Norm Macdonald Dead at 61

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/norm-macdonald-dead-dies-snl-1235064570/

Fuuuuuck.

Quote

 

Norm Macdonald, the deadpan comedian, actor, writer and “Saturday Night Live” star, has died after a battle with cancer, Variety has confirmed. He was 61.

Macdonald privately battled the disease for almost a decade. “Norm was an original! He defined American humor with honesty and blunt force,” Jeff Danis, president of DPN Talent and one of Macdonald’s reps, told Variety in a statement.

Dozens of comedians, including Seth Rogen, Jon Stewart, Ron Funches and Jim Gaffigan, paid tribute to Macdonald, “one of the greatest comedians to have ever lived,” on social media.

The comedian got his start in showbiz as a writer on “Roseanne” in 1992 after making rounds at comedy clubs in Canada. He joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in 1993, and the next year, began his memorable stint as “Weekend Update” anchor until early 1998, when he was replaced by Colin Quinn. Macdonald was known for his dry humor, non-sequiturs and impressions of Burt Reynolds, David Letterman, Larry King, Quentin Tarantino and many more during his five-year run on the show.

 

Legitimately one of the funniest human beings to ever exist. God, this sucks.

Fuck, I just saw this in the middle of a lecture. This sucks so much.

Damn. He was great.

My fondest memory of Norm was him playing Lucky the dog in Dr. Dolittle (1998) and the sequels. But the best part was his voice... I will never forget that voice.

RIP Norm.

Cancer didn't beat him, as his cancer died too; ergo, it was a draw. RIP

Norm Macdonald was a tremendously talented and funny person. 

His movies and cameo appearances were always on point and the guy genuinely knew how to read the room.

Comedy is not an easy thing to master, but Norm could make almost any topic funny.

RIP Pidgeon. 

He was a good man...

The greatest of all time. Appropriately his routine on death in his Me Doing Stand Up special was incredibly cathartic to me.

NOOOOOO

Another national tragedy, guy was really good

Oh no, this sucks. He will be missed, for sure. :(

This has been bumming me out all day.

2 hours ago, Serum said:

Cancer didn't beat him, as his cancer died too; ergo, it was a draw. RIP

The more I find out about this Cancer guy, the less I like him. Seems like a real jerk.

This has been bugging me a lot more than I thought it would. Norm was my idol. I remember watching his stuff in my first year of university religiously. His stuff really helped me through some tough times.

RIP Norm

Caught the news on Twitter earlier in the morning. Felt completely out of nowhere, but to find out he had been quietly wrestling cancer for 9 years and chose to keep it to himself as to not burden others with it is quite something. Macdonald evidently preferred to leave them laughing, which is a bittersweet ending for a comedian.

Of the few bits i have seen (He isn't that known here) he had incredible deadpan humour. I loved him on the Comedy Central Roasts because his style of humor was completely the opposite of everyone elses: Saying nothing inherently funny and yet making it funny through impeccable timing.

You have great skill if you can create something funny out of things that aren't funny by themselves. Chalking it up to watch more Norm.

I found out about this yesterday when I was at work. I started getting a bunch of texts. They were a group between my Mom, my brother, and myself. Started with my Mom saying "That's too bad about Norm MacDonald :-(". And my brother came back with "Yeah, I didn't even know he was sick." And I thought "Oh shit, what happened?" I checked and yeah, he was dead. And the texts kept going back and forth. 

One of the funniest human beings to have ever lived. I know there are people out there that don't like him, didn't find him funny, thought he was a sarcastic asshole (and he was), but I still think he was the funniest castmember that SNL ever had. Bar none. They were lucky to have him, and his termination because of the OJ jokes was absolute bullshit. The funniest Weekend Update "anchor" they ever had was kicked out because he made jokes about OJ Simpson. Graet jorbe.

He could tell the worst joke in the world, and it would become hilarious, his voice, intonation, timing, it was always spot on. His wit and sarcasm was unparalleled. He was a master of dry comedy, much like Leslie Nielsen: he could deliver a straight line, completely seriously, and make you laugh your ass off. I'm going to miss him, he was a funny, funny fucker. Definitely one of my favorite comedians. I think everyone in my immediate family loved his comedy, and pretty much everyone that I've ever been friends with throughout my life has enjoyed his humor. It's dark, but not black; it's sarcastic, but not mean spirited; it can be offensive, but only if you're easily offended. I'm going to miss him.

Edit: I'm going to add this. I was watching his talkshow/interview show on Netflix last night, filmed in 2018, in his interview with Drew Barrymore, and he attributed a quote to Pablo Picasso, when it was Salvador Dali that said "I don't do drugs I am drugs". And he messed up the quote itself. And the last standup that I watched of his was filmed in 2017, and he seemed to be slow on the draw. It was funny, but it seemed like something was off, he didn't seem as quick-witted as he had been in the past.

I thought, well, maybe he's high, or he's just getting a bit older. It just sucks. I thought he was just getting tired of being funny all the time, getting sick of the expectations. But no, he had cancer, and still wanted to make people laugh. Still had jokes to tell, still had people to piss off.

It really sucks to see him go, he was one of the most entertainingly sardonic comedians that has ever existed, and I'm glad I got to enjoy his humor from a wee lad up until a few days ago.

On 9/15/2021 at 7:40 AM, Redneckerz said:

Of the few bits i have seen (He isn't that known here) he had incredible deadpan humour. I loved him on the Comedy Central Roasts because his style of humor was completely the opposite of everyone elses: Saying nothing inherently funny and yet making it funny through impeccable timing.

 

You have great skill if you can create something funny out of things that aren't funny by themselves. Chalking it up to watch more Norm.

The Moth joke is one of the best examples of this, in my opinion. Norm's timing with Conan and the studio audience is incredible. What's even funnier is that when he discussed it years later, he basically said it was a few sentence joke he had heard from a friend. And in the middle of this particular Conan episode, he was made aware that he was going to be on the show for one more segment than he had initially thought. So during the commercial break, he decided he would just stretch out this few sentence joke into a 4-5 minute joke.

23 hours ago, Caffeine Freak said:

 

The Moth joke is one of the best examples of this, in my opinion. Norm's timing with Conan and the studio audience is incredible. What's even funnier is that when he discussed it years later, he basically said it was a few sentence joke he had heard from a friend. And in the middle of this particular Conan episode, he was made aware that he was going to be on the show for one more segment than he had initially thought. So during the commercial break, he decided he would just stretch out this few sentence joke into a 4-5 minute joke.

 

 

 

I have never seen that bit before, but that was hilarious. And I think it's a quintessential Norm joke. If you don't like it, you probably wouldn't like the vast majority of his work. If you're like me, you were laughing your ass off the entire time. It was drawn out well beyond it's welcome, it almost felt tiresome, and the punchline was absolute crap, but it's told in such a way that your attention is fixed on what he's saying. I'm not saying that people don't "get" him and feel superior about it, humor is absolutely subjective, but to me, he was one of the funniest people that have ever lived. I can really see how people might not find him funny. But damn, he cracks me up. Thanks for posting it @Caffeine Freak.

And at the end when Conan says "So... Norm?" and he replies "What?" Icing on the cake.