Name: Norm Macdonald on the Leonard Lopate Show (Sep 2016) 'A scholar and a gentleman'
Uploaded: 2022-05-19T18:58:33.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald on the Leonard Lopate Show (Sep 2016) 'A scholar and a gentleman'' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-05-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald on the Leonard Lopate Show (Sep 2016) 'A scholar and a gentleman'' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-05-19. Transcript available.

WNYC is supported by Picador, publishers of The Sellout by Paul Beatty.
Nominated as one of five books for the One Book, One New York program.
Learn more about the book, the program, and how to vote for your pick at www.voteforthesellout.com.
While dangerous and completely unbelievable are just a few of the ways based on
a true story.
A new memoir from actor, gambler, reconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran
Norm MacDonald has been described.
Ms. MacDonald's dry sense of humor established him as one of the most beloved
and controversial anchors of Saturday Night Live's weekend update.
And as his book's title suggests, Based on a True Story is much more than a
memoir.
It's a Hunter S. Thompson-inspired epic of the comedian's life, including
classic jokes and long mythologized Hollywood stories.
We've guest appearances from Chris Farley, Rodney Dangerfield, Sarah Silverman,
Adam Sandler, and many others.
I'm very pleased that he's brought Norm MacDonald to our show today.
Hello.
Hi, how are you?
And, well, you talk about how the process of writing was not something that you
really liked.
You found it grueling.
So what led you to even try to write a memoir?
Well, what happened was I was in a hotel room in Edmonton, Alberta.
And my manager told me to look at my Wikipedia.
And I looked at my Wikipedia, and somebody had changed my Wikipedia, and I was
dead in my Wikipedia.
And I had overdosed on morphine, which is some 19th century kind of drug to
take, in the very hotel room that I was reading this.
And so I chuckled, as you did, at first.
But then I didn't.
Then I got frightened, because I knew that one day that would be true.
What, that you die of morphine?
No, just that the tenses change.
Is becomes was, and does becomes did.
And so I thought, well, one day, in the future, when Norm MacDonald was, that
will be what's left.
There's a page on Wikipedia.
So I said, I want to tell my own side of the story, and not just a series of
facts, which I suppose is what a person's life is, is a series of facts.
Well, based on a true story, when we see that beginning of a movie, we know a
lot of license has been taken.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I think, though, if you base something on, it's not really based on a
true story.
It's based on facts, but it is true.
That's what, that's, that's how I would say it.
How will you describe your writing style here?
Are you using the truth as a stepping up point for some rather elaborate
storytelling?
And how does this kind of writing differ?
Or is it the same as what you do when you're doing a stand-up?
No, it's much, much different.
I'm not an educated person, so I wish I was, because I would have been able to
write the book.
But I wrote four books, I mean, four attempts at this book.
Not four drafts, but four entirely different books, until I came upon this one
that I think works.
Well, you told the Washington Post.
Maybe it doesn't, I don't know.
I can't imagine how anyone likes to write a blanking book.
I couldn't hate it more.
Yeah, I hated it.
I hated every moment of it.
Through much of...
I liked writing the end, about those two words.
Through much of the book, you drink and do a lot of drugs and gamble.
Yes.
Are those things that you do on your day-to-day life?
No, sir.
I don't do any of them, but I did do them.
Yes, I did do them a great deal.
I didn't enter show business until late in life, and before that, I was a sort
of a criminal.
I had a criminal, yeah.
I was a criminal, I suppose.
You engaged in illegal activities?
Yes, sir.
I did.
Wow.
Like what?
I would sell drugs.
I would break and enter.
Anything to...
Statute of limitations, okay?
Anything to survive.
You know, I was just trying to survive.
I had no money, and I was only 14 or 15 when I left home.
This is in Canada.
This is in Canada.
So you do what you have to do, and it's not immoral, you know?
There's nothing immoral about it.
You know, I remember we would steal electric typewriters.
This is how long ago it was.
And we would smash the window, and the alarm would go off, and we'd grab
electric typewriters.
And we used a cab.
