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Freddy Got Fingered
Original film poster
Directed by	Tom Green
Produced by	Larry Brezner Howard Lapides Lauren Lloyd
Written by	Tom Green Derek Harvie
Starring	Tom Green Marisa Coughlan Eddie Kaye Thomas Harland Williams Anthony Michael Hall Julie Hagerty
Music by	Mike Simpson
Cinematography	Mark Irwin
Editing by	Jacqueline Cambas
Release date(s)	April 20, 2001
Running time	87 min
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

Freddy Got Fingered (2001) is a comedy film directed by and starring Tom Green. Some of the scenes are similar to the antics seen in his own The Tom Green Show. It is largely built around gross-out and shock humor. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Freddy Got Fingered File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... Derek Kevin Harvie (born April 7, 1971 in Montreal) is a Canadian entertainment writer and producer. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... Marisa Coughlan is an American actress, born on March 17, 1974. ... Eddie Kaye Thomas (born on October 31, 1980 in New York City) is an American film (and stage) actor who rose to prominence in 1999 as Paul Finch in American Pie, which spawned two sequels and a direct-to-video spin-off. ... Harland Michael Williams (born November 14, 1962 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian-born comedian, actor, and radio personality. ... Michael Anthony Thomas Charles Hall (born April 14, 1968), known professionally as Anthony Michael Hall, is an American actor, producer and director who achieved stardom in several successful teen-oriented films of the 1980s. ... Hagerty in Lost in America Julie Hagerty (born June 15, 1955) is an American stage, screen, and television actress and model. ... The Dust Brothers are the Los Angeles-based producers E.Z. Mike (Michael Simpson) and King Gizmo (John King), famous for their creation of sample-based music in the 1980s, and specifically for their work on the groundbreaking albums Pauls Boutique by the Beastie Boys and Odelay by Beck. ... Mark Irwin is a prolific Canadian cinematographer. ... April 20 is the 110th day of the year (111th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the 1968 science-fiction film and novel, see 2001: A Space Odyssey The year 2001 in film involved some significant events. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... For the 1968 science-fiction film and novel, see 2001: A Space Odyssey The year 2001 in film involved some significant events. ... The word comedy has a classical meaning (comical theatre) and a popular one (the use of humor with an intent to provoke laughter in general). ... Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. ... The film director, on the right, gives last minute direction to the cast and crew, whilst filming a costume drama on location in London. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... The Tom Green Show was a Canadian (later American) television show which first aired in September 1994 on Rogers Television 22, a community channel in Ottawa, Ontario until 1996, and was later picked up by the Comedy Network in 1997. ... Gross-out films form a genre of scatological comedy movies in which the producers aim to gross out their audience with disgusting and disturbing material, also known as toilet humor. ...

Plot

In the movie, Green plays a 28-year old part time slacker/cartoonist named Gordon Brody (nicknamed 'Gord') pursuing his ambition to obtain a contract for a TV show. After being told quite correctly that his ideas are the stupidest ever conceived, he decides to move back home and rethink his future, much to his father's anger. He has a handicapped love interest, played by Marisa Coughlan, and a best friend, played by Harland Williams, who has left Gord's lifestyle for a mainstream bank job. A major subplot is Gord's feud with his father, and at one point in the movie, Gord accuses his father, played by Rip Torn, of molesting his younger brother, Freddy, played by Eddie Kaye Thomas. Strangely, when child services takes him away, no one seems to question the fact that Freddy is 25. During the course of the film, we are introduced to various other subplots that catalog Gord's daily experiences. These include a local neighborhood boy who finds himself injured as a result of various misfortunes, often involving Gord's entry onto the scene. Tom Green's then wife Drew Barrymore has a cameo appearance playing the receptionist at Mr. Dave Davidson's cartoon company. Cartoonist Jack Elrod at work. ... A television program is the content of television broadcasting. ... Marisa Coughlan is an American actress, born on March 17, 1974. ... Harland Michael Williams (born November 14, 1962 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian-born comedian, actor, and radio personality. ... Rip Torn as Chief Zed in the film Men in Black. ... Eddie Kaye Thomas (born on October 31, 1980 in New York City) is an American film (and stage) actor who rose to prominence in 1999 as Paul Finch in American Pie, which spawned two sequels and a direct-to-video spin-off. ... The United States Childrens Bureau is a federal agency organized under the United States Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families. ... Drew Blyth Barrymore (born February 22, 1975) is an American actress and film producer, the youngest member of the Barrymore family of American actors. ...

Backwards Man

In one particular scene, Gord dons his father's suit backwards. While admiring himself in the mirror, Gord begins walking backwards and forwards toward the mirror, muttering: "I'm the backwards man, the backwards man. I can walk backwards fast as you can. I can walk backwards fast as you can." Despite the film's pitiful showing at the box-office, this scene remains one of the more referred to and quoted.

