Name: Norm MacDonald on Burt Reynolds
Uploaded: 2023-05-28T11:58:59.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm MacDonald on Burt Reynolds' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm MacDonald on Burt Reynolds' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-28. Transcript available.

There was only one man in town who could make people afraid of him even from
beyond the grave.
And that man was Richard Chubby.
Because with Big Chubby gone, there was only one person to take over the family
business.
His son, Little Chubby.
Back again, Burt Reynolds in a commanding lead with $14.
Hey, check out the podium. Look at this.
Mr. Reynolds has apparently changed his name to Turd Ferguson.
That's right. Turd Ferguson. It's a funny name.
Norm and I were hanging out in his office one day playing a game where you had
words and you had to do an impression of somebody saying the same sentence.
And he did Burt Reynolds doing it. And we go, well, there we go. So how can we
get Burt Reynolds on TV?
And then one time I was talking to Burt Reynolds and he said he wanted to come
on the show while I was doing Celebrity Jeopardy.
And then punch me in the face and take over. And then he'd be even stupider.
But then I got fired so he couldn't do it.
Oh, okay.
The sketch that you got on the air, and you say in your book, hey, you know, I
didn't originate this sketch.
I kind of stole this sketch with permission.
But the famous Jeopardy bit.
Yes, Jeopardy sketch.
Where you play Burt Reynolds, and you say Will Ferrell was key to that sketch
because he played such a great Jeopardy host.
Yes.
But that thing was one of the most popular sketches, and you pitched that, but
you say, you admit in your memoir that, hey, that's something I got from SCTV.
Yeah, yeah.
And I waited until Martin Short was a guest on the show, and I pitched it and
said, can we do the Jeopardy thing?
Yeah, yeah, they did a sketch on SCTV when I was a child called Halfwits, and
it was, it even, Alex Trebek was in the sketch because he was a Canadian.
And it was, you know, it was just these kids.
It was, you know, when two schools would fight each other.
Yeah.
And so they were all, it was real stupid.
So I always loved that show, and I said, you know, Celebrity Jeopardy, they
always ask such easy questions, and celebrities are all so stupid.
It would be great to do it.
Unfortunately, they've already done it, and I feel like I shouldn't just steal
a sketch.
So when Mr. Short came to do the show, who later became my friend, I said, who
wrote that sketch?
And he said, Eugene Levy.
And I said, maybe we could phone him, you know.
Get permission.
Get permission.
And so he said, yeah, we'll do a conference call.
And I said, no, I'll phone, you know.
I'm a man, you know.
So I phoned Eugene Levy, and I asked him, I told him the whole sketch.
I said how much I loved the first one, and I asked permission, and he was kind
enough to give it to me.
There was no better show than an SCTV.
That was unbelievable, right?
Oh, my God, it was amazing.
It was amazing.
Unbelievable.
Why does Turd Ferguson, why does Burt Reynolds hate Alex Trebek?
You know, what's funny is I wrote that sketch, because on Saturday Night Live,
you have to do impressions once in a while.
And I don't do impressions, you know.
But I do, like, four or five guys from when I was a kid that I liked, you know.
Like Letterman I liked, so I could do an impression of him.
And when I was a little kid, Burt Reynolds used to be on The Tonight Show, and
he was, like, the funniest guy ever.
So I wanted to do Burt Reynolds, but I couldn't figure out how to put him in
anything.
And so I wrote the sketch, Celebrity Jeopardy, so I could do my Burt Reynolds.
And then when it comes time to tape it, like, Lauren told Costume to have a
white hair for me and a white beard.
And I'm like, no, Lauren, I don't do Burt Reynolds.
I do Burt Reynolds from the 1970s, from Smoky and the Bandai.
Because that didn't make sense either.
Yeah.
Nobody knew why.
Why was it 70s?
I know, it made no sense.
