Bossypants | Tina Fey | Talks at Google
Eric Schmidt: So her book is wonderful. It’s the funniest book you’ll ever read. And it’s a book not only about her growing up and all the things that happened to her as a young woman, as well as a professional woman, but a lot about life. And so it has a lot of lessons in it. So, for example, stop. I’ve got a gun.
Tina Fey: The gun I gave you for our wedding anniversary, Eric? How could you?
Eric Schmidt: We’re not married.
Tina Fey: Aha, we’re not married is a denial. We’ve learned our first improv lesson.
[ Laughter ] [ Applause ]
Tina Fey: It takes a long time to learn.
Eric Schmidt: This is the problem with an engineer trying to learn —
Tina Fey: It takes a long time to learn those basic rules of improv.
Eric Schmidt: Why don’t you take us through them? They’re in the book.
Tina Fey: I improvised at Second City, a place called Improv Olympic in Chicago. I talk in the book about improv kind of having changed my professional life and even sort of my worldview a little bit.
There are some basic rules of improvisation. When you’re creating something out of nothing, the first rule is to agree, which is to say “yes,” which we did do that successfully. You said, “Freeze, I have a gun.” I didn’t say, “That’s not a gun. That’s your finger.”
Eric Schmidt: Which is what a Google person would say. [ Laughter ] Okay.
Tina Fey: And so we agreed. And the next rule is yes and, which is to add on to what you’ve already agreed upon. So the gun, the gun I gave you for our wedding anniversary. How could you? And then we hit a brick wall, Eric. [ Laughter ] But it’s funny, because it’s like very some very famous comedians — there’s an old story about Joan Rivers was at the Second City briefly, 1959, 1960, they used this in class at Second City all the time. There was someone who came in and said I want a divorce was beginning the scene. She said, “I want a divorce. Whoever was with her said, what about the children? And she said, we don’t have any children, which, in the moment, got a big laugh, but killed the scene.
Eric Schmidt: So my response would be
Tina Fey: Human instinct.
Eric Schmidt: Yes, we have children, I just didn’t tell you. That’s why we’re getting divorced.
Tina Fey: Yes, I have some other children. This is exactly why.
Eric Schmidt: Got it.
Tina Fey: For me, it was a lot about being, you have to be open to any possibility and you’re being open to the fact that — an idea that you stumble upon together is likely to be more interesting than the idea that you started with as individuals. And all that stuff was very helpful as a writer.
