Okay, we're all set.
1, 2, 3, look away!
-Norm Macdonald! -Norm Macdonald.
-I'm gonna throw up. -[Laughing]
Norm Macdonald, everybody!
[narrator] Norm Macdonald's blend of deadpan jokes
and meandering humour earned him a spot
with the comedy greats.
Norm Macdonald was never not funny.
He is truly the comic's comic.
He was above the room.
You know, I'm a very lazy guy, I just hang around
on my coach and watch TV, that's all I do, you know?
-[Laughing] -Lazy.
I could get hit by a truck tomorrow,
a big truck could hit me,
paralyze me from the neck down...
wouldn't affect my lifestyle a bit.
Norm was sort of like a young old man.
He has this everyday uncle,
in the backyard, kind of a feel.
Yeah, yeah, you know, this guy over here.
Got too many teeth that's the problem.
How many teeth do you need really, hey?
Five? Six?
He could say anything and it'll be funny.
The only time you admit you look bad.
You ever see a guy, no tooth up in
the front there, he got no tooth...
man, you look like a dork, boy.
He was an SNL cast member throughout the 90s,
pushing the limits of comedy as the anchor of
the show's 'Weekend Update' segments.
Thanks. I'm Norm Macdonald, and now the fake news.
He really took big swings.
You can't really take the culture of comedy to the
next level if you're not taking those big swings,
if you're not taking those big risks.
It just seemed like he was whitewater rafting
through his career and enjoying the...
the turbulence.
As Norm once said to me, "Gambling is the most
interesting thing in the world."
He had some troubles with gambling.
He had a problem with gambling at times, I think.
Uh... I've lost everything I own three times.
His gambler's mentality is what made him
such a risk-taking comedian.
Norm Macdonald really did not want to be told
what he could and couldn't do.
Why would a comic who had everything
risk losing it all, over and over again?
He not only poked the bear, he was kicking the bear.
That's a little scoop for the viewers.
[Overlapping voices] Ladies and gentlemen!
You are about to be entertained!
Getting the laugh is the greatest addiction.
They want more of it, they want more of it.
She was getting death threats. It [beep] with your head!
He's out of his skull! That's what took her down.
This is a crazy story.
-Burt Reynolds? -That's not my name.
[Laughing]
Okay, Turd Ferguson.
[Laughing]
Yeah, what do you want?
[Laughing]
He influenced comedy.
I think he's one of those people where his influence
in comedy can never really be overstated.
Norm had a natural rhythm and a way of talking,
and a way of thinking, like nobody else I ever hung with.
'Cause I grew up on a farm. I had no running water.
You had no running water, right?
What did you think of an outhouse?
'Cause that's what I remember as the worst thing
about growing up on a farm.
-Yeah, we had an outhouse. -Was the goddamn outhouse.
It was the most terrifying place in the ----ing world.
Norm Macdonald was born in 1959.
The middle child of three brothers.
Norm...
well, like a lot of people, he absorbed television
as a child, and the stuff that he saw as a kid
was the stuff that had the greatest influence.
This is the CBC television network.
In Canada, in those days, there wasn't much television.
'Hockey Night in Canada',
the comedy team of Wayne and Shuster,
which was the only comedy show on CBC
for a generation.
I'm Randy Dash, old friend of Norm's.
Norm and I had a common interest
we found right away was TV shows,
especially classic retro stuff.
Norm's father was almost a generation older than
the fathers of his schoolmates.
I understand that 'cause I have a father who is of the
same generation, and it's a bit cold and standoffish,
you don't display a lot of emotion and things.
And from what I saw, that's sort of how Percy was.
Norm was sort of like a young old man, or an old young man,
you know, he had these elderly catchphrases and
references and nuances, and certainly he
acquired those from his father.
Norm used his ease of, of creating
comedy and levity to impress his father.
He graduated from high school at the age of 14 in Ottawa
and Norm went to Carlton University in Ottawa
starting at the age of 16.
So, in every capacity he's ahead of the class.
Norm had just finished the year of journalism and quit.
At loose ends after leaving college,
Norm decides to take a shot at stand-up comedy.
He told me that he was going to do
amateur night open mic at Yuk Yuk's.
He was really nervous, very nervous,
even fidgety, couldn't focus.
They had a giant sign right behind the comic,
and Norm got up there and it was brilliant stuff.
He started in Ottawa at our Ottawa Yuk Yuk's.
