lesmagicables: Tina Fey honors Carol Burnett at the 2013...

lesmagicables:

Tina Fey honors Carol Burnett at the 2013 Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize Ceremony in Washington DC.

Ms Burnett. Carol, if I may.

I still can’t.

Ms Burnett, I am so honored and thrilled to be here to help present this award to you. You mean so much to me that I love you in a way that is just shy of creepy. And a lot of female comedians are going to come out here tonight and say “oh I love you so much, you’re my idol, I watched you when I was growing up” but I’m saying it first. Which means that I am the most sincere.

Anyway I can’t believe that I am in a room where I get to talk  right to you like this. This to me still seems like something I would’ve been pretending was happening when I was a little kid and the rest of the audience would have been just like, old teddybears, and raggedy old Barbies, which… [motions to the audience]

My parents actually used to use the Carol Burnett show as a disciplinary tool. This is true. If I ever got in trouble when I was a little kid I was not allowed to take our family’s portable black and white TV up to my room and watch the Carol Burnett show on Saturday night. And, uh, the threat of this alone has terrified me into a life of academic excellence and double-decade virginity. So I thank you.

I did actually get in trouble one time, um, and I can’t remember why, and I didn’t get to watch the show. And I asked my parents recently “What did I do, that one time, that you took the Carol Burnett show away from me?” And my mom said “Oh gosh, I can’t even remember, I don’t know what it was” to which I said “I’ve had it up to here with you, old woman.” Not an impressionist. 

The point is that I watched your show and I thought “I could do that! I could have a show where I sing and dance and play lots of different characters!” and it turns out that I was wrong. But I did find a way to work at a sketch comedy show for 9 years and I fell in love with sketch comedy watching your show.

And I think you’re super smart, because you were smart enough to know that sketch comedy is a great place for women. Because only in sketch comedy does a woman get to dress up like Cher, Scarlett O’Hara, the Queen of England, Norma Desmond, a girl scout, and Mrs. Wiggins all in one night. And they gave you a pretty dress to wear in the question-and-answers, it’s the best gig in television, right? You don’t get to do that in movies. In movies, you have to play one character for three months. And the character is usually like, the friend of the lady who works at the magazine. Which is why, as Mark Twain once said… “movies stink and TV is great.” He was prescient in that way.

And for a sketch comedy show to be as great as your show was, it’s about more than just the jokes. Yes, the jokes were great and the premises were funny but a sketch comedy show really comes alive when the people on stage seem to be having fun. And no cast in the history of television except maybe Bill O’Reilly alone has ever had as much fun as you guys seem to have.