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Tom Green

Hello!

Today I'm going to be learning about the actor Tom Green. He played Sammy Lieberman on Dance Academy, and I also saw him on the American show Camp. I've looked at his filmography before in the past. The one thing I remember is that he starred in a movie based on the video game Halo.

I've been trying to remember what happened in the life of Sammy Lieberman. I remember what ultimately happened to him. But how about before that? I remember he dated Abigail, but then he realized he was gay. I'm thinking, though, that later he became interested in Abigail again? I remember them bonding before he met his untimely end. I can't remember, though, if it was a romantic bonding thing or a friendship one.

Sammy had problems with his dad. I remember that. His dad wanted him to be a doctor, not a dancer. How did he feel about Sammy being gay? I can't remember. Did his parents even know?

Though Tom Green's presence on Dance Academy added much to the show, his absence was even more valuable. I'm not saying this to be mean. It wasn't a good riddance thing. It's just the whole death and grief thing was so beautifully poignant...and it had a great soundtrack. To Tom Green's credit, if he didn't help birth such a wonderful character, the death and mourning scenes would be much less fantastic.

Oh never mind. That's not really true. I just thought about Sophia on The Walking Dead. She hardly had any lines and didn't have much to do on the show. But her death was very memorable. Actually, I personally think her no-longer-living scene has been the best scene, so far, on The Walking Dead.

Sometimes fictional characters are more valuable dead than they are alive.

But no. I don't think Sammy Lieberman is like that. Both his life AND death were very valuable to the show.

Enough about all that.

I need to start learning more about Tom Green.

His picture on IMDb looks very different from Sammy Lieberman. It looks like it could be Sammy Lieberman's evil twin brother.  Or maybe not evil. Maybe his drug-dealer twin brother. I feel like I'm really stereotyping here. Sorry.

And you know...returning to The Walking Dead subject. One of the lessons the show teaches us is that though someone may look like a drug dealer and/or thug, in reality, they might have helped save the life of a bunch of helpless elderly people.

Shit...now I'm stereotyping elderly people. Of course, they're not all helpless. But in a zombie apocalypse? I think it's fair to say that most of them are going to need assistance from the younger and stronger.

Let's get on with the filmography.

Usual disclaimer: I skip most one time appearances in TV shows I don't watch, and I skip over films if I can't find enough information about them.

Green's first screen thing was....

You know I always talk about the first screen thing, but I just realized a lot of these actors, I write about, probably appear in commercials. IMDb doesn't list those. And of course, they don't list all the home movies that mom, dad, and Grandpa took of Tom Green.

I think many humans, these days, have their first screen appearance at birth. Or actually...in utero, thanks to ultrasounds.

So what should I say then when I write these things?

Maybe I'll just say the first thing listed on the filmography is....

For Tom Green it's a 2008 TV movie called Emerald Falls.  When I read the plot description, it sounded very familar to me. Then I saw Georgie Parker was the star. I must have learned about the movie when I wrote about her. Did I see Tom Green when I did that post? Did I recognize him?  He played Parker's son. They both move to The Blue Mountains and run a bed and breakfast.

I'm going to look at my old post. I'm really curious about whether or not I noticed Green.

No! I didn't. Maybe he wasn't in the trailer or video clip that I watched.

I'm going to re-watch the clip from the link in my blog.

If he's not in the clip, I may or may not have noticed his name in the credits. It's possible I noticed, but was overwhelmed with other stuff, so I didn't take the time to report it.

Green is in the clip...in the very beginning. In my defense, though, the picture quality isn't so great. It's hard to see his face.

At :32, there's a better image of his face. I imagine a person more observant than me would have recognized Green.

Also, in 2008, Green was in a short film called The Ground Beneath.  Unfortunately, I can't find the whole movie online, but here's a clip.  It seems to be a bullying thing. Or an attempt at bullying. A kid tries to trip Green, and he fights back. Then it looks like he's the one who gets in trouble. I'm not sure, though. The trailer leaves me with a lot of questions. I wonder what happens next.

