Name: The Incomparable Norm Macdonald, Criss Angel & Some Lady with Tom Green as Moderator
Uploaded: 2021-07-25T16:04:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Incomparable Norm Macdonald, Criss Angel & Some Lady with Tom Green as Moderator' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-07-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Incomparable Norm Macdonald, Criss Angel & Some Lady with Tom Green as Moderator' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-07-25. Transcript available.

The Incomparable Norm Macdonald, Criss Angel & Some Lady with Tom Green as Moderator

Our next panelist for Broadcast Minds began his career in stand-up comedy, and
his early
writing work for Roseanne and Dennis Miller opened the door for him to join the
cast of
Saturday Night Live, where he was the anchor of the Weekend Update with his
trademark line,
Now the Fake News. You can catch him on the Video Podcast Network's Norm MacDonald
Live.
Help me welcome the incomparable Norm MacDonald.
And now for the moderator. Tom Green is one of the most unpredictable comedians
on the earth.
He was the host of the Tom Green Show on MTV, and he's a pioneer of internet
television,
doing a live daily show from the comfort of his own living room, Tom Green's
House Tonight.
And he's also the host of the current show on AXS TV, Tom Green Live.
And recently he's released one of the finest beers to ever come out of Canada,
Tom Green Beer,
the most consistent branding man in television, Tom Green.
Yeah!
Bill Nelson, everybody.
Hey!
How are you, Norm?
Of course I love it.
Gally, how are you?
Chris?
Hey, how's everyone doing?
Welcome to the Broadcast Minds panel.
Are you guys ready to have a good time tonight?
Oh, no, it's morning, it's morning, it's morning now, is it?
Morning.
Oh, my God, yeah, we had a good night.
The night hasn't ended yet.
We've been partying it up all night, right, guys?
Yeah, this is...
I'll tell you some of that crazy girls, that's truth in advertising.
Oh, yeah.
So this is exciting.
We're going to have a conversation here today about television and broadcasting.
And what's exciting about this is everybody here has taken their passion in
life and turned
it into something amazing.
And we've all built our own little television studios as well, right?
All four of us have built our own little television studios using, you know,
consumer electronics,
new technology.
TriCaster.
TriCaster.
Norm, you're doing the video podcast network and the Norm MacDonald live show
using a TriCaster.
Callie, you have a TriCaster.
You have a TriCaster.
It's a...
Is it more fun doing it on your own, producing the show yourself?
Your new podcast is completely independent and you're...
Or do you prefer broadcast television?
No, I prefer narrow casting because, you know, when I first came to Hollywood,
I met Richard
Pryor.
And I remember he said this thing.
He was like...
Because I said, everybody loves you, you know?
And he's like, I can't do Richard Pryor.
But he's like, no, they don't.
Yeah.
I'm doing Cosby.
He said, no, they don't.
He goes, what?
He goes, only one in ten people even know me and only one in a hundred like me.
He goes, but that's enough.
You know, because it's...
And I thought about it.
Yeah, it's like three million people, you know?
And so that's what's cool about, like, you having your own narrow casting thing
is that
they only tune in for you, you know?
So if I go on Letterman, they're going to see Letterman, you know?
They're turning in to see Letterman.
I'm the guest.
They might like me.
They might not like me, you know?
I don't know about that.
Everybody likes you, right?
Everybody likes me.
But when you were making Saturday Night Live, when you were on Saturday Night
Live, there
was all this preparation, writers and all sorts of people involved, executive
producers, and
and now you can just do it all yourself.
Is that process more fun and making the show more fun?
I like doing everything myself because I'm, like you, a stand-up.
So we started completely independent, you know, and completely responsible for
bombing or doing
well, you know?
Yeah.
And so that's how we start.
We grew up in stand-up.
So it was funny, you know, what Chris was telling me.
I just read a book from when I was a kid called Future Shock by Alvin Toffler,
but that's
what he talks about.
It's an amazing book, but he says, like, in the future, which is now, that
people that
don't understand technology will become obsolete, and they'll get future shock.
Yeah.
We're almost there.
And he said they'll have an enormous amount of product, and I was just talking
to Callie
backstage.
She has so much product, it's unbelievable.
Review units, gadgets, technology.
But hours, hundreds of hours.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I've been doing it for about eight years.
And you've now built a large facility in Dallas.
Yeah, as Philip said, we started out really in a bedroom and a house, like a
lot of YouTubers
or online content people.
But we've been able to grow over the years.
First, we went into a 4,000-square-foot studio that we leased.
Now, we've bought a building that we can really customize, make it state-of-the-art
technology.
It's going to be geek heaven.
Bought a building.
That's pretty cool.
I know.
My kid, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a sportscaster.
I grew up in Canada with you.
I wanted to be a sportscaster, do hockey.
But you know what my kid does?
He's only 10.
He does a podcast.
Nobody listens to it.
But he does it because he loves PTI.
So he does like a sports podcast.
And he'll do, so he'll have that, you know that Malcolm Gladwell thing where if
you do
100,000 hours, you're an expert, he's doing like 20 hours a week, like nobody's
listening
to it.
But he's getting better and better.
Like, it's amazing.
I would have loved that when I was a kid.
Wouldn't you have loved that?
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely, yeah.
Who are some of the guests that you have coming up in the new season of Norm
MacDonald Live?
Oh, we got the great Fred Willard.
We got Larry King.
We got Ray Romano, the great Ray Romano.
Hey, we had Mickey Rooney booked, but we would have been the last guys.
Was he really, he was booked on the took?
Yeah, he was booked for the next week.
Yeah?
