Based on a True Story Read online

  Gabe slides into the backseat of the Challenger.

  “Gabe, Adam Eget, Gabe.”

  With pleasantries taken care of, it is time to be on our way. “Listen, boys, before we hit the Strip, whaddya say we go to the El Cortez and get some fried bread?”

  The fellows think this is a capital idea and so we go and eat breakfast and talk, like civilized gentlemen in the middle of this jungle of vipers.

  I notice as we drink our coffee that Adam Eget’s eyes are not on Gabe or on me. He is looking beyond us, somewhere in the middle distance. I just assume he is gazing at his bleak and certain future. But, no, I turn my head and see he is staring at a lady who is waiting to be seated. She is dressed sexy as hell, in a tight dress and high heels. “Fellas,” Adam Eget says, “I think I’ll go and introduce myself to the future Mrs. Adam Eget.”

  I wish him good luck and watch as he approaches her, as he offers her a cigarette, as he stands too close to her, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Wonder if he’ll close the deal. What are the odds, Gabe?”

  Gabe hasn’t been paying attention, as the fried bread and molasses has arrived, but he looks over and studies the pair closely.

  “Well, Norm, to answer your question, I’d say the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

  “No way. Seriously, Gabe, you think that’s a dude?”

  “Look at the way she dresses and talks and moves. You ever see a lady act that sexy?”

  Gabe is right. Only dudes act as sexy as this lady. “I better go warn Adam Eget.”

  But it’s too late. They are gone.

  —

  Gabe and I head over to the Mirage. It makes me feel strong as I walk the floor and easily pass the blackjack and craps tables, feeling no pull. It helps to have Gabe beside me, knowing that if I stop at a table he’ll call me a jackass. When we get to my suite, I pull out my laptop and scour the baseball standings to find any trends. I’ll be up early the next day to see the Pinnacle lines. Pinnacle is an offshore betting site that always has truer odds than Vegas. Information is everything. I am proud to see that Gabe is proud of me.

  Gabe tosses me the drugs. “So, I’m interested to hear a plan that needs 10K worth of Dilaudid.”

  “I’m trying to play smart this time, Gabe. You see, I’m playing for my life. And if I win, I’m a millionaire.” I take out the syrettes and the brochures from Montana and explain my plan.

  Gabe looks at me for a long time and then smiles. “So, you bet a million and you either win a million or lose everything, including your life. It’s double or nothing. I like it.” Double or nothing. Only Gabe would think of it that way, and we laugh together at whatever it is men laugh at when all else is lost.

  We order way too much room service, which is what men do when food is comped, and as soon as we hang up the phone there’s a knock on the door and one of us says, “That was fast,” which is what men say when that happens.

  It is Adam Eget.

  “Hey, why didn’t you phone?”

  “I told you, I lost my BlackBerry, remember? It has my sponsor’s number on it. But I didn’t drink. One day at a time, right?”

  “Right, right. I thought you’d end up at one of those tiny chapels with some Elvis impersonator marrying you and that dude,” I say.

  “That was no dude. Her name was Sammi, with an ‘i,’ and she was crazy in the sack. Real aggressive.”

  “Whatever. Get yourself a soda while we wait for the room service.”

  “Oh, thanks, I will. But she’s definitely not a dude.”

  “Look at the coffee table and tell me what you see, Adam Eget.”

  “It’s a wineglass full of nickels.”

  “That’s right. You will use those nickels to play your favorite game.”

  Adam Eget’s face lights up like a child’s birthday cake. “Video keno?”

  “Yes, video keno. But first you use a few of the nickels to buy the Las Vegas Review-Journal and look at the sports lines, and if you find a winner you tell me, okay?”

  “Sure, boss, sure. I’ll start right now.”

