Norm MacDonald has died

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

There is an unease at times watching his material, albeit some from 20 years+ ago. His often jockish and nearly always white male associates, numerous barely veiled in irony sexist and homophobic remarks and crummy right leaning views.

That isn't to say that person shouldn't know how to be respectful to women or be inclined to be. This is bad stuff.

[bgmnts]

There is an unease at times watching his material, albeit some from 20 years+ ago. His often jockish and nearly always white male associates, numerous barely veiled in irony sexist and homophobic remarks and crummy right leaning views.

That isn't to say that person shouldn't know how to be respectful to women or be inclined to be. This is bad stuff.

Yeah, I mean I'm surprised people are surprised by the news to be honest.

[13 schoolyards]

Yeah, while this is depressing news, learning that a 61 year-old man who became famous in the 90s on SNL was a creep around women is a lot less surprising than I would have hoped it would be.

So he was hiding being a sex pest and that he was dying from cancer? It's like we hardly knew him at all

[Purple Toupee]

Fucking hell, things have gone from Sinbad to Sinworse

[wrec]

This piece by Kaleb Horton is probably the best appreciation of Norm I've read, and shows awareness that he wasn't unimpeachable. I used to correspond with Kaleb before he went pro as a writer, and he's the definition of a gent, who was on to Louis as a hypocrite way before all that blew up.

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/norm-macdonald-tribute-appreciation-1226839/

[Scrapey Fish]

This piece by Kaleb Horton is probably the best appreciation of Norm I've read, and shows awareness that he wasn't unimpeachable. I used to correspond with Kaleb before he went pro as a writer, and he's the definition of a gent, who was on to Louis as a hypocrite way before all that blew up.

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/norm-macdonald-tribute-appreciation-1226839/

Bit spoilerific that if you haven't read his book

[Twit 2]

Won't let me read it without subscribing. Can someone paste it in?

[Blinder Data]

Yes, unfortunately it's not so surprising that allegations of sexual harassment/assault have been made against Norm MacDonald. He came from a very 90s blokey stand-up world where that behaviour was prevalent and still knocks about with the same crowd. Mike Tyson too, even?

He courted controversy with his jokes/comments and some would like to think he was somehow "above" it all and being super-ironic. But I always thought he was just an old-school white dude with right-wing and old-fashioned opinions on politics, sexuality, etc. who happened to be one the funniest comedians ever.

[wrec]

Won't let me read it without subscribing. Can someone paste it in?



The True Story of Norm Macdonald, Comedy's Best Liar
by Kaleb Horton, rollingstone.com
September 15, 2021 09:15 AM

Norm MacDonald, performing at the Ice House in Pasadena, California, in 2003. Michael Schwartz/WireImage
Yesterday, Norm Macdonald, comedy legend, SNL cast member, and reluctant prose stylist, died after a battle with cancer. It ended in a draw; the cancer is dead too.

In one of his acts, Norm said: "When the fuckin' sickle of death is over my goddamn neck, I'm gonna be so cowardly. I'm afraid of going on Ferris wheels and shit. I'm not gonna be brave."

Like most of the assertions he made on stage over the years, this was a lie.

Norm was not a coward. He lived with cancer in secret for about a decade, writing and performing like always. He put out two stand-up specials. He did a show for Netflix. He stuck his neck out for people. He urged forgiveness as a spiritual imperative. He posted on Twitter a whole hell of a lot. He maintained his insane, unbeatable record as the greatest talk-show guest of all time. He even wrote a book, a crafty Moebius strip called Based on a True Story that's part novel, part parody, as slyly ambitious as his routines. There were tells, if you're morbid enough to look for them. He joked about impending death, maybe even more than the average comedian. And then he shuffled off without a warning, shortly after the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a monumental tragedy he was of course unafraid to skewer.

It's comforting to just bask in his accomplishments as an entertainer. The time he filleted Carrot Top, like a bored cat laying open a wounded bird, during a routine appearance on Late Night With Conan O'Brien. The time he did a set at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and made a lot of powerful people look like they wanted to vanish or quit their jobs or simply die. The time he almost won a million dollars for Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang charity. The punchlines that crept up and knocked you cold like a spring-loaded Daffy Duck contraption with a big red boxing glove on the end.

