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[crickets chirping]
[upbeat funky music]
* *
- All right, here we go.
* *
We're at the Columbus Theatre in Providence.
Beautiful theater.
Probably about 800 seats.
I'm not performing here.
We're not performing on this stage.
[laughs]
I'm performing up there.
That's where I work out new material.
This is very hard to explain.
"Old Man and the Pool" went to Broadway.
- His Broadway show-- it's fantastic--
"The Old Man and the Pool," with an additional
two-week extension of its run.
Please welcome back to the show our friend Mike Birbiglia.
[cheers and applause] - Super exciting.
And then it ends.
It's like, well, I can't tour that anymore.
And so then it's like, OK. Well, now what do I do?
[indistinct chatter]
This week in Providence,
it's, like, show number one of 500 shows
or however many it takes
to be the next Broadway show, comedy special.
What's the next show about?
And it's like, I don't know... - Right.
- Until I figure out what I'm obsessed with.
- When a comedian puts a special out into the world,
they are faced with a real sense of dread
that that is the last hour of jokes they're ever gonna write,
and they should probably move on to a different career.
- Good evening, and welcome... [laughs]
To the Strange Attic at the Columbus Theatre,
where Mike Birbiglia sometimes performs shows for some reason.
[cheers and applause] Thanks.
Thanks, Gary.
[cheers and applause]
Here we go again.
This is the beginning.
- A comedian only makes it work onstage
if it looks like it's the first time they're saying it.
If it doesn't seem natural, the audience feels ripped off.
You weirdly have to put all this time into it
to make it look
like you're coming up with it off the top of your head.
- I don't know why that's so funny.
You think it's funny, so it'll live
to see another night in the show.
I always tell the audience, "In case anyone's wondering,
there will be no arc."
If you feel themes, those aren't themes.
[laughter]
It's just the same person telling the jokes.
"If you notice an arc, feel free to shout it out."
You're probably thinking, how come we don't get
the final product?
We just get the first draft.
I think Providence is a first-draft town.
I just feel like-- [laughter]
Maybe that's who you are.
That's--that's why my family lives here.
[laughter and applause]
[bright music]
* *
[laughter]
I'm gonna start with a story that took place
here in Rhode Island last summer.
My wife and I stayed at an Airbnb,
which, by the way, no breakfast.
It's a--Airbnb is a wildly misleading acronym.
It's like if you showed up to an AA meeting,
and they're like, "We're livestreaming."
And you're like, I had heard
it was sort of a private thing.
And they're like, "Pop open a wine cooler.
We're gonna dish some goss."
[laughter]
All I'm doing right now is just throwing out jokes
and seeing what sticks.
If they get a big enough laugh,
I'll do them, you know, next week
in Washington, D.C.
That's actually what's exciting about these shows,
is it's an adventure.
It's like, OK. Wonder what this will be.
- Yeah. - Who knows?
- Mike came upon this idea to call shows "Working It Out,"
so as to set expectations.
You know, this isn't a fully realized show.
- I come off of doing "Old Man and the Pool,"
where it's, like, this fully realized production.
I've been working for four years.
So I always have this sense of, like,
do they know that this is what they're getting into?
This Airbnb said five minutes from the beach.
And it wasn't.
It was not five minutes from the beach.
It was on Seaview Road.
There was no sea view.
Everything was misleading.
[light music]
- I've only done one special, so I'm so impressed with Mike
and people like Mike who are prolific enough
to churn out a bunch.
And the other thing about Mike is,
none of his have ever seemed even a little bit rushed.
You realize that he takes that idea
of what a special means literally.
* *
Obviously, he's been incredibly lucky to be gifted
with things like a sleepwalking affliction,
heart trouble.
Not all of us can have this fall in our laps.
- So I told my brother Joe about this,
and he goes, "You should come over to our place."
I went over to his house, and his house is
five minutes from the beach.
[laughter]
And Joe and I, we work together professionally.
We've worked together for 15 years.
I mean--but technically...
he works for me.
[laughter]
I mean, I sign his checks.
[laughter]
So, if he's five minutes from the beach...
I should be five minutes from the beach.
So I started thinking, I should seize his home.
[laughter]
[upbeat music]
* *
I think people ask you a lot,
how come you didn't become a stand-up?
- Yeah, OK. - Because you're very funny.
- Yes. - You're a comedy writer.
- Some would say more funny.
[laughs]
- Some would say more funny. - Mostly our mom.
- Most people. - Mostly our mom.
[laughter]
The joke Mike has made is that
I'm too sensible to be a comedian.
Yeah, I had a pretty serious corporate job at the time...