But it's funny, like you say, Turd Ferguson, because on one of them I go, Burt
Reynolds goes, you know, that's not my name, you know, to Alex Trebek.
You know, and he forces himself to be called Turd Ferguson.
He forces Alex Trebek to call him Turd Ferguson.
Right.
So anyway, somehow that caught on with some people.
So still to this day, like, sometimes I'll be walking down the street and a guy
will go, hey, turd!
And then I go, thank you!
And then everyone else goes, what?
What is going on?
What kind of universe is this?
Hey, you worked with Burt Reynolds.
Yes, I did.
On the TV show, right?
Yeah, on Evening Shade, yeah.
Do you have any crazy Burt Reynolds stories?
He did hit me one time live in front of an audience and I couldn't breathe and
I couldn't say my lines.
Slap?
He hit me with an open hand but in the lung.
And he's got arms like Popeye, you know, those big forearms.
And in the thing, I'm supposed to hit him.
I'm supposed to slap him on the back and say something which pisses him off or
whatever.
And I come out there before the live audience and when we rehearsed it, he said,
I'm an old stuntman, so hit me as hard as you can.
And I guess I hit him really hard because his natural reaction, I guess, was to
hit me in the lung.
And I couldn't talk and they had to sort of suspend the big show for a few
minutes while I got my breath back.
I wanted Burt Reynolds on the show and he was like, oh, you don't want him, he's
crazy.
And I'm like, no, I don't want you, I want him.
Like, you know, I kind of wanted a crazy guy, which is what I wanted to talk to
you a little bit about.
Oh, yeah.
Well, this notion of crazy, yeah.
Burt Reynolds.
I remember one time he caught his hair on fire when he was over.
On the lot.
Yeah, he was making, he came over and he had caught his hair on fire.
I don't know how.
We're like, oh, you better go to the doctor.
You've got a big friggin' hole in your scalp.
Because Roseanne's show was on Radford along with Seinfeld and Evening Shave.
And I remember hearing a story, all those stories about Burt.
And he would go on his hiatus, he'd go away and hire people for the show.
And then people would show up, quit their job, you know, in whatever bar he
just found them in.
That's great.
And they'd come and go, we're ready to work.
And he'd go, what?
And they'd just pay him off and the guy'd have to go home.
Can you imagine that?
Like you're in your little town and Burt Reynolds shows up at your candy store
and offers you a job.
Well, that's kind of, what was he thinking?
I don't know.
But I think he had some, you were talking about, you had OCD.
He must have had some crazy stuff.
I met Burt Reynolds, though, which was an amazing...
Was he pissed?
Because he doesn't have a big sense of humor, does he?
You know what Burt Reynolds loves to do?
Is slap you in the face really hard.
He's like one of those masculine guys, punching you, you know?
But no, he was real nice to me.
Did he slap you?
He told me really funny stories.
He told me he was in Deliverance, you know, which I loved.
You know, he said, you know, I used to do my own gags.
Gags, I guess, are like stunts.
He was a stuntman.
Yeah.
And so he said, you know, they had this gag where I went over a waterfall.
And what, a car or something?
No, no, he's a fellow, you know, this wasn't...
He just falls off a waterfall.
The man did.
This was like Deliverance.
They were in the middle of...
Right, right, right.
So he says, I'll do the fall.
We don't need a stuntman.
Frank and Heimer says, no, no, we need a stuntman.
He goes, nah, we don't want that.
He goes, okay, well, we'll just use a dummy.
We'll just throw a dummy over, you know?
Yeah.
And he goes, no, no.
So Frank and Heimer's idea was just to throw a dummy over.
And then Burt Reynolds said, no, absolutely, I'm going to do it myself.
So Burt Reynolds says, he does it, and he said he did, you know, he said some
term I'm not
familiar with, you know, I do a half bike or something like that.
He said his shoulder immediately hit a rock, then his head hit another rock.
Oh, God.
