Name: The Legend of Norm Macdonald
Uploaded: 2023-05-03T05:08:44.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Legend of Norm Macdonald' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-03. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Legend of Norm Macdonald' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-03. Transcript available.

There's no one better to talk to about show business than Norm because he's
brutally honest about it.
Like, I'll try to tell the story quick.
Go ahead.
When Norm had his last sitcom on Fox, right, he invited me to go to the Upfronts
with him.
You know that big thing where he introduced the shows to the advertisers?
So the head of Fox is guy Sandy Gruchow, right out of Beverly Hills High, like
permanent tan, permanent fake smile on his face.
Right.
The head of Fox goes up to Norm, and it's Norm and Jason Bateman whose show had
premiered and all these Fox people.
Goes up to Norm and says, right in front of me and a bunch of people, goes,
Norm, I want to let you know that your show is the highest tested show we've
had in Fox history.
And Norm goes, wow, man, that's unbelievable.
Wow.
And then Gruchow leaves and goes to talk to Jason Bateman.
So this other executive at Fox, this woman, Tracy, something comes over and
goes, where's Sandy?
He was just here.
Norm goes, he's over there telling Bateman that his show is the highest tested
show in the history of Fox.
Another great quick Norm story.
Well, Jim will appreciate that.
They do a big Rolling Stone article about the cast of Sire Night Live.
Ah, that was a great one, man.
Wait, wait, wait.
They do a big Rolling Stone article about the cast of Sire Night Live.
I got a good one.
So the cast of Sire Night Live.
Right, yeah.
And it's everybody kissing each other's ass.
So they ask Norm about Chris Kattan.
And it's after pages of, I've never seen someone do better character work.
Norm's quote is, he seems gay to me.
I've never met a guy who said he wasn't gay who seems so gay.
But I guess he says he's not gay, so whatever.
Anthony Jezelnik, are you going to be live tweeting, last comic standing
Wednesday at 10 p.m.?
You have to now.
Oh, I do.
I keep thinking that NBC's going to tell me to stop, and they won't.
Is that an assumption that you're just not going to be asked back?
Because they still, they're like, oh, we love you, you did a great job.
But they just had to cut so much of my stuff that I don't know if I would.
I could maybe go back, but I would just be smarter about it.
I would just know.
Like, my biggest interest was just riffing with Norm.
So I, like, I wish I hadn't written so many jokes that they were just going to
cut all of them
and just been kind of loose and screwed around more.
Yeah, it's all for time.
It's really amazing.
Anytime you record anything for television, you record two hours for a half
hour,
and it all just winds up.
Oh, these were, like, five-hour tapings.
I mean, 100 comics, and most of them you don't even see.
There are people who get past the first round who they cut out entirely, just
for time.
Like, it's weird how they have to do it.
I just assumed that they would ignore all the comics and be like,
we've got this great show with Anthony and Norm, like, getting into fights.
Let's show that.
Spinoff.
I thought that would, yeah, I thought that would have been amazing, but...
I think America thinks that would be amazing, too.
I see tweets like that, that, like, you guys should have, like, a sitcom
together.
I don't know how he didn't get one of those desks.
Ferguson, Letterman, like, how did Norm Macdonald not wind up behind one of...
He almost, like, followed Conan, I think, at one point.
They weren't going to have him do an after-show after Conan.
Wow.
And now, here's Norm Macdonald!
I run into Norm, we're doing press, like, to promote the show.
We run into, we're doing Larry King together.
And Norm and I, like, I love Norm, but we kind of fought for the first couple
episodes.
Like, it was uncomfortable, and then we figured out how to work together.
And, uh...
What are you fighting about?
Just, like, who's going to be the funny one?
It's just two alpha males, you know, where he would make a joke and the
audience would get mad at him.
So I would make fun of him to get the crowd back, and he doesn't appreciate
that.
So we're, like, figuring it out.
If I go to the ATM machine at night, and it's, like, a white lady getting money
out of her account, I won't get out my car.
