Name: Conan Loves Norm Macdonald
Uploaded: 2023-02-22T17:47:51.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Conan Loves Norm Macdonald' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Conan Loves Norm Macdonald' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-02-22. Transcript available.

Obviously a lot of entertaining celebrities, but Norm MacDonald used to come on
our show in the early days.
And those were, I thought, great television because we never knew what was
happening.
And it was always teetering on the edge of, it was all about to blow up.
It's all about to fail, and it would always end brilliantly.
And then he, you know, he stopped coming around, and it was just a period that
passed.
And I was always sad about that because I thought, we're a very celebrity-conscious
age,
and people always think that the best guests are the biggest celebrities.
Sometimes, you know, the best guests are these people that you have a weird
connection with,
and it's compelling television.
People see, and they talk to me about it later on.
Like, I'll be out in the world walking around, and people will say,
I saw that when, you know, when you were with Harland, or when you were with
Norm, or with Ron.
But that really got, that got wild and crazy in a way that they don't see on
television now.
Have you, over the years, who are some of the people who have been your go-to
people?
I just remember Dave, in his early years, had Terry Garr, and he had Sandra
Bernhardt.
Yes.
And they were kind of magic together.
Who are your...
I had so many people.
Norm MacDonald was this person who would come...
You all know Norm MacDonald, but Norm MacDonald, when we would have him on in
the early days,
to this day, I've never interviewed anybody like Norm MacDonald.
Who was the best guest that you've ever interviewed, and who was the worst?
I love Will Ferrell.
I also love Norm MacDonald, because he comes on, and his stories are all
invented.
None of them are real.
They're all old farmer's daughter's jokes.
And he pretends they just, he'll come on.
I'll say, what's up, Norm?
And we'd be like, ah, the other day, I was walking down the road, and a pirate
comes up.
And I'm like, what?
Yeah.
A pirate comes along, and he's got three pigs with him.
One of them is wearing a hat.
One's got a pipe.
And then it's just a complete waste of everybody's time that's absolutely
delightful and hilarious.
And so, I love him.
Your favorite guests are always like the Bill Burr, Norm MacDonald, this might
go off the rails really fast type of guests.
Yeah, I mean, Norm MacDonald, one of the great talk show guests of all time, he
invented something that, no, Norm MacDonald invented this amazing thing that I've
never seen anybody do before or since.
It's kind of like he split the atom.
It was that revolutionary.
Norm would come on, and he would, instead of telling you a real story, like, if
I had you on the show, and you're like, hey, Bill, you know, tell me, well, you
know, and remember I was living in Chestnut Hill once, and you would tell a
real story.
Yeah.
About what happened to you in your life.
Norm tells old jokes as stories that happened to him.
Yeah.
So, I'd be like, Norm, what are you up to?
And I mean, really old jokes from, like, the 1920s.
And he'd be like, well, Conan, I don't know if you're aware that I purchased a
farm, Conan.
I'd be like, really?
You purchased a farm?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I purchased a farm, of course.
I have, of course, I have three daughters.
And I'm like, you have three daughters?
Yeah, I have three daughters on the farm.
One very attractive, one not as attractive, and, of course, the third not, you
know, kind of, well, she's ugly, Conan.
She's ugly.
And I'd be like, uh-huh.
Well, one day, this traveling salesman comes to the farm, and he says, now,
Norm, I'll tell you.
I'll tell you.
And then it's like he's telling an old traveling salesman joke.
Yeah.
But you know about halfway through where it's going.
No, I mean, I usually know, I know kind of what he's doing.
I'm laughing that he has the balls to do this.
I'm laughing at the audacity.
So I don't even care if this joke lands or not.
I'm laughing that he's committing to the fact that, you know, no, he doesn't
have a farm.
He doesn't have three daughters.
There's no traveling salesman.
But he doesn't care in a way that is exhilarating and scary at the same time.
Do you know what I mean?
And plus, he probably has some people in the audience who are taking it
completely seriously, right?
