A Wild and Zany Guy

By Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

The name sounds as normal as can be: Tom Green. But over the past year and a half, this MTV sensation, Pepsi pitchman and movie star apparent has slurped milk from a cow's teat, snorkeled for pennies in a shopping-mall fountain, worn an ELVIS SUCKS T shirt at Graceland, fought Monica Lewinsky with a lightsaber and gargled with mustard. Contrary to rumor, however, he did not dress as Hitler to attend a bar mitzvah. Although it is true that he humped a dead moose on camera.

Does this guy take anything seriously? Well, the answer is yes...and no. A few months ago--after wrapping the gross-out comedy Road Trip--Green, 28, was found to have cancer and underwent back-to-back surgical procedures to remove a diseased testicle and potentially damaged lymph nodes. Clearly it was no laughing matter. To help himself cope, he turned his ordeal into an MTV comedy special that will air May 23. "Basically," he says, "it shifted my attention away from feeling sorry for myself."

The one-hour show includes graphic scenes of his lymph-node surgery ("There's an extreme close-up of my intestines being taken out") tempered with Green's usual edgy humor ("When you talk about removing something like that from your body, there's always room for laughs"). Now 20 lbs. lighter and just off pain killers, Green hopes the show will raise awareness of testicular cancer, which strikes mostly young men and has about a 96% recovery rate if treated early.

Green has always relied on comedy when confronting adversity. A class clown, he and Ottawa school friends videotaped their fights with security guards who got after them for skateboarding in parking lots. After college, his quirky public-access show was picked up by a Canadian cable channel, and he was touted as the country's next Mike Myers. When he auditioned for MTV in 1998, he slathered himself with shaving cream and went into mock convulsions. "That to me was genius," says MTV programming president Brian Graden. "He delivers attitude and pushes buttons, but he provokes people with a smile on his face instead of a mean smirk." Green's self-titled program has since become one of the music channel's top three shows.

Now he's poised to become a big-screen star too. Road Trip, a low-budget ensemble comedy about college high jinks, could be this summer's American Pie, and Green has the equivalent of that film's gonzo pastry scene: he drops a live mouse into his mouth. Says director Todd Phillips: "In the script, Tom was only supposed to tease the mouse, but he took it a step further. In fact, six mice died in that scene...just kidding!"

Next up is a cameo in Charlie's Angels, starring and produced by Green's real-life girlfriend Drew Barrymore. Deals are also set for him to remake Roberto Benigni's Italian comedy The Monster and to co-write an original script. Off-camera, Green is less frantic, more witty, but still weird. He expresses regret that doctors wouldn't allow him to take his excised testicle home. "I really did want to keep it," he says. "They told me they needed to do further testing, but I'm sure it will soon be a hot-ticket item on eBay."