Name: Norm Macdonald "Everything turns out alright" (2017) Menefreghismo
Uploaded: 2021-09-15T16:43:15.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald "Everything turns out alright" (2017) Menefreghismo' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald "Everything turns out alright" (2017) Menefreghismo' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-09-15. Transcript available.

So, Norm, your book, Based on a True Story, reads like a novelistic memoir.
The central narrative is reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas,
and you've got bits of Jack London, Steinbeck, and maybe just a dash of Tolstoy
sprinkled in there for good measure.
I'm curious about what you were hoping to accomplish with the book.
Do you see it as kind of a parody of celebrity memoirs, an homage to your
favorite authors, or is it something else entirely?
No, what I wanted to do was make the greatest comic novel of all time, because
I love reading.
But when it comes to comedy, it's incredibly hard to write comedy.
You know Mark Twain is funny?
Oh, yeah.
To an extent, he's funny.
John Kennedy O'Toole's novel was funny.
A Confederacy of Dunces, yeah.
To an extent, it was funny.
But it wasn't gut-busting funny.
So I wanted to make a book that was...
I knew I couldn't make it as strong as my stand-up.
First of all, it's fiction.
It really bothers me that it's out of the non-fiction.
New York Times considers it non-fiction, because it's ridiculous.
And I've had arguments with them, because just because it says a memoir on the
title is meaningless.
You know, that's just the title.
Anyways, no, that's what I was aiming to do, was to write the funniest novel
that's ever been written.
Yeah, gut-busting.
Yeah.
One of the great things about the book is that it's unlike any other works of
comedy I've ever encountered.
Whereas a lot of books by celebrities are confessional, telling the story
behind the story.
With this book, you turn that model on its head, you'll take a kernel of truth
and spin it into a ridiculous story,
like the time you worked on SNL and ended up with a 40-year prison sentence for
contracting a hitman to kill a writer.
And some reviewers have said the book ridicules audiences looking for some
juicy gossip.
Does that criticism hold any water for you?
Is that something you were trying to do?
No, I wasn't trying to do it, but I did immediately understand that backstage
holds nothing.
Like in show business, backstage is just you're eating a sandwich trying to
figure out what to do on stage.
So, you know, on stage is the real thing.
And so what I was trying to do with the book to make that point strongly was to
make the book not backstage either, but rather on stage.
I wanted to make the book a work, not talking about some other work, you know.
A novel as opposed to nonfiction.
Yeah, and my sense is that maybe another reason why you wanted to turn your
life into this work of fiction is because you're not a fan of confessional
comedy, right?
I've read that somewhere.
Oh, no, I'm not.
No, this is a new thing that I, you know, that I didn't even know about until a
couple of years ago.
And I started noticing it in clubs, you know, and it was madding.
I didn't like it at all.
Why not?
Well, because I was always taught that the nature of art was to conceal, not to
reveal.
When people confess things and they're told how brave they are, you know,
because they have cancer or something and they talk about it.
Well, everyone has cancer.
I mean, it's not rare at all.
The brave thing to do if you have cancer is to not talk about it, is to just
have it and keep it a secret and don't burden anyone with it.
All you're doing is burdening people with those things.
You think so?
You don't think it can ever be helpful to share this story for other people
going through, in this case, going through cancer, dealing with cancer?
You don't think that?
It might be, but I certainly doubt that's its intent.
Its intent is to bask in the pity.
So it's kind of narcissistic, would it be fair to say, almost?
It's incredibly, incredibly narcissistic.
These are private things.
Yeah.
Have you ever read Nick Tosh's 1992 biography of Dean Martin?
Yes.
You have?
Dino.
Yeah, excellent.
Dino, living high in the dirty business of dreams.
The reason I ask is because you've read it, you know this, but our listeners
won't know this.
One of Tosh's central arguments in the book is that Dean Martin approached his
life and career with this thing called menafregissimo, an Italian word meaning
I don't give an F.
And it seems to me that you have a lot of that same spirit of menafregissimo,
and that is a big part of your appeal and success.
I would even go so far as to say that you could be described as the Dean Martin
of stand-up comedy.
Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Dean Martin is the Norm MacDonald
of male vocalists.
What do you think?
Do you think you've got the menafregissimo going on?
Dean Martin is my hero of all time.
He's like my number one guy.
Really?
