Norm MacDonald has died. How is that even possible? Of course, I know it is possible, and all too true. Many of the things that I tend to be fanatical about tend to be older. Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, even Alex Trebek were into their 80’s when they passed away. It was sad, but not necessarily unexpected. And, of course, many, many people die too young, celebrities are certainly no exception. The passing of Norm MacDonald though, really hit me as unexpected.
I loved Norm’s comedy from the first moment I saw it. There was something about his delivery, the way he said his punchline, that I’m not sure if any other comic, no matter how great, could say in quite the same way. No one else could inflect the words to deliver the same oomph to the punchline. Norm could read the phone book and I would probably laugh simply because of his delivery.
There was that original era of Saturday Night Live of the 1970’s, the John Belushi and Chevy Chase years. Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray. Then, with the notable exception of Eddie Murphy, the early 1980’s were not great years for SNL. In the mid to late 1980’s, there was a resurgence with Dana Carvey, Jon Lovitz, and Phil Hartman. An era I certainly remember well, but one I still call my older brother’s SNL years. There is something about SNL that seems to speak to each generation most when that generation is in Middle School or High School. For me, that era was the early 1990’s. Mike Myers was maybe the first to arrive during that era, but soon afterwards, there was this featured player in the fall of 1993. Norm MacDonald. There was something about the way he would deliver his joke, with a Paul Newman twinkle in his eye, that floored me. I don’t think he stood out to the public at first like maybe some of the others of that era, people like David Spade and Adam Sandler, but I knew right away this was my new favorite SNL player. Once I happened to catch Norm on MTV during that early 1990’s era, I think he was hosting a Spring Break half-hour comedy special, and I was so excited to see him. I had been a Dana Carvey SNL guy, and still love Carvey and all his characters, but Norm just cracked me up like few before or after have done.
Norman Gene MacDonald was born in Quebec City, Quebec on October 17, 1959. A Canadian stand-up comic, he worked the clubs in Canada and the infamous Just For Laughs festival. Eventually he would bring his talents, like so many other Canadian comics before him, to the United States of America. He would appear on Star Search and become a writer for the Roseanne sitcom. He desperately wanted to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson before Carson retired, but was instead offered a standup slot during a Jay Leno guest-hosted Tonight Show of the Carson era. In 1993, he would become a featured player on SNL, becoming a full-time cast member the following year. More importantly though, he would take over the anchor desk for Weekend Update.
As the uber-Norm fan that I was, I was ecstatic at this development. I know that Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtain and others all had their fans as best Weekend Update anchor. Since I grew up at first with Dennis Miller at the anchor desk, to me he had set the standard of what should be expected from the host of Weekend Update. Kevin Nealon came next, and I was not a big fan at the time. Looking back, I was probably too tough on Kevin, because to be fair, his main drawback to me was the fact that he was not Dennis Miller. But soon, all would be right in the SNL universe, as the greatest Weekend Update host ever would take over the desk. Norman Gene MacDonald. His sense of humor, his style of jokes, it’s like he was tailor-made for that moment. His jokes, frankly, sometimes maybe he was too hip for the room, and I’m not sure if the live audience was laughing nearly as hard as I was at home. He famously would lose his job as Weekend Update anchor in 1998, after angering NBC executives one too many times with one too many OJ jokes. One too many occurrences of insubordination.
While he would remain with SNL in sketches for the rest of that season, he would soon leave the show. ABC would give him a sitcom in 1999, The Norm Show (aka simply as “Norm” in later seasons). There was one episode of The Norm Show which had a contest in which 50 quotes from movies were interspersed throughout the episode. Write them down, and send them in, and the viewer could win fabulous prizes. I managed to notice 37 quotes, and I used my trusty dial-up modem to access my AOL account, and submitted my entry. Alas, while I did not win the Grand Prize, I was happily one of the many 3rd-prize winners. I won a Norm hat. A simple black baseball hat with the word Norm on it. One of my favorite hats to this day. Although, for the longest time, people confused it with “Norm!”, what everyone would yell when the George Wendt character of Norm Peterson would walk into the bar at Cheers.