The basking could go on. I'd rather reflect on what it was about Norm that made my entire circle of family and friends, even the most jaded and cynical ones (and maybe especially them) shut down so completely on the day of his passing. How so many people came together to post This Is The Funniest Thing I Have Seen In My Fucking Life clips without ever referencing the same one. How he could be difficult, problematic, often stubbornly wrong, and still force basically everyone who creates or consumes entertainment to stop their day and call him a genius without qualification. How did you do it, Norm? I've been watching the guy's comedy since I was in middle school, and I still don't have an answer.

Maybe it's the gambling. Norm was a self-identified addict who lost his entire net worth more than once. As an entertainer, he placed the biggest bets you'll ever see. When he bombed, he dragged the whole crowd to hell with him. He raked his audience, and himself, over the coals with a little grin on his face, as if to say that audience reaction was none of his concern. He never just let a joke fail. He'd double, triple, quadruple down. He'd make it so bad you'd get embarrassed for yourself and then for him and then maybe the promoter.

That approach had pros and cons. He staked losing claims regularly. He ended up on the wrong side of history a lot more often than I'd like to admit as a lifelong fan (though he did eventually issue an oblique, blanket apology for his jokes about trans people). He lost gigs, jobs, crowds. But when he bet big and won, he did things nobody in his field has ever come close to achieving. For once, "pushing the envelope" might actually be apt: At his best, Norm was the Chuck Yeager of comedy, breaking records we didn't know you could break.

When, on SNL's first episode after O.J. Simpson's acquittal, he pronounced that "murder is legal in the state of California," you could feel from the look on his face, the sound of the crowd, that he had just delivered the best late-night joke of all time. He knew it, and he wasn't even smug. He was just pleased about his craftsmanship.

Norm made seasoned comedy veterans break, really break, with routines that sound on paper like the worst ideas ever. He had Jon Stewart convulsing over Steve Irwin jokes 10 days after the man's death. He cracked up the entire Howard Stern show staff with a lengthy description of, essentially, the My Lai Massacre. On Conan, he rambled through a story about a conspicuously Russian moth that left his host tongue-tied.

I came to know Norm in 2014, after he had been diagnosed with cancer. I was unemployed and living on the outer edges of Redding, California, a separatist community a few hours north of anywhere. I had written a goofy little blog about a decrepit strip mall frequented by a lot of down-on-their-luck types, including me. There was a pay phone there with a sticker advertising Norm's then-latest special, and I thought it was crazy, because this wasn't a place where cult comedy was supposed to go, it was a place where 20-year-old chewing tobacco wrappers were supposed to go. Somehow, Norm saw the piece about the pay phone with his face on it and told me I was a good writer. He didn't have to do that. It was unprompted, sincere, and kind, descriptors that generally don't apply to "epic celebrity acknowledges fan" stories.

Our last messages, in 2016, were about Based on a True Story. He thanked me for praising it (I'd compared a passage to Chekhov) and bemoaned marketing imperatives. He wrote:

"It gutted me that the NYT would not put the book in its fiction list, but I'm trying to get over it. I went to a Chekhov play in NYC lately, and had never seen a play of his and am ignorant of plays. So I was disappointed but it might not mean much because of my ignorance. But I've never read better short stories, so for you to say such a thing means the world to me. I find myself in a predicament. All I want to do is write short stories or a book, but other things, often that I'm no good at all at, are offered me for much more money."



Based on a True Story: A Memoir might have been Norm's biggest bet. It contains almost no true stories. It's a pack of preposterous lies, a collection of tall tales and shaggy-dog stories that put its author's finest talk-show bits to shame. It's laugh-out-loud funny, of course; the audiobook is a must. It's also a novel, a metafictional sendup of Nabokov's Pale Fire, with a ghostwriter named "Keane" as its Charles Kinbote. Like Kinbote, Norm's Keane can't resist hijacking the text, and his deluded self-insertions transform a simple job (stamping out a hacky celebrity memoir for a quick payday) into a twisted labor of obsession and jealousy that ends in murder.