When I was a little kid, I would watch the Dean Martin show.
Sure.
Gold diggers, him coming down the fire pole?
Yes.
Yeah.
And something resonated with me that everything else seemed false, but he
seemed real within that false framework.
I always remember this sketch he did because he would get giant stars on the
show, you know?
So it was him and Ruth Buzzy, they're in a cold water flat, they're supposed to
be a couple, and she's in complete Ruth Buzzy garb with the handbag and
everything.
Yeah, yeah, the old lady scene that she does, Gladys, I think the name was,
that she would do with Artie Johnson on laughing.
Exactly.
And Dean Martin is wearing a tuxedo.
Yeah.
The same tuxedo that he had on for the opening monologue.
Yeah, yeah.
And he's just standing, reading from a card, not even looking at her, and she's
acting up an awful storm, you know?
There's a knock on the door, it's Sinatra, who's also wearing a tux.
Oh, they also have a drink and a cigarette in their hands.
Oh, of course.
So they walk in, they do the sketch, and then Dean Martin sees something, I'll
never forget this, he starts laughing, and he walks up and he looks at the cue
card, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And he picks it up and starts reading it and laughing at how funny, because he's
never seen it before.
So, I don't know, it's sort of dereliction of duty in a way, you could say, but
to me it was hysterical as a child.
So, yeah, Dean Martin was a gigantic influence in my life.
It's funny that you stumbled onto that.
So, Dean Martin's this huge influence, is that the thing you took, the thing
that I see in a lot of your comedy, the Menefregissimo, the I don't give an F
attitude?
Yes, I stole that from Dean Martin, note for note.
Wow.
Yeah.
But I love that thing, I forgot that phrase, but what do you call it?
Menefregissimo, that's what Tasha just calls it, it's a real word, it's like
actually, I looked it up, it's in Wiktionary, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it's fun to say.
Menefregissimo, yeah.
I would order that.
Yeah, Menefregissimo with a little R&R on the side, yeah, I would order it, too.
Menefregissimo, I love that.
So, something else I read in terms of just writing a joke that one of the
things you often aspire to is you like to have a setup and punchline that are
as close together as possible in terms of the wording, right?
Yes, well, that was something that I tried to do on Weekend Update specifically,
not in stand-up.
Because it was a parody of the news, it needed to have the setup be a very
rigidly written sentence that a newsman would say, you know?
Yeah.
Exactly like a newsman would say.
Since it had that, I thought the punchline and the setup, if they were exactly
the same, would be great because then you're just pointing out the absurdity of
the setup, you know?
Oftentimes, in a joke, I would do the setup and everyone would laugh and then
you don't even have to go on, you know?
Because you can't comment on something that everybody already finds ridiculous
and funny.
Yeah. Can you give me an example? Is there a joke that's come the closest,
something that you told on Weekend Update that came closest to the setup and
punchline, almost matching word for word?
Yes, there was one joke. Lyle Lovett and Julie Roberts are getting divorced.
The reason Insider's site is that she's Julie Roberts and he's Lyle Lovett.
Yeah, that's great because they seem like such an odd couple. So, yeah, you use
the newsman setup and then, yeah, that is a classic.
What is the biggest laugh you ever got? Like, you've gotten thousands, I guess,
in all the years you've been doing stand-up.
Is there one moment that you can point to as one of the biggest laughs or the
most satisfying laughs you ever got?
No, I can't because this is why. Because in live stand-up, this is something I
learned also.
Because I was always afraid to speak to the audience and I also thought I was
very hackneyed to speak to the audience.
Oh, like to interact with them.
Yes, to interact with the crowd. And so I would just stare into the lights and
do my jokes.
As time went on and I gained a little maturity, I understood it was only fear
that stopped me from talking to the audience and that that's what the audience
loves.
That's what makes it a live event. Otherwise, they could just watch it on
YouTube, you know.
They could just watch your act or just read your act off a piece of paper.
So what they want is interaction. So that's why I can't cite the biggest laugh
because that's where the biggest laugh would come organically out of a
conversation with people.
Yeah.
I think about laughter quite a bit. And when you say, like, the biggest laugh,
I find it very interesting.
I was just thinking about this last week. The biggest laughs you'll ever hear
in life are like at a Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of loved ones and
nothing funny is said, you know.
But there's this laughter that's going through the room and it just comes from
love.
