Here’s How Tom Green Is Responsible for Joe Rogan’s Podcasting Career
As further evidence that we may be living through a Greenassaince, comedian Tom Green is the subject of a new documentary on Amazon Prime, appropriately titled This Is the Tom Green Documentary.
The doc runs through Green’s life and career, editing archival clips of his show with slow-motion footage of him riding a horse on his farm, presumably in an effort to appeal to fans of Yellowstone.
While we all know about Green’s controversial movie Freddy Got Fingered, his brief marriage to Drew Barrymore and the time that he partnered with Monica Lewinsky to troll the entirety of the news media, a less-well known aspect of Green’s story is that he inadvertently inspired the creation of one of the most popular, and controversial, podcasts of all-time.
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Following the cancellation of MTV’s The New Tom Green Show in 2003, Green decided to build a late-night talk show set in his living room, and began hosting a call-in web show called Tom Green Live! (later renamed Tom Green’s House Tonight), which was streamed on his website. Green actually hosted some pretty big name stars, including Pamela Anderson, Flavor Flav and Val Kilmer.
One of those guests was a young(ish) Joe Rogan, who at that point was just a stand-up comedian who occasionally made people eat insects on network television. “I think this is fucking awesome! This is the craziest thing ever,” Rogan said of the show during his appearance, adding that it was better than traditional television because there’s no “corporate pressure” (hence why they were allowed to pound back Coronas during the show).
Entertainment Tonight happened to be visiting the studio/Green’s house during that taping, and interviewed Rogan. He gave them this surprisingly prescient quote: “Anybody, through the internet, can become famous. I mean, that’s really what’s going to happen. If you have something and you put it out there, and people are interested in it, a viral growth of whatever you’re putting out there will spread. People will know what you’re doing if it’s funny, if it’s entertaining.”
While Green eventually ended his web show because it “cost way too much to keep it operating,” when he appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience years later, Rogan made it clear that it was Green’s project that inspired him to start a podcast. “When you had me as a guest on, it changed the course of my life,” the host confessed. “I remember, like, light bulbs going off in my head, like, ‘Why don’t I do this?’ The idea came out of you, man.”
Of course, considering that Rogan has used his show spread conspiracy theories, including spurious medical claims during a global pandemic, and he recently gave a platform to Donald Trump that some have argued significantly contributed to his electoral victory, it could be argued that Green inspiring Rogan to create his podcast is a far worse than anything in Freddy Got Fingered.