"Daddy, would you like some sausage?"

Another memorable scene, Gord sets up an elaborate pulley system with sausages on the end of the pulley and plays the piano while singing, in an attempt to combine his favorite activities, eating and music. When his father enters and asks what he is doing Gord bangs randomly on the piano and sings: "Daddy would you like some sausage? Daddy would you like some sausages?"

Finding the treasure

When Gord's father realizes the shower has been flowing for a long while, he goes down to investigate. He turns off the hot water, thinking Gord will get out, but no sound or movement is made. After kicking down the door to the bathroom, he finds Gord in his Scuba diving kit, seaching for 'the treasure'. His father then tell him "thats soap on a rope!" and throws him out of the shower, smashing the glass shower panels. When the scene is over, his father walks out of the room calling him a "re-tard."

Fingers crossed

Shortly after the "Finding the treasure" scene, Gord is at the breakfast table while his younger brother Freddy is getting ready for work. He says to him that his father is driving him nuts, only for his younger brother to say it's him who is. He then says to Gord to get a job and that he still lives at home while being older than him, Gord then replies that his job as a banker is nothing to go on about, and that he still comes back home for breakfast before saying "Cross your fingers!" to his brother, in which after a few seconds he eventually does the same and Gord says "Alright!, fingers crossed!, keep your fingers crossed for Gordy that he gets a jobby!, fingers crossed!, ccoossseeeddd!!, crraawwssseedddd!!" while twisting his hands about while still being crossed.

How Gord spends his $1,000,000

Later in the film Gord finally manages to shop his drawings. This is how he spends the million dollars he receives.

• $100,000 - Renting a helicopter to take him to his girlfriend's apartment where he apologizes to Betty for getting in a fight, and gives her the jewels. In a deleted scene after this, he uses the helicopter to carry his fathers boat to his construction site and drop it on a multimillion dollar building project.

• $150,000 - Jewels for his girlfriend.

• $750,000 - SpecOps equipment to break into his own house and a tranquiliser gun to subdue his father while a construction company deports his house to Pakistan. "Hey look Dad; we're in Paki-Stan!" (Earlier in the movie Gord's father had mentioned that had they lived in Pakistan Gord would have been sewing soccer balls when he was four).

Production

The theatrically released cut of the movie is 87 minutes long and received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. As an extra on the DVD release, Green also included a version of the movie which he had edited to secure a PG rating. The PG-rated cut of Freddy Got Fingered is three minutes long with a comedic voiceover. The MPAA film rating system is a system used in the United States and territories and instituted by the Motion Picture Association of America to rate a movie based on its content. ... The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), originally called the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America, is a non-profit trade association based in the United States which was formed to advance the interests of movie studios. ... DVD (Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc) is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... The MPAA film rating system is a system used in the United States and territories and instituted by the Motion Picture Association of America to rate a movie based on its content. ...

The scenes in Pakistan were shot in Tunisia, and the film once completed lasted for over 7 hours, and so scenes had to be cut. Originally, Gord was to move into his uncles house, as his uncle owned the cheese sandwich factory where Gord worked before moving back home, but this scene was deleted alongside the opening scenes in the factory where his uncle gives him a briefing, including a scene where Gord throws cheese at his uncle saying that he does not want to work in a cheese factory before his uncle then bursts into tears. These scenes were cut because Tom Green said it slown down the movie, as well as the fact the film originally was over 7 hours, meaning other scenes were removed also.^[1]

Critical response

The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews by critics, some of whom gave it zero stars. The Toronto Star created a one-time new rating just for Freddy got Fingered, giving it "negative one star out of five stars." CNN's Paul Clinton called it "quite simply the worst movie ever released by a major studio in Hollywood history" and listed the running time as "86 awful minutes." [1]. The Toronto Star is a major metropolitan newspaper produced in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ... The Cable News Network, commonly known as CNN, is a major cable television network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. ... Paul Clinton (1953 in Columbus, Ohio – January 30, 2006 in Los Angeles) was CNN.coms longtime movie critic for 20 years. ... ...

In a damning review Roger Ebert conceded the film may in time be seen as a "milestone of neo-surrealism". In this memorable scene Gord ties sausage to his fingers, plays the piano poorly, and chants "Daddy would you like some sausage?".

