Tina Fey Adjusts to Writing for Film

Tina Fey found at least a few differences between writing for NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and tackling her first feature-length screenplay for "Mean Girls."

In devising comedy sketches, she says: "Story is your enemy. Story will sink you. Conversely, in a movie, if you don't have (a) story, then that will sink you. So I was just trying to learn that."

The 33-year-old co-head writer of "SNL" also had to confront another way of being funny.

"It's best not to have three jokes a page. Setup/joke, setup/joke, setup/joke," she told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "You kinda will sell yourself out if you try to do that in a movie. You have to have more patience."

One last difference between television and movies was being forced to look back at her work for months on end.

"I'm used to: Do it, do it in a week, good, bad, whatever ... move on," she said.

"Mean Girls" opened Friday to mainly positive reviews.