In Norm: The Tale Of Norm Macdonald, director Judd Apatow lovingly identifies and helps to explain the moment that, for many, wound up defining the former Saturday Night Live comedian\u2019s career. A thoughtful and affectionate tribute for the late cult favorite, Norm presents Macdonald\u2019s firing from SNL as the key to understanding his relationship with his audience. Apatow makes his case using a wealth of archival quotes from Macdonald, including his guest appearances on late-night talk shows and Macdonald\u2019s own video podcast series Norm Macdonald Live.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In these sometimes candid and often puckishly misleading clips, Macdonald struggles to redefine himself after he was fired by NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer in 1997 for relentlessly joking that ex-football player O.J. Simpson murdered his wife and her friend Ron Goldman as the anchor of SNL\u2018s Weekend Update. Over the film, we also get a clearer understanding of Macdonald\u2019s style of humor, which treated listeners like unwitting accessories, whether he was delivering a rambling shaggy-dog routine, like his now-signature moth joke, or an interminably anti-climactic speech, as in his appearance on Bob Saget\u2019s Comedy Central Roast episode.<\/p>\n
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In Norm, Macdonald says that he preferred to define himself as a stand-up comedian rather than by his four years on SNL. At the same time, his earliest and arguably most formative successes on that show evince the same qualities that made him a great stand-up, like his deadpan delivery and rope-a-dope comic timing. Apatow\u2019s observant and detailed collage suggests that Macdonald\u2019s unruly and confrontational style of humor treated both his colleagues and his audience like they were essential parts of his act. Macdonald was also king of understated overkill and vicious running jokes, so it\u2019s no surprise that many fans associate him with his persistent jabs at Sylvester Stallone\u2019s brutally uncharismatic brother Frank as well as his ongoing and, in hindsight, reckless cracks about Simpson\u2019s guilt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then again, that kind of smartass risk-taking was always part of Macdonald\u2019s act, as Apatow successfully argues. Several fellow comedians praise Macdonald for being \u201cdisciplined\u201d and refusing to chase what they consider to be easy laughs. Conan O\u2019Brien even paraphrases his own wingman Andy Richter when he says that Macdonald \u201cdoesn\u2019t care in a way that frightens me.\u201d That seeming fearlessness is also what drew SNL writer Jim Downey to Macdonald in the first place and convinced Downey that Macdonald would be a perfect fit to host Weekend Update.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But what really made Macdonald\u2019s O.J. jokes uniquely his, as well as the way that he subsequently drew attention to his firing by Ohlmeyer, was a matter of style. Macdonald was playfully elusive and sometimes combatively impersonal, so it\u2019s unsurprising that he relished in pushing the envelope of bad taste well past acceptable limits with jokes about Simpson\u2019s apparent guilt. Macdonald even continued joking about Simpson\u2019s guilt after his acquittal, quipping dryly on Weekend Update that murder is now legal in the state of California. Downey says that SNL creator Lorne Michaels used to object to these jokes on behalf of both Ohlmeyer and Simpson. Those complaints obviously didn\u2019t stop Macdonald and, in fact, seemed to energize him.<\/p>\n
Apatow also points out how quick Macdonald\u2019s colleagues were to defend him after Ohlmeyer let him go. In an excerpted clip from The Late Show, Macdonald told David Letterman that his main point of contact with Ohlmeyer was a phone conversation where Ohlmeyer bluntly told Macdonald that he didn\u2019t think he was funny. Letterman also perfectly complements Macdonald\u2019s tone when he says, in a mock aside, that, \u201cOhlmeyer, who, between you and me, is an idiot.\u201d Between you and me and the millions of viewers at home, of course.<\/p>\n
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Apatow suggests that his prickly subject was more in control of these post-firing interviews than he let on. He pointedly quotes Macdonald, from an interview with Larry King, where the comedian hastily notes that, \u201cI said nothing against Don Ohlmeyer after being fired. Not one thing.\u201d In the next clip, Apatow shows Macdonald ostensibly defending Ohlmeyer as a \u201ctroubled man\u201d by suggesting that the media mogul had a reputation for being a heavy drinker and a sex pest.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Ohlmeyer\u2019s name became synonymous with Macdonald\u2019s firing, to the point where, as Apatow reminds us, the Hollywood Reporter obituary\u00a0for Ohlmeyer ran a subheadline<\/a> that claimed the NBC West Coast president was \u201calso known for firing Norm Macdonald from \u2018SNL.’\u201d The stickiness of that association isn\u2019t surprising, given how frequently Macdonald not only named and shamed Ohlmeyer, but also paraphrased his ex-boss\u2019 snide remark about Macdonald being unfunny.\u00a0Apatow suggests that this calculated repetition was always part of Macdonald\u2019s act when, in an early scene, Macdonald recalls his own father\u2019s habit of repeating a joke to a captive audience, just because it would land twice as hard the second time around. This same spirit made audiences feel like they were in on the bit whenever Macdonald endlessly repeated running gags, like when he told interviewer after interviewer that he was a deeply closeted gay man, but would never admit to it.<\/p>\n But this approach, Apatow argues, also stems from something deeper. Apatow quotes Macdonald in an early scene about his addiction to sports gambling, particularly the invigorating moment between placing a bet and seeing its result. In voiceover, Macdonald reads from his own novel, Based On A True Story: Not A Memoir: \u201cIt is when the dice are in the air, and as long as they are there, time stops. As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to.