Here are five big takeaways from “Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald.”
The Weekend Update Secret Sauce
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Next to Chevy Chase, Macdonald is regarded as the greatest Weekend Update host in “Saturday Night Live” history. And in the documentary, he gives a lot of credit to Lori Jo Hoekstra, his longtime collaborator who produced his stand-up specials and oversaw Weekend Update during his tenure. It was Hoekstra, he says, who wanted to make their Weekend Update different from the rest of SNL by hiring a team of outside writers, including Ross Abrash and Frank Sebastiano (who joined Macdonald’s creative partner, the legendary SNL writer Jim Downey), and having its own separate comedy identity. “Lori Jo [Hoekstra] then suggested we hire outside writers so Weekend Update would have a completely different flavor from the rest of SNL,” Macdonald recalls in the doc. “We all agreed that the jokes should be stripped of any cleverness, play on words or innuendo… A joke should catch people by surprise. It should never pander. Applause is voluntary, but laughter is involuntary.”
His SNL Firing by Don Ohlmeyer
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But Simpson was best friends with then-president of NBC West Coast, the late Don Ohlmeyer, who supposedly became so incensed by Macdonald’s mockery of his controversial buddy that he fired both Macdonald and Downey (Downey was later rehired in 2000) over the jokes, with Macdonald saying that Ohlmeyer called him up personally and told him he was being fired because he wasn’t funny. Ohlmeyer’s vendetta against Macdonald didn’t end there. He later tried to ban NBC from airing promos for Macdonald’s film “Dirty Work” (he lost that battle) and tried to force Conan O’Brien to stop booking Macdonald as a guest on “Late Night” (O’Brien pushed back and Ohlmeyer lost that battle, too).
Concealing His Cancer Diagnosis
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One of Macdonald’s oldest friends, comedian Harland Williams, reveal in the film via interview clips that the comic quietly battled stomach cancer in the 1980s. In 2013, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and only told his family, agent and ex-wife, choosing to hide it from the public and even his closest friends. He was prescribed dexamethasone, causing him to gain considerable weight. “I was always taught that the nature of art was to conceal, not to reveal. What they do now is ‘confessional comedy,’ but when people confess things and they’re told how brave they are, because they have cancer or something and they talk about it, well, everyone has cancer. It’s not rare at all. The brave thing to do if you have cancer is to not talk about it,” Macdonald says in the doc.
The #MeToo Movement
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On Death
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One of Macdonald’s quotes that really stuck with me from “Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald” dealt with death — something the comedian stared directly in the face over the final years of his life while battling cancer. “Death is a funny thing — not funny ha-ha like a Woody Allen movie, but funny-strange like a Woody Allen marriage. When it’s unexpected, death comes fast like a ravenous wolf; when it’s expected, it comes slow and patient like a snake,” he offers. “The doctor tells you how far away it is, and when exactly it will be at your door, and when it will be at the foot of your bed, and when it will be on your flesh. It’s all right there on their clipboards… I have a theory that people are in deep denial about death, and I’m not.”
