Tom Green: 'I think all comedy has victims'

From Dennis Michael
CNN Entertainment Correspondent

Green says his show is "fun victimization"

(CNN) -- Call him comedy's newest astronaut -- like Buster Keaton or Andy Kaufman, Tom Green is going where few comedians have gone before.

His medium of choice is the MTV show bearing his name. "The Tom Green Show" is somewhere between a demented collection of "Candid Camera" outtakes and a particularly aggressive kind of performance art.

Green and his camera crew hit the streets and catch unsuspecting people in situations that -- well, that make people laugh. The humor can be lowbrow, and everybody is a victim.

"I think all comedy has victims, really," says Green, whose television show first appeared on cable access in Canada. "Even if it's not a victim that appears on camera, usually there's a victim. If it's political comedy, if you're talking about the president or whoever, there's a victim there."

But Green says there's one threshold the show never crosses.

"The victims aren't really victimized in a way that it comes off totally mean-spirited or negative," says Green. "It's a fun, fun victimization, if that's possible."

The real art of Green's comedy is his instinctive knowledge of how far he can go and stay funny.

"Once you cross that line, it's not funny," he says.

Talk to Green long enough and you begin to realize how seriously he takes humor. To him, the show has many layers, starting with comedy and going deeper.

"I think there's a lot of subtle mockeries of things on the show," he says. "Sometimes performance art, sometimes comedy itself, sometimes television. But that's a subtle layer. There's a lot of layers that are not so subtle on the show."

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