Conan says NBC tried to ban Norm Macdonald from his show
NBC exec Don Ohlmeyer, who pushed for Macdonald's firing from Saturday Night Live, also tried to ban him from Late Night
TV News Norm Macdonald
The comedy world continues to come to terms this week with the death of Norm Macdonald, who died on Tuesday at the age of 61. Beyond his bona fides as a former Saturday Night Live star (to say nothing of the cult status of projects like Dirty Work), Macdonald enjoyed a reputation as a “comedian’s comedian,” the kind of guy who could walk onto the set of a talk show and casually reduce professional joke-tellers to tears and begging requests to “Please don’t make me laugh at this.” As we noted in our round-up of the many clips of Macdonald that circulated online this week, he was one of the best “bad” talk show guests of all time, injecting irreverence and energy into a sometimes very rote formula. But he almost got banned from one of his most prolific venues for that deadpan absurdity, per that show’s host: Conan O’Brien.
This is per The Daily Beast, reporting on a podcast O’Brien released this week as a way to talk about Macdonald’s influence on his career. Talking with Andy Richter and long-time producer Frank Smiley, O’Brien spoke effusively about Macdonald, including his desire that the comedian could have seen all the praise from fans that has overflowed online since his death. “He took so much flak in his career, he took so much shit,” O’Brien said. “And yes, he knew that he had fans, but I wish he had been able to read the stuff that’s being written about him. I wish he knew how beloved he is.”
The most famous of that taken-shit, of course, was Macdonald’s firing from Saturday Night Live, which has generally been attributed to his refusal to stop telling jokes about O.J. Simpson, a personal friend of NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer. Per O’Brien, that dislike on Ohlmeyer’s part didn’t stop at the doors of Studio 8H, either: After Macdonald’s firing, the executive handed down an order that O’Brien ban the comedian from his show, as well.
“The word came down, ‘You can’t book Norm Macdonald anymore,’” O’Brien revealed on the podcast. “And it came from the top, from Don Ohlmeyer.” O’Brien, then five years into a run on Late Night that Ohlmeyer had helped assemble and sign off on, wrote back, “I got this directive. You’ve hired me to do the best show I can and this is my best guest. So I need to do my job, which is the best show I can do.” Ohlmeyer reportedly said he was “disappointed” by the decision, but apparently relented; Macdonald would appear more than two dozen times on O’Brien’s various NBC shows, creating some of the most memorable moments in those series’ history.
124 Comments
Who knew that a TV executive would be of such poor moral character? I for one, am shocked.
Their decision-making also seems suspect. These are highly paid individuals!!
But on the upside, I don’t think anybody will be surprised that Conan showed strength and integrity in this situation and stood up for his friend.
Unlike Jimmy Fallon.
I mean, yeah, Fallon doesn’t even have the integrity to just be the host and let the audience be the audience.
Norm had an appearance on Fallon’s show cancelled because of his comments about Louis CK & Roseanne:
Dadmit. Now he can’t host Jeopardy!
Who? Turd Ferguson? He never hosted the game show. Just frequent celebrity contestant.
It was a wisecrack about how Norm made an offensive comment in support of Roseanne and Louis and therefore should not host Jeopardy!, akin to how a bad and offensive joke by Ken Jennings should not let him host. See the video I replied to.
That guy looks disturbingly like Ted Cruz Jr.
What did he do? Do tell…
The sad thing is, Conan had to frame it in a “the show is more important” angle instead of a “shut up you petty tyrant” way.
This Don Ohlmeyer seems like a real jerk.
Damnit, I was going to make that joke!
Hiyoo!
Ah, he’s a good guy.
is jib has a cut that is most displeasing.
You know, the more I learn about him, the less I care for him!
Not enough stars
Who knew that adult people who live in reality could be friends with people who may or may not have questionable morals….Im sure you don’t though, im sure you properly background check every single person your friends with…Cause I mean its not America or anything and we don’t have this innocent until proven guilty or anything
Im sure the perfect morally pure woke trash surely wouldn’t have anything in their history that might mean they need to be “cancelled” also under the woke trash moral nazi, thought, music, movie etc. police…
“Tell me about it” – Julie Chen Moonves
Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock was pure copaganda
Ladies and gentlemen, this man is for the birds!
