Remembering Norm

hi uh it's bob here and um this is uh something i felt i needed to do i avoided it but i i have to do it um a lot of us lost someone um i lost a dear friend for my entire life and it's uh well it's gonna be hard i'll try to keep it short by the way um my friend norm macdonald nor macdonald um or as david would call him norm macdonald many of you um have been responding the comedy community comedians writers actors but people people that that are smart that understood norm that loved norm um i'm recording this for all of you and yes selfishly i'm recording it for myself because i need to i don't know people were contacting people that i work with and asking for statements and comments and i just felt it'd be better to do it this way in a conversational almost non-quotable way because uh i am not functioning too well this is uh and this isn't about me but it's going to be from my perspective so this is a loss when you lose someone i've lost two sisters and a couple parents uh i mean my parents not random parents and i've uh lost many friends and this is just a knife in the heart uh for all of us that were close to him and all of you who loved him and uh for me personally this is uh i don't know i'm just just doing this on the fly and seeing um if it can make a point or give some stories that might bring you a smile and let you even know from my perspective of why this is a beloved wonderful man who we've lost um i guess i'll i'll start uh less solemn that's impossible right because you know um when it happened yesterday uh today is uh wednesday by the way and we're gonna put this out tonight uh you know after midnight where most of you that love norm will be awake and the people close to him will be up because we we're up we just can't sleep but um i found out um that he had passed before it hit the deadline hollywood why don't they call it deadline now norm would probably not mind me saying that but he would have said you know he would have deadlined he would have hit the dead uh god damn it i love that man so that being said um i found out and then um then it was in the press and then the floodgates opened and i didn't i couldn't even go online i can't look at clips of him although i have right before i recorded this wanted to see a couple things um everybody's sharing stuff and you know he was a comedic genius anybody that didn't get it i'm sorry for you that you didn't get it he was one of the well he's one of the most important people in my life and one of the sweetest and we loved each other so i met him he was 17 years old and i was 21 or 22 it was 1978 i think or 79 one of those two probably 78 and i was working in ottawa at a club called i don't know uh snickerdoodle or something i i i don't even remember it was a giggles i don't know but norm was in the audience i think he was doing some stand-up at 17 i'm not sure but he was like literally six feet from me so it would have been a good distance for covid where he was sitting he had a bushy haircut a big one i'm sure you've seen it some people i i really loved seeing some pictures uh that people posted of him at that age that i saw uh because it was this sweet guy who had a brain and bandwidth that most people aren't born with who was also like most comedians an outsider and we talked we talked um at the bar and i remembered it specifically a few years later when i met him for real um in clubs in canada i think it was a yucky ox i'm not sure it just doesn't matter right but the point is he was in my life and i was in his in in an acquaintance kind of way and then um a bunch of years passed and we would see each other on the comedy scene and we became friends and um i everybody i know would get into the room to watch him on stage sometimes he would purposely tank as you know uh anybody that understands they call him a comics comic that's just um you know i i hate that expression but i guess it's true because um comedians couldn't help but laugh at him because he was so brilliant and he would say things that might not be able to be said by anybody i mean they wouldn't be able to be said by anyone else we're talking about an original voice and his influences were all the usual suspects all the people that you know that love comedy you can see who his roots were but he found a way to do things that came from a voice that nobody had i'd never heard anyone like him he um loved dark humor from the very beginning if you look at these clips i was able to see a couple of them when he was one of his very earliest appearances i think it was on conan he's just this young thin lad and talking about death and dark stuff and murder and those are themes because norm needed to feel things very very deeply and norm did feel things very very deeply so when on that amazing letterman appearance two weeks before david went off the air and norm was the last stand-up comedian to go on there um and i only know this i i know all about it because we had talked about it but watching um listening to the howard stern interview from 2016 is a valuable piece peace just to see his love for david he didn't know what he was going to say and the people that he really loved he would tell them so if you're one of those lucky people because he he'd gone through a lot norm uh very complicated right so we're talking about a guy at 14 15 years old he had a difficult upbringing and he said it uh you know he he made it known he didn't have much of a father figure in his life so david was kind of one um he revered intelligence and was drawn to it and when people got him it meant the world to him and that's uh kind of the thing that made him a comics comic because i hate saying that i got to erase that from my mind but he would love smart people he he loved howard and he loved david and he you know everybody conan he had such a strong kinship and uh as norm would say god bless uh all those people for getting him and loving him um because they're so funny and uh smart um i got roasted on comedy central i'm gonna go all over the place because i can't i don't know what else to do this is me just saying i love norm when i got roasted he i talked to him a week before the roast and he called me and he said uh i sag it i i can't it's a bad impression i can't help but do it though saggit i can't say mean things about you're my friend i don't even want to do it but i'm going to do it because it's you and we'd been through a bunch of stuff you know you we did dirty work and that thing it's so funny people say bob doesn't get through you know any interview without mentioning at least twice that movie now a cheer comes down my face um i loved working with him it wasn't easy because he was a perfectionist and he was complex carbohydrate he was he was uh i don't want to say was but i have to i got to be in reality myself but you know so we'd gone through so much together uh ups and downs and and so at the roast he called me a week out said i i i'm just gonna read jokes from her 40s joke book and i said norm and that's fine i mean you know what you're doing but you got to curse i don't want to do that i said well if just throw in