We had an amateur night there,
run by the manager, Howard Wagner.
Norm went on, did his five minutes, and walked out.
And as he walked out, he muttered under
his breath to Howard, "Well, that's that.
I'll never be doing that again. I bombed."
So Howard ran after him into the street.
He said, "You didn't bomb at all, and in fact,
I want you back here every single amateur night
until you are ready to do regular nights."
Then sometime in the next year,
he moved to Toronto full time.
You ever get a present for your dog?
My grandmother sent my dog a sweater.
[Laughing]
What a waste of wool that is there, boy...
a sweater for a dog.
I don't want to put it on the dog,
just humiliates the dog, you know.
What happens if the dog gets lost?
He's wearing a sweater.
[Laughing]
How long is he gonna survive in the alleyways
with that on, you know?
[Laughing]
Them's means streets if you're a wiener dog
in a cardigan, you know.
I met Norm Macdonald back in the 80s and
he was performing at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto.
He was sort of part of the whole group of
young comedians that were kinda the...
kinda the new, the new vanguard of comedy in Toronto.
I'm Dave Foley, arguably a comedian.
Norm, after they started hiring him locally,
would then start to get billed in Montreal.
In 1986, norm Macdonald gets the biggest break
a young comedian can ask for.
It's a stage that catapults the careers of many of
the comedians of the day.
Every agent and manager in comedy is at
'Just for Laughs,' and there's a huge buzz
around Norm Macdonald.
I remember Norm getting sick back then.
But before he can capitalize on the opportunity,
Norm receives devastating news.
He is very private,
and he didn't speak much about it.
He was in the hospital.
Norm never talked about his physical stuff.
In 1987, Norm was diagnosed with cancer,
and I believe it was stomach cancer.
And I think he told me because we were trying to
book him and he kept saying, "I can't go.
I can't go. I can't do it."
And he told me why,
and he asked me not to tell people. He said,
"The only other person I told was Jeremy Hotz."
Who was a comic out of, out of Ottawa.
Well, at the time we thought, "Well,
let's go visit him." So we went all the way out to
some suburb that he was living in, in a high rise,
and Norm came to the door, and he was in just a
ratty bathrobe, and he had the complexion of concrete,
and, you know, we, we spent the afternoon talking to him
and stuff and trying to make him laugh.
Then we took a cab back and Jeremy said to me,
"He's gonna die, man. He's gonna die."
And he didn't.
Norm takes a break to recuperate,
then a year later he returns to the stage.
Norm was starting to get these gigs.
There was this gristmill of just throwing stand-up comics
on TV constantly, and so
Norm was getting exposure that way.
But I think to Norm personally,
'The Pat Sajak Show' didn't really mean much to him.
'George Schlatter's Comedy Club,'
that appearance was something he wasn't
proud of, and 'Star Search,' I think
he found kind of demeaning.
Norm borrowed a suit from somebody because
he didn't own his own suit.
He looked like he's in a David Byrne music video
with these giant overside shoulders, you know.
Norm had only one prize in mind.
And now making his network television debut,
ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Norm Macdonald.
-Norm? -[Applauding]
So I had his dream, do you ever have a dream,
and then you wake up right in the middle of a great dream,
and then you're back in your stinking life again?
[Laughing]
So then you try to fall asleep, re-dream it.
Norm was completely elated to appear on
'Late Night with David Letterman.'
That was one thing he had always been working towards.
He hadn't heard anyone else quite structure a joke
the way Norm did. You know?
That slow delivery, that- [Stammering]
I tell ya.
You ever lie for no reason at all?
Just all of a sudden a big lie spills out of
your evil head there? You know?
You don't even know like a guy come up to you, go,
"Hey, you ever see that movie with Meryl Streep
and a horse"? And you go, "Yes."
[Laughing]
And in the back of your head you go,
"What the hell am I lying about over here"?
[Laughing]
"I stand to gain nothing by this lie."
[Laughing]
"The hell am I thinking back here in my head"?
Norm Macdonald's style of comedy was a
brilliant mix of, sort of an, "Aw shucks.
I'm a little naive about the world."
I don't know, man. I gotta get in shape,
that's what I gotta do. Work out, be a big,
I haven't worked out for a... ever.
-I never worked out. -[Laughing]
I was gonna lie there again.
Mixed in with a very smart subversive tone,
so that the audiences weren't sure
where this guy was coming from.