This website has another clip from the movie. It's from the beginning. Green thinks he's about to be attacked by a dog, but then it turns out the dog can't get him because he's on a chain. I'm thinking there's some symbolism there.

The clip contains the scene that the other clip had—he one with the tripping.

It looks like an interesting movie.

The website has another video. I think it shows a variety of clips—more trailer-like. I'm going to watch that.

I didn't gain any extra insight. The general idea I'm getting is, that Green plays a troubled kid.

The synopsis provided for the movie is: The Ground Beneath follows the emotional journey of a young teenager, Kaden, who lives a life of fear and threat. His friendship with Casey, the girl from school, and Lewis, a boy that spends time in his street, becomes a chance for change and self-discovery.

I wonder why his life is full of fear and threat? Is there a real threat, or is it more imagined? I mean every life has threat in it. Any of us can get hurt or killed on any day. But some peoples' lives are more threatened than others.

In 2009, Green was on 19 episodes of Home and Away.  He played a character called Dexter Walker.
According to the Bay to the Bay website, Green played the first incarnation of Dexter Walker. Then a second Walker was on the show from 2010-2013.

I think someone might have uploaded the first episode that Green appeared on. I'm going to skim through and see if I can find him.

Yep. I see him. Green appears at 1:16.  Dexter and his family are heading to Summer Bay. It seems his mother or father have plans to work at the local hospital.

The father looks familiar. Who is that?

Let's see....

It's Robert Mammone. What do I know him from?

Satisfaction! He played Nick.

2010 is the year Green started appearing on Dance Academy.  He was on 52 of the 65 episodes of the show.

I'm going to read what Lord Wiki's cousin has to say about Sammy Lieberman—try to clear up some of the questions I had earlier.

You know...something I've noticed lately. Lord Wiki's cousin has way too many advertisements on his page.  It's so hard to read because the scrolling is so slow.

There's something here that doesn't make sense to me. Sammy has a self-deprecating sense of humor, but deep down inside, he's a good guy who wants to do the right thing.  

To me, that implies that having a self-deprecating sense of humor is a bad trait. I personally think it's a GOOD trait. If I wrote the sentence, I'd exchange the word "but" with "and".

Never mind, Lord Wiki's cousin. He slows down my whole Internet. How about Lord Wiki himself? Does he have anything to say about Sammy Lieberman?

No...not really.

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   


The Dead are Online  a novel by Dina Roberts 


Someone made a video about Sammy's love life. Maybe this will jog my memory a bit.

Christian walks out of the room when Sammy reveals that he has feelings for him, but I remember that he ended up being very accepting.

The video doesn't have clips from Sammy's later love adventures. I guess, for now, I'll just go with what I think I remember.

By the way, I've been using Sam throughout this post instead of Sammy. I had to go back and change all that.  I noticed in the video, that Abigail called him Sammy. I thought maybe it was just her nickname for him, but then I looked back at IMDb and they say Sammy as well.

I'm looking at the cast list of Dance Academy—trying to find the name of Sam's boyfriend.

Ollie! That's it.

Didn't they get in a fight before Sammy died? Did they break up?

Someone made some videos about Sammy and Ollie. Maybe watching one will give me some clues.

This includes the scene with Sammy telling his friends he's dating Ollie. Some of them are excited to hear Sammy admit that he's gay...or in a homosexual relationship. Abigail is not.

Despite my reservations, I returned to Lord Wiki's cousin because I really wanted to remember what happened between Abigail and Sammy.  He reminded me, and now I'm in tears.

So...the night before Sammy died, he and Abigail kissed. I guess there was a possibility of them getting back together.

Then there was that scene with Abigail crying in the shower.  I remember that now!  It was very sad. And she did that heart-wrenching monologue, which you can find at the end of this video.

