Norm Macdonald (1959-2021)

[mfunk9786]

Artie Lange, who has been sober for about three years now and largely out of the public eye (presumably in an effort to maintain that sobriety, good for him) will be returning to podcasting on November 1st with Bob Saget as his guest. Have to imagine there will be a lot of Norm talk.

This discussion quite literally brought a tear to my eye. Saget, who I know very little about, seems like an incredibly sweet man.

[Brian C]

Have you all seen "The Bit"?

This is a funny bit from Norm, but it also confirms to me that his best comic foil - at least among the late-night shows - was Conan. I get the sense of Norm holding back for Fallon; if it was Conan's show, he'd have drawn out the detail and minutiae about the excruciating existential horror of it all, because Conan would know how to play off of him and support the bit. Fallon just sort of nervously laughs like he's afraid of how it will turn out, and waits for Norm to get to the audience-pleasing ending. And it kind of fizzles out, frankly.

Fallon has his moments but he's not really a high-concept comedy guy like Conan or Letterman, and I kind of get the feeling that Norm didn't want to waste his really good stuff on his show.

[domino harvey]

Generally true but O'Brien ruined MacDonald's moth joke by interjecting right before the punchline

[swo17]

His turtle joke has some great interplay with Conan

[therewillbeblus]

I agree, Brian, but "The Bit" works in a vacuum because of how Norm takes aim at Fallon's obnoxious staple of laughing at everything with deadpan acidity. Of course, when he took a perverse stab at Conan's situation on The Tonight Show, it was way funnier, but I suppose I don't see "The Bit" as following the same logic of passive interplay with the host. It's using Fallon as a prop and including him as a subject for mockery, rather than engaging in a playful exchange of offbeat personalities like he often does with Conan in the longer non-jokes.

[Brian C]

Eh, the “mockery” of Fallon was just gentle friendly ribbing. Nothing at all cutting or that hadn’t been pointed out before a million times.

[therewillbeblus]

True, but I still think the 'bit' manifests differently in its intended construction than Norm's bits on Conan, to your point due to their relationship and chemistry. I just didn't see an overlapping point of comparison to differentiate their quality that you did, since that variable of familiarity and camaraderie impacts the design of the joke itself.

[swo17]

Lol I do remember the eating monkey brains discussion: “Well, they gave me a dumb one”

If I recall correctly, Barrymore asked how they tasted and Norm said, "I don't know, mine were stupid"

I just watched this and the exact wording was "Well...mine was stupid," as in: they might be good, but I don't feel qualified to say. The delivery was a nice combination of both humility and arrogance

[swo17]

Am I the only long hauler here? I finished listening to the audiobook of Based on a True Story and I have thoughts. As much of the power of comedy comes from the element of surprise, I'll keep this in spoiler tags:

SpoilerShow

1. I thought it was interesting when I heard in an interview that Norm (have I earned the right to call him that?) set out with this to not only write a funny book, but also a great novel. I believe he mentioned along with this that he liked to start every day reading Tolstoy. Who's to say how true this is? It feels weird to think of it as a Great American novel what with all the references to popular comedians I grew up with, but it's certainly more ambitious than you might expect and very well written. I'm curious how it would all read in print, but there's an obvious appeal to hearing Norm's dry delivery of his own prose, and he also does a pretty spot-on Jack Warden impression.

2. If you're familiar with Norm's comedy routines, there is a bit of that repeated here, but it's generally expanded enough to be worth the retelling. You get his bit about being in peak condition at the age of one. You get an even longer version of the moth joke. There's a whole chapter devoted to the best Weekend Update jokes of all time, some of which are his own. And so many instances of his answering machine joke that you'll be absolutely sick of it by the end of the book.

3. Given how often Norm mentioned in interviews that he generally abstained from all vices besides gambling, it's surprising how much of this reads like a Hunter S. Thompson novel.

4. Some of the best stuff here is Norm's subversive take on the juicy celebrity tell-all, with shockingly revealing anecdotes about Rodney Dangerfield, Sarah Silverman, Don Rickles, and of course, his notorious departure from SNL. Most incredible of all is that, as he promises from the beginning, it's all true. And if his touching tribute to Adam Sandler toward the end doesn't move you to tears, you must be made of stone.

5. I wasn't familiar with the book's other lead character, Adam Eget, but some might be interested to know that he was the co-host on Norm's Netflix show. Funny, I could tell from just one episode that that guy's life story would only fill 100 words. He has a major plotline in this book that I suppose could be considered deeply transphobic (basically, the joke is that Adam's so dumb he doesn't realize his girlfriend is "actually a dude") but I don't know--that character does get to outsmart everyone else in the end, and if nothing else, the line that introduces this whole plot thread is rather clever. That's all I have to say about that. I also saw someone call the prison rape chapter problematic, but on the contrary, I found it deeply satisfying for its irony.

Next up is The Norm Show, which I'm going into with low expectations

[domino harvey]

There is a line from the Norm Show that has never left my head since it first aired

SpoilerShow

Norm MacDonald expressing fake outrage at his boss’ use of the word “gyp”— “You have insulted my rich gypsy heritage, sir!”

