The Tim Ferriss Show - #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant

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Starting point is 00:03:25 So, the guest, Mike Birbiglia. I've wanted to interview Mike for years. You can find him on Twitter at Birbigs, B-I-R-B-I-G-S. He is one of the best known and busiest working comedians in the world, both behind and in front of the camera. His stand-up blends a lot of elements, different elements, theater, film, storytelling, and comedy. This is of interest to me because he's been very deliberate in studying different crafts and tying them together. And this is reflected in his string of successes, which include sold-out tours as a solar theater act. He just did 100 Cities not too long ago, New York Times best-selling books, off-Broadway shows, feature film, TV, and much more. In the last few years, his work has started to appear on This American Life,

Starting point is 00:04:08 which is an incredible show and a podcast, for those interested, where he began a meaningful collaboration with the host and producer Ira Glass, who I'd love to have on the podcast at some point. Currently, Mike is the creator, writer, and star of the new film Don't Think Twice, which is hilarious, heart-rending, just a wonderful watch. I saw an early preview copy and it blew me away. So I highly recommend it. I don't say that lightly. It's a great movie. If you've struggled with notions of feeling like a failure, hoping for success, achieving some degree of success, and then getting more or less than you bargained for. It's an incredible journey, so I do recommend

Starting point is 00:04:49 you check that out. And how the hell does he pull all of this stuff off? He seems to be juggling a million projects. I aim to find out. We dig into it. So without further ado, please enjoy Mike Birbiglia. Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks, Tim. It's very exciting and timely for me to be here. Because I'm digging into all of your stuff. I'm immersing myself and it is affecting my life in real time. So speaking with you is almost a virtual reality experience. Well, I think this is a mutual feeling

Starting point is 00:05:25 since I've been a consumer and fan of your comedy for so long. And I've started thinking, after Elon Musk hints that we could be, logically speaking, players in some sophisticated future entities video game, that this might all be a virtual reality, albeit a very sophisticated one. But if I wanted to bring us back to the earth, at least as we understand it for a second, I pinged a number of mutual friends of ours, Brian Koppelman, of course,

Starting point is 00:05:57 famed screenwriter, all around good guy, Chris Saka, both of whom have been on the podcast before because they've spent some time with you and i wanted to ask a number of things that they brought up so the first was from koppelman and i asked very specifically does he have any obsessions that you know of outside of comedy and one word back pizza that's correct So can you elaborate on this, please? It's such an embarrassing obsession because it's a simple, you know, it's bread and cheese and sauce. I mean, hearing you say that

Starting point is 00:06:36 makes me realize how simple of a human being I am. I have a joke from my first album, Two Drink Mike, which is I love pizza so much I would marry it, but it would just be an elaborate ploy to eat her whole family at the reception. But it's so stupid. But I love pizza. I think it's just, you know, it's the simplicity of it. It's from my childhood. There's no deeper meaning other than by the time my mom raised me,

Starting point is 00:07:06 that's Freudian saying that because I was raised by my mother and father, but my mother was around more often. She really kind of gave up on parenting and ordered pizza a lot. She didn't want to cook that much, and so she'd just be like, let's just order pizza. So she just got very used to it,

Starting point is 00:07:24 and now I figure, well, in my adulthood, I might as well be a connoisseur and have good pizza. So what now qualifies for you as good pizza? If you could have one type of pizza delivered to you, and I'm sure there are many options, but are you a deep dish? Are you a New York style thin crust? What are we talking? Yeah. Yeah. I think there's two kinds of pizza that I like most. One is New York, New York, uh, thin crust, uh, coal oven and, um, places like Arturo's and Lucali, uh, Luzzo. And then I have this odd, you know, from my childhood, just in Massachusetts, there's a ton of Greek pizza. Just there's all these sort of greasy Greek pizzerias that I grew

Starting point is 00:08:13 up on. And, and so I have a fondness for that. Like, so if I'm driving, it's like all through New England. So if I'm driving to my parents' house and I'll stop in Connecticut, like a pizzeria on the side of the road in like the suburb of Connecticut and just get pizza. And the other one, the other pit stop there is New Haven has extraordinary pizza too. Really? Never would have guessed in a million years. And now is there something that characterizes Greek pizza other than the fact that it's made by Greeksreeks is it the same ingredients or do they do anything particularly no no it's same ingredients it's just it's just sort of a it's a medium-sized crust pizza but but i mean there's a million theories on pizza uh most people say it's based on you know the water i mean there's book there's books and books written about pizza but you know

Starting point is 00:09:03 that's people say it's it's it's water-based what makes it good, which is why, for whatever reason, New York pizza is better, in my opinion, than most places. And actually, the reason Koppelman is also bringing that up, I think, is that I would have these readings for my film Don't Think Twice at my house to workshop the film script the way that I would work I workshop my stand-up and I Would always I would have over people like Frank Hoplin Michael Webber You know like Phil Lord came to one of Nicole Hall Center and I would always have the best pizza like I have Lucali Or I'd have Lutz oh and I would say at the beginning of the reading the script might be bad But at the end we we're all going to eat pizza. It's like dealing with the grade schoolers. It is like dealing with grade schoolers, but it's a great incentive. I always urge people,

Starting point is 00:09:55 I always urge like screenwriters or anyone who needs feedback on their work to just invite people to something where you give them something. Give them food, give them ice cream, give them pizza, and try and solicit their feedback. Because feedback, I think, is the most valuable thing you can have for your writing. So let's talk about, well, two things since they came up. The movie, first of all, I was very excited to get a sneak peek, I suppose, Early Access on Vimeo. And I'm only a half hour in, but I've loved it. I watched it actually with a friend and also former podcast guest, Cal Fussman, who wrote the What I

Starting point is 00:10:34 Learned column or a large portion of it for decades for Esquire. And we both, after watching the portion we watched, because I had to jump on the phone to do this interview. Number one, he said, well, you should skip ahead to see the end so that you can discuss it with Mike. And I said, no, no, no. I want to watch the rest of the movie, the entire movie tonight. So I was very pleased and relieved that the movie is really, really good. And it made me, I'm going to digress here because that's my style but many moons ago i actually took one and it was the only improv class at a place called boba no casting in san francisco i remember it brought back memories and it made me want to go take improv classes as well as go

Starting point is 00:11:18 see good improv yeah but so that's so the the don't think twice i i would highly recommend people check out and uh saka Sokka loves it as well. And it gets better by the way. And it gets better. I mean, I'm not even, I'm not even through kind of act one. Yeah. I, I'm, it's nice that you haven't seen the whole thing because I can dance around things and so that the listeners don't, aren't spoiled on things.

