Name: Norm Macdonald on Koolidge Show (2010)
Uploaded: 2022-08-27T18:21:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald on Koolidge Show (2010)' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald on Koolidge Show (2010)' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-08-27. Transcript available.

sorry guys i have to do this interview just sorry
yes we can
no i'm cool
can you do me a favor my name is michael coolidge it's like the president
very nice uh very nice to meet you norm i'm a huge fan
can you say uh this is before we begin hey this is norm mcdonald and you're
listening to the michael coolidge show
yeah sure uh whenever you're ready hey this is norm mcdonald and you're
listening to the michael coolidge show awesome uh and is there any recent
things
in the news you'd like me to talk or you'd like me to ask you about to bring
up anything at all no not that i can think of okay we have
all your information here about zanies and st charles and vernon run
i'll probably say that uh either before or during the interview so we're going
to
promote this for you all right counting down in
all right our next guest is possibly the funniest stand-up comic alive yeah
that's
right people norm mcdonald former host of uh weekend update on saturday night
live
he's been in about a dozen movies he's been on a bunch of sitcoms uh he's going
to be
performing at zanies in st charles and in uh vernon hills later on next week uh
norm mcdonald welcome
on to the michael coolidge show hey thank you michael uh yeah we're so thrilled
to talk with you our
listeners are huge fans of yours i am uh i think you're the first canadian to
come on the show
since uh canada whooped america's butt in the uh olympics where did you watch
that did you uh
i assume you're i actually watched it in uh in chicago with my buddy who's a
big blackhawks fan
and uh i was in a sports bar and uh i was the only guy that uh was going for
canada
and uh then i almost got in a fight at the end which i now i kind of think
would have been cool
but yeah it was it was a knee buckler with 28 seconds left it took all my
breath away
oh it was nuts and i mean i've been in bars before where you're rooting against
the team that everyone else is rooting for uh did people know that you were
norm mcdonald i mean
you know canadian uh you know comic extraordinaire or were they just like who's
this jerk who's
rooting for canada in america well i was trying to keep it quiet yeah it's like
it's like playing
the don't pass line at a craps table you know right you want to kind of stay in
the background
but uh at the end i couldn't contain myself and uh it was yeah i was uh i was
like screaming at the
end and everybody that i was uh i was uh spotted at that point it was i mean
pretty much the greatest
sports day in canada's history right i mean was there anything bigger than that
no that was the
biggest when i was nine years old the the paul henderson scored to beat the russians
uh which
which was i remember as a little child huge but i think this one was bigger and
uh but both those
games had defining moments which the which the lake placid game did not have
the lake placid game was
just al michael screaming gibberish about a miracle as the oh come on there was
no goal like a true
canadian yeah no that's true i mean from a from a uh hockey match perspective
you're right it did not
end with like a a walk-off home run uh or anything you kind of faded out all
right uh well our listeners
who uh who don't remember the uh mid-90s uh norm mcdonald he hosted saturday
night live or he was a
weekend update guy on saturday night live for years um i mean you've done you've
done everything
basically every uh comic who gets into stand-up hopes to do someday you've been
cast on saturday night
live you've starred in a couple of different sitcoms you've starred in your own
movies um any of those
any form of entertainment you like more than the rest of them or are you at
home when you're on stage
doing stand-up yeah i never really dreamed of those things actually i just
wanted to do stand-up and
those i just stumbled into those things because it's very odd uh thing in hollywood
that if you're good
at stand-up they are the things that you're not very good at and sometimes
necessarily bad at
because stand-ups are generally very bad actors you know but in the old days
stand-ups were
you know only did stand-up like milton burl or georgie jessel would not be the
star of a comedy movie
they would use actual actors like jimmy stewart or jerry grant to star in
comedy movies
but now stand-ups i think because of bill cosby probably uh they decided that
to give stand-ups
all the stuff that that because i don't get it i don't like acting at all well
i'm trying to think
like all of the all the roles you've played and i've seen pretty much
everything i actually believe
it or not went to a uh a um a performance or not a performance an actual taping
of a minute with
stan hooper many many years ago yeah i swear i forget which episode it was but