an arbitrary now and then nah i'm not going to do that and then you get to the roast and okay so what you see usually with the extended cut which is not what it is it's just everything's everything everything about norm is the big lie there's a uh a 20-minute version there's 20 minutes of footage where the people that were there know what happened in the room half of them did and half of them didn't because they didn't know what was going on because they didn't get it but he was just taking the shot at doing and people are like this was the most brilliant thing and it was but a great and norm was one of the greatest ever uh knows that they're not gonna bombing is not uh doesn't matter and that's what was fearless and beautiful about him because bombing is just part of the art part of the performance of it and if you can offend people and uh and get laughs then you're you're in some kind of real special ethos and he was doing that by reading these jokes and then uh there were about eight minutes that it was it was you know it was quiet um and that made there's you don't see the comedians laughing harder but all of my friends that's the idea of that roast was as horrible as some of the things that were said because it's a roast and it was a different time but norm of course chose the path of dignity and and did jokes and and that we were laughing on the phone the week before that he would hold the cards up to his head and do johnny you know to the face like a cauliflower but we were doing all that stuff because he idolized johnny as uh all of us did and um so he was they cut out the the part that was bombing and uh but it did i would have loved to see the whole damn thing i think the roast should have just been a bunch of people doing a bunch of horrible dick jokes and uh wow some really wrong stuff on there right um but it was funny for a lot of people that's it's really split how you look at stuff from years ago and people know what funny is and norm did the most brilliant thing and i was so excited when he said i said he got a dog face and that that if you look at the thing i don't like looking at myself and who does but uh i like looking at me but when he said that um that's when i was like yeah come on come on start cursing just throwing arbitrary curses because he at that point he was digging out of a hole that's what he was doing but how brilliant because it was so anti-roast because he didn't want to roast his friend um and he also didn't want to do a roast so there's you know it was a good toss-up whether he was doing it because he didn't want to hurt his friend and also he didn't want to do a roast he didn't love the form he didn't mind listening to the old ones but he wasn't equipped mentally or care enough to make fun of someone it just you know it seemed like a oh okay that's the joke of making fun of somebody oh great great format um so of course he's reading the sports section while the other comedians are doing their stuff and that it's just you know it's brilliance it's an andy kaufman type thing or anybody who knows what comedy is and doing some kind of it's just norm it's just norman what he found funny and then at the end and i thought about do i play it on here right now and the answer is no you can watch it you can see it i mean at the end of the thing uh he got emotional and um he doesn't mean to do it he doesn't know what he's going to say and he doesn't do it that often but now i'm in present tense right because i can't accept that he's gone and that's the shock that we're going through 61. that's a sin it's a sin for all of us that he's gone anyway to finish that one thought um he told me uh you know he loved me and he told me publicly and i loved him and i love him and i don't what do we do with that when we lose someone right especially before their time and i know most of you listening have lost someone especially now right so he cared about people a lot and he felt the human condition so deeply that it affected him in different ways you know he he would maybe act out back in the day and uh no specifics needed and in other ways he would just even be more compassionate and then in other ways and stand up he would just go to the darkest place he could possibly go and he made me better he made me better as a as a comedian but more importantly um he was a genuine friend and um our friendship uh was really very deep um and i could say that uh i could say that without uh my name-dropping that i do sometimes and all of my other dumbass vices like everybody was posting when he died and and they love him they you know everybody's hurting over this one um this one yeah right i always why can't unfunny people die that's uh saggy ah why'd you say that but he uh a a week ago um we'd been working on something that we were uh gonna do and i think everybody asked me did you know every we're all tmz but also it's human to ask did you know i i felt it um i knew something was wrong i think a lot of us felt it and then you just figure well that's norm you know so he's whatever he's going through you see it with a lot of us you know when people change appearance or whatever but his his his mind was still amazing right um and i have off-road stories about things he did anyway just try to stay on on one subject is um i'd been texting with him and i i knew that the last month was a turn in whatever was going on and i suspected it was this uh cancer i really love when everybody puts out f cancer maybe that should be the new not-for-profit because it it's enough it's enough let's just let's get that thing somehow i don't know we're all test tubes for what we're trying to do with cancer and thank god some people are moving forward healthy he should be one of those people anyway uh two weeks ago he texted me how are you what are you doing are you are you doing stand up and i answered him with you know much too many words and then i didn't hear back and then last week last week i got a text and it just said i love you and i didn't say much back i just said i love you norm that was my last communication with him but he didn't mince words and he didn't mince emotions so he wasn't out doing he wasn't just out you know oh here's the emotional moment in the telethon where we pretend we're feeling something so we could uh one of the gifts of my life is that he loved me and that i loved him hell i'm always going to love him i mean there's not another guy like this guy um i'll tell you a couple other things instead it turned into a slobbering maniac um i don't know i'm just doing this because i don't know how else to do it um adam eget was somebody that he loved and worked with him and uh everybody's hurting we're all reaching out to each other you know it's a lot of comedians have been reaching out texting and calling and we're all this is you know it's a big big chasm for everybody i don't know why i said chasm what the would i say that why'd you use chasm that's not even the right use of it what are you trying to go across a reservoir he wouldn't say that reservoir is not funny got it um adam's a good man i went on norm's podcast before it was a podcast