David Spade and Conan O’Brien Remember the Funniest Part About Norm Macdonald’s Funeral
Memorial services generally aren’t a barrel of monkeys, but when a famous comedian passes away, your laugh mileage may vary. After Norm Macdonald passed, several prominent funny people spoke at his service, including David Spade, Conan O’Brien and Macdonald’s Weekend Update co-conspirator Jim Downey. But the funniest part of the occasion didn’t come from someone’s prepared remarks, said Spade this week on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast.
Spade was asked to speak, and after some “I’m no good at that” posturing, he agreed to do his part. Downey spoke first at the service, Spade remembered, earning a standing ovation. Conan followed, who was met by another standing ovation. Longtime Macdonald collaborator Lori Jo Hoekstra was next — she got a third standing O. It was a tough act to follow when O’Brien introduced Spade as the next speaker. “Well,” Spade began, “I guess the standing ovation portion is over.”
Good one, noted O’Brien.
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Spade agreed, wishing he could have landed the line and gotten off the stage right then. But even funnier than the one-liner was what happened when Spade approached the dais. “When I walked up, I fell on those stairs and you caught me,” he reminded O’Brien. “You grabbed me, and I think you fell too.”
O’Brien remembered all too well. “I did catch you,” he said. “You don’t weigh a lot, so it was easy. It was like catching a packing peanut.”
Privately, Conan wondered what was wrong with Spade. Couldn’t he walk up a simple set of stairs? But after Spade spoke, O’Brien went “up to take the stage again to bring up the next person, and my foot catches on something on the step. I trip and I turned it into like a roll and stood up again and people thought, ‘Oh, Conan’s doing, like, physical shit.’”
Except the pratfall wasn’t a planned bit. O’Brien found one of the stagehands to make things right. “That step — Spade tripped on it, and I tripped on it.”
“Yeah, that happens a lot,” said the worker. “We should fix that someday.”
“Yeah,” Spade remembered, “he knew!”
O’Brien couldn’t believe the sheer negligence. “What happens when Dame Judy Dench is killed?” So Conan continued to press the issue with the nonchalant stage worker. “He was like, ‘Well, you know, it’s higher than the other steps. And it’s also uneven, and it’s coming off.’”
Gee, is that all?
Spade was amused by the crew member’s reaction to the continual tripping: a drag on his cigarette and an attitude of “another one bites the dust.”
Conan wanted to grab the guy by the lapels and scream, “Fix it!” but he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere. The stagehand’s vibe was definitely “not my union.”
