Hollywood Causes Cancer: The Tom Green Story

“Not a day goes by when I don’t wake up and think, just for a second, usually between taking a leak and brushing my teeth, what the hell happened?”

Eight years ago, Tom Green lived in his parents’ basement in Canada. He spent his time skateboarding, making funny videos with his friends, and dreaming of hosting his own talk show. MTV saw his low-budget public access show and brought him to New York, and Tom’s next few years in show business were a bizarre roller-coaster ride. Not only did he achieve his dream with The Tom Green Show, but he launched a movie career and married a Hollywood actress. Then the tide turned. Their house burned down. Tom was diagnosed with testicular cancer (and recorded his surgery in a hysterical, oddly moving documentary for MTV). He endured a highly publicized divorce. All of a sudden, he went from media darling to media punching bag.

Hollywood Causes Cancer, now in paperback, is the full story of Tom Green’s wildly entertaining trip to celebrity. It’s an absorbing and revelatory look at a dramatic, excessive, ruthless place called Hollywood, and how one man survived his journey into the heart of it all.