Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald - Judd Apatow Takes a Scroll Through the Career of an Unleashed Comic Id
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B+
I don’t know if you ever had a friend who subsequently became famous, but Norm Macdonald was that friend in my case 45 years ago. Pre-open mike, the extent of his comic career back then was that we paid for his beers because he was pure entertainment as a drinking buddy.
Five years after his death from cancer, there are two books on route to the publisher, and – debuting today – a Netflix documentary from Judd Apatow, Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald - that is more a (hilarious) tribute to his career than any kind of reliable document of his life.
The reason for the latter is that Norm’s “tale” is told as much as possible in his own voice from archival sources. And in his own voice, Norm could fabricate like it was his super-power.
The one in Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald that hit me almost immediately was a playback of an interview about his childhood where he claimed to have never got past public school. That said, we met when I was a newly hired intern at the Ottawa Citizen and he was in Algonquin College. Some of his classmates and friends were also interns. They were my new best friends in an unfamiliar town.
Norm told better lies in his life. Many of them ended up in mainstream newspapers as fact.
(What is true about his past is that his brother is Neil Macdonald, the former CBC correspondent, who was assistant city editor at the Citizen when I was there. There is footage of them being interviewed together, which tickled me).
So Apatow chose wisely. I don’t envy the task of the two book writers separating fact from fiction. But leaving the actual “tale” of Norm Macdonald to Norm himself left Apatow with the easier task of sorting through the public Norm experience. And that experience could be oblique and screamingly funny, originating in some part of his brain science hasn’t completely explored.
And there’s a lot to choose on the public record, augmented with words from the people who loved him and his comedy and who opened doors for him. Maybe the gem of the entire film is the video of his last Letterman appearance. Not a guy to wear his emotions on his sleeve, Norm did just that, and it is legitimately heart-breaking.
There is another such moment, less on-the-nose emotionally but still moving. Reluctantly taking part in a roast of his friend Bob Saget, he told the hackiest, most unfunny jokes he could find, to subtly show he was “insulting” him in protest. It’s a moment remembered better by his fellow comics, but it’s fun to watch.
Much else is a fast-moving melange of what you might find if you spent a few days scrolling feverishly online – YouTube performance videos, podcast appearances (including his own), tweets (Norm was addicted to Twitter and would post things like a shot-by-shot commentary on the Masters golf tournament).
His SNL appearances on Weekend Update play a big part, of course. And his post-verdict insistence on outright calling O.J. Simpson a murderer in blithe did-he-really-just-say-that punchlines – yeah, the stuff that got him fired – stands up today. His insistence in subsequent interviews on relating his firing and naming the NBC VP Don Ohlmeyer as the friend-of-O.J. who fired him shows just how willing Norm was to jump into the fire.
His private life? There is a brief reference to how much he loved his son. No mention of the mom.
But then, Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald is primarily a movie about the Norm Macdonald the public knew. As for people who ostensibly knew him better, even they’re not sure they did.
Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald. Directed by Judd Apatow. Stars Norm Macdonald, David Letterman, Bob Saget. Begins streaming on Netflix Friday, October 16.