Norm Macdonald deserves a better thread than I can give him
I just wanted to say that his book, Based on a True Story, is pretty great for a fan and you can get it in audiobook form, which is also read by him, so it's 7 hours of Norm telling bullshit stories directly to you
you get to hear the platonic ideal of the moth joke
it's on Amazon with Audible, and if you have a Prime account you can get 2 free books as a trial
on an unrelated note, I have learned to convert .aax files to .mp3
outside of that a lot of great stories and videos of Norm have come out in the past week
Conan has a great long send up podcast, doing his best to articulate what it was that made Norm special:
https://www.earwolf.com/episode/conan-talks-about-norm-macdonald/he also has posted a lot of high res clips from old shows, unprecedented quality of stuff we've only had shitty VHS copies of until now:
Rolling Stone released a never before published interview that had happened back in 2018, which is surprisingly candid and honest.
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/norm-macdonald-lost-interview-1226722/Norm Macdonald Has a Show was genius in its way, though it never became a sensation, largely because its launch was torpedoed by a public-relations crisis. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter to promote the show, Macdonald expressed sympathy for disgraced comedians Louis C.K. and Roseanne Barr, and a furor erupted. For a while, Macdonald became something of a third rail.
The chat I had by phone with Macdonald in advance of the show’s debut was nowhere near controversial. We covered his philosophies on comedy and late-night, why he likes Twitter, his run-ins with Trump, and, naturally, the suspension of civil liberties in Canada in the 1970s. But, because of the hot water bubbling up around him at the time, the interview was held from publication. Now, here it is, a reminder of how inquisitive, forthcoming, and unvarnished Macdonald was.
(in other words he was briefly cancelled so we shunned him but now that he's dead everybody loves him again so here you go
)
Why are you so mean to your sidekick Adam Eget?
I’ve always loved sidekicks. I loved Paul Shaffer, who was almost hipper than Letterman, which was really cool. [Johnny Carson’s sidekick] Ed McMahon was just a dunce, but he was really funny; very, very funny and he served his part well. I decided to take that Ed McMahon scenario and just amplify it up to where it was like when Johnny would rip Ed teasingly, but if you just abused the guy unapologetically. So, I didn’t get a comedian, because I knew I would get blowback. Adam Eget works at the Comedy Store and it’s funny because he doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s very nice; it allows me to just abuse him very, very hard. I had to stop saying certain things about him because then he gets a million Twitter threats because I just make stuff up, like that he’s a Holocaust denier, or something.
Did people actually believe that Adam Eget is a Holocaust denier?
Yes, amazingly. I started realizing when I was reading Twitter comments that people are angry about it. I remember when I was at SNL and Lorne Michaels, who is very wise, told me, “You know, [you think] you’re really popular on the show, because people will come up and say how good you are. But all of the people who don’t like you won’t approach you.” He said it to put you in your place, but it’s true. Everybody thought they were so great, which people in show business tend to do because people in crowds come to see them. It’s like Trump — how can Trump think he’s unpopular if there’s entire auditoriums cheering him? That’s why I like the Twitter. I actually like the Twitter, because it allows performers to see that no, you’re not that popular.
But “the Twitter” is also a place where people take things very literally and do not pick up on irony.
I trust that if a comedian says it, it’s a joke. I started realizing that it would be a terrible thing to go through life taking everything literally and not understanding irony. I see that more and more. If I was onstage and said, “You know who was great? Hitler!” If you thought that was serious, what a terrible life you have. If you see a comic, then it’s clearly a joke. If you’re in public saying that, then it must be a joke. So, sometimes if I say something about Adam Eget, he’ll say, “Please don’t put that in.” I don’t want him to get murdered or anything.
lots more at the link
also, complete archive of the Norm Macdonald Live show which had been removed from Youtube:
https://archive.org/details/Norm_Macdonald_Livepost other Norm things!