Long before the advent of YouTube prankers and even before the age of Jackass, there was Tom Green. He tried anything for a laugh, making him a stand out of Canadian public access that soared to the heights of disrupting MTV to such a degree that Eminem mocked him in his lyrics. Green’s penchant for annoying his parents and sucking on cow udders to starring in numerous comedy films of the early 2000s. When his controversial comedy Freddy Got Fingered debuted, it was an offensive mash of his clawing antics that critic Richard Roeper once stated, “Why is Tom Green famous? He should be flipping burgers somewhere!” It’s a fair question; oddly enough, Tom Green is the best man to answer it.

At the beginning of this documentary, which Tom Green directs, he discusses with his mother whether it’s appropriate for a documentary’s subject to direct their own film. Green thinks he’s breaking some rule, but that was always who he was. Green defied convention by testing every absurd and boundary-pushing thing you could do in front of a camera. He pisses off his parents by painting their house plaid or waking them up in the middle of the night to watch a Bon Jovi tape. He’d make his co-host Glen feel uncomfortable by bringing up his history of pissing in pickle jars. Even Green’s cancer diagnosis became a subject of The Tom Green Show. There was simply nothing Green wouldn’t do or say, making him the only voice that could be honest about his life. He requires no such probing to open up about his relationships and mortality.

The documentary recounts Green’s rise to fame and the emotions courting through his mind during this time. It’s pleasing to know that Green still took time to appreciate how far he’d come in the blaze of his fame. It’s not every Canadian dork who pulls pranks who gets to be a guest on the David Letterman Show. So when Green was invited to the program, he took in the set with wonder while still being open about how close he was currently living so close to Letterman’s studio. A mixture of the genuine and the starstruck made Green so admirable to young weirdos like myself who wanted something more unorthodox from television.

The progression of Green’s legacy is perhaps the most interesting for how he approached everything with comedy. The pique of his disruption was the creation of his first music video, “The Bum Bum Song,” a song all about putting his butt on stuff. Through Green’s encouragement of his audience, the song rose to the top of the charts on MTV’s Total Request Live. It was a wild time to watch this madness unfold, where Green’s buffoonery was running the show. One lyrical passage read, “My bum is on the cheese, bum is on the cheese, if I get lucky, I’ll get a disease.” Soon after the video’s debut, Green was diagnosed with testicular cancer. It’s a cruel joke, but one that Green rolls with, going so far as to document his surgery for his show. He even embarrasses his parents further by taking them out for a pre-surgery meal, where Green makes small talk with the waiter about his cancer. There’s a charm to that high level of inappropriate nature that grants comedic freedom.

Now that Green is older, his priorities have shifted, but he hasn’t turned his back on comedy. It would seem like he had since he moved back to Canada to live on a farm, but Tom would later helm a comedy special in his own backyard. Much like his show, Tom didn’t hold anything back, boasting about everything from the chickens he was raising to trotting out his parents once more for a crowd. Even with a history of divorce, critically panned movies, and troubling health problems, Green still has that spirit of willingness to try anything for a laugh, turning a rant about smartphones into a nostalgic plea for rocks.

There’s as much humanity as nostalgia in this Tom Green retrospective. It was fun to return to that age where I’d race to the TV to see what ludicrous stunt Green would pull next on his show. Was he annoying? Of course, but that made him impossible to ignore. A cutaway gag from Family Guy once framed Green sucking off a cow, but remarking to the cameras, “Am I famous yet? Can I stop this?” The problem with this gag is that it assumes Green had some grander ambition beyond being silly and getting laughs. Whether you loved his humping of mooses or hated it, there was no doubt that Green had a fearless nature to try out the most outrageous of comedy bits for television. He doesn’t shy away from that ridiculous history, and his willingness to talk about it makes this documentary so enthralling. I can’t think of another director who would’ve handled this material better, but I could imagine Tom wrestling the camera away in that situation for something wilder.