Yes.
Yeah, he's got some people thinking.
We call them tourists.
Yes, we call them.
They're usually from San Bernardino.
Well, Norm had the greatest talk show moment in the history of talk shows with
Courtney Thorne Smith.
That was epic.
That was so great.
And it's funny because-
It's lived on.
Who knew that we were going to have YouTube eventually where we could just queued
up on command?
God bless YouTube.
I had no idea.
When those things were happening, I thought, we're talking 1993, 94.
When those things were happening, I thought, you know, what did I know?
I just thought if you were up and you saw it, that means you saw it.
That was it.
You saw an amazing thing happen.
And then maybe if I get to stay on the air long enough,
we'll have a one-year anniversary show and maybe you'll see it then.
But if you're not there for that, it's gone.
And now I meet people, I mean, that around the world that will say, oh, I just
saw that thing with you and Norm and Courtney Thorne Smith.
And I'll think that was a moment of my life when I was 30.
Yeah.
And I'm like 85 now.
Like, how is that possible?
Straight to the heart.
I've been a long time acting like I was a brother.
Get a part by you.
Everybody knows now, Norm MacDonald died two days ago.
And I got the news, like everyone else, just absolutely stunned.
Had no idea that Norm had not only been very ill, but been very ill for a very
long time.
None of us had any idea.
And there's been this seismic reaction, which is appropriate, completely
appropriate in the comedy world.
And a lot's been said about Norm.
And I just had this very strong feeling yesterday that I needed to talk to
people about it and talk to people who, like me, experience Norm in the moment
and really try and understand what it was about this man, this very improbable,
unusual man.
What, what made him so different?
And I maintain that, you know, we are accustomed, sadly, to losing funny,
talented people all the time.
And we grow accustomed to it.
I think Norm's impact is only going to grow.
And I think his significance in comedy is only going to expand over time
because he was such, such an incredible talent.
And trying to describe what made Norm different is so difficult.
And I think so far when I've, I think I've read everything that's out there and
I'm hearing, you know, to be fair, people were all taken by surprise.
You're just hearing he was an original and there was no one like Norm.
And I keep thinking, no, no one's getting to it.
And I just wanted to take a stab today to try and understand what exactly it
was about this guy that was so, so brilliantly unusual and is going to be so
lasting and his work is so important.
And one of the things that speaks to, you know, I was having a conversation
with Jim Downey and, and in the, in the wake of Norm's death and Jim Downey.
And he, and I was trying to get to the, what is it that made Norm so different?
And he's reminded me, he said, you know, on weekend update, we would do, um,
there's a dress rehearsal, which I know because I worked at Saturday Night Live.
There's a dress rehearsal.
And he said, the best way to test a joke on weekend update is at dress
rehearsal.
If it does well at dress rehearsal, it will do well on air.
Uh, if it doesn't do well at dress rehearsal, it will bomb on air.
That's, that's the best way to test it.
And he said that Norm would do a joke at dress rehearsal that they both loved
and it would get nothing.
And when weekend update was over, Jim would say, um, yeah, that's too bad.
That joke didn't do well.
And Norm would say like, yeah, I know, but we got to do it.
So he would do jokes that he knew were going to get nothing.
If he thought the joke was worthwhile, he didn't give a shit.
Now that is very uncommon.
That is very, well, he never pandered.
He didn't pander at all.
And that takes, um, you know, that's what made me think about the line you said
so many years ago, Andy, like it's, it almost terrifies me.
His fearlessness because it was, um, the thing he did so many times on our show,
which I thought was absolutely outrageous was, um, he would launch into these
long stories that you later, you quickly realized.
And he would go on and on and on and on and on and I'm so happy that, um, the moth
joke has been getting circulated so much from our tonight show because it is
completely outrageous what he's doing.
Uh, it is, um, you know, it's, it's, it's the, it's the tonight show and he is
telling this very long story and he's taking all the time in the world.
And I love it just cause.
Even though I was there.
