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ED HELMS: Wow. Thank you. Thank you for that introduction. Not enough applause on The Hangover.
[LAUGHTER]
You guys really disappointed me on that. Give it up for the glee club. Those are my peeps over there.
[APPLAUSE]
And how impressive are these guys? Wow. Tough acts to follow.
[APPLAUSE]
I'm not scared of your uniform, Rob. I could still take you if I had to.
[LAUGHTER]
Good afternoon faculty, students, friends, family, younger siblings playing Flappy Bird. What a fantastic day. Such a proud moment. I can see it in your faces-- excited, full of hope, and blissfully unaware that you will be paying off high interest student loans well into your 60s.
[LAUGHTER]
But don't worry. It was money well spent. If you're wondering where the bulk of your tuition goes, you might be interested to know that my personal appearance fee is $4 million.
[LAUGHTER]
But I do give $100 of that directly to charity because that's just who I am.
[LAUGHTER]
$4 million dollars may sound like a lot. But keep in mind, I will be talking nonstop for the next 106 hours. So settle in. And may I say to those of you graduating from Cornell's esteemed school of Hotel Administration, congratulations.
[CHEERING]
And also, I'm in room 404 of the Statler, and I could use a couple extra pillows whenever you get a chance.
[LAUGHTER]
Cornell, can we talk about your mascot for a second? He's a bear in a red sweater and his name is Big Red. Have you checked the news lately? Because we are on the cusp of another Cold War, and you have the most Communist mascot imaginable.
[LAUGHTER]
This whole campus is steeped in Communist propaganda. I'm shocked Putin isn't here delivering this speech. I half expected President Skorton to ride up shirtless on a horse.
[LAUGHTER]
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Cornell tried to annex Ithica College tomorrow. It's all part of Putin's master plan. First Crimea, then the scenic Finger Lakes region. And then, I don't know, Rochester.
[LAUGHTER]
So many distinguished speakers have been on this stage. It's really a privilege for me to follow them. Cory Booker, a US senator who literally tweets 80 times a day, which we can all assume is exactly what our Founding Fathers had in mind. Michael Bloomberg, a great mayor of New York City, and a man with the courage and vision to invent the most boring television channel in history.
And of course, US representative from the great state of California, and at the time she was here Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, my ex-wife. I wish her well.
[LAUGHTER]
And now me, Ed Helms, an actor. And you're lucky you got me, because I have some amazing advice for you today which I have pulled from my rich and varied life experience. My advice to you is go out and be a movie star, because it's awesome.
[LAUGHTER]
You're probably wondering, well, how do you go be a movie star? Isn't that complicated? No, it's not, actually. Here's how you do it. If someone offers you part in a movie called The Hangover or The Hangover 2, or really anything with the word "hangover" in it, you should definitely take it. I am divulging some serious entertainment industry secrets here.
All right, guys, let's cut to the chase. You do realize I'm not actually Andy Bernard, right? That he isn't a real person? He is a character from a TV show. And I am the actor who played him. Or did you actually invite a fictional person to give this speech? Because that would be very strange. That would be like the Naval Academy inviting Captain Crunch.
[LAUGHTER]
Or Notre Dame inviting a leprechaun. Or Rice University inviting Uncle Ben. I have a whole list of these. I can go on. Purdue University inviting Colonel Sanders. Think about that one.
[LAUGHTER]
But before we go any further, for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about with this Andy Bernard stuff, let me explain. I'm a guy whose primary connection to this venerable institution is having portrayed a rather hard to like Cornell alum named Andy Bernard on the NBC television show The Office.
It's interesting. Condoleezza Rice backed out of speaking at Rutgers this year because students protested over her controversial role in the Iraq War. Meanwhile, I directly embarrassed this school for eight years on national television, and no protests.
[LAUGHTER]
When I got the invitation to speak here, I was scared to open the email because I thought it might actually be a lawsuit.
[LAUGHTER]
To be perfectly honest, I was really touched by this invitation. Andy Bernard's zealous embrace of Cornell is well documented. But I can't tell you how meaningful and just plain cool it is to see Cornell embrace him right back. And I'm not alone. Our entire Office family, the cast, crew, writers, we all think this is pretty cool. And so thank you very much. I'm very proud to be here.
[APPLAUSE]
And now I feel obliged to indulge at least one rid dit dit dit do.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes, I do, I miss that. I genuinely-- I loved playing Andy Bernard. And this might surprise you, but I actually learned a lot from Andy Bernard. If you've never seen an episode of The Office, in a nutshell, Andy was conniving, obnoxious, desperate for attention. He had an anger management problem and a very questionable fashion sense.
