TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Mr. Green's official site
• Article on Mr. Green
• Robot Chicken on Adult Swim

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Seth Green may forever be known to an entire generation as Scott Evil from the blockbuster hit, "Austin Powers,' that whole series, for that matter. But this spring, he's turning his attention to television with two animated projects. First up, the very popular Fox series, "Family Guy,' where he plays the voice of Chris Griffin. But he's also the creative voice behind a series for the Cartoon Network called "Robot Chicken.' The show airs Sunday night as part of the Adult Swim lineup. Here now a scene from "Robot Chicken.'

[A film clip is shown]

Tavis: Seth, nice to meet you.

Seth Green: Nice to meet you too, Tavis.

Tavis: Glad to have you on.

Green: Thank you very much.

Tavis: So are you happy if history records you as the "Austin Powers" guy?

Green: Yeah, oh, yeah. I can't even believe that I got to be in those projects. I mean, it shaped up to be something more after the fact than it was going to be when we made the first movie. But, you know, the same way that I got influenced by funny, crazy movies, people come up to me and say like that movie made me laugh or made me bond with my kids or made me want to be a comedian. It's incredible to be a part of something like that. Also, it was a lot of fun to do.

Tavis: I'm sure it was. I get the sense that you like stay up at night trying to figure out at least a couple different things. One, what is the next offbeat choice that I can make and, number two, I get the sense you work really hard at trying to figure out how you can equally offend like all of us. Am I right about these two things?

Green: (Laughter) Well, partially. I do stay up a lot at night, but I've had like chronic insomnia since I was fifteen, so it's more about that.

Tavis: Now we know where these ideas come from.

Green: Sleep deprivation.

Tavis: Yeah.

Green: I don't really set out to do offbeat things. It just tends to be the things that I get involved with are a little off-center. I mean, "Robot Chicken" just kind of came up because a friend and I were going to do something silly and then it naturally evolved. It grew into this show and, as we brought more and more people onto it, we got their sensibility and their sense of humor and it's become what it is now.

Tavis: But you do have - back to your earlier point - you do have a unique way of finding these things to kind of turning the screw, finding these things that get our attention. So it's not just that they're offbeat, but you're like whoa. I mean, it really gets your attention.

Green: Oh, good, good. I mean, a long time ago I realized I'm sure the same way that you did that, once you have a captive audience, you got to have something valuable to say, so I just try. I mean, our show is silly and it's funny and may be offensive, but it's equally offensive and we're always offensive in the most ridiculous of ways, so I never feel like it's a true offense, you know.

Tavis: (Laughter) It's a fake offense, not a true offense, a false offense.

Green: Well, no. I mean, it's offensive in a way that's not entirely offensive. More like you're going, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe that you said that,' but not like, "Hey, that really makes me upset."

Tavis: Well, that's what I meant by my question, the former and not the latter. I agree with you on that. Your show is not a report obviously, it's not a daily show, but you don't avoid making fun of politicians and these very serious political issues.

Green: No, that's true, but we do it in a very silly way. We've kind of all collectively agreed that George Bush makes himself buffoonish from time to time by acting like a child and, you know, being petulant or avoiding work and responsibility for things, so we just play him like a little kid. Every time you see him, he's like with a teddy bear and he's like, "Oh, Hopalong, you're going with me to the Geneva Convention. Bang, Bang."

We have an episode coming up where George Bush is at the doctor and the doctor says, "Well, everything's fine except that your midichlorian count is exceptionally high." If anyone who knows Star Wars, they say that the midichlorians are a bacteria that's in your bloodstream that a high presence of will cause you to have The Force. You've got a bad case of The Force. I was a little disappointed at that justification for it, but Lucas and I will talk about that at some point. So George Bush finds out that he is in fact a Jedi and goes out and does crazy stuff like picks fights with Bill Clinton and actually has a light saber duel with Abe Lincoln at one point. You know, that's our political humor.

Tavis: Well, his Jedi mind trick is working on a lot of people in the country, but that's another issue (laughter).

Green: (Laughter) Yes, it is.

Tavis: We'll leave that alone.

Green: They're far more susceptible than our -

Tavis: - the Jedi mind trick is working. Speaking of which, how did you get - I was going to say how did you get so political? I don't know that you are that political, but I assume though that you must have politics somewhere in your blood because you cover some of the issues and you seem well-versed about these things.

Green: You know, I've been paying attention a lot more and more. As I grew up, my parents were not active in politics, but they were both teachers. Social issues were brought to my attention. My parents always watched the news. I was also naturally curious. So the older I get and the more curious I am, the more I start to unravel the secrets of what's really going on in our world and the more I start paying attention to historical context for political battles.

You know, I watched this movie called "Kingdom of Heaven,' this Ridley Scott movie, which is the battle for Jerusalem between the Muslims and the Christians in 1184. It's not entirely accurate. Some of it's fictionalized, but the actual events, the war, is true. It just put that into perspective like, man, we have been fighting the same war over and over again and it's always for the same reason. It's how you pray. Everybody in the world agrees, oh, yeah, I like to pray, I believe in God, that's important to me, but it's the how that everybody fights over. It's insane and I find it more and more frustrating every day that people are willing to kill and die in the name of a presence that, in my opinion, would never condone that kind of activity.

Tavis: You have reason to believe that it's going to change?

Green: No, no.

