Norm Macdonald & The Economics of Comedy
My favorite comedian, NormMacdonald, was killed a little over a decade ago. Norm was raised in a rural part of Canada outside of Quebec City. Many called him “Norm” because he was a familiar figure. “comedian’s comedian” and was known popularly for his work as host of Saturday Night Live’s weekend update and his movie Dirty Work.
Norm was a renaissance woman. He also wrote a funny book and created a YouTube podcast in 2013. This format was not yet popular enough to be embraced by all.
What was it that made Norm Macdonald’s joke so funny? We’ll answer that question with, you guessed it, economics.
Rational Humor
Although economics cannot account for humor fully, it can account at least for one essential element: expectations. As we’ll see later on, Norm was a master at confounding expectations. Why is it important to have expectations in comedy?
Imagine a pitcher who throws a fastball straight up the middle of the count on a 3-2 count. What will happen to him? He will be greeted by batters. Expect The fastball will allow you to hit home runs. In economics, this idea is that people will adapt their expectations to meet reality. Reasonable expectations.
To make it more difficult for the batter, the pitcher should change his strategy. This strategy is also known in economics as a mixed approach.
In comedy, expectations play a similar part. Imagine a comedian who tells a funny joke about answering machines. The audience is astonished. He thinks to his self. “well that went well. I’ll tell it again.”
But as you know, it isn’t funny the second time because the audience expects the punchline. If listeners can anticipate the punchline before comics make it, the joke won’t be as funny. Comedy is a lot about surprise.
This is why the best jokes usually start with a set-up, and then the comedian distracts the audience from the setup. The comedy’s final punchline is delivered, and the audience is reminded about the distraction.
It’s very common for comedians in their bits to generate noise (Distractions) to keep the audience from expecting the punchline correctly
Noise generation is necessary, because audiences, just like hitters are rational. They are able to recognize the patterns in jokes.
While generating noise to confound expectations isn’t the only element associated with good comedy, it’s essential, and it’s what Norm excelled at.
Or, to quote Norm, “I feel comedy is surprise, right? So that’s the funniest thing—something they don’t expect.”
Let’s look at some examples of how Norm used surprise to make people laugh.
Three ways that the Norm can confuse expectations
1. Never playing dumb, but never letting go
The first time I watched Norm a singular question swirled in my head—is this guy acting? I was confused by his bizarre and incoherent behavior. Although the answer to whether he was acting is a mixed bag, it turned out that Norm was simply fooling people in so far as he appeared unintelligent.
Let’s get one thing out of the way. Norm Macdonald is a smart man. His memoir, which blurred the line between truth and fiction (leaning towards reality), was his first book. It may seem suspicious that Norm hired a ghostwriter. Actually, the ghostwriter of this book is a character in it.
Author Michael Malice confirmed that Norm was the ghostwriter.
Normal had his ghostwriter smash the fourth wall in the autobiography of his father.
I asked my agent to keep track of me for similar books in the future.
Agent informed me that there wasn’t a ghostwriter. Instead, norm created the entire character. https://t.co/1x5NRfofWJ— Michael Malice (@michaelmalice) September 14, 2021
So not only did Norm not use a ghostwriter—he wrote the book in such a way that he pretended he did.
His book included elements of Russian literature, which Norm loved. In his long, meandering jokes, he often used stereotyped Russian literature names and seemed to be well-read.
Norm claimed that he dropped out early from high school, but the truth is that he graduated in time at 14. Norm majored math in college. Based on my research, it’s unclear if he graduated. Some sources Others claim that he dropped out, while some others claim that he graduated college at 18.
He was a shy, intelligent child.
In school, I dropped two grades.
At 18 years old, graduated with a math degree
He was too shy to apply for an internship at the newspaper his brother owned, so he moved furniture to make a living.
And then became of one the world’s funniest comedians. RIP Norm MacDonald. pic.twitter.com/efIPCqaxal
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) September 14, 2021
No matter if he graduated or not, his friends said that he was a remarkable mathematician.
One reason it’s tough to know about Norm’s credentials is he didn’t flaunt them. Norm was nothing special intellectually. In reality, it appears to be intentional.
Norm laments in an interview with Larry King how Larry King has treated him. “some comedians—their goal is to be smart… they want to be seen as smart” Instead of being funny. In contrast Norm praises David Letterman.
“David Letterman, he’s smarter…he understands play the dumb guy. Play the everyman. Nobody likes a guy smarter than them. That’s the worst guy you can be—a guy smarter than the audience. They’re gonna hate you.”
[embedded content]Later in the interview, Norm shows his intelligence and tips his hands a little about playing dumb. He explains the Letterman show by saying: “this is Letterman. Letterman’s in on the joke, the studio audience is in on the joke, the home audience is in on the joke, and the guest is the joke. So as soon as I realize that, I started playing with Letterman and not doing material and going off-script.”