- Yeah. - At Pfizer.
And finally when he said, "I need your help,"
I was more than happy to leave that world.
On occasion, I'll write a joke and give it to him.
And then he'll present it, and it won't do well.
But he didn't do it the way I thought
he should have done it.
[laughs]
Is he here? Um... [laughs]
- When I was in high school, you were living in Brooklyn.
And you would take me to, like, the hipper shows
that had Sarah Silverman and Zach Galifianakis.
- Right. - Joe took me
to see Steven Wright at the Cape Cod Melody Tent
when I was, like, 16.
Two of my biggest influences were Steven Wright
and Mitch Hedberg.
- It's a small world,
but I wouldn't want to paint it.
[laughter]
- Steven Wright, of course,
was all these, like, one-liner, like, cerebral jokes.
People are always surprised that these are the influences,
because they don't think of me as, like, a joke teller.
And, like, Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg are
two of the greatest joke tellers of all time.
- I'm gonna rob a bank with a BB gun.
Give me all your money, or I will give you a dimple.
- In terms of developing "Sleepwalk With Me,"
my biggest influence
was "Richard Pryor: Live from the Sunset Strip."
- Of all the people you ever heard of freebasing,
have you ever heard of anybody blowing up?
Why me?
- He just had so many moves-- wildly versatile.
Sometimes you don't need punch lines.
Sometimes it can just be what happened.
* *
I love jokes, and I love storytelling.
So I do these shows that are solo plays,
that are also stand-up specials.
I'm a very different comic than I was when I started.
I was like an observational comic.
And at a certain point, I started telling
personal stories about my life.
And it was weird. It was a hard thing to do,
because I was always discouraged
from telling personal stories growing up.
Like, my dad, my whole life,
when I would tell personal stories,
he'd be like, "Don't tell anyone."
And it would be about mundane things.
Like, it wasn't about creepy things.
Like, I wouldn't make the soccer team,
and he'd be like, "Don't tell anyone."
I was like, they're gonna know, you know,
when they show up at the games and I'm not on the team
and I'm crying, you know what I mean?
And--
[soft music]
My dad, he was a doctor--
very serious person, very academic person.
He always had this thing that was like,
the more that you tell people about yourself,
the more they can use it against you.
But the upside is incredible.
If you can open up to people and tell them the thing
that you'd be the least likely to tell them about--
how you had cancer or how you have
a serious sleepwalking disorder or any of your flaws,
anything that you're self-conscious about,
the connection can be so deep.
- When you grow up in a structured Catholic family,
there is a fear of veering way off.
But I do think that Mom and Dad were supportive of you
or supportive-- - Of comedy?
- Yes. - Really?
- I do. I think that more than you do.
- Literally, when I told Dad I was doing comedy--
when I was at Georgetown, I was working the door.
- Mm-hmm. - And I said,
"I'm working at a comedy club at the door."
And he goes, "Comedy club? What do they do, strip?"
- [laughs] - He literally--
- Right, right. - You know?
And it's like a "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."
- Right. - Like, that's the context
of his old-time clubs. - That's right.
- When I was a kid, I feel like everything in my life
was me trying to express--
like, writing poetry, writing essays,
writing jokes, drawing, painting, writing plays...
* *
And just, like, in every direction,
people just being like,
"Yeah, I don't think that's for you."
And they didn't mean any harm by it.
They just thought I was this kid who, like, trips a lot.
Like, it's almost like the great metaphor
for being a comedian is like, it's the person who trips a lot
and then figures out how to write about it
in a funny way.
When I was 20, there was blood in my pee.
My dad takes me first thing in the morning to see
a urologist friend of his.
And the urologist asked me to take my pants down,
and he's looking around.
I started to chime in with my own theories,
because I find doctors enjoy that.
I said to my urologist-- I can never unsay this.
I said, "Is it possible that the blood is from me
masturbating too often?"
[laughter]
I said that...
out loud...
to my dad's friend!
[laughter]
The best jokes are the secrets.
You're telling the audience things that, like,
you're not even really telling your friends.
You look at the last show.
It's like, "Old Man and the Pool" is,
I'm obsessed with age and mortality.
- Right. - You look at the show
before that, "The New One," it's like,
I'm obsessed with having a child,
even though I never wanted to have a child.
- Right. - The obsession thing,
it's like-- - Totally.
- People being like, what's the next show about?
And it's like, I don't know. - Right.
- The last show was all about death,
'cause it's a preoccupation and it's relatable.
We're all gonna die.
So now I'm trying to figure out, like,
OK, I'm writing this new show.
It's like, well, what's after death?