And then he said, the next thing you remember, he's way downstream, all his
clothes had been
torn off.
And he looked up, and he was just like in shock, right?
The next thing he remembers, he's waking up in a hospital.
John Frankenheimer is at his bedside.
And he goes, then I said to John, how'd it look, you know, on the daily?
And John Frankenheimer said, it looked like a dummy falling off a bike.
So that made me laugh.
So he does have a good sense of humor.
He has a very good sense of humor.
And did Burt slimmack you around a couple of times just to show you where it
was at?
So what was the first sketch that you ever got on, or what was the first
written material
that you ever got on the show?
I wrote a sketch for the first show because Burt Reynolds had just, was on
Larry King Live
and was kind of famous at the time that, because he was in a contentious
divorce with Lonnie
Anderson, and he was wearing this crazy purple suit on Larry King Live, and he
announced, I will, you
know, Lonnie Anderson is lying, and I will get her on this show with you, Larry,
and we'll
both take truth serum.
And I was like, truth serum?
What?
Is that even a real thing?
So it was so funny.
And then so I wrote a sketch where they both drank, like from beakers of truth
serum, you
know, and Lauren did not care for it.
It opened the show, you know, it was like a big hit at the table.
What's his name, dude?
Burt Reynolds, Phil Hartman.
It was Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks.
And it's just, the next week, Lauren, like, pointed it, pointed to it as the
example of
what we should not be doing on the show.
He said it was just the, you know, he calls things Carol Burnett-ish, you know,
which is
the ultimate insult.
He said it was just the most Carol Burnett-ish type of sketch.
But I didn't know what I was doing, I don't know.
And he let me do it, it got all the way to the air.
He chose it, and he put it on first, not my fault.
I love the Burt Reynolds impression you got.
So, a bit about A, like the genesis of it, B has Burt, and he met Burt,
he's commented, and just while I had this, over the 41 years of SNL, I'm
wondering, besides
Farley, going back to the game of one, who were the players that really, for
you, most
admire, and maybe shaped anything?
Well, when I was a kid, I liked, my favorite was Dan Aykroyd, I was like, wow.
I always wondered why Shelby was the star, because I thought, god damn, Dan Aykroyd
can do
anybody, and he's so funny, and stuff.
And, and the reason I did, I want to do Burt Reynolds, you know, because I
loved him when
I was a kid.
I don't really do impressions, but guys who I really like, I can do, and guys
that are
funny, it's kind of a cheat, but, you know, you do an impression of them, and
then you're
funny, because they're funny.
You know what I mean?
So, I always used to watch one of the tonight's show, and I said, I gotta get
up a sketch,
so then I, uh, stole this sketch, called Half-Wits, from Second City, and I
turned that into, uh,
Celebrity Jeopardy, and I felt really bad for stealing the sketch, and so I
waited until
Mark, because Mark Short was coming on, and I said, Martin, can I, can I get
this sketch?
I, you know, I stole it from Half-Wits, and then he said, oh, I didn't write it,
Eugene
Levy wrote it, and I, I had to phone Eugene Levy and ask him, and he was a
gentleman who bought
it, and said that, uh, I could do it, but then when I did it, you know, Warren
picks out the
wardrobe, he had, like, with this gray hair, and gray beard, and stuff, and I
was like,
"No, I want to play with him in the '70s," and then, it's kind of odd, but all
the time
I did it, nobody ever commented, that the three celebrities, one of them was,
like, 50 years
ago.
Oh, yeah, no, I met him, and, god damn, that guy was funny.
He was telling me the funniest stories, and, uh, yeah, he wanted to, uh, he
said he wanted
to, uh, this is the story he told me, he said, you know, he'd get all these
girls when he was
young, you know, they were so handsome, and he said, one time he was in a hotel,
and there was
this beautiful blonde, and she said, like, "Just come up to my room, you know,
I have a lot of sex."
