Name: Norm Macdonald Book Tour - Sixth & I (2016) Based on a True Story: A Memoir Full Appearance
Uploaded: 2019-03-26T22:41:45.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald Book Tour - Sixth & I (2016) Based on a True Story: A Memoir Full Appearance' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-03-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald Book Tour - Sixth & I (2016) Based on a True Story: A Memoir Full Appearance' from Happy the Dog on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-03-26. Transcript available.

Norm Macdonald Book Tour - Sixth & I (2016) Based on a True Story: A Memoir Full Appearance

Please join me in welcoming Norm MacDonald and Jeff Edgers to Six and I.
That was a very, very sweet introduction.
It's almost, I almost feel like we can't match that, can we?
No.
I can't.
So thank you for coming here.
You actually were scheduled to be in Washington, D.C. earlier in the year, but
you were unable
to make it, right?
Oh, yes.
That's correct.
But so you had to write a book to get here, but we're obviously appreciative.
So just to start out, this book, based on a true story, a memoir, how would you
describe
that to people?
Well, I don't know.
It's hard to describe things, but that's what I learned when I tried to write a
book.
But I would just, I don't know.
You know, I decided to skip past facts and go for truth.
That's helpful.
And so it's not totally true.
That's what you're saying.
No, no.
I mean, when you look at your life, which I'm writing it out of whatever it
forces you to
do, you start to understand that most of your life is, well, I found anyway, I
wake up in
the morning, I eat my Count Chocula.
Then I say, I've got to get a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch.
I'm thinking all the time, right?
I say, I've got to get groceries.
And, but this Count Chocula has not digested yet.
And then I go, so anyways, most of your life is finding and eating food.
Which doesn't make for a great read.
Yeah.
You didn't consider a cookbook.
I guess that's why cookbooks are, so that's why cooking is so important.
But we would argue, knowing what you've done in your life professionally, the
part we know
about, it's been very interesting.
You've mixed and worked with some of the most fascinating people in
entertainment, right?
Yeah?
No?
Well, here's the thing with backstage things.
They're not interesting at all.
Like, on the stage is what's the interesting part.
And then backstage, it's just guys eating ham sandwiches.
It's all eating.
Yeah.
And they're trying to figure out what to do on stage.
You know?
And they're saying, is there any way we could work some eating of food into
this sketch?
No, but, you know, that's what show business is on stage.
And also, most of the interesting things that have ever happened to me,
happened to me before I had any measure of fame.
Because once you have fame, you're in a bit of a cage against which, you know,
like one time I got, I think I told you, I got in a, did I tell you about my
fight in New York City?
No, no, I have not heard about your fight in New York City.
I got in a, I used to fight all the time when I was in Canada before I was
famous.
Like a professional boxer?
No, no, no.
No, just fighting.
I was not a prize fighter.
I just wanted you to say prize fighter.
No, I was just in bars and so forth.
And anyways, I was in a bar in New York City.
And I hit a guy and he went down, there was some broken glass and stuff.
And so I was like, oh my God, I'm on the TV.
I forgot.
Because I was on the TV.
Yeah.
So I ran out of the bar.
And the guy said, hey, who are you anyway?
And I said, Dana Carvey.
That's good.
Did I ever tell you that was great?
No, no.
I thought you'd say Vince Vaughn.
That would have worked.
So before I was famous, those things, those interesting things happen to me all
the time.
But once you're famous, you know, your life is pretty, pretty uninteresting
after that.
So before you were famous, I spoke to your mother.
I called her on the phone.
She said you were a very good student.
But also she said you were sort of an adventurer.
She talked about you living on a boat for a time and working in...
Now, again, some of this is in your book, right?
No.
No.
No.
Because that's interesting.
Nothing interesting.
Yeah.
Okay.
Should appear in this book.
But yeah, I was a bit of a, I was a bit of a scapegrace.
Scape what?
