READY or not, the rest of Canada is about to enter the bizarre world of Tom Green.
Green's strange, improvisational humor has made his comedy-talk show on Rogers Cable 22 a cult hit with local audiences. As of January, he's going to get a national audience with a 13-week run on the new Comedy Network.
Green had been negotiating with the CBC on and off for a year, and even had made a pilot episode for the corporation.
But finally in March, CBC decided to take a pass on the show. It was a moment Green described yesterday as "a low point and a relief."
"It has been a year of waiting around for CBC," Green said, "and knowing about this Comedy Network thing.
"It's a major relief knowing what's going to happen now."
The show will be moved almost intact to its new home, with his Rogers production crew, co-host Glenn Humplick and the rotating roster of guest bands, Green said.
"The goal is to keep it as much like it was as possible," Green said. "The main difference is that it was an hour; now it's a half-hour."
For the uninitiated, that means a standard talk show format intercut with segments in which Green is unleashed on an unsuspecting world to bring anarchy and weirdness to innocent people in the street.
In one memorable segment last year, Green, dressed in full hockey equipment stood at the gates to Parliament Hill and ambushed such politicians as Lucien Bouchard and Brian Tobin, then went and threw himself in the canal in front of an amazed group of senior citizens.
"There are definitely going to be wackos on the show," Green said. "I don't call them wackos, though. I call them regular people.
"A lot of shows won't seek out an 80-year-old sitting on a park bench. But the thing is, an 80-year-old, when confronted by me acting weird, can come across a little wacko."
The question, of course, is how well Green's humor will travel, said Ed Robinson of the Comedy Network.
The Comedy Network launches Sept. 26, as part of a tier of six new specialty channels, which will include the History Channel, the animation channel Teletoon, and three other services, which will be announced by the Canadian Cable Television Association today.
"Tom is outrageous and irreverent and wacky and wonderful and funny and the kind of show we would like to give a shot to," Robinson said.
"I know he's a comedy cult hero in Ottawa. It will be interesting to see how well he translates to the rest of the country."
If Green appeals to the nation, his producer Merilyn Read said, he may become a permanent fixture not only across Canada, but eventually could invade the U.S. airwaves as well.
"The plan is (for the Comedy Network) to pick up more episodes, to double it to 26 episodes the next year," Read said.
As for shopping it in the U.S., "We're taking it to places like (the American cable channel) Comedy Central."
The show will be made in Ottawa by MTR Entertainment in association with Rogers Cable 22, which will supply technical facilities in return for a percentage of the ownership.
And now, with The Comedy Network, it will have a large enough budget to be able to go on the road. Plans are for Green to inject a little surrealism into the lives of Torontonians, Haligonians, and even New Yorkers.
He has already done street segments in Montreal.
"It was great getting out of town," he said, adding that his cult fame was beginning to make it difficult to maintain the element of surprise in Ottawa. "We've been on every street corner in town.
"It was great to go down Ste-Catherine St. and not be recognized."