When you were at the ATM machine, you were no longer a black guy.
You were a human being.
That was great.
Almost racist, but then you got it right under the bar, Norm.
That's why I love you.
Keep it going for DC, everyone, everybody.
Great job, DC.
And so we were backstage at Larry King, and he's like, I don't know how to
promote this thing.
I don't know what to talk about.
I said, what, am I going to talk about these comics?
And I go, no, let's do this.
Let's say that we had this horrible rivalry, and that we hate each other and
just talk trash about, like, things we do to each other backstage and, like,
how much we hate each other.
And he goes, that's great.
Let's do that.
That's really funny.
And I'm like, all right, great.
So I go around for weeks, and I'm just throwing Norm under the bus, talking
about how much I hated him and what an awful person he is.
And Norm has completely forgotten that we've made this deal.
Norm is just talking about how nice I am and how funny I am everywhere we go.
And he still hasn't brought it up to me, but I can't think he's happy.
I can't think he's happy that I'm just...
Regarding Norm, you know, both of you guys have definitely different styles,
but both of you, I think, have a real cerebral approach to your craft.
And I'm just wondering, from you coming up, what did you learn from a colleague
at Promotel?
You know, he wasn't my colleague until just recently, so coming up, I couldn't
really learn anything from him.
But I learned from watching him on SNL when he was on Weekend Update of just
that, believe in your joke.
And if the audience doesn't get it, you still need to believe in it.
You know, like, not every joke has to hit.
You don't want to be a crowd pleaser.
You want to be a great comedian.
And Norm seemed to always be going that way.
So I always looked up to him, always loved him, which is why meeting him and
getting to work with him was such a huge disappointment.
I can't think he's happy that I've just been, like, slamming him.
But what happened that night on Larry King?
We weren't on together.
We weren't on together.
You weren't on?
No.
Oh, it sounded like you guys were going on.
He was like, I went on first and then he went on second.
So I went on and, like, kind of trashed him.
I love Larry King.
He did it when I was on SNL.
Oh, yeah.
My money beats the best vegetable.
Hello.
He said his favorite Larry King story, and I still think this is hilarious, is,
uh, someone's talking to Larry King.
And Larry's like, you lost your son, right?
Uh, and he goes, yeah, I lost a child.
And Larry King just goes, uh, Paul Newman says you never get over it.
Like, that's the only way he could relate to someone who lost a child was what
Paul Newman said once.
Like, the guy's just completely out of his mind.
I don't regret doing it.
But, like, now that I'm watching it, I'm furious.
And they don't seem to mind that I'm furious in, like, a funny way.
Like, I'm still promoting the show by going and, like, slamming it and talking
about how great I am
and how much better I am than everybody else on the show.
You know, they really don't care.
Like, I don't know if you've seen my Twitter, but, like, I live-tweet this show,
and it is, it's,
they're borderline war crimes, what I'm doing.
I don't know.
Wednesday, 10 p.m., we're all going to be following Anthony Jezelnik on Twitter
as he live-tweets last comic standing.
And then, of course, Norm being at the end chair.
That's just, like, just mana from heaven.
Like, thank you, God.
Sure, but that's, that was, like, why I took the gig was, like, was to work
with Norm.
I was like, oh, that's amazing.
When am I going to chance, like, this again?
Let me do this.
And the way, the, the way he was on, like, in the taping is so much better than
the way they edit that it kills me.
Like, it kills me.
Why?
Because I think he's really good on the show.
He's good on the show.
He has really constructive advice.
He's good, but it was fascinating to see him, like, unfiltered.
Especially when he's, like, they took out all the bad comics.
Some of the funniest stuff on that show is when a bad comic comes up and the
judges trash them.
I'm trash, and I'm like, that was really fun, and it's all gone.
They didn't want to embarrass anyone.
So it's, like, the one reality show where they don't want the drama, and Norm
was, like, borderline a monster to people.
Like, he would say things that would kill me, that I would be, like, on the
floor dying laughing.
Like, I would have to take time.