Oh, wow.
I didn't mean to bring everybody down.
He had a good life, you know?
Yeah, sure.
Is there stuff that you can talk about on the show?
Did this conversation go off in crazy directions that you wouldn't take it?
Well, you know, the interesting thing is like when you have no notes from censors
or anything.
So the first shows were like, you know, practically pornographic.
Like you just say anything that comes to your mind.
So you have to, you know, censor yourself like.
You have to decide who your audience you want to be.
Yes, yes.
They are and where you want to go with it.
And then you have freedom.
But you have to, yeah, you have to sort of give notes to yourself.
Like there was a great Bob Dylan line.
And he said, what do you say, if you live outside the law, you must be honest.
You know, so that's what I think.
Like if you're not, if nobody's telling you what to do, you got to do it.
You got to tell yourself what's right and wrong, you know?
Right, yeah.
Now, Callie, now, it might be interesting from your perspective to tell people
like how you've built up what you do from scratch.
You started this in your house.
And she makes money.
And you make money, yeah.
I use a service called Patreon.
And I don't know how many viewers are out here right now, but we have so many
people who are willing to support the show on a monthly basis just because they
love what we do.
They get the show for free and they will always get it for free, but they
continue to just give us money because they love it.
They do.
And they want to be part of the family.
Patreon?
Patreon, exactly.
Chris, you like using Twitter.
I do use Twitter.
Norm, you like using Twitter.
I use it all wrong, but yeah.
We all enjoy using Twitter.
How often do you tweet, Norm?
I notice you, I follow you on Twitter.
Yeah.
You're often tweeting in the middle of the night.
Yeah.
You just wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and just feel the urge to
tweet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know what I like to do?
I like, because I like tweeting and then I, mostly I like reading my fans.
A lot of who hate me.
I don't know why they're following me, but that's what's actually interesting.
Like, I remember when I was on Saturday Night Live, Lauren Michaels told me the
first year,
he goes, you know, people will come up to you in the street and say they like
you and you'll
think you're popular, but the people that hate you don't come up to you.
And I was like, oh.
So everyone, every time a guy complimented me, I go, oh, that guy probably
hates me.
Oh.
But then, it's true.
Yeah.
Because when you get Twitter, you're like, oh, I see.
Yeah.
Some people like me and some people hate my guts.
Twitter has given us all so much more access to all of those millions of people
that hate us.
Yeah.
And none of them.
In my case, I'm speaking for myself.
Like, at first I was worried that they'd come and murder me.
Right?
Yeah, sure.
But that's never happened yet.
Yeah.
It seems like when they break down the barrier between the fans and the
performers,
the psychopaths, they like that.
Yeah.
I hope Chris pulls a rabbit out of his hat later.
I pull that sometimes out of my ass.
I know people that have gotten, when Twitter started, they got TV shows.
They had four million followers.
They go, the TV network goes, oh, four million people will watch the guy's show
immediately.
It doesn't work.
I know a headline magician in town that literally buys his Twitter followers.
Yeah.
I won't say who it is.
Wow.
But buys his Twitter followers.
It happens.
You've inspired me in so many ways because of what you did, you know, back in a
day before
it was popular, before people were doing it, you know, was really...
Yeah, Tom was before his time.
Yeah.
Giving people the opportunity to kind of control your destiny, right, with a
camera.
I just say never build a TV studio in your living room.
Never.
Never, never do it.
Do it in a park or something before you do that.
Don't you find also being before your time like you always are doesn't pay a
lot?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The pioneers leave with the arrows in their back.
Where did that come from?
That sounds painful.
I don't know.
I just made that up.
No, somebody told me that once.
Sounds like the search.
So, Norm, how do you...
Let's talk about the technology for the actual...
Some of the technology you guys are using, the actual equipment.
And then after that, we can actually open it up for some questions.
We can take some questions from the audience.
But what equipment are we using here?
We're using TriCasters.
TriCasters.
Cameras, right?
We're using cameras.
Cameras.
The cameras give you the picture.
Yeah.
What's great about the new...
Microphones.
Microphones.
The sound goes through the microphone.
Oh, wait.
You're supposed to have a microphone?
Down the wire into the TriCaster.
I did a stand-up special.
And, like, I did a...
Other times I've done stand-up specials, the networks do it, you know?
I always hate them, like...
And so they'll have, like, a crane shot, like, swooping down.
And that's a big thing.
They want to do a crane shot on.
And it's just me.
It doesn't distract the audience at all with the crane.
Yeah, so you're trying to do a joke, and a crane's coming...
All they're paying attention to is the crane.
So I said, I don't want to do it.
Like, I want to do it in a small club.
I want to do it my own way.
So anyway, I just did it with digital cameras and did, like, two shows, and it
was awesome.
And then I did three cameras, like...
I did two shows, so I did three cameras here, and then in the second show, I
used the three
cameras elsewhere.
Yeah.
So it looks like six cameras.
Yeah.
You know?
So...
But it was so fun.
And you edit it exactly the way you want it, you know?
Yeah.
And you don't...
Because I don't shoot the audience when I do it.
Like, whenever I've done a stand-up special, they always shoot the audience.
You know, so if you talk about a Chinese guy, they cut to a Chinese guy.
So I like doing it just my own way, and it was, like, so fun.
Especially with stand-up, because you know how stand-up, you're very protective
of it.
Yeah.
You don't want them to mess it up.
And I always thought when I saw a stand-up special, anybody's stand-up special,
even as
a kid, like George Carlin, they'd show the stand-up special, and then there'd
be 200 names
on the credits.
And it's just a guy on st