Based on a True Story Read online

  You wouldn’t know it now, but I was a great man once. A fine young man, alive with ideas.

  And suddenly I found myself an old man standing in a doorway as Mr. Macdonald spoke of how he didn’t trust Eskimos and never would. I had never felt such instant animus toward anyone. And I remember thinking that this time I might not take the job. I might just walk out of the office.

  But I stayed put as Mr. Macdonald mercifully finished his “story.”

  “…and so, anyways, the point is I’ve never met an Eskimo I liked. Not once. Not ever. As a matter of fact I don’t think I’ve ever even met an Eskimo. I call them blubber-eaters, by the way. And don’t even get me started on the filthy Swedes.” He struck the table with his fist and Julie burst into laughter. I’d heard many silly celebrities tell their silly stories in my time. They always amused me, the way a harmless child amuses me. But Mr. Macdonald appalled me. The way a harmful child appalls me.

  For the first time, he fixed his sluggard’s eyes on me. “Who are you, old man?”

  “The name’s Keane, Mr. Macdonald. Terence Keane.” I extended my hand and he shook it with great strength, the way weak men always do. He finally stopped and I stood there, clasping and unclasping my hand, hoping the brute hadn’t broken it in his effort to prove his manhood. “I will be your ghostwriter.”

  Mr. Macdonald lit up a cigarette in a nonsmoking building and shot a look at Julie. Julie, abashed, cast her eyes down.

  “Oh, yes, Terence, Norm was just explaining to me that he has no need for a ghostwriter, only a secretary.”

  “That’s right, mister,” said Mr. Macdonald. “I’m a great writer. Written sketches, jokes, gags, all kinds of things. A memoir will be nothing for a guy like me. Problem is, I never learned to type. Back when I went to school, very few boys took any typing classes, if you catch my drift. What about you, Keane, did you ever take typing classes?”

  He looked at me with a stupid smirk. Of course I’d caught his drift. It was the kind of drift you catch upon entering a gas station restroom. But I wasn’t about to be cowed by this bullying clown.

  “As a matter of fact I did, yes. Most useful class I took in high school. I can type seventy-five words a minute.”

  Macdonald looked over at Julie.

  “I guess he’ll do. Although I gotta tell you, when I pictured having a secretary, I figured she’d have a nice set of cans.” Then he looked at me. “No offense, Keane, but yours look kinda floppy.”

  And then he let out a big hoary laugh, which was followed by Julie’s delighted squeal. “Oh, you are incorrigible, Norm, absolutely incorrigible. Isn’t he, Terence?”

  “Yes,” I managed, “a true scapegrace.”

  I just stood there, burning up inside, and I guess Julie noticed, because she stopped laughing and turned to me.

  “Of course, Terence, the deal would be the same as if you were the ghostwriter. The standard ten percent plus. Mr. Macdonald will receive a million upon receipt of the manuscript, and you will be paid a hundred thousand.”

  That cooled me down considerably, because that was a great deal of money for a celebrity memoir, especially a celebrity who hadn’t worked in years.

  “Wow,” Mr. Macdonald said, “100K? That’s easy money for you, Keane. I’ll tell you the stories and all you have to do is write them down, word for word. That’s it. You don’t have to add your own opinions. Nobody’s interested. If you can type as fast as you claim, we should be able to finish this thing in a week.”

  I looked at him closely to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Macdonald, why don’t I begin with a little cursory research on you and we can get to work presently. I feel this collaboration will work out splendidly, sir. Just splendidly. How does that sound to you?”

  “It sounds womanish.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I mean the way you say ‘splendidly.’ Just sounds womanish, that’s all. Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t care what filthy things a man does with another man when they lay down together, but I just don’t want any words like ‘splendidly’ showing up in this book. You understand me, brother?”

  His eyes were dull and he took a menacing step toward me, and I backed up to the door. And in a moment I was out on the streets of the big busy city and away from the vile man and it felt fine. As a matter of fact, it felt splendid. Splendid. Splendid. Splendidly. Splendidly. Splendidly. Splendidly. Splendidly. Splendidly. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY. SPLENDIDLY.