i i thought it was
a funny show norm mcdonald was like this uh writer who moved to the midwest to
kind of you know be a
part of the real america and and blah blah blah and uh i thought it was great
but you you did i
actually like that show a lot i liked uh the only thing i like in tv is i like
writing and i like
casting and so uh i always wanted to just not have myself in the show but uh
they wanted they wanted
whatever so i try to surround myself with great comic actors in the same way of
seinfeld you know if you
watch seinfeld you didn't know it was called seinfeld you would assume that jason
alexander was the
star of the show you know right or or uh michael uh richards or julie drivis
yeah absolutely yeah
yeah seinfeld's basically just an he looks like he's just watching the show you
know right right
and you and you did and he was kind of just jerry seinfeld i mean when you uh
see him perform his
stand-up he's not that much different than his character on the show and i'd
say that was the
same with you too most of the stuff you've been in it's i very unless you're
like completely an
over-the-top impersonation of burt reynolds or of bob dole every time i watch
you i'm like oh that's
norm mcdonald that's not a guy playing you know acting a character or something
no exactly i can't
as a matter of fact if i i've only been on three or four auditions in my life
but i'm a little
terrified because in auditions they go can you try it this way after you do it
i go no i can't do it
two ways so uh yeah they probably don't like that they're probably like wait
this guy cannot take
direction next exactly on my show we would get whenever i did shows i would i
would get direction
which i always hate and uh and uh so i my big move is to they would go try it
this different way and
then i just do it the exact same way and i go how's that they go no no it's
different way and then i go
i thought i did it so finally they would gradually tire of it stop now uh it's
funny because you i think
you uh started out as a writer for roseanne which many people consider probably
the best sitcom
pre-seinfeld or or of the 90s the best like traditional sitcom of the 90s and
you were
a writer on that show for for a bunch of years right yeah yeah she was i mean i
started with stand-up
and then roseanne signed with you stand-up and hired me uh that's my first job
in actual show business
and what was it what was that like i mean again every every stand-up comic
hopes to get discovered
or like hopes to get his first job or whatever i mean were you like literally
you had not no other
experience before writing for uh uh roseanne other than stand-up on like one of
the hugest shows of the
of the 90s no i had none and really it was only because roseanne liked stand-up
that i got the job
like i don't think i ever would have got traditionally and then when i was on
the show it was cool
because it was just me and one other stand-up and roseanne only liked us
because she hated like
harvard writers and she hated like uh you know that uh snobby kind of uh what
she perceived as snobby
right right and she really loved stand-up so wow she was very hard on the
rights except for me and this other guy
and she was notorious for uh like basically saying this is my show abc do not
come down here and
you know you higher ups and try to tell me how it's going to be it's my show
and and she she did
control everything and and to her credit she did because i mean the whole first
i mean it was great
fascinating because the writers every week would complain because roseanne
would want everything
changed and uh then the show would be great and then they'd complain again like
they never
understood that she would she actually had to realize more what the show was
than they did
right and and her big thing was there's too many jokes that was all this sort
of thing like what's
with all these jokes like and uh so she'd she'd kill all the all the pad or all
the one liners
and uh and the writers didn't like that because it's sort of an easy way to
write you know you just write a
just pepper a bunch of little jokes in there right like she was she was more
more into character
uh she called it like an hypnotistic yeah and relationships and that that's
that's why that
show was so brilliant because of of the relationships between her and her kids
and her the relationship
between her and dan i mean uh is there are there any particular episodes that
you can remember
writing uh that that that stand out that says oh that's norm mcdonald's like
conan o'brien always says
about the simpsons oh the uh the uh monorail episode is the one i wrote was
there was there
a roseanne one that stood out to you yeah there was one that that kind of broke
my heart because
a girl won an emmy for writing it even though i wrote it but uh boy it works
and show business and tv
writing is they'll just it's just one person's uh one person can write the
episode so even though i