So he goes up to my room, and they're kissing on the bed and stuff, and then,
he said, she
whispered to Nazir, and she said, "I'll be right back. I have to take a dump."
So she ran away.
Most of us wouldn't run away, but he could just get the next girl and get back.
That's good.

Norm MacDonald on Burt Reynolds

There was only one man in town who could make people afraid of him even from
beyond the grave.
And that man was Richard Chubby.
Because with Big Chubby gone, there was only one person to take over the family
business.
His son, Little Chubby.
Back again, Burt Reynolds in a commanding lead with $14.
Hey, check out the podium. Look at this.
Mr. Reynolds has apparently changed his name to Turd Ferguson.
That's right. Turd Ferguson. It's a funny name.
Norm and I were hanging out in his office one day playing a game where you had
words and you had to do an impression of somebody saying the same sentence.
And he did Burt Reynolds doing it. And we go, well, there we go. So how can we
get Burt Reynolds on TV?
And then one time I was talking to Burt Reynolds and he said he wanted to come
on the show while I was doing Celebrity Jeopardy.
And then punch me in the face and take over. And then he'd be even stupider.
But then I got fired so he couldn't do it.
Oh, okay.
The sketch that you got on the air, and you say in your book, hey, you know, I
didn't originate this sketch.
I kind of stole this sketch with permission.
But the famous Jeopardy bit.
Yes, Jeopardy sketch.
Where you play Burt Reynolds, and you say Will Ferrell was key to that sketch
because he played such a great Jeopardy host.
Yes.
But that thing was one of the most popular sketches, and you pitched that, but
you say, you admit in your memoir that, hey, that's something I got from SCTV.
Yeah, yeah.
And I waited until Martin Short was a guest on the show, and I pitched it and
said, can we do the Jeopardy thing?
Yeah, yeah, they did a sketch on SCTV when I was a child called Halfwits, and
it was, it even, Alex Trebek was in the sketch because he was a Canadian.
And it was, you know, it was just these kids.
It was, you know, when two schools would fight each other.
Yeah.
And so they were all, it was real stupid.
So I always loved that show, and I said, you know, Celebrity Jeopardy, they
always ask such easy questions, and celebrities are all so stupid.
It would be great to do it.
Unfortunately, they've already done it, and I feel like I shouldn't just steal
a sketch.
So when Mr. Short came to do the show, who later became my friend, I said, who
wrote that sketch?
And he said, Eugene Levy.
And I said, maybe we could phone him, you know.
Get permission.
Get permission.
And so he said, yeah, we'll do a conference call.
And I said, no, I'll phone, you know.
I'm a man, you know.
So I phoned Eugene Levy, and I asked him, I told him the whole sketch.
I said how much I loved the first one, and I asked permission, and he was kind
enough to give it to me.
There was no better show than an SCTV.
That was unbelievable, right?
Oh, my God, it was amazing.
It was amazing.
Unbelievable.
Why does Turd Ferguson, why does Burt Reynolds hate Alex Trebek?
You know, what's funny is I wrote that sketch, because on Saturday Night Live,
you have to do impressions once in a while.
And I don't do impressions, you know.
But I do, like, four or five guys from when I was a kid that I liked, you know.
Like Letterman I liked, so I could do an impression of him.
And when I was a little kid, Burt Reynolds used to be on The Tonight Show, and
he was, like, the funniest guy ever.
So I wanted to do Burt Reynolds, but I couldn't figure out how to put him in
anything.
And so I wrote the sketch, Celebrity Jeopardy, so I could do my Burt Reynolds.
And then when it comes time to tape it, like, Lauren told Costume to have a
white hair for me and a white beard.
And I'm like, no, Lauren, I don't do Burt Reynolds.
I do Burt Reynolds from the 1970s, from Smoky and the Bandai.
Because that didn't make sense either.
Yeah.
Nobody knew why.
Why was it 70s?
I know, it made no sense.