What's the show gonna be about?
What's more high stakes than death?
- One time, I was in West Virginia.
This is when I was starting out.
And this guy was opening for me.
He goes, "Oh, you live in New York City?"
He goes, "I went there once.
"The only place I saw was
the inside of an abortion clinic."
You know, that's like a joke where
I wouldn't have written that joke, like, 20 years ago.
But I wrote down the memory.
That's how he started the conversation.
Now, what I should have said...
was nothing.
[laughter]
What I did say was,
"You really gotta spend a week there
"to get a feel for the town.
"You know, I'd probably swing by the Empire State Building.
"If it's the holiday season, I'd go to Rockefeller Center
"to see the tree.
"The abortion clinics are nice.
That was one of your things."
[laughter]
I journal a lot--probably three, four times a week.
And usually, it's not funny,
as much as it's just writing down memories
so that I don't forget them.
- I'll walk into his dressing room when he's on the show,
and there'll be a journal he's writing in,
and there's another journal--
almost as if he's flexing to everybody who comes in,
I might fill up this first journal
so fast that I need a second one.
This is a random box of journals,
which is the only type of box of journals I have.
A lot--like, a majority of it is just writing something down
about how you feel and then rereading them later
and seeing if there's anything of value
that's worth saying onstage.
[percussive music]
"Comedy is mean, even when it's not mean,
"because life is mean and painful and cruel.
Or at very least, the funny parts."
I stand by that.
Most of the time, all of us are being polite
to either everyone we're encountering
or some people we're encountering.
And you don't have to be polite to a journal.
It is the only thing that I can think of
that is culturally understood that only belongs to you.
This is from, I think-- it's, like, four years old.
"I just got back from Brooklyn Bridge Park,
"where ten four-year-olds tackled me
"and stuffed grass into my nose and ears
and yelled, 'Beautiful.'"
That's the kind of thing that I would write down,
and it might become a joke, it might not.
I mean, that would basically have to be--
that would be the setup for punch line, tag, tag, tag.
Essentially, like, the structure
of, like, everything I do.
Like, in a full journal like this,
there might be one line that's, like, anything.
With all of this, you're creating clay
to make a sculpture.
But if you didn't have clay, you couldn't make a sculpture.
And so this is the dirt.
[upbeat music]
My whole life, my dad would be like,
"Don't tell anyone."
I wouldn't make the soccer team.
He'd be like, "Don't tell anyone."
I was like, "They're gonna know
"when I'm not on the team
and I'm crying, you know what I mean?"
And...
- Do you get time every day to write?
- God, no.
I mean, I try, but it's like--
I find that the time I'm able to write most
is on the subway to the Comedy Cellar.
Earlier today, I showed them my journals.
I've never shown anyone my journals--anyone, ever.
- You have a whole record called
"My Secret Private Journals."
- I know, but I've never showed them to anybody.
- [laughs]
- So the process usually is writing in my journal.
And then I'll be like, OK.
I'll give that a shot onstage.
And then I have one other Rhode Island story.
Pedro from Petro,
which I have to read, 'cause it's brand-new.
Two years ago, my wife and daughter and I rented
a house here in Barrington.
Everything was great until we turned the heat on
and there wasn't any.
And it was Thanksgiving.
I'll bring it to, like, Peter and Joe,
and we'll kick around analogies and tags
and things like that.
The Pedro from Petro story
went this week
from being 4 pages
to about 2 1/2 pages.
So it went from being about a 12-minute story
this week to being, like, a 7-minute story.
And I called the oil company.
I didn't shout, but I think he could hear
some angst in my voice.
And to deescalate it, he goes, "Happy Thanksgiving."
[laughter]
And it will probably land at being,
like, a 5-minute story.
Which I thought was a pretty smart move on his part,
because I was forced to respond,
"Happy Thanksgiving to you, too."
Even though he was completely fucking me over in real time
and lying to me, like the pilgrims.
[laughter]
The--all right, I'll keep in that line.
You could also change "Happy Thanksgiving"
to "Merry Christmas."
- Oh, right. Just move it to Christmas.
- Yeah. - Oh, that's interesting.
- In a way, that's kind of better.
- Well, is it less-- I mean, well,
people do run out of oil on Christmas.
- Yeah, but then you lose the pilgrims joke.
- That's the thing.
- Pilgrims joke is currently the biggest hitter.
- Oh, right. Right, right. - Yeah.
I feel like the upsides of this week, for me, feel clear.
There's a lot of jokes and a lot of stories that work.
The downside is, it's not about anything.
- I remember seeing one of Mike's shows
and going backstage afterwards,
and this was a show that was exceptional when I saw it.