One of my favorites was he told this one girl, he told this one girl, he said,
he just, like, and she did fine.
Like, the other two judges really liked her.
And this is what would happen, was, like, the other two judges would, like,
like the person.
The crowd liked the person.
And then Norm would just be, like, I think you suck.
And it would be, like, everyone's, like, I can't believe you're saying this,
and I can't believe you're so against the other two judges.
But so this girl, he says, she's done fine.
The other judges like her.
Norm says, I thought that was horrible.
I think you're one of the worst people I've seen in this whole competition.
And I'm, like, dying laughing.
And then he goes, he goes, I think that you are incapable of writing a joke.
And she goes, oh, well, I'll work on that.
She's trying to be nice.
She's like, okay, thank you.
I'll work on that.
And he goes, no, no, don't work on it.
I said you are incapable.
And that was the most, like, crushing thing he could have said to someone.
Norm, I saw, the one thing they did get through was a guy did a joke about the
Bible, and then he compared it to Harry Potter.
And then Norm goes, because he's, you know, from the plains of Ontario, I
believe Norm is a God-fearing man.
And he goes, hey, if, you know, you're going to talk about the Bible, you might
want to know your stuff there, you know.
And maybe really read the book, Harry Potter, that author is a Christian.
And then Roseanne, I remember, went, what?
Yeah.
Like, she couldn't believe, like, J.K. Rowling, I think her name is.
Like, she's a Christian?
Like, it was nuts.
And then Norm just saying to that guy, like, that made news, like, on those
weird, like, gawker sites or whatever.
Like, Norm Macdonald, Hammer's comic.
But all he said was, like, if you're going to do jokes about the Bible, you
should really know the Bible.
Yeah.
Don't be flippant about this book, because it's very important to a lot of
people.
And you're isolating, and you're going to get laughs.
Magic Man in the sky, like Harry Potter, like, hmm.
But they framed it up like he was destroying people.
That wasn't the case at all.
But what you're telling me, I mean, I would have, why don't you bang your foot
down on the floor?
I actually got into an argument on the subway, and the guy quoted the Bible at
me.
That is not fair.
Like, if you get to quote from your favorite book, I should be able to quote
from my favorite book, right?
He was like, men do not live on bread alone.
Matthews, 4-4.
And I was like, everybody's a little bit magic.
Harry Potter, chapter 7.
I disagree.
I don't think the Bible joke is brave at all.
I think if you're going to take on an entire religion, you should maybe know
what you're talking about.
JK Rowling is a Christian, and JK Rowling famously said that if you're familiar
with the scriptures,
you could easily guess the ending of her book.
Huh?
Okay.
I don't like it.
Um, Norm Macdonald.
Norm Macdonald's a weird dude.
No kidding.
Yeah, he really is.
He was hilarious.
Like, he did this, like, weird thing where he went up, and he was just being
like a, he wouldn't curse.
He called, he said it was the same, like, oh, what the age.
And he was being like this, these innocent, sweet jokes, like, you know, uh,
Bob, if you walk up to a bathroom,
and the door says, gentlemen, you should ignore that and proceed in anyway.
Like, that type of stuff.
Yeah.
And he really made me laugh.
And there was one lie where he made me laugh.
He goes, ah, Bob, he's the same stinker he's always been.
He's a stinker.
He called Bob Sackett a stinker.
Ha, ha, ha.
But he said, ah, ha.
Oh, dude, he was just.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, there are times when Bob has something on his mind, when he wears a hat.
But no thoughts at all.
Just a hat.
No, but Bob has a beautiful face, like a flower.
No offense, but your face looks like a cauliflower.
And Bob is not very worldly.
He thinks the English Channel is a British TV station and not a body of water
separating England and France.
Bob, you have a lot of well-wishers here tonight.
And a lot of them would like to throw you down one.
A well.
They want to murder you in a well.
Seems a little harsh, but apparently they want to murder you in a well.
It says here on this card.
And Bob isn't the biggest sports fan.
I don't think I'm telling any tales out of school.