Starting point is 00:11:41 And, but, but yeah, it gets better. But what, one of the comments that came up from cal and i concurred was that the writing was really good so i want to talk about the workshopping what is the format like could you explain how you workshop the material and in in what at what stage do you workshop it i conceived this idea um my first film was called sleepwalk with me and it's um people want to see it it's on netflix it's easy to find and uh and after i made it i i went back to improvising at ucb theater after years of kind of taking time off from improv i'd studied it in college etc and the reason i

Starting point is 00:12:20 went back to it is because ucb upspright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York and Los Angeles, actually. And the reason I went back to it is because I realized that so many of the principles, probably the principles that you see at the beginning of the movie and that you probably studied in your class, say, yes, it's all about the group. Don't think, just do. And all those principles are really what got me through directing a film which was the hardest thing by far i've ever done in my entire life and i after i directed it i was like how the hell did i even live through that like how did i even stay alive and i realized that it was all these things in improv that had taught me that and so i veered back into doing improv and one night my wife who's

Starting point is 00:13:06 who's brilliant came to one of my improv shows and she made this observation and i thought it was wonderful which is she goes it's because i think it was on that on that given night it was like it's it guest improvisers sit in with me this show called my previous dream and any given week it'll be like ad bryan from sn SNL or Ellie Kemper from Kimmy Schmidt or like, you know, Zach Woods from Silicon Valley. And she said, my wife said, it's amazing watching this art form with these people because it's all about the group and how everyone's equal.

Starting point is 00:13:41 But in real life, that person's a TV star, that person's a movie star, that person's a movie star, and that person shares a one-bedroom in Bushwick with five dudes who live on air mattresses. And I thought, man, that's not just a great observation. It's a whole movie. I mean, that is a whole movie to me. And I could just see the movie.

Starting point is 00:14:01 And I started just writing out just this really kind of throw up, what I call a throw up pass of the movie script. I would go to coffee shops in the morning for three, my minimum's three hours. I stick myself in a coffee shop with no internet and no email, no anything. And then if it's going well, I go up to five hours. And if it's not going well, I just end at three hours, but, and then I would start to start to interrupt. What time do you have a, do you have a time that you've generally used for that? I try to do 7am. I try to do, I try to write before my inhibitions take hold of me. Ah, right. So I almost try, I always, I always say write, because I'm an actor as well, I always say write in a trance and act in a trance.

Starting point is 00:14:47 Like, it's almost like you don't even want to think consciously about what you're putting on the page for fear of, oh, you wrote this down in your book. You write them as emails to people. Right. And I think that's such a brilliant, that's in your book, right? Yeah, no, it is. And I think that's such a brilliant, that's in your book, right? literally go into an email compose window and write the first chapter as if it were just a letter to a close friend after me having had two drinks. That was basically it. That's so brilliant. And a lot of times what I do is I'll write in my journal as though it'll never be seen by anyone ever. And then more often than not, the things I put in my secret journal

Starting point is 00:15:44 are the things that I publish. And when you sit down at the coffee shop 7am or just beforehand, a couple of things, do you have a particular type of coffee or beverage? And then do you use Word? Do you use... I do a cappuccino and I do movie magic screenwriter is the program i use or i write in a notebook by hand i try i try to write as much in my hand in an in a like a nice notebook that i'll you know that has some meaning to me sometimes i'll have my friends like once i was on last summer i was on tour for the movie train wreck and with david tell and amy schumer and vanessa bell and Amy Schumer and Vanessa Bayer. And it was my birthday. And Dave Attell got me a journal. Like it was really sweet.

Starting point is 00:16:30 He just, you know, he just like gave me a little gift for my birthday. He bought it. We were in Seattle on tour. Gave me a nice journal. That's really nice. One of my favorite standup comics. Never had any interaction with him,

Starting point is 00:16:40 but really awesome, amazing. Yeah, one of the greats. And I asked him if he would sign it on the, just in the back somewhere. And so he, I have like a Dave Attell notebook. And so it's sort of signature series. Well,

Starting point is 00:16:51 I think of it as like, it's blessed, you know, like sometimes when people ask me, like sometimes people ask me to sign their notebook and I'll write like, I bless these jokes. And then I'll write my friends like, um, you know, Andrew, Andrew Dost, who's a musician who's in the band Fun,

Starting point is 00:17:09 he came to see my off-Broadway show, Thank God for Jokes, and he actually brought me a journal as a gift, and I asked him if he would sign it, and so he wrote this nice note. And I think there's something about the personal element and the personal relationship with notebooks that I think can, can be helpful to the writing. A couple of really, I guess, perhaps mundane questions, but I'm curious on the last movie magic screenwriter. Why do you use that instead of say a final cut or something like

Starting point is 00:17:34 that? God, it's so stupid. I mean, I'm, I'm a real wonk with screenwriting and, uh, like I, I listened to the script notes podcast with Craig Mason and John August and those guys just, they despise final cut. They just despise it. Um, and, or I'm sorry, final draft. Oh yeah. You know what? I always mix those up. That was, I just incepted you with the wrong information. Sorry. Yes. Final draft. But, um, and, but anyway, a few years ago I stumbled across movie magic and I like it and there there's no there's no good reason necessarily. But so I write and actually this is a real quirk that I rarely admit to anyone, never mind in public, to get to finish the script.

Starting point is 00:18:14 I found that I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And I was analyzing my habits and I was like, I'm putting that I'm putting off writing this script, but I'm not putting off, you know, having lunch with Brian Koppelman or having lunch with my brother or whatever. And so I thought, well, I'm always on time and I always show up to things. So why don't I do that for myself? And so what I did was I put a note, a handwritten note next to my bed that said, Mike, and it has three exclamation points. Mike, you have a meeting at Cafe Pedlar. That's where I was writing at 7am with your mind, which is so stupid. It's so embarrassing to admit, but it works.

