June 18, 2003
NOT-SO-MAJOR TOM: After one of
NOT-SO-MAJOR TOM: After one of the quickest career meltdowns in Hollywood history, Tom Green has come crawling back to MTV, and next week will begin hosting "The New Tom Green Show."
Around the summer of 2000, Green looked like the next big comedy movie star. He had been consistantly funny (albeit way over the top) for years on his original MTV show, prior to hitting a home run with his MTV swan song, "The Tom Green Cancer Special"- a network special filmed around the comic's successful surgery for testicular cancer that included the memorable "hey boys, feel your balls, so you don't get cancer" jingle. Later that summer Green appeared in a successful supporting role in the movie "Road Trip," and looked on the way to becoming the next Adam Sandler, or at least the next Rob Schneider.
The next Pauly Shore, more like it. In '01 Green wrote, directed, and starred in "Freddy Got Fingered," a film that is not without its fans, yet was that rare movie that was such a failure that it all but ruined every career involved. Green's follow-up, last year's "Stealing Harvard," didn't do much better. Even worse, Green's marriage to Hollywood royalty Drew Barrymore lasted less than a year, and Green needless to say will not be appearing in the upcoming "Charlie's Angels" sequel.
Green's return to MTV means something else to me, on a personal note: the comedian's longtime friend and sidekick, Glenn Humplik (below, left) will return on the new show, and I've been told for years by Green fans that my resemblance to Mr. Humplik is uncanny, to the point that every 12-16-year-old I met between the years of 1997 and 2001 took to calling me "Glenn" from that point forward. Good thing I'm not a camp councilor anymore...
All in all, I can't say I'm that surprised about Tom Green coming back to MTV. How much you wanna bet the same thing happens, in 2005, to Johnny Knoxville?