[GoodOldNeon]

Am I the only long hauler here? I finished listening to the audiobook of Based on a True Story and I have thoughts. As much of the power of comedy comes from the element of surprise, I'll keep this in spoiler tags:

SpoilerShow

1. I thought it was interesting when I heard in an interview that Norm (have I earned the right to call him that?) set out with this to not only write a funny book, but also a great novel. I believe he mentioned along with this that he liked to start every day reading Tolstoy. Who's to say how true this is? It feels weird to think of it as a Great American novel what with all the references to popular comedians I grew up with, but it's certainly more ambitious than you might expect and very well written. I'm curious how it would all read in print, but there's an obvious appeal to hearing Norm's dry delivery of his own prose, and he also does a pretty spot-on Jack Warden impression.

2. If you're familiar with Norm's comedy routines, there is a bit of that repeated here, but it's generally expanded enough to be worth the retelling. You get his bit about being in peak condition at the age of one. You get an even longer version of the moth joke. There's a whole chapter devoted to the best Weekend Update jokes of all time, some of which are his own. And so many instances of his answering machine joke that you'll be absolutely sick of it by the end of the book.

3. Given how often Norm mentioned in interviews that he generally abstained from all vices besides gambling, it's surprising how much of this reads like a Hunter S. Thompson novel.

4. Some of the best stuff here is Norm's subversive take on the juicy celebrity tell-all, with shockingly revealing anecdotes about Rodney Dangerfield, Sarah Silverman, Don Rickles, and of course, his notorious departure from SNL. Most incredible of all is that, as he promises from the beginning, it's all true. And if his touching tribute to Adam Sandler toward the end doesn't move you to tears, you must be made of stone.

5. I wasn't familiar with the book's other lead character, Adam Eget, but some might be interested to know that he was the co-host on Norm's Netflix show. Funny, I could tell from just one episode that that guy's life story would only fill 100 words. He has a major plotline in this book that I suppose could be considered deeply transphobic (basically, the joke is that Adam's so dumb he doesn't realize his girlfriend is "actually a dude") but I don't know--that character does get to outsmart everyone else in the end, and if nothing else, the line that introduces this whole plot thread is rather clever. That's all I have to say about that. I also saw someone call the prison rape chapter problematic, but on the contrary, I found it deeply satisfying for its irony.

Next up is The Norm Show, which I'm going into with low expectations

Regarding your first point, I hadn't heard that anecdote about reading Tolstoy, but he did say in a Q&A that he loved Russian literature and that that was what he mostly read (though he then said that he didn't like Dostoevsky). In the same Q&A he said that his favourite novel was In Search of Lost TIme and his favourite American novel was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

[swo17]

I think what he actually said was that he spends the first few hours of every day reading Tolstoy, which is surely an exaggeration, but I do get the sense that he was well read

[Mr Sausage]

Am I the only long hauler here? I finished listening to the audiobook of Based on a True Story and I have thoughts. As much of the power of comedy comes from the element of surprise, I'll keep this in spoiler tags:

SpoilerShow

1. I thought it was interesting when I heard in an interview that Norm (have I earned the right to call him that?) set out with this to not only write a funny book, but also a great novel. I believe he mentioned along with this that he liked to start every day reading Tolstoy. Who's to say how true this is? It feels weird to think of it as a Great American novel what with all the references to popular comedians I grew up with, but it's certainly more ambitious than you might expect and very well written. I'm curious how it would all read in print, but there's an obvious appeal to hearing Norm's dry delivery of his own prose, and he also does a pretty spot-on Jack Warden impression.

2. If you're familiar with Norm's comedy routines, there is a bit of that repeated here, but it's generally expanded enough to be worth the retelling. You get his bit about being in peak condition at the age of one. You get an even longer version of the moth joke. There's a whole chapter devoted to the best Weekend Update jokes of all time, some of which are his own. And so many instances of his answering machine joke that you'll be absolutely sick of it by the end of the book.

3. Given how often Norm mentioned in interviews that he generally abstained from all vices besides gambling, it's surprising how much of this reads like a Hunter S. Thompson novel.

4. Some of the best stuff here is Norm's subversive take on the juicy celebrity tell-all, with shockingly revealing anecdotes about Rodney Dangerfield, Sarah Silverman, Don Rickles, and of course, his notorious departure from SNL. Most incredible of all is that, as he promises from the beginning, it's all true. And if his touching tribute to Adam Sandler toward the end doesn't move you to tears, you must be made of stone.

5. I wasn't familiar with the book's other lead character, Adam Eget, but some might be interested to know that he was the co-host on Norm's Netflix show. Funny, I could tell from just one episode that that guy's life story would only fill 100 words. He has a major plotline in this book that I suppose could be considered deeply transphobic (basically, the joke is that Adam's so dumb he doesn't realize his girlfriend is "actually a dude") but I don't know--that character does get to outsmart everyone else in the end, and if nothing else, the line that introduces this whole plot thread is rather clever. That's all I have to say about that. I also saw someone call the prison rape chapter problematic, but on the contrary, I found it deeply satisfying for its irony.

Next up is The Norm Show, which I'm going into with low expectations

Regarding your first point, I hadn't heard that anecdote about reading Tolstoy, but he did say in a Q&A that he loved Russian literature and that that was what he mostly read (though he then said that he didn't like Dostoevsky). In the same Q&A he said that his favourite novel was In Search of Lost TIme and his favourite American novel was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

If you were to’ve asked me what celebrity I thought would have an identical taste in literature to me, never would I have guessed Norm MacDonald.

[Maltic]

He was an early defender of Showgirls

@2:12

You get his poetics of cinema @10:50-11:50

[Never Cursed]

Netflix to release a posthumous stand-up special recorded by Macdonald in his home May 30