You ever meet those old guys,
doesn't matter what the hell they do to themselves,
you know, they still grow old?
[Laughing]
Be the oldest bastard you ever met in your life,
you know? Guy goes,
"Every day I smoke four packs of cigarettes."
[Laughing]
"I drink a bottle of Jack Daniels,
and I hit myself in the head with a shovel every day."
[Laughing & applauding]
"I'd like to die."
Norm is becoming a hot ticket on the stand-up circuit,
but just when his career looks about to explode
he reveals an entirely different,
darker side of himself.
We used to go on trips, the comics and myself.
We used to go to Vegas a lot,
and we took Norm on one of these trips.
It was the first time he'd ever even been in a casino.
And the way the trip would start was we would
go to this, sort of downscale casino.
Not to gamble, but for the footlong hotdog,
which was only a buck.
And we look over, Norm's not having a hot dog,
Norm's already gambling.
On that trip he never even checked into his room.
All he did was play at the tables,
and refused to even,
he wouldn't go for dinner with us, he wouldn't,
we went to a couple of shows, he didn't want to go to shows.
Well, I'd never seen anything like it.
This was the thing that was his vice.
Something just clicked in his brain.
♪
Ladies and gentlemen, Norm Macdonald!
It's 1991, and now living in Los Angeles
Norm's career hits a new peak.
He's offered his own HBO special.
Wow! Good to see you, good crowd here.
How are you doing tonight? You alright?
Yeah!
[Sighing] Well it's good to be here, man.
I came down here, I got a, I got a lift down here.
We drove down, me and my two buddies there,
and four hours it took us to drive down here.
And I was in the backseat all the way.
You ever be in the backseat for a long trip?
Oh man, does that stink or what?
Man! What a rough place that is.
And when there's only 3 of you in the car, you know,
and you're in the backseat, you know,
you know you're not the most popular guy in the car.
[Laughing]
Nothing back there.
You can't talk to them, you know?
You got that class barrier, front seat,
back seat thing there, you can't...
you can't smash through that, you know?
You ever try and just stick your head into the front seat?
-You go, "Hi"! -[Laughing]
"What are you guys talking about?
It's me from the backseat."
[Laughing]
"Okay, I'll go back then."
It was not unusual for a comedian to skyrocket,
because the industry was just discovering stand-up as
an art form, and they were basically giving TV deals
and promoting anyone who they thought potentially
could be a sitcom star.
Norm fit the bill.
Dennis Miller gave me my first job on his talk show
that he had for a couple of days.
Now, how'd you do it?
You went in and pitched yourself?
I mean, how do you get that first break to go on
the Dennis Miller show?
Well, the only way I ever got anything is
I did stand-up, and some guys would see me.
Like, Roseanne saw me.
I didn't watch 'Roseanne' at the time.
I remember hearing that Norm got hired as a writer on
'Roseanne' and that was a big deal.
Norm's work on Roseanne means
he's suddenly flush with cash.
He now has more money than ever to gamble away.
Norm would work 12 to 14 hours a day in the writer's
room of 'Roseanne.' They'd finish up,
and he and another guy from there would just get in a car
and like zip to The Commerce.
The Commerce is a small casino on the outskirts of LA.
Imagine being in a giant bus station,
and if everything was gone, like all the stores and
everything, and instead of that there were poker tables.
Now, poker clubs in California are legal,
so it's completely legal gambling,
but they're pretty degenerate places.
We'd be there, there'd be guys eating super
greasy food, and they're not the kinds of guys who are
gonna sit there with, like, you know, wash and dries.
You know, cleaning up their hands
before they touch the cards.
They would just touch the cards with their greasy hands.
You know, it was a pretty crazy environment.
You could be there for days if you wanted.
I mean if your money held out and your stamina held out and
you wanted to keep gambling.
You were in there to play poker,
and Norm fit right in. He loved playing poker there.
So, play poker all night, then they go right back to
'Roseanne' the next day.
Despite Norm's endless hours at the poker tables,
his work on 'Roseanne' flourishes,
soon attracting talent scouts from 'Saturday Night Live.'
I didn't think Norm was gonna get big.
I didn't.
And then as soon as the 'Saturday Night Live'
thing happened...
okay, it's real.
In October 1993, Norm makes his debut
on 'Saturday Night Live.'
I wasn't surprised at all that Norm landed at SNL.
He had the perfect credentials.