I'm delighted every time I see it, I, I, I, every time I see it, I'm delighted
with it because what he's doing is breaks every rule.
You're not, you're not, brevity is the soul of wit.
That is the rule.
Keep it, you know, and man, he completely like Picasso blew up the form.
He goes and he tells this joke forever.
And then finally gets to this punchline.
And you can see that he's, everyone's delighted, uh, but he has broken every
rule in the book.
And I was asking, uh, I was talking to Lori Jo, uh, and I asked her if it's
okay if I related this and she said it was okay, but she said that not too long
ago, um, someone asked Norm, uh, about the moth story that he told on, on our
tonight show.
And that, that, that she said, what made the guy wanted to know what made you
have the nerve to do that?
And that he said that, you know, it was that goddamn Frank Smiley.
He said, I was only supposed to do one segment.
And then suddenly in the commercial break, Frank came over and said, like, you're
doing another one.
Because whenever I had Norm, I was greedy.
I wanted more Norm.
I always wanted more Norm.
And so he didn't know that he was, that we were going to ask him to do a second
segment.
He had nothing planned.
Absolutely nothing planned.
That's true.
And so as recently as like, not that long ago, I think it was a couple of
months ago, he was telling somebody, uh, damn it.
That was Frank Smiley.
Hey, get back out there.
Conan wants more.
So he heard that joke from Colin Quinn and he did the segment and it was, he
had seven minutes prepared.
Yeah.
And, um, and so he basically, um, you said, you know, and then he's done.
He's done.
We'll be right back with more Norm.
And he goes, I've got nothing to say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then he, uh, he remembered the Colin joke and it was a 20 second joke.
So he asked you, how long is the segment?
Uh-huh.
And he was hoping you'd say 20 seconds.
Right.
But you said seven minutes.
Yep.
Yep.
So it became a seven minute joke.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he's doing that.
This has to be understood.
He's doing this on the fly.
Yep.
So his way to slow it down that he came up with on the fly is he invents.
It's a Chekhov play.
With Russian names.
With Russian names.
And there's a sadness, an ineffable sadness in life weighing on the character's
soul.
And, and I'm thinking, you know, uh, who I've never met anybody who would take
that
chance, uh, and make that choice.
And I'll never meet anybody like him again.
He was the ballsiest comedian in the history of comedians.
He, he was taken that.
And he was saying like, the joke doesn't matter.
Like that, you know, he would watching that, seeing that clip again, you're,
you're getting
to see his brain.
Yeah.
He's just showing you his brain.
And the notion that this is that the joke is the thing, the joke isn't the
thing.
No, it's the journey.
It's taking a stroll through this guy's brain and hearing the choices that he
makes and what
he has to say.
And, you know, and I think that that was like kind of what, like there was so
much of like
what he, you know, would say like, well, that doesn't matter.
This matters, you know, and, and what mattered to him was his own self-expression
was his
own, was spreading his own kind of genius and his own point of view.
Like there's a clip out, he did some roast and I, and I remember seeing it at
the time.
I can't remember who it was that he was roasting, but all his jokes are things.
Bob Saget.
Was it Bob Saget?
And it was unbelievable.
It was, but all the jokes were things like, you know, Bob often has a lot of
things on,
or, you know, Bob often has things on his mind.
It's when he's wearing a hat, like it was all these dad jokes intentionally bombed.
Right.
And then I, I didn't even know this, but I remember feeling like, okay, Norm.
I mean, you know, these are funny and this is, and you're funny doing because
you can't
help but be funny, but this is, feels a little hostile, you know, like why are,
why
are you breaking from what this, you know, you were invited to a costume party
and you
came, you know, in a tuxedo, you know, whatever.
He didn't play by the rules of the thing.
Turns out the producers told him really go for it, really get him.
And Norm was like, ah, yeah, you're going to tell me what to do here.
I'll do this.
I'll do the softest, lamest dad jokes I can come up with.
Yeah.
And it was just a fuck you to the producers.