I'm sorry.
Scapegrace.
Scapegrace?
A troublemaker I'd never do well.
You know, so I'd travel from place to place, cause havoc and move to the next
town.
Like a traveling sort of salesman who, right?
More like a criminal drifter.
So you grew up in Canada, right?
You started doing stand-up in what the...
Ottawa, Canada.
Yeah?
Yeah.
And...
Just by accident, you know, I never knew there was such a thing as a person
that could work
in comedy.
Like I thought, you know, I had seen The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
We got it rarely in Canada, but we got it.
And I thought there was like five comedians, you know?
And they all had nice sweaters.
Like, what?
It's a nice sweater.
Thanks.
And that's what I thought.
And I didn't know that there was this subculture of comedians that traveled all
around telling
their, you know, rather unseemly jokes to, you know, drunk patrons and tried to
hit on waitresses
and asked if all the food was free.
So then when I found that out, I said, that's great, because before that I only
had jobs...
I only had manual labor jobs, and...
Like what?
What's a real job you did that you would call manual labor?
Well, the cooler ones were like I was a chokerman for a logging company.
A what?
It's a person that puts the...
It doesn't matter.
Okay.
It's a thing where a goddamn tree can fall on you.
Okay.
All right.
Fine.
Every week.
Hey, where was Pete?
A tree fell on him.
And we all made a lot of money.
We made $17 an hour.
And I remember at one point I was talking to the dishwasher that everybody made
fun of.
Old Sam.
And I said, Sam, what do you make?
He's like, $17 an hour.
I'm like, what?
So everybody made $17 an hour.
So then I was like, I want to be the dishwasher.
It turned out there was a huge waiting list that included almost everyone in
the logging can.
They wanted to be a dishwasher.
Yeah.
Because when you were washing dishes, the likelihood of a tree falling on you
was highly diminished.
So you, um, you go to, uh, you start doing comedy.
And, you know, what is interesting to me is we hear about this...
This cocaine is not working.
I just want to say, I mean, I don't really know about your personal life here,
but I've been with you for hours and hours and hours.
I'd say, what?
We've been together, yes.
And I've never seen you take a single sip of alcohol, right?
No.
Yet, I read the internets.
Do you, do you go there?
What's that?
The internet.
Do you see?
The internet, sure, yeah.
And, uh, every time you do anything, people say, uh, oh, he's drinking.
The man's drinking again, right?
Yes, sir.
And when I do stand-up there, I go, I don't drink.
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha.
I don't drink.
That's a laugh.
That's rich.
And I don't drink, you know?
The only thing I do is, uh, before every show, I eat a fistful of acid, LSD.
And, my doctor, who has a broken record, was like, stop eating fistfuls of acid
before
your show.
I think it works.
What does he know?
The guy's a big purple dog.
Well, lots of stents to that one.
That was good, yeah.
I didn't know when to cut in, but I think I stayed out, uh, long enough.
So, um, you talk about it in the book, how you're, the key to how you were able
to get
yourself onto Saturday Night Live.
I hate to jump ahead, but you're talking about comedy and, um, you know, we
have this sense
there's this huge audition process and you have to trot out all these
characters.
Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how, how you found yourself on that
show.
Well, there is an audition process and, uh, which I didn't know about.
I thought I had the job.
That's what I was told by a fellow that worked there.
So I quit the job I had.
I worked for the Roseanne program.
Yeah.
You were a writer on Roseanne first.
Yeah, yeah.
So, uh, I, uh, and I was contractually obligated to her.
So I went to Roseanne and Tom and Tom said, "How you doing, buddy?"
And I was like, "Pretty good."
He was like, "So, what's going on?"
A lot of that kind of stuff.
So, uh, I thought it'd be good to have him and Tarantino.
Like, he's like, Tarantino's like, you know.
Uh, so anyways, uh, they, uh, were kind enough to allow me to, uh, to, uh, to
go to Saturday Night Live, you know, which was very sweet of both of them.