But he coined the phrase, “must see TV!” so he can’t be all bad, right?
You uh…you got any gum?? You get that one, Paul? Pinheads at GE!
Funny how the holier-than-thou white men of the av club seem totally clueless about the numerous and well documented instances of McDonald being a misogynistic, homophobic piece of shit. For years! Although this place certainly has a history of ignoring women and minority voices when it has a hard on for a mediorce, abusive white man, like John Teti for example.Funny how this website that never hesitates to criticize and attack other websites and orgs for their history of institutional bigotry but a huge number of former (and prominent) av club writers and staffers lay out exactly how bigoted this place is and its just… crickets from all the shitty white men on this site. Shitty white men like you William Hughes. There’s a reason you are still here and they are not
Is any of this evidence of him being a piece of shit not based on him making some jokes you didn’t like?
I’m sure there is, I mean hell, he grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and was an adult in the early 80’s plus he was white. What more do you need, right???I do dislike how all these (For lack of a better term) “Woke” People are calling out all these, older people for acting how they acted in a time when everybody acted in a particular manner.Many of the biggest names in comedy made their careers in new york city during the heyday of cocaine. Yeah, they probably treated a lot of people like shit and did a lot of things they wouldn’t do today because it unacceptable.Can I believe he probably treated some women less than respectfully? Sure, it was the 80’s and 90’s. Could he be homophobic? I doubt it, but maybe, after all he did describe himself as religious. does it matter? no, unless this is stuff he was doing recently which I have not heard of.
He certainly wasn’t a Joe Rogan type with wacko beliefs or some edgy comic ranting about women and “the gays” and minorities like they’re all just nuisances in his life. MacDonald made jokes that may read as extremely callous on paper but the delivery was something else entirely. Really I don’t think he had a lot of prejudices or deeply held beliefs, he probably didn’t care about politics… I doubt he’s someone you’d have wanted to be in a relationship with because it was probably pretty one-sided… He may not have gotten much enjoyment in life out of anything except crafting and telling the perfect joke. If someone wants to read his jokes as homophobic, I (personally) think that’s either because his sensibility (which is a very detached Gen X kind of humor that kind of mocks sincerity) is alien or off-putting to them or they’re willfully not getting it. But either way I’ll leave them to their beliefs because it doesn’t seem like an argument that can be won.
Women are still treated disrespectfully. All the time. A lesser portion of men are as well. I don’t know why we can’t just boil it down to positive and negative. This Purity of Essence poster is negativity. Norm Macdonald was never an enemy of gay people. At all. My one negative comment will be that I’m surprised and sad that an apparent fan of Dr. Strangelove is such a bummer.
Norm is a bit of a tough nut to crack. I think he didn’t find women funny because his ethos was very male and very straight and he made some sexist and homophobic jokes. But I also think there was an Andy Kaufman like quality to the way he did it that was satirical, even if Norm claimed he hated satire. Kaufman exaggerated his own sexism for laughs but Laurie Anderson always said he knew the joke was or should be on him. Norm’s producing partner was a woman, and he was apparently very dependent on her. The issue is that when Kaufman or MacDonald do humor like that, the fact that they are supposed to be jerks and not “truth-tellers” is lost on too much of the audience. Of course, a cynic would say they were playing it both ways and they probably were.
I’m so tired of the “everyone was like that back then!” It’s circling around the point, which is: Yes, racism and misogyny and homophobia were fucking epidemic and straight white men had the privilege of being able to ignore it while women and non-white comics just didn’t get booked.
No, no, Vague: you see, Purity up there, had he been in a time machine and gone back to the 60s, why, he’d have marched right up to a Klan rally in Mississippi and told them they were wrong! And all the Klansman would be immediately taken aback, take off their hoods, and then go out offer their daughters’ hands in marriage to black people.For real. That’s totally what Purity would do. Honest. Shame there’s no time machines, so you’d have to take his word for it.
See but there’s the problem when the charismatic klansmen took of their hood, well Purity would be taken by those eyes of theirs and joined right in on their hate.
