“IT'S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY” AUTHOR NED VIZZINI VISITS ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Nov. 1, 2010
Contact Judy Bass
Communications Specialist
Minuteman Career & Technical High School
Office email j.bass@minuteman.org
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“IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY” AUTHOR NED VIZZINI VISITS
MINUTEMAN CAREER & TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOL IN LEXINGTON
By Judy Bass
You might not think that being in a psychiatric hospital would have many positive ramifications, but
author Ned Vizzini parlayed his own brief experience as a patient in a mental facility into a successful
young adult book titled “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” that is now a motion picture.
During a recent visit with students at Minuteman Career & Technical High School in Lexington, Vizzini
talked with memorable wit and insight about his tangles with depression, how he mastered the craft of
writing at an early age, and surviving adolescence and the high school scene.
Vizzini’s appearance was initiated by student Gerald “Jake” Ravanis of Medford, a senior who wrote to
the author inviting him after reading one of his books in English class. Vizzini, impressed with Ravanis’s
forthrightness, got in touch with Minuteman Librarian Terri Burke and arrangements were made for his
speaking engagement at the school thanks to a grant from the Minuteman Parents Association.
Los Angeles-based Vizzini, 29, who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., started his writing career in 1996 at the
precocious age of 15 by publishing essays about his high school years in an alternative newspaper called
The New York Press.
His next milestone was an essay that graced the pages of the venerable New York Times Magazine on
May 17, 1998. Titled “Teen Angst? Nah!,” it featured upbeat advice for his fellow teens and was
eventually enlarged into an entire book of essays with the same title. “Be More Chill,” Vizzini’s first
novel, followed in 2002, but two years later, as he told his raptly-listening audience of approximately 75
Minuteman students (plus teachers including Bruce Girouard, Ravanis’s English instructor), he
encountered a roadblock that left him stumped, sleepless, and scared.
Vizzini had signed a two-book contract when he did “Be More Chill,” and as he discovered, penning the
second volume wasn’t a cinch. In fact, Vizzini said, he “freaked out” from stress to such an extent that he

called a suicide hotline at 4 a.m. That traumatic low point led to his brief hospitalization at Methodist
Hospital in Brooklyn in 2004, which provided the raw material for “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.”
Although Vizzini’s talk about how teens can maintain their emotional equilibrium was serious, his
comments were often self-deprecating and lighthearted, provoking ripples of laughter from the students,
many of whom had read his book in class. For example, Vizzini recounted an incident from his time at
Methodist when he fumed with helpless rage because patients were not allowed to have cell phones, he
didn’t have immediate access to another phone, and he needed to make a call right that minute.
A patient saw Vizzini’s barely-concealed wrath and asked him what the problem was. Vizzini explained
his frustrating situation to the man, who claimed he had an ingenious solution. Producing a banana – and
as he told this story to the students, Vizzini, deadpanning perfectly, calmly withdrew a banana from his
suit jacket pocket to demonstrate – the other patient proceeded to show him how to use it as a make-
believe phone. Wacky? Sure. Attention-getting? Definitely. Ideal fodder for “It’s Kind of a Funny
Story”? You guessed it.
To wrap up his presentation, Vizzini gave the students three key tips for avoiding the kind of hopeless
desperation that he endured long ago. First, he said, “keep your antennae up” to find what you really love
to do. Second, don’t sell yourself short out of fear. As an undergrad at Hunter College, Vizzini said he
was so convinced that he would never earn a living as a writer that he majored in computer science
instead of his real passion, writing. “Fear isn’t real,” he explained. “It’s your mind running away with
itself. Regret is very real.” Third, Vizzini said, “stress is not a real threat, it’s your body’s response to a
perceived threat. Whatever you are stressed out about – tests, reports, job interviews, SATs – is not going
to kill you.”
After Vizzini concluded, a cluster of students enthusiastically surrounded him, and minutes later, he
began the final portion of the event, a writing workshop in the library for about three dozen of them called
“From Personal to Published.”
A highlight of the visit came when Kristen Mikoski of Stow, a senior studying Culinary Arts, brought
Vizzini an unexpected gift - a sheet cake whose frosting beautifully replicated the colorful geometric
cover of “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.”