The cab driver would be involved, and then we would drive to an Indian
reservation where
the police were not allowed to enter, and that's where we would put all the
goods that
we had stolen.
Would they go to a fence?
Yes.
Exactly.
You also, I mentioned gambling.
What does it feel like to lose your net worth, something you say that you've
done twice in
your life?
Yes.
It feels very good.
It feels good to lose everything?
Yeah.
You go to the coffee shop, and you have a coffee, and you feel fresh, and you
feel like, hey,
I'm going to start over, I'm going to start over, I can do it again.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, I've always wondered about the appeal of gambling, because the little
bit of gambling
I've done, okay, you know, sometimes I've made a couple of bucks, sometimes I
didn't,
but it doesn't really, I don't understand the addictive quality.
I guess what you're addicted to is hope, which is not such a bad thing,
according to our
president.
So, you know, when the dice are in the air, anything can happen, and then, you
know,
it hits the cruel green felt, and sometimes you bust.
You, along with so many comedians of your generation, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers,
Martin Short, Catherine
O'Hara, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Seth Rogen, Phil Hartman, Eugene Levy,
Samantha Bee, are
all from Canada.
Is there something about Canada that produces all those funny people?
No, I don't think so.
I think that, I think it's probably, you know, we have 10% population of North
America without
Mexico, whatever that's called, so we have 10% population of what the United
States has.
So I would say it's probably, you know, you mentioned 10 guys, I could probably
mention
100 Americans.
Really?
Well, but those are some of our favorites, and your father-
Yeah, they're my favorites, yeah.
Your father was a bit of a raconteur.
Did you think you got some of your comedic influences from him?
Yeah, well, we lived a rather bleak existence when I was young.
You know, we had a, we lived on a farm that was sort of obsolete, and it was
just barren,
rocky soil.
So, and there was all those old men around, you know, and, but they were always
happy and
funny, even though, even though their existence seemed, seemed bleak.
That's why I was so attracted to Russian literature, because I saw all the
people I knew in those
books, you know?
Like, I mean, we're talking about Shmadyotkov, or what's Kaldekov?
Like, just Google, and-
Oh, the absurd guys.
The absurd, yes.
My guest is Norm MacDonald, who's written a book called Based on a True Story,
a memoir.
You spent five seasons on the cast of Saturday Night Live in the 1990s.
Yes, sir.
How did you secure a tryout on the show, given the fact that your background
was stand-up comedy,
not sketch comedy?
Well, I was working on a show called Roseanne with Roseanne Barr, and I talked
to the head
writer of Saturday Night Live, who liked me, you know?
He phoned me up, and he liked me.
And so he gave me the job, and so I went to Roseanne, and I quit, and I came to
New York,
and then they told me, oh, you're meeting with Lawrence tomorrow, and I'm like,
what's
that for?
And they go, well, that's the audition, you know?
You have to audition.
So I'd already quit my job.
I thought I had the job.
That was what I was told, that this was just a mere formality to meet Lauren,
and then it
turns out it's an audition.
So I go in, and he goes, you know, I'd like to, you know, you have to do two
impressions.
We have to go to the studio.
You have to do two impressions, two characters.
Everyone has to do it.
And I said, I got to go home, because I can't do that.
I don't do impressions.
I don't do impressions, and I don't do characters.
And I think he got a kick out of me or something.
You know, Lauren was always with me.
He always thought I was just a big moron.
Well, he let you do the news.
You're best known as the host of Weekend Update, or as you call it, the fake
news.
Did you do most of the writing for that, or was that something that
collaborated?
I did most, but it was collaborative.
But I kind of set the tone, you know, and I tried to make the jokes different
than other
jokes.
And we all tried to experiment.
You know, there was three of us.
And we tried to experiment with comedy and the way that you tell a joke.
And my idea was to strip bare all innuendo and all cuteness and, you know, just
leave
the bare bone of the joke.
And if it didn't work, then it wasn't a good joke to begin with.
But if it just relied on tricks.
Were there certain stories that were off-limits?
Oh, yes.
Yes, yes.
You know, people always ask me, because I just stand up, you know, is anything
off-limits?
