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Originally Posted by SportsJunky
I'm back down the rabbit hole again, listening to Norm in the background while I work. Thank god there is so much material online of his performances. I think in a few years he will be talked about in the way comics talk about Pryor and Carlin. He was that important in my opinion.
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While I don't think he's near their level as they are the two greatest of all time, what separates Norm is that he always stayed true to his stand up roots. Carlin branched out but still toured until right before his death. He never abandoned the craft.
That's the thing about most of these modern stand up guys. As soon as they can, they want a tv show, movies etc. They almost all become sellouts as soon as they hit it big and go mainstream.
Norm never did this. He was like #### the establishment and told jokes his way for his whole career. He never, ever caved to studio or executive pressure. He even got fired from SNL over it. He doubled down on it whenever he was threatened.
Most of his SNL contemporaries and other comedians respect him so much IMO because Norm said #### the money and the fame, I want to do comedy my way. All those other guys took the paycheck instead of the credibility.
I've always believed that's what makes him a comedian's comedian. He doesn't have some unique never before experienced take on comedy. It's that he's unrelentingly himself and never wavered.
The Bob Saget roast is the perfect example. It reminded me of something Andy Kaufman would do, where the joke is almost entirely based on the fact that a lot of people won't get it. He never, ever went for the lowest common denominator humour. In fact, I think he'd hate it if his comedy was ever that broad.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1437850553279660032
And a good article:
https://www.nathanrabin.com/happy-pl...ob-saget-roast
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This was never more apparent than during what I consider the highlight of his career outside of Dirty Work: his legendary performance at the Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget. The impulse when roasting someone is to go as hard and as dirty and as aggressive as you possibly can, to “win” by out-grossing everyone else, or, alternately, being super-clever.
So there’s something brilliantly counter-intuitive about Macdonald traveling in the opposite direction. The audience expects, even demands, profanity and nastiness and gutter scatology. Then Macdonald shambles over genially and begins delivering dad jokes so exquisitely hokey and unfunny that they cross over and become devastatingly funny. You can watch it here.
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And let's not forget he spent the entire roast reading the newspaper!