He had an original voice, he was fearless,
and he looked really good on camera.
But they really cleaned him up on SNL,
you know, got him out of his plaid shirts.
And they also saw in him as somebody who could
really kill it on the update desk,
which is a huge component of the show.
He wanted to do the closest thing to stand-up that
you could do on SNL.
Hired as a regular cast member,
SNL producer Lorne Michaels soon discovers the
perfect vehicle for Norm's style.
Hi, I'm Norm Macdonald, and now the fake news.
He had that exquisite delivery.
In Walnut Creek, California, anyone who turns in his gun
can get free therapy, and anyone who doesn't
turn in his gun can get free anything.
[Laughing]
Laughter is one response to comedy,
but I don't think it's the only response to comedy,
and Norm embodied that.
Norm saw... bombing
as part of the art form.
"Wrong-Way Corrigan".
A man who once flew all the way to Ireland by mistake,
died this week at the age of 88.
"It was just like him," said his wife.
"He was trying to live."
[Laughing]
When the audience didn't laugh...
He got it all wrong.
He stared at the camera, and just
dared you not to laugh.
47 year old Adrienne Brown, wife of soul legend
James Brown, died suddenly last week.
Most shocking of all...
she was not killed by James Brown.
He really took big swings, that if it failed,
he had to so boldly hold on to his commitment.
If a joke died at dress,
when he was doing Weekend Update,
he would commit to the joke and do it on air because
Norm liked the joke.
And in Polk City, Florida, a man had his stolen car
returned, but the cremated remains of his father,
I say they cremated remains of his father,
are still missing.
Don't I know it.
[Laughing]
[Mumbling]
[Laughing]
Now pulling in a reported six figures from his work on
'Saturday Night Live,' Norm finds ever bigger
opportunities to feed a habit
that's become an obsession.
He would go right from SNL to gamble in Atlantic City.
I mean, he told me that if you watch old episodes of SNL
and everybody's on stage hugging each other and,
you know, celebrating at the end, he goes,
"Often you wouldn't see me, 'cause I'd be in a limo
heading down to Atlantic City."
As Norm's thirst for risk at the casino, amplifies.
so does his impulse to drive his comedy into
more and more controversial territory.
Hey, it's comedian Jim Breuer.
And now ladies and gentlemen, Jim Breuer!
Here he is.
Summer of '96 going to Iowa, big show.
Me, Darrell Hammond, it's our first year,
and Norm Macdonald.
Now, before the show they're like, "Listen." You know,
"There's kids." You know, "There's students here.
Just no cursing." You know, "Try not to talk about
sex and mention sexuality.
Don't make fun of church." And me,
I'm like, "I'm on 'Saturday Night Live'.
This is, this is me every, yeah, I get it.
Live TV, just same thing." Norm goes out,
he's smoking a cigarette.
And they're already like, "Oh my God,
he's smoking in front of."
And he goes- [Inhaling]
What did you say to them?
I was just talking, you know, like, I don't have,
my stand-up act, I just talk about
whatever I'm thinking about.
-Mm-hm. -So, I went-
It was about having sex with an animal.
♪
And...
People are getting up,
and, they're grabbing their kids.
They're running up the aisles.
People are flocking for the exit.
Next day...
kicked out of the state.
The governor wants him out,
kicked off of the golf thing...
I mean, it was, it was 'USA Today.'
It was all over the place.
I think he said afterwards, he goes,
"I don't care about if people left.
I only cared about the kids that were there.
They had a good time, and I had a good time,
that's all that matters."
-Quite a world we live in. -[Chuckling]
Incidentally, Ms. Mastin will be represented in her
civil suit by feminist attorney Gloria Allred,
who is also quite unattractive.
Norm continues to push buttons on Weekend Update,
starting to make increasingly questionable
jokes about women.
No box of chocolates that one.
It's really, really interesting and
kind of bizarre that someone who had
such a fresh aesthetic and
artistic ability was really not able to apply that in
any kind of interesting way to women.
Who are safer drivers, men or women?
Well, according to a new survey,
55% of adults feel that women are most responsible
for minor fender benders,
while 78% blame men for most fatal crashes.
Please note that the percentages in these
pie graphs do not add up to 100% because
the math was done by a woman.
[Laughing]
You know, it's called a punchline for a reason.
It's supposed to punch.
It's supposed to hit and elicit that laugh.