  So Adam Eget goes and returns with a newspaper and scans the next day’s lines, but he falls into no trance and finally grows tired of it and turns to the funny pages to read Marmaduke, and he laughs really hard. Then he sees the food that’s arrived in his absence and fills his face with shrimp and steak. He eats fast, like gluttons do, and much of the food spills from his mouth and falls to his shirt. Gabe is on his iPad, running simulations of something, and I lie back on the couch and take stock of myself. I feel great excitement at what lies ahead. The enormity of the stakes, the idea of a game being played for life and death, does not sober me but instead does the opposite. I feel drunk with confidence. A simple piece of logic convinces me I will win. I cannot conceive of my own death, and since a loss would result in such, it follows that I cannot conceive of my own loss. My father passed away many years before my gambling compulsion was born. He would not have approved. Every Sunday when I was a boy, my aunt Laura would buy a lottery ticket, always making sure she used the identical numbers. The ticket only cost a dollar, but my father called it foolishness and often counseled my aunt to quit this habit. One Sunday, my aunt was over for dinner, and as we were finishing dessert she jumped from her chair. “Oh, my goodness, I almost forgot to get my ticket. I’d better go before Barkley’s closes.”

  “Oh, why don’t you skip it this week, Laura?” my dad said.

  “But I can’t,” said my aunt. “They’re my lucky numbers. What if I were to skip this week and my lucky numbers hit?”

  My dad wiped some gravy from his lips and looked at his sister. “Well, Laura, if that were to happen, I would say they were not your lucky numbers. I would say they were your unlucky numbers.”

  I busted a gut at that one.

  I look over at Gabe and think he would have liked my dad. Gabe always tells me, “Luck is for losers.” I plan to keep this firmly in my mind whenever I feel lucky, whenever I feel I can beat a dealer or a croupier. The money will all come from the Sports Book. I know that with patience and research, I can beat the odds.

  After all, I had beat the odds before, again and again. For blackjack or baccarat or roulette, you need exceedingly good luck but nowhere near the luck it takes to succeed in show business without a shred of talent. So I sit the boys down and explain to them how a punk doing stand-up comedy in Canada decided to go to Hollywood and roll the dice on Mr. Johnny Carson.

  13

  THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING

  JOHNNY CARSON

  Adam Eget has pity all over his face and in his stupid voice.

  “But I thought you already went to Hollywood to go on that show where they search for stars. But you lost. Just imagine if you had won!”

  “Well, it’s like that expression, Adam Eget. Everything happens for a reason.”

  “I’ve never heard that expression.”

  “You haven’t? It’s a very, very famous and popular expression. Women are particularly fond of it.”

  “I don’t even know what it means,” says Adam Eget. “So everything happens for a reason? I never knew. Everything happens for a reason….So there’s some secret reason I ate that bowl of Frankenberries for breakfast.”

  “You know something? You make it hard to tell a story, but I will go on. As I was saying, everything happens for a reason,” I say, and then I tell my story.

  —

  After my Star Search debacle I stayed in Los Angeles and worked at the Improv, The World Famous Comedy Store, and the Laugh Factory. I had decided to take a break from the road to try to perfect my material at the L.A. clubs. Every night I went onstage and afterward I hung out and talked to the audience, answering their questions, which were always the same: “What is the Bushman like in real life?” “Do you think the Bushman will come here tonight?” “If the Bushman does come here tonight, would you mind taking a picture of him with me?”

  I met some great comics in Los Angeles, a
nd the best one, and the one who became my friend and hero, was Rodney Dangerfield. Many a night I sat at the back of the Improv, watching Rodney the way a dog watches a man, or a man a god. This guy was the complete package. He looked funny, he talked funny, he even moved funny—tugging at his tie and wiping sweat off his brow—and all the while his comically bulging eyes shifted nervously from side to side. He wrote the best jokes any comic has ever written. But that’s news to nobody.

  I know another side of Rodney.

  I’ve got the inside scoop on big-time celebrities, and one of them is Rodney Dangerfield. Soon after meeting Rodney, when he was at the peak of his career, I learned a very distressing truth. And that truth was that success and money mean nothing when it comes to achieving happiness.

