
Green starred, co-wrote, and directed Freddy Got Fingered, a movie that features Tom licking an exposed broken bone, ripping open a deer and wearing its skin like a coat, and masturbating an elephant to the aforementioned explosive climax. It was not what Hollywood insiders would call a "four-quandrant movie." It was really the only movie Tom Green could make, because it was the only movie Tom Green wanted to make.Now, with a new talk show on Axs.tv and a career touring as a stand-up comic, Tom invited me to his home in the Hollywood Hills to discuss the creation of a transgressive masterpiece. We talked over expensive Belgian beers for almost two hours, the results of which have been condensed (all of my belches have been removed) into the below.VICE: Was there a thing in particular that you said or did that convinced people with money to make a movie that the system would never make?
Tom Green: The hardest part about Freddy Got Fingered is that we got people to go along with it. It was a combination of the success of the TV show, the success of Road Trip, and my stubbornness.So you just say no, and no is an answer they don’t get often.
Pretty much. There’d be arguments. There’d be fights. They’d call my manager, my manager would call me, but no one wanted to say no to me at every single step of the way. But at that time, people were really excited about the TV show. They really wanted to put the movie out. So I really had some power at that time. I think a lot of people would have rolled over. When fights and arguments got to a certain point, a lot of people in that position, unlike me, had probably grown up in Hollywood and grown up around this "just say yes" mentality. You don’t argue with the studio. You just say yes. We dug our heels in and we did it.
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There’s always moments like that. I don’t remember specifically what they are, but I’ve never done anything that I have ethical or moral problems with. We never made fun of people who are less fortunate. We’d rather take on authority. It was more about making fun of movies. The whole point was that we were going to make each scene so over the top.So, you delivered the script to the studio.
The movie didn’t instantly get made. The movie got bought by a major movie studio. They make all the major movies with all the major comedians. We went in for our first meeting and said I wanted to direct the movie. And they said, “What? You wanna what? You wanna direct the movie? Have you ever directed a movie?” Well, I’d directed my TV show, but that’s not a movie. I said I want to direct the movie, and I don’t want to change a thing in the script. Nothing. And they sort of looked at me, and I think they were kind of confused by that. They’d already bought the script.
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You’d think it would be the opposite, but that’s not the way Hollywood works. They buy things and then they change it. The corporations and executives take young talent that’s interesting, bring them in, and then make their movie with them. Not make some kid from Canada’s movie. It’s some kid from Canada in their movie. They were going to make it a cookie-cutter studio movie, and I said no. I had an opportunity to make a movie. We’re gonna make our fucking movie and we don’t give a fuck.In hindsight, would I have done everything the same? I probably wouldn't have, because I would have known the effect it would have on me and my ability to make another movie. I certainly wouldn't have been as cutthroat in my firmness when it came to creative decisions—like walking away from a studio because they wanted to take a couple of scenes out of it.
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Really cool. He was a nice guy. You can print that.Did you feel more motivated to have it your way, having the cancer scare? You have this brush with mortality, you need to do it your way and have your big chance to express yourself fully?
I’d like to say yes, but it’s not really true. No. The script had been written already. For about three or four years, I was in a lot more physical pain and stress than anybody knew. When I would meet people, I was kind of standoffish. That was because I was in a bit of a funk. I had a lot of nerve pain from the surgery. I think people might have felt I appeared a bit standoffish. I didn’t realize what was going on other than I was in pain. There is a layer of that that’s probably reflected in some of the movie. In the sense that when there’s guts, there’s more guts. When there’s blood, there’s more blood. When there’s screaming, the screaming is a little bit louder and angrier.
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That was my surgery, my intestines. You know how Alfred Hitchcock made a cameo in all his films? Even though I was already in the movie, as the main character, I made another cameo as my intestines.

