Name: Remembering Norm
Uploaded: 2021-09-16T14:00:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Remembering Norm' from Bob Saget on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Remembering Norm' from Bob Saget on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-16. Transcript available.

Remembering Norm

Hi, it's Bob here, and this is something I felt I needed to do.
I avoided it, but I have to do it.
A lot of us lost someone.
I lost a dear friend for my entire life, and it's, well, this is going to be
hard.
I'll try to keep it short, by the way.
My friend, Norm MacDonald.
Norm MacDonald, or as David would call him, Norm MacDonald.
Many of you have been responding, the comedy community, comedians, writers,
actors,
but people, people that are smart, that understood Norm, that loved Norm.
I'm recording this for all of you.
And yes, selfishly, I'm recording it for myself, because I need to, I don't
know, people were
contacting people that I work with and asking for statements and comments, and
I just felt
it would be better to do it this way, in a conversational, almost non-quotable
way, because I am not functioning
too well.
This is, and this isn't about me, but it's going to be from my perspective.
So, this is a loss.
When you lose someone, I've lost two sisters and a couple parents.
I mean, my parents, not random parents.
And I've lost many friends.
And this is just a fucking knife in the heart for all of us that were close to
him, and all
of you who loved him.
And for me personally, this is, I don't know, I'm just doing this on the fly
and seeing if
it can make a point or give some stories that might bring you a smile and let
you even know,
from my perspective of why this is a beloved, wonderful man who we've lost.
I guess I'll start less solemn.
That's impossible, right?
Because, you know, when it happened yesterday, today is Wednesday, by the way,
and we're going
to put this out tonight, you know, after midnight, where most of you that love
Norm will be awake.
And the people close to him will be up because we're fucked up.
We just can't sleep.
But I found out that he had passed before it hit the deadline.
Hollywood, why do they call it deadline?
Now, Norm would probably not mind me saying that, but he would have said, you
know, he
would have, deadline, he would have hit the dead.
God damn it, I love that man.
So, that being said, I found out, and then it was in the press, and then the
floodgates
opened, and I didn't, I couldn't even go online.
I can't look at clips of him.
Although I have, right before I recorded this, wanted to see a couple things.
Everybody's sharing stuff, and, you know, he was a comedic genius.
Anybody that didn't get it, I'm sorry for you that you didn't get it.
He was one of the, well, he's one of the most important people in my life, and
one of the
sweetest.
And we loved each other.
So, I met him, he was 17 years old, and I was 21, 22.
It was 1978, I think, or 79.
One of those two, probably 78.
And I was working in Ottawa at a club called, I don't know, Snickerdoodle or
something.
I don't even remember.
It was a Giggles, I don't know.
But Norm was in the audience.
I think he was doing some stand-up at 17, I'm not sure.
But he was, like, literally six feet from me, so it would have been a good
distance for
COVID, where he was sitting.
He had a bushy haircut, a big one.
I'm sure you've seen it.
Some people, I really loved seeing some pictures that people posted of him at
that age that I
saw, because it was this sweet guy who had a brain and bandwidth that most
people aren't
born with, who was also, like most comedians, an outsider.
And we talked.
We talked at the bar, and I remembered it specifically a few years later when I
met him, for real,
in clubs in Canada.
I think it was at Yuck Yucks, I'm not sure.
It just doesn't matter, right?
But the point is, he was in my life, and I was in his in an acquaintance kind
of way.
And then a bunch of years passed, and we would see each other on the comedy
scene, and we
became friends.
And everybody I know would get into the room to watch him on stage.
Sometimes he would purposely tank, as you know, anybody that understands.
They call him a comics comic.
That's just, you know, I hate that expression.
But I guess it's true because comedians couldn't help but laugh at him because
he was so fucking
brilliant.
And he would say things that might not be able to be said by anybody.
I mean, they wouldn't be able to be said by anyone else.
We're talking about an original voice.
And his influences were all the usual suspects, all the people that, you know,
that love comedy.
You can see who his roots were.
But he found a way to do things that came from a voice that nobody had, I'd
never heard anyone
like him.
He loved dark humor from the very beginning.
If you look at these clips, I was able to see a couple of them when he was, one
of his
very earliest appearances.
I think it was on Conan.
He's just this young, thin lad, and talking about death and dark stuff and
murder.
And those are themes because Norm needed to feel things very, very deeply.
And Norm did feel things very, very deeply.
So when, on that amazing Letterman appearance, two weeks before David went off
the air and Norm
was the last stand-up comedian to go on there.
And I only know this, I know all about it because we had talked about it, but
watching, listening
to the Howard Stern interview from 2016 is a valuable piece.
Just to see his love for David, he didn't know what he was going to say.
And the people that he really loved, he would tell them.
So if you're one of those lucky people, because he'd gone through a lot.
Norm was very complicated, right?
So we're talking about a guy at 14, 15 years old, had a difficult upbringing.
And he said it.
You know, he made it known he didn't have much of a father figure in his life,
so David was
kind of one.
He revered intelligence and was drawn to it.
And when people got him, it meant the world to him.
And that's kind of the thing that made him a comics comic, because I hate
saying that.
I've got to erase that from my mind.
But he would love smart people.
He loved Howard, and he loved David, and everybody.
Conan, he had such a strong kinship.