Starting point is 00:18:59 But if it works, it works. I was like, yeah, if it works, it works. I was like, well, I have a meeting. It doesn't matter that it's with myself, but it's a meeting and I have to be on time. I love that. I love it. The human mind is such an odd amalgamation of sensical and nonsensical behaviors. I just love it. When you brain vomit. So I vomited the script out in a few weeks. Is it scenes? Do you start with just stream of consciousness, lines you want to include? Yes.

Starting point is 00:19:28 That's exactly right. And it goes from stream of consciousness. I'd like to see a scene of this. I'd like to see a scene of this. I'd like to hear this piece of dialogue. I wrote down like I had a corkboard my walls. Like it's silly when you see my office. It's just like a wall of corkboard.

Starting point is 00:19:45 And one of the, the three by fives I put up, I put up all of these mind writing slogans, which you can look up, you know, things like quotes from, you know, there's a Ezra Pound quote that I have in my wall that literally three words. I think it's one of the best quotes for, for writing only emotion endures. And I always try to keep that in mind when i'm writing because i think that that's that's just a really crucial idea you said mind writing quotes yeah that's that's um mind writing quotes it's it's there's they're just these kind of like you know you can do googles for like mind writing quotes and it's like quotes from writers collected over time by famous writers. And you can you know, they're written up and, you know, there's like like you look around and there's like lines from Hemingway and there's lines from George Orwell and Jack Kerouac. And, and, um, it

Starting point is 00:20:45 was funny cause it was something that, um, Elna Baker, who's, who's a producer in this American life actually gave me as a tip when I was writing my book, sleepwalk with me and other painfully true stories. She said, she said, I had, when I wrote my book, she said, I had all these mind writing slogans on the wall and I, and I used it and it, it, it's real. I find it to be really, really helpful helpful so only uh emotions endures was that the quote only emotion endures emotion what does that mean to you well what it means is a lot of times writer as a writer you get hung up on you get hung up on uh cultural references you know a lot of times like a if you see a comedian a lot of times

Starting point is 00:21:23 the the way that I lose interest in comedians, for example, or sitcoms or movies or whatever, is that it gets it gets hung like they get hung up on like a cultural reference, a joke about a cultural reference that literally will be gone in in four years or five years? Like, you know, there's a reference to Twitter in my movie and Don't Think Twice. And I was very cautious to think through the implications of in 10 years when Twitter no longer exists or becomes the MySpace of the future, will that reference make sense to the viewer and advance the story? And because, you know, I always have to think in those terms, like there's a part of Sleepwalk with me,

Starting point is 00:22:12 the movie where my character is figuring out how to drive to one of his gigs and and he uses Google Maps. And it's like a very key visual. And I had to think like, okay, what's going to be the mapping system of the future? And then like, will people be able to grasp what this mapping system is in relation to the story? In other words, like if you get too hung up on sort of making jokes or your sort of cultural jokes about, you know, things that might go away,

Starting point is 00:22:44 then that whole five minutes of the movie is sort of dead in a way. Well, it's it's I mean, it's at risk ephemera, right? I mean, when you have that topical hook. Yeah, yeah. And so and so with this movie, I was really about, like, what is this about? It's about friends. And so when it's about a group of friends coping with what it's like to be in their 30s and confront the idea that they might not be successful the way they thought they were going to be successful in life and what does that mean what does that mean for their lives what does it mean for their friendships and so it was it was about like whenever it would veer into something that was like a cultural reference i would be like no no let's pull it

Starting point is 00:23:24 back to it's about friends. And so that's what I mean by mind writing slogans. And then I would have also on the wall, like things that felt like principles for the movie. Like I would, I wrote, like when my wife made the observation about how everyone's equal on stage, but off stage, they're completely unequal.

Starting point is 00:23:40 I wrote on the wall, this thing I made up, which is art is socialism, but life is capitalism. And that was like a guiding principle for the film, which is like, how is that? How can that be a conflict between these friends? You should you should add your own quote to the mind writing quotes collection. Well, you know, you know who bites me on that is Bernie supporters. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be. I get their point.

Starting point is 00:24:16 So at what point then do you invite your friends over and ply them with pizza? What form? How rough is it when you give it to them? Probably about two months in. Yeah, I started writing two years ago in end of April. And then like June, it was like June 10th, I had people over. And so it was like two months in draft and I had people over. And I said, you know, I prefaced it. I said, it might not be good and thanks for coming.

Starting point is 00:24:39 And those ended up, I had like 10 or 12 of those at my house. They ended up being some of the most fun part of the process entirely because there's really no stakes to showing your friends your work. I mean, it feels like there's stakes. I was very nervous. But it's just there's something communal about it. There's something fun about it. And do you do a table read? Do you have people take roles or do they just all read in silence and then give you feedback?

Starting point is 00:25:08 How does it work? No, no, no. So I have them read it aloud. And like I would have my assistant at the time, Greg, would read the screen directions. And I would assign parts and I would highlight the scripts for people. And then we'd read it aloud. And then we'd eat pizza and we just kind of talk about, uh,

Starting point is 00:25:27 the, what, what it made us feel like, you know, my, my, the, the director of my one person shows is this guy named Seth Barrett.

Starting point is 00:25:34 She's really brilliant theater director. And he, um, he always does this thing dramaturgically, which is, Ooh, good word. He will listen to,

Starting point is 00:25:44 I will pitch him what I'm working on, what my idea is, or a piece of writing. I even did it this week because I was asked to write a piece for a storytelling event in Nantucket Film Festival. And I read it to him over the phone. And then he says back to me, well, what I get from that is this. And it's like this, not a nonjudgmental way of interfacing with a collaborator. So, so in other words, you know, I, I give him, he reads this script and then he says, you know, well, what I get from it is it's a group of friends and you know, one of them ends up being more successful than the other and then they're all trying to figure out what they're doing with their lives.

