Laugh with Norm McDonald...
- Thread starter t-noah
- Start date
I'd imagine there's a lot of people out there that, because it wasn't typical comedic softball humor, or the joke was so bad, don't think he was very funny, when in actuality in a way the joke was on them.
He definitely prepared stuff as he came on Conan BUT the whole time you still have no idea where he's going with it.
Right. He prepared probably a lot more than we know about. Many times you can hear the same joke and delivery one year to the next.
On the other hand he had a great way of ad-libbing also and could easily go with the flow, change things up. One of a kind.
His appearances on Conan are simply the best.
Yeah, you can tell he cracked Conan up for real (rather than the fake laughter that hosts usually do).
He's said precisely this somewhere talking about how he wrote. He started out scripting each piece/pause as many comics do, but somewhere along the line he just started playing with how he got there.
That's just Conan. One of the best and most underappreciated Late Night hosts.
He was pretty awesome on Letterman as well. His story telling style was just so damn funny. I remember watching this live when I was maybe 10 and finding it hilarious and I still do.
As much as I join others who mourn this loss I immediately thought of his closest comedy friends and the first to come to mind was Bob Saget. Bob has a podcast and on his page there is a 37 minute tribute to Norm. I don't know how Bob got through 37 minutes just a day after the news. You will laugh and you will shed a few tears.
Everyone tries to tell the edgiest joke at a roast and Norm just rambles through old timey dad jokes and then speaks from the heart. A true rebel, Norm had a bit of Andy Kaufman in him and his appearance on the View talking about Bill Clinton being a murderer is one of the best IDGAF moments ever on mainstream TV. An absolute legend.
Some things to notice in that bit and some things I just read/heard about, that I think are accurate:
-he was trolling the concept of the roast to begin with by bombing on purpose.
-he was told to really go after Saget, but was seriously good friends with Bob and didn't want to say bad things.
-he got the jokes from some really old book of jokes.
-it's funny how many of the comics/roasters didn't get the bit. Bob Saget knew right away.
Bob talked about this very stuff in this pod tribute to Norm.
This is so raw and great. Don't expect a celebrity tribute to have this much feeling to it.
Forget how you may or may not feel about Dennis Miller. Norm with Dennis was a great combo. I listen to this 3 hour video often as I am falling asleep and still laugh out loud sometimes (ventroloquist bit is NWFW but hilarious). I normally don't care about celebrity deaths but this one is still weird to me and still hurts. I thought we would have at least 10-15 more years of Norm.
Having read Norm's book (Based on a True Story) I really wished he could have lived longer to write at least one if not more novels/books. He had a clear intellect and would have been great to have him reflect on life in written form for just a little bit longer. I obviously never met or knew Norm but he seemed like a compassionate and deep human. Sad that he now longer is alive. I guess he reached a draw with cancer. Goodbye Norm.
He and Bob were apparently pretty good friends and did a lot of standup around the same time coming up. I think they met as like damn near teenagers