  14

  LIVE FROM NEW YORK

  “Oh, now I understand,” says Adam Eget. “Of course. Everything happens for a reason. And the reason you did really bad at Star Search was so that you could not get The Tonight Show. Of course. It’s so clear now.”

  “Adam Eget, are you trying to be sarcastic?”

  His eyes lower. “I suppose.”

  “There’s more to the story,” Gabe says. “But I’m not gonna be around to listen to it again. I hear there’s a juicy thirty–sixty game over at the Bellagio. See you later. Be careful out there.”

  And just like that, Gabe is gone. “Tell me the rest of the story, Norm.”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll tell you and one other guy. See, I’m writing a book and they gave me a secretary, and, get this, the secretary is a man!”

  “Is this one of those riddles?” Adam Eget says. “I’m not good at those.”

  “No riddle, no joke. He’s a man-secretary. He can even type. I phone and tell him stories and he types them out. I met him before this trip and I moved in with him for a month. I figured that would be way more than enough time to finish the book, but I guess the old fool couldn’t type as fast as he’d claimed.”

  “Does the man-secretary have a nice house, Norm?”

  “It’s okay. I was gonna go back there and finish the book, but then I got the plan.”

  Adam Eget puts a big smile on his squid face. “Say, Norm, why don’t you go back to the man-secretary and live with him till you’re finished?”

  “Nice try,” I say, and I phone Keane’s number and get his answering machine. That makes me happy. If he answered, he’d be sure to talk, and that would just slow me down. “Okay, Keane. Okay, Adam Eget. Listen, and hear about my first week at SNL.” That was a long time ago, so I take a deep, deep drag and hold the magic stuff in my lungs, although it fights to get out. Finally, I can’t take it anymore and I lean over and cough like hell. When I look up again, there it is. The past. It’s directly in my face, like a forgotten child who’s hunted me down to find out when I’ll be returning with that pack of cigarettes.

  —

  After the Carson episode, my agent fired me and I got laughed out of Hollywood. I ended up in New York, where I slept in the Central Park Zoo, next to the polar bears. I got lucky—Robert Morton, the booker for Late Night with David Letterman, was at my first show at Catch a Rising Star. The next day I got a call that would change my life.

  “You’re on the show. Just one question: You’re not that idiot who turned down Carson, right?”

  “No,” I said. I had my suspicions about him, but I had learned my lesson about trust, and it turned out that Morty was the real deal. A month later, David Letterman, the funniest man in the world, put me on his show and gave me his stamp of approval.

  Everything moved quickly after that. Adam Sandler had been a friend since my early days of stand-up and had always had my back. It was Adam who persuaded Jim Downey, the head writer of SNL, to watch my Letterman performance. “He’s not that idiot who turned down Carson?” said Jim.

  “Yes,” said Adam.

  Jim laughed. “Oh, we’ve gotta get that guy on the show.” Jim, in turn, recommended me to Lorne Michaels. “He’s not that
idiot who turned down Carson?” said Lorne.

  “No,” said Jim.

  People were beginning to talk about me, and that’s always good news. As Adolf Hitler once said, all publicity is good publicity.

  Soon after, I was offered the opportunity to audition for Lorne.

  —

  Back when I started, Lorne began the year by taking all the cast and crew to a place called Mohonk, a lakeside resort at the foot of the Catskills. The idea was that the new writers and performers could meet and bond with the veterans in a relaxed atmosphere.

  We were like one great big dysfunctional family, except we were not related and we all got along famously. But we were great, and we were big. The year I started, Jay Mohr and Sarah Silverman also joined the cast, and Dave Attell became one of the writers. They were all very cool and very talented, and this made me very afraid.

  I was not used to seeing famous people, so the week at Mohonk was both intimidating and exciting. The stars like Mike Myers, Phil Hartman, and Tim Meadows were all there, along with legendary writers Robert Smigel, Ian Maxtone-Graham, Tom Davis, and Jim Downey. I instantly bonded with Downey, who was the only person at SNL who had completed less formal education than I had, having dropped out of school in the second grade. But Downey had street smarts, and even if he couldn’t tell you who Newton or Shakespeare was, he could tell you plenty about the guys he had met in the streets. Like this one guy named Bill. And this other guy named Bob.

