The documentary pays homage to Macdonald's prickly comic glee, even as it charts his difficult personality and his bent toward self-sabotage.
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Courtesy of Netflix Stand-up comedians have always had a reverence for what they like to call a “comic’s comic” — a fellow comedian who works with such distilled purity and edge, diving head-first into the gnarly metaphysics of comedy, that the comics end up worshipping him more than the public does. (He’s the stand-up-comedy equivalent of an ultimate cool indie-rock cult band.) Gilbert Gottfried was a comic’s comic. So are Larry David and Doug Stanhope and Maria Bamford. And Norm Macdonald was one too, except that as you watch Judd Apatow’s juicy and haunting documentary “Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald,” you realize that there was a special thing about him. He was a comic’s comic…who everyone else loved too.
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