wrote it was my complete notion this other girl wrote it but it was based on my
uh my mother talking to my
grandmother and it so goes when the mother dies and uh she has to explain it or
her father dies rather
and she has to explain it to her mother and her mother can't hear her on the
phone you know because
she's got bad hearing right right so that it actually happened with my mother
so she's trying
to tell she starts off sad but she ends up like screaming into the phone you
know so that's
her mother can hear it oh no and that actually happened to you that actually
happened to me
and then i had to watch this girl win an emmy for writing oh man go there and
accept it did she even
thank you or did she mention you in the in the acceptance that would be giving
it up oh no well
that sucks uh and um and what what type of stuff are you concentrated right now
uh pretty much on
stand-up um i mean a lot of people remember the probably the funniest roast
performance of all time
at least of the modern era uh was norm mcdonald roasting bob sagat i won't even
describe what he did
because i'll destroy the whole point of of his performance just google uh norm
mcdonald roasts
bob sagat and you could watch it for yourself uh did people get that like right
after it like
backstage and stuff because people didn't see it on steve on tv what what you
were doing there it was
like a a meta performance almost it was it was interesting i didn't get it
which kind of surprised
me that they because it seems like a relatively easy concept me but uh some
people didn't get it and
then comedy central was not going to air it and then somehow virally it leaked
i don't know how that
stuff works and then a lot of people watched it on uh youtube and stuff and
then comedy central
decided to show it so uh otherwise it never would have left that room and they
even chopped it up
on tv i remember uh yeah they chopped it up which was depressing to me because
yeah i wanted the
entire there was a reason that i did it that long you know yeah yeah that was
again listeners if you
haven't seen it google bob sagat roasts uh i'm sorry norm mcdonald roasts bob
sagat comedy central i'm
sure comedy central has the unedited clip somewhere on their site it is
possibly the best roast ever i
mean he uh well again i don't even want to describe what he did because i'll
ruin it um any any uh young
comics you like uh uh coming up or do you are you online a lot do you watch
like john lejoie he's a big
uh canadian uh guy who's gotten pretty big recently that john it looks like
john lejoy uh he does those
parody songs and stuff but his name's john lejoie i think he's from toronto or
from montreal
one of those one of those cities up there in canada no i didn't but i will
check it out
yeah i see i see there's a kid called bo burnham that uh is on youtube a lot
and uh i kind of i kind
of dig these kids and just go into and uh fool around and i watch them a lot
because some of them are
although you have to go through a lot of bad people right uh it's very uh cool
how
you know how they bypassed any system of uh some old guy deciding whether you're
funny or not
gone right to the people you know i really think that's cool now does that uh
it's i'm interested
to hear you say that because i know that a lot of comics they develop over
years and years and years
material and uh they perform in a lot of ways the same act uh all over the
country when they perform
um but if all because of the internet so much of their acts are online now are
you afraid that when
you go to places a lot of people will have already heard your jokes because
they've seen your stand-up
on online is that is that a struggle that comedians have these days um i'm sure
it is although i don't
work that way and i kind of detest that way of polishing an act until it's
perfect anyways because
i don't like uh saying the same thing over and over
um i just don't like it i just think it's an in any way of conducting your life
so i don't like going just by rote and making things uh
perfect i'd rather i'd rather just uh kind of uh work on new stuff and uh and
and keep writing
keep writing keep writing so i don't mind it that much if people want to
procure it or steal it or
whatever yeah also people will steal your stuff all the time too other comedians
so you've got to keep
writing anyways yeah you've got to stay you've got to stay fresh uh i'm sure uh
and and just do do
come up with new stuff all the time and in this day and age like you said with
with everything online
uh your comics have to do that because you're gonna um you know something a
year old could be
could be could seem like uh it's it's an eternity uh ago uh we're speaking with
norm mcdonald
listeners he is performing at zany's in st charles on friday april 9th and uh zany's
in vernon hills
on saturday april 10th go to coolidge.com click on norm mcdonald for more
information about how to get
tickets to the show we are going uh for sure one of those nights we can't wait
to uh see him perform
