Remembering Norm Macdonald
Sounds Good!
It was sad to hear of the passing of Norm Macdonald late last week. Norm was a comedian’s comedian – and of course within hours of the news of his death (he’d had cancer for close to a decade, he’d kept it quiet) there was a line around the block wanting to cancel him for homophobic and sexist jokes that he made 20 and 30 years ago.
The last thing I want to do is offer a defence or shame someone for the feeling of outrage they have – when that outrage is trying to work for the good of people and on their behalf. But Norm’s target wasn’t the subject of the joke. Norm’s target was (usually) the hypocrisy and absurdity of Hollywood, and the mocking of rule-makers that decided what was and wasn’t allowed to be laughed at. So if Norm had a punchline wishing people were dead it wasn’t because he was cold and unfeeling – it was because he wanted to mock that type of response. And he wanted to call out the fake sincerity on both sides of that. Well, that’s my read anyway. And there’s a fearlessness to that which means he got it wrong a lot of the time too. And was far too cruel. And was deeply problematic. And was challenging on a level where you weren’t supposed to give a blanket endorsement.
Norm seemed to operate in a space of one-man satire. His vision was something you either got – and ran with – or you just didn’t get.
I spent a bit of time over the weekend thinking about this, re-reading Norm’s (fake) memoir and watching so many of the clips where he seemed to truly not give a fuck. That, these days, comes cross only as white male privilege. But as cruel as some of his jokes and blatant non-jokes were and are, as the time that Norm was delivering them there weren’t many capable of offering that sort of commentary in that inimitable way on mainstream TV.
The other thing about Norm is just how flawed he was - Jesse Mulligan tapped into some of that in his tribute on The Spinoff. The episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast is well worth listening to for essential background.
I never appreciated Norm or really knew he existed until a week ago when I discovered The Moth Joke and it floored me. (Seen him on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee but that doesn't count because it's a ten minute highly edited appertif amongst numerous other highly edited comics at their best).
One thing you notice about Norm, and Dave Chapelle is it's not the words, the delivery is everything. He knows exactly what to do at the Bob Saget Roast where he just stops and stares at Bob - who to his credit is "getting it" - or at the audience because that is what the joke requires to work. Other times his infectious mischevious grin would come on - any time he mentions O.J. Simpson for example, and he just ploughs ahead because to stop would be comedic quicksand.
A Master of his Craft.
That’s very sad news Simon