Yeah, remember when he ‘joked’ that Brandon Teena deserved to be raped and murdered, what a hilarious guy he was, definitely just a ‘joke’ that people didn’t like, yeah?
This douche-nozzle has “Purity” in their name, so right off the bat we know we’re dealing with a self-righteous individual who lacks the ability to distinguish between jokes and actual opinions.
you got anything concrete or just accusations?
The AV Club is the most self-righteously woke pop culture website out there, and that’s certainly saying something. I love Norm and I’m shocked that the regular cast of joyless scolds here have eulogized him to this extent, considering he was no Amber Ruffin or John Oliver.
“Joyless scolds” “woke” jfc you clowns need to develop more of a vocabulary. Why not just say it makes you want to cry when people criticize celebrities you for some reason stan for in spite of not actually knowing them personally, make it easier for everyone
I have my complaints about the trajectory AVC has gone down (Kinja!), but I don’t believe it’s the most self-righteously woke, because of all the others out there.
Im kind of shocked they didn’t scold Norm for his views on stuff like Hannah Gadsby or views on religion. Especially given that someone like William Hughes still believes Jussie Smollett. This just proves it is hard to win the wokest of all. There is always someone who will out do you with some form of outrage and opression.
Also this is the first I’m hearing of the “institutional bigotry” of the AV Club. It sure would be hilariously ironic if this place imploded with a woke inquisition like so many other organizations have over the past few years.
It was pretty bad in the “Girls” heyday. That’s when they started flailing the ban hammer to drop folks taking a piss take on a show that desperately needed it in order to “elevate the discussion”. Then everyone pissed off to the boring, serious site.
Can I ask for citations of these well documented instances?
You should comment less.
Unhinged comments like this really make me wish for a Kinja “block user” option.
And the Andrea Dworkin Award goes to…
lmao, this wokescold
funny how there’s always one of you sniveling slacktivists finding any and all reasons to shit on a beloved person’s death.One day, you will be loved, too.
John Teti is abusive? I hadn’t heard that.
I was waiting for the obligatory “this beloved guy sucked because he doesn’t have the moral character of me!” Love the puritanical streak on the internet.
It’s more Victorian than Puritanical.
I’m thinking mostly the “everyone deserves damnation for they are all sinners, except for me,” viewpoint that exists in such posters.
Username checks out
Someone who has no sense of humor finds something unfunny. Shocking.
Are you trolling right now? Did you pick the wrong site by accident? Do you think you’re on MaximOnline or something?
It’s classy spitting on someone’s grave. Maybe look at yourself and see what deep darkness is inside your soul made you push publish.
Whenever I’ve said anything about Norm over this past week, I’ve always phrased it along these lines: “Norm was a fucking asshole who had some pretty bad takes, but holy shit, if he wasn’t also one of the funniest goddamn men who ever lived, and I hate that he won’t be around to tell any more of his godawful, hilarious jokes.” I think, yeah, Norm was one of the older, Boy’s Club type comedians, but I also think Norm didn’t make that his whole persona. It was the environment he came up in, so it was a part of him, and sometimes that part of him came out. That sucks, but I don’t consider it a cancellable offense, because he rarely seemed to dwell in that ugliness. (And believe me, I’m all for cancelling people, if their actions call for it.) From one minority to, presumably, another, I think we can let this one go.
I think that’s probably the difference between Norm and, for example, Joe Rogan. I truly do think Norm believed that comedy was better done by men, or at least from a male voice (as he mentioned when talking about Sarah Silverman), but he was never really insistent about it or anything else. He could have bad takes but he never would devote like an hour of a radio show talking about why he was right and everyone else on the planet was wrong.
He could have bad takes but he never would devote like an hour of a
radio show talking about why he was right and everyone else on the
planet was wrong.
…and you think Joe Rogan would? I don’t think you’ve researched deeply enough
Did Norm have some bad takes? Yea. Have you at any point in your life had a bad take?
