When comedian Norm Macdonald died in 2021 my social media feed was flooded with tributes from fans and other comedians. I'll be honest, I didn't know a great deal about him, but watching some clips at the time and playing catch-up I could see why the praise was being heaped on him. He seemed simultaneously both very ordinary and very special. An effortlessly funny slow burn oddball. Though I suspect he worked very hard at being effortlessly funny.
This new documentary, directed by Judd Apatow, sheds some light on Macdonald with the aid of clips and quotes, while also creating an air of lingering mystery. We are told he never went to college but then see cuttings of him from college days. We are told he dropped out of school as a teenager, but did he? Was he of Scottish or Polish descent? When he put on weight in later life was he ill or over-indulging?
A comparison is drawn with Straight Story actor Richard Farnsworth, who was dying when he made his final movie but didn't let on because he didn't want his terminal illness to get in the way of the work. Was Macdonald the same, or was he just an old school guy who didn't share his problems? His death came as a shock to many, though a close circle of friends knew he had been diagnosed with leukaemia in 2012. Was this an ultimate Andy Kaufman-style stunt or reality?
This doc raises all sorts of questions. The biggest one, of course, is why Macdonald never become a huge star. He was part of the cast of Weekend Update on SNL in the mid-1990s, but stories persist that he was fired because he kept making jokes about OJ Simpson who was a friend of a senior TV executive. Another version of his departure though is that he said if his friend left he'd leave too, so the truth remains fuzzy.
Whatever the reason, while other SNL luminaries went on to major Hollywood things, Norm went his own way. He gigged constantly “staying at shabby hotels and telling jokes you no longer find funny” and became a chat show regular. He did have his own sitcom, which even had his name as the title, but somehow it didn't propel him to Seinfeld heights.
Yet clips show that he was a master stand-up whose jokes had a zen-like simplicity. In fact his gags are so good and so plentiful we never get to see one of his most famous, the moth gag, in full, though we do see a daring riff about the conditional love of dogs and how Hitler's dog loved Hitler. I'm not sure who a UK equivalent would be. A cross between Peter Cook and Paul Foot?
But Macdonald was not without his problems. He was a gambler - there's a great story about him losing a massive bet by copying a nearby high roller – and while in later years he made a name for himself on Twitter he was also criticised for being sympathetic towards Louis CK and Roseanne after they fell out of favour.
There's no doubt that Norm was a talented stand-up worth discovering or rediscovering. The likes of Adam Sandler and David Letterman are among those that chip in to pay tribute (shame they couldn't get more young comics to chip in). In a Larry King interview King says that “show business has never really found a place to put him.” Apatow's doc reveals a bit more about a man who preferred laughs to opening up.
