xiv • Contents

A Childhood Dreamÿ Realized

Peeing in Jars with Boys

[ Donÿt Care If You Like It

Amazingÿ Gorgeousÿ Not Like That

Dear Internet

30 Rock: An Experiment to ConFuse Your

Cran@arents

Sarahÿ Oprah, and Captain Hook

There's a Drunk Midget in My House

A Celebrityÿs Guide to Celebrating the

Birth of Jesus

Juggle This

The MotheFs Prayer for Its Daughter

What Turning Forty Means to Me

What Should I Do with My Last Five Minutes?

Aeknmdedgments

H9

I33

I43

I47

I63

I69

I97

237

Bossypants

245

255

26I

265

267

P-77

28IReading Group Guide

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s book have appeared, in slightly different form, int Should I Do with My Last Five Minutes?," "A Childhoodeing in Jars with Boys," and "I Don't Care If You Like It").

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For 9%anne Fey:

Happ2 Mother's Day. I made this out of macaroni for you.

Io • Tina Fey

,ÿh. I was going to have to steal that

. And that's where my college educa-

Re unfair advantage I'd been waiting

interview with Vicky. It was easy. Did

skills? Sure, I was twenty-two. Did I

ent on the phone? Sure. What were

, this job to pay for improv classes."

back downstairs to relieve Donna on

pÿ" I told her. As I watched her her-

steps to her interview, I knew it was

ma had been at the front desk too

other people's grimness on her, like

tfting out of the blue suit.

thrown herself into that office job

it for the rest of her life. I stayed less

t when I got a job with The Second

%und like a jerk, I know. But remem-

he story where I was the underdog?

The Windy City Full of Meat

he most fun job I ever had was working at a theater

in Chicago called The Second City. If you've never

heard of The Second City, it is an improvisation and

sketch comedy theater in Chicago, founded in 1959 by

some University of Chicago brainiacs. There's a Second

City theater in Chicago and one in Toronto, and between

the two they have turned out some mind-blowing alumni,

including John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd,

Chris Farley, John Candy, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene

Levy, Andrea Martin, Steve Carell, Amy Sedaris, Amy

Poehler, and Stephen Colbert. I could go on, but my editor

• told me that was a cheap way to flesh out the book.

I moved to Chicago in 1992 to study improv and it was

everything I wanted it to be. It was like a cult. People ate,

slept, and definitely drank improv. They worked at crappy

day jobs just to hand over their money for improv classes.

Eager young people in khakis and polo shirts were willing

to do whatever teachers like Del Close and Martin de Maat

told them to. In retrospect, it may actually have been a cult.

8ÿ • Tina Fey Bossypants . 83

:git acting methods in colle

:icely Berry's The Actor and His Teÿ

ill tell you that I never mastered

a as a way of working made sense

of two actors on stage with

ts, no dialogue--who make up

is then completely real to everyone "

of improvisation appealed to me

reating comedy, but as a

ion literally changed my life. It set me

7ard Saturday .Might Live. It changed

.ÿ world, and it's where I met my bus-

cult done for you lately?

ed working at The Second City, there

ompanies and three touring compa-

:ompanies would write and perform

dy shows for packed houses in Chi-

)mpanies would take the best pieces

t perform them in church basements

ers around the country. We traveled

destinations, from upstate New York

, to Waco, Texas.

lpany we were paid seventy-five dol-

enty-five-dollar per diem. Of course,

e a show in Kansas followed by a

ted by another show in Kansas, so

the van for two days to get to your

It wasn't lucrative, but it was show

There were three touring companies: Red Company,

Company, and Blue Company. I was in the Blue

)any, or BlueCo as we called it to be unbelievably

I still feel affection for the members of BlueCo like

'. served in the military together. Specifically the French

because we were lazy and a little bit sneaky. For

once sent us on a tour of Texas and the Mid-

and the moment the van pulled away from the the-

we all agreed to throw out the "best of" sketches we

been directed to perform and replace them with our

own original material. Amy Poehler in particular was tired

handed dated old blond-girl roles where all her

were things like "Here's your coffee, honey" or "Mr.

Johnson will see you now" or "Whattaya mean a blinddate?!" Each night we'd pull out an old sketch and replace

it with something of our own. My friend Ali Farahnakian,

who is a genius in many ways, wrote a very funny mono-

logue about the McDonald's Big Mac. During the course

of the monologue he would eat an entire Big Mac Extra

Value Meal onstage. Because the meal was technically a

prop, he made the stage manager buy it for him every night

and he kept his twenty-five dollars. These were the kinds

of skills you learned touring for The Second City. By the

time we returned to Chicago ten days later, the "best of"

show was completely gone and we were in big trouble,

except we didn't really care.

84 . Tina Fey Bossypants • 85

:e Rules of Improvisation

nge Your Life and Reduce B

€improvisation is AGREE. Always agreehen you're improvisinÿ this means you

ith whatever your partner has created. Sond I say, "Freeze, I have a gun," and,

It's your finger. You're pointing yourised scene has ground to a halt. But'zn!" and you say, "The gun I gave you

tard!" then we have started a scene'zat my finger is in fact a Christmas gun.'n real life you're not always going to agree

ryone says. But the Rule of

ct what your partner has created" and to at

en-minded place. Start with a YES and see

I aIwaysfind it jarring when I meet some-r first answer is no. "No, we can't do that."

budget." "No, I will not hold your hand forof way is that to live?

f improvisation is not only to say yes, but

;upposed to agree and then acid somethingrt a scene with "I can't believe it's so hot

t say, "Yeah..." we're kind of at a stand-

m't believe it's so hot in here," and you say,Wt " "

e re zn hell. Or iflsay, "I can't believe;d you say, "Yes, this can't be good for thezy, "I can't believe it's so hot in here," and

e shouldn't have crawled into this dog'sing somewhere.

ly fat.