in person um anything else norm mcdonald do you want to add before we say
goodbye i know we kept you
over a little bit longer here we'd love to talk to you for talk with you for
another half hour but i
know you got to run um no i can't think of anything i'm glad tiger's coming
back i mean i'm excited about
that right the masters he's uh what what were your general uh thoughts on uh on
tiger woodsall thing
south park did a funny send up on it i don't know if you caught that who did
south park oh they did yeah
yeah yeah i just think that it's uh i don't know because i'm coming from a golf
fan so it was kind
of devastating to me when he when he got knocked out of golf you know right and
so i uh i was as much
a victim as anybody in this whole thing because i've watched a guy for 12 years
you know and uh
i've just talked to anyone by it sort of it's just absurd to me that anyone
would be surprised by such a thing right well that that was south park's point
they're like
wait a second a really rich guy slept with a lot of women um what where's the
story here basically i
mean it's exactly but it was uh it was funny uh norm mcdonald uh such an honor
to speak with you in
person we can't wait to see you at vernon hills uh i'm sorry norm mcdonald we
cannot wait to see you
at uh zany's next week um it was an honor to have you on the michael coolgood
show and uh uh thanks for
coming on the show oh thanks i'll see you at one of those gigs man come on up
we'll wrap
awesome uh and uh and i'll let you go here i i i was nervous in this interview
because you're
honestly one of my uh one of my favorite comics of all time and i can't wait to
see you that's nice
awesome all right we'll see you uh yeah we seriously we'll see you at zany's i'll
come
by afterwards and i'd love to get a picture with you yeah cool which one are
you going to come to
uh definitely going to come to the friday april 9th zany's in st charles pheasant
run resort
oh sweet okay cool man yeah yeah uh great good good good to meet you norm have
a great oh you know
what i i totally forgot to ask you about and we won't even put this on the air
but have you heard
is arty lang doing okay like i know he i know you guys are friends is he yeah a
lot of people are
worried about him right yeah so far he's doing great how it's day to day but uh
so far it's been
great i don't think he's gonna return for a long time really howard i think sat
on the show last
week or a couple weeks ago that he's been sober for like three months now or
something like he he's
he's gotten help as far as you know like he's in a uh yeah that's yeah he's in
a program and he's i
think yeah he's on day 55 or something like that yeah well that's great to know
because a lot of
listeners uh you know even non-howard stern listeners uh are fans of his and uh
hope he's okay
such a great guy that yeah everybody's rooting for him yeah okay norm uh we'll
see you a week
from friday can't wait to meet you okay cool mike i'll see you then man take
care bye
Thank you.

Norm Macdonald on Koolidge Show (2010)

sorry guys i have to do this interview just sorry
yes we can
no i'm cool
can you do me a favor my name is michael coolidge it's like the president
very nice uh very nice to meet you norm i'm a huge fan
can you say uh this is before we begin hey this is norm mcdonald and you're
listening to the michael coolidge show
yeah sure uh whenever you're ready hey this is norm mcdonald and you're
listening to the michael coolidge show awesome uh and is there any recent
things
in the news you'd like me to talk or you'd like me to ask you about to bring
up anything at all no not that i can think of okay we have
all your information here about zanies and st charles and vernon run
i'll probably say that uh either before or during the interview so we're going
to
promote this for you all right counting down in
all right our next guest is possibly the funniest stand-up comic alive yeah
that's
right people norm mcdonald former host of uh weekend update on saturday night
live
he's been in about a dozen movies he's been on a bunch of sitcoms uh he's going
to be
performing at zanies in st charles and in uh vernon hills later on next week uh
norm mcdonald welcome
on to the michael coolidge show hey thank you michael uh yeah we're so thrilled
to talk with you our
listeners are huge fans of yours i am uh i think you're the first canadian to
come on the show
since uh canada whooped america's butt in the uh olympics where did you watch
that did you uh
i assume you're i actually watched it in uh in chicago with my buddy who's a
big blackhawks fan
and uh i was in a sports bar and uh i was the only guy that uh was going for
canada
and uh then i almost got in a fight at the end which i now i kind of think
would have been cool
but yeah it was it was a knee buckler with 28 seconds left it took all my
breath away
oh it was nuts and i mean i've been in bars before where you're rooting against
the team that everyone else is rooting for uh did people know that you were
