Based on a true story : [a memoir]

240 Pages·2016·4.152 MB·English

by  Macdonald, Norm

The stories in this memoir begin with the author’s recollection of events, which is—by his
own admission—spotty. Beyond that, several names and identifying details have been
changed.
Copyright © 2016 by Norm Macdonald
Foreword copyright © 2016 by Louis C.K.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division
of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC for permission to
reprint an excerpt from “Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me” by Billy Joe Shaver,
copyright © 1972 by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by
Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 424 Church Street, Suite 1200, Nashville, TN 37219.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
All photographs are reproduced courtesy of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Macdonald, Norm.
Title: Based on a true story / by Norm Macdonald.
Description: First edition. | New York : Spiegel & Grau, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016014108| ISBN 9780812993622 (hardback) | ISBN 9780812993639
(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Macdonald, Norm. | Comedians—Canada—Biography. | Actors—Canada
—Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment &
Performing Arts. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.
Classification: LCC PN2308.M23 A3 2016 | DDC 792.7/6028092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016014108
ebook ISBN 9780812993639
randomhousebooks.com
spiegelandgrau.com
Book design by Susan Turner, adapted for ebook
Cover art: Mark Stutzman
Cover design: Greg Mollica
v4.1
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Job Interview
Chapter 2: A Debt Unpaid
Chapter 3: My First Five Years
Chapter 4: Six Years Old to Eight Years Old
Chapter 5: Eight Years Old to Thirteen Years Old
Chapter 6: Thirteen Years Old
Chapter 7: Driving to Las Vegas
Chapter 8: Starting Out
Chapter 9: My Greatest Gig
Chapter 10: Star Search
Chapter 11: The Plan
Chapter 12: Me, Gabe Veltri, and a Squid
Chapter 13: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Chapter 14: Live from New York
Chapter 15: A Little Fame
Chapter 16: Winning Big
Chapter 17: First Week at Work
Chapter 18: The Trial
Chapter 19: Doing Time
Chapter 20: The Devil, You Say
Chapter 21: The Lost Days
Chapter 22: Meeting God
Chapter 23: Make a Wish
Chapter 24: Heading North
Chapter 25: A Wish Fulfilled
Chapter 26: Tiny White Coffin
Chapter 27: Leaving Las Vegas
Chapter 28: Weekend Update
Chapter 29: The Update Team
Chapter 30: Top 25 Weekend Update Jokes of All Time
Chapter 31: The Fat Man with the Artificial Hair
Chapter 32: Word for Word
Chapter 33: Way Outta Line: The Making of Dirty Work
Chapter 34: Mr. Warmth
Chapter 35: The Shoot
Chapter 36: Torn Apart
Chapter 37: The Bright White Light
Chapter 38: Fired from Update
Chapter 39: A Debt Incurred
Chapter 40: Flipping Coins
Chapter 41: After the Fall
Chapter 42: A Fancy Name for a Filthy Thing
Chapter 43: Escape!
Chapter 44: The Final Chapter
Chapter 45: Me, Myself, and I
The Last Part of the Whole Book
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Three fingers whiskey pleasures the drinkers,
Moving does more than that drinking for me.
Willy, he tells me that doers and thinkers
Say moving’s the closest thing to being free.
—BILLY JOE SHAVER,
“Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me”
To live outside the law you must be honest.
—BOB DYLAN,
“Absolutely Sweet Marie”
I know of only two very real evils in life: remorse and illness.
—LEO TOLSTOY,
War and Peace
FOREWORD
LOUIS C.K.
I first saw Norm Macdonald onstage in 1988. I was twenty-one years old and
he came to headline a club in Boston where I had been doing stand-up for
three years. Me and my friends had heard about him, so I went to check him
out.
Within two minutes I was astonished by how goddamn funny he was.
Just blown away. I laughed harder that night than I had in my life. I
remember my comedian friends and I just sat and talked about him for hours
after the show. I went back to see him five times during the week he was at
that club. He instantly became my favorite comedian, and in the thirty years
since, he has never stumbled far from that rank. Every time I see or hear
Norm, he’s doing something new and better than the last time—he gives me a
new favorite comedy bit.
The thing that drives me nuts about Norm is the powerful simplicity of
his style. A lot of comics (myself included) swagger around the stage and fly
into contrived bits of anger that give them an air of dynamic importance.
Norm has a beguiling humility that sneaks up and grabs you by the throat.
There is something about how simply Norm says things onstage. Just lays
words end to end with such elegance. And then you just explode with
laughter and you just can’t stop. He’s just standing there talking and you’re
howling and trying to breathe, your head in your lap. The power in that is
amazing.
Norm is brilliant and thoughtful, and there is sensitivity and creative
insight in his observations and stories. But really he’s just talking. Just a guy
talking and somehow shredding everything he talks about.
He mildly dives into dark and light subjects alike and fabricates them
with his hand in his pocket and his wry look. And he leaves you limp. How
does he do it? I don’t know. I have been a student of comedy my whole life
and I honestly don’t know how he does any of it. He has a fastball and a
slider and about fifty arm angles.
A lot of comics over the years have been compared to Mark Twain, but I
think Norm is the only one who actually matches the guy in terms of his
voice and ability.
I listened to Norm on the radio once with my fourteen-year-old
daughter, and he was doing a bit about how he would go about stalking,
abducting, murdering, and burying a woman. Just politely explaining what
would be his logistical plan. My daughter and I were dying laughing. Just
cackling and howling. How do you get a forty-eight-year-old man and a
fourteen-year-old girl to laugh like that together? And he could have told that
same bit to a bunch of ladies at a church and they would have laughed just as
hard.
I really could go on and on about Norm. He’s a brilliant comedian. One
of the greatest of all time. I put him in my top five.
The last thing is that there is not one single other comedian like him. He
falls into no genre or category. Just comedian.
I seriously fucking love Norm Macdonald. Please buy his book. He
probably needs the cash. He’s really bad with money.