But if you paid close attention, you could see that Andy also had an enormous heart. He wanted desperately to be a better person. He had a huge capacity for love, and was at times deeply compassionate and even sweet.
And my favorite trait of his-- he really wore his heart on his sleeve. You always knew where Andy stood. Whether he was incredibly angry at Dwight, or madly, deeply in love with Angela, he let you know. Even when it wasn't in his own interest to broadcast his feelings, he couldn't help himself. Andy was by all accounts a fool-- a glorious, vulnerable fool.
So imagine my surprise when I realized that I was actually experiencing some wish fulfillment in portraying Andy. Because his foolishness was actually a kind of honesty and integrity. I always believed that I, Ed Helms the actor, was superior to Andy because I had better social skills. I had more discretion and humility.
But over time, playing Andy made me realize that what I thought was sophisticated self-awareness on my part was very often just self-consciousness and fear of judgment. And what I really wanted was to be more free and foolish like Andy, to be more transparent with my feelings, to engage the world with less artifice, to be more of a fool in my daily life.
And now we get to the heart of the matter. As you look ahead and ponder your lives, after four years of extensive learning, having been taught by some of the greatest minds on the planet, studying late nights, endless exams, essays-- please, remember to be a fool.
Sounds crazy. A fool is by definition a person who lacks good sense or judgment. But I'm here to tell you that good sense and judgment are highly overrated.
[LAUGHTER]
Wisdom is too often just a fancy word for cynicism. And foolishness is a condescending word for joy, wonder, and curiosity.
George Bernard Shaw said, "A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed, he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself." I couldn't agree more. It turns out the world provides us with virtually infinite opportunities to be a fool. Let's take a look at a couple.
Only a fool would risk failure. Be that fool. I went to college with a wonderful guy named Phil. And he was in a really great band at the time called Trans Am. If you've never heard Trans Am, check them out. They're awesome. After graduation, they went on and had a really successful tour and became indie rock stars. And I moved to New York City to basically be a broke filmmaker and comedian.
But I called Phil one day and I said, hey Phil, can I direct a music video for you guys? And he said, well, I don't know. What are your qualifications? And I said, I don't have any. And he said, great. OK, cool. Let's do this. Because that's kind of how things get done when you're 22 years old.
I was living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a whole lot of college buddies. We reached out to every friend we had and every friend they had. And we staged a full blown Trans Am concert in the loading bay of a warehouse building on Kent Avenue. We probably packed 1,000 or 2000 people in there. Was it legal? Let's just say if a fire marshal saw this, he would protest by setting himself on fire.
Now, I was terrified, because I was essentially a concert promoter, a video director, a cameraman, caterer, hair and makeup artist, set decorator, all at once. And I had no idea how to actually do any one of those things. I was effectively a complete fraud in about 10 different ways.
Here's where I wish this story took a cute turn and I could tell you that, despite my complete incompetence, by sheer grit and determination I turned it around and I powered through and made a really cool music video. But that's exactly what didn't happen that night. The film jammed in the camera. The wheelchair that I had rented for $500 deposit to use as a camera dolly was tossed in the East River by drunken revelers.
I failed to anticipate that it would actually be very difficult to direct my cast and crew in the middle of a raging rock concert. I lost my temper at all of my best friends. I was caught in a recursive feedback loop of ineptitude which was so overwhelming and all encompassing, I can only imagine that from the outside it looked hauntingly beautiful, like a mushroom cloud in slow motion.
The video was awful. Thankfully, almost 20 years later, I can now see that it is in fact also hilarious. You can judge for yourself on YouTube. But at the time, it was just a giant, epic fail. I was a fool for taking on more than I could handle. And it was brutal.
But at least I had an outcome. And outcomes, whether good or bad, allow us to move forward-- maybe trim the sails, but stay in forward motion. Had I exercised good sense and good judgment, had I not been foolish, I never would have done it. And then all I'd have is a vague sense of regret and wonder, which is at best useless and at worst paralyzing.
Here's another one. Only a fool would work hard when there's no clear objective. Be that fool. Shouldn't we wait until we have direction before we take decisive action? Otherwise, we risk wasting a lot of time and energy.
But many times in life, college graduation for example, we don't have a clear goal. We're overwhelmed by all of the options, or we're scared we don't know enough to succeed at the thing we want. Doesn't matter. Be a fool and work hard at whatever's right in front of you.
On my flight here, I saw an ant on the airplane. Now, this ant was presumably an accidental stowaway I'm guessing, because I definitely did not see him at the ticket counter. In any case, he was a long way from home and definitely had no idea that he was now hurtling across the country at 30,000 feet.
And yet there he was, marching along my armrest with startling alacrity. He went up to every single speck or dot and inspected it, sniffed it, smelled it, maybe tried to mate with it. I don't know, his genitals are too tiny to see.