When you’re dead, do you want to be judged by the worst 3 sentences you’ve ever said? Or by whether you were a kind person who treated people well on a daily basis, went out of your way to help other people, was generally honest, and was talented in a way that consistently brought people joy?We’ve got to stop thinking beyond single sentences. We all know we’ve said things we regret, we phrase our points poorly, we change our minds with new information constantly, and have spoken out of our depth. We know all this, but we like to pretend single sentences that are removed from tone of voice, removed from the broad social context of the time period, removed from the specific context of a comedy show, and removed from the context of all the other sentences around them, can make a person good or bad. As if there is a good/bad switch on a person that flips when they say the right or wrong things.The sum of a person’s actions is what matters. We write off good people too fast, and we open ourselves up to schmucks who treat people like shit but know the right things to say.
This is what I basically intended to say. Norm had some major issues with his ideology and some of his comedy. I won’t handwave it or excuse it. If it’s offensive enough to taint any faint appreciation for his comedy, I completely understand.
However, in spite of many flaws – his humor still meant a lot to me so I’m very sad to have lost him. He could be incredibly funny so, so often…and then he’d follow it up with some really awful shit about politics or people he felt like defending.
I think that’s how a lot of us operate these days. We acknowledge that those we appreciate are not perfect beings – and we don’t make excuses implying that anyone who does feel hurt has no right to feel that way. It’s the best most of us can do to navigate things. No, that’s not my way of saying things are ~too sensitive~ either, as I’m an icky SJW myself. But it’s a landscape we’re going to be navigating for a while. No celebrity will ever fully be above reproach or critique (I sure hope not! That seems like a person who isn’t *learning* either!) but I do hope we can begin to see more people who are a bit more nuanced and careful in their worldview. It’s a true shame Norm wasn’t. I still found a lot of his jokes to be riotously funny, though. It’s just the ol’ balancing act I guess. 🙁
Oh, fuck off
..have you ever seen his sitcom? It was OVERTLY pro-gay, pro-women, pro-minority, etc etc etc etc, and that was aired ages ago (all while also having some very “off-color” jokes about the same topics, but at the core was always pro-whateverfuckingequalrightstopicyouwantyoucaninserthere). He was a white man born 60 years ago, OF COURSE he is going to end up saying (likely JOKINGLY) some racist/sexist shit, maybe even having some racist/sexist tendencies, but that is a product of his environment. If you are raised to think X is bad and evil, and have never been provided the chance to learn otherwise (or given any reason to think you should need to look any further), does that make you a bad person? Unless he was beating gays every night or campaigning to get all black people back to the fields, I dont see the issue..If you cant separate “said some racist shit a long ass time ago and is a racist we should all shit-talk immediately after he dies” from “was a comedian making jokes in a time when irreverence was the ‘it’ thing to do and almost universally was loved by everyone around him, white cis men and otherwise,” idk what to tell you. If I called someone the N-word 20 years ago Im sure you would be calling for me to be beheaded because I am a racist terror not worthy of life, nevermind the fact that I am constantly defending, supporting, and helping people of all races, genders, sexualities, etc etc in whatever ways I can.(Please note, im 30…I did not say the N-word 20 years ago, or ever for that matter, but Im sure if a 10 year old had said a word they didnt know the meaning to but was widely considered the most racist word there is, yall will still demand he be burned to death while crucified because “fuck the white man” eh? White = bad, according to the comments sections of EVERY Kinja website…)
Minutes after the original post about McDonald’s death I commented with a joke I’m sure Norm would’ve appreciated and got chided. There’s definitely a demographic of AVClub readers/commentors who are downright odd.
Nice try, The Late Don Ohlmeyer.
lol
Andy Richter addressed just this on Conan’s memorial of Norm. To sum it up they were fucking jokes. There was no hatred there Norm just knew how to use off color jokes. I’ve loved Norm my entire comedy loving life. He was the example of the jokes were just that jokes. Norm had no limits and his limits were down to him having no hate.
What abusive things did John Teti do? I haven’t encountered any bad stories about him.
A bullshit inflammatory attempt at a troll post from a bullshit lightly-used troll burner account. Shocking!A comedian didn’t always toe party line, said some politically incorrect stuff, and occasionally had to apologize for pissing people like you off? Boo fucking hoo.Freedom of speech works both ways.