So I've been talking about love a lot in my act lately because I find that to
be a taboo subject.
I find that surprising. Why do you find love to be a taboo subject?
Well, no one talks about it. You know, no one finds any comedy in it. And yet
it's central to everything there is.
Do you think because so much of comedy is based on conflict, love is difficult
to turn into jokes?
Yeah, it's very difficult.
Can you give me an example of a joke about love that you've told that you're
particularly happy with?
Well, I talk about how much we don't love, you know, and how we can walk beside
a homeless guy that's pleading for money and ignore him and stuff.
I talk about, like, how a dog can love. And that's all it does, really, is love.
You know, we can't even keep up with the dog.
But this sounds not funny at all, as I say it.
Yeah.
But when I say it in a club, it catches people off guard. That's what it does.
Because you're not supposed to be talking about that. You're supposed to be
cynical.
And I used to be cynical. I used to be a very cynical person.
So when did you stop being such a cynical person? What was the turning point?
I don't know. Just as I aged, just as anybody grows, you know.
Yeah.
Just constant introspection and seeing that what you do maybe is hollow or
something.
And so you have to change, change, change all the time.
Do you see or have you seen your work as a stand-up comedian as hollow?
Yeah. My earlier work, yeah.
Yeah, because you're constantly improving and growing.
Yeah, I talked of nothing of consequence or significance.
I do love comics that talk about minutiae.
Mm-hmm.
Like, there's a comic named Brian Regan that I love and Jerry Seinfeld.
Sure. Yeah, the master of it.
And in some ways, I think those guys are the deepest of anybody because they
talk about the stuff of life, you know, the little things.
Yeah, life is made up of the details.
Yeah, exactly.
So I certainly love that, but I guess my mind goes toward the more ethereal,
especially as of late.
You know, I live alone.
I think a lot.
So I sort of live in a fantasy world more than a—I wouldn't know what's
inside a grocery store, you know.
It has its pros and cons to live in a fantasy world.
It has its pros and cons, yeah.
You're going to lose your mind.
That's the con.
Yeah.
But the pro is, everything turns out all right.
Norm Macdonald is a stand-up comedian and a fictional memoirist.
His new book is called Based on a True Story, a Memoir.
His new stand-up special debuts on Netflix on Tuesday, May 9th.
It's called Norm Macdonald, Hitler's Dog, Gossip and Truth.

Norm Macdonald "Everything turns out alright" (2017) Menefreghismo

So, Norm, your book, Based on a True Story, reads like a novelistic memoir.
The central narrative is reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas,
and you've got bits of Jack London, Steinbeck, and maybe just a dash of Tolstoy
sprinkled in there for good measure.
I'm curious about what you were hoping to accomplish with the book.
Do you see it as kind of a parody of celebrity memoirs, an homage to your
favorite authors, or is it something else entirely?
No, what I wanted to do was make the greatest comic novel of all time, because
I love reading.
But when it comes to comedy, it's incredibly hard to write comedy.
You know Mark Twain is funny?
Oh, yeah.
To an extent, he's funny.
John Kennedy O'Toole's novel was funny.
A Confederacy of Dunces, yeah.
To an extent, it was funny.
But it wasn't gut-busting funny.
So I wanted to make a book that was...
I knew I couldn't make it as strong as my stand-up.
First of all, it's fiction.
It really bothers me that it's out of the non-fiction.
New York Times considers it non-fiction, because it's ridiculous.
And I've had arguments with them, because just because it says a memoir on the
title is meaningless.
You know, that's just the title.
Anyways, no, that's what I was aiming to do, was to write the funniest novel
that's ever been written.
Yeah, gut-busting.
Yeah.
One of the great things about the book is that it's unlike any other works of
comedy I've ever encountered.
Whereas a lot of books by celebrities are confessional, telling the story
behind the story.
With this book, you turn that model on its head, you'll take a kernel of truth
and spin it into a ridiculous story,
like the time you worked on SNL and ended up with a 40-year prison sentence for
contracting a hitman to kill a writer.
And some reviewers have said the book ridicules audiences looking for some
juicy gossip.
Does that criticism hold any water for you?
Is that something you were trying to do?
No, I wasn't trying to do it, but I did immediately understand that backstage
holds nothing.
Like in show business, backstage is just you're eating a sandwich trying to
figure out what to do on stage.