There are three interwoven narratives. The first is Norm's "memoir," ghostwritten and mostly invented by Keane. There's a present-day framing story in which Norm and Comedy Store manager Adam Eget are forced into hiding after an ill-fated Vegas trip; Keane is behind this story too, but as an impartial chronicler and eventual participant. Finally, there's Keane's bitter, discursive first-person commentary about writing the whole thing. Only one chapter is authored by Norm himself: It's an incoherent rant about ordering chili.

Keane is a talented ghostwriter. He renders Norm Macdonald's life story in vivid detail, from his breakthrough as a stand-up to a memorable gig at a hospital for the criminally insane to a bloody seal hunt north of the Arctic Circle. He applies just the right amount of restraint to the Canadian farm boy's probable abuse by a local gardener known as "Old Jack." Only Norm's stint in prison, for hiring a hit man to kill Sarah Silverman's boyfriend, is described in bad taste — but then, Keane may be letting his own prejudices show. All along, stream-of-consciousness interjections by Keane, a thwarted novelist, paint "the real Norm Macdonald" as selfish, bigoted dullard, patently incapable of writing his own book.

Does this sound overachieving for a celebrity memoir? Norm — the real Norm, not "Keane" or "Norm" — is right: They're the cheapest form of writing. If you were on SNL for even a couple of seasons, a memoir is like falling off a log into a million dollars. Even the ones that aren't ghostwritten might as well be. Norm could have written a regular, straight-ahead, "here are the times I met Lorne and Chris Farley" comedy memoir in his sleep, and it would have been a contender for the best one ever. But he never took the easy money.

How did you do it, Norm? He was so much smarter, better, more mature than the crowd he came up in. He elevated live storytelling — distinct in so many ways from "stand-up" — to something beyond an art form. He tricked people. He taunted them, goaded them, left them speechless. He made Barbara Walters really, really mad. He seemed to love being underestimated. But however hard he pushed his audience, he pushed himself harder.

I'd love for there to be a nice ribbon here that makes it all make sense and wraps up this remembrance with dignity. I know he was a great lover of country music, Billy Joe Shaver in particular (Shaver also died in the last year; wherever they are now, they're probably together). Besides all the Nabokov stuff, Based on a True Story contains a reference to Shaver's song "Live Forever:"

I'm gonna live forever
I'm gonna cross that river
I'm gonna catch tomorrow now

You're gonna wanna hold me
Just like I always told you
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone

Nobody here will ever find me
But I will always be around
Just like the songs I leave behind me
I'm gonna live forever now

But then I think of the end of his novel and feel it's more appropriate, even without context: Turkey fucking chili. story of my life.

[Cuellar]

I am delighted Norm Macdonald is dead

[Indomitable Spirit]

I will not eat another morsel of food until Norm MacDonald is dead and buried!

.....

[Small Man Big Horse]

Yes, unfortunately it's not so surprising that allegations of sexual harassment/assault have been made against Norm MacDonald. He came from a very 90s blokey stand-up world where that behaviour was prevalent and still knocks about with the same crowd. Mike Tyson too, even?

That'll be due to the two working together on the Adult Swim show Mike Tyson Mysteries - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Tyson_Mysteries

Hearing that Norm was so shitty to women really is upsetting stuff, there were times I struggled with some of the things he did (claiming he was the wankbeast before it was confirmed it was Louis C.K. especially) but I generally thought he was a decent enough sort which isn't the case now.

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

Hearing that Norm was so shitty to women really is upsetting stuff, there were times I struggled with some of the things he did (claiming he was the wankbeast before it was confirmed it was Louis C.K. especially)

Wasn't that Doug Stanhope?

[Ornlu]

I knew it was too good to be true when the Men of Twitter were permitted to commiserate one of their (supposedly) unproblematic kings for hours uninterrupted. Of course there would be something like this looming on the horizon (as said, being born in the 50s and shooting to global fame in the 90s meant that, culturally and psychologically, this was probably all but certain).

