Norm MacDonald has burnt a number of bridges since attaining fame on
SNL, mostly for shamelessly stealing the jokes of lesser known comedians or cheating other comedians out of contracts. In the club circuit he's known as one of the worst joke poachers since
Robin Williams1.
MacDonald seems to pick on comedian
Eric Tunney the most. Tunney was an occasional guest host on
NBC's
Later with
Greg Kinnear. He's pretty tight with the
Kids in the Hall and had a bit part in the film
Brain Candy. MacDonald has poached no less than four of Tunney's club routines on talk show appearances. Even worse, he's cost Tunney a couple jobs. In one instance, Broadway Video was watching one of Tunney's club tapes for a possible development deal. The deal was killed when reviewers thought Tunney was doing Norm MacDonald material. Another time Macdonald and Tunney were going to try out for the same role in a movie. The producer had left one copy of the script at a
comedy club for the boys to pick up. Macdonald and Tunney agreed they'd arrive together and
photocopy the script so they could both prepare for the roll. When Tunney arrived at the club, he spotted MacDonald racing out of the club and down the street with the script in hand! Tunney was unable to audition.
Comedian Lawrence Morgenstern helped MacDonald land his job with SNL. Morgenstern wrote a lot of MacDonald's jokes for his submission tape. MacDonald promised Morgenstern $500 a week to write him more material if his initial stuff landed him the SNL job. MacDonald got the job but then backed out of the $500 a week deal with Morgenstern. Another time MacDonald pinched one of Morgenstern's jokes for SNL
Weekend Update.
1During Robin Williams' club days, he garnered a very large reputation for poaching other people's material. Legend has it that one comedian was so mad at him that he threw Williams down a flight of stairs. Williams settled a lawsuit not long ago because the title of one of his albums was the catch phrase of
San Francisco comic. Even Williams admits his propensity for
verbal diarrhea causes him to dump out material without regard to source. There's another legend that after an appearance by Williams, it's not uncommon for his
agent to routinely issue checks to comedians who write/phone in complaining Williams lifted their work!