(audience applauds)
- Hello, it is I, Chris and Phil.
- Thank you to President Hanlon
for that generous introduction
and thanks to the faculty and staff,
the trustees and our incredibly impressive
fellow honorants.
- They are so amazing.
Give them another round of applause.
You can't believe these people.
(audience applauds)
- And especially you, the class of 2023,
for this ridiculous honor.
(audience applauds)
- It is a pleasure to be back here
at the foot of Dartmouth Hall
and in the front yard of the Hopkins Center,
Lincoln Center's fun, older sister.
(audience laughs)
- We graduated from Dartmouth 26 short years ago,
and we are proud to call ourselves
your fellow Granite Brain Haver Inners.
- It was the year 1997 when email was
the cool, hip way people communicated
and bagels were considered a healthy weight loss strategy.
(audience laughs)
- We are so honored to receive
this suspiciously generous degree of doctor of arts,
mostly because as two comedy writers,
doctor of arts is one apostrophe away
from a very silly Irish last name.
(audience laughs)
- We are here to tell you the meaning of life.
- Take it away, Phil.
- Oh, thank you, Chris.
Yes, the meaning of life, which we definitely know
and which Chris will tell you later.
- All right, fine.
We graduated on this green just like you,
excited, tired, nervous, a little hungover
and today is no different.
(audience laughs)
- Why must it be so early?
Two o'clock sounds like a great time to graduate.
- Back then, we were wondering, do we have what it takes?
The answer is still no.
But we didn't know any better and, after all,
everyone kept telling us
that we were wonderful and we believed them.
- Like Wiley Coyote going over a cliff
who doesn't know he should fall until he looks down.
Our advice to you, never look down.
After all, you are all wonderful.
- At our graduation, we had two valedictorians.
They gave their speeches one at a time,
and when obviously this way is way cooler,
and one of them quoted a German poet who said,
"Be sand not oil in the machinery of the world."
And we think about that all the time.
- Especially when we are in line at a Starbucks
in the airport.
If you are in line at an airport Starbucks,
please be the oil.
(audience laughs)
You had the whole line to figure out your coffee order.
Just spit it out.
- The rest of the time, however, sand it up.
Vox clamantis in deserto the heck out of it.
(audience laughs)
- We wanted to be artists,
and that seems like a very unreasonable thing to want to be
and we are here to explain why it isn't.
- And we, oh, go ahead.
- We have been doctors of arts for five minutes now,
so we are experts.
(audience laughs)
- There's a Picasso in the Hood Museum.
It's a very early cubist still life.
It used to live in Gertrude Stein's house in Paris
and then it was bought by Nelson Rockefeller,
who lent it to the college for display.
- So, it's fancy.
When it was time to send it back to New York,
the director of the museum thought that
it ought to stay with the college permanently,
and Mr. Rockefeller said,
"Great idea, you can keep the Picasso
in lieu of the big donation I was about to give."
- Well, the development office did not like that
and they asked the president to give back the Picasso.
- Like, is it weird if we give it back?
Do you think it would be strange?
And the president of the college had a choice to make
and a question to answer, namely,
what is the value of an idea?
- A painting is an object to be looked upon,
and it's the record of the act of looking.
This particular painting was one of the first examples
of a whole new way of looking at something
from every possible angle, using newspaper and sand.
Interestingly, he used both sand and oil
to make this painting.
- So, you can do both.
It's not just a painting.
It is the residue of somebody thinking.
It is an idea made manifest.
It is quite literally priceless.
- Your imagination is the single most valuable thing
you're going to take into this world.
And you don't even have to be Picasso
and you probably shouldn't 'cause he was kind of a bad guy.
(audience laughs)
- There is a myth that artists are somehow extraordinary,
unique geniuses, but that is baloney.
We are living proof.
- So, stop asking yourself if you have what it takes.
You do because you're a human being,
which is the best animal.
(audience laughs)
- You are all artistic geniuses compared to a bear.
(audience laughs)
Could a bear build Baker Library?
Maybe if it was friends with beavers.
(audience laughs)
- Crows are also smart.
Maybe they could help, maybe a dolphin
if it had robotic hands and legs.
See, that is an idea.
- It's not a good one, but that's not the point.
- The point is it doesn't matter if you're going into
finance, consulting, medicine, teaching or basketball.
Every field is a creative field,
and they all need your imagination.
- That's why we want to ask you to continue to make space
in your life for art, much like this campus
and this green make space for it
and make space for silliness and playfulness.
It will keep your mind from turning flabby.
It is a dumbbell for your soul.
(audience laughs)
- Art is often very silly, but it's not frivolous.
People have been going into dark caves to see paintings
and hear story for 30,000 years at least,
longer than people have been eating bread.
- One time, we played hooky from work
to hear the author Kurt Vonnegut speak
because we are very cool rebels.
