Based on a True Story

by Norm Macdonald

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Driving, wild and hilarious” (The Washington Post), here is the incredible “memoir” of the legendary actor, gambler, raconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran.

When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre “one step below instruction manuals.” Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, “Call it anything you damn like.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812983869
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/13/2017
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	33,878
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Norm Macdonald was a stand-up comedian, writer, and actor. He died in September 2021.

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Excerpted from "Based on a True Story"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Norm Macdonald.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

A driving, wild and hilarious ramble of a book, what might have happened had Hunter S. Thompson embedded himself in a network studio.”—The Washington Post

“Dostoyevsky by way of 30 Rockefeller Center . . . the best new book I’ve read this year or last.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“This book is absurd fiction. . . . Scathing and funny.”—The New York Times
 
“Hilarious and filled with turns of phrase and hidden beauty like only a collection of Norm Macdonald stories could be.”—Esquire
 
“Raucous . . . a hilarious, innovative work.”—A.V. Club

“Part personal history and part meta riff on celebrity memoirs, the book, it quickly becomes clear, is also just partly true (and all hilarious).”—Vulture

“My three favorite books:
1. The Bible, by Moses and other guys
2. The Art of the Deal, by President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump (a.k.a. President Trumpy)
3. Based on a True Story, by Norm Macdonald
 
I have not read the first two. I have read Based on a True Story, and I believe it to be largely bullshit, but it is very, very, very funny! Thanks, Norm, for letting me be part of this Booker Prize–for–literature–quality effort.”—David Letterman

“Norm is one of my all-time favorites, and this book was such a great read I forgot how lonely I was for a while.”—Amy Schumer
 
“I always thought Normie’s stand-up was the funniest thing there was. But this book gives it a run for its money.”—Adam Sandler
 
“Norm is one of the greatest stand-up comics who’s ever worked—a totally original voice. His sense of the ridiculous and his use of juxtaposition in his writing make him a comic’s comic. We all love Norm.”—Roseanne Barr
 
“Norm Macdonald makes me laugh my ass off. Who is funnier than Norm Macdonald? Nobody.”—Judd Apatow
 
“Norm Macdonald is more than a triple threat—he’s a septuple threat. He is smart, funny, wry, rakish, polite, rakish . . . no, wait. He is polite, insightful, and . . . aaaaah . . . warm. No. He’s exciting. Yeah. Exciting! You never know what he’ll do. Okay, then make that unpredictable. Add that up. He’s amazing.”—Alec Baldwin
 
“Norm only has to grunt to make me laugh. And this book is three hundred pages? Sign me up.”—Sophia Amoruso, author of #GIRLBOSS
 
“Norm is a double threat. His material and timing are both top-notch, which is unheard of. He is one of my favorites, both on- and off-stage.”—Dave Attell
 
“David Letterman said it best: There is no one funnier than Norm Macdonald.”—Rob Schneider

From the Publisher

…Based on a True Story [is] often very funny but always very fabulist…A memoir in the sense that it's roughly organized by the timeline of Mr. Macdonald's life and career, this book is absurd fiction in many of its details, even the most basic ones…[Macdonald's] an oddball by nature who also seems to have genuinely cultivated a disregard for conventional success. This memoir's evasive clowning is in keeping with all that.

The New York Times - John Williams

08/15/2016
In the spare moments of a Las Vegas gambling adventure—replete with murderous loan sharks, drug and alcohol binges, and sexual misadventures—comedian and Saturday Night Live alum MacDonald recounts predominantly fictitious tales from his life and career to his companion (and podcast cohost), Adam Eget, who's portrayed as a dunce. Some MacDonald fans will enjoy the comedian's signature mix of dark absurdity and sophomoric antics (many of the gags in the book are recycled from the comedian's prior work), but general readers will find little to appreciate in this uninventive and meandering adventure narrative. Many of the details and sentiments that MacDonald shares about his childhood, his 1990s tenure at SNL as host of the Weekend Update segment, and his current experience as a working comic past his prime are surely true. For the most part, however, MacDonald steers clear of introspection and disclosure, choosing instead to make up stories and tell jokes. MacDonald does deliver some hilarious material—for instance, recounting a supposed confidential conversation with Rodney Dangerfield in which the late comedian admitted that despite his wealth and fame, he secretly felt disrespected. On the whole, however, MacDonald's faux memoir is not nearly funny enough to justify the reader's time. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-07-19
Now that pretty much every one of his contemporaries has written a memoir, why not Macdonald?The book starts out promising enough, justifying the title with the typical disclaimer: “there’s no way of telling a true story. I mean a really true one, because of memory. It’s just no good.” The author also promises to “name names,” “drop bombshells,” and “let the filth fly, like a mad dog.” Though he delivers on the first two, Macdonald’s creative imagination has reached such delirium by that point that readers are likely to discount even the parts that may be true. Most of this account takes place in Las Vegas, where the author may or may not have gambled $1 million on credit, high on morphine and whiskey, promising (and failing) to kill himself if he lost, and then borrowing another million to try to win back what he had lost—and becoming God’s anointed messenger in the process. Part of the problem here is that, as he acknowledges, “if I am remembered, it will always be by the four years I spent on Saturday Night Live and, maybe even more than that, by the events surrounding my departure from that show. As long as SNL exists, so do I.” Of his departure, he says he refused to resume telling O.J. Simpson jokes. As for the rest, he may or may not have been deeply in lust with Sarah Silverman. It isn’t likely that he engaged a hit man to murder her boyfriend, that he was sentenced to 40 years (or four months) for this, and that she took out a restraining order that made it difficult for them to do sketches together. It also isn’t likely that he was hired for the program by Lorne Michaels because of a shared passion for liquid morphine, and it isn’t likely that he received a $1 million advance for this book, whatever it is. Will try the patience of even the comedian’s fans.

Kirkus Reviews