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Comedian Tom Green will perform Sunday at the Funny Bone in Perrysburg.
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Tom Green has grown up — to a point

Getty Images/carlo allegri

Tom Green has grown up — to a point

Tom Green is like the meatloaf special and every new season of Saturday Night Live.

Everyone who's seen the outrageous comedian has an opinion of him they want to share.

That's because, from his outrageous TV show high jinks to Freddy Got Fingered, a comedy Green wrote and directed and starred in that perennially ranks among the worst films ever made, there's nothing ambivalent about the performer.

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It's a career that started with a 15-year-old Green performing standup comedy in the mid-1980s, and peaked in his late 20s with The Tom Green Show, a minor cultural phenomenon on MTV running from 1999 to 2003. It was also during the show's run that he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and later married and divorced Drew Barrymore in a 15-month span. He wrote about all of that in his 2004 autobiography Hollywood Causes Cancer: The Tom Green Story.

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Green's been a guest host for David Letterman, performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, competed on Celebrity Apprentice, and hosted a Web-based talk show from his living room.

He's since partnered with Mark Cuban's AXS TV channel for Tom Green Live, which is on holiday hiatus but should be back by February, Green said. He also stays busy performing standup comedy, including a 7:30 p.m. show Sunday at The Funny Bone, 6140 Levis Commons Blvd. in Perrysburg. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by calling 419-931-3474 or visiting funnybone.com/​Venues/​Toledo.

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The Blade recently interviewed Green about the evolution of his material, including becoming "mature."

Q: How has your standup act changed since you began performing at the age of 15? How much of your life experiences since then inform your comedy act today?

A: Every year as we get older we go through different things in our lives and there's negative things that happen to us, there's positive things, there's lot of experiences that we accumulate along the way. I basically incorporate all of those experiences into my comedy. When you're 15 years old you don't really have a lot to draw on, so you're doing a routine talking about Saturday morning cartoons and cereal commercials. Now ... I like to explore heavier themes and subjects. That I think coupled with the fact that as a person you change quite a bit as you get older and your desire to communicate with audiences about different things changes. It's definitely always evolving.

Q: You’re 43 now. Would you say your material has matured just as you (presumably) have?

A: Yeah, I don't know if I would use the word "mature," just because I don't want people to think that the show's not completely outrageous and ridiculous, which it is, but I know what you're saying. I'm talking about more adult subjects and things that are affecting us all in and our lives and the world that we're living in. As far as the way I deliver my standup and the outrageousness and the ridiculousness and the high energy that I bring to my shows, it's definitely one of the less-mature shows out there. I do think that the subject matter I'm approaching may be more mature than things I've done before, but I want to keep the shows ridiculous and fun and crazy.

Q: You're critical of the Internet in your act — particularly social media. Isn't that a contradiction, considering how much the Internet has helped your career and defined it?

A: Yeah, I mean there is a bit of a contradiction there. I don't look at it like a contradiction, though, I look at it like this: I've been using the Internet in a very serious way. I've been using it more than probably most people, starting at an earlier time. I started tomgreen.com in 1996, which was essentially a blog, posting videos. It essentially was a precursor to what we now know as Facebook. I would go on and post all of this information and ideas and get comments back from people — and this is 10 years early — [and] I developed sort of a strong set of understandings, beliefs, and opinions about the way the Internet works.

When this all went mainstream — Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all went mainstream — I was really aware of how this can affect a person's psyche, how it can impact personal relationships, how it can impact life ... and exposing your information like that and your privacy and all these things. So because of that I was just very aware of it and it just opened up a flurry of ideas that I wanted to convey to people.

It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm never going to use it again. It's kind of like saying I don't want to make a joke about relationships because I'm in a relationship. I'd never be able to talk about what it's like to be in an argument with your girlfriend because I'm having an argument with my girlfriend. You write about what you know, I guess is what I'm saying.

Contact Kirk Baird at kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.

First Published January 1, 2015, 5:00 a.m.

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Comedian Tom Green will perform Sunday at the Funny Bone in Perrysburg.  (Getty Images/carlo allegri)
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