But it's funny, like you say, Turd Ferguson, because on one of them I go, Burt
Reynolds goes, you know, that's not my name, you know, to Alex Trebek.
You know, and he forces himself to be called Turd Ferguson.
He forces Alex Trebek to call him Turd Ferguson.
Right.
So anyway, somehow that caught on with some people.
So still to this day, like, sometimes I'll be walking down the street and a guy
will go, hey, turd!
And then I go, thank you!
And then everyone else goes, what?
What is going on?
What kind of universe is this?
Hey, you worked with Burt Reynolds.
Yes, I did.
On the TV show, right?
Yeah, on Evening Shade, yeah.
Do you have any crazy Burt Reynolds stories?
He did hit me one time live in front of an audience and I couldn't breathe and
I couldn't say my lines.
Slap?
He hit me with an open hand but in the lung.
And he's got arms like Popeye, you know, those big forearms.
And in the thing, I'm supposed to hit him.
I'm supposed to slap him on the back and say something which pisses him off or
whatever.
And I come out there before the live audience and when we rehearsed it, he said,
I'm an old stuntman, so hit me as hard as you can.
And I guess I hit him really hard because his natural reaction, I guess, was to
hit me in the lung.
And I couldn't talk and they had to sort of suspend the big show for a few
minutes while I got my breath back.
I wanted Burt Reynolds on the show and he was like, oh, you don't want him, he's
crazy.
And I'm like, no, I don't want you, I want him.
Like, you know, I kind of wanted a crazy guy, which is what I wanted to talk to
you a little bit about.
Oh, yeah.
Well, this notion of crazy, yeah.
Burt Reynolds.
I remember one time he caught his hair on fire when he was over.
On the lot.
Yeah, he was making, he came over and he had caught his hair on fire.
I don't know how.
We're like, oh, you better go to the doctor.
You've got a big friggin' hole in your scalp.
Because Roseanne's show was on Radford along with Seinfeld and Evening Shave.
And I remember hearing a story, all those stories about Burt.
And he would go on his hiatus, he'd go away and hire people for the show.
And then people would show up, quit their job, you know, in whatever bar he
just found them in.
That's great.
And they'd come and go, we're ready to work.
And he'd go, what?
And they'd just pay him off and the guy'd have to go home.
Can you imagine that?
Like you're in your little town and Burt Reynolds shows up at your candy store
and offers you a job.
Well, that's kind of, what was he thinking?
I don't know.
But I think he had some, you were talking about, you had OCD.
He must have had some crazy stuff.
I met Burt Reynolds, though, which was an amazing...
Was he pissed?
Because he doesn't have a big sense of humor, does he?
You know what Burt Reynolds loves to do?
Is slap you in the face really hard.
He's like one of those masculine guys, punching you, you know?
But no, he was real nice to me.
Did he slap you?
He told me really funny stories.
He told me he was in Deliverance, you know, which I loved.
You know, he said, you know, I used to do my own gags.
Gags, I guess, are like stunts.
He was a stuntman.
Yeah.
And so he said, you know, they had this gag where I went over a waterfall.
And what, a car or something?
No, no, he's a fellow, you know, this wasn't...
He just falls off a waterfall.
The man did.
This was like Deliverance.
They were in the middle of...
Right, right, right.
So he says, I'll do the fall.
We don't need a stuntman.
Frank and Heimer says, no, no, we need a stuntman.
He goes, nah, we don't want that.
He goes, okay, well, we'll just use a dummy.
We'll just throw a dummy over, you know?
Yeah.
And he goes, no, no.
So Frank and Heimer's idea was just to throw a dummy over.
And then Burt Reynolds said, no, absolutely, I'm going to do it myself.
So Burt Reynolds says, he does it, and he said he did, you know, he said some
term I'm not
familiar with, you know, I do a half bike or something like that.
He said his shoulder immediately hit a rock, then his head hit another rock.
Oh, God.