The Norm Show lasted three years, and Norm pretty much focused on his standup career from then on out. Sure, he did some movies (Dirty Work is kind of an underrated film in my humble opinion), and he would make game show appearances. Norm MacDonald should have been the first celebrity to win $1 Million on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, but Regis Philbin kind of inadvertently talked him out of giving the right answer to the last question. Norm still walked away with $500,000 for charity. Norm also hosted the Espy Awards, the ESPN award show, and somewhere Ken Griffey Jr. is still squirming over that, not certain if he can laugh or not when the camera is on him. Tina Fey once called Norm MacDonald the last “dangerous comedian”, because you just never knew where he was going, what he was doing, and if it would be politically correct to laugh at the joke once he got there.
Norm probably was the greatest talk show guest ever. His appearances on Conan O’Brien are the cream of the crop, particularly when he is discussing Carrot Top with Courtney Thorne-Smith. But Norm also had great appearances on David Letterman and other shows as well. Just do yourself a favor and go on YouTube and watch his various appearances. Any of them, all of them. Watch him talk about interactions with Bob Uecker. Watch Norm on Howard Stern. It does not matter what you choose, they are all great. My typing, trying to explain what he did or said on any particular talk show will never do it justice. No explanation of his comedy can compare to his actual comedy, can compare to the footage of his actual appearances. Norm’s final appearance on David Letterman, on Letterman’s next-to-last show, is funny as always, but then takes a surprisingly emotional turn. For the first time, maybe ever, Norm is not working the room, he’s not three steps ahead of everyone building up to a joke. He was raw and real and emotional.
I can go on and on about Norm’s various appearances throughout the years, just listing the things I enjoyed. I was a big fan of his roasting of Bob Saget at the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget. Norm would say very much not cutting-edge things, and pretend that it was some of the rudest, most over-the-top roasting of another human being. I’m not sure if the audience liked it that much, but the other comics loved it. He hosted Sports Show with Norm MacDonald on Comedy Central. He would have a talk show of his own on YouTube and on Netflix. His voice, that wry voice of his, would be featured on Family Guy as the Grim Reaper, and on The Orville as a gelatinous blob of an alien. He would appear ten times as Uncle Rusty, on the criminally underrated sitcom, The Middle. One of my favorite more recent appearances is when a bunch of Weekend Update anchors, Norm included, joined David Spade on Spade’s criminally underrated talk show.
When all is said and done, I think Norm would most like to be known as one of the greatest standup comics of all time. My first instinct was to say he dedicated himself to making the audience laugh, but that’s probably not true. He was dedicated to the joke. Making the audience laugh, or his fellow comics laugh, or himself laugh, that part maybe did not matter that much. The joke was his art form, if you got the joke, that’s great. If you didn’t, that was okay too. But he was true to his art, his joke, whether or not we went along for the ride and laughed with it or not. Somewhat surprisingly, I have seen interviews with him through the years in which he was a deep thinker about life, death, religion, and politics. I think he was one of the smarter guys in the room, often presenting himself with the façade of a less intelligent man. Just to win the room over to whatever joke he wanted to build up towards.
I had the pleasure of seeing him four times through the years. When he was on tour, he would almost always stop in at the Royal Oak Music Theater as his Detroit area stop. I was lucky enough to see him multiple times, and I’m going to miss him. We all should have had the pleasure of another 10 years of his commentary on our life and times. Celebrity deaths are weird things, we don’t know these people, but they are part of our lives. Sometimes entertainers can touch our hearts, and sometimes they don’t, their deaths are just a blurb of a headline in a newspaper. But Norm always made me laugh, if it was a bad day, I could go down the rabbit hole of his YouTube clips and laugh. And then the day would not be so bad. I, for one, will miss him terribly.
And one last thing, Germans love David Hasselhoff.
Norm MacDonald, 1959-2021.
-MTR