For those of you hissing at that joke,
it should be noted that that joke was
written by a woman, so...
now you don't know what the hell to do, do you?
[Laughing & applauding]
No, I'm just kidding. We don't hire women.
[Laughing & applauding]
Norm is seemingly immune to criticism,
but then he starts attacking another subject and
won't let it go.
According to retailers, the most popular
Halloween mask this year is OJ Simpson,
and the most popular Halloween greeting is,
"I'll kill you and that guy
who's bringing over your glasses, or treat."
I was there when OJ was acquitted,
that was my first season at SNL,
and Norm was passionate about the fact that
OJ Simpson had gotten away with murder.
But his boss is a friend of OJ's, and,
and kept calling Lorne Michaels to say,
"You gotta tell Norm, just, he could do every
other joke just no more OJ."
I'm Norm Macdonald and now the fake news.
Well, it is finally official, murder is legal
in the state of California.
[Cheering]
He deliberately antagonized Don Ohlmeyer,
who kept telling him to lay off OJ,
and he wouldn't do it. You know?
No more OJ. We don't want to hear any more...
and the more he was told not to
poke the bear,
he not only poked the bear, he was kicking the bear.
Well, let's get to OJ. OJ Simpson.
OJ Simpson.
OJ Simpson. And OJ. OJ Simpson trial.
So, he, he kept doing the OJ jokes,
but that's what made him great.
That's what made him, and that's what excited him more,
because it was more dangerous,
and that's what made him wanna do it more
because you told him not to do it.
That made it funnier.
Norm doesn't seem to care
about any offence
he may be causing,
then he is given one more warning.
He was called into Don Ohlmeyer's office at NBC,
and Don Ohlmeyer said to Norm,
"Look, I know you're talented,
but you're too slow on Weekend Update.
You need to pick up the pace."
Well, you're telling that to a comedy genius.
Last weekend in Washington,
a new museum dedicated to broadcast jour-
[Gagging] What the ---- was that?
[Laughing]
Last weekend in Washington, a new museum...
[Laughing & cheering continues]
Ah-ha...
My farewell performance. Last weekend...
You can't really take the culture of comedy to the
next level if you're not taking those big swings,
if you're not taking those big risks.
I've heard people say that they thought
Norm was reckless.
I disagree with that completely.
Norm was committed.
Norm Macdonald really did not wanna be told
what he could and couldn't do.
Norm refuses to stop talking about OJ,
until he pushes too far.
Our first guest is one of the funniest men
working in television today.
He is the anchor of 'Weekend Update' on the popular
'Saturday Night Live' program,
please welcome Norm Macdonald.
There is a tape of him on Letterman... that day!
-How you doing? -I'm doing good. Oh.
No, that's alright I'm just, I'm just slow, that's okay.
-Happy New Year, buddy. -Happy New Year to you.
Thank you very much for being here.
You don't mind if I ask you a question?
-What's that? -I hear today...
...I hear this story and it is like this
press release that you got your ass fired.
-Is that true? -Yeah.
-No, you didn't get fired. -Yeah, they fired me.
-No, they didn't fire you. -No, I'm serious.
I talked to a guy that said I'm fired. Well-
Who fired you? First of all,
let's get some names here.
Let's get this on the record.
They said that this guy Don Ohlmeyer,
who turns out to be the president-
Yeah. Now I know Don Ohlmeyer and
just between you and me, he's an idiot.
So he goes, "Oh yeah, I'm, I'm firing you there from
the show." And then I said, "Oh, that's not good."
-[Laughing] -You know...
And then I said, "Why is that now"?
And he goes, "Oh, you're not, you know, you're not funny."
And then I said, I said, "Holy Lord,
that's even worse news." You know?
[Laughing]
I go, "No, I don't got nothing to fall back on."
-No. -[Cheering]
-He's a good man. -He just fired you!
What do you mean he's a good- what is wrong with you?
Weeks later, Norm relays the conversation
he had with Don Ohlmeyer on Howard Stern,
and suddenly, who was behind the firing
seems less clear.
So then I said, "But this decision is coming from you,
right"? And then he goes, "What"?
And then I go, "Because, you know,
'cause I talked to people on the show, Lorne and stuff,
and they're for me." And he goes, "Well,
if that's what they tell you, sure, blame me."
But the reality remains, Norm Macdonald is out.
In the aftermath of his firing
Norm appears to accept his defeat,
but his reckless impulse to risk it all
continues to ramp up.