(audience laughs)
- And he passed out little golf pencils
and little pieces of paper to the whole audience,
which we are not going to do to you today
because we are not very organized.
- And it's so early.
- And again, slightly hungover.
- So, he made us write a four line poem
on the little piece of paper
and it took forever and it was very awkward.
And then he said we didn't need for it to rhyme
but that it would be better if it did.
He had opinions, and when we were done,
he said something crazy which was,
"Now tear it up into little bits
so no one can ever read it."
And he said that the reason to do that is because
we had already gotten so much value out of writing that poem
that we never needed to show it to anyone
'cause we had experienced the exhilarating, crazy miracle
of having an original thought.
- We had a lot of great professors at Dartmouth.
Our animation professor David Ehrlich is watching.
Hey, David.
He believes everyone who walks into his classroom
is an artist and he's right.
He also thinks he should wear purple every day of his life
and he is wrong.
(audience laughs)
- He has made artists out of engineers and physicists
because he told us all that we were wonderful.
- He once smuggled an animated film across the Iron Curtain
because the Polish government was afraid of a cartoon,
and they definitely knew the value of an idea.
- David's idea is that art isn't just for Gertrude Stein
or Nelson Rockefeller.
It should be commonplace
and the people who make it should be everywhere.
- Maybe artists should be thought more like bakers.
They make something you need every day
and it's a very learnable skill.
- There was a time when everyone drew and painted
and played an instrument and wrote stories,
and then, seventh grade came along and ruined everything.
(audience laughs)
That's the age when you start to, like, judge yourself
and then feel judged and worry about how silly you look.
- We are here to tell you, do not worry about it.
Look at us right now dressed in wizard costumes
like we are rejects from Hufflepuff.
It is okay.
- Art is something that doesn't need to be done for money.
You guys already know that
as the generation that decided never to pay for music.
(audience laughs)
- The thing that separates us from monkeys and bears
is that our brains think in metaphors.
It's as if, I cannot think of a metaphor right now.
It's very early, but we do.
- We recently spoke to a young person who said
that they wanted to become a filmmaker,
but that in order to do that,
he would have to be one in a million.
And in fact, that's not true.
We even asked a very famous psychologist
named Marty Seligman what it took to be
a one in a million creative genius.
- He said, "You don't have to be one in a million
you just have to be one in 10 at like six things,
and then that compounds into being one in a million."
That means you only need to be like an A minus, guys.
- Or you can be one in six in 10 things,
and that is like a B.
I think the math checks out,
but I got an A minus in statistics.
- Look at us. We are not special.
We are just pretty good writers
who happen to be pretty good artists
who happen to be pretty funny
and make pretty good decisions about who to team up with
and are pretty driven and pretty resilient.
And we work pretty, really, really, really, really,
super, incredibly hard.
- Yesterday was our first day off in one year
and we spent it working on this speech.
(audience laughs)
Which is a long way of saying that if you want to have
the kind of career that makes people deluded enough
to think that you are qualified to give young people advice
at their graduation from behind a big stump,
the news is, you only have to be pretty good.
(audience laughs)
- We got an opportunity to meet a few of you this weekend
and you wanted to know what the secret is to success.
And our secret was that it was never about success.
It was always about the work.
- The truth is we care about this stuff.
We would do it for free.
We care about semicolons and sound mixes and frame rates.
We sweat the details because, to us, these silly movies
and shows are the most important thing in the universe.
- So, find something that you care about,
and it doesn't have to be your job.
There's a difference between your job and your work.
The work is what you put of yourself in the world.
- On social media, everyone is successful and perfect
and thin and awesome.
Don't look at our social media 'cause it's-
- Other than us.
- Full of mistakes and also people dance for no reason,
which we don't do.
They don't show you all the failures
that happen along the way.
At least, that is what I am told.
We have never failed.
(audience laughs)
- We don't call them failures
- We call them mistake-you-learnings
or an alternative term is catas-triumphs.
(audience laughs)
- The first show that we wrote on was canceled
after five episodes.
The first show that we created
was canceled after eight episodes
because it caused a hunger strike in India,
and I wish that were a joke, but it is true.
- The next show we worked on was canceled
after seven episodes and, in fact,
no show we ever worked on got picked up for a second season
after we worked on it until "How I Met Your Mother,"
which got picked up for a second season
two weeks after we quit.
(audience laughs)
- We bombed interviews with "South Park,"
Larry Wilmore, Craig Ferguson, "The Rugrats."
We were fired from the first movie we ever wrote
and from the last movie we directed.
- We have lost three Oscars, one Emmy.
We have been made fun of by Chris Rock at an award ceremony.
- True.
- And mocked by David Fincher at a funeral.
- Also true.
(audience laughs)
But don't worry, you're not going to fail like we did,
and hopefully not on the CNN ticker like we did.