Honestly though I'm pretty unfazed at this sort of news by now. I can't generate outrage where there is only really quiet acceptance.

The art, the comedy, remains unaffected. And that's what I believe to be the most important thing, my fellow comedy forum patrons.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The art, the comedy, remains unaffected

Does it? His entire persona is now influenced by the arrogance and guilt that comes from a powerful man knowingly carrying out abuse without consequences. Anything can betray it at any point, right down to the tiniest look.

Where once the shit eating grin was charming, now it may at points show the easy arrogance of a powerful man knowing he is in charge.

You could even argue that it was important for his act to work that underneath there was some moral decent human being in command. We now know he wasn't that.

[ProvanFan]

I was going to find his audiobook which I nicked off soulseek ages ago but I've been put off. Maybe in a while.

Got Bob Mortimer's now anyway, which I'll be racing through before his victims speak out.

[ImmaculateClump]

Yeah, really regretting putting off listening to his book now.



Gonna listen to Bob Mortimers tonight before he gets a chance to assfuck a nunnery.

[SpiderChrist]

I was going to find his audiobook which I nicked off soulseek ages ago but I've been put off. Maybe in a while.

Got Bob Mortimer's now anyway, which I'll be racing through before his victims speak out.

Copy of Norm's book arrived yesterday. Fantastic comic timing, even in death

[The Mollusk]

Yeah I don't think the comedy remains unaffected either. Watched Me Doing Standup last night and the whole Janice routine about kidnapping and murdering a woman is very much dependent on the implicit understanding between performer and audience that in no way would the performer ever think about maliciously harming a woman or even harassing a woman. As was said earlier in the thread, his comedic style is successful not because it's deliberately edgy to provoke a reaction, and absolutely not because it's done in a "come on, we're all thinking it" way, but because you see him as the smartest guy in the room pretending to be the dumbest. When the two circles of "joking about being unpleasant to women" and "actually being unpleasant to women" begin to overlap that is where my respect for that performer immediately plummets. The fact that the Janice routine is from 2011, many years after he came into the scene with the SNL crowd, would also imply that he's learned relatively little and in some way is still succeeding off the suffering of others. That fucking sucks.

[up_the_hampipe]

Bill Maher talked about Norm on Kimmel last night https://youtu.be/BWKNtyQK64U?t=790

Either he's keeping it classy, which is very respectable if true, or he genuinely didn't know that Norm fucking hated his comedy.

Howard Stern also did a lengthy tribute on his show https://www.howardstern.com/show/2021/09/15/howard-remembers-iconic-comedian-and-stern-show-regular-norm-macdonald/

Not sure if people here want to still be honouring him at this point, but I thought I'd post anyway.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Wasn't that Doug Stanhope?

Ah, yeah, you're right, my mistake.

I'm with others when they suggest it does affect how we receive aspects of his comedy, for instance there's a long section in the book where he jokes about stalking Sarah Silverman which I now see in a different light, not that it happened of course, but the revelation that Norm had a pretty shitty attitude to women makes the whole thing a lot less funny.

[Dusty Substance]

"Six women or six million women, it's still terrible"

[lankyguy95]

Regardless, I still say Stalin was just as bad.

[Twit 2]

Does it? His entire persona is now influenced by the arrogance and guilt that comes from a powerful man knowingly carrying out abuse without consequences. Anything can betray it at any point, right down to the tiniest look.

Where once the shit eating grin was charming, now it may at points show the easy arrogance of a powerful man knowing he is in charge.

You could even argue that it was important for his act to work that underneath there was some moral decent human being in command. We now know he wasn't that.

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree with "person does bad thing = entirely void". Although, certainly bits will now not be enjoyable to watch anymore. I haven't watched a single bit of Louis CK's stuff since wankbeast because pretty much all his material is now tainted.

Not to excuse what Norm did, his acts are as bas as they were and should not be played down, but a lot of people report that he was capable of being kind, generous, thoughtful etc as well. The good and bad can coexist. And I hope I'm not saying this just because it's Norm - that should apply to all people too.