Shut up racist.
With all seriousness: shut the fuck up, you insufferable twit. He was a fucking comedian, who grew up in the fucking 60’s. His jokes were edgy sometimes. But point to a single example of his supposed bigotry that wasnt part of a joke, by all means. And if youre going to argue that comedians should never be allowed to say anything controversial or offensive, then that is an incredibly ignorant and idiotic argument. Norm was pretty much the only comedians who was universally beloved by other comedians, many of whom have gone out of their way to talk about how kind and caring he actually was. Which would be strange if he was supposedly a bigot. Learn how to separate jokes from reality, you insufferable dipshit.
I found the most idiotic and least self-aware comment on the internet today…
You seem exhausting.
MEH
i think this was auto generated by an AI
In addition to rightfully challenging a man who killed a woman, Norm MacDonald was the kind of misogynist who freely admits to groping women. He has also been accused of sexual assault and sexual harrasment by women in his industry.
Well Norm can finally meet his biggest fan. Nicole Brown Simpson.
Just proving that NBC has been broken for a long time. How much do you think Conan’s unwillingness to play ball contributed to him getting cut from the network? Everybody knows Jay’s the ultimate yes-boi. That’s kind of been their direction since the SNL massacre mass-firing of the last best bad-boys cast. Smile for the camera and don’t say what you think and don’t have too much fun. Comedy is for eVeRyOnE.
How much do you think Conan’s unwillingness to play ball contributed to him getting cut from the network?
Seems pretty well established as a cause.Weird that the War for Late Night book seemed to chide Conan for this despite all the other stuff that showed NBC as not being any more loyal to him. I don’t blame Conan for thinking NBC would screw him over by acquiescing to Leno (who was acting more against NBC’s shit decision to forcefully retire him).
I don’t feel Bill Carter was personally chiding Conan for the way he ran his version of The Tonight Show. He was establishing the context by which NBC brass were chiding Conan, which led to their unhappiness with him and eventual firing from The Tonight Show.
Carter is fantastic at not inserting his own opinions, but simply establishing the mindset of the players involved in the events he’s chronicling.Did Conan refuse to compromise and repeatedly “buck” at any requests/directives from NBC? Yes. Hell yes. Was NBC wrong for terminating him in favor of Jay? Yes. Would they still have fired him if he’d agreed to compromise and do a more mainstream show? Also yes. What many people don’t realize is that Jay’s post-Tonight Show contract, which NBC agreed to to avoid him fleeing to ABC, was that he was guaranteed a show, to be broadcast on NBC every night, so he could do a nightly monologue, comedy skits and guest interviews. The contract was EXTREMELY punitive to NBC if they didn’t fulfill that portion (even moreso than the $40 million penalty Conan had in his). They could either keep him at 10pm every night, and create an enormous dead-spot in their ratings, which would have probably dragged down all of their primetime, or do what they did, and put him at 11:35pm again.Should NBC just have said, “Fuck it” and let Jay go to ABC without signing that atrocious contract? Personally, I’d say yes. Conan may not have dominated the traditional Nielsen ratings, but he was the most beloved late night host at the time, with the most dedicated fanbase, and his online presence was by far the strongest. I think Jay would have floundered at ABC.Also, another personal opinion… in the longrun, I believe Conan should have taken 12 Midnight at NBC, rode out the last few years of Jay’s contract, and then take the true Tonight Show back over again. He slowly died at TBS, and we’re now stuck with fucking Fallon.
Why would Jay have floundered at ABC?
Because he was nothing without The Tonight Show, as we saw at 10 PM. People didn’t tune in then to watch a watered down Leno version of a late night show, and they weren’t going to do it at 1135 on ABC either, at least not on a level that should have made NBC scared. If anything, keeping Kimmel later would have helped preserve Conan’s younger audience, while Leno and Letterman held down the other two network slots for a few years and Conan was the only “young” host on at that time slot.NBC made the exact same mistake they made with Letterman previously; Leno on CBS would have absolutely not been able to compete with a Letterman-hosted Tonight Show. That’s what makes the entire thing so hilarious.