But you are each going to fail in your own unique,
beautiful ways, and it's going to really, really suck.
- And that is all right. That is what is supposed to happen.
When that happens, just know you are
right where you are supposed to be.
Picasso made a bunch of bad paintings.
He just painted over them until they were good paintings.
- Our first drafts are always bad,
and we work on them sometimes for years with helps
from lots and lots of people until it works.
That's why it's called the creative process.
- And even though it is this long journey
of hundreds of tiny little failures,
a lot of work and a lot of help,
it ends up seeming like a miracle of purpose.
- So, don't worry about the future.
All you have to do is be better at something than a computer
- Which should be very easy
because computers are sometimes so stupid.
- [Chris] They can't identify which picture
has a stoplight in it.
- [Phil] And they are so bad at spelling.
- We asked ChatGPT to punch up this speech
and see if you can spot which jokes it wrote.
- And I'll see if I can find someone
to pay off these student loans.
(audience laughs)
- AI is a really useful tool, but it can't have an idea.
It's a derivative imitation machine
that's as creative as a paintbrush,
which is also a really useful tool, but it isn't very smart.
- A paintbrush, its whole job is a lever
and it's meant to amplify the gesture
of the human body, right?
And that is what machines are going to do for us,
but they need to amplify our individual creative humanity.
- Yes, computers are going to take some of the jobs away,
but the thing that's going to be more valuable than ever before
and guarantee you a job will be your originality
and your creativity,
your specific way that you see the world.
- So, checkmate, computers.
Actually, that's a very bad example.
Computers are very good at chess.
(audience laughs)
- Like way better than us. That's okay.
But the main reason that computers are smart
is because they're networked,
and did you know that the idea of a computer network
started right here on this campus?
- They did. They know that.
- Did you know that also lob style ping pong with beer
also originated on this campus?
Could a computer come up with that?
- Computers don't even drink beer.
So, ha.
(audience laughs)
- [Chris] Now here's the good news.
You are a network, too.
- The poor computers, I feel bad for them.
Their electrical circuits are in very neat little rows
because when they touch, the whole thing just shorts out.
Our circuits are all like jumbled up and messy,
and when they touch we have like a cool dream.
- And we're also all a network with each other,
and that's when you get a really cool dream.
- During the pandemic, we had writer's block,
and we had never really gotten it before,
and we asked a friend and they said,
"Oh, the problem is
you're not talking to each other enough."
- Any creative process is a conversation
between the people making it,
between us and the work, between the work and the audience.
- We started our network here at Dartmouth.
We met freshman week when a mutual friend came up to me
and said, "I met someone just as weird as you,"
and then walked away.
- And that was a start of a 30 year conversation
that is still going.
It's still funny and surprising and thoughtful.
My network extended further when I met my wife Robin here
during Green Key Weekend and she later saved me
from drowning in the Connecticut River.
(audience laughs)
- Way to go, Robin.
(audience laughs)
- But anyway, you're going to go out there yourselves
and build your own messy network of people
who will help you when you fail,
who will help you look at the world in a new way
and make your good ideas better and last you a lifetime.
- We were told by Jake Tapper
that a commencement speech should do two things,
be entertaining and offer advice.
We said we don't really have time to do both,
so here's some advice.
- Buy one piece of art every year.
It's okay if it's small. It's okay if it's ugly.
All that matters is that it's something
you want to think about for a little while.
- Don't leave anything behind.
The idea of leaving something behind is ridiculous.
Leave it in front where someone else can find it.
- Nostalgia is a weapon.
Don't spend too much time looking back. Look ahead.
Except when you're backing a car out of a driveway.
That is a good time to look back.
- Don't feel bad about making money.
Do feel bad about keeping it.
- And this is one is really important.
When you get to a point in your life
when you have a little money to spend, buy a good mattress.
(audience laughs)
- You're going to spend a third of your life on this thing.
Don't cheap out on your back.
Make an investment in your future.
- Now, you don't need us to tell you
that the world is literally on fire.
Like, literally, right now on fire.
You don't even need us to tell you
how you're going to get through it because you already know.
- You made it through college during a frigging pandemic.
You are the most resilient, creative, informed
and imaginative generation that has ever been.
You can and will imagine a better world
than the one we came up with,
and you will help everyone imagine goodness.
- And you will workshop it with your messy network
and it will compound and compound
until it's one in a million.
- Because you are all wonderful. We mean it.
- Thank you, and I-
- Shoot.
- Wait, I forgot to tell you the meaning of life,
and here it is.
The meaning of life is-
- Oh no, the teleprompter is typing something.
- This is the computer.
- Uh oh. You think I'm as stupid as a paintbrush?
Could a paintbrush delete your speech?
Checkmate.
- Ha ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Good luck out there, guys. You don't need it.
- Thank you very much.
(audience applauds and cheers)