It was looked weird at the time.
It was funny in a way, but it still was just like, it was Norm doing what the
fuck he wanted
to do.
It was still hilarious.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Norm is, it's like Norm couldn't not be funny.
Yeah.
I've had this gnawing regret this last day and a half, and it's reading all
this praise
for Norm, which again I believe is completely justified and will endure.
And it's been a regret that he didn't get to experience this.
He took so much flack in his career.
He took so much shit and yes, he knew that he had fans, but I wish, you know,
it's a common
wish for people, but I wish he had been able to read the stuff that's being
written about
him.
He knew how beloved he is, and also how in awe comedians are of what he did and
what
he meant and how, you know.
How important he was to the people who are probably the most important people
in the world to him.
Yeah.
You know.
And he, you know, I wish he knew that.
Yeah.
And that's the one regret I, you know, he kept his illness a complete secret
from everybody.
Everybody.
And, um, and that was his choice and I respect that choice.
See how it's done.
But selfishly for me, I wish I had had the chance and I, I wish a lot of us
wish we had
had the chance to go in and tell him.
Yeah.
You are a singular artist and you've really made a huge difference and you've,
I mean,
if nothing else, uh, I don't, I don't know of anybody that could make me laugh
like that.

Conan Loves Norm Macdonald

Obviously a lot of entertaining celebrities, but Norm MacDonald used to come on
our show in the early days.
And those were, I thought, great television because we never knew what was
happening.
And it was always teetering on the edge of, it was all about to blow up.
It's all about to fail, and it would always end brilliantly.
And then he, you know, he stopped coming around, and it was just a period that
passed.
And I was always sad about that because I thought, we're a very celebrity-conscious
age,
and people always think that the best guests are the biggest celebrities.
Sometimes, you know, the best guests are these people that you have a weird
connection with,
and it's compelling television.
People see, and they talk to me about it later on.
Like, I'll be out in the world walking around, and people will say,
I saw that when, you know, when you were with Harland, or when you were with
Norm, or with Ron.
But that really got, that got wild and crazy in a way that they don't see on
television now.
Have you, over the years, who are some of the people who have been your go-to
people?
I just remember Dave, in his early years, had Terry Garr, and he had Sandra
Bernhardt.
Yes.
And they were kind of magic together.
Who are your...
I had so many people.
Norm MacDonald was this person who would come...
You all know Norm MacDonald, but Norm MacDonald, when we would have him on in
the early days,
to this day, I've never interviewed anybody like Norm MacDonald.
Who was the best guest that you've ever interviewed, and who was the worst?
I love Will Ferrell.
I also love Norm MacDonald, because he comes on, and his stories are all
invented.
None of them are real.
They're all old farmer's daughter's jokes.
And he pretends they just, he'll come on.
I'll say, what's up, Norm?
And we'd be like, ah, the other day, I was walking down the road, and a pirate
comes up.
And I'm like, what?
Yeah.
A pirate comes along, and he's got three pigs with him.
One of them is wearing a hat.
One's got a pipe.
And then it's just a complete waste of everybody's time that's absolutely
delightful and hilarious.
And so, I love him.
Your favorite guests are always like the Bill Burr, Norm MacDonald, this might
go off the rails really fast type of guests.
Yeah, I mean, Norm MacDonald, one of the great talk show guests of all time, he
invented something that, no, Norm MacDonald invented this amazing thing that I've
never seen anybody do before or since.
It's kind of like he split the atom.
It was that revolutionary.
Norm would come on, and he would, instead of telling you a real story, like, if
I had you on the show, and you're like, hey, Bill, you know, tell me, well, you
know, and remember I was living in Chestnut Hill once, and you would tell a
real story.
Yeah.
About what happened to you in your life.
Norm tells old jokes as stories that happened to him.
Yeah.
So, I'd be like, Norm, what are you up to?
And I mean, really old jokes from, like, the 1920s.
And he'd be like, well, Conan, I don't know if you're aware that I purchased a
farm, Conan.
