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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Kings Network.
Are you ready to give me your soul? Sure. He's Mike Birbiglia, and he's a writer. He's a director. He's an actor. He's a comedian. He even does one-man shows. He's got a new special, The Good Life, on Netflix. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But let me start with the one-man show. What is it about you that would gravitate toward the idea of a one-man show?
What was in your childhood that would make you somebody who thinks he can pull off successfully and did a one-man show?
I did not mean to write a one-person show. I was trying to make movies this whole time. Like when I was in college, I studied screenwriting and playwriting. And at the end of college, I went to apply for all the jobs in screenwriting and realized that's not a thing. Yeah.
So you failed your way into a one-man show.
Yeah. So in other words, what happened was I did stand up because I was working the door at the Washington, D.C. Improv during college. And so I was seeing great comedians. I mean, Mitch Hedberg and David Tell and Brian Regan and Margaret Cho and all these people. I was getting to watch them for free because I was a door person. It was unbelievable. It's like amazing education.
But one of the things I worked in the office, I was able to see the pay stubs You know, everybody. So you go, oh, this person's making a few thousand dollars. The middle act is making $500. The MC's making $250. You know what I mean? So I was like, well, I can MC and try to make a living doing that. And so I drove my mom's station wagon around the country.
for a couple years, and then it kind of became something. I got a couple specials on Comedy Central and all that, and then I circled back, and I was like, well, why don't I try to write a one-person play? Because I really love plays and I love movies. And so I just kind of merged stand-up into a play, and that's what became Sleepwalk With Me, which was at the Bleecker Street Theater in 2008.
Well, that is an interesting thing about you. For those who don't know your sleepwalking tales, we will get to them.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Mike Birbiglia to create a one-man show?
But let's drive through on your mother's car there. You're doing what? You're just emceeing what? What are some of the sad or ridiculous places you're going to emcee things, trying to figure out what you want to do with your life?
I had...
Chapter 3: How did Mike's childhood shape his comedic journey?
spreadsheet of comedy club bookers across the country, and it was accumulated from other comedians and people who were trying to do the same thing. They'd say, oh, there's this booker in Louisiana, and they book a bunch of one-nighters in Louisiana and Texas, and there's someone who does a bunch of stuff in West Virginia and Ohio, and you could call them.
And I would literally just call them every day. I was like a telemarketer. I was just, Hey, I'm Mike Birbiglia. I'm a comedian. I could send you my tape. This is in the era of VHS cassettes. And, uh, so I would book myself for next to nothing, any, any place that would take me. And so a lot of times it would be one nighters.
Like I remember in my first show, I talked about how one night I was at like a restaurant called fat Tuesdays and it was And I was backstage, which was the sidewalk of a strip mall. And the manager says to me, so you're going to go out and you're going to do 25 minutes. And I had probably like 10 minutes tops. And I turned around and I threw up on the sidewalk. Yeah.
While he's saying this to you? He walked back in.
I got really nervous. Threw up on the sidewalk. To this day, I've heard that the headliner of that show tells the story from their perspective also. But it's probably funnier, but it's like, but I threw up on the sidewalk and then I walked on stage. I probably did five minutes and then I ran out of jokes and said, and now you're a headliner. And I brought him on. But I will say like,
I I doing those gigs and it was a lot of like colleges. It was a lot of like one time I was performing in the center of like a walkathon for lupus, like an all night walkathon. And I'm got a microphone. I'm trying to entertain people going around me. And and I mean, it's always it's so demoralizing, you know, and it but it's but it was it was then and it still is like what I want to do.
Like this idea, like you guys were making jokes before we started about my notebook. Like everywhere I go, people see me with my notebook and it's just all jokes and it's gibberish. But it's like the idea that even if you're in a hell gig, you're in the center of a walk-a-thon for lupus or you're on the sidewalk of a strip mall throwing up.
Like if the end result is I go on and I say to an audience some stuff I thought of and I wrote in my notebook, that's a pretty good job. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's a great job. Like that's a good job. Even if it's terrible, it's pretty good.
The walk-a-thon for lupus makes me sad, though the words together are funny. They're funny, yeah. This notebook, it's a pacifier for you?
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Mike face when starting his comedy career?
My dad is a retired neurologist.
Chapter 5: What is the significance of sleepwalking in Mike's comedy?
My mom's a retired nurse. you know, my dad would say, you know, maybe this, you know, maybe this comedy thing could parlay into advertising, you know, and I would just be like, no, no, I think this is the thing like this. And, and he, you know, he was like, Michael, you know, he, he sort of fly off the handle. Sometimes he'd be like, Michael, you need some goddamn reality testing.
That's what he always said. Reality testing. And, uh, He's not wrong. I mean, like what's funny is, is at the time I feel like I had to put a judgment on it. And in the sense of like he didn't get me to understand me. And now, like I'm a dad, you know, my daughter's 11. Like I have a better sense of like, oh, right. You're just trying to protect yourself.
Oh, he was just scared and there's no money in what you were choosing. What would that reality test look like, though, when you imagine the game show in your mind? Is he the host of a show that is reality test and you come out and you think you're going to make a living cracking jokes?
That's right. No, I mean early on he said to me – I told him I was working at a comedy club and he goes, comedy club? What do they do, strip? Because that was his only point of orientation was like – he grew up in the 50s in Brooklyn.
A God-fearing American goes to a club to see someone nude, not to see you talk.