Yeah. I'm crying now.

My love for the Kaplan girls keeps growing. They're amazing actresses.

Now that my tears have tried, I'm going to move on from Dance Academy and explore other bits from Green's filmography.

In 2010, Green was in a World War I film called Beneath Hill 60.  Lord Wiki doesn't list him as a main cast member, so his part wasn't probably huge.

I'll see if I can spot him in the trailer.

The movie takes place AFTER Gallipoli.

That might be Green at :36. It kind of looks like him. Maybe?

And maybe that's him at 1:01.

I am pretty sure that's him at 1:28.

The guy at 1:51 kind of looks like Harry Potter.

In 2012, Green was in a movie called Thirst.  I thought it was going to be about vampires, but no. It's about people trapped in the desert.

Here's a trailer for the film.

One of the girls reminds me of Evangeline Lily.

Also, in 2012, Green appeared in a Guy Pearce TV movie called Jack Irish: Bad Debts.  Lord Wiki says it's part of a series of films based on some detective novels.

Here's a trailer for the movie.

I think I see another Satisfaction person at :39.

I have to look at the cast of the film...see if she's there.

No! I don't see her in the credits, though, I do see Nicholas Bell's name, and he's from Satisfaction.

I didn't see Tom Green.

The Halo thing that Tom Green was in is called Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. Does that mean there are three other Halo movies? Or is this the first Halo movie, but it's based on the 4th game?

Lord Wiki says it was a web series, and it was a marketing ploy for the Halo 4 game.

Green was the main star.

Here's a trailer.

I was confused at first, because I saw a video game. I thought the movie was going to be a live action type thing. But now I see that I was watching the ad before the video, which is for a video game. The Halo movie/series is live-action.

In 2013, Green appeared on the television show Camp.  This is the show that resurrected Sammy Lieberman and sent him to American summer camp along with several of his classmates from Dance Academy.

I found watching that show to be really surreal, and not in a good way.

Though maybe I looked at it the wrong way. Maybe I should have looked at it in the same way I look
at American Horror Story. It's the same group of actors reunited to play different characters.

I think what bothered me about the show, though, is that even in some interviews I watched—behind the scene stuff—the actors used American accents. And it's not the first time I've seen Australian actors speak American when they're not officially acting. I think some people naturally lose their accent, or it becomes a bit hybrid.  But I got this feeling from Camp, that the actors were instructed to speak American. It felt to me like they were trying to fool Americans into believing they were watching an American show filmed in America with American actors. I felt they were trying to downplay the Australia stuff. And there was a lot of Australia stuff. It was filmed in Australia, and all the stars were Australian.

On the show, Green played a guy recovering from Leukemia. That was weird too, because on Dance Academy, he played the friend of a guy who had recovered from Leukemia.

The last thing on Green's filmography is a 2015 movie called Downriver. It's a drama about drowning.  A boy serves time for drowning a child.  Then when he gets out of prison, he tries to find the missing body of the drowned child.

It sounds sad, but interesting.

Green doesn't actually play the main character. Maybe he's a friend? Neighbour? Someone the main character met in prison?

I can't find a trailer. It might not have been released yet.

Well, I'm going to take a break. I have a lot of chores to do.  Then I'll come back and learn more about Tom Green.

I'm back! I got a lot done, but not everything. I still have to put the laundry away, and hand wash some dishes.  I'll do that stuff later.

What Tom Green stuff should I do now?

Are there any interviews out there?

Here's a Dance Academy video thing.  I think I looked at this series when I was writing about Xenia Goodwin and Alicia Banit.

Green names three adjectives that he thinks people use to describe him—confident, outgoing, and ghetto. Maybe ghetto is the better word to use when describing the IMDb photo of Green.

He says Thirst was filmed between making season 1 and season 2 of Dance Academy.  It was done in Broken Hill, so Green spent some time there.  Also during his break, he took a lot of dance classes.

