Freddy Got Fingered has aged like a fine wine, or like a rotting deer carcass, depending on your opinion of the notorious feature debut for Y2K's most notorious comedian, Tom Green. If you like Freddy Got Fingered, a rotting deer carcass might sound appetizing.
Since the film was a disaster, the conversation surrounding it has evolved. Most people think Freddy Got Fingered is either a masterpiece or a mess of blood and elephant semen. The day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism according to Roger Ebert. When it is seen as funny, the day may never come. Thanks to a growing number of critically beloved comedies operating in its shadow, both days have arrived: There are those who consider it a milestone, and those who find it funny.
Tom Green was a hero in 2001. At my grade school, the hero was the 12-year-olds. He was a loud and obnoxious skateboarder who acted unfeeling in the face of his own destruction. Green would paint sex scenes on the hood of his parents car and act ignorant when they reacted negatively. His response to any offense would eventually lead to screaming. There was a lot of screaming.
It was hard to imagine audiences coming out in droves to see a feature-length version of The Tom Green Show two years after Jackass. Green and Harvie wrote a film that was sure to get greenlit in 2001: a gross-out big-screen yuk fest starring MTV's biggest star. It looked like any number of comedies about an insipid man-child getting his first job and learning to grow up a little. Green plays Gord, an aspiring animator who moves to L.A. to make his dreams come true, only to return home to his violent, psychotic father after losing his job at the cheese-sandwich factory.
Hollywood comedies went through a gross out period. The Farrelly brothers had kicked it off with their surprise smash There's Something About Mary, which was followed by Adam and American Pie. The way in which these movies mixed bodily fluids and tasteless jokes with just enough heart to win over audiences was the stealth appeal. Freddy Got Fingered was not interested in the feel-good part of the equation. The movie ends with a boy being sucked into the propeller of a plane, and he cries, "I'm okay, daddy."
Freddy Got Fingered may have been a little ahead of the game for mainstream adult audiences in 2001. Freddy Got Fingered tried to fit into the tradition of weird, caustic, and unpleasant Hollywood movies like Cabin Boy and Clifford. The intended audience isn't old enough to vote with their wallet, so those types of movies rarely do well in theaters. They thrive on home video because they are better at provocations at sleepover parties. In a recent interview with Decider, Tom Green said that Freddy Got Fingered was an "overriding success." The movie made almost $25 million on DVD in the first year, but they didn't talk about the critics or the box-office. There were people who got it. Some of those people are making comedies of their own.
It took a few years to see the influence of Freddy Got Fingered on movies, but Green's show and the film quickly began to bring in a wave of live-action anti-comedy on television. Two years after Green's second MTV series, The New Tom Green Show, failed to take off like the first one had, Comedy Central launched Wonder Showzen, a parody of kids shows in the vein of PBS. In one of the most famous clips from the show, a girl asks Wall Street traders who they exploited.
There was a small anti-comedy boom. Wonder Showzen became a cult hit on DVD and late-night shows. Adult Swim added Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! to its roster. The Awesome Show is a follow up to Tom Goes To The Mayor and shares Green's penchant for antagonism. Replacing setup and punchlines with blank stares and booming lip smacks, the show leads its viewers to laughs. The show's soundtrack would fit nicely with the song " Daddy Would You Like Some Sausage". Tim and Eric would get their own attempt at a Freddy Got Fingered-style comedy, 2012's Tim And Eric's Billion Dollar Movie, which was produced by two of comedy's biggest names, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell.
The runway to become a $100 million dollar blockbuster was given to Step Brothers by the increasingly weird tastes exhibited on television. McKay takes a lot of Green's anarchic spirit and filters it through John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell, known comedians with a track record that puts the audience squarely on their side. He smoothed out the jagged edges and offered a less violent version of Rip Torn's father character. The film works in a similar way as Freddy, taking a classic slacker comedy about grown men acting like children and filling it with dadaist tangents of impulse and imagination.