To me YES, AND means don't be afraid to contribute. It's

vy to contribute. Always make sure you're adding

to the discussion. Your initiations are worthwhile.

The next rule is MAKE STATEMENTS. This is a positiveof saying "Don't ask questions all the time." If we're in

scene and I say, "Who are you? Where are we? What are we

ing here? What's in that box ?" I'm putting pressure on you to

with all the answers.In other words: Whatever the problem, be part of the solu-

Don't just sit around raising questions and pointing outWe've all worked with that person. That person is

drag. It's usually the same person around the office who says

things like "There's no calories in it if you eat it standing up!""I felt menaced when Terry raised her voice."

MAKE STATEMENTS also applies to us women: Speak instatements instead of apologetic questions. No one wants to go to

9 'a doctor who says, "I'm going to beyour surgeon. Im here to talk

to you about your procedure? I was first in my class at Johns Hop-

kins, so ?"Make statements, with your actions and your voice.

Instead of saying "Where are we?" make a statement like

"Here we are in Spain, Dracula." Okay, "Here we are in Spain,

Dracula" may seem like a terrible start to a scene, but this leads

us to the best rule:THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only opportunities. If I start

a scene as what I think is very clearly a cop riding a bicycle, butyou think I am a hamster in a hamster wheel, guess what? Now

I'm a hamster in a hamster wheel. I'm not going to stop every-

thing to explain that it was really supposed to be a bike. Whoknows? Maybe I'll end up being a police hamster who's been puton "hamster wheel" duty because I'm "too much of a loose can-

non" in the field. In improv there are no mistakes, only beauti-

ful happy accidents. And many of the world's greatest discoverieshave been by accident. I mean, look at the Reese's Peanut Butter

Cup, or Botox.

86 . Tina FeyBossypants • s7

ts Lesson #183: You Can't Boss People

und If They Don't Really Care

"s tried to punish BlueCo by giving us the

om shows were held at one A.M. after a high

and attendance was mandatory. It was basi-

keep kids from drinking or having sex on

nd the performers hated doing these shows

h as the kids hated watching them. Imagine

would be if you were missing out on a toothy

vatch some cult members make up a song

election.

other terrible shows. Brightly lit hotel ball-

oken microphones. College shows where the

trunk. Charity buyouts where the audience

y sober. Corporate gigs at eight A.M. for

o were there to be told about reductions in

re benefits. Basically, any time you were per-

t audience that was not there voluntarily, it

tOW.

l or eight months of touring, we started to

of us actors would get promoted to one of

)anies. The Mainstage cast and the "Second

t got to stay in Chicago and earn a unionized

7hey would develop their own sketches by

front of an audience, then keeping the ideas

ed until they had a full two-hour show. It

L job. However, of all the places I've worked

)osedly boys' clubs, The Second City was

the only one where I experienced institutionalized gender

nonsense. For example, a director of one of the main com-

panies once justified cutting a scene by saying, "The audi-

ence doesn't want to see a scene between two women."

Whaaa? More on that later.

In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up

of four men and two women. When it was suggested that

they switch one of the companies to three men and three

women, the producers and directors had the same pan-

icked reaction. "You can't do that. There won't be enough

parts to go around. There won't be enough for the girls."

This made no sense to me, probably because I speak Eng-

fish and have never had a head injury. We weren't doing

Death of a Salesman. We were making up the show our-

selves. How could there not be enough parts.9 Where was the

"Yes, and"? If everyone had something to contribute, there

would be enough. The insulting implication, of course,

was that the women wouldn't have any ideas.

I'm happy to say the producers did jump into the twen-

tieth century and switch to a cast of"three and three," and

I got to be that third woman in the first gender-equal cast.

However, I must say, as a point of pride, that I didn't get

the job because I was a woman. I got the job because Amy

Poehler had moved to New York with the Upright Citizens

Brigade and I was the next best thing.

But this was the first time I experienced what I iike to

call "The Myth of Not Enough."

When I worked at Saturday Wight Live, I had a five A.M.

argument with one of our most intelligent actresses. It was

88 . Tina Fey

Lorne was adding another woman to the

is irate. (In fairness, she was also exhausted.

. after writing all night.) She felt there

ugh for the girls and that this girl was too

?here wouldn't be enough screen time to go

old argument: How could this be true if we

w?A bunch of us suggested that they coHab-

compete. And, of course, that's what they

success, once they were actually in a room

ere does that initial panic come from?

I tell young women who ask me for career

re going to try to trick you. To make you

in competition with one another. "You're

tion. If they go with a woman, it'll be

Barbara." Don't be fooled. You're not in

1 other women. You're in competition with

rage them to always wear a bra. Even if

Tou need it, just.., you know what? You're

gret it.

r the future is that sketch comedy shows

-blind meritocracy of whoever is really the

ight see four women and two men. You

m and a YouTube video of a kitten sneez-

)w we're really open to all the options, we

h Whatever's the Funniest... which willfarts.

My Honeymoon or A

Supposedly Fun Thing FllNever Do Again Either*

y husband doesn't like to fly. He does fly now

because he doesn't want our daughter to grow up

thinking he is a Don Knotts character. But when we were

first married, he didn't fly.

I made him fly once before we were married because

* If you get this reference to David Foster Wallace's 1997 collection of essays,

consider yourself a member of the cultural elite. Why do you hate your country

and flag so much?!