You Need to Watch Norm Macdonald's Hilarious Old Fake Sully Sullenberger Biopic
As of today, you can watch the first trailer for the new Tom Hanks-starring, Clint Eastwood-directed biopic of Sully Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who dramatically landed a full jet in the Hudson River in 2009. I’m sure the movie will be decent, but it’s impossible for it to be better than the fake Sully biopic created by Norm Macdonald for Conan O’Brien just a month after the incident.
In February 2009, Macdonald made his last appearance on Late Night With Conan O’Brien, just weeks before Conan would leave the show for good. Norm opened with some particularly pointed ribbing of Conan, who at that point had been given The Tonight Show but with an unexpected lead-in from a newly created show meant to keep Jay Leno on NBC.
But about five minutes into the above video, Norm starts talking about a “new project”: a biopic of “Sully Sullenberg” called Sully Sullenberger: Airport Pilot. He goes onto tell Conan that he’s known Sully for 10 years, and went ahead and bought his story because “there was something special about him.” But, he says, something went unexpectedly wrong with the film.
I won’t spoil the insanely dry and fucking hilarious joke that springs from this prompt, because you should go ahead and watch it. At the very least it will save you money you might have spent on a movie ticket.