norm mcdonald i mean
you know canadian uh you know comic extraordinaire or were they just like who's
this jerk who's
rooting for canada in america well i was trying to keep it quiet yeah it's like
it's like playing
the don't pass line at a craps table you know right you want to kind of stay in
the background
but uh at the end i couldn't contain myself and uh it was yeah i was uh i was
like screaming at the
end and everybody that i was uh i was uh spotted at that point it was i mean
pretty much the greatest
sports day in canada's history right i mean was there anything bigger than that
no that was the
biggest when i was nine years old the the paul henderson scored to beat the russians
uh which
which was i remember as a little child huge but i think this one was bigger and
uh but both those
games had defining moments which the which the lake placid game did not have
the lake placid game was
just al michael screaming gibberish about a miracle as the oh come on there was
no goal like a true
canadian yeah no that's true i mean from a from a uh hockey match perspective
you're right it did not
end with like a a walk-off home run uh or anything you kind of faded out all
right uh well our listeners
who uh who don't remember the uh mid-90s uh norm mcdonald he hosted saturday
night live or he was a
weekend update guy on saturday night live for years um i mean you've done you've
done everything
basically every uh comic who gets into stand-up hopes to do someday you've been
cast on saturday night
live you've starred in a couple of different sitcoms you've starred in your own
movies um any of those
any form of entertainment you like more than the rest of them or are you at
home when you're on stage
doing stand-up yeah i never really dreamed of those things actually i just
wanted to do stand-up and
those i just stumbled into those things because it's very odd uh thing in hollywood
that if you're good
at stand-up they are the things that you're not very good at and sometimes
necessarily bad at
because stand-ups are generally very bad actors you know but in the old days
stand-ups were
you know only did stand-up like milton burl or georgie jessel would not be the
star of a comedy movie
they would use actual actors like jimmy stewart or jerry grant to star in
comedy movies
but now stand-ups i think because of bill cosby probably uh they decided that
to give stand-ups
all the stuff that that because i don't get it i don't like acting at all well
i'm trying to think
like all of the all the roles you've played and i've seen pretty much
everything i actually believe
it or not went to a uh a um a performance or not a performance an actual taping
of a minute with
stan hooper many many years ago yeah i swear i forget which episode it was but
i i thought it was
a funny show norm mcdonald was like this uh writer who moved to the midwest to
kind of you know be a
part of the real america and and blah blah blah and uh i thought it was great
but you you did i
actually like that show a lot i liked uh the only thing i like in tv is i like
writing and i like
casting and so uh i always wanted to just not have myself in the show but uh
they wanted they wanted
whatever so i try to surround myself with great comic actors in the same way of
seinfeld you know if you
watch seinfeld you didn't know it was called seinfeld you would assume that jason
alexander was the
star of the show you know right or or uh michael uh richards or julie drivis
yeah absolutely yeah
yeah seinfeld's basically just an he looks like he's just watching the show you
know right right
and you and you did and he was kind of just jerry seinfeld i mean when you uh
see him perform his
stand-up he's not that much different than his character on the show and i'd
say that was the
same with you too most of the stuff you've been in it's i very unless you're
like completely an
over-the-top impersonation of burt reynolds or of bob dole every time i watch
you i'm like oh that's
norm mcdonald that's not a guy playing you know acting a character or something
no exactly i can't
as a matter of fact if i i've only been on three or four auditions in my life
but i'm a little
terrified because in auditions they go can you try it this way after you do it
i go no i can't do it
two ways so uh yeah they probably don't like that they're probably like wait
this guy cannot take
direction next exactly on my show we would get whenever i did shows i would i
would get direction
which i always hate and uh and uh so i my big move is to they would go try it
this different way and
then i just do it the exact same way and i go how's that they go no no it's
different way and then i go
i thought i did it so finally they would gradually tire of it stop now uh it's
funny because you i think
you uh started out as a writer for roseanne which many people consider probably
the best sitcom
pre-seinfeld or or of the 90s the best like traditional sitcom of the 90s and
you were
a writer on that show for for a bunch of years right yeah yeah she was i mean i