And so, uh, I left.
I moved to New York City.
And, uh, then this girl, Marcy Pines said, "You know, tomorrow you have to meet
with Lauren."
And I'm like, "What's that all about?"
She goes, "Well, that's the, uh, you know, the job interview."
And here I quit my job.
Yeah.
And a good one.
Yeah.
So I got really drunk, forgetting I had to go the next morning to do my job
interview.
And I, anyways, I went in, and Lauren and I had a fine talk, you know.
He was, uh, also from, he's also from Canada.
Um, but he's a cosmopolite, you know.
Right.
Cosmo?
Cosmopolite.
A worldly person.
Okay.
Aren't you a fucking writer?
No, no, no.
I don't know these words.
I read a lot of stuff.
Can we get an Oxford English Dictionary up there for Jeff?
I write a lot of things online.
He's a, he's a, he's a worldly man.
Okay, yeah.
Man, that we'd be comfortable with the King of England himself.
Yeah.
I know that's a little sexist, that comment, but, but here's the thing.
I am not.
I come from the barren soils of the Ottawa Valley, you know, and that's where I
was born.
That's where I was born a hick.
I'll die a hick.
And, uh, that's the way it is.
So, uh, I didn't have anything to say.
So I just laughed at everything he said, like I always do when I'm trying to
get a job.
And then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, Lauren says to me, he says to me,
he says,
he says to me, he says.
That's the thing I wrote for Farley to do.
I said, what if you did a thing where it was just a guy who says, he says to me
way too
often.
So Farley would do it really funny.
He goes, I met this guy and he says to me, he says to me, he looks me right in
the eye
and he says to me, he says to me, he says to me, he says to me.
So anyways, Lauren said, you have to go to the studio now and do two
impressions and
two characters.
And at the time, I had zero impressions and zero characters.
Like I could do impressions of like anybody Rich Little did.
But I couldn't do anyone like, you know, of the day.
I didn't want to cut out.
So, oh, cut out.
I know that word.
I'm a writer.
So, anyways, I had no way to, but then I thought when I was, you know, he said,
you
know, he said, we'll be in touch.
And I knew I was in trouble, you know.
And so I said, what do I do?
And then I remembered when I was in kindergarten and I didn't get my homework
done.
I would present the teacher with a shiny red apple, right?
Yeah.
Because what would a teacher like better, the scribblings of a five-year-old or
eating a
shiny red apple?
We've been over food, the subject of food.
And teachers, you know, are highly underpaid, which I think is a sin.
And a shiny red apple, it costs a pretty coin, you know.
So then I says to myself, I says, I says, I says, is there a way, with Lorne
Michaels, is there
a way I could red apple the old man?
And I'll tell you, Jeff, there's always a way.
So in my back, I had a red apple, not an actual red apple, metaphorically.
It would be perfect if I had had an actual red apple.
That's not how things work.
But I had as close a thing to a red apple in my back pocket.
And I'm talking about my literal back pocket.
Literal.
Oh, God, I love when people say that all the time.
Don't you love that?
I do.
I put it in all my stories.
It's when people say it literally, constantly.
I don't even care that they're saying it wrong.
No.
I just don't want to hear it every third word.
I like you regardless as well, you know.
So I took my red apple, which in this case was six grams of government-quality
morphine.
And we know what happens next.
Yeah, I was in.
Lauren Michaels, luckily for me, was a hopeless morphine addict.
Norm, so I think we're seeing, it's in the book.
No, I just thought.
When you talk about bombshells, that's an example of what we'll find in this.
Oh, yes, I have bombshells.
There's, you know, it's a tell-all.
Well, it's not all.
So tell us.
So we're seeing it a little bit in process here, but, you know, obviously, we
watch you
on late-night shows.
We hear you.
I just heard you on Howard Stern.
We watch you on your podcast.
And what we find is suddenly 