  The first night at Mohonk, the whole cast and crew gathered in the dining room. Adam Sandler, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and I were sitting at a table together, and they were going on and on about how funny Chris Farley was and how much I was going to love him, but I’d heard that about plenty of guys in my time. I’d be the judge of that. The dinner was winding down with a lot of boring comedy talk about what was funny and what wasn’t funny when, suddenly, something funny happened. The doors burst open and a naked Farley entered, doing his impression of a salad—shoving baby tomatoes up his ass and dousing himself with oil and vinegar. The room went crazy and Sandler yelled in my ear, “What did I tell you!?” They were right: I’d never seen anything close to that before.

  Later in the evening, when I was officially introduced to Chris, I was surprised to find he’d taken on a serious tone. He leaned in to me and whispered that there was something very important he had to tell me, and it was a matter of some urgency. He secreted me to a room where we could be alone, locked the door, and cased the place, to be sure no one was listening. He made me swear that what he was about to tell me must never leave the room. I was thrilled that the great Farley was taking me, a complete stranger, into his confidence and excited to learn what all this cloak-and-dagger was about.

  After I took the oath of secrecy, Chris drew me close and whispered in my ear.

  “Pat is actually a WOMAN!!!!!!!!!”

  And then that big Chris laugh. Man, I miss that laugh. That big Chris laugh.

  During that trip, I talked deep into the night with Lorne Michaels. He explained to me that it was a time of profound change at SNL. The brilliant sketch players—Dana Carvey, Jon Lovitz, Jan Hooks, along with the tack-sharp Dennis Miller—had all ended their tenure on the show. Mike Myers and Phil Hartman would soon be following suit. It was hard to imagine they could be replaced. Who would dare fill the shoes of the greatest sketch troupe ever assembled?

  Those who came after were cut from wholly different cloth, Lorne explained. There were four: Farley, Schneider, Spade, and the top dog, Sandler. Other than Farley, none of these boys had any experience in sketch acting. They didn’t come from Second City or the Groundlings; they came from the smoky nightclubs of America. They were stand-ups and they worked alone. It looked bad for the new cast, and Lorne predicted that the press would mention it often.

  Lorne called them “The Not Ready for the Not Ready for Prime Time Players.” But the boys were adapting, Lorne explained. They were using their stand-up skills to their advantage, playing not to each other or the studio audience but over all that and to the camera, to the home audience itself. They performed in the sketch and watched it at the same time, often laughing at the silliness of it all.

  “These kids are in the serious business of deconstruction, and in Sandler’s case, it will often rise to a glorious dereliction of duty.”

  Most all of this I didn’t understand, but I nodded whenever I felt it was appropriate and I certainly agreed with Lorne that these four guys were the Beatles of Comedy.

  Lorne told me that this change in the show’s tone would not sit well with many of the writers, and I soon learned what he meant. There was a sharp divide between the ones who embraced the new comedians and the ones who rejected them.

  Lorne Michaels, Tim Herlihy, Ian Maxtone-Graham, Jim Downey, and Robert Smigel loved the anarchy of it all. But others vocally did not. And that week at Mohonk was filled with dissension between the two camps.

  On the final night, Adam Sandler told me the following season would be a rough, divisive one, and he wanted to know which side I’d take. I told him I wanted to be on the side of the guy who had shoved the baby tomatoes up his ass.

  Adam smiled.

  15

  A LITTLE FAME

  “That’s when you moved to Regency House, right, Norm?”

  “Yes. That’s right, Adam Eget, remember the Regency House?” Makes me kinda sad remembering.

  They say my Father’s house has many mansions, but the one I live in now is no great digs. Four men to a room, and you have to be back before nine in the evening and you can’t have whiskey on your breath or Mrs. Sullivan will turn her back to you, and the hard pavement of the Nickel will be your pillow. But back in the day. Oh, back in the day. The Regency House.