Starting point is 00:26:29 And so if he says that back to me and I think to myself, well no, it's more than that. It's actually about this, this, this and this. And he says, well that's not what I got from it. It's actually helpful to the process because it's, I think one of the most important things about writing is that, that you, that people are getting what you're intending. Like I listened to an interview with Ron Howard where he was talking about

Starting point is 00:26:55 how he, he shows his movie to tons of test audiences and it's not so that they can tell him what the vision for the movie should be in the rough cut form but it's to find out whether his vision is landing with people and if it's not landing and if they're not he's not then he's not conveying it correctly and he goes back and reworks it a lot so that's that's how i like to think of the screenplay process and what i like to do is i i like to work out, like what I'm doing essentially in my living room,

Starting point is 00:27:29 in my little shabby apartment in Brooklyn, is basically what they're doing on like the $100 million level in Hollywood with tons more money and fancier offices. And it's quote unquote development in Hollywood with tons more money and fancier offices and, and it's quote unquote development in Hollywood. They develop these screenplays for years and years and years. And it's all these executives giving notes, but I don't want executives to give notes to me.

Starting point is 00:27:56 I want writers to give notes and I want actors to give notes. I want collaborators who actually do, do the things that I like and, I like and who I aspire to be. Like, I bring, I like invite people over who are way better writers than me. Like, I have no business, like, getting notes from Phil Lord, you know, who's the director of, you know, 21 Jump Street and, you know, the Lego movie. Like, he's just a brilliant, brilliant mind. But who cares?

Starting point is 00:28:24 I'm just going to ask him to come. If he doesn't want to come, that's fine too. And do you generally say go through a five minute scene in its entirety and then people do a postmortem and give their, their thoughts or will they read a line and then say, you know what? Like that, my character wouldn't say that. That's weird. It sounds stilted. Like, how do you, how do you actually facilitate? We read it start to finish. So we read it as though it's a table, like a table read for a sitcom or a movie. And then at the end, we just kind of adjourn and some fiery discussion start. A lot of people give their thoughts and they really conflict with other people's thoughts.

Starting point is 00:29:03 And those people fight with each other. And I listened to that and it's really helpful. So you don't swear on stage, uh, generally as I understand it, although Saka said one or two funny exceptions perhaps. And in the recent, and in the recent show, thank God for jokes, I actually dissect why I don't curse gratuitously on stage and and why in some ways in the thank god for jokes show i departed from that a little bit which i can explain yeah please please explain because for instance i've been i i'm an avid consumer of stand-up love it and have have i've heard for instance dirty jirty Jim Gaffigan, but he's largely sanitized, but he can often pull it off. And so what is your logic behind your approach?

Starting point is 00:29:57 My logic was it started off in kind of an embarrassing way, which is to say that my parents were very upset that I was going to pursue comedy. My mom, my dad's a doctor, my mom's a nurse. Those are professions where people help other people and are ashamed of their artistic children. And so, but my mom was so upset when I was moving to New York. And she said, just don't become one of those dirty comedians. And I said, okay. And she said, you don't have to use those words to be funny. For example, Oprah's very funny. And I was like, mom, I'm not sure you understand my goal. I'm not trying to be the queen of daytime, but you know, it's, it's stuck with me with me because you know you want to make your parents

Starting point is 00:30:46 happy you know you know you want to pursue your goals but you're also you know these people gave you everything and so you have to heed you should heed that to some extent and so i've tried not to curse for a lot of years um but i do i do feel conflicted about that sometimes because a lot of comedians i admire most did curse on stage let me me Bruce Richard Pryor. And then some of them who famously don't curse are secretly criminals. Um, and, uh, I'll be referenced,

Starting point is 00:31:12 but, uh, but yeah. And so, and so I, I'm somewhere in between that. I will say that I don't curse gratuitously more often as, as,

Starting point is 00:31:21 as, as word choice than it is to sanitize it for people who object for Christian reasons about words. Like, I have no problem, I curse a lot, quite a bit in my life, but when you're a writer, I think that word choice is important.

Starting point is 00:31:40 I think word variety is important. So if you say, I don't know if you personally podcast, but I do occasionally, but I try not to be egregious. If you say the F word 75 times in an hour, that's poor word choice.

Starting point is 00:31:56 You're not being creative. It's lazy. It's like using the adjective interesting as a modifier for everything. Yes. As a matter of fact, there's this brilliant film that calls out that point at the festival. It's called Captain Fantastic. And it's coming out, I think, maybe in September. Is this with Viggo Mortensen?

Starting point is 00:32:18 It is. I've heard a friend of mine saw a screener and said it was fantastic. I haven't. But it's a father who raises his family in sort of the woods, like off the grid, so to speak, in Washington State. And he won't let the kids say the word interesting because it doesn't mean anything. And it's actually, it called, it made me reconsider that as a word choice and try to banish it from my vocabulary. But anyway, the point is that the F word is not, to banish it from my vocabulary. But anyway,

Starting point is 00:32:45 the point is that the F word is not, I don't think the F word is effective as a monologuist unless you're using it to the right effect, to the good effect. For those who are interested in delving into the etymology and various uses of the word fuck, which is in fact very flexible. There is a book called English as a Second Fucking Language that goes, that is a fantastic short read. I think it has a quote. I might be making this up from Stephen King. Don't sue me, Stephen, on the front or some huge name. Who do you run jokes by? I run them by primarily audiences is, uh, I go out and I bomb with jokes and I, and see what lives I see, you know, and, and then, um, also my brother, Joe, my brother,

Starting point is 00:33:34 Joe took me to introduce me to comedy when I was a kid. He, I was, he was a senior in high school. I was in eighth or ninth grade and I was helping him write these satire issues of the newspaper. So that was sort of my introduction to comedy. And then he took me to see Stephen Wright live, and that changed my life. That was when I was in high school, and it just changed the way I thought about everything. It was like an epiphany moment of like, oh, I want to do that. That's what I can do. And I started writing in my notebook and

Starting point is 00:34:05 i wrote all these kind of stephen wright rip-off jokes and then really and they're 24-hour banking who has time for that exactly and yeah yeah i went to a i went i went to a drive-in movie in a cab movie cost me 95 they're just great i, they're just endlessly great if people are interested in that type of joke. Another great joke writer in that vein is Mitch Hedberg, who I'm sure people are more familiar with. So good. But anyway, once I saw Stephen Wright, I was like, oh, this is over. I'm doing this. And then when I was in college, I entered a stand-up comedy contest, and I won.

