Norm Macdonald on silence, setups, and beginner's mind
Norm: "I tried to make the punchline as close to the setup as I could."
A few months back, I wrote about the beginner’s mind approach of Norm Macdonald at my Rubesletter. Below is an excerpt:
[A] sign of Norm’s zen mindset was his approach to language and joke structure. At Weekend Update, he tried doing a specific experiment in making bits as blunt as possible. They were almost like koans disguised as jokes.
I tried to cut all cleverness out of the joke. I’ve always been very averse to innuendo, especially sexual. I find it cowardly or something. Like on Will & Grace, my mother will laugh at it, then I’m like, “You know what that joke’s about, right? Like, that one guy fucked that guy in the ass.” And then she’s aghast, and I’m like, “That’s what he just said when he talked about the tunnel! So why didn’t he just say it?” It always maddens me that people can laugh at sexual innuendo, then you say what it really means, and they’re like “Ah! I can’t hear that!” So on Update, the only real original thing was trying to take away the cleverness of the punchline and make it as blunt as possible. And then I tried to make the punchline as close to the setup as I could. And I thought that was the perfect thing. If I could make the setup and the punchline identical to each other, I would create a different kind of joke.
Basically, he was on a search for the Platonic ideal of joke structure.
And then there’s Norm’s embrace of silence, which most comedians view as the enemy.
I don't mind [silence] at all. I don't do comedy for audiences; I just do it for myself. I wouldn't even know how to please somebody, I only know how to please myself. I mean, I certainly don't want audiences to not like me, that's not my goal. I always just think, if it makes me laugh, then it will make everybody laugh. Often I'm wrong.
In fact, he viewed certain kinds of silence as the ultimate sign an audience is surprised – and perhaps the pinnacle of what a comic can achieve.
When I first began in comedy, I would get people to clap, rather than actually laugh. You just say something that has no comedy in it at all but people agree with it…So I was getting people to clap, but I reached a point where I never wanted to get people to clap, because it was, like you said, pandering. But there's a difference between a clap and a laugh. A laugh is involuntary, but the crowd is in complete control when they're clapping, they're saying, "we agree with what you're saying-proceed!" But when they're laughing, they're genuinely surprised. And when they're not laughing, they're really surprised. And sometimes I think, in my little head, that that's the best comedy of all.
So here’s the Norm hierarchy of audience response, from best to worst:
Silence (due to real surprise)
Laughter
Clapping
My upcoming shows
NYC: Misguided Meditation with Matt Ruby. A comedy show about mindfulness. Sunday, Jun 12 at 7:30pm. Tickets and info here. Use code “breathe” to get $5 off.
Chicago: Lincoln Lodge on Thursday, June 16 at 9pm. Tickets here.