Name: Remi Damours's review of Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald
Item: Based on a True Story
Rating: 5
Author: Remi Damours

Norm Macdonald

Wild, dangerous, and flat-out unbelievable, here is the incredible memoir of the Canadian actor, gambler, and raconteur, and one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time. As this book’s title suggests, Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life—more or less—from his origins on a farm in the backwoods of Ontario and an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search to his account of auditioning for Lorne Michaels and his memorable run as the anchor of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live—until he was fired because a corporate executive didn’t think he was funny. But Based on a True Story is much more than just a memoir; it’s the hilarious, inspired epic of Norm’s life. In dispatches from a road trip to Las Vegas (part of a plan hatched to regain the fortune he’d lost to sports betting and other vices) with his sidekick and enabler, Adam Eget, Norm recounts the milestone moments, the regrets, the love affairs, the times fortune smiled on his life, and the times it refused to smile. As the clock ticks down, Norm’s debt reaches record heights, and he must find a way to evade the hefty price that’s been placed on his head by one of the most dangerous loan sharks in the country. As a comedy legend should, Norm peppers these pages with classic jokes and long-mythologized Hollywood stories. This wildly adventurous, totally original, and absurdly funny saga turns the conventional “comic’s memoir” on its head and gives the reader an exclusive pass inside the mad, glorious mind of Norm Macdonald.

A Memoir

Based on a True Story

Remi Damours

Patrick Book

It would be impossible to describe this accurately. The dust jacket doesn't take into account the manic scope of the thing -- let alone properly emphasize the gleeful, madcap fiction that holds whatever thin strands of truth that run through the narrative together. This is an insane head trip that is at times frighteningly honest and dark (while being almost definitely fiction), but also completely ludicrous (while hinting at some of life's larger truths). 

This really is pure, unadulterated Norm. If you don't know what that means, give it a shot. If you do, it will make you so very, very happy. If you don't like that, then not even God can help you.

Norm MacDonald

"As its title suggests, Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life--more or less--from his origins in a rural small town in the-back-of-beyond Canada to an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search, to his possibly incredible account of auditioning for Lorne Michaels and his memorable run as the anchor of Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update." But Based on a True Story is much more than a memoir, it's a hilarious, inspired, very meta imagining of his life, as told to a deeply disturbed ghost writer whose teetering sanity and bruised ego threaten to take down the entire narrative--and possibly the comic with it. Peppered with classic jokes and long mythologized Hollywood stories, this wildly adventurous, tense, totally original, and absurdly funny memoir turns the conventional "comic's memoir" on its head and leaves the reader delightfully off kilter"--

Gavin

Not a memoir, not a novel. Very like Hunter Thompson: haha-misery half-obscured by hedonism and trolling. Yes, it’s just a joke, but it’s pretty brutal even by that standard. It simply won't work if you don't have his delivery in mind - the giant child, the diamond pretending to be coal, the anarchist with a penchant for 1950s dad jokes.

This book fakes vast misery so that we won't notice the smaller real stuff. 

  I’ll claw and tear into this showbiz career of mine and I’ll let the filth fly, like a mad dog digging up bones he buried deep and long ago. And I’ll name names. And I’ll drop bombshells. I bet they’ll pay good money for that kinda thing. For the straight dope on the Hollywood crowd, and the SNLers too. And I need money. I need money to live.
Damn near fifty.
I open the curtains and it’s raining outside. I catch an image of myself in the window, and the rain blurs my thin reflection as if I’m barely there at all. And I see there’s a bruise under my left eye and some dried blood. I look down at my hand, and the heel of my thumb is swollen purple and hurts like a bastard and that makes me happy. It means the girl on the bed was fought for and not bought.


It's way too long, but one of the running gags is that he's just padding it out to meet the contract.
(view spoiler)[There are three main conceits: 1) Norm constantly jokes about how stupid he is; 2) his friend Adam is even stupider and also a gay prostitute; 3) the book is being written by a ghostwriter slowly being driven insane by Norm's crassness and thoughtlessness. (hide spoiler)]

If it was all true or false you’d know how to feel about it. People say how hilarious they found it, but the first half is grim. He covers his greatest hits, the moth joke and Farley stories. The Weekend Update gags (mostly not written by him) are without exception terrible, instantly dated and weak.

His own are occasionally brilliant.

  “I specialized in unskilled labor, and I was good at it.”

"I was making $21.20 a day for Charlie, and Mark was offering fifteen dollars a set. A set took about five minutes and you could do two a night if you were lucky, so the decision was pretty easy.



  I pull out a vial of liquid morphine and sink my cigarette in it. The narcotic dries fast, adhering to the tobacco. I light up and inhale deeply, listening to the wondrous crackling as the fire hits my lungs and the smoke hits my brain. Then the smoke clears and in the place where it was is now a picture.

