When Marc Maron Interviewed Norm Macdonald, ‘All of My Assumptions About Him Were Wrong’
“I was genuinely concerned that I wouldn’t be able to have a conversation with him,” Maron told A.V. Club in 2013. “Just by his public personality and the times I met him, I thought, ‘I don’t know if this guy can even talk for very long.’ You know what I mean? He doesn’t seem like a talker.”
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The two comics didn’t seem to have much in common. Maron had heard the rumors about Macdonald’s gambling, but knew little about sports. What would he talk to Macdonald about? “I was racking my brains,” he said, “and completely nervous.”
He needn’t have worried. Macdonald “showed up, and all of a sudden, this whole other person that I couldn’t have ever imagined was inside of there. All of my assumptions about him were wrong. My fears were not necessary. We had a lot in common, and for whatever reason, I’m talking to a very sensitive, self-aware, struggling, searching, intelligent person.”
Here are some highlights from their conversation…
Macdonald on New York Magazine’s Takedown of SNL: “When I was on Saturday Night Live, everyone hated it. They hated Sandler and Farley. Everybody was ‘Oh, it's dead’ and all that shit. (A New York Magazine writer) came and the guy had an agenda, obviously. But he was very unfair. Sandler was very, very funny, and nobody was funny like Farley. And then he presented it as if these guys were always doing shtick and everyone's looking away embarrassed. And I him laughing! It was very frustrating ... They had Farley do a photo shoot where he had a television on his head and it was kind of funny — Farley is doing a crazy physical thing with this big TV on his head. And then they put it on the cover and they said, ‘Comedy is dead.’ (Farley) wanted to go beat up the guy.”
Macdonald on Gambling: “Oh fuck, man. I went broke like a few times when I actually had lots of money. Three times. And I mean broke, dead broke. I’m not a psychiatrist but I do know this: When I would go broke — because they say gamblers want to lose and stuff, (which) always seemed odd to me — but I will say the three times that I went broke for a lot of money, I had a very freeing feeling. I would go to the coffee shop and have a coffee. I had nothing. A lot of me is trying to get the fuck as ascetic as I can in my life.”
Macdonald on Religion. “I’ve been struggling with faith. I’ll just throw myself into religion sometimes. But the problem with that is, then you get into churches, and then you get into men and stuff like that. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of going, ‘Religion’s bad.’ ‘God’s bad’ because this fucking priest fucked a kid. I mean, why does that make God bad? It doesn’t make any fucking sense. If you go into any church, obviously it’s led by fallible men and you can’t believe in them. So you got to come to it yourself somehow.”
The Macdonald interview ended up on Maron’s list of WTF favorites. “It was just one of the greatest conversations I ever had in the garage because I was completely wrong,” he explained. “My perception about somebody was just way off. It turned out to be one of the greatest conversations I had there, and I couldn’t believe it.”