In 1999... I spent a crazy lost weekend
with Norm Macdonald in Las Vegas.
I was writing a lot for 'Details' magazine at
the time, and I knew that Norm liked to gamble,
but I didn't know that much about his
gambling proclivities.
Norm was performing at the House of Blues
in Mandalay Bay, and the idea was he would take
what he earned for the performance,
which was $40,000,
and either double the money or lose it all.
If he doubled the money, that would've been awesome.
If I was a betting man, I would've bet that
he was not going to double the money.
[Norm reading] So why the attraction?
Most people would think it's the wins that
keep the gambler going,
but any gambler knows this is not true.
As you place your chips on the crap's table,
you feel anxiety and impatience.
It is a particular moment, a magic moment.
It is after the red dice are thrown,
but before they lay still on the green felt
where they fall.
It is when the dice are in the air.
And as long as they are there, time stops.
As long as the red dice are in the air,
a gambler has hope,
and hope is a wonderful thing.
Norm blew $10,500 on craps,
and then he was like,
"Okay, let's go play blackjack."
We're sitting there playing blackjack.
I'm like betting, you know, minimum bets,
he's of course betting way more.
We lost 17,000 at blackjack.
Norm, like, doesn't even seem to care about losing,
it's like not a big deal to him.
So we're back up in his room and he goes,
"Can you loan me $10,000"? I'm like,
"Norm, I don't have that kind of money with me."
But I did feel like I was party to the loss. So I go,
"Okay Norm, I'll, I'll loan you a thousand."
Sure enough, he was back in about five minutes,
and he blew the money, so now he's broke.
I loaned him $1,000 and I got back a cheque from him,
like, in no time at all.
And there was a note attached to it that said,
"Better sorry than safe."
Norm's gambling addiction has reached shocking proportions,
something he later reveals on TV.
Have you ever been devastated and lost like
a big bet?
I've lost everything I own three times.
[Laughing]
[Stuttering] Like, tapped out?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That happened to me three times. But since,
I've gotten control of it since.
Actually after you lose everything,
sometimes you kind of feel good.
It's odd.
But you feel like, you feel like, clean.
You go, "Hey man, I feel alright." You know?
Yeah, this was my big statement.
On the boardwalk, I threw 60,000 into the ocean.
Yeah, to quit. That was my thing,
"I'm gonna quit."
I guess it's like people that know
they're gonna hit bottom, you know?
And kind of want it.
-Yeah. -Because it does get...
It's exhausting.
Taking the risk.
I think that's what he was addicted to.
Throwing dice, not knowing where it's gonna land,
is 100% the same as
spinning out a joke and
not knowing where it's gonna land.
And it's almost like
his gambler's mentality is what
made him such a risk-taking comedian.
I remember a psychiatrist once telling me that
I gamble in order to escape the reality of life.
And I told him, "That's why everyone does everything."
I think Norm's gambling,
the toll it took was...
mostly financial.
I didn't see it really take a toll on him
in terms of his spirit.
He would lose a lot of money, he would need money,
he would have to keep working.
But Norm didn't mind working.
I think Norm loved working.
What brought you down, gambling?
Well, some, some have said
it's been the ruin of me, Larry.
-The ruin? -But I don't.
If Norm Macdonald had a dark side,
I don't think that it was
all about his relationship to gambling.
I think that that was a symptom of something much
more interesting and much more complicated,
which is the darkest of all dark sides,
is this relationship we all have with death.
Where most of us live in complete denial.
I mean, if you die, the cancer also dies
at exactly the same time.
So that to me is not a loss, that's a draw.
That's a, you know what I mean?
SFX: [Heart beat]
[Norm] My biggest problem is ruminating about death.
If I could get over that somehow.
[Interviewer] And you do that regularly?
[Norm] I try to read ----ing books about it and shit.
[Dan] I think Norm's dark side was,
he was acutely aware of it,
thinking about it all the time, and everything he did,
his comedy and his gambling,
was all about cheating death
to kind of prove that he was still alive.
After a string of sitcoms, movies,
and personal projects through the early 2000s,
the next decade sees Norm still gigging and quietly
becoming a late night fixture on talk shows,
settling into his role as a comedian's comedian.
He was the ultimate comic's comic.
You hear it a lot like, oh, they're a comic's comic.
But with Norm, like, no one would argue that.
Norm Macdonald. Norm Macdonald, Norm!