  From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed Rodney had everything: money, success, fame. But there was one thing Rodney Dangerfield was never able to attain, and it plagued him his entire life. The ugly little secret in Hollywood was that Rodney Dangerfield never got any respect.

  Now, I know that’s hard to believe, but hear me out. Every story Mr. Dangerfield told me was more heartbreaking than the last. It had all started when he was a child and his father told him that his dying wish was to have little Rodney sit on his lap. I thought it was such an adorable thing for a father to tell his son. I really did. Until Rodney informed me his dad was sitting in the electric chair at the time.

  Rodney’s mother now had to raise the boy alone and decided to get him a dog, but she didn’t think the dog would play with a tot such as Rodney unless she tied a pork chop around the boy’s neck.

  Rodney finally grew up and became a man, but things didn’t improve. One time, he recalled, a hooker informed him, “Not tonight, I have a headache.” Imagine hearing that from a prostitute.

  I told Rodney that when I felt the whole world was against me, I’d find a tavern, where a bartender would always lend an understanding ear. But Rodney said he tried that once and that when he asked the bartender for a double, the bartender brought out a guy who looked just like Rodney.

  Rodney told me story after story and each had an identical theme: Rodney Dangerfield, famous, wealthy comedy superstar, just didn’t get any respect, no respect at all. Are you kidding me?

  I suggested a therapist, and a sad look came into Rodney’s rheumy eyes. He had seen one, yes, and the therapist—and I use the term very loosely—said Rodney was crazy. Rodney demanded a second opinion, and the cruel psychiatrist told him that he was ugly as well. I felt so bad for my friend and hero. I wanted to tell him how deeply I respected him, both as a man and an entertainer, but I knew Rodney would only think I was mocking him. Then, one night, I got the most frightening phone call of my life.

  Rodney had begun to feel that perhaps it was his fault that he never received any respect, and, disconsolate, he decided to end it all. He told me over the phone that in a fit of despair he had swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.

  “Rodney,” I screamed into the phone, “please, listen, you must get to a doctor!”

  “I just left his office, Norm. He told me to have a few drinks, try to get some sleep.”

  I didn’t want to tell Rodney, but I thought that was one of the most disrespectful things I’d ever heard a doctor suggest. But Rodney already knew all too well. When he was away from the spotlight and alone with me, he would tell me his secret truth, all summed up in one sad sentence: “I tell you, Norm, it’s the story of my life; I don’t get no respect.”

  And so it went with Rodney Dangerfield. It reminded me of that line in the Scriptures: “What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world but don’t get no respect, no respect at all? Are you kidding me?”

  I was also pretty down during this time. I felt I’d had my big chance on Star Search and blown it. In my dreams I often saw the angry eyes of Ed McMahon. But one fateful night, while watching The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, everything at once became diamond clear to me. My melancholia lifted and I was overcome with joy and hope. What did I care about Ed McMahon? The world didn’t revolve around Ed McMahon. The world revolved around the man sitting to his immediate left every night at eleven-thirty: the King and the Kingmaker, Johnny Carson. I knew I had to get on The Tonight Show. And I knew, in that moment, that I would. I knew deep in my soul that Johnny would make me an overnight star, and that it would happen very soon. I drank a handle of bourbon that night, alone and in glory.

  Late in the fall of 1991, things were different for comedians. Johnny Carson could make your career with a wave of his hand. Here’s how it worked: You went out there, you did your six minutes, and if Johnny liked you enough he’d wave his arm, inviting you to join him at his desk, and you’d sit beside him and he would anoint you and you would become a star. No other man could do that. Problem was, Carson had already announced his retirement and my time was running out on being anointed. But every time I went onstage in Los Angeles, my chance of getting on Carson increased, and I was doing as many sets as possible.

  It was near Christmas when I came offstage at The World Famous Comedy Store and was approached by a small, unassuming man. You can spot a bigshot in Hollywood because he wears a pinstripe suit and chews on a fat cigar. He’s never unassuming. He’s always assuming as hell.