[LAUGHTER]
The point is he was completely clueless, but still madly industrious. Now, that is patently foolish behavior. But it is also surprisingly valuable. After my music video directing career went down in flames, I landed a good job, which I abruptly quit at age 25 to really try and make a go of comedy.
It would be years before I even made $5 from comedy. So to make money, I began doing commercial voice overs. Now, what does that mean? Well, if you watched TV or listen to the radio in the late '90s or early aughts, it's very possible you heard me saying things like, two Whoppers for $2, only at Burger King.
[LAUGHTER]
Or the Aquos liquid crystal television, from Sharp.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, give it up for that.
[APPLAUSE]
Those are real. I really did those. To book voice overs, you go on auditions. Now, I needed money. So I went on as many auditions I could, up to five or six a day, all over Manhattan, five days a week. And I did this for years. That's thousands of auditions.
And how many of those did I actually book? Maybe-- maybe-- 1%. The rest, the other 99% of those auditions, just went up in smoke. And that took a weird toll on me. It got depressing. So many useless auditions. Wasn't there something more valuable or productive I could be doing with my time?
But it was enabling me to do comedy at night. So I dug in and I continued to work hard at it, traveling all over the city every day, making sure I was on time to every single audition. I would do so many auditions that this often nerve wracking show business ritual became second nature to me.
I wouldn't get nervous at all. I'd just walk in, do my thing, and walk out. Moreover, I knew that 99% of the time I wasn't going to get the job, so as soon as I walked out, I let it go. Never gave it a second thought.
I didn't realize it, but I was slowly becoming a zen master of auditioning. So when I finally auditioned for The Daily Show, an audition I was really nervous and excited about, I walked in with a ridiculous amount of confidence. I had more confidence than I had any business having, and not because I was particularly good at comedy yet-- I was a relative greenhorn at comedy-- but because I was amazing at auditioning.
[LAUGHTER]
When you try hard at everything you do, even if it feels utterly foolish to do so, you're opening up future doors and possibilities that you might not be seeing in the moment. Remember the ant? After tenaciously inspecting my armrest, he made it over to my tray table. And before long, he landed on my Starbucks brownie.
Is that cool? I don't know. How would you feel if you were walking through the woods and landed on a chocolate cake the size of a house? Pretty cool.
[LAUGHTER]
OK, next one. Only a fool would deliberately scare himself. Be that fool. Here's the thing. Scaring ourselves is-- well, it's scary. And that's not necessarily fun for anybody. But you have to do it, because it's the most potent catalyst for growth.
The Daily Show scared me on a regular basis. At the political conventions, each correspondent was dispatched on the convention floor with barely more than a camera crew and a directive to go get something funny. On election nights, we did absolutely terrifying live shows. Lo and behold, it was during those deliberately scary situations that I grew the most as a performer.
Then I got a call from my agent. He'd set up a meeting with Greg Daniels, showrunner for The Office. It was 2006. Greg was gearing up for the third season. The writers had been kicking around a new character named Andy Bernard, and Greg wanted me to play him.
I was absolutely thrilled. At that point, I'd been on The Daily Show for 4 and 1/2 years, and I was ready to stretch my legs. I was ready to show the world that I had some acting ability beyond this snarky, heightened version of myself I played on The Daily Show. Because let's be honest, that guy was-- he was a jerk. Me I'm talking about.
[LAUGHTER]
Also, I was getting pretty sick of New York winters. I don't know if you guys know anything about that.
[LAUGHTER]
So a move to Los Angeles was feeling pretty peachy. But there was one really big problem. Andy's entire arc on the show was only scripted to last eight episodes. That's eight weeks of work-- two months.
Suddenly, this exciting possibility was just a terrifying choice. Working on The Office was obviously a wonderful opportunity, but could I really quit my job at The Daily Show for only eight weeks of work? Then what would I do?
And that's when all of the lessons I had learned about scaring myself kicked in. I loved my job at The Daily Show, but I knew I needed to grow. And to grow, I needed to scare the hell out of myself and step off the cliff.
So I did, and I foolishly took the role of Andy Bernard. And it completely changed my life. After six episodes, I became a permanent cast member. And I was employed for not only eight weeks, but eight wonderful years. Let's-- oh, great. Yeah
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you. Feel free to clap any time.
[LAUGHTER]
There is an ant on the podium, and he is so eager to get somewhere. God bless him. Let's try another. Only a fool would disregard his past and future. Be that fool. We should all learn from our past and plan for our future, right? Well, sort of. The problem is we often take it too far and we undervalue the present.