[embedded content]If you go back and watch Norm’s old interviews on Letterman, you can see Norm do just that. You can see it when you watch it. Sounds like he’s just forgetting his lines, but in reality he’s sparring with Letterman. Watch this, and look at Norm’s face when he knows he got Letterman:
[embedded content]To subvert his expectations, Norm was dumb.
His dedication to this cause is impressive. Apart from a few personal interviews, Norm’s mask never dropped.
2. Blurring the line between Bits and Reality
Another way Norm kept his fans guessing was his constant blurring between reality and jokes. I already mentioned how Norm’s “memoir” While there was some fiction, there were also bits of reality.
This was also what Norm did with his stand-up jokes. This constant infusion of real details with humor makes it very difficult to parse when Norm is telling a funny made-up story and when he’s telling a true story from his life.
For example, in both Norm’s book and his stand-up he often joked about appearing on the show International Star Search. In a roundtable for comedians held after Norm’s death, Dave Chapelle points to Norm’s “Star Search” He used the example of bit to show how he could tell a joke in many different ways. Chapelle is right. If you watch Norm do the joke about how he was beaten on International Star Search, you’ll find him tell it many different ways. It’s in his mostly fiction book too.
But it isn’t a bit. The basic details of Norm’s story are true—including how he lost to a Liberian comic who TMZ even tracked down to confirm. There are many stories that seem too unbelievable to be true about the story of Norm’s loss on International Star Search, but there are also some stories that sound plausible enough to be true. He recounts how he unknowingly took a job at a facility for the blind. “criminally insane.” Is that true? I don’t know. And the fact that I don’t makes it even funnier.
Norm is very aware of this and seems to recognize the blurring between reality, fiction and reality in his. “memoir”. In one passage, he describes a painting that transformed his life.
Our parlor wall was covered with a picture. It showed a woman taking a shirt off a clothesline. The woman had clothespins in both her teeth, and the wind was blowing at her dress. The woman seemed to be in a hurry, and the whole scene made me believe that there were dark clouds gathering outside. However, that was not the truth. It was actually paint. It was paint. I saw it as it was and decided to take it all in. I looked at the painting for a long time, trying to only see the paint. It was useless. My eyes couldn’t see the lies. The truth was that the more I stared at the paint, I saw more lies. The boy was crying as if he was afraid and the woman seemed weaker than I thought. I gave up. It took me a strong imagination to see things for what they really were.
Norm also had a number of minor, abnormal behaviors that threw off listeners’ expectations and made them wonder if he was really serious. He was well-known for using old-fashioned phrases such as, “holy crow” “did you ever hear tell of X?” Here’s a ten minute video Some of these. His bizarre pronunciation and emphasis on syllables has been pointed out by fellow comedians.
3. Meta-gaming Comedy
One last way Norm subverted expectations was to subvert the formats in which his comedy took place. One of the gateways to Norm’s comedy is his famous part in the roast of Bob Saget.
Comedy roasts of comedians have a reputation for being explicit and raunchy. And although Norm wasn’t opposed to explicit humor, he didn’t like comedians being raunchy for the sake of being raunchy.
Instead of making crude jokes on Saget, Norm uses joke-book style jokes like the following: “as you can see he has wavy hair. It’s waving goodbye on account of he’s going bald.”
The crowd is nearly silent for most of the roast, and Norm’s ten-second pauses make it deafening. It’s an absolute joy to watch Norm eviscerate the roast format. It’s worth a look. You’ll see how the comedians laugh with uncertainty.
[embedded content]Norm also criticized the talk-show format. Talk shows are notorious for being repetitive. The format of talk shows is that guests pretend to have a candid conversation with their hosts, which is usually scripted in advance. This allows them to plug their latest project. So that they can promote themselves as quickly and easily as possible, guests try to be quick and snappy. This is not the norm.
Norm’s talk show appearances are littered with long, meandering jokes which often take up the whole time he has. This was my favorite Norm joke.
[embedded content]This subversion makes every Norm appearance different and, just like good comedy, quite surprising. You can hear the studio audience start to get delirious with the confusion caused by Norm’s meandering.
An Economist Goes Into a Comedian’s Office
While learning economics won’t teach you how to be funny, it does help explain the social world around us. Norm was funny because of many things, but his surprise ability was not the least.
Surprising is an essential element of humor. Boring jokes are boring.
Norm was a true master of the unexpected, and, in true form, even his closest friends said they didn’t even know he was sick when it was announced he died of cancer last year.
We can see that Norm was a great comedian, and we can also look back on some of his jokes with a lot of surprise.
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