And I hear comics go, nothing's off-limits.
And I think almost everything's off-limits for me.
And you learned, of course, that the O.J. story might have been considered off-limits.
You were doing this during the time of the O.J. trial, and you got a lot of
humor out
of that, but how and when were you aware that NBC President Don O'Meyer was a
good friend
of O.J.'s?
I found that very strong.
Well, listen, I admire that he stood by him, you know.
He stood by his friend.
But the jokes I did about O.J. were filled with moral outrage and righteous indignation
because I didn't like him.
You didn't like him as a person?
You knew him?
No, sir.
I didn't.
I didn't like, I don't like murderers.
And I was convinced he was guilty, even though he was, you know, innocent, as
it turned out.
Well, he was found not guilty.
It's not the same thing.
Listen, I don't think it's fair.
Many people believe that he was a murderer.
I don't think it's fair that he was given 40 years for stealing his own shirt,
you know what I mean?
I don't think that was fair, that he was obviously found guilty of the previous
crime.
But do you think you were let go, as some do, because of the O.J. jokes?
I don't know.
David Letterman said of you, there may be people as funny as Norm, but I don't
know anybody who is funnier.
And if we could have, we would have had Norm on every damn week.
You had, obviously, a very special relationship with him.
I mean, you performed the final stand-up set on his last year?
Yeah, I did, yeah.
It was the last stand-up set.
And everyone was being very cool with Letterman, very, like, ironic.
And that's not how I felt about it, you know?
As it came to an end, because he was such an important person in my life, and I
feel he was a very important person in culture, I think he changed the way
everybody thought and spoke, you know?
And so he was very important to me, and I just watched it and saw everybody be
cool, and I was not cool about it.
I was very sad that he was leaving.
You got very emotional.
Well, I did.
You followed Donald Trump on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last week, one
of the more controversial interviews with Donald Trump.
You know, when I saw it, I didn't think it was controversial.
I mean, goodness gracious, it's Jimmy Fallon.
Maybe he blew his chance to be host of Meet the Press, but it's Jimmy Fallon.
Maybe he'll get Matt Lauer's job.
That's right.
But, yeah, it's Jimmy Fallon.
What do you expect?
I mean, that's why Donald Trump did it.
But I will say this.
When I was watching it, I was like, oh, my God, Donald Trump.
He has being very reasonable and measured.
This is getting a little frightening.
Like, maybe he can pivot.
I don't know.
You've had your own television series, which lasted three seasons.
You co-wrote and starred in a feature film.
You've done voiceovers, had a short-lived sports show, a podcast, and even
played Colonel Sanders in KFC commercials.
Yet you remain somewhat a cult personality.
How does that sit with you?
Well, all that stuff that you mentioned is pretty subpar nonsense.
All I really do is stand-up comedy.
That's what I'm good at.
And everything else came from stand-up comedy just as an accident.
But I'm very, very good at stand-up comedy.
And the rest is just free money.
How much does the act change, show by show?
My act?
Yeah.
For example, Lenny Bruce, it was always different.
On the other hand, George Carlin wrote out an act.
Yes.
And he would revise it a bit over the course of a year.
He was very precise, George Carlin.
He's a word for word.
Even the uhs and the wells were written in.
Yeah, he was amazing.
But no, my act's almost always different.
I have so much material because I don't do specials.
I mean, I'm doing a special in a month, I shouldn't say that.
But I don't do as many specials as everybody else.
So I would say I have about 10 hours of material.
And most people don't.
So I just mix it up, you know.
Sometimes I will talk to the audience and whatever they say, I will talk about
whatever they say.
Because I have a material.
It's improv.
I have material on almost.
It's not improv, no.
I have material on nearly every subject.
Comedy Central's president, Kent Alterman, described your absence from the airwaves
as one of the great injustices of the world.
But he could give you a show.
If only he knew somebody.
Has there been talk about Comedy Central?
I don't know.
I haven't been home since then.
I've been on the road.
But yeah, I thought it was funny.
Well, considering what you've said about writing this memoir, can I assume that
one of the things you won't be doing in the future is writing more books?