Then why did Dave beat Jay in the ratings for almost two years after moving to CBS? If Jay only led in the ratings because of The Tonight Show I think that advantage would’ve been strongest the soonest after taking over.
You’re making some really backwards logical assumptions. I think it’s pretty obvious why a rival show would do better when it first launches. New+NBC drama+some lingering resentment over how it was handled+some people who dallied with something new in the wake of Carson. All of that is a recipe for viewers returning to the original franchise after the initial buzz wore away. I mean, I guess we’re both sort of arguing a proof that we can never prove, but I’d argue we have evidence of both Leno and Letterman trying to start network talk show franchises that aren’t The Tonight Show and one ran for decades successfully both in ratings and critical regard while the other was so bad it on every level it forced NBC into an impossibly embarrassing debacle that still stands out as how not to manage talent and programming.
I could see Dave leading for a few months because of the initial hype, but he led for almost two years before Jay surpassed him.
Absolutely. On all points. There’s an alternate universe out there, somewhere, where the Tonight Show went Carson>Letterman>Conan. We’re in a bad universe. The one saving grace of this universe is we got Ferguson for almost a decade on CBS.When CBS stuck its nose into the “What does NBC do after Carson” conversation, their original intentions were to steal Jay, as his “holding deal” contract with NBC was as thin as the paper it was printed on, and Letterman had an iron-clad, almost-indentured-servitude contract with NBC at the time. When Jay and his agent made it clear they were going Tonight-Shot-or-Bust, it took Howard Stringer and Michael Ovitz almost moving heaven and Earth to get Letterman out of his NBC contract.Yes, it’s a daaaaamn shame Letterman didn’t get the Tonight Show, but he got 22 solid years on CBS, getting to do his show his way, and ended things on his terms (with, in my opinion, possibly the greatest send-off of a host in television history. Thank you, Dave Grohl.)All told, Jay was a decent late night talk show host. The situations that evolved for him to get the Tonight Show [twice] were horribly twisted and underhanded, but the man knew how to command a stage and play to an audience. I am a huge automotive enthusiast, and Jay is, in my opinion, one of the greatest car collectors that has ever lived, and I thoroughly enjoy his various television and web shows about cars. He doesn’t collect cars for their value or investment potential, but because he likes them for what they are and enjoys them. Very few large-scale collectors like that.
Thing is about Jay Leno, is I’ve seen him do standup live and he was sooo much better than on TV. On television he was shit on a shingle for people with no taste for tabasco. Letterman is a genius, and everything you say about Craig Ferguson is true. Twenty five, thirty years ago if you’d said to a studio exec that they were going to replace Tom Snyder(Fuck Craig Kilborn) with a Scotsman for a decade, the first words out of their mouths would have been “Is it Sean Connery? No? Then fuck outta my office, Bozo.”.I have nothing further to add other than I consider Lorne Michaels to be a billionaire’s dildo.
Because Jay Leno is awful and hasnt been remotely funny in numerous decades?
I hate Jimmy Fallon with a pure unrelenting hatred that isn’t even remotely rational.
Rightly so
If Carter chided Conan for anything, it was not being more judicious in his contracting. His contract did not have time-based language stating, in effect, hosting the Tonight Show at 11:35 PM EST. Apparently, Jay’s contract did have that. It seemed like, if there was any criticism of Conan, it was that his team was less sophisticated and “trusted” NBC more than they should have.I’m Team Coco all the way. But Carter’s book demonstrated that Conan left himself vulnerable in that whole kerfuffle. You can argue that NBC should have done it differently, Leno should have been a more stand-up guy, etc. But Conan apparently didn’t protect himself enough legally and contractually. It left him with little leverage.
Bill Hicks nailed Jay from the start. “Company man to the bitter end.”
Yeah, when all the Leno/Conan stuff went down, I was surprised anyone was surprised.
Man, Jay knew he was punching approx. 100000 miles above his head, what did you expect him to do? Carson loved him,Letterman was too edgy for 11:30 (lol) Jay was never going to get another job that paid a fraction of Tonight. He was like, “I can leverage this into my dream antique car museum with me as curator” 100% geek take. That dude did a lot with a little.