I'll never forget watching the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics and seeing all of the athletes rise out of that tunnel in the middle of that acid trip of a stadium. And they all came out in this huge line, and they were all filming it on their iPhones.
And I just wanted to scream at the TV, guys, stop filming this! Put your phones away! NBC's already got it covered. Just set your DVR. Enjoy the moment, for god's sake.
A psychologist named Linda Henkel actually tested this and found we remember less about something when we record it on our iPhones because we externalize it. We let this device do the job of remembering for us.
Staying present in the moment is counter-intuitive, but it's worth it. I learned this firsthand when, after a few great years on The Office, I received a script called The Hangover. It might surprise you to know that when I got that script, I agonized about whether I should do it. Why? Because I played out all these scenarios in my mind of it being an embarrassing flop.
I believed that between The Daily Show and The Office, I had established myself as a smart, sophisticated comedian. That was my brand. Wouldn't a movie about a bunch of guys getting a hangover dumb me down? How will this reflect on me? What will the reviews say?
I thought I was being smart, prudent, exercising discretion and common sense. But I was actually just being arrogant and fearful, preoccupied with catastrophe. What I really needed was to disengage my analytical mind and be foolishly in the moment.
Because the script in front of me was really funny. It made me laugh. The story was original, even kind of heartwarming. The director was Todd Phillips, a modern master of comedy. And my potential costars were not only hilarious, they were great guys. I knew I'd have fun making this movie.
All of that information was reality. It was the present. My paranoid predictions about the future, that was fantasy. Once I focused on the present, what was real, the answer was abundantly clear-- do the damn movie. And so I did it, and it turned out OK.
[APPLAUSE]
Which brings us back to Andy Bernard. In the series finale of The Office, Andy said something quite profound. He was leaving the frumpy Dunder Mifflin Paper Company to join the admissions staff here at Cornell University.
[LAUGHTER]
While thrilled about his new job, he was suddenly overwhelmed with nostalgia. He said, "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them." I love that line. I even got misty saying it on camera that day. What a wonderful way to send Andy off to the great beyond.
But it got me thinking, what exactly are the good old days? When do they happen? And why? Here's the thing. Good old days are good because they're the times we look back and we really liked ourselves. And I contend that good old days are marked by relatively high levels of foolishness.
Case in point-- college. College is almost always considered good old days, and for good reason. It's one of the great incubators for foolishness. Sadly, so much of the vitality and curiosity that we bring to college is almost immediately squished out of us when we step out into the real world.
Remember when you arrived as freshmen for orientation and you were so open and curious and vulnerable? You went out of your way to meet the other kids on your hall. You helped your neighbors move in.
Over the next four years, you worked hard, but you probably also went to some weird jazz concerts or poetry readings. Maybe a party or two, I don't know. Perhaps you stayed up late debating Ayn Rand versus Karl Marx, or skipped class to go on a great hike. You joined clubs. You scoured the course catalog to find subjects that ignited your curiosity.
The world will tell you that that's all well and good, but it's time to grow up now and leave those foolish youthful diversions behind. Don't fall for that. I'm here to tell you, those foolish diversions are the real nectar of life. Don't relegate them to the good old days. Take them with you. Keep creating good old days.
Now, let me ask you something. Have you ever heard a profound insight and thought, wow, that is so true? Whether it's Confucius or Mark Twain or Shakespeare or Aristotle, the only reason profound insights resonate with us is because at some level we already know them.
That's an important thing to realize because it means that all of us are brilliant and profound. Somewhere deep inside, we all share the secrets of the world, the human condition, all of the arts and sciences. How you live your life determines how many of those secrets will be revealed to you. Pursuing knowledge and responsibility gets you halfway there. The other half can only be tapped by being a glorious and wonderful fool.
I'm not saying be irresponsible. On the contrary, be grateful for your amazing Cornell education. Put it to good use and be great at whatever you do. But always nurture a healthy contempt for maturity and level headedness. The world out there cultivates conformity and cynicism, but you don't have to. Take a stand. Put up a fight. Be a fool.
Thank you, congratulations, and good luck.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Thank you, Ed Helms, for sharing your inspiring words with us. It was truly a pleasure to hear your perspective today. And at this time, we would like to recognize and thank you for honoring us with your presence during this incredibly meaningful time in our lives.
Your phenomenal accomplishments as an actor, writer, musician, and comedian have inspired us to dream big and achieve great things. Your work through Education Through Music, LA, remind us to always give back and help others. We are pleased to present you with the 2014 senior convocation medallion.
[APPLAUSE]
Ed Helms, the actor who portrayed fictional Cornell alumnus Andy Bernard '93 on the television comedy 'The Office,' delivered the Senior Convocation address to graduating students and guests at Schoellkopf Stadium, May 24, 2014.
