Truth stretching delivers laughs
Norm Macdonald, Canadian-born standup comedian, writer, producer and actor, doesn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story in his “memoir.”
But that’s not a bad thing if you want to deliver a belly laugh. Macdonald stretches the truth in Based on a True Story like the elastic on a pair of cheap briefs.
The Canadian export tells readers that he got his start as a fresh-faced 21-yearold on the Ottawa stage of Yuk Yuk’s standup comedy club. He’s best known for his five seasons on Saturday Night Live and for anchoring the popular Weekend Update segment of that show.
Macdonald works in lots of invented Lorne Michaels’ anecdotes. The controversial comedian jokes about being fired in 1998 by NBC overlord Don Ohlmeyer. He sarcastically states it was because he didn’t tell enough jokes about alleged killer O.J. Simpson — Ohlmeyer’s friend.
The 53-year-old (as of October 17) is very forthright about the cost of his career misstep. “. . . looking back now, I can see that my life since SNL has been a full sprint, trying with all my might to outrun the wolves of irrelevancy snapping at my heels. It has all been in vain, of course. ”
Macdonald spins yarns of an innocent childhood growing up in the Ottawa Valley with brothers Neil and Leslie and his father’s early life as a Depression-era hobo riding the rails. Based on a True Story features a running narrative gag: To regain a fortune lost to sports betting (due to his gambling addiction). Beginning in Los Angeles, Macdonald and Adam Eget, his wingman/former personal assistant, navigate the Dodge Challenger on a Hunter S. Thompson-esque, drug-and-alcohol-fuelled road trip to Las Vegas.
Macdonald is an unreliable narrator but this “memoir” is nothing but a lark. The Canadian gen-Xer created an interesting memoir-novel hybrid.
Read it, because, as David Letterman once said, “there is no one funnier than Norm Macdonald.” D. Grant Black is a writer, editor and satirist who grew up in front of the TV tuned to SNL, SCTV and Kids in the Hall and reading Mad and National Lampoon magazines.