'The world loves wannabes' or so sang The Offspring in their No 1 song, Pretty Fly (For a White Guy) in 1998. The wannabes in their song are those that try desperately hard to be accepted, being false to themselves and usually ending up making themselves look like a right tit. For some reason though, the popular masses lap it up and the popularity of shows such as TOWIE, Jersey Shore or Big Brother, seem to reflect this.
Big Brother, for me, was the show which alerted me to the public's fixation of wannabes and for me is the granddaddy of the talentless, charmless and shallow. This show has led to the popular media being crammed full of people with vacuous 'personalities' and the word 'celebrity' has had to be redefined as a 'nobody fuckwit who appeared on a reality TV show for their 15 minutes of fame and now will not fuck off'.
Truth be told, I could write an entire blog on how much I hate the wannabes who appear on programs such as Big Brother, but this is a film blog and I should really get back to the point! 'There's a point Colin?', I hear you ask, (which is a bit spooky as I did not see you enter the room), well yes there is. You see even before Big Brother there have been many wannabes polluting our airwaves and the biggest one of my generation was an egocentric unfunny little man called Tom Green.
'Tell us how you really feel', I hear you cry, (seriously, stop sneaking up on me!), well yes, it is fair to say I am not a Tom Green fan. I remember him mainly from his MTV days when he used to present a show which was a mixture of sketches, and 'Candid Camera' pre-'Punked' public stunts. Green would act like a idiot and try humiliate the public, (and his parents on many occasions), by being loud, rude and obnoxious.
Actually in fairness, I did not mind the show to begin with and some of the sketches were funny, but as the series wore on, it became painfully obvious what was wrong with the show.....
The parts of The Tom Green Show in which he would play practical jokes on the public, should be about the public's reactions to what is going on around them. We are laughing at ordinary people in extraordinary situations and the actors should be background noise, there only to set up the gag. The problem with Tom Green though, is he wanted to be the centre of absolutely everything. He wanted to be the one we all laughed at and the show focused on him and solely him. The show became less about the public and their reactions and more about massaging Green's ego.
In 2001, Tom Green released a movie which he wrote, directed and starred in. This was a chance for Green to showcase his comedy writing talents and prove to everyone that he's not a one trick shock pony up his own backside.
So did he succeed? Well, not exactly.......
#73b Freddy Got Fingered
The title of the movie, Freddy Got Fingered, would suggest that this is about a character called Freddy and it is, sort off. Freddy actually is a very small part of the story and the film actually centres around his older brother Gord Brody, (Tom Green). Gord is a failed cartoonist, who acts like a twat and loves to be the centre of attention. This is portrayed brilliantly by Green as all he had to do was turn up.
When Gord's dad, Jim, (Rip Torn), gives Gord a car, he decides to drive to Hollywood to realise his dream of becoming a cartoonist. Jim's reaction to his son moving out of his house and driving off, hopefully to be never seen again, is one of intense joy and I instantly begin to relate with him. Unfortunately for me though, I realise that Green is not gone forever and within 20 seconds Tom Green is wanking off a horse.
Yes, you did read that correctly.
Gord then goes to work in a cheese factory. I say work, he actually runs up and down with a large sausage in front of his trousers pretending it is his penis. Green has set his stall out early on in the movie and it's high brow stuff, I'm sure you'll agree!
When he's not tossing off equine or playing with his meat, Gord tries to get in contact with a CEO of a major animation company, Dave Davidson, (Anthony Michael Hall). He tracks him down to a swanky restaurant and for a bit of randomness, goes dressed as a UK policeman. Gord shows him his artwork and ideas and Davidson decides to let Gord down gently by yelling at him that they're 'fucking stupid'.
Gord threatens to kill himself and Davidson lets us all down by talking Gord out of it. Davidson gives him some advise and says that if he wants to draw cartoon animal characters, then he needs to get inside the animal. Gord promptly finds a road kill deer, skins it and gets inside it. Cue a long scene of Green acting like a pratt covered with a dead deer! Not a great gag based on 'get inside the animal', but I am so grateful that Green did not take this literal meaning into another direction and remake Animal Farm, (non George Orwell version)!
Gord quits his job, (I'm sure he'll be missed) and moves back with his parents. Refusing to grow up, Green sets about finishing off his half pipe on his parents drive. On testing it out, Freddy's friend, (I was surprised he had one too!), Darren, (Harland Williams), breaks his leg. Green reacts in the only way he can by shouting loudly and licking the visibly protruding bone through Darren's shin. At this point I am starting to get the feeling young Green is trying to shock us here.
This is nothing though compared to when Green goes to visit Darren in hospital and pretending to be a doctor, decides to assist an understandably terrified lady to give birth. The gross bit comes when the baby is born and Green bites the umbilical cord with his teeth, (yummy), and half a gallon of blood drips down his chin. Green then tries to resuscitate the baby by swinging it around his head. It's at this point I try to find Green's abandoned deer so I can climb inside and hide.
Gord meets a young nurse at the hospital whom he starts dating. Betty, (Marisa Coughlan) is a beautiful wheelchair bound girl who likes to be whipped across the legs for sexual pleasure and loves giving blowies. M'Okay then.
New found love does not stop Gord's antics and Jim is so sick of his 28 year old son's childish behaviour, (aren't we all), that to gain revenge he decides to smash up his newly built half pipe. Gord is understandably angry, after all it did take him 18 years to build, and accuses Jim of 'fingering' his younger brother Freddy. And finally we get to the whole point of the film title, 'Freddy Got Fingered', (it really seemed like we'd never get there). Personally I don't think it was worth the wait and the double entendre doesn't really work as it is Jim who got fingered, in the sense of being accused of something.