So, you know, on stage is the real thing.
And so what I was trying to do with the book to make that point strongly was to
make the book not backstage either, but rather on stage.
I wanted to make the book a work, not talking about some other work, you know.
A novel as opposed to nonfiction.
Yeah, and my sense is that maybe another reason why you wanted to turn your
life into this work of fiction is because you're not a fan of confessional
comedy, right?
I've read that somewhere.
Oh, no, I'm not.
No, this is a new thing that I, you know, that I didn't even know about until a
couple of years ago.
And I started noticing it in clubs, you know, and it was madding.
I didn't like it at all.
Why not?
Well, because I was always taught that the nature of art was to conceal, not to
reveal.
When people confess things and they're told how brave they are, you know,
because they have cancer or something and they talk about it.
Well, everyone has cancer.
I mean, it's not rare at all.
The brave thing to do if you have cancer is to not talk about it, is to just
have it and keep it a secret and don't burden anyone with it.
All you're doing is burdening people with those things.
You think so?
You don't think it can ever be helpful to share this story for other people
going through, in this case, going through cancer, dealing with cancer?
You don't think that?
It might be, but I certainly doubt that's its intent.
Its intent is to bask in the pity.
So it's kind of narcissistic, would it be fair to say, almost?
It's incredibly, incredibly narcissistic.
These are private things.
Yeah.
Have you ever read Nick Tosh's 1992 biography of Dean Martin?
Yes.
You have?
Dino.
Yeah, excellent.
Dino, living high in the dirty business of dreams.
The reason I ask is because you've read it, you know this, but our listeners
won't know this.
One of Tosh's central arguments in the book is that Dean Martin approached his
life and career with this thing called menafregissimo, an Italian word meaning
I don't give an F.
And it seems to me that you have a lot of that same spirit of menafregissimo,
and that is a big part of your appeal and success.
I would even go so far as to say that you could be described as the Dean Martin
of stand-up comedy.
Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Dean Martin is the Norm MacDonald
of male vocalists.
What do you think?
Do you think you've got the menafregissimo going on?
Dean Martin is my hero of all time.
He's like my number one guy.
Really?
When I was a little kid, I would watch the Dean Martin show.
Sure.
Gold diggers, him coming down the fire pole?
Yes.
Yeah.
And something resonated with me that everything else seemed false, but he
seemed real within that false framework.
I always remember this sketch he did because he would get giant stars on the
show, you know?
So it was him and Ruth Buzzy, they're in a cold water flat, they're supposed to
be a couple, and she's in complete Ruth Buzzy garb with the handbag and
everything.
Yeah, yeah, the old lady scene that she does, Gladys, I think the name was,
that she would do with Artie Johnson on laughing.
Exactly.
And Dean Martin is wearing a tuxedo.
Yeah.
The same tuxedo that he had on for the opening monologue.
Yeah, yeah.
And he's just standing, reading from a card, not even looking at her, and she's
acting up an awful storm, you know?
There's a knock on the door, it's Sinatra, who's also wearing a tux.
Oh, they also have a drink and a cigarette in their hands.
Oh, of course.
So they walk in, they do the sketch, and then Dean Martin sees something, I'll
never forget this, he starts laughing, and he walks up and he looks at the cue
card, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And he picks it up and starts reading it and laughing at how funny, because he's
never seen it before.
So, I don't know, it's sort of dereliction of duty in a way, you could say, but
to me it was hysterical as a child.
So, yeah, Dean Martin was a gigantic influence in my life.
It's funny that you stumbled onto that.
So, Dean Martin's this huge influence, is that the thing you took, the thing
that I see in a lot of your comedy, the Menefregissimo, the I don't give an F
attitude?
Yes, I stole that from Dean Martin, note for note.
Wow.
Yeah.
But I love that thing, I forgot that phrase, but what do you call it?
Menefregissimo, that's what Tasha just calls it, it's a real word, it's like
actually, I looked it up, it's in Wiktionary, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it's fun to say.
Menefregissimo, yeah.
I would order that.
Yeah, Menefregissimo with a little R&R on the side, yeah, I would order it, too.
Menefregissimo, I love that.
So, something else I read in terms of just writing a joke that one of the
things you often aspire to is you like to have a setup and punchline that are
as close together as possible in terms of the wording, right?