Green talks about how people working on the show underestimated the age of the audience.  Yeah. Although I think it was geared towards older kids and teens, adults enjoy it too. I don't think I'm the only one. I think it has wide appeal.

Here's an interview about Camp. And here, they mention right away that Green and the cast are Australian. So that's good.

I think it was the official NBC Camp site that downplayed the whole Australian thing.

I thought the site would be gone since the show was canceled. But NBC still has some pages about the show. There are no videos ,though.  I remember seeing videos in the past. Maybe NBC removed those; or maybe I saw them elsewhere?

And I'm looking at the little bios of the cast members. Australia stuff is mentioned. They're not trying to hide it.

Maybe there wasn't a hide-the-Aussie thing going on. Maybe I'm delusional.

Anyway, I'm going to finish watching the interview.

It's very interesting. They're talking about the accent. Green says they all stayed in the American accent from the beginning to the end of the work day.  So maybe they spoke American in those interviews, I saw, not to hide their Aussie-ness, but because they were trying to keep the accent in their heads. Maybe they felt if they switched to their Australia accent, it would be hard to go back to the American accent when filming.

I know other actors do it differently.

Back to The Walking Dead... Andrew Lincoln speaks Southern-American on the show, but in interviews he uses his British accent. I remember seeing the same thing with True Blood actors.

Wait! Maybe the difference is Camp was filmed in Australia.  True Blood and The Walking Dead are filmed in America. So when the camera is off, the actors are still often hearing American actors. Most of their co-stars are American, as well as the crew. If they go out around town, they'll encounter mostly Americans. So they'll be hearing the accents.

The same can't be said for the stars of Camp. If they didn't force themselves to keep up with the American accent, they'd all be hearing each other speak Australian.  I think it's easier to do an accent when you're hearing it a lot.

Now the interview is about how summer camp is less popular in Australia than America. Green says though, that he thinks it would be a popular thing in Australia if they had it.  The interviewer asks him if he watched any movies as research. Green mentions Meatballs.  I think I saw that. I can't remember, exactly. My favorite camp movie is probably the TV movie Poison Ivy.

Green says they filmed Camp in the winter, and it was really cold.  I have to wonder. Why not wait and film in summer, or at least Autumn or Spring?

Maybe the area in which they filmed was only available in winter? Or maybe it was cheaper then? In the warmer months, it might be used for tourism purposes.

In the end of the interview, they have a s'more tower building contest. Green seems very nervous. Or maybe annoyed? Bored. He doesn't seem very impressed with the activity.

Well, he didn't seem happy before the activity begins. But once it starts, he seems to kind of get into it.

You know I was sitting here feeling guilty about my negativity towards Camp. But then I thought, what if it was reversed? What if there was a show about Australia filmed in America that starred all Americans? Wouldn't that feel kind of wrong?

I kind of get the feeling that I already came to this conclusion the last time I wrote about Camp.  And now I'm rehashing the whole thing. I'll probably forget again that I wrote all this, and I'll think of it again the next time I write about an actor from Camp.

I'm curious. I'm going to skim through my Dena Kaplan post and see if I said the same thing.

Well, I said the same stuff about the accents, but I didn't come up with my reverse idea of Americans pretending to be Australian. So, that's new. Probably.

Why does it even matter? I already know I repeat myself a lot in this blog.

Here's an article about the Halo movie.

Green says he was in the US for pilot season when he got the role. I guess it's pilot season for the actors and not the viewers. Is it when they start auditioning or filming a bunch of pilots? I wonder when this happens. Is it the same time every year?  Is it popular for Australians?  Would we find a bunch of them together on Qantas flights, heading to Los Angeles?  I hope, in the future, they remember to dress business casual and not wear thongs.

Green says he did a lot of green screen work for Halo, and he wasn't used to that. I think actors have to have a strong imagination to do that.  But then again, if an actor is lacking imagination, they're probably in the wrong career.