I took him to a ball game, and he came toting a double-barreled shotgun.
Do you remember that?
I said, what the H is that for?
Bob said, I heard the Lions were playing the Tigers.
Do you remember that?
Yeah.
Do you worry when you're in the audience at the ESPYs that somebody's going to
make fun of you?
Absolutely.
But I think athletes, for the most part, have pretty thick skin.
I think so, too.
But I think it's different, Jimmy.
If I make fun of an athlete, at least I've kind of been there.
When they get made fun of by, like, an unathletic comedian, it's kind of
different.
Right, right.
You know?
Like, I'm trying to think of some examples, but...
Yeah.
Yeah.
But like someone...
Norm Macdonald.
Yeah, right.
Like a Norm Macdonald, for instance.
Not you.
I was not talking about you.
And there's Charles Woodson.
How about that?
I don't know what a season he had.
Great, man.
I mean, he became the first defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy.
And congratulations, Charles.
That is something that no one can ever take away from you.
Unless you kill your wife and a waiter.
In which case...
All bets are off.
It's a word of advice.

The Legend of Norm Macdonald

There's no one better to talk to about show business than Norm because he's
brutally honest about it.
Like, I'll try to tell the story quick.
Go ahead.
When Norm had his last sitcom on Fox, right, he invited me to go to the Upfronts
with him.
You know that big thing where he introduced the shows to the advertisers?
So the head of Fox is guy Sandy Gruchow, right out of Beverly Hills High, like
permanent tan, permanent fake smile on his face.
Right.
The head of Fox goes up to Norm, and it's Norm and Jason Bateman whose show had
premiered and all these Fox people.
Goes up to Norm and says, right in front of me and a bunch of people, goes,
Norm, I want to let you know that your show is the highest tested show we've
had in Fox history.
And Norm goes, wow, man, that's unbelievable.
Wow.
And then Gruchow leaves and goes to talk to Jason Bateman.
So this other executive at Fox, this woman, Tracy, something comes over and
goes, where's Sandy?
He was just here.
Norm goes, he's over there telling Bateman that his show is the highest tested
show in the history of Fox.
Another great quick Norm story.
Well, Jim will appreciate that.
They do a big Rolling Stone article about the cast of Sire Night Live.
Ah, that was a great one, man.
Wait, wait, wait.
They do a big Rolling Stone article about the cast of Sire Night Live.
I got a good one.
So the cast of Sire Night Live.
Right, yeah.
And it's everybody kissing each other's ass.
So they ask Norm about Chris Kattan.
And it's after pages of, I've never seen someone do better character work.
Norm's quote is, he seems gay to me.
I've never met a guy who said he wasn't gay who seems so gay.
But I guess he says he's not gay, so whatever.
Anthony Jezelnik, are you going to be live tweeting, last comic standing
Wednesday at 10 p.m.?
You have to now.
Oh, I do.
I keep thinking that NBC's going to tell me to stop, and they won't.
Is that an assumption that you're just not going to be asked back?
Because they still, they're like, oh, we love you, you did a great job.
But they just had to cut so much of my stuff that I don't know if I would.
I could maybe go back, but I would just be smarter about it.
I would just know.
Like, my biggest interest was just riffing with Norm.
So I, like, I wish I hadn't written so many jokes that they were just going to
cut all of them
and just been kind of loose and screwed around more.
Yeah, it's all for time.
It's really amazing.
Anytime you record anything for television, you record two hours for a half
hour,
and it all just winds up.
Oh, these were, like, five-hour tapings.
I mean, 100 comics, and most of them you don't even see.
There are people who get past the first round who they cut out entirely, just
for time.
Like, it's weird how they have to do it.
I just assumed that they would ignore all the comics and be like,
we've got this great show with Anthony and Norm, like, getting into fights.
Let's show that.
Spinoff.
I thought that would, yeah, I thought that would have been amazing, but...
I think America thinks that would be amazing, too.
I see tweets like that, that, like, you guys should have, like, a sitcom
together.
