Can he turn wrong into right on his new sitcom?
Norm Macdonald is crazy. A particularly functional, inspired, and funny kind of crazy, but one that makes him capable of the sort of strange grin or bizarre utterance that might make you move a couple of seats away from him on the bus. He’s a man’s man. He likes booze and gambling and jokes about prison sex. In a world full of eager-to-please comedians, Macdonald remains the dark knight. He turns the mind-fuck into performance art. As an actor and a comic, Macdonald is best known as Saturday Night Live’s sardonic anchorman. There he was allowed to offend and, more often, unsettle a nation, while all the time wearing a tie. It was a job that showcased Macdonald’s schizophrenic genius – his warped worldview and his childish pleasure in the absurd. He has always been well in touch with his inner brat. “You know those kids who seem much older than their years?” the thirty-six-year-old Quebec-born comedian once asked me. “I was the opposite of that. When I was three, people would always go,