This acting website has a page about pilot season.  It's a time for auditioning. Traditionally, it occurs in January-April, but the page says there are opportunities for pilot casting all year round. Yeah, but that would't be pilot season, right?  It would be out-of-season pilot casting.

The website suggests if you live out of town, to come AFTER pilot season. They say this way you'll face less competition.

I guess it worked out pretty well for Green. He got Halo, and maybe this is also when he got the Camp role? Or maybe that came later.

While I was Googling pilot season, I somehow ended up with a news story saying that Robert Pattison is joining the cast of The Walking Dead.  That's pretty interesting.  I think he'll be the fourth British actor on the show. As far as I know, they've had only one Australian.

Wait. Now I'm confused. I just looked back at the title of the article and it says, April Fools! Robert Pattinson (not) confirmed as Negan in The Walking Dead.  But from the article, it seems he is taking on the role.

Oh! I get it. The trick is that he's NOT confirmed, which means he is confirmed.

April Fools Day is confusing me this year.

I thought Amazon Dash was a joke.

But no. It's real. And Robert Pattinson is going to be on The Walking Dead. Cool.

Maybe Tom Green should be on The Walking Dead. Maybe that's why I keep thinking about the show when I'm writing this post. Maybe it's the universe trying to tell me he belongs on the show.

Beth Greene the singer died, so maybe now they can have a dancer on the show. He can kill zombies while breakdancing.  Seriously, all those fight scenes take a lot of choreographing. I'd think being a dancer would help.

Here's Tom Green's Twitter page.

His most recent Tweet is about the new TV show Bloodline. He's excited about there being a second season.  I like seeing that celebrities are fans of things too. I think it's better than celebrities who talk only about their own projects.

Green is also very conversational on Twitter, which I like.

On March 31, someone who calls themselves I'm Chuck Bass asked Green if he got Deadroses.  He Tweeted back, I did. Did you?

I wonder what they're talking about.

I see that there's a "Deadroses" song.  Maybe they're talking about that.

Looking at Tom Green's Twitter...I'm getting the idea that he's like me in that he watches a lot of television. But it's not something rare we have in common. I think there are a LOT of people who watch a lot of television.

On February 20, Green Tweeted, What kind of world do we live in where a guy can't sing the Law and Order theme song without being shushed by the next door neighbors?

A very bad world!

Well, unless he lives in an apartment and the people next door are trying to sleep or watch THEIR television show.

I sing outside sometimes, but I don't think people will hear me unless they're outside too. Or maybe they can hear me. Yeah. They probably can. Because when I'm inside, I hear people outside.  So maybe it's only a matter of time before I get shushed.

Today I sang a few lines of an Air Supply song while cleaning the pool. No one complained.

Tom Green is probably in Los Angeles now...living there. I got that idea from some of his Tweets. And then I looked to the left at his little Twitter bio. It says he's in Los Angeles.  I hope he's having fun there. I wonder if he's been to Disneyland.

Here's Tom Green's Instagram.  He has a lot of selfies.  I pride myself on not having many selfies on Instagram. It makes me feel not self-absorbed. But I was thinking the other day that the reason I don't have selfies is I look HORRIBLE in iPhone pictures. I look worse than ugly.  It's confusing to me, because I feel I look pretty good in the mirror. And I think I look decent in some regular photos. But in all selfies, I look monstrous.  I'd like to think it's my phone and not me.  Yesterday I had some hope because I took a photo of a Hidden Mickey spilled strawberry milk. It looked lovely and adorable in real life, but in the photo, it just looked like a generic ugly blob.  Then the other day I tried photographing my cooked apples and that looked bad too.

I was going to point out that Tom Green looks good in HIS selfies, but I'm wrong. They're not selfies. Someone else has taken most of these photos.

This might be a selfie of Tom Green, and it's not too pretty. It's less ugly than my selfies, though.