I'll probably write more books, yeah.
You will write more books.
I think so, yeah.
Yeah, as much as I hate it, I feel compelled to do it.
I can't explain it.
But once I wrote it, once I started writing a book, I knew that's what I should
be doing.
And I always thought I should be doing stand-up.
And once I started writing a book, I realized I should be writing a book.
But writing funny in a book is different than writing funny for stand-up.
Because in stand-up, there's the tone of your voice.
There's body language.
Here, you just have to make people laugh because of the words that you've used.
It's almost impossible.
Like, if you go to a library, the last place you want to be is the humor
section.
You know?
Good Lord, it's awful.
And in the history of America, you know, who has there been?
You know?
Mark Twain?
Will Rogers.
Will Rogers.
What's the other fellow's name?
Well, there have been...
Josh, uh, Josh, um, I can't remember his last name.
But this was long ago.
But modern, you know, humorists would be like Irma Bombeck and this kind of
garbage.
Well, there have been some funny ones, too, but...
Who's that?
Well, we'll talk during the break because I have to announce that you'll be
speaking with Vulture editor David Marques.
Is it Marques?
Marques?
Yes.
Tonight at the Union Square Barnes & Noble store at 7 o'clock.
The book is based on a true story, a memoir.
It is published by Spiegel and Grau.
And my great thanks to Norm MacDonald for being our guest today.
You're a scholar and a gentleman, sir.
I appreciate it.

Norm Macdonald on the Leonard Lopate Show (Sep 2016) 'A scholar and a gentleman'

WNYC is supported by Picador, publishers of The Sellout by Paul Beatty.
Nominated as one of five books for the One Book, One New York program.
Learn more about the book, the program, and how to vote for your pick at www.voteforthesellout.com.
While dangerous and completely unbelievable are just a few of the ways based on
a true story.
A new memoir from actor, gambler, reconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran
Norm MacDonald has been described.
Ms. MacDonald's dry sense of humor established him as one of the most beloved
and controversial anchors of Saturday Night Live's weekend update.
And as his book's title suggests, Based on a True Story is much more than a
memoir.
It's a Hunter S. Thompson-inspired epic of the comedian's life, including
classic jokes and long mythologized Hollywood stories.
We've guest appearances from Chris Farley, Rodney Dangerfield, Sarah Silverman,
Adam Sandler, and many others.
I'm very pleased that he's brought Norm MacDonald to our show today.
Hello.
Hi, how are you?
And, well, you talk about how the process of writing was not something that you
really liked.
You found it grueling.
So what led you to even try to write a memoir?
Well, what happened was I was in a hotel room in Edmonton, Alberta.
And my manager told me to look at my Wikipedia.
And I looked at my Wikipedia, and somebody had changed my Wikipedia, and I was
dead in my Wikipedia.
And I had overdosed on morphine, which is some 19th century kind of drug to
take, in the very hotel room that I was reading this.
And so I chuckled, as you did, at first.
But then I didn't.
Then I got frightened, because I knew that one day that would be true.
What, that you die of morphine?
No, just that the tenses change.
Is becomes was, and does becomes did.
And so I thought, well, one day, in the future, when Norm MacDonald was, that
will be what's left.
There's a page on Wikipedia.
So I said, I want to tell my own side of the story, and not just a series of
facts, which I suppose is what a person's life is, is a series of facts.
Well, based on a true story, when we see that beginning of a movie, we know a
lot of license has been taken.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I think, though, if you base something on, it's not really based on a
true story.
It's based on facts, but it is true.
That's what, that's, that's how I would say it.
How will you describe your writing style here?
Are you using the truth as a stepping up point for some rather elaborate
storytelling?
And how does this kind of writing differ?
Or is it the same as what you do when you're doing a stand-up?
No, it's much, much different.
I'm not an educated person, so I wish I was, because I would have been able to
write the book.
But I wrote four books, I mean, four attempts at this book.
Not four drafts, but four entirely different books, until I came upon this one
that I think works.
Well, you told the Washington Post.
Maybe it doesn't, I don't know.