I would've thought there was no work left in this show.
And then you go backstage,
and it does look like a detective
trying to catch a serial killer in the middle of a manhunt--
so many different index cards.
I don't know if it made it more or less fun
to realize how much work,
how much structure had gone into what I'd just seen
that he had made look effortless.
- This index-card thing is brilliant.
It sounds simple, but it's so brilliant.
He lays the entire show down on index cards.
[upbeat music]
He tells me,
"If I can lift up one of these index cards
and the show still works...
- "Decent guys on the bus" worked.
- "Then that joke, that story, is gone."
- I was on book the other night with it,
and it didn't go as well.
- He'll have bangers,
like, really great jokes.
- It felt a little stodgy.
- And he'll just lift it, lift it, lift it.
- I think, like, long-term, Pedro from Petro,
if that's gonna live in the show,
it's gonna have to have something to do
with taking care of my family.
- Mm-hmm. - Some kind of stakes.
- I know you well enough to know
you're in between, like, five things at all times.
You're working up new material at the Cellar,
or you're doing the podcast, you know.
And Jen has your back, and your brother has your back.
But somehow, even though they have your back,
you have a feeling all the time that it's all on you.
- [laughs] - That basically,
if you stop working for a month,
suddenly, like, several people would be unemployed and--
I don't know, I can't even imagine.
- My wife is-- she's here tonight.
She's a poet. She writes under a pseudonym.
It's Allen Ginsberg.
And... [laughter and applause]
And I don't know if I would--
I don't know if I would have made these shows
if it weren't for Jen, because she's always
really loved these shows.
And I think you end up just doing
the thing that the person who you're in love with enjoys,
because you're like, what else am I gonna do?
[upbeat rock music]
Actually, it was a funny moment.
They interviewed Jenny earlier today.
* *
- If you talk to Mike's siblings,
you talk to his parents, everyone will tell you
that Joe Birbiglia is the funnier Birbiglia.
- And Jen was like,
"I just want to set the record straight.
Like, Mike's the funny one."
- Aww. - I thought that was sweet.
* *
- When I met Mike, he was 25 years old.
As I got to know him, he would tell me stories.
And what I appreciated about it
is that he was telling me all these things about him
that were, like, a lot of red flags.
It wasn't gonna work if we were gonna get married
and I was going to stifle
his ability to talk about his life.
- I'm very jealous that Mike seems to have
a solid understanding with his wife
about what is allowed to be said onstage.
My wife and I are having a continuing conversation.
- In Hindi, there's a saying that says...
[speaking Hindi]
"Don't say the things that you speak of at home,"
which is a very, like, kind of beautiful saying about...
the way parents and family members feel
about the way comedians act onstage.
- My wife has said,
"I don't care how mean you make me sound,
as long as you always make me right."
It's diabolical.
- I'm happily married, which is to say,
I'm not happy...
[laughter]
But I'm happy I'm married.
Does that make sense?
- There's things that we just keep for ourselves,
and that's very important to me.
When I was pregnant, I had a lot of issues.
I was like, "I really don't want you
talking about this onstage."
And that was really hard for him.
- But, like, yeah, because I wasn't
happy before I, like, was married.
And then I got married, and I'm like, that's cool.
And then like, I'm still not happy.
You know what I mean?
And then, like, we had a child, and, like, that's great.
Still not happy. You know what I mean?
And...
- So when Mike started writing "The New One"
about that time period,
it was a little bit of floodgates opening
after I had sort of kiboshed
his ability to talk about our lives for a while.
- Me not being happy, like, that's what was cool about me.
Like, you saw my shows, right?
This is very tenuous stuff I'm talking about here.
It's unformed and irresponsible.
[laughter]
For me to have something be in a show,
it has to be a story that is attached to something real.
You know, tragedy plus time.
I'm always trying to find that.
But if it's just serious,
if I'm just talking about cancer
in a serious, serious way,
well, that's not, like, what having cancer is like.
Like, when you have cancer,
sometimes something funny happens.
That's why the story works.
There's parts of the Internet where they credit me with,
"Comedy is tragedy plus time." [laughter]
- Really? That's a good one, Mike.
- I'm like, how do I fact-check that one for them?
[laughter] That's not me!
My whole comedy career is based on it.
- Yeah. - But I didn't invent it.
- That's really funny.
- I haven't been here in 30 years.
Do you mind if I come up? - Come on in.
- OK. Well, thank you very much.
[upbeat music]
This is the house I grew up in Shrewsbury.
* *
- Oh, hi, there. I'm Mike.
I'm sorry to be in your home.
