Name: Norm Macdonald Everything turns out alright 2017 Menefreghismo
Uploaded: 2022-03-16T05:00:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald Everything turns out alright 2017 Menefreghismo' from TickleMeNorm on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-03-16. Transcript available. Be Sad Now #normmacdonald #norm.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald Everything turns out alright 2017 Menefreghismo' from TickleMeNorm on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-03-16. Transcript available. Be Sad Now #normmacdonald #norm.

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,
well, 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
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.
Mm-hmm. 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...
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 "Menefregissimo," 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 "Menefregissimo,"
and that
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 "Menefregissimo" 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 Buzzi. They're in a cold water
flat. They're
supposed to be a couple. And she's in complete Ruth Buzzi garb with the handbag
and everything.
Yeah, yeah. The old lady, Ruth, scene that she does Gladys, I think the name
was, that
has to do with R.D. 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, 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? 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 men of frugissimo, that I don't give an F attitude?
Yes, I stole that from Dean Martin, note for note.
Wow. Okay.
But I love that thing. I forgot that phrase. What do you call it?
Menefrugissimo. That's what Tosha 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.
Menefrugissimo. Yeah. I would order that.
Yeah. Menefrugissimo with a little R and R on the side. Yeah. I would order it,
too.
Menefrugissimo. 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?
Yeah. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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 –

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,
well, 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
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.
Mm-hmm. 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...
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 "Menefregissimo," 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 "Menefregissimo,"
and that
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 "Menefregissimo" 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 Buzzi. They're in a cold water
flat. They're
supposed to be a couple. And she's in complete Ruth Buzzi garb with the handbag
and everything.
Yeah, yeah. The old lady, Ruth, scene that she does Gladys, I think the name
was, that
has to do with R.D. 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, 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? 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 men of frugissimo, that I don't give an F attitude?
Yes, I stole that from Dean Martin, note for note.
Wow. Okay.
But I love that thing. I forgot that phrase. What do you call it?
Menefrugissimo. That's what Tosha 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.
Menefrugissimo. Yeah. I would order that.
Yeah. Menefrugissimo with a little R and R on the side. Yeah. I would order it,
too.
Menefrugissimo. 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?
Yeah. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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