before he did the netflix version of it and uh he said yeah come over yeah is it audio only or do i have to look good yeah it's audio only um norm was really good at lying and i'm sure you've read all this stuff he was incredibly skillful at it and but you could tell what talk if you if you knew him you would even if you see him you would see it in his eyes that he's lying or then you're not sure if he is because sometimes he wasn't but he but he always had that look what a charming uh um shouldn't have said that charming is okay but he uh told me to go do the podcast i go over there adam is there all of a sudden there's cameras like it's norm you i gotta go fix my hair what the hell you didn't tell me that this was i don't know what they're doing i mean they're putting it out you know blaming other people like he didn't know his video and then you know he's helping me publicize a book and then whenever he would say something horrible he would say the name of the book and hold the book up i mean he i i laughed at him so left with him i mean he's just he i go on the podcast if you're uh sorry this will be profane uh and it was worse than what i'm about to say so if you're 12 probably 15 just go to bed i get on the show and he goes uh so uh you like you like a big fat juicy and he added other adjectives in there and i was like this is your show what are you doing so our relationship had a bit of an odd couple type thing uh where we were would and he loved that engage engagement i don't know he loved the fact that i would give him or kind of be in a parental role oddly enough or an older brother [Music] he has a brother neil he's a very good man um and his mom and his son he was such a great father such a great father um and i'm sending so much love to them you know it's uh i also have to mention someone i'm just going to say her name his closest friend for uh many years laurie joe and i'm just sending uh so much love to her this is so hard for his family and for friends like adam and many other people that you're you're reading you know who they are you know who who loved him and it doesn't matter you know if you see somebody every minute norm's not a guy you would spend a lot of daily time with oddly enough past year and a half we were spending time together or at least talking a lot the covet thing had him hold up more and when you find out when we all find out in retrospect as you all have seen all the stuff about cancer and his stand up and you know oh wow this makes frightening sense now and there is after nine years of of fighting cancer um and i don't know any details i can only speak from my experience and knowing that i was talking to a comedian that you all know and he was saying that he believes he is at peace and what's interesting is norm was believed in faith norm was a spiritual man and he kept it quiet he kept a lot of his stuff quiet but there's a reason his exclamatories would be good lord good god he would say things like that and um he believed in god and um i had people in my life that were uh very sick um and someone that i care about so much and he would say i'm i'm gonna pray for them and he he didn't mince words and that's you know i'm going to pray for them that's what someone that cares about you says you know this is not some guy doing his hijinks where the eyebrows go up and he's got that flim-flam man sparkle in his eye yeah i said that nobody wants to say sparkle cause i twinkled that's that's the operative right but um i'll share a couple more things i don't know how much longer i can go on he had people that he truly loved in his life they were always part of it adam sandler and conan and um a lot of really interesting filmmakers and actors and people that he really regarded hailey he loved old films he loved clint eastwood he loved burt reynolds we all know who he loved you could watch what he would do um on snl he also loved you know being that guy that's this nor macdonald and a lot of comedians are the result of someone telling you your whole childhood don't do that you can't say that don't do that well there he goes it's two years of oj jokes and uh and that's all anybody talks about you know but it was uh charming for me it was you know i mean just that's the that he would do and he would also speak well of in a weird way it's just um there will there will be many people influenced and are influenced by north macdonald but uh there can't ever be another nor macdonald i'll share a couple of the quick things that are fun um there's a story i'm not going to tell it but it was what he loved to play jokes on me and make a fool out of me and i was playing golf with him and artie lang after dirty work came out and uh it's a drinking game every time i mentioned the film's title but it was important because we loved it and he loved it in fact before i tell you this crazy thing i will tell you that the night the movie premiered norm and i knew we saw the poster for dirty work and it was in 1998 and uh norm and i looked at each other we saw the poster and it said coming soon on it we both did it literally at the same time a carson coming soon kiss of death we didn't say that at the same time but you don't kind of go hey sometime in the future this movie's coming out and it premiered on the weekend that uh michael jordan played his last two games with the bulls so oh there's our 15 year old boy audience they're gone so we went to theaters norm and i got in the car the night the movie came out and we went to seven theaters and they were all packed it was century city hollywood westwood we literally went to seventh theaters one after another and people were screaming they were laughing not screaming like getting the out of here um and we thought we had a hit we this is like we're high-fiving it's just like you know ralph crammed in going on we're good i'm gonna we're going to make it honey this is it and um we were so excited to see it with an audience they were laughing so hard and that was so awesome right and then the next morning the producer bob simons called me said sorry buddy you know i just didn't do it and um and that was that so uh it's almost appropriate so i read somebody call it a bomb or you know it tanked or whatever and uh i guess that's the point that's the point of of the underdog and uh many people it's a cult favorite whatever that means you don't have to join a cult to like the movie so anyway the movie came out and uh this is right before it came out norm and uh artie lang and i are playing golf up in i don't know where we were some country club outside of new york and then i already just got a brand new cadillac i told the story on stern and i i just drove it back i wanted to drive it oh i'll do this i'll tell you you know mr control me and i bottomed out the car i hit a big pothole and i told you i wasn't going to tell the story but i might as well tell it truncated version and it busted the tire and it cracked the axle and already literally had to get the whole thing redone i still owe him two grand i think i tried to pay him but i did pay to have a guy come with a tow truck to change the tire