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| Sofa Seedlings (l-r) Adam Korson, Tom Green and Carrie-Lynn Neales |
Can Tom Green help spread a little Seed? The Ottawa-born comedian is featured on tonight’s episode of Seed (8:30 p.m. ET on City).
Green plays an arrogant shrink named Dr. Stuart Meinertzhagen who counsels the show’s dysfunctional families. The good doctor’s new-age methods put him in direct rivalry with Anastasia’s mom Janet (Laura de Carteret, The L.A. Complex), who considers Meinertzhagen a total fraud.
Some guest star name recognition could help this series, which has struggled so far on Monday nights.
Green says the main thing he learned on the Halifax-based set of Seed was how to play Paddleball. “I broke 300 without even looking,” he says. “Clearly we had some time between takes.”
Green says the whole cast was into paddleball and that they presented him with an autographed paddle when his time among them was up. “I’m planning on breaking a thousand and making a YouTube video of it.”
Green used to duct tape himself to telephone posts back in his wild and wacky
Rogers community cable days in
Ottawa. Now he “posts” comedy videos at his site,
tomgreen.com. Thanks to the new technology, he saves duct tape, which means more for that other Green, Red..
His main focus the past three years or so has been performing stand up in various venues around the world. He’s performed in
Australia,
Scotland and even before Canadian troops in
Afghanistan. He’s currently touring
Canada, with shows in Winnipeg April 4, 5 and 6. (
See more show dates here).
A Showtime cable comedy stand up special created some buzz in the U.S. late last year; Green says he’s still waiting for a Canadian network to pick it up.
Back when Green was pranking his parents by painting the family car and then dumping it all on Ottawacommunity TV, The Comedy Network—which used to do more for Canadian comics than stick them in remakes of American game shows–offered him a wider platform. That led to a gig on MTV in the States. Green then set out to make what many consider the worst movie of all time, “Freddie Got Fingered.”
The Showtime special, shot in Boston, has led to resurgence in all things Green, with Russell brand singling him out as a big influence at a recent TCA press tour.
“It was a cool thing for him to say,” says Green, who hung out with Brand in L.A. where the two yakked about Green’s early TV antics.
Green says his comedy influences ranged from David Letterman to Monty Python to SCTV. “Candid Camera was something, I loved all that on the street comedy,” he says. “I wanted to replicate that when video cameras came out. I decided to take video in school and then do my own warped version of Candid Camera meets David Letterman.”
The 41-year-old says he’s glad, in a way, he never really got full time into stand up until he was older. “When you’re 15, 16, 17, you don’t have anything to talk about basically. To really connect with an audience, you have to talk about things that matter to people.”
He hopes
Seed takes root and would be happy to return in a future episode. Green spent more time in Halifax as well as Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., hanging with fellow Canuckleheads Mike Smith, Jean Paul Tremblay and Robb Wells as they worked on their upcoming
Swearnet feature film.
“We went out to Harvey’s one day,” Green recalls. “The people at Harvey’s were a little bit shocked when the Trailer Park Boys walked in.”