I'd be like, really?
You purchased a farm?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I purchased a farm, of course.
I have, of course, I have three daughters.
And I'm like, you have three daughters?
Yeah, I have three daughters on the farm.
One very attractive, one not as attractive, and, of course, the third not, you
know, kind of, well, she's ugly, Conan.
She's ugly.
And I'd be like, uh-huh.
Well, one day, this traveling salesman comes to the farm, and he says, now,
Norm, I'll tell you.
I'll tell you.
And then it's like he's telling an old traveling salesman joke.
Yeah.
But you know about halfway through where it's going.
No, I mean, I usually know, I know kind of what he's doing.
I'm laughing that he has the balls to do this.
I'm laughing at the audacity.
So I don't even care if this joke lands or not.
I'm laughing that he's committing to the fact that, you know, no, he doesn't
have a farm.
He doesn't have three daughters.
There's no traveling salesman.
But he doesn't care in a way that is exhilarating and scary at the same time.
Do you know what I mean?
And plus, he probably has some people in the audience who are taking it
completely seriously, right?
Yes.
Yeah, he's got some people thinking.
We call them tourists.
Yes, we call them.
They're usually from San Bernardino.
Well, Norm had the greatest talk show moment in the history of talk shows with
Courtney Thorne Smith.
That was epic.
That was so great.
And it's funny because-
It's lived on.
Who knew that we were going to have YouTube eventually where we could just queued
up on command?
God bless YouTube.
I had no idea.
When those things were happening, I thought, we're talking 1993, 94.
When those things were happening, I thought, you know, what did I know?
I just thought if you were up and you saw it, that means you saw it.
That was it.
You saw an amazing thing happen.
And then maybe if I get to stay on the air long enough,
we'll have a one-year anniversary show and maybe you'll see it then.
But if you're not there for that, it's gone.
And now I meet people, I mean, that around the world that will say, oh, I just
saw that thing with you and Norm and Courtney Thorne Smith.
And I'll think that was a moment of my life when I was 30.
Yeah.
And I'm like 85 now.
Like, how is that possible?
Straight to the heart.
I've been a long time acting like I was a brother.
Get a part by you.
Everybody knows now, Norm MacDonald died two days ago.
And I got the news, like everyone else, just absolutely stunned.
Had no idea that Norm had not only been very ill, but been very ill for a very
long time.
None of us had any idea.
And there's been this seismic reaction, which is appropriate, completely
appropriate in the comedy world.
And a lot's been said about Norm.
And I just had this very strong feeling yesterday that I needed to talk to
people about it and talk to people who, like me, experience Norm in the moment
and really try and understand what it was about this man, this very improbable,
unusual man.
What, what made him so different?
And I maintain that, you know, we are accustomed, sadly, to losing funny,
talented people all the time.
And we grow accustomed to it.
I think Norm's impact is only going to grow.
And I think his significance in comedy is only going to expand over time
because he was such, such an incredible talent.
And trying to describe what made Norm different is so difficult.
And I think so far when I've, I think I've read everything that's out there and
I'm hearing, you know, to be fair, people were all taken by surprise.
You're just hearing he was an original and there was no one like Norm.
And I keep thinking, no, no one's getting to it.
And I just wanted to take a stab today to try and understand what exactly it
was about this guy that was so, so brilliantly unusual and is going to be so
lasting and his work is so important.
And one of the things that speaks to, you know, I was having a conversation
with Jim Downey and, and in the, in the wake of Norm's death and Jim Downey.
And he, and I was trying to get to the, what is it that made Norm so different?
And he's reminded me, he said, you know, on weekend update, we would do, um,
there's a dress rehearsal, which I know because I worked at Saturday Night Live.
There's a dress rehearsal.
And he said, the best way to test a joke on weekend update is at dress
rehearsal.
If it does well at dress rehearsal, it will do well on air.
Uh, if it doesn't do well at dress rehearsal, it will bomb on air.
That's, that's the best way to test it.