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
the very funny Norm Macdonald.
Norm Macdonald!
Ladies and gentlemen, Norm Macdonald.
Norm was the very last comic
to do stand-up on Dave's CBS show
before Dave went off the air.
Nobody made Letterman laugh harder than Norm Macdonald,
so this was the perfect moment.
And you know, you know you guys,
we all know that David Letterman was the
greatest talk show, who, host who ever lived, but I-
[Cheering & applauding continues]
I remember Dave differently because the first time
I saw him, I was 13 years old.
I was living in- [Voice breaking]
[Chuckling & gasping]
I was living in Toronto, Canada,
and I went to a talk show they had there, and
David Letterman was the stand-up comedian
on the show. And I loved stand-up.
So anyways, I'd just like to say I know that
Mr. Letterman is, ah...
not for the mockish and he has,
he has no truck for the sentimental,
but if something is true, it is not sentimental.
And I say, in truth, I love you.
Oh my God.
Norm was standing there, and Letterman came over
and he, he was crying.
And, and I thought, that's the most emotional
I've ever seen Norm Macdonald. Ever.
It meant a lot to Dave, and it meant a lot to Norm.
Now keep in mind, Norm...
had to have known he was sick at the time.
Norm! Oh my God!
[Applauding]
Very funny, Norm, and thank you.
-Thank you for everything. -Thank you.
Norm Macdonald, ladies and gentlemen.
That was very sweet, Norm.
He knew that he had a terminal illness at the time
that he did that Letterman performance,
but he was really a humble guy.
And I think for him
it was all about Letterman and,
and not about himself.
Norm's heartfelt appearance on Letterman reveals a side
of the comedian never seen before in public,
and the media takes notice.
When you're doing stand-up, you know, you, you-
-It's false by nature. -Yes.
And then all of a sudden you kind of opened up
as to who you were for real.
Yeah.
And you showed Letterman how much you cared about him.
Netflix offers him his own talk show, and suddenly
Norm Macdonald is back in the spotlight.
Do you miss cocaine?
Oh, there's a dog on the set, Chevy.
I never went to a strip club.
Well, we got tonight.
I feel bad that Roseanne got fired.
But when Norm speaks to a Hollywood reporter
while promoting the show, he puts himself in
the centre of an ugly controversy.
He openly sympathizes with comedian Louis C.K.,
who is widely accused of sexual harassment.
Five women came forward with sexual misconduct
allegations against comedian Louis C.K.
I was walking to set to shoot my scene and he
approached me and got really close to my face and said,
"Can I ask you something"?
And I said, "Yes." And he said,
"Can I masturbate in front of you in your dressing room"?
Norm Macdonald did an interview about
this new Netflix talk show he's doing.
He's promoting it, and he made comments about the
'Me Too' movement and his friend Roseanne and
Louis C.K., and here's what he said.
"There are very few people that have gone through
what they have, losing everything in a day.
Of course, people will go, 'What about the victims?'
But you know what?
The victims didn't have to go through that."
Essentially, Norm Macdonald's argument is
Louis C.K. lost his comedy special,
he's lost a lot of cultural cache,
people are mad at him,
his legacy has been tarnished.
And he says, "People say, 'What about
what the victims go through?'
Well, the victims never went through that."
Norm attempts to explain his statements in a
social media post, but criticism continues to build.
I don't wanna make light of being the
centre of a public shaming, as Louis C.K. was,
I'm sure that's devastating to experience,
but it's interesting that Norm Macdonald's
immediate thought was, well, that's way worse
than experiencing sexual assault.
Like is that an equivalent that
we're all comfortable drawing?
Is that really what we're going to say
is the baseline here?
Norm's comments begin to cast a chill over his career.
Comedian Norm Macdonald has had a 'Tonight Show'
appearance nixed after some controversial remarks.
Every year I do a big charity event, which raises,
actually a couple of million dollars for a kid's charity,
like Sick Kids or something.
And we floated the idea of,
we could get Norm Macdonald.
We thought, wow, they're gonna love us for that.
And the committee came back and said,
"No, we don't want Norm Macdonald because
he defended Louis C.K."
It does seem as though he was pretty taken aback by
the backlash, which was so intense that he just sort of
stopped doing press cycle for his new show.
Appearing on 'The View,' Norm tries to
explain himself and mitigate the damage.
