Name: Edge of fame podcast with Norm Macdonald (2018) WBUR
Uploaded: 2021-09-27T02:46:35.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Edge of fame podcast with Norm Macdonald (2018) WBUR' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Edge of fame podcast with Norm Macdonald (2018) WBUR' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-27. Transcript available.

Edge of fame podcast with Norm Macdonald (2018) WBUR

Produced by the i-Lab at WBUR Boston.
Weekend of 8 with Norm Macdonald.
Hi, I'm Norm Macdonald, and now the fake news.
Our top story tonight, in an emotional press conference this week,
Bob Dole announced that he was resigning from the U.S. Senate, where he had
served for the early three years.
Hi there.
Hi, everybody. Yes, yes. Thank you so much.
I'm going to look through one more time.
Do you mind looking through with fresh eyes?
No, I'll go.
We're just going to do a sweep.
Go ahead, go ahead.
What you hear is Norm Macdonald, the former Saturday Night Live star.
He's getting ready for a high-profile appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy
Fallon.
Though you wouldn't know it.
Because at the moment, what's really consuming him is where did he put his keys?
I don't see it, man.
Okay.
So it's September of 2016.
Norm is going on Fallon to promote his comic novel.
Some people have branded it a memoir, but it's really not.
I mean, there's a character in it named Norm, and he used to be on Saturday
Night Live, but most of it is fake.
It took time to ride, and it kept Norm off the circuit for a few years.
Which is why this is a perfect chance for him to reintroduce himself and also
reinvent himself.
Fallon also has Donald J. Trump on the show.
Back then, he was just candidate Trump.
Not a bad lead in.
We've got to get out of here. She's going to scream at us.
Get ready. Let's go.
They're going to get mad at me.
I'm starting to get there.
Underneath my nostril.
So this thing with the keys might seem strange to you, but for me, someone who's
spent hours and hours with Norm over the last year, I'm used to this.
Norm is always losing things and finding them.
Because the Tonight Show is more important, right?
Yeah.
Than your keys?
You're good.
Thank you.
Bye.
And you know, tonight, his keys aren't the only thing he's going to be looking
for.
I'm going to lose something. What do I need? Keys, phone, and wallet.
Got it, got it, got it.
I'm Jeff Edgers, and from WBUR Boston and The Washington Post, this is Edge of
Fame.
A show about the life that happens before, behind, and beyond the spotlight.
This episode is a sneak peek of our plan to take over the podcast world, or
something like that.
We'll kick off the rest of the season February 15th.
I'm the national arts reporter for The Washington Post, and it's my job to go
all over the country looking for special stories and characters.
So it's only natural that I'd be immersed in Norm McDonald's world, because
Norm is one of the great, underappreciated geniuses in comedy and entertainment.
I'm sorry to throw that word out there like it's just something to throw around,
but he's special, and I feel like more people need to know about him.
That's the why.
The reason I'm embedded in Norm's life right now is because these two days are
important.
He wouldn't say that, but I think they're crucial as he tries to revitalize his
career.
And they'll also reveal why mainstream fame is always just beyond his grasp.
So some history.
Norm was born in Canada in 1959.
He was a smart kid and apparently quite withdrawn, the middle of three brothers.
Norm's father died when he was young.
So after bumping around in Canada doing stand-up in the '80s, Norm came to the
States.
The first you hear of him would be on Star Search, where he appeared and lost.
I finally quit smoking, you know.
Some people feel pretty good about that.
I smoked ever since I was a kid, so it was kind of tough for me, you know.
I remember once I was eight years old, a little kid, behind my garage, sneaking
a cigarette back there, and my dad caught me.
He hauled me in, I thought I was in for the strap into my life, you know.
What he did is he pulled out a big cigar.
Must have been half the size of my arm, this giant cigar.
Stuck it in my mouth, lit it up, made me smoke it.
All the way through, right to the end.
That's when I started smoking cigars real heavy.
He spends some time off camera, writing for the Dennis Miller Show,
and then jumping onto the staff of one of the all-time great sitcoms, Roseanne.
Then some of his buddies, like Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Farley,
they got him an audition in a meeting with SNL's grand poobah, Lorne Michaels.
It's just a meeting because Norm doesn't really audition.
So he goes to meet with Lorne Michaels, and instead of praising him and telling
Lorne how great he is,
he tells Lorne that he's the wrong guy for the job.
He's got no impressions. He's just not good enough.
Lorne seems to like this approach, and Norm's hired.
Weekend Update with Norm MacDonald.
He becomes the anchor of the Weekend Update desk,
or as he terms it decades before President Trump took office, the fake news.
Thanks, I'm Norm MacDonald, and this is the fake news.
PLO leader Yasser Arafat announced this week that his wife is pregnant.
The happy couple said they really don't care if the child is a boy or a girl,
just as long as it hates Jews.
Norm was more than a joke reader.
He did Weekend Update his way.
You know, comics go on, and they tell a joke, and they know it's not a great
joke,
or the joke doesn't land right.
And they roll their eyes, and they look apologetically to the audience and say,
"Yeah, okay, I know that wasn't funny."
Well, Norm never did that.
Even if a joke truly did bomb, Norm believed.
He would stare you down, stare right through that TV screen as if to tell you,
"I don't care whether you like this joke or not. It's mine."
"Jeffrey Dahmer's relatives are reportedly fighting over what to do with his
body."
"Yeah, that's right."
"Yeah, well, some want to have sex with it, well, the rest want to put it in
the fridge."
"So that's, uh, should have stopped at the premise that time."