A picture hung on the wall of our parlor. In it, a woman was taking a shirt from a clothesline. She had clothespins in her teeth and it was windy and a boy was tugging at her dress. The woman looked like she was in a hurry and the whole scene gave me the idea that, just outside the frame, full, dark clouds were gathering. But that was not what it was.
It was paint.
So I decided right then and there to see the picture as it really was. I stared at the thing long and hard, trying to only see the paint. But it was no use. All my eyes would allow me to see was the lie. In fact, the longer I gazed at the paint, the more false detail I began to imagine. The boy was crying, as if afraid, and the woman was weaker than I had first believed. I finally gave up. I understood then that it takes a powerful imagination to see a thing for what it really is.

...so I glanced back at the open door, where Old Jack stood, but his back was to me now and it was blocking out the light of the moon. I suddenly remembered that I’d read somewhere how the light of the moon was just an illusion and the moon was only a cold, cold stone. I watched Old Jack look from side to side before he turned his gaze on me, and his eyes flashed black like the wing of a crow. He closed the door and the inside of the shed went black. Then I heard the bolt.
I forget what happened next.

That’s a stone dead thing to winkingly fabricate. You need to imagine Norm’s delivery to laugh.
 

  off the captain came over the intercom, as is the custom on airplanes. ‘Good morning,’ the captain said. ‘This is your captain, Pat Johnson, and we will be flying—’ and Sam gave out a wild scream: ‘NOOOOOO!!!!! NOT CRASH JOHNSON! NOT CRASH JOHNSON!!!!!!!!! AAAAA​AAAAA​AAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!’

One of the few actual jokes is him putting dreadful opinions in his mate Eget’s mouth

  "Yeah,” says Adam Eget. “I really wish I’d met him, but it was before my time. There are so many great Kinison stories at the Store. It’s so unfair that guys like Sam have to die so young and a sonofabitch like Nelson Mandela lived to be an old man.”
“Nelson Mandela wasn’t a sonofabitch. He fought apartheid and they put him in prison for more than twenty years. And when they finally released him and he took power, he never exacted revenge on his enemies. Instead, he exacted forgiveness on them and brought his torn nation together.”
“I thought he stole some diamonds.”
“No.”
“Didn’t he steal a bunch of diamonds and then sell them back to the guy he stole them from?”
“No.”




  I had gotten a gig doing comedy at a hospital, for the patients… I was getting close and getting nervous too. Maybe it was the barbed wire around the perimeter or maybe it was the armed guards. What kind of hospital was I playing, anyway? I got my answer quick enough, because it was written on a big sign: HOSPITAL FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE. My agent had never been big on details.
It took me a while just to get into the place. First they patted me down and took all my weapons and my drugs. Then they looked up my ass and took those weapons and those drugs as well



  "Where do I fit in?”
“If I win, you become my head ranch hand and make five percent more money than the other ranch hands and get beaten far less often.”
“Sounds good.” Adam Eget beams. “Do I get my own horse?” “No.”
“But what if you lose and kill yourself? Then where do I fit in?”
I guess that would hurt most men—a guy you’ve known for twenty years asking what he gets when you toss away your soul in a Las Vegas hotel room—but I understand the ways of men, all right. Everybody’s in it for himself. Adam Eget’s just like everyone else. And my Plan B also takes care of him after I murder myself in cold blood.
“You’re the one who finds me dead, and you cry and shake like a little girl, the way you just did a minute ago. Then later you write a book about me and they pay you money.”
“But I can’t write. I’m not smart enough.”
“Don’t worry about that, Adam Eget. For idiots like you, they provide a ghostwriter. A ghostwriter is a man blessed with bright talent but cursed with dim luck. The brilliant ghostwriter will do all the work and receive a pittance, while you, an illiterate fool, will be given a king’s ransom. That’s God’s great joke, my son.”


(view spoiler)[
  
    My name’s Keane. I’m a ghostwriter. Nothing you have read in this book has been written by Mr. Macdonald. That is my job, to write these sorts of books for these sorts of people. But this one I was excited about. I was a very, very big fan of Norm Macdonald.
Was.

…You wouldn’t know it now, but I was a great man once. A fine young man, alive with ideas.
And suddenly I found myself an old man standing in a doorway as Mr. Macdonald spoke of how he didn’t trust Eskimos and never would. I had never felt such instant animus toward anyone. And I remember thinking that this time I might not take the job. I might just walk out of the office.
But I stayed put as Mr. Macdonald mercifully finished his “story.”
“...and so, anyways, the point is I’ve never met an Eskimo I liked. Not once. Not ever. As a matter of fact I don’t think I’ve ever even met an Eskimo. I call them blubber-eaters, by the way. And don’t even get me started on the filthy Swedes.” He struck the table with his fist and Julie burst into laughter. I’d heard many silly celebrities tell their silly stories in my time. They always amused me, the way a harmless child amuses me. But Mr. Macdonald appalled me. The way a harmful child appalls me.
  
 (hide spoiler)]

Lots of outre gags from the short window between Lenny Bruce and Louis CK: 

  I’m willing to make a deal with you, Adelman. We are both civilized men. You quit raping me right now and there’ll be no hard feelings. And you won’t see a reprisal rape outta me either, I promise you that.”


The gambling sections are probably psychologically true, which I judge by how moving they are.

