Bill Murray on taking chances and saying "No"

http://ninjasandrobots.com/bill-murray-on-saying-no-and-taking-chances

by nate • 14 years ago

78 24 14 years ago

ninjasandrobots.com

bostonpete• 14 years ago

I'm sorry -- is this really a "great quote"...?

"The essence of design lies in the process of discovering a problem shared by many people and trying to solve it."

Just seems kind of obvious to me.

illumen• 14 years ago

Yeah, fairly obvious.

Design is about delivering to a brief. Not necessarily discovering a problem, or necessarily a problem many people have.

"(noun) a specification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints;"

It's really hard to judge a design without knowing the circumstances behind it. That is the first clue that someone does not really know about design - they will judge some design where they know nothing about the goals, constraints, or requirements.

hoopism• 14 years ago

Probably should have taken his own advice when it came to Garfield.

bennesvig• 14 years ago

He thought that was a Coen Brothers movie: http://www.vulture.com/2010/07/bill_murray_only_did_garfield...

brandall10• 14 years ago

"Fair enough. But this doesn't explain why he returned for the 2006 sequel, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties".

drzaiusapelord• 14 years ago

Err, that's him being funny. No one at his level just has chats on the phone and has contracts written up and walks into a studio to do lines.

He saw a paycheck and took it. Come on, a brooding Garfield movie by the Coen brothers?

mildweed• 14 years ago

This guy should take an intro level improv comedy class. If BFM's quote was that inspiring to him, he's got a lot of learning yet to do.

As a comedian and an entrepreneur, I can say there are many overlaps between the two, and the willingness to take bold steps is just one of them. Another is to trust your team members. Another is to build on others' ideas, not tear them down. And many more.

Cushman4• 14 years ago

Everyone should take an improv class, in secondary school and again in college.

Like the bard said, everyone's an actor; most people are just really bad ones. Knowing how your own facial expressions, gestures, voice and words really work is a crucial survival skill in human society, and one which you are very unlikely to pick up without a little training.

jarek4• 14 years ago

> Knowing how your own facial expressions, gestures, voice and words really work is a crucial survival skill in human society

You may want to rephrase this. I'm willing to accept it's useful, but it's clearly not a survival skill or there would be a lot of dead nerds out there.

clintboxe• 14 years ago

If that's the case, you should take an entrepreneurship class from him.

flipp• 14 years ago

A lot of those lessons are within this speech by Amy Poehler, who is an amazing improviser and co-founder of one of the most important improv theatres in the game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7N_L_pu74k

badclient• 14 years ago

Interviewer, Scott Raab: A lot of folks worry that if they aren't available or don't say yes, they'll stop getting asked.

Bill: If you keep saying yes, they'll stop asking you, too. That's a much more likely event.

I don't know if the conclusion is for everybody to start saying 'no' more. Doesn't it depend on where you are? I know friends I stopped asking to hang with because all I have gotten is some form of repeated 'nos' in past. On the other hand, I have very few friends I stopped hanging with because they said too many 'yes' and I'm not sure if the reason was that they kept saying 'yes'.

Now, there are definitely times when you are saying too many yesses but in general, I think more people would do better by saying 'yes' than 'no' in their life.

To actually know whether you should be saying more of 'yes' or 'no' for yourself requires a much more nuanced evaluation than this generic post could offer.

jwallaceparker• 14 years ago

In the interview he's talking specifically about saying "Yes" or "No" to an acting job.

If he says "Yes" to everything he'd be in a lot of terrible films. This could be a detriment to his career.

I think it's a completely different situation when you're talking about whether or not you hang out with a friend. In that case, I'd agree with you.

Bill Murray on taking chances and saying "No"

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