Comedy has fully embraced Got Fingered. On the small screen, the joke machines of Tim Robinson, Eric André, and Connor O'Malley rely on the threat of full-throated tantrums.
I think you should leave is a sketch series by Tim Robinson that is double down on the denialism that fuels much of Green's comedy. Men oozing with privilege, refusing to see the world for what it is, unleashing fury whenever their worldview is challenged, are featured in sketches like "Dan flashes". In Robinson's sketches, teachers yell at students for asking vital questions about a traffic safety video, a focus group accuses a quiet participant of loving his mother-in-law, and men stomp their feet until they are left alone. The comedy comes from these characters refusing to accept their mistakes even in the face of the most compelling evidence. Robinson's characters live in a place outside of society where they hear the rules and interpret them in different ways.
Gord lives in a different world from those around him. Freddy Green's aggression throws the base reality into turmoil in every scene. Green created a world that is always on the verge of bizarre violence, so it is not hard to imagine a commercial for Coffin Flop Freddy in Got Fingered. Green is like a guy who can't stop cursing on a haunted house tour. Scenes become chaotic when he continually negs and negs. Gord sticks a gun in his mouth when challenged, threatening to kill himself.
Freddy Got Fingered is a comedy about antagonism. When pushed far enough, Green's provocations in the film tend to be physical or at least aural. Most comedies ignore the gore and viscera that he leans into. The comedy becomes frightening if it is pushed too far. Freddy Got Fingered's other characters believe they live in an ordinary world filled with family dinners and lunch meetings. Gord changes that belief. His presence is a sign of pain. Robinson hammers home his POV by refusing to stop when asked, whether he is putting on a Blues Brothers routine or staying planted in a parking spot because he can't drive. It doesn't matter. stubbornness always wins the war of attrition.
Eric likes playing in that pool. He released his version of Freddy Got Fingered on the streaming service. In both cases, the comedians elaborate on the violence of other comedies, which are similar to Frank Grimes-ing their films.
In one of Bad Trip's early scenes, Chris accidentally dropped his hand in a smoothie shop and splattered blood on the shop and its customers. It's nothing new to tilt cringe-comic exchanges into slapstick violence. While There's Something About Mary shows Ben Stiller's fly, director Kitao Sakurai's many hidden cameras hold on to André screaming in pain as his hand is blended to a bloody pulp. A scene later, with his hand bandaged in bloody rags, he breaks into a musical number, "I Saw A Girl Today," accompanied by a fleet of dancers. The same purpose as Gord delivering a baby and swinging it by the umbilical cord is served by the blood-soaked mayhem of André, which punctures the cliché beats of Hollywood comedies by ramping up the intensity, then return to the status quo like nothing ever happened.
The comedy of Freddy Got Fingered is no surprise in a culture where people refuse to face facts. The last decade of post-truth culture has helped these comedies. The sound of Tom Green pushing a microphone into someone's face has been replaced by the sound of a generation of men who refuse to recognize their status, potential, and privilege.
Green's greatest contribution to modern comedy is his air of invincibility and faith in "boys will be boys". Green is a white middle-class twentysomething. It is the same reason that teen skateboarders in the suburbs mouth off to cops when they are told to leave a skate spot. Green made that attitude into something that could be used for comedy. He is less Steve Martin in The Jerk and more Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and he is still frightening people with his beliefs. What does Gord care about? He is not the one who is hurt by his actions. Even if he was hurt, he would be fine.
The Super Male Vitality supplements enhance the confidence of men. Many comedians use the Trumpian world of awkward media, body horror, and incomprehensible jargon to make their anti-comedy funny. The modern American male is being pointed out by many people, including O'Mally, Heidecker, and more, in order to remind you that their parodies aren't as exaggerated as they seem. In some cases, the real version is only a recommendation away.
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It isn't a new approach in comedy to push the status quo, reveal its underside, and make audiences sit in the unpleasantness. It can take 20 years for others to notice the profitability of the rotting deer carcass.