Roger Ebert gave the film a rare zero-stars rating and described the film's humor thusly: Image File history File links Size of this preview: 400 × 281 pixelsFull resolution (400 × 281 pixel, file size: 190 KB, MIME type: image/png) A screenshot from the movie Freddy Got Fingered. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 400 × 281 pixelsFull resolution (400 × 281 pixel, file size: 190 KB, MIME type: image/png) A screenshot from the movie Freddy Got Fingered. ... Roger Joseph Ebert (June 18, 1942) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American film critic. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Plate with German Wurst (liver-, blood- and hamsausage) A sausage consists of ground meat, animal fat, herbs and spices, and sometimes other ingredients, usually packed in a casing (historically the intestines of the animal, though now generally synthetic), and sometimes preserved in some way, often by curing or smoking. ... A short grand piano, with the top up. ... Roger Joseph Ebert (June 18, 1942) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American film critic. ...

This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels...The day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny.^[2]

Later, however, in his review of the film Stealing Harvard, Ebert wrote: Stealing Harvard is a 2002 film, directed by Bruce McCulloch, about man who resorts to crime to pay for his nieces Harvard tuition. ...

Seeing Tom Green reminded me, as how could it not, of his movie Freddy Got Fingered (2001), which was so poorly received by the film critics that it received only one lonely, apologetic positive review on the Tomatometer. I gave it—let's see—zero stars. Bad movie, especially the scene where Green was whirling the newborn infant around his head by its umbilical cord. But the thing is, I remember Freddy Got Fingered more than a year later. I refer to it sometimes. It is a milestone. And for all its sins, it was at least an ambitious movie, a go-for-broke attempt to accomplish something. It failed, but it has not left me convinced that Tom Green doesn't have good work in him. Anyone with his nerve and total lack of taste is sooner or later going to make a movie worth seeing.^[3]

James Berardinelli from "Reelviews" also gave the film zero stars and mentioned: "...I have to report that this motion picture is arguably the worst piece of cinematic crap I have ever experienced theatrically. Hyperbole, you wonder? I looked through my list of zero-star movies and couldn't find one entry (except the immortal Zombie! vs. Mardi Gras, which was a straight-to-video release) that ranked as more difficult to endure." James Berardinelli (born September 1967, New Brunswick, New Jersey) is an online film critic. ...

One of the few notable critics who gave it a generally positive review was A. O. Scott of The New York Times, who compared the film to conceptual performance art. ^[4] A.O. Scott is a film critic for The New York Times newspaper. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ...

Freddy Got Fingered is thus widely regarded as signaling the absolute limit of what gross-out humor can achieve. Since the film's release, movies based around the strict "shock value" of gross-out humor have been in decline. The movie does have a cult following, including many Tom Green fans who consider it a brilliant movie making it a cult classic as a result, even though the overall view of the film seems to be the same. Others regard the gross-out humor as being so extreme that it makes the film a parody of the genre, as Green indicated was his intention in his autobiography Hollywood Causes Cancer. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

The film "won" in five categories at the 2001 Golden Raspberry Awards and, in acknowledgement of the critical consensus regarding the film's merits, Green appeared at the ceremony to accept his awards, saying: The 22nd Golden Raspberry Awards were held on March 23, 2002 at the Abracadabra Theater at Magicopolis in Santa Monica, California, to recognise the worst the movie industry had to offer in 2001. ...

"I'd just like to say to all the other nominees in the audience: I don't think that I deserve it any more than the rest of you. I'd like to say that; I don't think that it would be true, though."

^{[citation needed]}

Box Office

The movie's budget was $15,000,000, and grossed $14,249,005 domestically. It ran for 59 days in North American cinemas.^[5] DVD rentals in the US grossed $24,300,000 during it's stay on the top 50 weekly chart, grossing more than the box office hit Cats and Dogs on DVD rentals alone.^[6] As a result the film has broken even making a possible profit for the film studio with DVD sales unknown. North America North America is a continent [1] in the Earths northern hemisphere and (chiefly) western hemisphere. ... Cats and dogs is a Wall Street slang used to describe: Nonperforming securities, or Highly speculative securities. ...

References

1. ^ Freddy Got Fingered MTV Special
2. ^ Roger Ebert's review of Freddy Got Fingered
3. ^ Roger Ebert's review of Stealing Harvard
4. ^ New York Times
5. ^ "Freddy Got Fingered" box office data
6. ^ "Freddy Got Fingered" US DVD rentals gross

See also

• Films considered the worst ever
• Cult films

Plan 9 from Outer Space, considered so bad its good by some, is also a contender for Worst Movie Ever Made. ... A cult film is a movie that attracts a small but devoted group of obsessive fans or one that has remained popular over successive years amongst a small group of followers. ...

External links

• Freddy Got Fingered at the Internet Movie Database
• Freddy Got Fingered at Rotten Tomatoes
• Freddy Got Fingered at Box Office Mojo
• Story by Tom Carson, mostly laudatory.
• Official Site