  I remember a psychiatrist once telling me that I gamble in order to escape the reality of life, and I told him that’s why everyone does everything... why the attraction? Most people would think it’s the wins that keep the gambler going, but any gambler knows this is not true. As you place your chips on the craps table, you feel anxiety and impatience. When the red dice hit the green felt with a thunk and you’re declared the winner and the chips are pushed toward you, you feel relief. Relief is all. And relief is fine, but hardly what a man would give the whole rest of his life to gain. It has to be something else, and the best I’ve come up with is this: It is a particular moment. A magic moment that occurs after the placing of a bet and before the result of that bet. It is after the red dice are thrown but before they lie still on the green felt where they fall. It is when the dice are in the air, and as long as they are there, time stops. As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to.
“Better luck next time, sir."



...my chip denominations had climbed from the original five-dollar chip to a thousand-dollar chip, and finally, at about the hour mark, I was playing with the maximum five-thousand-dollar chip. The funny thing is, the five-dollar chip was the very same size as the five-thousand-dollar chip. Probably cost the same to make. But it was worth a thousand times more.

I was winning big time now. I began to feel an extraordinary transformation taking place deep within me, one that mirrored my chip’s transformation, for I felt myself double in value and then redouble and press to the maximum. I was the same exact size physically, and yet I was worth much more, a thousand times more, and that lingering suspicion that I might be a nobody was long gone. The Asian player rolled for twenty more minutes, and finally he rolled a seven and the run was over. Everyone cheered and I had a hundred eighteen thousand dollars in chips. I colored up, threw a fifty-dollar tip on the table, and left in perfect calm and elation, big as God inside


Maybe the best showbiz memoir, but that's not saying much.

Erfan Abedi

** spoiler alert **
           Norm is one of my favorite comedians, needless to say, he masterfully manages to perfect the same humor in writing the pages of his book, but this is more that just a mere transcript of a stand-up special, it has many interesting storylines and the slow burn that was the story of his ghostwriter was one of the best that I've seen to date, I had never seen it coming.

Norm, you are the salt of the earth, if you ever read this, I hope you know that I think you're a great writer, one that always keeps you wondering about what's going to happen next.
"Adam Eget says to me, he says".

Caitlin

Norm MacDonald has never once failed to make me laugh and laugh hard, and that continues well past his life here on Earth. This book often had me in stitches, which was particularly awkward when I was listening in public. There were definitely parts that were dragged out a bit too long, and some that went a little too far beyond that line of funny and offensive, but that was his style. It was outlandish, wildly funny, wicked, and made me miss the guy. For sure worth the read, but I’m really glad I listened to this one on audiobook — I think him narrating it gave it something extra that might have been lost on the page.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Driving, wild and hilarious" (The Washington Post), here is the incredible "memoir" of the actor, gambler, raconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran. When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre "one step below instruction manuals." Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, "Call it anything you damn like." Praise for Based on a True Story "Dostoyevsky by way of 30 Rockefeller Center . . . the best new book I've read this year or last."--The Wall Street Journal "This book is absurd fiction. . . . Scathing and funny."--The New York Times "Hilarious and filled with turns of phrase and hidden beauty like only a collection of Norm Macdonald stories could be."--Esquire "Raucous . . . a hilarious, innovative work."--A.V. Club "Part personal history and part meta riff on celebrity memoirs, the book, it quickly becomes clear, is also just partly true (and all hilarious)."--Vulture "Very, very, very funny! Thanks, Norm, for letting me be part of this Booker Prize-for-literature-quality effort."--David Letterman "Norm is brilliant and thoughtful and there is sensitivity and creative insight in his observations and stories. 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 seriously f**king love Norm Macdonald. Please buy his book. He probably needs the cash. He's really bad with money."--Louis C.K., from the foreword "Norm is one of my all-time favorites, and this book was such a great read I forgot how lonely I was for a while."--Amy Schumer "I always thought Normie's stand-up was the funniest thing there was. But this book gives it a run for its money."--Adam Sandler "Norm is one of the greatest stand-up comics who's ever worked--a totally original voice. His sense of the ridiculous and his use of juxtaposition in his writing make him a comic's comic. We all love Norm."--Roseanne Barr "Norm Macdonald makes me laugh my ass off. Who is funnier than Norm Macdonald? Nobody."--Judd Apatow "Norm Macdonald is more than a triple threat--he's a septuple threat. He is smart, funny, wry, rakish, polite, rakish . . . no, wait. He is polite, insightful, and . . . aaaaah . . . warm. No. He's exciting. Yeah. Exciting! You never know what he'll do. Okay, then make that unpredictable. Add that up. He's amazing."--Alec Baldwin "Norm is a double threat. His material and timing are both top-notch, which is unheard of. He is one of my favorites, both on- and off-stage."--Dave Attell "Letterman said it best: There is no one funnier than Norm Macdonald."--Rob Schneider

Ben Nathan

Cover to cover dry wit. I laughed so very hard at this. Absolutely loved it even with its flaws

Remi Damours &
Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald

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Remi Damours &Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald

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Based on a True Story by Norm Macdonald