Yes, well, that was something that I tried to do on Weekend Update specifically,
not in stand-up.
Because it was a parody of the news, it needed to have the setup be a very
rigidly written sentence that a newsman would say, you know?
Yeah.
Exactly like a newsman would say.
Since it had that, I thought the punchline and the setup, if they were exactly
the same, would be great because then you're just pointing out the absurdity of
the setup, you know?
Oftentimes, in a joke, I would do the setup and everyone would laugh and then
you don't even have to go on, you know?
Because you can't comment on something that everybody already finds ridiculous
and funny.
Yeah. Can you give me an example? Is there a joke that's come the closest,
something that you told on Weekend Update that came closest to the setup and
punchline, almost matching word for word?
Yes, there was one joke. Lyle Lovett and Julie Roberts are getting divorced.
The reason Insider's site is that she's Julie Roberts and he's Lyle Lovett.
Yeah, that's great because they seem like such an odd couple. So, yeah, you use
the newsman setup and then, yeah, that is a classic.
What is the biggest laugh you ever got? Like, you've gotten thousands, I guess,
in all the years you've been doing stand-up.
Is there one moment that you can point to as one of the biggest laughs or the
most satisfying laughs you ever got?
No, I can't because this is why. Because in live stand-up, this is something I
learned also.
Because I was always afraid to speak to the audience and I also thought I was
very hackneyed to speak to the audience.
Oh, like to interact with them.
Yes, to interact with the crowd. And so I would just stare into the lights and
do my jokes.
As time went on and I gained a little maturity, I understood it was only fear
that stopped me from talking to the audience and that that's what the audience
loves.
That's what makes it a live event. Otherwise, they could just watch it on
YouTube, you know.
They could just watch your act or just read your act off a piece of paper.
So what they want is interaction. So that's why I can't cite the biggest laugh
because that's where the biggest laugh would come organically out of a
conversation with people.
Yeah.
I think about laughter quite a bit. And when you say, like, the biggest laugh,
I find it very interesting.
I was just thinking about this last week. The biggest laughs you'll ever hear
in life are like at a Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of loved ones and
nothing funny is said, you know.
But there's this laughter that's going through the room and it just comes from
love.
So I've been talking about love a lot in my act lately because I find that to
be a taboo subject.
I find that surprising. Why do you find love to be a taboo subject?
Well, no one talks about it. You know, no one finds any comedy in it. And yet
it's central to everything there is.
Do you think because so much of comedy is based on conflict, love is difficult
to turn into jokes?
Yeah, it's very difficult.
Can you give me an example of a joke about love that you've told that you're
particularly happy with?
Well, I talk about how much we don't love, you know, and how we can walk beside
a homeless guy that's pleading for money and ignore him and stuff.
I talk about, like, how a dog can love. And that's all it does, really, is love.
You know, we can't even keep up with the dog.
But this sounds not funny at all, as I say it.
Yeah.
But when I say it in a club, it catches people off guard. That's what it does.
Because you're not supposed to be talking about that. You're supposed to be
cynical.
And I used to be cynical. I used to be a very cynical person.
So when did you stop being such a cynical person? What was the turning point?
I don't know. Just as I aged, just as anybody grows, you know.
Yeah.
Just constant introspection and seeing that what you do maybe is hollow or
something.
And so you have to change, change, change all the time.
Do you see or have you seen your work as a stand-up comedian as hollow?
Yeah. My earlier work, yeah.
Yeah, because you're constantly improving and growing.
Yeah, I talked of nothing of consequence or significance.
I do love comics that talk about minutiae.
Mm-hmm.
Like, there's a comic named Brian Regan that I love and Jerry Seinfeld.
Sure. Yeah, the master of it.
And in some ways, I think those guys are the deepest of anybody because they
talk about the stuff of life, you know, the little things.
Yeah, life is made up of the details.
Yeah, exactly.
So I certainly love that, but I guess my mind goes toward the more ethereal,
especially as of late.
You know, I live alone.
I think a lot.
So I sort of live in a fantasy world more than a—I wouldn't know what's
inside a grocery store, you know.
It has its pros and cons to live in a fantasy world.
It has its pros and cons, yeah.
You're going to lose your mind.
That's the con.
Yeah.
But the pro is, everything turns out all right.
Norm Macdonald is a stand-up comedian and a fictional memoirist.
His new book is called Based o