\u201d This indirectly explains why Macdonald couldn\u2019t help making an O.J. Simpson joke in 1998 when he was invited to host the ESPY Awards.<\/p>\n \ufeff\ufeff<\/p>\n Macdonald couldn\u2019t have known the response he\u2019d get from Heisman-winning football player Charles Woodson when he joked that Woodson\u2019s prize is something that \u201cthey can never take away from you. Unless you kill your wife and a waiter, in which case\u2026\u201d Apatow includes a reaction shot of a mortified Woodson, which remains funny for the same reason that, in a successive montage, O\u2019Brien\u2019s helpless laughter at Macdonald\u2019s button-pushing jokes is a key part of Macdonald\u2019s bits. Macdonald turned his anxious listeners into essential proofs of his patience-testing humor.<\/p>\n In the wake of his firing, Macdonald enjoyed moments of mainstream resurgence, including star vehicles like cult comedy Dirty Work<\/a> and his short-lived sitcom The Norm Show, but all the bridge-burning led Macdonald to what he jokingly referred to as a major demotion in stature: hosting a podcast. But Macdonald also joked about this indignity, like with a running bit about losing the sponsorship of the ManGrate brand of cast-iron grills, whose products Macdonald couldn\u2019t stop himself from laughing at.<\/p>\n Macdonald continued to thrive even with a notably reduced audience, and Apatow exhibits a keen understanding as to why. He points out how Macdonald treated anyone who either interviewed or was interviewed by him like a comic foil. That was always a calculated gamble, but it often paid off in the unfiltered responses he got from seasoned talk show hosts, who he treated like straight men in an unrehearsed comedy duo. Macdonald seemed most at ease on talk shows because his ingratiating and knowing hosts often gave him license to play the kind of pseudo-na\u00efve troublemaker that his fans came to idolize.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it became harder to appreciate Macdonald\u2019s bulldozer fearlessness when he committed the same blithe sin of favoritism that Ohlmeyer did when he fired Macdonald. It\u2019s one thing to condemn Ohlmeyer for protecting his buddy Simpson and another to insist that \u201cwe should be more forgiving\u201d about Macdonald\u2019s pals Roseanne Barr and Louis C.K. To his credit, Apatow doesn\u2019t ignore that wrongheaded episode, nor Macdonald\u2019s series of self-mortifying, backpedaling apologies, many of which only make him look more lost and confounded by public backlash. It\u2019s all the more mortifying to see the comic in this state after he spent so much time singling out Ohlmeyer for defending his own infamous friend.\u00a0<\/p>\n In this sense, Norm both does and doesn\u2019t satisfy as an apology for Macdonald. Apatow seems to agree with Macdonald\u2019s pleas for tolerance when he shows Macdonald asking Barr about her mental health struggles. And Apatow also predictably takes more time to highlight what Ohlmeyer did in service of Simpson, like how Ohlmeyer continued to punish Macdonald even after his firing by refusing to pay for newspaper ads to promote Dirty Work. Macdonald isn\u2019t held to such high standards; for example, there\u2019s nothing in Norm about Macdonald\u2019s other MeToo apologia, like his comments<\/a> about Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Norm convincingly presents Macdonald as a comedian whose biggest misstep was not caring enough about who he made fun of, or how he ingratiated himself to his audience. Some mistakenly assumed that Macdonald\u2019s \u201cWeekend Update\u201d persona was his style, based on his frequently critical tone and propensity for flirting with provocative subjects. But as Apatow points out, Macdonald didn\u2019t want to be known for being mean. He says as much in an excerpted conversation with O\u2019Brien, revealing that he regrets making fun of the 1997 Carrot Top vehicle Chairman Of The Board: \u201cI never got into comedy to hurt anyone\u2019s feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n In this case\u2014when Macdonald breaks Carrot Top\u2019s co-star Courtney Thorne-Smith while on the same episode of O\u2019Brien\u2019s show\u2014the subject of Macdonald\u2019s jokes at least gets to agree that the context of Macdonald\u2019s humor does make a difference. These jokes were obviously his characteristic way of turning Thorne-Smith into his unwitting, but clearly game comedy partner. Apatow also shows Carrot Top saying, on a podcast interview, that he didn\u2019t take it personally since \u201cwe\u2019re comics\u201d and also \u201cit was a fucking joke, and it was funny.\u201d Norm effectively argues that, in order to fully appreciate or simply understand Macdonald\u2019s sensibility, you have to appreciate that even his most pointed and critical jokes were all in good fun.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s why Macdonald preferred to be known as a stand-up than for his time on SNL, since that became the ultimate proof that he could still bust up anybody, in any room. After all, when you\u2019re a stand-up, the response you get is immediate, so when the response is good and you\u2019re on a roll, you don\u2019t have to wonder if you\u2019re funny or not. That said, by focusing so much on how Macdonald\u2019s style implicitly relied on his rapport with his audience, Apatow also inadvertently relates why Macdonald will likely always be most fondly remembered for what might have been if he had let up on Simpson. But then, that just wouldn\u2019t have been a very Norm Macdonald thing to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Norm: The Tale Of Norm Macdonald, director Judd Apatow lovingly identifies and helps to explain the moment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,92],"class_list":["post-884370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}