the guy comes change the tire norm comes over says uh hey this guy his kid really likes you he wants you got to sign an autograph and send it to him when he's done wait till he's done and then go over and uh and get his information so you can send the kid an eight by ten so the guy does all the work and i get like 800 bucks out of an atm i give it to the guy and i say i can give me your address i'll send it to your son he goes what are you talking about i don't know who you are and i look over at norman arder just pounding the pavement laughing their asses off that's the kind of that was very similar to the experience of the characters they were in the movie and then there was the norm a couple years later that um i had him over my parents uh for dinner now my parents and my daughters and i'm actually going to put some slides on this audio right now that'll be when my when it gets posted on the youtube and on the and on the whatever assets i'm really talking hardcore wi-fi talk right now and uh norm was really sweet to my kids they loved them this is uh hard for them and they um he would my youngest was really young and he would just sit on the ground like he did with his son and just play with him he had a very childlike quality and it took him to a kinder time i think and he really could relate to to kids you know and damn it he was a good father and really good with kids because they were innocent and they didn't have all the that he couldn't take from people um he really just when he couldn't stand somebody he just got away he just stayed to his own you know and that's probably a smart way to go about it rather than doing what everybody does which is start fights these days these days but anyway so my parents who had met on the set of that movie which i will not name it again he went to their condo in uh brentwood for dinner and my my dad would make my mom i don't know who made them uh beef ribs and they would cook them for 24 hours and they would uh be very soft fall off the bone and so my dad would go he used to be in the meat business so he would go market to market and find the least fatty bone anyway they cooked for probably two days for a meal to have norm and it was just my kids my parents and my nephew and norm and me and uh he really he loved the meal but more importantly he uh when he when something hit him hard he would emotionally he would make a proclamation he made a proclamation and he said i just want to say and this is not an audience this is not anything this is people that he cared about and was touched by and he said i just want to say um that having i really i'm trying to get it almost close to reality of what he said i just want to thank you for welcoming me and welcoming me into your home and how much it means to be with you all and thank you for taking me in and um i just really appreciate it and it was something almost i'm almost close to what he said but you know i didn't record the damn thing and my kids didn't take notes and i'd raise them anyway um so it was and he he was tearful you know it was real and that's our relationship that was always our relationship and a lot of you that are close to him uh or whoever is listening i'm talking to five people probably no i'm talking to probably 100 200 people that maybe know him on a deep level and then the rest of you i'm just feeling your pain because this is one of those uh bad ones this is just one of them you know he uh he just had a a great deal of love and that's how i remember him is the love that he had and we would screw around when we were in our 40s and hug each other and then he would you know make a move and then have ungodly human strength gargantuan strength for an angular thin lad man and uh and then i would attack him back in an overly physical way uh which he he enjoyed doing with some people and he had some off-road habits which i won't discuss but there's uh you know the funniness the incredibly deep funniness came from his deep deep feeling of things and he felt things incredibly heavy and yeah it is uh i don't think it's strange that norm mcdonald kept nine years of cancer a secret and i know that everyone that was on his business team in the closest of ways were sworn to secrecy and that is i think completely appropriate and i also think he thought he was going to beat it and uh and i do feel that he's at peace now i truly do i'm really sorry that he's that a lot of you are going through this um and those that aren't and are discovering norm for the first time definitely do it do what people have been doing for two days a lot of people i know have been doing it they've been going through everything go through them all go through every conan appearance go through read his book watch his netflix special it's definable and he knew it was and he knew his book was because norm was incredibly proud of himself and confident because he was an accelerated person and i think things that happened in his career that didn't go the way he wanted also hurt him it hurt him you know he was he was hurt by it but he also knows showbiz and he was very realistic about it and you can read all of this you can read it in his book you can read it in interviews there's some wonderful interviews out there because he had a a sages approach to many many things and he also knew who the good people were and god damn it he knew who the funny people were so i guess that's uh i could i could go on with other stories about him but it's um it's all out there so do yourself a favor if you haven't watched everything definitely read his book definitely watch his netflix special and watch everything you can from the moment he started doing it and go through all the snls you want he's just uh he's a gift norm mcdonald was a gift to all of us and i will miss him always and um i will always love him so uh i hope what rubs off on me is amidst all of his trickery which he always said he was doing and his charlatan moves which he always said he was doing is the fact that that self-awareness and that honesty is what helped helps make me strive to be more honest and uh i think a lot of people feel that way right now we've lost someone that cut through to the heart of things even with some of the most uncomfortable circumstances and then would do it for his own pleasure a lot of it was to bring himself pleasure and he did not love the reiteration of stand-up and thought it was like a joke and you know he goes to town like a carny barker and does the same stuff but i would differ with him on that and i did i got i got to i got to tell him and i think that's the closeness also it was anybody that got the man so if you want to do anything to honor norm don't just do it like once you know um honor him by getting him honor him by trying to understand if you don't get it just watch his stuff watch as much as you can watch when he hosted seto that's hilarious he was uh beautiful he was an amazing father he was an amazing son he was a great brother and he was a great friend and uh i would just say uh i think he is resting in peace now and i love you norm and god bless you take care everybody [Music] you