I can't imagine how anyone likes to write a blanking book.
I couldn't hate it more.
Yeah, I hated it.
I hated every moment of it.
Through much of...
I liked writing the end, about those two words.
Through much of the book, you drink and do a lot of drugs and gamble.
Yes.
Are those things that you do on your day-to-day life?
No, sir.
I don't do any of them, but I did do them.
Yes, I did do them a great deal.
I didn't enter show business until late in life, and before that, I was a sort
of a criminal.
I had a criminal, yeah.
I was a criminal, I suppose.
You engaged in illegal activities?
Yes, sir.
I did.
Wow.
Like what?
I would sell drugs.
I would break and enter.
Anything to...
Statute of limitations, okay?
Anything to survive.
You know, I was just trying to survive.
I had no money, and I was only 14 or 15 when I left home.
This is in Canada.
This is in Canada.
So you do what you have to do, and it's not immoral, you know?
There's nothing immoral about it.
You know, I remember we would steal electric typewriters.
This is how long ago it was.
And we would smash the window, and the alarm would go off, and we'd grab
electric typewriters.
And we used a cab.
The cab driver would be involved, and then we would drive to an Indian
reservation where
the police were not allowed to enter, and that's where we would put all the
goods that
we had stolen.
Would they go to a fence?
Yes.
Exactly.
You also, I mentioned gambling.
What does it feel like to lose your net worth, something you say that you've
done twice in
your life?
Yes.
It feels very good.
It feels good to lose everything?
Yeah.
You go to the coffee shop, and you have a coffee, and you feel fresh, and you
feel like, hey,
I'm going to start over, I'm going to start over, I can do it again.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, I've always wondered about the appeal of gambling, because the little
bit of gambling
I've done, okay, you know, sometimes I've made a couple of bucks, sometimes I
didn't,
but it doesn't really, I don't understand the addictive quality.
I guess what you're addicted to is hope, which is not such a bad thing,
according to our
president.
So, you know, when the dice are in the air, anything can happen, and then, you
know,
it hits the cruel green felt, and sometimes you bust.
You, along with so many comedians of your generation, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers,
Martin Short, Catherine
O'Hara, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Seth Rogen, Phil Hartman, Eugene Levy,
Samantha Bee, are
all from Canada.
Is there something about Canada that produces all those funny people?
No, I don't think so.
I think that, I think it's probably, you know, we have 10% population of North
America without
Mexico, whatever that's called, so we have 10% population of what the United
States has.
So I would say it's probably, you know, you mentioned 10 guys, I could probably
mention
100 Americans.
Really?
Well, but those are some of our favorites, and your father-
Yeah, they're my favorites, yeah.
Your father was a bit of a raconteur.
Did you think you got some of your comedic influences from him?
Yeah, well, we lived a rather bleak existence when I was young.
You know, we had a, we lived on a farm that was sort of obsolete, and it was
just barren,
rocky soil.
So, and there was all those old men around, you know, and, but they were always
happy and
funny, even though, even though their existence seemed, seemed bleak.
That's why I was so attracted to Russian literature, because I saw all the
people I knew in those
books, you know?
Like, I mean, we're talking about Shmadyotkov, or what's Kaldekov?
Like, just Google, and-
Oh, the absurd guys.
The absurd, yes.
My guest is Norm MacDonald, who's written a book called Based on a True Story,
a memoir.
You spent five seasons on the cast of Saturday Night Live in the 1990s.
Yes, sir.
How did you secure a tryout on the show, given the fact that your background
was stand-up comedy,
not sketch comedy?
Well, I was working on a show called Roseanne with Roseanne Barr, and I talked
to the head
writer of Saturday Night Live, who liked me, you know?
He phoned me up, and he liked me.
And so he gave me the job, and so I went to Roseanne, and I quit, and I came to
New York,
and then they told me, oh, you're meeting with Lawrence tomorrow, and I'm like,
what's
that for?
And they go, well, that's the audition, you know?
You have to audition.
So I'd already quit my job.
I thought I had the job.
That was what I was told, that this was just a mere formality to meet Lauren,
and then it
turns out it's an audition.