Green really does have a lot of photos of himself. I shouldn't complain because I have a lot of photos of myself on my screensaver slideshow.  I don't have a lot of pictures of myself on the phone. I usually delete those. But it's probably self-absorbed to be taking the photos in the first place.

Green's most recent photo right now is of him and some other guy. I don't know who it is.

Wait. There's a link. It's a guy named John Lock. Is he an actor too?

Well, he might be, but its his singing he's promoting on his Instagram.  He has a song called "Surrender" that's available on iTunes.

Here's the song's video.  I like it so far. I mean I like the song. I'm not really watching the video.

I'm going to listen while I look at more of Green's photos.

I assumed that Lock is a friend of Green's, but maybe they're fans of each other. Or one is a fan and the other was nice enough to stick their face in the photo.

Here's a photo of Green having fun with Tiger Woods at a wax museum.  Or at least I'm assuming it's a wax museum.

Here's a sweet photo of Green with his brother, and here's a photo of Green with his niece. Green has cuts or bites on his leg. Is it weird of me to notice that?

Here's a photo of Green with his Dancing Academy co-star, Alicia Banit. They were at a restaurant in Melbourne called Fonda Mexican.  The photo was taken four months ago. I wonder if Green lived in Australia back then. Or maybe he was just visiting?

Here's a photo of a guy with an American flag. It's probably Green, but I'm not 100% sure. It looks like he's at some kind of pool party.  There are rafts in the water that look like giant sausages. Or hot dogs.

Green played with sparklers on 4th of July. We played with sparklers in Australia, but not for the 4th of July. It was February. Maybe it was the fourth of February. Well, I don't think I actually played with them. I think Jack and his friend did. I probably just watched. And worried.

Green has a girlfriend! Or at least he did 9 months ago.  Her name is Janelle Hanson. Here's her Instagram.  She makes jewelry.

Here's another photo of Hanson. She's at an Australia Day party. I wonder if the party was in America or Australia.

Green did go to Disneyland!  I wonder if he liked it.

Here's a photo of Green and his girlfriend at Wildlife Sydney. I still think of it as Wildlife World, just like I will probably always think of Hollywood Studios as MGM.  It's confusing when tourist attractions change names. And Disney is planning to change MGM's name once again.

Here's an old family photo with Green.  I guess it was probably taken sometime in the 1990's?

I'm kind of wondering if Green and Hanson broke up, because there are many photos of her in 2013 and 2014; then none within the last 7 months.  Or maybe they've ended the time period of the relationship where one takes a lot of photos of the other.  I never had that period with Tim, which kind of hurt my feelings...especially since he's always been into photography.

What's worse—to have a partner that often takes photos of you and then stops, or to have a partner that never went through the phase of wanting to take a lot of photographs of you?

And now I'm also wondering what's worse—to think that Green and his girlfriend have parted ways, or that they're still together, but he's no longer posting photos of her on Instagram?

I've turned into a gossip columnist. Now I'm looking at Hanson's Instagram to find her last photo of Green.

There's one from three months ago.  There might be more recent ones, but nothing is jumping out at me.  What I mean is he might be part of a crowd in a photo, but it's hard to tell without clicking on each photo.

I just thought of another possibility. Green and Hanson might be together, but not together. Maybe they're doing the long distance thing right now.  Though I think Hanson is from Los Angeles; and Green is supposedly there now. But who knows...Maybe Hanson went to Antartica or something.

Well, it's doubtful because a week ago she was eating donuts in Los Angeles. The donuts look awesome, by the way.

Anyway, I should stop my gossiping and get on with life. I have chores to finish and I need to watch some Farscape.  I will end this by saying that I hope both Hanson and Green are happy and well, whether they're together or not.  If they're not together, I hope they find good love elsewhere...whether it comes from romance, friendship, pet-love, self-love, TV-show-watching love, etc.



Click here to read my online novel: The Dead are Online. (please?)