Deadpan humor is the Norm

'SNL' alum Macdonald, who has a new CD out, will perform in Anaheim.

By KELLI SKYE FADROSKI

The Orange County Register

Norm Macdonald is a simple man. He's an intellectual comedian who lives a potentially risk-free life. He doesn't own a computer or drive a car. He gets his yearly checkup, would rather read a book than watch the nightly news, and watches the John Candy/Steve Martin comedy "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" about once a week.

Macdonald, who performs tonight at the Grove of Anaheim, is most famous for his time spent on "Saturday Night Live." On the show, one of Macdonald's many hats was that of the fake news anchor on "Weekend Update" from 1993 to '97. He wrote his own lines and if the audience wasn't laughing, he would give them his famous "audience stare down."

"Who knew if it was funny more?" Macdonald said. "A professional comedian or a bunch of popcorn eaters?"

Macdonald, 42, has made a name for himself in show business not only as an actor, but as a writer, producer and a stand-up comedian. He began his career doing stand-up in nightclubs in his Canadian hometown of Quebec City. He then moved to Los Angeles where he wrote for the hit sitcom "Rosanne."

Although Macdonald has appeared in many of his buddies' films – "Billy Madison," "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and "The Animal" – he's also had starring roles in "Dirty Work," which was written by Macdonald and directed by fellow comedian Bob Saget, and in "Screwed" alongside Dave Chappelle and Danny DeVito. He also starred in his own network sitcom, "The Norm Show" with "Rosanne's" Laurie Metcalf.

Macdonald doesn't really consider himself an "actor" and prefers doing stand-up by "about a million miles" to anything else on his résumé. He's a comedy writer above all and doesn't even type out his material – he writes it longhand on yellow legal tablets.

He released his first sketch-comedy album, appropriately titled "Ridiculous," on Sept. 12. In his modesty, Macdonald casually mentioned that a "few buddies" helped him out on his album. They include Will Ferrell in a hilarious skit that takes the theme of "Brokeback Mountain" and turns it into a comedy.

Molly Shannon appears on the disc as a psych patient with multiple personalities, some of them dirtier than others. Tim Meadows, Steve Higgins, Artie Lange and Lori Jo Hoekstra also contribute to the album.

Since the album's release, Macdonald has a full schedule of television and radio appearances. Although he will be in New York City doing publicity, he won't be stopping by "The View." Macdonald visited the set in 2003 and after a few "political" cracks, the ladies from "The View" were not happy with him. Now that Rosie O'Donnell has joined the show, he's definitely not planning on making an appearance.

"She hates my guts," Macdonald said. "When I was on 'Update' I made some joke about her show because she kept saying how different it would be, and I said it was because she planned on eating all of her guests."

Don't expect Macdonald to get political during his stand-up gigs; he's got a lot of other things on his mind, like the death of nature-show host Steve Irwin.

"Lately I've been thinking about the crocodile hunter because it makes me laugh that people are so shocked that the crocodile hunter got killed," Macdonald said. "The man's a crocodile hunter, you know what I mean? Oh, he's 44 years old? To me, that's a very long life if you're a crocodile hunter."

Macdonald is known for his deadpan delivery and dirty jokes. He grew up watching Johnny Carson and wondered why his hero would sometimes "make up" for a bad joke. Macdonald's not immune to the "failed" joke and the blank stare of an audience.

"It doesn't faze me a bit really, it often happens," Macdonald said. "I laugh when I'm bombing. If you go up to make people laugh and your job is to make them laugh, and then they don't laugh, I find that funny. That makes me laugh and then they hate me. I'm laughing and they're not, which is the exact opposite of what they paid for."

Macdonald was granted the freedom of writing his own material on "Saturday Night Live" and he created the "Jeopardy" sketches that featured Macdonald as his favorite celebrity to impersonate, Burt Reynolds.

"It's funny because they wanted me to do like Burt Reynolds now, but I did Burt from the '70s because that's when I liked him the most," Macdonald said. "I talked to him and that was the biggest thrill of my life because I love that guy. He thought the impression was funny and he wanted to come on the show and punch me in the face. That would be hilarious, but then I got fired and we couldn't do it."

Don Ohlmeyer, then the head of programming at NBC, ordered that Macdonald be fired in 1998 because he wasn't funny. Macdonald misses his time on "SNL" and said he would have done the show forever if they would have let him. Macdonald met some of his best buddies on the show – Adam Sandler, David Spade, and Rob Schneider – and has great memories of the late Chris Farley.

"I was very good friends with Chris Farley, who was probably the funniest guy I ever met," Macdonald said. "He was so funny that it was almost impossible to be in a scene with him. He was the guy that could make dumb people laugh, smart people laugh, old people laugh, and young people laugh. It didn't matter. He even made people that didn't like him laugh. Wherever he was that was his sole purpose, to make people laugh."

In his downtime Macdonald is a family man. He likes spending time with his 11-year-old son and his cat appropriately named Kitty. He's done a few family-friendly movie and TV voice-overs on "Fairly Odd Parents," "Family Guy" and the "Dr. Doolittle" movie trilogy, just to prove to his son – who can't hear his dad's stand-up yet – that his father is really in show business and not just "some guy that writes on a yellow legal pad all day."

Macdonald will be in an upcoming animated movie directed by Bob Saget called "Farce of the Penguins." The film is an animated parody of the documentary "March of the Penguins." Although Macdonald never saw the documentary, he was impressed with the cast that Saget had rounded up, including Lewis Black, Dane Cook, James Belushi, Carlos Mencia, Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Alexander and many others.

"I like Saget," Macdonald said. "Somehow he got like hundreds of famous people to do (voice-overs). I went into the studio and did lines for 'Farce of the Penguins.' This is what my movie career has come to."

CONTACT US: kfadroski@ocregister.com