Starting point is 00:34:42 And so it got me the chance to perform at the dc improv and then i got a job sort of working the door at the dc improv and uh and and uh but the point is is that my brother joe and i always would kick around jokes like ever since you know i was like 19 years old and and now he he's worked for me or he's he he's worked with me. We run our production company for the last 10 years together. I like poached him from being an ad copywriter because he had gone sort of the route that my parents had wanted me to go. And I veered into comedy. And then I sort of brought him along when I was able to financially do that. Pulled him to the dark side. I pulled him to the dark side and he's a, yeah, he's an extraordinary writer. And, uh,

Starting point is 00:35:25 and so I run everything by him, but, but the big, big thing is also like I run, you know, I run stuff by Ira Glass when we're working on something for this American life. I run stuff by Seth Barish when we're working on something for one of my one person shows and then my wife quite a bit. And then audiences, I mean, audiences are the big determiner of what is worth saying. A lot of times if you're in front of, and when I say audiences, I don't mean it doesn't have to be 2000 people. I mean, you know, 10 people at the comedy cellar on two in the morning, I can understand whether a bit is going to work, you know, for five years. I love watching comedians work on material. And I've seen a number of them with notepads who are friends of mine working on material. They apologize after the fact.

Starting point is 00:36:09 And I'm like, no, are you kidding me? This is what I want to see. I can always see the finished product on HBO or wherever it ends up coming out. This is the in-process stuff that I want to see. Me too. I love it. And so let me dig into some of the details and see if there's anything to discuss. So the process of eliciting feedback, when you pass something by someone, let's just say it's comedy and you're talking to Ira Glass or someone like that, are there any particular questions that you ask? And the reason I bring that up is that when I have my friends who are writers proofread my writing,

Starting point is 00:36:45 let's say for a book, I ask them first to highlight anything that is confusing. That's good. Like whether they're unclear, like whether they love or hate something is secondary to clarity, right? And as long as it's clear, they can hate it, but I want them to understand what I'm saying. And then it kind of goes on from there. Well, that's similar to the Ron Howard idea of, is what I'm saying. And then it kind of goes on from there. Well, that's similar to the Ron Howard idea of is what I'm creating being conveyed the way that I meant for it to be conveyed. Right. And so in your case, Ira is a brilliant man, but not a comedian as far as I can tell,

Starting point is 00:37:18 although he has his moments of being funny, certainly. With someone like Ira or anyone else, is there a particular way that you elicit feedback to make it as helpful as possible i usually um i usually do it i i'll tell people bits and jokes over the phone um partly because they can sort of peacefully, uh, peacefully give feedback in a way that doesn't feel so judgmental where when you're face to face with somebody, it can be hard to, to say a joke to them and have them feel the pressure of, Oh, I, I should laugh or I should politely respond on the phone. It's pretty easy to just kind of like skim through stuff.

Starting point is 00:38:06 And I can hear, I can hear when people are interested by what I'm seeing said, you know, Quentin Tarantino often I've, I've read this. Quentin Tarantino will call people endlessly and pitch the movies that he's working on. And he says he doesn't even have to hear the laughter.

Starting point is 00:38:28 He can hear in their silence what their interest level is. It's like the silence whisperer. Exactly. There's some truth to that. If you pitch stuff to people all the time, after a while you kind of get the sense of, are they hooked or are they not? If they're not hooked, which I think could happen. Why do you think, and this is a very broad question, why did you make it, so to speak, in a business where very few people do? You've reached a level of success across several different art forms, but let's just

Starting point is 00:39:20 look at comedy and the various iterations of that. What were the decisions you made or chance encounters or mentors or whatever it might be that contributed to you just look at comedy and the various iterations of that. What were the decisions you made or chance encounters or mentors or whatever it might be that contributed to you making it, at least that being the perception, certainly. When I was 19, I had a bladder tumor and I was, um, I, I, it was ended up being, they caught it early. It was a malignant tumor. And so for the next, every three months for the next like five years, I would have to go for a cystoscopy where they would look inside my bladder and see if the cancer had returned. And it didn't.

Starting point is 00:39:54 I was very, very lucky. You know, I'm, you know, it's like almost 20 years later and I go for cystoscopy like every now every like two years or so but that at this exact same time that i had this kind of life-threatening uh ailment happen i started to do comedy and i i entered a contest and i won and i got this job at the dc improv and i would watch every comedian who would come through the dc improv and i would watch you know and and the variety actually was really helpful. It's like, I, I saw Larry, the cable guy before he was a stadium act. Like I saw, you know, Dave Chappelle before he was a Chappelle show and George Lopez and Margaret show and Kathleen

Starting point is 00:40:35 Madigan, Brian Regan, Jake Johansson, Jim Gaffigan, all these people. And I watch all of them. And then I would try to just bug them with questions. And so I was, I had this kind of education in watching a ton of comedy and going to open mics and trying comedy at the exact same time where I had this realization from cancer that, that life is short, like in, in, in can end, you know, and it can end at any time. And it's like, in some ways, the best thing that ever happened to me was that perspective. Because I became an absolute workaholic

Starting point is 00:41:16 trying to get good fast. Like, I wanted to become a really great stand-up comedian really fast. And so I to become a really great standup comedian really fast. Um, and, and so I feel like that, that's the thing that there's this comedian, Tommy John again, who, who started in the Midwest. And I remember he opened for me one time when, when he was in college and now he's, you know, he's been on Letterman a lot of times and he's, he's got a

Starting point is 00:41:40 great career, but when he opened for me, like when he was in college, he like, I had done standup like once or twice. And he quoted this back to me years later. And he said, he goes, you gave me this piece of advice when I, like the moment I started. Um, and it's, it's what made me sort of help me create what I've created as a career, which is if you want to perform five minutes of good comedy, write what you think is three hours of great comedy. And because that's the ratio that it's going to be. You're going to write about three hours of what you think is great,

Starting point is 00:42:25 and that about five minutes of that's worth showing an audience. That's a good quote. And I remember reading at some point, I don't recall who it was. I want to say Neil Gaiman, but that's just because I have a secret infatuation, not so secret infatuation with Neil Gaiman. So this is something helpful that I want to attribute to him somehow, which was a writer talking about process and discussing the frustration of say, writing nine or 10 pages and only having one or two paragraphs at the end be worthwhile and feeling like the first nine pages were a waste of time, but then emphasizing, no, in fact, you needed those first nine pages so that you could produce the two paragraphs that are of use. Yeah, not only that.