I remember standing up on a high chair
when I was probably three or four years old,
trying to get attention,
falling down, and landing on my head.
- Oh, no. - They take me to the hospital.
I ended up with, like, 20 stitches in my head.
- Oh, my goodness.
- That's where comedians come from.
We fall on our head.
This week I visited Shrewsbury, my hometown.
I grew up in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
Yeah. [cheers and applause]
I went to Saint Mary's School-- it's a Catholic grade school--
from grade one through eight.
And, like, the amount that you age
in that span of time is profound.
Like, there was this girl in my class.
The nun let her ring the bell for recess.
And I remember thinking, like, oh, that's so cool.
In, like, third grade, I was like, that's so cool.
I hope someday I can ring the bell.
And then when she was, like, in, like, ninth grade,
I heard she had sex for the first time.
And I was like, wow. I still haven't rung the bell.
You know what I mean?
[bell tolling]
You remember the three-check system?
If you were talking in class, you get a check.
Like, an X mark.
And I got three checks, like, so many times
because I just wouldn't stop talking.
- Yes. - They taught us
that God was watching us at all times.
And I thought, oh, I guess he's watching me masturbate.
And so I tried to cheat to the camera,
thinking if he happened to be looking
at the monitor at that moment, he'd think,
"I've seen a lot of 12-year-olds masturbate,
but this kid's good."
[laughter]
One of the misunderstood things about comedians is,
people always assume they're the class clown.
But I don't think a majority are.
- I don't ever remember thinking, like,
oh, he's funny, he's funny, he's funny.
Looking back on it...
I'm sorry, but you were not funny as a kid.
[laughs] - I get it. I get it.
- Your brother was funny.
- Your brother was hilarious. - Yeah, Joe was very funny.
- Yeah. - Joe's hilarious.
Growing up, when I would say things that were kind of
seemingly off-kilter to my friends,
I don't think it was ever viewed as humorous.
It was more viewed as just, like, why are you saying this?
[soft music]
People would be sort of confused.
* *
- This is first grade? - This is first grade.
- Yeah.
- I mean, I have this now.
If I say a thing that I'm thinking,
it's usually not very well received.
My sisters Gina and Patty,
they were, like, teacher's assistants.
And when they walked in,
they saw me just being screamed at.
Like, a teacher, like, in my face.
And Gina went home and said to my mom,
"Like, Mike's, like, a pretty bad kid.
"Like, he gets in trouble.
Like, gets in trouble, like, a lot."
- There was one kid who used to pick on you in this class.
- Oh, yeah. There was one time
this guy was pushing me on, like, the hill down here,
and then Michael, like, attacked him.
You, like, slid-tackled him or something.
- Is that, like, hard to think about?
- [chuckles]
- It's hard for me to think about.
It's always hard to know, like, as a friend
in that situation, right? Like--
- Yes. - How do you step in?
- Yeah.
When I was in ninth grade,
I went to this all-boys Catholic school.
- Saint John's? - Saint John's. There you are.
Joey Grigioni was from Worcester.
He loved to fight.
One day, I'm walking down the hill.
And I feel on the back of my head
what seems like a rock on my head.
Turns out it was a fist.
I forgot to mention, Joey Grigioni
has rock-like fists.
And next thing I know, I'm just on the ground.
And I'm just getting pounded in the back of my head.
I didn't even run away at first, you know?
Like, it took me a few seconds to just eventually be like,
I guess I should leave here, you know what I mean?
Like, this conversation is going terribly.
It's only now, at age 44, that any of this is funny at all.
[laughter]
[chuckles]
* *
- And then I just threw in the towel.
I go, you know, I'm just gonna leave this school.
And what was remarkable is that no one tried
to talk me out of it.
Not a single grown-up in my life.
Not my teachers, my parents, not my guidance counselor.
Nobody said, "Stick with it.
Don't let them get the best of you."
They knew that they had gotten the best of me.
Like, the best of me was gone.
[laughter]
So, at the end of the year, I transferred schools.
And the first few weeks of school,
you're getting to know people.
And they say, where are you from?
What was your last school like?
And I decided to leave out the fact
that I had been beat up mercilessly
in my previous school.
And you know what? They never found out.
Because that's what they don't teach you
in those after-school specials.
Running away works.
- Who am I not telling in the bullying story?
- Oh, that's true. That's a good point.
Yeah.
Yeah, no. I didn't-- it didn't occur to me.
[laughter]
And that's the show. Thanks a lot for coming.
[cheers and applause]
This has been the first week
of the next show.
So I was just happy that the "running away works,"
I got off the page.