I don't know how he didn't get one of those desks.
Ferguson, Letterman, like, how did Norm Macdonald not wind up behind one of...
He almost, like, followed Conan, I think, at one point.
They weren't going to have him do an after-show after Conan.
Wow.
And now, here's Norm Macdonald!
I run into Norm, we're doing press, like, to promote the show.
We run into, we're doing Larry King together.
And Norm and I, like, I love Norm, but we kind of fought for the first couple
episodes.
Like, it was uncomfortable, and then we figured out how to work together.
And, uh...
What are you fighting about?
Just, like, who's going to be the funny one?
It's just two alpha males, you know, where he would make a joke and the
audience would get mad at him.
So I would make fun of him to get the crowd back, and he doesn't appreciate
that.
So we're, like, figuring it out.
If I go to the ATM machine at night, and it's, like, a white lady getting money
out of her account, I won't get out my car.
When you were at the ATM machine, you were no longer a black guy.
You were a human being.
That was great.
Almost racist, but then you got it right under the bar, Norm.
That's why I love you.
Keep it going for DC, everyone, everybody.
Great job, DC.
And so we were backstage at Larry King, and he's like, I don't know how to
promote this thing.
I don't know what to talk about.
I said, what, am I going to talk about these comics?
And I go, no, let's do this.
Let's say that we had this horrible rivalry, and that we hate each other and
just talk trash about, like, things we do to each other backstage and, like,
how much we hate each other.
And he goes, that's great.
Let's do that.
That's really funny.
And I'm like, all right, great.
So I go around for weeks, and I'm just throwing Norm under the bus, talking
about how much I hated him and what an awful person he is.
And Norm has completely forgotten that we've made this deal.
Norm is just talking about how nice I am and how funny I am everywhere we go.
And he still hasn't brought it up to me, but I can't think he's happy.
I can't think he's happy that I'm just...
Regarding Norm, you know, both of you guys have definitely different styles,
but both of you, I think, have a real cerebral approach to your craft.
And I'm just wondering, from you coming up, what did you learn from a colleague
at Promotel?
You know, he wasn't my colleague until just recently, so coming up, I couldn't
really learn anything from him.
But I learned from watching him on SNL when he was on Weekend Update of just
that, believe in your joke.
And if the audience doesn't get it, you still need to believe in it.
You know, like, not every joke has to hit.
You don't want to be a crowd pleaser.
You want to be a great comedian.
And Norm seemed to always be going that way.
So I always looked up to him, always loved him, which is why meeting him and
getting to work with him was such a huge disappointment.
I can't think he's happy that I've just been, like, slamming him.
But what happened that night on Larry King?
We weren't on together.
We weren't on together.
You weren't on?
No.
Oh, it sounded like you guys were going on.
He was like, I went on first and then he went on second.
So I went on and, like, kind of trashed him.
I love Larry King.
He did it when I was on SNL.
Oh, yeah.
My money beats the best vegetable.
Hello.
He said his favorite Larry King story, and I still think this is hilarious, is,
uh, someone's talking to Larry King.
And Larry's like, you lost your son, right?
Uh, and he goes, yeah, I lost a child.
And Larry King just goes, uh, Paul Newman says you never get over it.
Like, that's the only way he could relate to someone who lost a child was what
Paul Newman said once.
Like, the guy's just completely out of his mind.
I don't regret doing it.
But, like, now that I'm watching it, I'm furious.
And they don't seem to mind that I'm furious in, like, a funny way.
Like, I'm still promoting the show by going and, like, slamming it and talking
about how great I am
and how much better I am than everybody else on the show.
You know, they really don't care.
Like, I don't know if you've seen my Twitter, but, like, I live-tweet this show,
and it is, it's,
they're borderline war crimes, what I'm doing.
I don't know.
Wednesday, 10 p.m., we're all going to be following Anthony Jezelnik on Twitter
as he live-tweets last comic standing.
And then, of course, Norm being at the end chair.
That's just, like, just mana from heaven.