The cut of the movie was about half an hour longer. It had a very dark soundtrack throughout. Some of the songs were the same, some different. There were scenes that were removed. A lot of it wasn’t just scenes; it was the length of scenes, the amount of time we held on a certain shot. The tone was completely different. The movie’s choppy now. It was smooth all the way through. Important scenes were removed. Things were made shorter to make them less gross, less shocking, less strange—to keep it moving.It wasn’t the studio. Arnon Milchan was super supportive of me. We had a screening at 20th Century Fox. Everyone from the studio was there. It was my director’s cut. The movie ended and Arnon Milchan stood up and started clapping. He did a long speech about it being the best movie a first-time director had done in his career. He said it was perfect. He didn’t want to change a thing. It was a great day. Everyone was happy. Then we went to test it. Every movie does it. This is the final stage of making everything as cookie-cutter as possible.We all flew out to Phoenix to see the movie with all these people who’ve been selected to come in and play film critic for the day. Some guy comes out and says, “Was there too much blood?” Yes, there was too much blood. “Was it too gross?” Yes, it was too gross. “Was it too long?” Yes, it was too long. “Was it funny enough?” No, it wasn’t funny enough. “Do you like this character? No? Then we’ll just take him out.”
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Well, the uncle owned the cheese sandwich factory. When I originally got to Los Angeles, there’s a scene with my uncle played by Stephen Tobolowsky, who’s hilarious. He introduced me to the cheese sandwich factory. Then we did the I Love Lucy machine sandwiches thing. But they didn’t like that scene. So we get to the factory and I’m just putting cheese on my head.And then it’s over.
And then it’s over and it just seems strange, right? So the critics looking at the movie don’t understand the process I had to go through. There’s a much better movie in there that I actually made. The ending…When the kid gets chopped up by the propeller, he says, “I’m fine.” Was that added after the fact?
Of course it was. He wasn’t fine. He was dead. He ran into an airplane propeller. He was dead. There was an arm that flew into the shot. His arm got chopped off. His father was screaming, then an arm lands. It was more over-the-top crazy stuff.The movie came out and it cost $14 million. It made $14 million. Everyone considered that to be a failure. The critical onslaught was immense. Everyone said it was the most puerile, offensive, grossest, worst movie ever made. It was very extreme.
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The weekend the movie came out. It’s not the blockbuster people had wanted it to be, but if you do the math, not as big of a failure as it seems. If a movie cost $80 million and make $14 million, that’s a failure. When a movie costs $14 million and it makes $14 million at the box office, then $30 million on DVD—that not been reported by anyone. I have talked to the studio. The movie has actually profited. It’s not a financial failure. Nobody ever says that.So, people were saying mean things in the paper the weekend the movie came out, which baffles me to this day. If you’re a writer who writes about movies, and every weekend ten movies come out and they’re all exactly the same, then this thing comes out which is like an aberration. It’s not the movie you wanted it to be in your mind, but at least give it the credit that it’s different. Don’t be so unrelenting with your criticism that you can’t admit that it’s different.I actually consider all of that more successful than I had anticipated. It pissed off more people than I thought it was going to piss off. It pissed off everybody. I thought it would piss off half the people, but we got a lot of joy when we’d go to screenings and when I’m swinging that baby around. Right when I bite the umbilical cord and the blood comes out, four old ladies would get up and walk out of the movie. Me and friends would be screaming into our fucking hands.But you saved the day.
Exactly. But we loved it when people walked out of a movie, to get that kind of a reaction, where people get angry. Who makes a comedy movie to try to piss people off?So I got a call after the reviews came in, and the box office receipts were counted and it was a call from Arnon Milchan. He said, “Tom, I want you to know you should be very proud of this movie and that I made a movie once called the King of Comedy. When that movie came out, it got bad reviews. It didn’t do well. Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs down. 10 years later, people looked at it different. Now it’s become a classic film. It was the only movie at the time Roger Ebert revised his thumbs down on. Be proud of it. In 10 years, people may come to you and say they liked the movie.”And sure enough, the only other movie he changed his mind on was Freddy Got Fingered. He didn’t 100 percent change his mind, but he did come back five years later and he said, basically that it was ambitious.Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.