And he said that Norm would do a joke at dress rehearsal that they both loved
and it would get nothing.
And when weekend update was over, Jim would say, um, yeah, that's too bad.
That joke didn't do well.
And Norm would say like, yeah, I know, but we got to do it.
So he would do jokes that he knew were going to get nothing.
If he thought the joke was worthwhile, he didn't give a shit.
Now that is very uncommon.
That is very, well, he never pandered.
He didn't pander at all.
And that takes, um, you know, that's what made me think about the line you said
so many years ago, Andy, like it's, it almost terrifies me.
His fearlessness because it was, um, the thing he did so many times on our show,
which I thought was absolutely outrageous was, um, he would launch into these
long stories that you later, you quickly realized.
And he would go on and on and on and on and on and I'm so happy that, um, the moth
joke has been getting circulated so much from our tonight show because it is
completely outrageous what he's doing.
Uh, it is, um, you know, it's, it's, it's the, it's the tonight show and he is
telling this very long story and he's taking all the time in the world.
And I love it just cause.
Even though I was there.
I'm delighted every time I see it, I, I, I, every time I see it, I'm delighted
with it because what he's doing is breaks every rule.
You're not, you're not, brevity is the soul of wit.
That is the rule.
Keep it, you know, and man, he completely like Picasso blew up the form.
He goes and he tells this joke forever.
And then finally gets to this punchline.
And you can see that he's, everyone's delighted, uh, but he has broken every
rule in the book.
And I was asking, uh, I was talking to Lori Jo, uh, and I asked her if it's
okay if I related this and she said it was okay, but she said that not too long
ago, um, someone asked Norm, uh, about the moth story that he told on, on our
tonight show.
And that, that, that she said, what made the guy wanted to know what made you
have the nerve to do that?
And that he said that, you know, it was that goddamn Frank Smiley.
He said, I was only supposed to do one segment.
And then suddenly in the commercial break, Frank came over and said, like, you're
doing another one.
Because whenever I had Norm, I was greedy.
I wanted more Norm.
I always wanted more Norm.
And so he didn't know that he was, that we were going to ask him to do a second
segment.
He had nothing planned.
Absolutely nothing planned.
That's true.
And so as recently as like, not that long ago, I think it was a couple of
months ago, he was telling somebody, uh, damn it.
That was Frank Smiley.
Hey, get back out there.
Conan wants more.
So he heard that joke from Colin Quinn and he did the segment and it was, he
had seven minutes prepared.
Yeah.
And, um, and so he basically, um, you said, you know, and then he's done.
He's done.
We'll be right back with more Norm.
And he goes, I've got nothing to say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then he, uh, he remembered the Colin joke and it was a 20 second joke.
So he asked you, how long is the segment?
Uh-huh.
And he was hoping you'd say 20 seconds.
Right.
But you said seven minutes.
Yep.
Yep.
So it became a seven minute joke.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he's doing that.
This has to be understood.
He's doing this on the fly.
Yep.
So his way to slow it down that he came up with on the fly is he invents.
It's a Chekhov play.
With Russian names.
With Russian names.
And there's a sadness, an ineffable sadness in life weighing on the character's
soul.
And, and I'm thinking, you know, uh, who I've never met anybody who would take
that
chance, uh, and make that choice.
And I'll never meet anybody like him again.
He was the ballsiest comedian in the history of comedians.
He, he was taken that.
And he was saying like, the joke doesn't matter.
Like that, you know, he would watching that, seeing that clip again, you're,
you're getting
to see his brain.
Yeah.
He's just showing you his brain.
And the notion that this is that the joke is the thing, the joke isn't the
thing.
No, it's the journey.
It's taking a stroll through this guy's brain and hearing the choices that he
makes and what
he has to say.
And, you know, and I think that that was like kind of what, like there was so
much of like
what he, you know, would say like, well, that doesn't matter.
This matters, you know, and, and what mattered to him was his own self-expression
was his
own, was spreading hi