Starting point is 00:43:14 I mean, that's a brilliant way of looking at it. Not only that, everything that you do in your life, I've realized over the years, is leading to where you are. So, so in other words, like the fact that when I was in college, I worked at the door of DC improv and brought food to people's tables. And then I was a waiter at the tombs when I was in college. And then I was, uh, you know, I was, uh, uh, a temp in New York city at a pharmaceutical company. All of that actually led to the life experience that would be able to put something on the page that feels real. There's a, I went to a little talk at the Nantucket Film Fest this morning with Oliver Stone. And the thing that I wrote down in my notebook from it,

Starting point is 00:43:57 my takeaway was he, when he was like 20 years old, he wrote, I think a novel and it got rejected like all over New York city, like every publisher for like two years,, he wrote, I think, a novel, and it got rejected all over New York City, every publisher, for two years. He tried to get published for two years. And then he joined the Army. And when he got out of the Army, because of the GI Bill, he was able to go to film school, and then he made films. And what he talks about is that it was the army that taught him to become self-reliant in a way that allowed him to understand how to make films, which is a completely, he goes, the army is what took me out of my head and made me understand that it's not about being just cerebral. It's about being a combination of cerebral and self-reliant

Starting point is 00:44:48 and being able to survive in the forest or whatever it is. And that's sort of what went into this epic film career that Oliver Stone has had. And I think that that's worth considering in this discussion. So given that, which I agree with, and how old are you now, Mike, if you don't mind me asking? I just turned 38 this week. Well, happy birthday. So if you were going to give advice or could give advice to your 20 year old self, 25 or 30, so you can pick, if you could just

Starting point is 00:45:18 place us to what you were doing, where you were, what advice would you give to yourself if any i would say write everything down because it's all very fleeting keep i would say keep a journal which i have but i i would be i would have been more meticulous and then i would say don't bow to the gatekeepers at the head of, in my case, show business. But at the gate of any business or any endeavor, don't bow to the gatekeepers because I think in essence there are no gatekeepers. I think that you are the gatekeeper. I like that. It has a vaguely Ghostbusters ring to it also. But it's bizarrely true now in history when you look at where we are in film and television and the internet.

Starting point is 00:46:20 I mean, there's this amazing quote i think it's at the end of um hearts of darkness which is the documentary about the making of apocalypse now um where i think it's in the end credits or it's one of the final things francis ford coppola pretty sure in the 70s said that the the best movies in the future because of the way that technology is moving the best movies are going to be made by like a kid i'm remembering just from memory but like roughly like a kid in ohio who picks up a camera and and starts shooting something like that's that's where technology technology is going to be democratized and has been now in a way that's unprecedented for film, certainly. It's really unbelievable. Although, as the technology or despite the technological changes, much like the quote on your wall, emotions endures. The core components of good storytelling, I don't think are going to change all that much.

Starting point is 00:47:37 No, no. sort of 20 year old self is like, is like, don't, don't, uh, don't waste your time on marketing. Just try to get better. Yes. Great advice. I remember a blogger very early on, I think it was Robert Scoble actually said to me, uh, good content is the best SEO. So kind of the equivalent of writing online, which is everybody's trying to optimize for search engine results. And he's like, just put out good content. People will link to it. Yes. And that is how you get found.

Starting point is 00:48:11 It's not about, and also it's not about being good. It's about being great. Because what I find the older I get is like a lot of people are good. Definitely. And like a lot of people are smart and a lot of people are clever, but not a lot of people are good. Definitely. And like a lot of people are smart and a lot of people are clever, but not a lot of people give you their soul when they perform. True. Yes.

Starting point is 00:48:32 Very, very true. So when you, when you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind and why I'm going to, I'll say a political and nonpolitical answer because I, if people dislike this person, then I, it kind of

Starting point is 00:48:46 goes one in ear out the other. Barack Obama. Barack Obama, to me, is very inspiring. He came from nothing. He came, you know, and

Starting point is 00:49:01 he didn't, he became president of the United States. He doesn't have to. This is, I feel like, lost on culture a lot of times. He doesn't have to be. He doesn't have to be the president. He could be an extremely wealthy anything. He could be on Wall Street street he could be a corporate lawyer

Starting point is 00:49:28 he could be anything that he could be in silicon valley he could do anything that would make one a person billions of dollars and he chose to be in work in service as a country that being said um and and i met him i met him at the 75th anniversary of uso last month which was really cool um but then i met him two years ago when my wife was pregnant and um and i we asked him we our whole thing was when whenever we meet someone who we know doesn't care about meeting us, my wife and I always try and come up with a trick question that throws them off. And they kind of have to answer or have to think about it. I give this advice to people.

Starting point is 00:50:16 If you ever see Jimmy Fallon on the street, don't be like, I love The Tonight Show. Just be like, what do you think of Kiwi? You know what I mean? You won't be able to not be like, oh, I love Kiwi. Just talk to people about a thing they didn't think they were going to talk about. And then next thing you know, you're talking to Jimmy Fallon about Kiwi, and then you'll have that for your life. So our thing with Obama was, let's tell him, because my wife is four months pregnant but we hadn't told anybody yet, is why don't we tell him that you're pregnant.

Starting point is 00:50:54 And so when we get to the front, I go, Mr. President, this is my wife Jen, she's newly pregnant but don't tell anyone. And he couldn't help, the president of the united states couldn't help to be like well am i the first to know and and my wife says yes she goes do you have any parenting advice and he goes um we'll get some sleep and we were like ha ha ha ha because he's the president you know uh because he you know it's like wasn't that funny comedically but he's like your boss times a million and then he goes but he got better because he goes oh no actually i got something he goes when you bring him home he goes he goes when you bring him home the poo the president said poo and the moment he said poo i thought this is the greatest day of my life. I could die right now and I'd be fine. He

Starting point is 00:51:47 goes, when you bring them home, the poo doesn't smell. It doesn't smell like adult poo. Adult poo smells bad. And then he looked at me for affirmation. I was like, absolutely Mr. President, adult poo does indeed smell terrible. Thank you for inviting me to the Poo Summit 2015. And so, and he goes, and when you bring them home, he goes, babies crave structure. And they're eating and they're sleeping. And he goes, and if it doesn't, you know, in the breastfeeding, it doesn't always work out right away. It can be a little bit wonky. Don't freak out.