- I really like that line of, like,
"That's what they don't teach you
in the after-school specials."
It's like, running away works. - Yeah, running away works.
I think for D.C., I'll try to memorize it.
[cheers and applause]
Also, like, just adding the context of, like,
being like, "I'm 44 now,
and so it's funny."
- Mm-hmm.
- It's funnier now than it was then.
- Yeah. - Like, it kind of gives
the audience a pass to laugh.
Great job this week, Gary. It's our first week!
[cheers and applause]
[upbeat jazzy music]
* *
[indistinct chatter]
[upbeat music]
* *
- This week I'm performing in Washington, D.C.
In Providence, I was just throwing out jokes,
seeing what sticks.
This week trying to put together
runs of jokes into what might be stories.
* *
Growing up, my dad would be like, "Hush!
Don't tell anyone."
In a year or two, those stories might become a show.
When she was in ninth grade, I heard she had sex
for the first time.
And I was like, wow. I still haven't rung the bell.
It's nice to be in D.C.
The first time I did stand-up,
I won a contest at Georgetown
called The Funniest Person on Campus.
It was wild.
It was hosted by Victoria Jackson
from "Saturday Night Live."
I think it was probably the first celebrity
I ever met in my whole life.
I couldn't believe that she was at my college.
[bell tolls]
[light music]
* *
The idea that I would just be performing
in a 600-seat theater was just shocking.
[cheers and applause]
Like, I think maybe it was a standing ovation.
Like, it was, like, pretty big.
Funniest Person on Campus contest
was when I met Nick Kroll,
because he entered also.
It was a really fluky thing
that a bunch of comedians came from this school,
because it's, like, not a funny school.
Just a very serious place.
I never even clocked, really, the idea
that I was doing comedy in this very,
like, almost, like, religious hall.
I auditioned for the improv group,
and I got in.
And it was, like-- it was a long shot.
Like, I think, like, 50 or 100 people auditioned.
And then all of a sudden, I was friends
with these ten hilarious people
who were funnier than anyone I had met in my whole life.
And I was like, oh, OK.
I guess this is-- I guess these people exist.
And it was very eye-opening.
It made me feel a certain sense of hope,
that, like, I found my people
and, like, that what I thought was funny about me,
they thought was funny about me.
And that was, like, a huge breakthrough in my life.
* *
Victoria Jackson said to me...
[high-pitched voice] "You're gonna be a comedian."
[normal voice] She had a very high voice.
I actually did think, like, maybe she's right.
I got $200 and the chance to perform
at the Washington, D.C. Improv, which is, like,
not only the best comedy club in Washington,
top five, top ten comedy clubs in the country.
[rockabilly music]
* *
[car horn honking]
* *
- I want you to get your hands together right now
for Mike Birbiglia.
Whoo! [cheers and applause]
- Thanks, Gary. Appreciate it.
Gary Simons, everybody.
I went, and I opened for Dave Chappelle.
Nice to see everybody.
I said, "Can I perform here again?"
I thought to myself, I just need stage time.
And they said, "We don't need that.
But we need someone to work the door."
So I go, "I'll do that."
I worked here at the door.
I used to seat people down here.
The worst was, you have to sometimes
seat people behind these poles.
For example, like, you have those seats behind the poles.
Right. No, and I'm sorry.
I would bring, you know, people with the menus.
And then I would jog away.
As an aspiring comic,
you get to watch a lot of shows for free.
I was able to watch, like, George Lopez and Mitch Hedberg
and Lewis Black and all these people who...
- Yeah. - like, I would have loved
to have seen, but I couldn't afford it.
Started off here when I was 19.
And I was, like, an observational comic.
Like, the kinds of jokes that I would say would be like,
I would hate to be a stick insect, you know,
'cause all the other insects are always bumping into you.
And that's the whole joke.
That would be my act.
The first time I told a joke that worked, I said,
"My girlfriend is getting to the age
"where she's thinking about having kids,
which is exciting 'cause we're gonna have to break up."
And I said, "I don't want to have kids
"until I'm sure nothing else good
can happen in my life."
It was like an inflection point.
Not because the joke is so great,
but because it was the moment where I realized
that telling an honest truth
about how I felt...
connected with a group of people in a room.
Like, there was a feeling of like,
oh, they get me, and I get them...
in a way that, like, an observational joke
about insects or something doesn't.
I opened for George Lopez once, and I kind of, like, bombed.
I was, like, up here, and it, like, didn't go great.
At the time, I was living with my girlfriend.
We'd watch Oprah every day together.
We were like Oprah soldiers. We were, like, super into it.
Like, all about it. We're in the book club.