But you kind of lose me when you imply that the hardship
that your friend Louis C.K.-
he's a friend of mine too, really-
I know him a long time.
That the hardship that he went through is equal to the
hardship that the victims went through.
That doesn't, that doesn't compute.
No, it's not true.
Can you explain yourself a little there?
Yeah. That's not, that's not what I was saying.
When this happened, I was working for Roseanne when
Roseanne's thing went down, and I called her the next day
and she was crying the whole time I was talking to her.
I've known Roseanne for a while and I was worried
about her 'cause she, she seemed really, really
in a bad place.
And I said, "I can't really talk to you about this 'cause
I've never been through anything like this."
And I said, "I know Louis, and he's been through this,
where he's had everything taken from him."
And I said, um...
"Not many of us have gone through this, and,
and so you should talk to each other 'cause you've,
you've..." And then the guy said,
"What about the victims"? And I said,
"Well, the victims haven't gone through this."
It's too little too late.
By the time the dust settles, Netflix chooses to
end Norm's talk show after one season.
A shocking loss in the comedy world today,
comedian Norm Macdonald has died after
a private battle with cancer.
On September 14th, 2021,
Norm Macdonald dies of leukemia,
suddenly laying bare a secret he has long been hiding.
He wasn't open about his health issues,
which apparently were incredibly shocking to
a lot of us who said, who found out that
he had been suffering for years and years.
I...
I, I had no clue.
The way Norm was able to keep his illness secret was
because he's so respected that I think between
his right to privacy and not telling many people,
the few who knew weren't gonna say a word.
I, I spoke to Norm, the last time,
the July before he passed away that fall.
And I knew something was wrong.
Spidey senses.
Norm's illness was definitely a surprise to me,
and not only me, to many people.
I'm sure there was a few in his family that knew about it.
I, I don't think it was
hard to hide it 'cause,
you don't talk about it, it's hidden.
We were making a run across the open...
Richard Farnsworth was nominated for
an Academy Award for the movie.
And if he had said he was, he was filled with cancer,
he would've won for sure. -Sure.
But instead, he didn't say it.
And in fact, no one knew it.
His family didn't know it. He kept it from everyone.
So that, to me, is courageous.
Like, you're, you know, you're not being a burden to
your family, you know, they know nothing about it,
and then you're gone.
His passion was doing comedy and doing interesting,
funny things in his life, and...
I don't, I don't know this, but I would imagine
he felt that if it was public,
it would colour what he was doing,
how he was doing it,
and how he was being received.
And the Laugh Factory's marquee in Hollywood tonight
lit up with Macdonald's bright smile and the message,
'Make God laugh.'
♪
In light of the controversies that dogged him
in the last few years of his life,
Norm's legacy has become more complicated.
I didn't know Norm- like again,
I feel like I knew surface Norm.
I never got to know the deeper layers of Norm.
He never would let, I don't, I don't know if
he let too many people in there.
There certainly was a darkness embedded in
all of Norm's comedy.
I mean, he could do corny stuff, sure,
but there was almost a, a resentment or
anger built in there.
I think after Norm Macdonald died,
there is this really big impulse
in popular culture and especially in comedy,
to want to just celebrate him and
his life in this uncomplicated,
lovely way, you know.
And I think a lot of people experience that as like,
"Oh, what a buzz kill. You know, I just
wanted to love this man, uncomplicated."
And what I think some of the
women have said is,
"I didn't do this to his legacy.
He did it to his own legacy."
I think Norm Macdonald's legacy
is that he was a
completely unique voice in comedy.
He is one of the finest anchors that SNL
ever had on 'Weekend Update.'
That's all for now, folks.
That's the way it is, goodnight.
You know, the people that leave legacies,
people like Norm are...
just brave in their art.
And anybody who's non-conforming
inspires the next generation
to not conform.
I don't think Norm was ever ambitious.
I think he- the, the fact that he,
he kind of ambled his way into success, I think.
He didn't really, he never seemed driven.
You know, he never seemed like a guy
who wanted to be a big star.
He just seemed like a guy who, like,
wanted to tell good jokes.
When I have my funeral, you know?
And you know at most of these funerals-
[Whimpering] Crying and sad and everything like that,
and that's what I'd like, you know?
I don't want- I've heard of other ones,
"Let's have a party!" Ah, ah, ah, ah.
-Whoa, whoa! -No party.
There'll be a lot of party days later,
but right now this is, I'm dead.