Like, thank you, God.
Sure, but that's, that was, like, why I took the gig was, like, was to work
with Norm.
I was like, oh, that's amazing.
When am I going to chance, like, this again?
Let me do this.
And the way, the, the way he was on, like, in the taping is so much better than
the way they edit that it kills me.
Like, it kills me.
Why?
Because I think he's really good on the show.
He's good on the show.
He has really constructive advice.
He's good, but it was fascinating to see him, like, unfiltered.
Especially when he's, like, they took out all the bad comics.
Some of the funniest stuff on that show is when a bad comic comes up and the
judges trash them.
I'm trash, and I'm like, that was really fun, and it's all gone.
They didn't want to embarrass anyone.
So it's, like, the one reality show where they don't want the drama, and Norm
was, like, borderline a monster to people.
Like, he would say things that would kill me, that I would be, like, on the
floor dying laughing.
Like, I would have to take time.
One of my favorites was he told this one girl, he told this one girl, he said,
he just, like, and she did fine.
Like, the other two judges really liked her.
And this is what would happen, was, like, the other two judges would, like,
like the person.
The crowd liked the person.
And then Norm would just be, like, I think you suck.
And it would be, like, everyone's, like, I can't believe you're saying this,
and I can't believe you're so against the other two judges.
But so this girl, he says, she's done fine.
The other judges like her.
Norm says, I thought that was horrible.
I think you're one of the worst people I've seen in this whole competition.
And I'm, like, dying laughing.
And then he goes, he goes, I think that you are incapable of writing a joke.
And she goes, oh, well, I'll work on that.
She's trying to be nice.
She's like, okay, thank you.
I'll work on that.
And he goes, no, no, don't work on it.
I said you are incapable.
And that was the most, like, crushing thing he could have said to someone.
Norm, I saw, the one thing they did get through was a guy did a joke about the
Bible, and then he compared it to Harry Potter.
And then Norm goes, because he's, you know, from the plains of Ontario, I
believe Norm is a God-fearing man.
And he goes, hey, if, you know, you're going to talk about the Bible, you might
want to know your stuff there, you know.
And maybe really read the book, Harry Potter, that author is a Christian.
And then Roseanne, I remember, went, what?
Yeah.
Like, she couldn't believe, like, J.K. Rowling, I think her name is.
Like, she's a Christian?
Like, it was nuts.
And then Norm just saying to that guy, like, that made news, like, on those
weird, like, gawker sites or whatever.
Like, Norm Macdonald, Hammer's comic.
But all he said was, like, if you're going to do jokes about the Bible, you
should really know the Bible.
Yeah.
Don't be flippant about this book, because it's very important to a lot of
people.
And you're isolating, and you're going to get laughs.
Magic Man in the sky, like Harry Potter, like, hmm.
But they framed it up like he was destroying people.
That wasn't the case at all.
But what you're telling me, I mean, I would have, why don't you bang your foot
down on the floor?
I actually got into an argument on the subway, and the guy quoted the Bible at
me.
That is not fair.
Like, if you get to quote from your favorite book, I should be able to quote
from my favorite book, right?
He was like, men do not live on bread alone.
Matthews, 4-4.
And I was like, everybody's a little bit magic.
Harry Potter, chapter 7.
I disagree.
I don't think the Bible joke is brave at all.
I think if you're going to take on an entire religion, you should maybe know
what you're talking about.
JK Rowling is a Christian, and JK Rowling famously said that if you're familiar
with the scriptures,
you could easily guess the ending of her book.
Huh?
Okay.
I don't like it.
Um, Norm Macdonald.
Norm Macdonald's a weird dude.
No kidding.
Yeah, he really is.
He was hilarious.
Like, he did this, like, weird thing where he went up, and he was just being
like a, he wouldn't curse.
He called, he said it was the same, like, oh, what the age.
And he was being like this, these innocent, sweet jokes, like, you know, uh,
Bob, if you walk up to a bathroom,
and the door says, gentlemen, you should ignore that and proc