Norm MacDonald

I first stumbled across Norm’s comedy by accident, with YouTube’s algorithm working the wonders that it does in suggesting new and exciting video rabbit holes to fall into. My first prominent memory was a video of him promoting one of his podcast sponsors, the “Mangrate,” which he read, was ‘revolutionising the way people grill… Chicken, steak, has never tasted so good,” prompting a spit take from his guest Nick Swardson. It was not the content of the words that made me laugh as much as Norm’s delivery, and the way his emphasis brought the phrases alive and turned the seemingly mundane and shallow, into something deeply hilarious.

From then on, I was hooked, and spent many hours listening to his podcast, with a roster of legendary comedic talents like Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Einstein (Super Dave Osbourne) and Tom Green, providing the backdrop for Norm’s acerbic exchanges with his trusty sidekick Adam Eget. I learned from him to appreciate comedy as performance art, that there could be an underlying narrative tying together an entire hour and a half of podcast conversation, and how frequent non-sequitur could take the narrative in many strange and funny new directions.

 I was then led on to his many appearances on late shows with Conan O’Brien, David Letterman and various others, in which he would purposely begin with the most convoluted and unassuming ‘shaggy dog,’ stories, only to bring it back at the end with a killer punchline, leaving his host and the audience dumbfounded. All the while, he carried the tone of an old timer bumbling his way through the joke. I had heard some comparison of his style to the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where upon his first appearance, Wonka hobbles up the red carpet towards his guests with a walking stick, only to begin toppling forward and then land a perfect somersault and finish ‘ta-da!’ That was a recurring theme in Norm’s delivery, in conversation and in comedy.

Beneath the innocent demeanour and childlike response to people’s admiring derision of his deadpan jokes, I learned a few more serious and inspiring things from Norm. His worldview came to me at a time where I was reconciling and overthinking my relationship with life, death, dying and everything in between. He related to me through his thoughts that life is something that should be faced head on, and to distract and lie to yourself by engaging with things that materially don’t matter, is a terrible waste of the short time we have on Earth. I was encouraged enough by his fearlessness, in bombing on stage and not getting the response an average comedian would expect from their audience. To in fact enjoy a scathing negative response as much as an adoring positive one, and to pursue your art because it is what makes you happy to write and perform, not because you are trying to pander to another person’s expectations. Leaning into one’s imperfections is a hallmark of what it means to be alive, furthermore, the benefits of seeing things from many discernible angles allows us to tailor our lives to what defines us best.

I was able to focus from this point, on doing whatever it was that made me happy, and to care a lot less about what other people thought, as what is naturally good about you will allow the right people to gravitate in and out of your life, therefore leaving you with the right balances in friends, family, and work. It might be said that any of his perceived failures in life, were because he decided to go against the grain, rather than what a TV executive or modern media expected him to do or say. For example, his firing from Saturday Night Live, because he made too many ‘Weekend Update’ jokes about OJ Simpson’s murder trial, which upset Don Ohlmeyer, an exec at NBC who was a friend of Simpson’s. He carried on with the jokes as a service to comedy, rather than to sacrifice his pursuit of art to appease some guy in a suit. He also expressed sympathy to the modern day ‘cancellation’ of Roseanne Barr, following her comments on the ‘Me Too’ movement, and proceeded to defend himself in front of a panel of ladies on ‘The View’ by making heartfelt and reserved apologies to all of them, rather than giving them any journalistic buzzwords or phrases to leech upon. These were examples of the smartest person in the room, playing the dumbest, yet simultaneously outsmarting and disarming everyone with seemingly little effort. Norm’s approach was a compliment to how multi-faceted comedy can be in single situations and finding the lightest and most direct route through the jargon and BS that dominates so much of today’s popular culture. He was a servant of honesty, and saw through people who were dishonest or narcissistic, and found ways to bring their ill-informed agenda down a peg without letting on that they were being ‘Norm’d.’

What Norm MacDonald achieved in breaking down the boundaries of what is possible as a comedian, conversationalist, and person, has gained the admiration of many comedy and media heavyweights across the world. Scrolling through Twitter this morning included tributes from Jim Carrey, John Cleese, Sarah Silverman, and even the likes of Mark Hamill and James Corden.

Not everything he said landed as a zinging joke, many even toed quite close to the edge of what would now be considered unacceptable. However, my argument in response to that would be that people have to make these mistakes to break new ground for what works and what doesn’t. What I will remember best is that Norm was not afraid to get things wrong and was self-aware that he was not perfect. He crawled through the murky ground of what are or aren’t good ideas, so that others could appreciate the dizzying highs of the ones that worked, and understand better why the ones that didn’t’, didn’t. Thank you for the laughs, Norm, and people across the world will surely have many more, immortalised in your many clips online of you doing what you did best.  

RIP