Name: Conan's Favorite Guest of All Time
Uploaded: 2021-06-30T02:21:46.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Conan's Favorite Guest of All Time' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-06-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Conan's Favorite Guest of All Time' from I'm not Norm on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-06-30. Transcript available.

But I wonder if people, like you say, you don't like people who are not hardworking.
I wonder, are there people who work and worked as hard as Steve did and does?
I was thinking when I said it that there's an exception.
I know we're both admirers of Norm MacDonald.
And he seems sometimes like someone who has something.
It's his cadence.
It's the way he talks.
I don't know if he's a hardworking comic.
But God, he makes me laugh.
And his cadence, something is just wrong about it, you know?
But I love Norm.
And my guess is what I know of Norm is that he may not be working hard.
No, no.
But what he has is the same result as somebody who's worked hard.
Yes, yeah.
Which is, again, enviable, admirable.
But God, he makes me laugh.
And I happened across some of his time on Weekend Update.
Yeah, yeah.
When you watch it now, you realize Norm just didn't care if it got a laugh.
No, no, no.
And he didn't.
Yeah.
He didn't care.
And he had a joke.
I think Downey wrote the joke.
It was during the OJ trial.
And there's a picture of Johnny Cochran holding up the knit cap with OJ sitting
next to him.
And God, no one could do this but Norm.
Norm said, a little bit of a wrinkle for OJ in the trial today.
Johnny Cochran stood up and held the knit cap that was found at the scene of
the double murders.
When OJ jumped up and said, hey, careful with that.
That's my lucky stabbing cap.
Who else could do that?
Right.
And he doesn't.
And if it got nothing, he would stare.
Yeah.
And tell you your problem.
I thought that was one of the best.
I mean, dark but fantastic.
Right.
And also, no one could do it but him.
No, no.
That's what I was going to say.
If somebody had pitched that joke to me at the height of the OJ trial, I would
have laughed and not done it.
Would you have done that joke?
No, I would not have done that.
Yeah, yeah.
I would have been queasy and, you know, it's a tragedy.
Yeah.
It was theater of some kind.
Theater of the absurd.
But the delivery, the persona, and the material.
It's powerful.
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 it 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 were with Harlan or when you were with Norm or with Ron.
That really 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'd 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 he'll be like, hey, the other day I was walking down the road and a pirate
comes up.
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 a guest.
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 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, 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?
Yeah.
And plus he probably has some people in the audience who are taking completely
seriously, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
He's got some people thinking.
We call them tourists.
Yes.
We call them usually from San Bernardino.
Well, Norma 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.
And I'm like, oh, my God.
you