That's right. That's right. Right. It was like I feel like the only clubs where there were in that era. I mean, that's what like Richard Pryor and all those people came up in was dirty, tawdry places. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They came up in like these kind of burlesque kind of mixed arts. There wasn't there wasn't such a thing as a comedy club. So I feel like that was the point.
That was the point of view that my dad came from.
You, forgive me for switching gears here, but you married a poet. That seems like a harder way to make a living than even comedy. Poetry seems like a real hard way to make a living.
As far as I can tell, there's no path.
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Chapter 6: How did a malignant tumor influence Mike's career choices?
It's – yeah, no, and it was, of course, what – it's actually what I wanted to do when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I was always – I always told people I want to be a poet or a comedian or the owner of a pizza restaurant where third graders could hang out. That was when I was third grade. And then seventh grade, I want to be –
a poet or a comedian or owner of a pizza restaurant where seventh graders can hang out, et cetera. And then I never became a poet, but then I married a poet. And yeah, she's fantastic. Sometimes we'll do a thing called jokes and poems, like at Joe's Pub sometimes.
Or even we've done it here at Largo in Los Angeles before where it's just Jenny will do a poem and then I'll do a joke that's riffing on what the poem is and then she'll do a poem that's inspired by what I'm talking about. It's fun. Yeah, she's brilliant.
You wanting to be a poet, though, what how does a kid like what does that look like growing up? You want to be poet, screenwriter. You failed your way into merely jokes because you had these you had these noble ambitions about what writing was. That wasn't just making the guy who's seven vodka tonics in chuckle in the corner.
Well, I think it's that you that your point of reference is when you're younger is just narrower. So, for example, like when I was a kid, we would read poems, you know, we would or we would read, you know, Shel Silverstein or Roald Dahl or something like that. And I go, oh, OK, I could do something along those lines because that was the closest thing to what we would read. And I would think.
Yeah, I could do that. And then when I was in high school, I went to see, you know, my older brother took me to see Stephen Wright live at the Cape Cod Melody Tent. And there's all these like one liner jokes. And I think I was 16 and I was like, oh, I'm going to do that. Because that made, you know, I think at different phases you're exposed to different types of expression.
Well, but to be exposed to hymns, but that comedy where it's not just that it's one-liners, but it's one-liners delivered in a character you've never seen before.
Yeah, yeah. It was shocking. It was a shock to the system.
And the 16-year-old in you, what, is just awed with discovery there on the idea that that's...
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Chapter 7: How does Mike find humor in personal struggles?
And which if this is sort of news to anyone, I wrote a book called Sleepwalk With Me. I made a movie called Sleepwalk With Me. I have a comedy album of that name. And so I was sleepwalking for... probably since college or so, since I was like maybe 20.
And I started writing this show, Sleepwalk With Me, and it was about living in denial, you know, being in a relationship where I knew it was over and I didn't want to deal with it, doing standup comedy where you're kind of in denial of bombing with audiences. And then there's the metaphor of I had a sleepwalking issue. And I was not seeing a doctor about it, et cetera.
And then I was working on the show and I was doing versions of it at Upper Citizens Pre-K Theater in New York City. And then I was on the road at a series of colleges in Oregon and Washington State. And I was at a Walla Walla Washington motel called La Quinta Inn. And then I jumped through a second story window. It nearly killed me.
I went back for like the 20-year anniversary of when it happened this past January with a film crew. And I did a show. And I talked to the ER doctor who put stitches in my legs and took the glasses off.
Mining the hell out of your malady. Like just really just filling up that notebook with just this grotesque curiosity that people have about what does this man do in his sleep?
You have to though, right? Like 20-year anniversary, jumping through a second story window and living to tell the story.
People are interested in this for sure. It is human and there would be all sorts of curiosities around it.
Yeah. And so anyway, I went. I did a show. But it was fascinating. It was this really unlikely outcome that I lived through.
I want more details though.
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Chapter 8: What lessons did Mike learn about failure in comedy?
So for the uninitiated, how do you come by sleepwalking and what are the specifics of the things happening to you while sleepwalking that have nothing to do before we get to the second story window?
Sure. So I would have dreams, for example, I was living with my girlfriend at the time, and I would have dreams that there would be a hovering insect jackal in the bedroom, and I would jump on my bed in real life, and I would strike a karate pose, and I would say to my girlfriend, Abby, there's a jackal. in the room and she said, there's no jackal, go to bed. And I'd say, are you sure?
And I would go to bed knowing there was a jackal. And this would happen a lot. I mean, this is, and in hindsight, it's like really tied to anxiety and stress and also just a sleepwalking disorder I was later diagnosed with. And it got worse. So I remember one time I dreamt I was in the Olympics for some kind of arbitrary event like dust bustering.
And they told me I got third place in the dust buster Olympics. And I stood up on the third place podium.
Congratulations. Thank you. Bronze medalist in dust busting.
And then the officials reconsidered. And they go, no, actually, you got second place. I move over to the second place podium.
Oh, no. A promotion.
The second place podium is wobbling. I wake up. I'm falling off the top of probably like a table of this size, of this height, about a three-foot, four-foot table in our living room. Fall on the floor. Fall.
hard like on top of what at the time the DVR was called TiVo and you remember TiVo yes it breaks the TiVo into pieces my girlfriend wakes me up in the morning and she goes Michael what happened to the TiVo I said I got second place and it's a long story but But but, you know, I always say when I tell the story, I go at that point, I thought maybe I should see a doctor.
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