  —

  The Regency House sat on Central Park West and had a lot of kids from SNL living in it. Kevin Nealon, Phil Hartman, Timmy Meadows, even the great Adam Sandler, and Lori Jo Hoekstra. Lori Jo was a writer’s assistant who got me into the joint. It was great to move out of the Central Park Zoo. Polar bears make terrible neighbors.

  Lori Jo was the smartest and funniest woman I had ever met, and she was hotter than a two-dollar pistol to boot. She eventually became my producer on Weekend Update and then my producing partner on everything thereafter. Truth be told, any success I ever attained would have been impossible without Lori Jo.

  I lived way up on the thirty-fifth floor of the Regency House and had a beautiful view of the wall of another thirty-fifth floor of another New York apartment building. We were a stone’s throw away from work and I’d often walk there with Sandler, who everyone knew and loved. The doorman, Steve, always had a good word for Adam and liked to talk to him about the show from the week before. Sometimes he liked it and sometimes he didn’t, but he always loved Adam. Adam introduced me to Steve and told him that I was on the show as well. Steve looked puzzled and I explained that, although I was technically on the show, I had yet to actually be on the TV. Steve looked even more puzzled. “Don’t worry, Steve,” Sandler said. “You’ll be seeing plenty of Normie.” That’s all it took. After that I was good with Steve.

  One day I left my apartment and got on the elevator. There was a girl standing in it. Her head was bent down and she quietly wept, so I ignored her. On the twenty-first floor a man got on the elevator. He was a real gregarious New York kinda guy. As soon as he saw the girl, he jumped into action.

  “Hey, honey, what’s the matter?” he asked, and she mumbled something through sniffles, to which he replied, “Lemme tell you something: Everything’s gonna turn out all right, okay? This guy knows.” And he motioned to me, but I didn’t know, so I stayed silent. We all got out of the elevator and I went to get my mail, and when I got back to the lobby the gregarious fellow was still talking to the girl, who was still quietly weeping. He was telling her how things always worked out, how matters that were substantial today were trivial tomorrow. He told her that he would take her to have coffee in the Greek diner around the cor
ner and that everything was gonna be just fine, and she nodded as they left.

  On my way back up to my apartment, I was spotted by Steve the doorman. His eyes were bright and he smiled. I knew why. He had seen me on the show the previous Saturday. It was my first time onscreen. Tim Herlihy had put me in a Star Trek sketch, where I had one line: “Beam me up, Scotty.” That was good enough for Steve the doorman.

  “Hey, hey, look who it is. Beam Me Up Scotty!!!! How are you feeling this fine morning, Beam Me Up Scotty?”

  “I’m good, Steve, really good. I’m going to go upstairs to my apartment, have a cigarette and coffee, and read the Daily News.”

  “Atta boy, Beam Me Up Scotty,” said Steve the doorman.

  From then on, that was how Steve the doorman knew me. When I got home from work I could rely on a hearty “Good evening to you, Beam Me Up Scotty.” He was always excited to see me, because I was a famous guy who went on the TV every Saturday night and said, “Beam me up, Scotty.” The problem was, only he and I knew that, and everyone in the vicinity would just look at me odd. One time I was going through the door and Steve was having a conversation with a friend, which he abruptly stopped when he saw that such a famous figure as I was at the door.

  “Hey, Beam Me Up Scotty, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, John; he’s a good guy, always been there for me, you know what I mean. You don’t find that often in this life. John, I’d like you to meet Beam Me Up Scotty.”

  John shook my hand and said, “Sorry, what was your name?”

  Steve got embarrassed that his friend was so ignorant of popular culture, and he slapped the back of his glove on the chest of John’s heavy coat and reproached him. “What’s the matter with you, Johnny? This is Beam Me Up Scotty, from the TV.” Then he looked at me. “Go ahead. Do it for him.”

  “Beam me up, Scotty,” I said.

  John just looked at me for a long moment, bewildered, then said, “Oh, yeah, sure. I know you.”