there's a thing that happens in that town in that area where the the people that think outside of the norm say it in like whispered hush tones there's a a certain ideology that's attached to that City and it's not logical it's a kooky wacky uh completely insulated left-wing view of the world and they enforce it with an Iron Fist and if you're not on that team you don't get B for things you don't get picked for things if you're someone who has U conservative leanings or you're talk about cons there's projects you're never going to
get you're never going to be involved with people will they'll malign you and without knowing you at all be openly prejudiced about you and uh so no one does it so everyone who goes over there who's just like desperately trying to make it they're desperately trying to get in movies they're desperately trying to get a recording deal whatever it is they're desperately trying to do the last thing they want to do is do something and talk about something that's going to politically get them at odds with the people that run the studios so no one
does everybody just follows the same sort of wacky ideology these people take from the universities they go straight into working as a PA and straight into working for executives and producers and all of those people are indoctrinated they're all in this wild ass Cult of weirdness and then you have people that move there to try to make it and these people are just always going on auditions so they're always like please choose me please choose me and no they didn't choose me and so you're trying to be friends to the people who choose people you're
trying to get them into parties trying to introduce them to other people trying to be around other famous people this person's been chosen I got to be around the chosen person we to go to the chosen person's party maybe we can get chosen and they so you get this like overwhelming anxiety that fills theing City yeah and then now you have ticktockers and influencers and all these people that are just trying to do anything to get famous yeah and that the reality stars and all that started it all off and the Real Housewives and all
that wacky you get away from that you're like oh there's real people out there there's real people that's a storm of anxiety just a hurricane of confusion and zolof and and everyone's losing their mind and everyone's in therapy and everyone's nuts and everyone's trans it's out of touch yeah it's just a crazed cult yeah it's like you know you start out as a stand-up comedian and you are trying to you know poke uh holes in the you know the absurdity of the world and you're saying things that are not being said on stage and then
you know as you know you all of a sudden get brought into and I'm sort of saying the the every standup comedian every outlier every person that's uh doing something different a punk rocker a skateboarder my goofy show was so out out there when I was making it and I was making it I was rebelling against you know in Canada in my little little Public Access show I was kind of trying to rebel against what obviously seems like a formulaic mainstream way of thinking to create art right and then you mov to Los Angeles cuz
well the show got on MTV I end up moving to Los Angeles now you're I'm talking about myself now all of a sudden being asked to go on um you know the show The Tonight Show Saturday live and you're on these shows and you know I was sort of sort of a bit of a naive you know basically you know like in you purposefully so I would go on these shows try to go nuts right and try to do something crazy and just try to sort of dice sort of almost disrupt the whole format of
it right in those first couple of years as a naive person who didn't understand how Hollywood worked and I was just I you know I went on I had a similar thing to our last appearance here on Jay Leno I went on Jay Leno when I had a film coming out I went J Leno and and uh we I came up with this bit let me roll the the bar they had a you know remember they had the bar cart the J Bar I'll roll it out on stage during the show and then I'll do
a shot of Jagger with with Jay you know Jay doesn't this is a crazy story I probably told you this before but I do a shot of Jagger with with with Jay and Jay doesn't drink so he said okay well I'll throw it over my shoulder right so we go I'm with my my buddy who's you know you you know have a buddy who like pushes you further into the darkness right like you know like you know you got you got a bad idea and he pushes you further and makes it even worse use the
force yeah so we're in the Green Room getting ready I'm me in the green room with my buddy getting ready to go on the show and and he goes do a shot now before you go on I'm like okay so I do a shot now before I go on right and get ready to go on the bits all approved with The Tonight Show you know it's it's a gag they know I'm doing real Jagger right but it wasn't planned that I would do a shot before I go on he goes do another shot before you
go on Two Shots two shots do another one so now I walk out I'm three shots in before the show even starts oh boy you're hammered well pretty quickly then yeah and then I got out there and I did a shot and the audience goes crazy and cheers right and so then I do another shot and so I end up doing like way too many shots and it kind of ended up very similarly to our last our last conversation here and uh and it was it was actually pretty hilarious uh it was one of those
things where you know it it did get out of control the next day uh the there was a the New York Post it's had my picture and it said dead drunk you know it was just like one of those and uh you know Jay called me at home the next day you okay man you he really kind of went but then you know then that was sort of the beginning of me realizing oh you know you can't why Tom Green went on Leno and deliberately got drunk yeah and and you know in hindsight I go
well that was you know kind of the outrageous kind of young version of me that I was doing on the show that made perfect sense to do that for a gag uh but then you know the naive Kid in Me didn't understand well you know a lot of people in Hollywood did not understand that and then got mad in the movie studio got mad at you well like the movie studio I was on promoting a movie and they were like oh we don't want you go any more talk shows for the movie I'm like was
like what I was it was a joke I was obviously it was a joke and they they're not interpreting it as a joke they're interpreting it as as me being kind of out of control which yeah exactly but it was a it was a a manufactured out of control I was out of control but it was planed it was planned confusion right so but that kind of subtlety didn't really uh didn't really kind of pass the the smell test so so then you start to go oh jeez I better tone it down a little bit
you better be better better tone it down a little bit because this and and you sort of end up falling into that feeling where all of a sudden you're like you said going to an audition or driving out to a meeting and being a that you're not yeah exactly if you're hosting a late night talk show and now all of a sudden you're this sort of wearing a tie this odd button down and trying to make something that they like and fit into their mold and you know try to get your own little creative shots
off within that mold but no longer are you actually being purely yourself right right and uh you then you know you end up living there for 20 years I end up living there for 20 years and it becomes normal pretty quickly right and then and then you sort of slowly forget oh you know oh this is just the way it works I guess now and then uh eventually you know one day you go I'm getting out of here and I I got to say uh you know when you when you moved here it was a
bit of a uh a light bulb I think for me too it was inspiring for me because I I I sort of realized oh look at that Joe's leaving you know cuz you you were always at the comedy store all the clubs it was a scene in LA and you're thinking wow like Joe Joe's just going to go do it on his own and just turn his back on this whole infrastructure here and I was like yeah you can do that you don't have to be here and and it was really inspiring and you know
and it inspired a lot of people