Channel: Bob Saget

Views: 583,663

Rating: 4.9780726 out of 5

Keywords: bob saget, bob, saget, bobsaget, bob saget youtube, youtube bob saget, bob sagets here for you, bob saget’s here for you, here for you, podcast, bob saget podcast, podcast bob saget, here for you podcast, podcast here for you, comedy, comedian, stand up, bob saget stand up, interview, interviews, Norm MacDonald

Id: yEYu-7BkNDM

Length: 37min 46sec (2266 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SteveDucka]

I spoke to a friend for about 30 minutes on the phone about Norm last night. I told him I needed something like this, it's cathartic to hear someone who knew him, talk about him, rather than just the little 30 word tweet. Thanks.

[u/mojambowhatisthescen]

Considering all of us are feeling so sad, I can't imagine someone like Saget must be going through. Beautiful tribute.

[u/qeadwrsf]

Honor him by trying to understand him.

Honor him by watching his stuff.

So I guess I'll just continue life as normal.

This was emotional to watch, and I don't really get emotional that often.

[u/oheverglow]

I cried. But I’m a woman.

So.

The part about him texting I love you last week kind of broke me.

[u/garypinese69]

Rob Schneider looked pretty broken up too. Lovitz....well.

[u/MusesWithWine]

This was so well done and needed.

[u/Corninmyteeth]

This really made me tear up. Then I heard big fat juicy cock lol rip normie

[u/Bigbearforever]

Aside from Norms comedic timing and wit, I think most people should be inspired by his kindness. Over all the hours of material he has performed he has always had the singular goal of making people smile.

[u/19Highlander94]

Incredibly beautiful listen. Saget’s the man.