And then he said, the next thing you remember, he's way downstream, all his
clothes had been
torn off.
And he looked up, and he was just like in shock, right?
The next thing he remembers, he's waking up in a hospital.
John Frankenheimer is at his bedside.
And he goes, then I said to John, how'd it look, you know, on the daily?
And John Frankenheimer said, it looked like a dummy falling off a bike.
So that made me laugh.
So he does have a good sense of humor.
He has a very good sense of humor.
And did Burt slimmack you around a couple of times just to show you where it
was at?
So what was the first sketch that you ever got on, or what was the first
written material
that you ever got on the show?
I wrote a sketch for the first show because Burt Reynolds had just, was on
Larry King Live
and was kind of famous at the time that, because he was in a contentious
divorce with Lonnie
Anderson, and he was wearing this crazy purple suit on Larry King Live, and he
announced, I will, you
know, Lonnie Anderson is lying, and I will get her on this show with you, Larry,
and we'll
both take truth serum.
And I was like, truth serum?
What?
Is that even a real thing?
So it was so funny.
And then so I wrote a sketch where they both drank, like from beakers of truth
serum, you
know, and Lauren did not care for it.
It opened the show, you know, it was like a big hit at the table.
What's his name, dude?
Burt Reynolds, Phil Hartman.
It was Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks.
And it's just, the next week, Lauren, like, pointed it, pointed to it as the
example of
what we should not be doing on the show.
He said it was just the, you know, he calls things Carol Burnett-ish, you know,
which is
the ultimate insult.
He said it was just the most Carol Burnett-ish type of sketch.
But I didn't know what I was doing, I don't know.
And he let me do it, it got all the way to the air.
He chose it, and he put it on first, not my fault.
I love the Burt Reynolds impression you got.
So, a bit about A, like the genesis of it, B has Burt, and he met Burt,
he's commented, and just while I had this, over the 41 years of SNL, I'm
wondering, besides
Farley, going back to the game of one, who were the players that really, for
you, most
admire, and maybe shaped anything?
Well, when I was a kid, I liked, my favorite was Dan Aykroyd, I was like, wow.
I always wondered why Shelby was the star, because I thought, god damn, Dan Aykroyd
can do
anybody, and he's so funny, and stuff.
And, and the reason I did, I want to do Burt Reynolds, you know, because I
loved him when
I was a kid.
I don't really do impressions, but guys who I really like, I can do, and guys
that are
funny, it's kind of a cheat, but, you know, you do an impression of them, and
then you're
funny, because they're funny.
You know what I mean?
So, I always used to watch one of the tonight's show, and I said, I gotta get
up a sketch,
so then I, uh, stole this sketch, called Half-Wits, from Second City, and I
turned that into, uh,
Celebrity Jeopardy, and I felt really bad for stealing the sketch, and so I
waited until
Mark, because Mark Short was coming on, and I said, Martin, can I, can I get
this sketch?
I, you know, I stole it from Half-Wits, and then he said, oh, I didn't write it,
Eugene
Levy wrote it, and I, I had to phone Eugene Levy and ask him, and he was a
gentleman who bought
it, and said that, uh, I could do it, but then when I did it, you know, Warren
picks out the
wardrobe, he had, like, with this gray hair, and gray beard, and stuff, and I
was like,
"No, I want to play with him in the '70s," and then, it's kind of odd, but all
the time
I did it, nobody ever commented, that the three celebrities, one of them was,
like, 50 years
ago.
Oh, yeah, no, I met him, and, god damn, that guy was funny.
He was telling me the funniest stories, and, uh, yeah, he wanted to, uh, he
said he wanted
to, uh, this is the story he told me, he said, you know, he'd get all these
girls when he was
young, you know, they were so handsome, and he said, one time he was in a hotel,
and there was
this beautiful blonde, and she said, like, "Just come up to my room, you know,
I have a lot of sex."
So he goes up to my room, and they'