And as Norm would say, God bless all those people for getting him and loving
him, because
they're so funny and smart.
I got roasted on Comedy Central.
I'm going to go all over the place, because I can't.
I don't know what else to do.
This is me just saying I love Norm.
When I got roasted, I talked to him a week before the roast, and he called me,
and he said,
Saget, I can't.
This is a bad impression.
I can't help but do it, though.
Saget, I can't say mean things about you.
You're my friend.
I don't even want to do it, but I'm going to do it, because it's you.
And we'd been through a bunch of stuff.
You know, we did dirty work, and that thing, it's so funny.
People say, Bob doesn't get through any interview without mentioning at least
twice that movie.
Now a cheer comes down my face.
I loved working with him.
It wasn't easy, because he was a perfectionist, and he was a complex
carbohydrate.
I don't want to say was, but I have to.
I got to be in reality myself.
But, you know, so we'd gone through so much together, ups and downs.
And so at the roast, he called me a week out, said, I'm just going to read
jokes from a 40s joke book.
And I said, Norm, that's fine.
I mean, you know what you're doing, but you got to curse.
I don't want to do that.
I said, well, just throw in an arbitrary fuck now and then.
Nah, I'm not going to do that.
And then you get to the roast, and okay, so what you see usually with the
extended cut, which is not what it is.
It's just everything about Norm is the big lie.
There's a 20-minute version.
There's 20 minutes of footage where the people that were there know what
happened in the room.
Half of them did and half of them didn't, because they didn't know what was
going on, because they didn't get it.
But he was just taking the shot at doing.
And people are like, this was the most brilliant thing.
And it was, but a great stand-up, and Norm was one of the greatest ever, knows
that they're not going to, bombing is not, doesn't matter.
And that's what was fearless and beautiful about him, because bombing is just
part of the art, part of the performance of it.
And if you can offend people and get laughs, then you're in some kind of real
special ethos.
And he was doing that by reading these jokes, and then there were about eight
minutes that it was, you know, it was quiet.
And that made this, you don't see the comedians laughing harder, but all of my
friends, that's the idea of that roast was as horrible as some of the things
that were said,
because it's a roast, and it was a different time.
But Norm, of course, chose the path of dignity, and did jokes.
And we were laughing on the phone the week before that he would hold the cards
up to his head and do Johnny, you know, face like a cauliflower.
But we were doing all that stuff, because he idolized Johnny, as all of us did.
And so he was, they cut out the part that was bombing, but I would have loved
to have seen the whole damn thing.
I think the roast should have just been a bunch of people doing a bunch of
horrible dick jokes and, wow, some really wrong stuff on there, right?
But it was funny for a lot of people.
It's really split how you look at stuff from years ago, and people know what
funny is.
And Norm did the most brilliant thing, and I was so excited when he said, I
said, he got a fucking dog face.
And that, if you look at the thing, I don't like looking at myself, and who
does?
But I like looking at me.
But when he said that, that's when I was like, yeah, come on, come on, start
cursing.
Just throw in arbitrary curses, because at that point, he was digging out of a
hole.
That's what he was doing.
But how fucking brilliant, because it was so anti-roast, because he didn't want
to roast his friend.
And he also didn't want to do a roast.
So there's, you know, it was a good toss-up, whether he was doing it, because
he didn't want to hurt his friend.
And also, he didn't want to do a roast.
He didn't love the form.
He didn't mind listening to the old ones.
But he wasn't equipped mentally or care enough to make fun of someone.
It just, you know, it seemed like a, okay, that's the joke.
Make it fun of somebody.
Oh, great.
Great format.
Of course, he's reading the sports section, while the other comedians are doing
their stuff.
And that, it's just, you know, it's brilliance.
It's an Andy Kaufman type thing, or anybody who knows what comedy is, and doing
some kind of, it's just Norm.
It's just Norm, what he found funny.
And then at the end, and I thought about, do I play it on here right now?
And the answer is no.
You can watch it.
You can see it.
I mean, at the end of the thing, he got emotional.
And he doesn't mean to do it.
He doesn't know what he's going to say.
And he doesn't do it that often.
But now I'm in present tense, right?
Because I can't accept that he's gone.
And that's the shock that we're going through.
61.
That's a sin.
That's a sin for all of us that he's gone.
Anyway, to finish that one thought, he told me, you know, he loved me.
And he told me publicly.
And I loved him.
And I love him.
What do we do with that when we lose someone, right?
Especially before their time.
I mean, I know most of you listening have lost someone.
Especially now, right?
So, he cared about people a lot.
And he felt the human condition so deeply that it affected him in different
ways.
You know, he would maybe act out back in the day.
And no specifics needed.
And in other ways, he would just even be more compassionate.
And then in other ways, in stand-up, he would just go to the darkest place he
could possibly go.
And he made me better.
He made me better as a comedian.
But more importantly, he was a genuine friend.
And our friendship was really very deep.
And I could say that.
I could say that without my name-dropping bullshit that I do sometimes.
And all of my other dumbass vices.
Like everybody was posting when he died.
And they love him.
You know, everybody's hurting over this one.
This one.
Yeah, right.
I always...
Why can't unfunny people die?
That's the...
Saget?
Yeah, why'd you say that?
But he...
A week ago, we'd 