[peanutbutter]

The guy was a comic genius, but I always factored in him being a twat anyway. I was listening to a recording of him on youtube the other week*, and he came across as very transphobic and generally right wing, without his usual dollop of ambiguity or irony. Finding out he was a sexist piece of shit isn't really a surprise either, based on his long career.

Some bastards are just really, really funny - and he certainly seemed like someone who was mellowing with age and generally becoming more considerate. For me, it's not like Cosby or, to a lesser extent, Louis CK, where they always traded on a nice guy persona which was fundamentally shattered by what they had done.   

*It appeared to be a bootleg recording of some event he had guested at.

That's about where I am at with all of this, but I think it also highlights how subjective a lot of this stuff is.

First thing I ever heard about Woody Allen was the married-his-daughter stuff, and everything I saw by him since I've never had the sense that his general self-awareness and presented unlikeability was anything other than just being reasonably straightforward that he's quite an unpleasant person regardless of where the truths lie in that whole situation. I do get the impression prior to that he held a position not massively unlike where CK was before his downfall, with his presented unlikeability only serving to bolster his rep and immunise him from actually being a bit of a cunt.


Norm similarly very frequently came across as a bit of prick and quite dated in a lot of ways. He generally gave off a vibe that seemed a generation or two above his actual age and his opinions on things seemed to fall in line with that too, I kinda suspect that gave him a bit more immunity than other acts in his age range in the same way as an 85 year old is treated more lightly.
I'm not sure I can blame him too much for the "easy arrogance of a powerful man knowing he is in charge", it wasn't him that was jumping through hoops to justify his bullshit. My personal impression of him was always that, especially in the last decade or so, there was quite a cold distance from him to the idea of him as some kind of loveable weirdo but maybe I'm imagining that.



Seems like a good thing we're able to talk about this stuff so soon after someone's death rather than the usual blanket ban on negative shit at least. Not sure how it hadn't come up before though; or has it been a known thing for years but somehow never gained traction? Has he been a kind of oddly niche concern for years where the only people really paying attention to him were massive fans of his?

[Petey Pate]

If I had a time machine I'd go back and tell Norm MacDonald to not be a sex pest, but I'd be afraid of getting lost under the spell of his beautiful eyes.

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

Gonna listen to Bob Mortimers tonight before he gets a chance to assfuck a nunnery.

All consensual though.

[WILTY researcher scribbles furiously]

[checkoutgirl]

Fantastic comic timing, even in death

Yeah he saved up one last fuck you from beyond the grave. Be interesting to see if it stops at a handful of gropes or progresses to a bigger number with more serious accusations.

This is partly why I hesitate to comment too kindly on dead comics. We're now in a post Cosby landscape where even the nicest seeming comedian can be a monster. Not that Norm even seemed particularly nice.

There was that actress who said she'd never work with him again on I think SNL. There was the (admittedly funny) Carrot Top bit on Conan where Norm mentions him and/or Conan having a crush on the actress which made me a bit uncomfortable. There's the anti Metoo stuff. Having Artie Lange as a mate. If they're not red flags then they're orange ones.

David Spade is a contemptible piece of garbage creep who is very open about how he is and I've always hated him. A walking Metoo waiting to happen.

[checkoutgirl]

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree with "person does bad thing = entirely void".

Nor should you necessarily. If you can enjoy something separate from the man I say enjoy yourself. It's not a crime.

Comedy is trickier though than something like music or film. I can still watch Rosemary's Baby or Crimes and Misdemeanors no problem.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree with "person does bad thing = entirely void"

Neither do I. My post is not promoting cancelling, but disagreeing that his real life actions can be truly separated from his act. The nature of his comic persona is drawn heavily from who he is.

In fact the hardest thing is that these revelations now linger around it, they infect everything, right down to a particular glance at a given moment which is now loaded with more information than we had before. How can it not mar his work, how can it not be less easy and unnecessarily problematic to watch?