Hilarious in the shadows
Somebody please give Norm Macdonald another TV show
LOS ANGELES Norm Macdonald has just unwrapped his first Klondike bar when he mentions the Chris Rock show. Turns out he has a chance to appear at a surprise gig at the nearby Comedy Store that also includes Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle.
Wouldn’t performing in L.A. with the hottest comedians on Earth two nights before Rock’s much-anticipated #OscarsSoWhite hosting spot be good for his career?
Macdonald, 56, shakes his head. His mouth is full of chocolate crust and ice cream, and he chews as he talks.
“The only thing that would happen is I would destroy. Which leads to nothing.”
It is a strange mix of confidence and fatalism.
“I’m telling you, I know. As a matter of fact, if there was somebody writing a story about that night, I would not be mentioned.
“I could do better than all of them. Which is possible. I’m not saying I’m better than them. I’m saying that on any night, I could do material that’s super strong and I’d probably be better than Rock’s material for the Oscars. But it leads to nothing.”
Over the next four hours, Macdonald barely budges from his seat in the two-bedroom condo he recently bought in a planned community not far from the airport. But he does talk — about his first book, a kind of memoir that is overdue and torturing him, his various TV ideas, his various TV failures, his dashed dream of hosting a late-night talk show, Rodney Dangerfield, gambling, religion, Russian literature, his son, why he was Saturday Night Live’s best Weekend Update anchor ever, why he’s a terrible actor, his obsessive tweeting and his belief that nothing is more important professionally than being the greatest standup comic of his time. Five more times, he will get up to grab another Klondike. And then, around 2:37 a.m., he’ll stand up, lift up his shirt to rub his stomach and say, “Maybe I shouldn’t have had all six of those.”
If it isn’t obvious yet, Macdonald’s publicist isn’t here. He doesn’t have one. And that makes sense. This article isn’t being done because he has an entertainment product to plug — though, in the months after the Oscars, Macdonald will finish his book. Based on a True Story: A Memoir is now available.
This profile is actually a journalistic intervention. It is about trying to understand why a brilliant, original voice remains virtually invisible at a time when, as his admirer Conan O’Brien puts it, “every United States citizen who is registered to vote has a talk show.”
Let’s start with the last big thing. It was about 15 months ago, on May 15, 2015. Macdonald, wearing a suit and a crisp red tie, arrived at the The Late Show With David Letterman to perform the final standup set on the legendary host’s program. He brought his best material. His timing was impeccable. And when he was done, he offered these parting words.
“Mr. Letterman is not for the mawkish, and he has no truck for the sentimental,” Macdonald said, clasped hands raised to his chin to help maintain composure. “If something is true, it is not sentimental. And I say in truth, I love you.”
And then he cried. It may have struck some as odd that Macdonald was even there. Other guests during Letterman’s star-studded final week included Tom Hanks, Bill Murray and Bob Dylan. For Letterman, Macdonald fit in perfectly.
“If we could have, we would have had Norm on every damn week,” Letterman says. “He is funny in a way that some people inhale and exhale. With others, you can tell the comedy, the humour is considered. With Norm, he exudes it. It’s sort of a furnace in him because he’s so effortless. The combination of the delivery and his appearance and his intelligence. There may be people as funny as Norm, but I don’t know anybody who is funnier.”
The problem has never been being funny, whether doing standup, a video podcast or another legendary talk-show guest spot.
The struggle for Macdonald has always been finding the right outlet for his humour.
Born in Quebec City, Macdonald was “one of the best-behaved children in his class.” (His mother said that.) He doesn’t drive. Lori Jo Hoekstra, a researcher when he joined SNL, is his closest confidante and, to date, has coproduced virtually everything he has done in the past 20 years.
He tells everyone he was born in 1963, but he was really born in 1959.
He loves Russian literature. Tolstoy is his favourite.
He has been married once. He doesn’t talk about his ex-wife, a marriage therapist in L.A., though if you press, he will groan like a child getting checked for strep throat and eventually say “she’s great” and a “fine person.” He has a son, Dylan, 23. His parents were teachers. Percy died in 1990 of heart disease. Ferne, 81, splits her time between Canada and Los Angeles, where she makes “Norman” delicious tomato sandwiches on toasted rye.
He doesn’t drink or do drugs. But he gambled away everything — twice. He is not one for parties. There is a place where Macdonald feels at home. Watching him do standup, he’s a master, whether delivering a riff on the sad reality of children having to go to school or the fact that Harrison Schmitt, an astronaut who was the last person to walk on the moon, “did not become famous” while “a girl with a giant ass is super famous.”
Macdonald is not anti-social so much as socially reluctant. In an industry centered around parties and red carpets, he prefers the privacy of his home or, after a gig, clicking through the channels in his hotel room.
“I’ve been to six Hollywood parties and out of those six, I probably got two jobs,” Macdonald says. “In other words, if I went to 600, I’d probably get 200. Somebody at the party, when they’re auditioning people the next week, they’ll go, ‘Hey, Norm was funny at that party at Kimmel’s house.’ But if you’re not around, it’s not their fault. They forget you’re alive.”
He makes a living off his standup gigs, generally favouring places like Calgary over New York or L.A. He has a steady stream of small parts on TV and movies. (Netflix recently announced Macdonald would do one of the voices in Skylanders Academy, an animated children’s series premiering later this year.)
Based on a True Story: A Memoir is a driving, wild and hilarious ramble of a book, what might have happened had Hunter S. Thompson embedded himself in a network studio.
It’s told by a Canadian-born comedian named Norm Macdonald who gets hired by Lorne Michaels to star on SNL with Adam Sandler and Chris Farley, makes movies, a couple of sitcoms and then flames out. That’s all true. The rest — you’ll have to decide.
Based on a True Story may not join Aziz Ansari or Tina Fey on the bestseller list. But it should. As funny and ridiculous as it is, the book is also quite moving in spots. At one point, Macdonald writes about the fleeting nature of fame.
“I think a lot of people feel sorry for you if you were on SNL and emerged from the show anything less than a superstar,” he writes in what is labelled The Final Chapter but, naturally, comes two chapters before the book ends. “They assume you must be bitter. But it is impossible for me to be bitter.
“I’ve been lucky. If I had to sum up my whole life, I guess those are the words I would choose, all right.”
If it sounds sentimental, just remember: It isn’t if it is true.