Tavis: That's the sad part.

Green: Well, it's just fact. I mean, our society gets bigger and bigger and it grows and technology booms and everybody advances in one way or another and you just can never put things back together. You can't them back the way they were. In the fifties and sixties, we were kind of a naïve society and that got ripped away with the Kennedy assassination, with Watergate, and people were suddenly exposed to the concept of corruption in politics. Now, sadly, it's just become really accepted.

People just say, "Oh, yeah, I know the government's corrupt, but I'm so excited that Brad and Angelina are having sex." (Laughter) You know what I mean? They're like, "Oh, I know those people in Katrina. It was a horrible situation. I sent ten dollars, but did you guys see the new Lindsey Logan movie?" It's an embarrassing concession to make and I just try and find my footing and do the best I can. I know I won't ever alter the machine. It's been in effect and in power for hundreds and hundreds of years. I just try and participate and do good where I can.

Tavis: Your comment now makes me think of something. If back in the fifties and sixties, your sense is - and others have the same view - that society was much more naïve than it is today, so if kids in the fifties and sixties were too naïve, are kids today too exposed?

Green: Far too exposed. I did a program on KROQ last night called "Love Lines" where young kids call in with sexual questions.

Tavis: I've heard that show many times.

Green: It is insane. I've known Dr. Drew for almost ten or twelve years now. We have the same startled reaction when fourteen year olds - this happened last night. A fourteen year old boy called in and had a question about, oh, my gosh, his fourteen year old girlfriend and the fact that she was uncomfortable with oral sex. They'd already been having like intercourse and she was uncomfortable with oral sex. Drew and I, you could hear it on the radio, our jaws hit the ground. We were like, wow, man, kids today.

It's hard for me to comment because I was exposed to a lot at a young age and I don't feel it affected me adversely. But it is hard to put that into perspective when you think of a fourteen year old being sexual, to think of them really establishing that aspect of their identity.

Tavis: What was it like for you? Back to something you said a moment ago. You grew up with two parents who were teachers. Now every time I think about friends of mine who grew up with a mother or father in the house who was a professional teacher, I always seem to find that those kids like do well in school because their parents like make them study and make them go to the library (laughter). But on the flip side, though, you got a momma and a daddy that teaches. What is that like? They must like beat you over the head to study like all the time.

Green: It was very embarrassing. My mom is a professional artist and she taught art, so it was easy for me to please her because I draw and sculpt and paint and things like that. But my dad is a mathematician. I mean, my dad was the department head of Math and Computer Sciences for several years and he just has a different kind of brain than I have. Man, I just could not do well in math and I did not devote any attention to science. I didn't get interested in school until I was older and realized that it was a requirement to graduate (laughter).

Tavis: And I was hoping that you were going to tell me that my parents, because they're teachers, instilled in me a great love of learning.

Green: No. I grew more serious after I graduated high school. I really did. Instead of going to college, I just did a bunch of reading and investigated the subjects that I found fascinating. Instead of having to take a bunch of requirements to be able to take my electives which was the complaint that all my friends who were in college had, I just went to a used book store and studied literature and studied philosophy and a little bit of religion and then I went to the local coffee houses and debated and got into conversations with the kids who were actually paying for college (laughter).

Tavis: So given that experience, if you were going to tell somebody watching right now, aside from their college studies, two or three disciplines, two or three genres, to read into, to study, what would they be?

Green: That's hard. I mean, for me, I was really curious about philosophy, so I studied like Freud and Jung and things like that. I was very interested in literature and studied like Hess and Steinbeck and Hemingway and just like got into it, got into all the same stuff that people were reading in colleges. I found the stuff that interested me and that made me more interested in studying it. But I think everybody is different.

The one thing that I can offer is you honestly have to be disciplined because nothing is ever gotten by sitting idle. Everything that I've gotten in my life and my business, I've had to reach out and grab for and kind of force into being. "Robot Chicken" was created from thin air and we had a lot of help doing it, but we spent five years getting it from us going, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny to do that?" to getting it on the air and getting a DVD out. Five years, dedicated to making it happen because somebody's got to.

Tavis: So now you got so many projects going from movies to television projects, television interviews like this. You sleeping much these days?

Green: You know, I still don't sleep very much. I have been averaging like - you could average it out to five hours a night (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) So your chronic insomnia continues.

Green: But it's just kind of my condition, you know. Some people put on weight. Some people can't put on weight. Some people sleep heavily. Some people can't. It doesn't stop me from functioning. I just need to balance it.

Tavis: You think you'd be more creative or less creative if you got the required eight hours of night?

Green: I went on vacation for about twelve days. I went to Hawaii and, first of all, it took me two days to even stop thinking to where I could just sit on the beach and relax. After the sixth day, I was like I got a bunch of great ideas. I stayed on vacation, but I wrote a lot of stuff down. But that's what you need. You need to recharge over a period of time.

Tavis: It happens to me. I take a few days off and my staff, on the one hand, loves for me to leave. He deserves a little down time. But they hate it because he's coming back with a long list of ideas.

Green: With a vengeance.

Tavis: Exactly. Nice to have you here.

Green: My pleasure.

Tavis: "Robot Chicken" on Adult Swim. Check it out. Seth Green, nice to have you on the program.

Green: Thank you very much.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. You can catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. I'll see you back here next time, though, on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.