Anyway, we plough on with the movie and Freddy is placed into care and Julie, (Gord's mum, played by Julie Hagerty), disgusted with Jim, runs off with Shaq O'Neil, (played by the man himself in actually quite an amusing cameo).
Gord's luck goes from bad to worse when he and Betty have a row about whether or not Betty will be able to build the world's first rocket powered wheel chair and they split up. We now enter the lazy two-thirds into a typical Hollywood movie in which it appears the lead character is at rock bottom and there is no way back for him. This being Hollywood, off course there is a way back!
Gord catches a news report on Betty who is seen on a runway successfully riding her rocket powered wheelchair. This spurns Gord on and he realises people can achieve their dreams and so with a new sense of purpose he goes back to Davidson's office to try to get one of his animations to be made into a series.
Whilst at Davidson's office, Gord is tracked down by a rather pissed of Jim and he proceeds to chase Gord around the office in a loud and obnoxious way and actually a lot like how Gord would behave, (we see where Gord gets his strange behaviour from). Davidson loves the animation and this display of slapstick beatings from his dad appears to be a deal clincher and he agrees to produce Gord's animation and gives him a million dollar cheque. As you do!
Rich beyond his wildest dreams, Gord decides to pay his dad back with the biggest prank he can think off. He moves the entire house, with dad asleep inside, to Pakistan! Jim wakes up, opens the door and realises quickly that either Portland is in the middle of a freak heatwave or his git of a son has done it again! Jim chases Gord, Gord finds an elephant, grabs hold of the elephant's tallywhacker and proceeds to cover Jim in fresh elephant semen. It's at this point I put my milk down and decide I wasn't as thirsty as I thought I was.
As if that was not enough, Gord and Jim get kidnapped and are held hostage. This is big news back in The States as Gord's animation series is a massive hit and he is now a celebrity. But it is OK, dear reader, as they are released a few years later. Oh and Gord gets back with Betty, (hooray!). And so ends the 89 minutes Tom Green ego wankfest.
And that, quite simply, is what is painfully wrong with this movie. It's all about Tom Green, promoting Tom Green in a Tom Green way, with a Tom Green script, Tom Green in every scene and Tom Green, Tom Green, Tom Green. This is a shame, because there are some good ideas in this movie. There are funny scenes and potentially there could have been a lot more. Had Tom Green allowed someone else in the movie, other than himself, to have more of a role in the film or more than one page of dialogue, it could have been really good.
Rip Torn, for example as Jim's dad is brilliant. He is especially good when he is acting like Tom Green and really hamming it up. His arguments with Gord are the best parts of the movie as are his over the top reactions. When Gord, for example, says to Jim 'Fuck You', Jim's response of 'Is that what wanna do', pulling down his trousers, exposing his bare bottom and shouting, 'well go ahead, fuck me'. This may sound crude but it is funny and well done. The roles have reversed and Jim is the childish one and Gord the shocked 'parent' and it works brilliantly. Had Green allowed Torn to have some more of Gord's lines, then this easily could have made the movie funnier and the dynamic between Gord and Jim could have been far more entertaining and interesting.
Some of the best parts of the movie, however, are the more subtle gags or the off the wall visual humour. For example when Gord rigs up a pulley system with sausages at the end of pieces of string tied to his wrist, wearing steaks on his ears and playing the keyboard. It's a bit left field, even for Green and visually looks funny and is a refreshing change. It kind of reminds me of Vic and Bob in their Big Night Out years and this type of humour is right up my street.
Unfortunately we are dragged back to normality and Green spoils it by shouting very loudly to his dad, 'Daddy, would you like some sausage' and before you know it we're back into Egosville, population Green.
There is also a recurring funny gag around Gord's neighbour, a kid called Andy Malloy, (Connor Widdows), who gets hurt at various points in the movie. He gets hit in the face with a baseball, smashes his face on the kerb and generally seems to ends up in a bloody mess with each scene he is in. It's funny because it's pure slapstick and exaggerated to the extreme and Andy's character is the nicey nice American nuclear family boy. The shock and gore is balanced with the silliness of the situations and the way Green's character does not pay any attention to Andy's plight and carries on as normal.
Another part which made me laugh was when Gord is breaking back into his Dad's house. Dressed all in black, with night vision binoculars, he uses a laser cutter on the glass of the front door, Green stealthily and silently cuts a hole in the glass. He carefully removes the cut glass, places it down and then smashes the window pane to unlock the door to get in. It goes to show that Green does understand comedy and can write funny scenes. But he does not seem to understand that gags can be subtle and do not have to be shoved into your face at every opportunity. It is almost as if Green tries too hard and that brings me back to my original point in this blog.
I have no doubt Green can be funny, there are signs in Freddy Got Fingered and there were signs in The Tom Green Show, but the problem is Green can not tone it down, he must be noticed, he is a wannabe and so desperately so, he ends up destroying all of his hard work. He does not need to try so hard, he does not need to be the centre of attention all of the time, he can take a step back. But, he does not seem to learn this and all we end up with is 89 minutes of Green shouting, 'look at me, look at me, I'm Tom Green, look at me'. In the end he becomes like the pushy salesman in the store who you end up trying to avoid and ignore.
It's as if Green lacks confidence and needs reassurance time and time again that he's funny and that people accept him. There is a great gag in 'Family Guy' about Tom Green which I think sums Green up better than I ever could. Green is wearing a pink ballerina outfit, laying under a cow, sucking it's udder and he stops, turns to camera and says, 'Does anyone out there like me yet?'.
I want to Tom, I really do, but whilst the world may love wannabes, unfortunately I don't.
