The other thing he did,
which was completely fearless,
is if you look at him on the ESPYS,
have you seen that footage of him on the ESPYS?
People were so angry at the time--
Mm hmm. because he's going after
these athletes and there was this sense of like,
you can't do this and he took so much shit for that,
and then you look at it now,
that's what the ESPYS has become.
You know?
Mm hmm. The ESPYs now is,
is like a lot of people doing jokes about--
A roast. A roast.
Yeah. Yeah.
But it became more that way.
He just did that first.
And at the time people were really upset.
And at the time,
you feel like there's a lot of, in comedy,
people getting applause for being brave
in one way or another,
but oftentimes,
what they're doing,
they know is gonna play well.
Mm hmm. Do you know what I mean?
But when he's-- But when he's doing it--
Yeah. he was doing things
that really were brave
and he paid the price for it.
Yeah. He took a lot of heat
when he went out,
he took a lot of, I mean,
it cost him his job at Saturday Night Live--
Yeah.
One of his bosses was friends with a murderer.
And so Norm was gonna do-- Alleged.
Okay. (Frank laughing)
Jesus. Norm was gonna--
This is a show that follows the rule of law.
(Andy and Frank laughing) All right, alleged.
(Conan laughing) You can just slug in,
"Alleged." (Conan and Frank laughing)
We can edit that in.
I've seen no proof, Andy. Yeah.
I'm assuming that it came down,
"Hey, lay off the OJ stuff."
'Cause Norm would do at the time,
like five OJ jokes in a row.
And to Norm's sensibility, somebody saying,
"Hey, the big boss wants you to stop making jokes
"about that murderer." Yeah.
Norm is like, "No!" Yeah.
Like if anything that you should not back off of,
it's making jokes about a murderer.
You know what? He did-- That must have been tough
for you at that time.
Well, I remember,
and I have it somewhere,
either I have it or Jeff Ross has it,
but we got, we got,
The word came down,
you can't book Norm Macdonald anymore
and it came from the top
and from Don Ohlmeyer.
Don Ohlmeyer was the one that Lauren suggested me
for Late Night, he gave me the job,
and so I had a lot of feelings of loyalty
to Don Ohlmeyer because I wouldn't be here right now
if it weren't for Don sticking with me.
So I owe him that.
So I wrote a letter to Don that said,
"I got this directive, you've hired me
"to do the best show I can do,
"and this is my best guest,
"and so I need to do-- Yeah.
"I need to do my job, which is the best show I can do."
I got the letter back and written in the margins
was just something, I don't remember the exact,
but it was something like,
"I expected better from you."
Or something like that.
It was basically me being told--
Do as you're told. Yeah, but,
or I'm really disappointed in your lack of loyalty
or something and I felt, at the time,
that's not, no,
that's not a lack of loyalty.
That is loyalty. Yeah.
I always greedily wanted more Norm.
I was upset, this is in a purely selfish way,
but the number one fan request,
I think this podcast now is only three years old,
the number one request for a guest,
by far--
Mm hmm. out of everyone,
Norm Macdonald. Yeah.
And we tried for a long time--
Yeah. to get Norm
to come on the podcast and couldn't get him to come on
and I started to get into my head about it and think, well,
is something wrong?
Is he upset with us?
And it's only now that I'm--
Yeah. realizing that he was ill.
It was hard to book him on the show.
It became-- Paula Davis has said
we try constantly and he just--
Yeah. wasn't doing anything.
Yeah.
We were all scratching our heads.
Like where's Norm? We were all wondering
where he is and I know that fans were thinking,
where is he?
And we were as confused as anybody--
Yeah. And of course now, sadly,
we know how much difficulty he was having--
Yeah.
and how long and how very sick,
how long he's been sick and how very sick he was.
Yeah, I go back to, again, like I'm like a dog with a bone
trying to figure out...
He's very...
I'm just gonna tell Frank is new to this,
so he keeps shuffling papers (Frank laughing)
right up against a microphone.
(Andy laughing) There you go.
That's okay, Frank.
He wants to make sure
people know-- Frank you can have it
right here on the table. Yeah, sure.
He wants people to know
we're reading from a script. Yeah.
(Frank exploding with laughter)
He's got all these notes.
Norm equals funny.
Like that's not gonna... (Andy laughing)
That's not gonna help you.
I remember,
I gave this shout out to Jim Downey earlier,
Jim Downey and Norm were such a good team
because they both have a very high bar for comedy
and a really good ear
and I think Norm was the perfect vehicle
for Jim's humor and vice versa.
They just had a really copacetic relationship,
but one of my favorite norm jokes of all time was an OJ joke
and the picture comes up
and it's the picture of Johnny Cochran at the trial
and OJ is seated next to him
and Johnny Cochran's holding up the knit cap
that was found at the scene
and forgive my bad Norm impression,
but it was kind of like something along the lines of,
"A rough, difficult time today in the OJ Simpson trial,
"Johnny Cochran introduced the knit hat
"that was found at the scene of the murders
"and he held it aloft and showed the jury
"the hat that had been found.
"Things got off the rails a little bit
"when OJ Simpson interrupted him
"and said, 'Hey, hey, careful with that.
"'That's my lucky stabbing cap.'"
(Frank and Andy laughing)
I remember that joke came through the TV
and slapped me in the face,
it was so good. Yeah, yeah.
And I love the whole like,
and of course, you know Norm,
what he would do is,
and I never saw him do it,
he would tell the joke
and then he would stare you down--
Yeah. through the television.
Yeah. Like try that on for size.
Yeah. (Frank laughing)
Something no one else could get away with.
Yeah, and-- You would look like
such an asshole-- Yeah.
if anybody else did that.
"But that's my lucky stabbing cap!"
Yeah. And then you could just see
his eyes-- Yeah.
on fire and that grin
and he's going to hold it there
and he knows he's gonna lose his job.
Yeah.
He's gonna lose his job over this.
Funniest guy to ever be on that show
and he's going to lose his job.