Why do you think they gave The Tonight Show to Conan in the first place?
Was Conan still getting paid by NBC, while on TBS, b/c of their botched effort to retire Leno and replace him w/ Conan? I seem to remember that being the case. He may still be getting paid by NBC for all I know.
Hadn’t Norm already had his Letterman appearance by this point? This would be the one where Letterman pried all the details out of Norm on-air and then proceeded to chew up Ohlmeyer and spit him out (Letterman had his own history with the guy and didn’t like him either)
Norm had a double header that day, as he’d been on Howard Stern’s show before his appearance later in the day with Letterman, and like Dave, Stern took apart Ohlmeyer, Lorne Michaels, and NBC’s top executives like you would disassemble a cheap Ikea desk, with Norm just saying, “But he’s a good man, Howard!” (And later, “But he’s a good man, Dave!”)
i can picture norm saying that, too. fucking awesome! fuck ohlmeyer.
From the Dave Letterman appearance (contained in this video), it looks like Dave had him on straight after he was removed.
Can’t believe after all the clips of Norm that I watched this last week that I never came across this one. Fantastic.
“Don Ohlymeyer fancies himself a creative. That guy couldn’t create gas after a bean dinner.”-David LettermanIt makes me happy to know that guys like Letterman and MacDonald will always be remembered fondly for their comedic genius while suits like Ohlymeyer will be remembered (if at all) for being profit-generators and little else.
Then Norm’s line: “That’s not true! I witnessed that!”
Letterman calling Ohlmeyer “Cologne and Cufflinks” is tremendous and has always stuck with me. And Norm’s “He said you’re fired, and I said that’s not good. Then he said he didn’t think I was funny, and I thought that’s even worse news!”
“Cologne and Cufflinks” is a line I’m gonna be using for years. I’ve been lucky that I don’t run across many jerks like that, but I wish I had known it a decade or so ago. It’s funny how they are in every industry. They fail upwards, and it never surprises me how their peers say “They’re great!!!” and the people under them shake their heads and wonder if they are all blind to this asshole’s idiocy.
You’re right, Don, if Norm just stops making O.J. jokes on SNL, that whole unfortunate news story will probably go away
.
Man, this Don Ohlmeyer guy sure was willing to stick up for his friend who murdered his ex-wife and her waiter friend.
I think O.J. Simpson reputation was gone the moment HE DECIDED TO MURDER HIS WIFE, Norm Macdonald making fun of the ridiculousness of the trial to publicly save him was epic.
Norm talked about this in his interview with Howard Stern, I think. One of Norm’s best interviews. Love the story about Dave ‘The Hammer’ Schultz.
I know between Norm Macdonald and Don Ohlmeyer who will be remembered…
Luckily Conan knows what’s funny.
I’m sure OJ is happy with his death, but at the same time, it must be bitter sweet. The internet is flooded with old OJ Simpson jokes to let a younger generation know about his little murder spree.
Parents, do not name your children Donald unless you want your bundle of joy to grow into a reprehensible fuckstick (Donald Glover excepted).
Too late.
Anyone who clicked on this article should read Bill Carter’s two books on late night, The Late Shift and The War For Late Night. Some incredible stories of network executives fucking up and Jay Leno being a ghoul.
I remember seeing the HBO movie “Late Shift” and saying often, “Come on, that could not have possibly happened,” and then after the whole Leno/Conan fiasco, I was sure all of that happened.
I’ll kill you and the guy bringing over your glasses.Or Treat.
Also this was a contributing reason to why Ohlmeyer was fired a little over a year on.
This guy Ohlmeyer sounds like a real winner.
“but apparently relented; Macdonald would appear more than two dozen times on O’Brien’s various NBC shows”OR he didn’t relent because that’s not the fucking story. Conan WAS banned from having Norm on.Norm. Was. Not. On. Late. Night. Again. During. Olmeyer’s. Career. At. NBC.Olmeyer left NBC in fucking 1999.Stop making shit up. And also, LISTEN TO THE FUCKING PODCAST if you’re going to cite it you FUCKING hack.