So I go in, and he goes, you know, I'd like to, you know, you have to do two
impressions.
We have to go to the studio.
You have to do two impressions, two characters.
Everyone has to do it.
And I said, I got to go home, because I can't do that.
I don't do impressions.
I don't do impressions, and I don't do characters.
And I think he got a kick out of me or something.
You know, Lauren was always with me.
He always thought I was just a big moron.
Well, he let you do the news.
You're best known as the host of Weekend Update, or as you call it, the fake
news.
Did you do most of the writing for that, or was that something that
collaborated?
I did most, but it was collaborative.
But I kind of set the tone, you know, and I tried to make the jokes different
than other
jokes.
And we all tried to experiment.
You know, there was three of us.
And we tried to experiment with comedy and the way that you tell a joke.
And my idea was to strip bare all innuendo and all cuteness and, you know, just
leave
the bare bone of the joke.
And if it didn't work, then it wasn't a good joke to begin with.
But if it just relied on tricks.
Were there certain stories that were off-limits?
Oh, yes.
Yes, yes.
You know, people always ask me, because I just stand up, you know, is anything
off-limits?
And I hear comics go, nothing's off-limits.
And I think almost everything's off-limits for me.
And you learned, of course, that the O.J. story might have been considered off-limits.
You were doing this during the time of the O.J. trial, and you got a lot of
humor out
of that, but how and when were you aware that NBC President Don O'Meyer was a
good friend
of O.J.'s?
I found that very strong.
Well, listen, I admire that he stood by him, you know.
He stood by his friend.
But the jokes I did about O.J. were filled with moral outrage and righteous indignation
because I didn't like him.
You didn't like him as a person?
You knew him?
No, sir.
I didn't.
I didn't like, I don't like murderers.
And I was convinced he was guilty, even though he was, you know, innocent, as
it turned out.
Well, he was found not guilty.
It's not the same thing.
Listen, I don't think it's fair.
Many people believe that he was a murderer.
I don't think it's fair that he was given 40 years for stealing his own shirt,
you know what I mean?
I don't think that was fair, that he was obviously found guilty of the previous
crime.
But do you think you were let go, as some do, because of the O.J. jokes?
I don't know.
David Letterman said of you, there may be people as funny as Norm, but I don't
know anybody who is funnier.
And if we could have, we would have had Norm on every damn week.
You had, obviously, a very special relationship with him.
I mean, you performed the final stand-up set on his last year?
Yeah, I did, yeah.
It was the last stand-up set.
And everyone was being very cool with Letterman, very, like, ironic.
And that's not how I felt about it, you know?
As it came to an end, because he was such an important person in my life, and I
feel he was a very important person in culture, I think he changed the way
everybody thought and spoke, you know?
And so he was very important to me, and I just watched it and saw everybody be
cool, and I was not cool about it.
I was very sad that he was leaving.
You got very emotional.
Well, I did.
You followed Donald Trump on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last week, one
of the more controversial interviews with Donald Trump.
You know, when I saw it, I didn't think it was controversial.
I mean, goodness gracious, it's Jimmy Fallon.
Maybe he blew his chance to be host of Meet the Press, but it's Jimmy Fallon.
Maybe he'll get Matt Lauer's job.
That's right.
But, yeah, it's Jimmy Fallon.
What do you expect?
I mean, that's why Donald Trump did it.
But I will say this.
When I was watching it, I was like, oh, my God, Donald Trump.
He has being very reasonable and measured.
This is getting a little frightening.
Like, maybe he can pivot.
I don't know.
You've had your own television series, which lasted three seasons.
You co-wrote and starred in a feature film.
You've done voiceovers, had a short-lived sports show, a podcast, and even
played Colonel Sanders in KFC commercials.
Yet you remain somewhat a cult personality.
How does that sit with you?
Well, all that stuff that you mentioned is pretty subpar nonsense.
All I really do is stand-up comedy.
That's what I'm good at.
And everything else came from stand-up comedy just as an accident.
But I'm very, very good at stand-up comedy.
And the rest is just free money.