Starting point is 00:52:29 And if it doesn't work out with the sleeping right away, don't freak out. And he paused and he thought about it and he goes, that's actually some pretty good advice. He complimented his own advice. But I'm telling you, the best thing to do is you've got to give people questions they don't, what you're doing right now. You've got to give people questions they're not expecting. And then my non-political answer, if people hate Obama, I get it, whatever. You're a Republican, I don't care. You know, like, that's your issue. But it would be Bob Dylan. I think Bob Dylan is the great artist of our time because, unlike the Rolling Stones or, you know, the Beatles, obviously obviously broke up but some of them died

Starting point is 00:53:05 but he he continues to grow and learn and produce and to change and so I think that for that Time Out of Mind is a top five album, Bob Dylan album of all

Starting point is 00:53:22 time and he made it in the 60s it all time and he made it you know what went in the 60s you know it's like it's unbelievable and he made and he made free will and Bob Dylan when he's like 21 years old and it's unbelievable that is yeah when you've been doing it for three or four decades it's a bit you've definitely passed the once you're lucky twice you're good stage yes the next question I feel like has to be at a left field for this to function after that incredible Obama story. So let me try a question that I've been dying

Starting point is 00:53:51 to ask someone, but I feel like you might be game for this. What are your rules for good sex? Oh, wow. That is fascinating. The standard thing that Captain Fantastic has this piece of advice in it, which I thought is smart, where the father says to the son, when you make love to a woman, be gentle. And I think he says, be gentle and listen. And I think that's wise. I think that's good advice. I think, I think you should have sex, assuming that your wife or girlfriend wants this,

Starting point is 00:54:41 more than you think you should. Because it's kind of like pizza. Like, it's never a bad idea. Yeah, man. I mean, you could even add that to the list of incentives for your friends when they're proofreading, I guess. I mean, and the script might not be good, but at the end, we're all going to have sex.

Starting point is 00:55:12 That's right oh my god if that if that's the qualification for the next reading series that will get so many people in the door i had a joke on my first album which is pizzas like sex when it's good it's good when it's bad it gets on your on your shirt. It's honestly the dumbest joke, but I still enjoy saying it. Is there a book that you've given or books as frequently as gifts? I give people the DVD. I give a book sometimes, but more often I give a DVD of Stop Making Sense. I'm not familiar with that. It is the David Byrne concert film with the talking heads that Jonathan Demme worth watching and and taking in in a creative sense because it's so unorthodox i mean it's called stop making sense in it and musically it

Starting point is 00:56:13 pays off i think and i think visually it pays off um because it's very abstract so that's the one thing i give the other thing is just i give this book called the people ask me about my sleep walking all the time because i have obviously a very serious sleep disorder where it almost killed me and so I give this book called the promise of sleep and it was written by Dr. William C. Dement who is the father of sleep medicine in in this you know decade or even century and um and makes a cameo in my movie sleepwalk with me as himself, but it's a wonderful book. And people often say to me because of my sleep disorder, what should I do? I have insomnia, blah, blah, blah. I always say, well, get, first of all, get this book. And second of all,

Starting point is 00:56:55 the basic takeaway for starters is, you know, an hour or two before bed, turn off your phone turn off your computer um and uh and and and uh i forget what the third one is but but but uh yeah that's the biggest thing is like think of don't think of sleep as something that you don't crash into but that you ease into like that you that you're parking the car as opposed to crashing the car yeah that's a good point yeah it's like that like that analogy uh any other favorite movies or documentaries i love um terms of endearment and broadcast news are two james l brooks films that i can just watch over and over and over again. And those are really the, you know, when I made Don't Think Twice, when I make Sleepwalk With Me,

Starting point is 00:57:53 and when I make hopefully the next eight or nine movies, I strive to make movies like those where you're laughing and you're crying. Because to me, that's what all of it is for. It's to experience the range of emotions within an hour and a half or two hours. On that point, if you could combine three comedians, alive or dead, into one super comedian, who would you pick?

Starting point is 00:58:22 Okay, so it would go something like this. It would go Mitch Hedberg. I'm writing this down on a pad. Mitch Hedberg, Doug Stanhope, Maria Bamford. So Mitch Hedberg, I think, is the greatest joke writer of our time. I think Doug Stanhope is the most honest comedian of our time. And I think Maria Bamford is the most vocally and physically versatile. Unbelievable.

Starting point is 00:58:50 Yeah. I mean, I just think what she does is uncanny. I mean, she drops into these voices that are just like these completely vivid, pitch perfect impressions of people in her life. And it's uncanny. And so I would say those three that's a great question by the way i've never gotten that question well i'm gonna have to dig in so i know hedberg i know maria banford i haven't explored doug stanhope is there any particular

Starting point is 00:59:13 no there's i think there's one called no refunds that's on netflix and it is i mean because all of his stuff is meant to make people leave so like all of all the names of his albums are things that imply that you can't get your money back, essentially. So does that mean that he does what, as I understand it, I mean, I've listened to and watched a fair amount of his stuff, but Bill Burr. So it seems that Bill Burr will deliberately lose the audiences because it's no longer a challenge to simply make them laugh. He wants to be able to reel them back in. Is that effectively what Doug does? Yeah, it's precisely that. I mean, seeing Doug Stanhope live, it's Bill Burr actually to the extreme. I mean, to the point where I can't, it's like watching, it's like

Starting point is 01:00:02 magic trick. I mean, it's like watching Andy Kauf like magic trick I mean it's like watching Andy Kaufman doing his bit where he he does like his like latke character speaking like gibberish to the audience and like bombing and people not realizing it's a character and then going into you know a perfect Elvis a pitch perfect Elvis impersonation having it's like you. And people go crazy. It's this thing where you can't believe that he lands the show after how terrible he's made it. And it's

Starting point is 01:00:34 fascinating. And Bill Burr's incredible too. Bill Burr would maybe be very close to that list as well. Yeah, Maria is I've listened to a lot of her comedy and being, I suppose, I've listened to a lot of her comedy and I being, I suppose, although I, I, I alternatively love and hate this description in the self-help business, uh, which I, I try sort of not to think about much, but the, I get asked about the secret a lot

Starting point is 01:01:00 and manifesting things, which is not really a focus of mine at all. But Maria has this hilarious bit that I always mention. I'm like, you should listen to Maria Bamford. She talks about the secret. And there's this bit where she's talking about being down and out and her sister is very successful, sort of corporate, super efficient. And Maria has her over at one point and Maria has put together a vision board, which is like a board. And there's a microwave on the board. And her sister goes, a microwave? Really?