You know what I mean?
Like, we're just, like, full-on Oprah.
But the thing that always struck me as really funny
was that her song at the beginning of her show
is, like--the song that was like...
* Run on, run on *
And my joke was, like, I don't think Oprah runs a lot.
And...
And this is not a joke I would ever tell now,
other than right now into a microphone
in front of a group of strangers.
I go backstage, and I say to George Lopez,
"Hey, do you have any, like, critical feedback?"
And he goes, "I wouldn't open with a thing about Oprah"...
"'Cause they love Oprah,
and they don't know who the hell you are."
[soft upbeat music]
He goes, "You know, you should make fun of yourself
"before you make fun of other people,
"because then you have a relationship
with the audience."
It's stuck to me to this very day.
* *
- That's my time. Thank you very much.
Let's give it up for Mike Birbiglia.
Whoo! [cheers and applause]
- Thanks, Gary.
Gary Simons, everybody.
- I've been really grateful to be able to do these shows
and, like, learn from each one.
- You're killing, man. You're doing great.
- Thank you. - It's exciting.
[upbeat music]
- Mike Birbiglia is one of those dudes
that truly loves the art form of comedy.
The people that he's touched-- myself, Kroll, Mulaney--
we're all so different,
but it is his love of comedy,
his desire to help mentor.
- My favorite comedians who are coming up,
like Hasan Minhaj and Atsuko Okatsuka,
I love that they tell personal stories.
And usually, like, I love when their stories
are completely different from mine.
- Trippy! - Ah!
Look what you've done.
[upbeat music]
[gagging]
I had already done stand-up
for maybe, like, 11 years.
And my stand-up, you know, not bad, you know.
But it wasn't gonna be life-changing.
It was definitely during the pandemic,
when there was just, like, a general big sadness,
I turned inward.
I didn't want people to feel sad.
I started writing more about things
that was hard for me to talk about before,
like my mom's mental illness.
The truth is, my mom has schizophrenia...
I never talked about it before the pandemic.
Which means she hears voices in her head
and she hallucinates a lot.
And also, I started talking to my fans more
and making more videos with my family...
because it was a mood lifter for all of us.
So those dance videos that went viral...
and the drop challenge that went viral,
that was all, you know, me running from trauma.
You know? [laughs]
Mike found me on one of those videos.
[elevator bell dings]
And then he DM'd me and was like,
"Would you want to be on my podcast?"
There is a show in Vegas called "The Puppetry of the Penis."
- Yes, there is. - Have you seen it?
- I've seen it. It's...
- You've seen it! - Bizarre.
- After that, he asked me to open for him.
* *
Just so cool, you know?
He's the one that told me to get on TikTok.
We don't need to talk age, but he is older than me.
He's 400 years old.
I'm hip.
My clothes, trendy.
You're telling me I need to be on TikTok?
And he's like, "Well, I mean, do you want to be forgotten?"
- Atsuko, like, she started coming on the road with me
and opening for me.
And at one point, I said to her, like,
like, what's the strangest thing that's happened
in the last few years?
And she told me...
- About this intruder that came to our house
three times in the same day.
I was already touring with my hour at that time.
And I was like, I want to figure out
a way to put this intruder story into the hour.
But I don't know how.
- And I was like, wow, this is great.
It's a great story.
- And he was like, "He came to your house
"three times in the same day.
That's three acts."
- That's not just a joke. That's a whole show.
- I was really excited but a little scared,
'cause I was like, well, I've been doing an hour
that I know works.
But I want this intruder story in there.
Oh, this is gonna be so much more work, Mike.
OK, I'll do it.
[rock music]
And then he got really excited.
He loves process. He loves jokes and stories.
And so he was like, "OK, let's sit down."
And he took out his note cards.
And he was like, "OK, so act one is first intrusion,
second intrusion, third intrusion."
* *
If you were to tell a younger me that as an adult,
I would have an HBO stand-up special,
I'd be like...
yeah, that sounds about right.
No, I'm just kidding. I'd be like, "What's HBO?
We don't have cable."
So our landlord had an intruder.
That's what he's so good at, having an arc in his shows.
- I used to write everything down on the computer,
and I actually found
there was value to writing it out longhand first.
When you think you have a funny idea
and you type it into the computer, it goes so fast.
When you think of an idea and you're writing it out longhand,
about halfway through a lot of times,
you realize, oh, this stinks.
And I did learn that from Mike.
- It's this weird thing where I'm not just looking to him
for advice, but I'm also looking for him
for some form of therapy, I guess.
- I'm aging into a point
where I'm starting to be a mentor to people,
which I don't think I ever thought I was gonna do.
