Saturday, April 30, 2011

Bossypants by Tina Fey


Bossypants by Tina Fey (2011): Funny, breezy autobiography with very little dirt and a surprising amount of practical advice on comedy (the two-page section on 'How to Successfully Improv' is gold, Jerry, pure gold!). Some of the stuff on Fey's Sarah Palin is pretty interesting as well, combining the personal (Palin offered to have Bristol baby-sit Fey's duaghter during their co-appearance on Saturday Night Live) and the political (a few weeks later, Palin complained publically about all those mean impressions of her).

You'll find out that a certain number of 30 Rock bits are based on reality (including the propensity of some male writers at SNL to urinate into containers in their offices because they were too lazy to go to the bathroom), though you'll get very little on the day-to-day workings of the show or wacky stories about wacky goings-on -- probably because 30 Rock is still airing, making it a bit of a necessity to avoid the chance of ruffling any feathers.

Like Steve Carrell on The Office, Fey is a happily married parent who plays a gormless singleton. I'm not sure what that means in the Big Picture, but there it is. Fey also briefly explains where the scar on her face came from, a scar I wasn't actually aware she had until I read this autobiography. The Photoshopped cover riffs on Fey's experiences being on the covers of magazines, by the way. Recommended.

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