Amy Poehler on Creating and Collaborating

Here’s some delicious wisdom on creating and collaborating from an interview with the great Amy Poehler. (Hat tip to Michael Swaine for sharing!)

On power:

Power sometimes comes down to knowing the vocabulary, figuring out how the system works and how to work within it. You need to believe that you deserve to be in the room once you get there.

On functional collaboration:

I met a lot of the people I collaborate with now doing improv, and I’ve had the experience of being in functional creative environments. I don’t think creativity has to come from a place of dysfunction. It can come from nice people with good parents.

On caring and risk-taking:

To some people, not caring is supposed to be cool, commenting is more interesting than doing, and everything is judged and then disposed of in, like, five minutes. I’m not interested in those kinds of people. I like the person who commits and goes all in and takes big swings and then maybe fails or looks stupid; who jumps and falls down, rather than the person who points at the person who fell, and laughs. But I do sometimes laugh when people fall down.

Photo by Renee Barrera. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.