On SNL, Norm was unyielding.
He came across as down-to-earth, but he had high, almost unattainable standards.
And a stubborn streak.
Take one of his favorite subjects at the time.
Just to remind you, this was the height of the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
And Norm loved O.J. jokes. Just loved them.
And now the fake news.
Well, it is finally official.
Murder is legal in the state of California.
And so at a certain point, one of the TV executives, Don Olemire,
who had been O.J.'s golf buddy, told Lauren he didn't want any more O.J. jokes.
Or at least, he didn't want so many.
What did Norm do?
"Well, that covers the main developments in the O.J. Simpson case this week.
And after all, other important things are going on in the world.
Now more O.J. Simpson."
Eventually, Norm was removed mid-season. Unheard of.
He wasn't fired from Saturday Night Live, but he ended up leaving.
And that's all the news. Thanks, folks. See you later.
But for me, Norm's leaving SNL was just the beginning.
He starred in a movie called Dirty Work that didn't make a ton of money at the
box office, but was still very funny.
He starred in two different sitcoms, and he developed a weird sideline as one
of the world's greatest late-night talk show guests.
I mean, one time he went on Conan and told this moth joke.
Seriously, you could boil this joke down to its essentials and tell it in 20
seconds.
You probably know it. The moth goes to a doctor because he's depressed.
A moth goes into a podiatrist's office, and the podiatrist's office says, "What's
the problem?"
And the moth says, "What's the problem? Where do I begin, man?"
He goes, "I go to work for, uh, Gregory Olinovich, and all day long I work."
Honestly, Doc, I don't even know what I'm doing anymore.
I don't even know if Gregory Olinovich knows.
He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness.
Norm turns this into like a seven, eight, nine-minute story that goes down all
sorts of roads and dead-ends and twists.
He invokes Russian names that are almost impossible to pronounce.
My other boy, Gregorio Ivinovich.
You know it's natural that he's doing this because he loves Russian literature.
Not that you know it from his bits, but I'm telling you, this man reads Tolstoy
religiously.
Anyway, he tells this joke that just goes on and on and on.
People basically realize, "I don't know what's going on here, but it's special,
and I want to be part of it."
He says, "Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I'm a moth.
Just barely hanging onto my web with an everlasting fire underneath me.
I'm not feeling good."
And so the moth, the doctor says, "Moth, man, you're troubled.
But you should be seeing a psychiatrist.
Why on earth did you come here?"
And then the moth said, "Because the light was on."
So why isn't Norm on TV?
Why isn't he enjoying the kind of mainstream success that his peers have
enjoyed?
You know, why is Rob Schneider getting a show and Adam Sandler getting billions
of dollars to make movies?
Norm isn't getting those same opportunities.
I think, in large part, it's because you can't describe exactly what he does.
In a world of elevator pitches, Norm's unorthodox approach can be jarring, even
unsettling.
And brilliant.
I'm not the only one who thinks this.
Listen to what David Letterman told me.
Norm is, first and foremost, smart, next funny, and thirdly, most importantly,
perhaps, endlessly appealing.
Why doesn't a guy like that get to have an hour every night?
You know, there's no reason on this earth that that guy shouldn't have a
regularly scheduled, easy-to-access video outlet.
So, show business is not a meritocracy, you know? Fame is the only currency.
So, I always thought, you know, if I could just be the funniest stand-up, that
would be enough.
But, it's not enough.
That sloshing sound, that's Norm shaving.
He's getting ready for The Tonight Show, and we're talking about whether he
feels underappreciated or not.
He was 15 years old, and they told me, you know, "How would you like when you're
in your 50s to be taking a shave and being interviewed by a guy and just about
to go on The Tonight Show?"
I'd say, "I'll take it. That would be fantastic."
You know what I mean?
And if the guy said, "Would you complain about anything?"
I'd go, "Of course I wouldn't."
You know, I'd be in heaven, you know?
So, a number of years ago, I stopped comparing myself to people.
I also used to want to have a magazine cover that said, "The Funniest Man Alive",
you know?
They do those every 10 years or so.
And you had this moment of time, for a whole bunch of reasons, where you were
starring in this big weekly television show, making movies, having sitcoms,
basically being as big a star as you could be.
And that's not necessarily all you're doing.
Some of it is the outside world accepting you at that moment, right?
But that's also the appearance. Like, that's the perception. Like, the reality
of my life, well, I mean, if you really want to look at the reality of a person's
life, it's basically eating, you know, finding food.
But, you know, of my career, then I always did stand-up, you know? I was lucky
enough not to be a waiter or whatever.
But at that moment, in 1997, I would argue, you weren't any funnier than you
are now. You just happened to be more famous.
No, I was less funny, but yeah, I was more famous, yeah.
We'll be back with more Norm in a minute.
So the life Norm leads these days is pretty unglamorous, at least by Hollywood
standards.
He lives in a condo near the Los Angeles airport.
He's divorced.
He spends a lot of time alone.
People sometimes will speculate that he's on drugs or drinking or something,
but I've never seen him so much as drink a beer.
He does take a pill for anxiety.
The only vice I know about is gambling, and particularly sports gambling.
He's lost his entire savings or fortune, or whatever you want to call it, a
couple times already.
But mostly, he leads a pretty quiet life.
He watches sports and news and tweets and he writes.
I watched him work on his fake memoir, comic novel, whatever you want to call
it, for months.
And when it finally came out last year, he invited me to interview him on the
stage in Washington, D.C. at the cultural center called Sixth and I.
And when I showed up, the place was pac