Was it hard to be true to yourself making, like, you know, making your own
documentary, and no one should probably make your documentary except for you,
because you're one of the rare cases, it feels like, that has so much, has
documented themselves so much, you know, like, and I don't even know if it's, I
don't know if it seemed like an egotistical way, I don't think it ever came
across like that of your footage, it just came across that you wanted to have
control over how, of yourself, you wanted to put yourself out there.
But was it hard to make a documentary and not want to, like, make yourself the
hero or something, or, I don't, I've never made a documentary before.
Yeah, yeah.
Or was there any of that in it, or how do I make this?
Yeah, it's like the first scene of the documentary, I'm sitting with my mother,
and she actually says, are you really supposed to do, direct a documentary
about yourself?
I mean, can't you kind of whitewash that a little bit?
Are you going to do that?
Yeah, I'm going to do that.
So, but honestly, the, I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to be, I did not want
to completely, like, you know, put a false story out there.
So, I think the hardest part was trying to figure out how to not be too self-deprecating,
you know, because, you know, you think, you know, when you get to my age, you
know, you look back and you think, oh my God, I wish I hadn't done that, or I
wish I hadn't done that, or I shouldn't have said that, or I shouldn't have
done that.
And, you know, I have a lot of those things, right, they're constantly rattling
around in my head, and you start to think, like, you know, man, maybe this is a
good way for me to go and just, like, apologize for everything that I perceived
that I've done wrong in my life, right?
And then you have to kind of take a step back and go, well, wait a minute, you
know, like, that might just be in my head, you know?
So, I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people about, you know, people
that I know, people that I'm close with, about the story of, really, it's the
story of the show, and takes us through the story of kind of creating the show,
and then building, you know, before the show with my music, and then after the
show with building a, you know, sort of a web TV studio, right, here in Los
Angeles.
And it's sort of a telling of that story, but then I wanted to talk, you know,
a bit about some of the, you know, personal sort of, you know, things that I
went through.
I mean, I had cancer when I was on MTV, and I talked about that.
And then on top of that, there's just so much footage and so many weird little
funny clips that only I know are the ones that people like or people have or
haven't seen, and I kind of wanted to make sense of that all and piece it all
together.
I don't think anyone else would have been able to find it all, you know?
Yeah.
So, but...
Was there a project that you kind of wanted to do over the years that you didn't
really nail or you didn't, that something that didn't happen?
Was there something?
Because you've just done so much stuff.
I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting because, like, in
fact, that's part of what the documentary is about.
Because, like, when I was, uh, got into making the show when I was growing up,
all I could even imagine myself doing was I wanted to be a talk show host.
You know, I wanted to do basically a show like David Letterman, right?
Have guests on, and then I'd go out in the street and, you know, be a nutcase,
you know, do goofy stuff, right?
And, uh, I got to do that, you know, a few times over the years.
And, um, you know, when those shows go away, you know, initially when that
happened, you know, that was back in the day of MTV.
You know, the first show I stopped when I, when I got sick.
So, you know, it didn't actually get canceled, the Tom Green show.
But then when I started, I did a nightly show, it kind of, you know, when it
kind of got canceled, I was thinking, oh my gosh, you know, this is the worst
thing that could ever happen to me that I could ever imagine that I'm not going
to be able to do a nightly talk show.
You know, like, this just was like, this was devastating to me, you know?
And as time marches on and I look at all the things that I've done instead, you
know, into, you know, touring, doing stand-up or moving back to the farm and,
uh, and, and, and everything in between, I kind of realized, man, I'm kind of,
kind of glad that actually didn't work out because I, if it, if it, if it, if
that, if that show had been a big hit, then I would have been going down to the
same studio every night for the last 30 years.
And I wouldn't have gotten to do all these other things, you know, so.
Thank you.