started with stand-up
and then roseanne signed with you stand-up and hired me uh that's my first job
in actual show business
and what was it what was that like i mean again every every stand-up comic
hopes to get discovered
or like hopes to get his first job or whatever i mean were you like literally
you had not no other
experience before writing for uh uh roseanne other than stand-up on like one of
the hugest shows of the
of the 90s no i had none and really it was only because roseanne liked stand-up
that i got the job
like i don't think i ever would have got traditionally and then when i was on
the show it was cool
because it was just me and one other stand-up and roseanne only liked us
because she hated like
harvard writers and she hated like uh you know that uh snobby kind of uh what
she perceived as snobby
right right and she really loved stand-up so wow she was very hard on the
rights except for me and this other guy
and she was notorious for uh like basically saying this is my show abc do not
come down here and
you know you higher ups and try to tell me how it's going to be it's my show
and and she she did
control everything and and to her credit she did because i mean the whole first
i mean it was great
fascinating because the writers every week would complain because roseanne
would want everything
changed and uh then the show would be great and then they'd complain again like
they never
understood that she would she actually had to realize more what the show was
than they did
right and and her big thing was there's too many jokes that was all this sort
of thing like what's
with all these jokes like and uh so she'd she'd kill all the all the pad or all
the one liners
and uh and the writers didn't like that because it's sort of an easy way to
write you know you just write a
just pepper a bunch of little jokes in there right like she was she was more
more into character
uh she called it like an hypnotistic yeah and relationships and that that's
that's why that
show was so brilliant because of of the relationships between her and her kids
and her the relationship
between her and dan i mean uh is there are there any particular episodes that
you can remember
writing uh that that that stand out that says oh that's norm mcdonald's like
conan o'brien always says
about the simpsons oh the uh the uh monorail episode is the one i wrote was
there was there
a roseanne one that stood out to you yeah there was one that that kind of broke
my heart because
a girl won an emmy for writing it even though i wrote it but uh boy it works
and show business and tv
writing is they'll just it's just one person's uh one person can write the
episode so even though i
wrote it was my complete notion this other girl wrote it but it was based on my
uh my mother talking to my
grandmother and it so goes when the mother dies and uh she has to explain it or
her father dies rather
and she has to explain it to her mother and her mother can't hear her on the
phone you know because
she's got bad hearing right right so that it actually happened with my mother
so she's trying
to tell she starts off sad but she ends up like screaming into the phone you
know so that's
her mother can hear it oh no and that actually happened to you that actually
happened to me
and then i had to watch this girl win an emmy for writing oh man go there and
accept it did she even
thank you or did she mention you in the in the acceptance that would be giving
it up oh no well
that sucks uh and um and what what type of stuff are you concentrated right now
uh pretty much on
stand-up um i mean a lot of people remember the probably the funniest roast
performance of all time
at least of the modern era uh was norm mcdonald roasting bob sagat i won't even
describe what he did
because i'll destroy the whole point of of his performance just google uh norm
mcdonald roasts
bob sagat and you could watch it for yourself uh did people get that like right
after it like
backstage and stuff because people didn't see it on steve on tv what what you
were doing there it was
like a a meta performance almost it was it was interesting i didn't get it
which kind of surprised
me that they because it seems like a relatively easy concept me but uh some
people didn't get it and
then comedy central was not going to air it and then somehow virally it leaked
i don't know how that
stuff works and then a lot of people watched it on uh youtube and stuff and
then comedy central
decided to show it so uh otherwise it never would have left that room and they
even chopped it up
on tv i remember uh yeah they chopped it up which was depressing to me because
yeah i wanted the
entire there was a reason that i did it that long you know yeah yeah that was
again listeners if you
haven't seen it google bob sagat roasts uh i'm sorry norm mcdonald roasts bob
sagat comedy central i'm
sure comedy central has the unedited clip somewhere on their site it is
possibly the best roast ever i
mean he uh well again i don't e