Playing for Laughs

By Denis Grignon
March 1st 1989, The Orleans Star.

The room is dark, a bit dingy and seems hardly the place for an innocent looking adolescent. The doorman Tibor, -yes, that's his real name ­ walks to a table at the back and unknowingly flexes a muscle as he politely tells the hecklers to "shhh".

On this naked stage, the only lit area in this basement hall of the Beacon Arms Hotel in Ottawa is an innocent-looking adolescent performing "the naked art."

Tom Green of Beacon Hill is a fledgling stand-up comic.

Every Thursday evening after the seasoned pros tickle the funny bones of the 180 or so patrons at Yuk-Yuks, Green is one of a half-dozen amateurs who attempt to follow the masters' lead.

Tom Green is young.

Sporting an oversized blazer and tie, it'd be easy to believe that this 17-year old jokester goes through dad's wardrobe to ready himself for this weekly ritual.

With mike in hand, head held low, Green is pacing from one end of the stage to the other presenting his caste to his judge and jury. If they laugh, he¹ll be accepted and relieved of the "hangman's" boos ­ or worse, the deafening silence.

"Tricks are for kids," states Green to the audience, referring to the famous breakfast cereal. Sarcastically he jumps right into the punchline. "What! I hear you have to have I.D. now to buy the stuff."

Hence, Tom Green's material is also young ­ and tonight, funny.

The crowd is not guffawing. But they're laughing.

Green's stumbling into standup is similar to many of his peers. In fact, his first appearance at the comedy club was as one of the hecklers in the back of the room. When he discovered there was a weekly amateur night, he decided it was time to strut his stuff.

He enlisted, he says, because some of his schoolmates at Colonel By Secondary School told him he was funny. "I was always telling jokes. Something funny would happen in class, and I would point it out." His comedy roots actually reach back to elementary school. In the sixth grade at Robert Hopkins Elementary he had his first experience with standup by winning the school's speech contest. His subject topic, naturally, was humour.

He even admits to running for student council in grade 11 because he would get to present a campaign speech before his peers. "I really enjoyed myself" says Green. " it gave me all these opportunities to address assemblies and act foolish."

At one assembly , the Dennis the Menace look-a-like inadvertently stole the attention away from one of his running mates by opening up his briefcase, pulling out it¹s kitchen contents and proceeding to make a tossed salad. Almost apologetically, he says, " I never planned to have it take away all the attention from the guy talking."

The audience at a recent air-band show caught another glimpse of Green's wacky culinary skills when he walked out to the middle of the stage and fried a dozen eggs on an electric frying pan. "I think people expect me to do something weird." says Green.

Doing standup seemed like a logical progression. But he realized that it demanded more than just the zany antics of a cocky kid. He spent three weeks writing out his first routine, forever armed with a a piece of paper in his wallet and a pen ­for those spontaneous comical Eurekas!

He was also in line for a few lessons in humility. Gor Green, who hadn¹t accustomed himself to a paying crowd of adults, making people laugh "was a lot harder now. Especially because I'm younger."

"People from my school know what I'm like, so they¹re ready to laugh. At Yuk-Yuk's, the crowd doesn't know me and they don't necessarily care to." He says that many of the jokes which "kill" in the high school milieu, often die in a club atmosphere.

"Clubbing it" also meant ebing a bit more refined. Says Green, "when I first started, my jokes weren't very structured. I thought I could go up with a basic idea and improvise." Looking back, he adds, "You really have to rehearse the WAY you say it and not just WHAT you say."

On stage, Green attempts to make the distinction : "Oil of Olay is supposed to make you look 10 years younger." Pausing, he chooses the precise moment the same way an orchestra conductor would, and blares out, "If you put it on a nine-year-old, does the kid disappear?"

For Green, developing good timing is all part of the comedic dues a struggling standup must pay-like the time a friend videotaped one of his performances. "I just totally bombed," laments Green.

Barely old enough to drive a car, he realizes his limitations in the experiences he draws upon to write his material. A self-professed David Letterman addict, Green explains, "Most of my routine is teen-related topics-a lot of jokes about TV and commercials. Whereas if I was 30, I'm sure I'd have more to choose from."

"Writing is the most difficult part of standup," claims Green, whose joke tools include a thesaurus and his parents' word processor. Working out his new material also has its price ­ often paid by people other than Green himself. "Ninety ­ percent of my conversations with my mother start off with "How's this joke, Mom?" laughs Green, who says his parents and only brother are very supportive of his new-found passion. But "they listened a lot more at first. Now I think I'm becoming a bit of a nuisance."

A life as a funny-man, road warrior isn't the only aspiration for Green, though. When he graduates from Colonel By, the Grade 12 student plans to pursue radio and television broadcasting at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto.

"Comedy's great" says Green, "But I still want something to fall back on." He'd like to follow path as Ottawa comic Juris Strenge by hosting his own TV show and doing standup on the side.

But even at 17, Tom Green has no illusions of grandeur when it comes to his past-time. "If it ever become a bigger part of my life, well, then great. But even if it doesn't , and I can't turn pro I'll still pursue it as a hobby. It's just that much fun. It doesn't feel like work at all.