  “Hi, my name’s Jim McCauley, and I’m the talent booker for The Tonight Show,” the man said. Hollywood is a town filled with fakes and phonies. Charlatans and mountebanks, just waiting to take advantage of a country hick like me. I quickly deduced that this Jim McCauley character was about as authentic as a pound of pimento loaf. So I decided two could play that game.

  “Is that so? Well, it’s sure nice to meet you, Jim. My name’s Norm Macdonald and I’m the King of Spain.”

  The man chuckled nervously. He knew I was onto him but he continued nonetheless. “As you know, Johnny is retiring in May, and he’d really like to break one last comic on the show. Norm, I think you’re the guy.”

  “Well, that sounds fine to me, Jim. As a matter of fact it’s been a dream of mine since I started stand-up. But, of course, I’ll have to run it by my wife, the Queen of Spain. I’m sure you understand.”

  He laughed again but he couldn’t give up the act. He was in it too deep. “Okay, then, we’ll be in touch.” He really slipped up there, because he had said “we” but he was all alone.

  “Fair enough, I’ll talk to you guys later,” I said.

  The next morning I got a call from a lady. “Mr. Macdonald, I have Jim McCauley for you.”

  “Sorry, never heard of him,” I said, before hanging up.

  The phone rang again. “Mr. Macdonald, I have Mr. McCauley, the man you met last night. The man who books comedians to appear on The Tonight Show.”

  “Oh, yes, of course, that Mr. McCauley. Yeah, put him on.” I had to admire this guy’s persistence.

  “Hi, Norm, I think I found the perfect date. Second week of January we have Steve Martin and Elton John. I ran it past Johnny and he thinks it’s great, because you’ll be performing in front of him and Steve Martin and, fingers crossed, after your set you’ll be sitting right between them.”

  Boy, had this guy done his homework. Steve Martin was my favorite comic, and I always considered Elton John to be a great singer as well as a hot piece of ass.

  “Well, you see, the thing is this, Jim. January is not the perfect month, because that’s when the people of Spain are at their most anti-monarchist. And if I was to leave the country at that point, there could be trouble in the streets. I don’t know if you follow Spanish politics, Jim, but the queen is not well liked by her subjects. But what the hell. You only live once. I’ll do it. I’ll be on The Tonight Show.”

  “Congratulations, Norm. I think it’s gonna be dynamite.”

  Well, a few weeks passed and I got a panicked call from my agent. “Norm, were you supposed to be on the Carson show tonight?”

  “Don’t tell me that guy is phoning YOU now.”

  “That guy is Jim McCauley and he
books The Tonight Show, you idiot.”

  “I thought he was just a guy pulling a prank. Tell him I’ll do it!”

  “I already asked. He said you’re dead in his eyes.”

  Boy, I really blew that one. Every comic’s dream. I had it in my hand, and I’d let it sift through my fingers because I didn’t know how to trust. I got very angry at myself and in a rage I returned to Madrid, where I took it out on my subjects by ruling them with an iron fist.

  I first met Mr. Macdonald six months ago in the Random House offices here in the city. My publisher, Julie Grau, introduced us and informed me that he had a story that simply must be told. I’d heard this same speech from Julie many times before about many different people in that very office. There are so many stories that simply must be told. And it is my job to tell them.

  Besides, as I said, I was a fan of his back in the nineties and was curious as to what had befallen the man. I had expected that Mr. Macdonald and I would hit it off that day.

  Julie had motioned me into her office that afternoon while Mr. Macdonald was telling a story about how he hated Eskimos. It was not so much a story, really, as a string of words that was randomly assembled, incoherent, unending, and filled with hate. Every piece of clothing he wore advertised something he had done in the entertainment business at some time. He may as well have had “Has-been” stenciled on his forehead. I knew I had my work cut out for me with this one.