But sometimes that just happens.
You age. [laughs]
And--but it was helpful for me to be a student first,
to understand, like, what that is and what--
as a student, what you need from a mentor.
You don't want it to be pretty good.
You want it to be great.
And the only way you can make it great
is writing, failing, getting feedback.
Need more there.
Writing again, failing again.
I'll take out that line.
The story peaked a little early.
Getting more feedback...
[cheering] I don't know why.
The ending worked well in the other show.
Is the only way that people get better.
That's what they don't teach you
in the after-school specials.
Sometimes running away works.
Eventually, if you're lucky,
you'll arrive at something that is yours.
Last night was the first time I thought,
the "getting beat up" story, I think,
will probably be in the next show.
This seems promising.
[applause]
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
[light music]
* *
- In some ways, stand-up comedy is like a documentary
of your own life, right?
In most documentaries, they shoot
and they shoot and they shoot.
And then eventually something happens.
And we go, oh, that's what it's about.
It all hinges on, there has to be a main event.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't know what the main event is of this yet.
* *
Once every three weeks, our dad will call me.
He'll go, "Mike, the craziest thing happened."
I'll go, "What?"
He goes, "I was at the hardware store...
And someone had heard of you."
And I was like,
"I don't know if that's, like, the craziest thing."
- He does say that a lot.
- The craziest thing.
- [laughs] - Like, I think,
the least believable part of that story
is that you were at a hardware store.
Dude, the whole job is, you tell jokes to strangers.
Eventually some of the strangers are gonna see it.
- [laughs]
- Our father did tell me once, one job he would have liked
would have been to be a writer for "Saturday Night Live."
- No. - He said that?
- Yeah. - I can't even see him
saying that or watching it.
- That is absurd. - Isn't that unusual?
- That is so strange.
- Seems out of character, right?
- Right. - Joe gets the juice.
- [laughs]
- My brother Joe was talking to my dad, who's 83.
He was a doctor, went to law school,
never wanted me and Joe to go into comedy at all.
- Mm-hmm. - And he said,
"I thought, for a period of time,
that I could write for 'Saturday Night Live.'"
- Really? - Yeah.
- Was your dad funny?
- My dad is very dry.
And my mom is a great storyteller.
- Hmm.
Have you ever heard of the thing
that Rilke says, how children dance
to the unlived lives of their parents?
- Oh.
Going to Shrewsbury this week,
Dad, of course, wanted to know, "Who did you run into?"
- Yeah. [laughs] - "Who did you see?"
And then you go, "Mrs. Gazik, Mrs. McCann."
"Well, did they say anything about me?"
- They wanted to know if you were alive.
- Yeah, they wanted to know if you were alive.
Exactly. That's exac--yeah.
Yes. I answered that you were alive.
[light guitar music]
In my 20s and 30s, as a comedian,
I feel like I have so many judgments
in my act of my parents.
And I think as I get older and they get older,
they're in their 80s, and I'm just like--
it's like, what was I doing?
When I see our childhood home,
like, it definitely brings me to, oh, yeah,
like, they were just parents just, like, trying their best.
- That's right.
* *
- So it's like, maybe that's what the next show is about.
- Mm-hmm.
- I don't know how literally any one of those jokes
supports that idea.
- [laughs] - But it could.
* *
It's like, the reason I don't know what the show is about
is, I don't know what will happen
in the next three or four years.
* *
So it's like, you know, God forbid,
someone close to me dies or any number of things
that I'm anxious about at all times could occur.
And I'd say, most likely,
that's what the show ends up being about.
It's just a doozy.
Being an autobiographical comedian is not--
it's not advisable.
But also, it's my favorite type of comedy.
[chuckles]
That's all for me. [cheers and applause]
Thank you so much. Thanks for being here.
I'll see you next time, everybody.
[upbeat music]
* *
Still rolling? Speeding?
Save it for the camera. - You save it.
- What was it like? - Save it for the camera.
- OK. All right. - That's more interesting
than what I have to say.
- Sister Margaret walked into our classroom.
And she was like, "Boys and girls,
"I'm hearing something on the playground.
I'm hearing a word." - [laughs]
- "And that word is 'fuck.'" - Oh, my God. Wow.
"What happened to that one joke?"
The reason it's gone is because of you.
- You know, the thing
that always impresses me the most about Mike
is how much thought he puts into his clothes.
When he walks out onstage, you think,
oh, maybe one day I'll hit it big enough
to have whoever his personal shopper is.
- Pretty much everything I'm saying
makes me uncomfortable.
- Yay, good job, everyone.