Starting point is 01:01:31 You want a fucking microwave? That's depressing. I'll buy you a microwave. And then Maria's like, bam, manifest. It's like, oh my God, so genius. What purchase comes to mind, could be recent, but whatever, that has positively impacted your life?

Starting point is 01:01:49 Ideally not like a Maserati, but something that's on the less expensive side. I would say, this is so, this sounds so stupid and like current and speaking of things not enduring, who knows what this will even be, but I find the Fitbit was helpful for me because it tracks my sleep

Starting point is 01:02:11 and so it tells me this thing about my sleep, which I had that sleep. It tells you how much you were walking the night before. No, it's true, it's true. I mean, it tells me, not only, I don't know if you know about this, it not only tells you how long you slept, but it tells you the quality of sleep during. In other words, it tells you you slept technically for eight hours, but you were awake for an hour of that.

Starting point is 01:02:38 So it's actually quite helpful. I like it. So you use it primarily for your sleep then? For my sleep yeah yeah i mean i like the steps thing i like trying to get to 10 000 steps a day that's helpful but for the sleep i mean because you got to remember like i i've slept over at hospitals you know countless times for sleep studies because i have rem behavior disorder and it's like three thousand dollars per visit to i mean obviously you know some of its insurance but some of it I have to pay.

Starting point is 01:03:07 And I mean, this thing basically does a sleep study, and it costs $100. What type of nighttime rituals do you have? I mean, you mentioned easing in instead of crashing into the wall. Yeah. Do you have any particular kind of wind down or evening rituals i try to do there there's a actually a good podcast called uh not to be mistaken with sleepwalk with me there's a good podcast called sleep with me i could go a lot of directions okay yes and it's this guy named i think he calls himself Scooter.

Starting point is 01:03:46 And he sounds trustworthy. And he and he he has like this really uncanny skill of talking in circles and slow and circling back to the first topic and then the next topic and then another thing and then a digression and the next thing you know you're asleep i mean it's it's pretty fascinating what he does um yeah so that that's where that's where we're looking into and then um and then i try to write in my journal and then honestly the biggest thing is thing is getting off of social media. It's getting off of Twitter and Facebook. I think in relationship to what we were talking about earlier, I was saying the thing about Oliver Stone, that he joined the army and that's how he became self-reliant. And how ultimately everything in your life that you do leads to who you are and what you're able to accomplish. I think that social media is weirdly the exception to that. I think that social media is like this

Starting point is 01:04:52 weird kind of looking in the mirror all the time thing that is, it's not helpful for, for being productive or, or, or learning. I don't, I mean, I, I don't know if that's true, but that that's been my feeling lately. I think the dose makes the poison. Certainly. I mean, I think there's, there's a point where you're like, Oh, this Tylenol is helping my headache. And then, Oh, I, my stomach lining just fell out of my ass. That's extreme. I think. Has that ever happened? No, I mean, that hasn't actually literally happened to me, but there's definitely a point where, you know, things in excess become their opposite.

Starting point is 01:05:38 I agree. What is the, on the flip side, the first kind of 60 to 120 minutes of your day look like? I mean, are there any particular rituals that you have in the morning? It's a little bit like memento every day. Injecting your wife with insulin over and over again? It's just like a lot of times if I'm not focused, I will kind of wander. And, you know, until I have coffee, forget about it, I'm a heavy coffee drinker.

Starting point is 01:06:11 And if I'm on a project, if I'm shooting a movie, I have a complete and exact plan for the next day. And if I'm writing a movie, like I said, I put notes next to my bed, Mike, wake up, go to the coffee shop and write. I think that when I don't have a routine, I'm a mess and I'm not productive and it's not helpful. So that's what I'd say. It's inconsistent. And the other thing is I travel. I mean, the the thank God for jokes show, I toured a hundred cities in a year. And so it's, it's very hard to have rituals when you're going to a hundred cities in a year. Yeah. I wonder if it makes the value of the rituals even greater. If you are able to maintain some semblance of routine when touring. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:07:06 I've never done that. Do you have a favorite venue in the entire United States? If you had to pick one? Oh, gosh. There's so many. I mean, the Upper Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City feels like home because I've been on that stage a lot. And the Comedy Cellar in New York feels similarly. I think that in terms of like a pound for pound venue, I think the Chicago Theater is probably your best concert venue in America.

Starting point is 01:07:31 Chicago Theater seats about 3000 people. And yet, as a performer, you feel like you're talking to people in your living room. And as an audience member, it feels like you're just, you know, you're just you're just watching, you know, someone not in your living room, but sort of, you know, it feels like you're just watching someone, not in your living room, but it feels intimate. So you're a collector of good advice. What is the worst advice that you hear or see being given out often? And that could be in any domain. It could be comedy, it could be writing, it could be movies, it could be completely unrelated anything uh it's all about you know it's all about getting your dream pursuing your dream like i feel like there's something i i don't

Starting point is 01:08:15 know what the exact advice is that drives me crazy but i think there's a cultural thing right now that it is kind of irksome, which is that, that people feel like they're like, I read it recently in the New York times or someone said, um, I'm forgetting her name who wrote this, but she said, if I had advice for college students, it would be don't ask, what do I want to be when I grow up? Ask, how can I help? Or how can I change the world? Or how can I be of service to other people? And I think that the kind of just kind of be whatever you want to be is perhaps to be reconsidered by how can I be of service when I'm on the earth for such a short amount of time? Because when, you know, when I do my shows, like it's when, when I do my one man shows, for example, Seth Barish and I, we were always talking about what, how is this, how is this story that I'm telling, you know, about, let's say, sleepwalk with me?

Starting point is 01:09:31 It's a story about how I jumped out a second story window while sleepwalking and nearly killed me. I was, you know, I got cut up. I ended up in an emergency room. I was, I jumped through a window in the glass, missed my femoral artery by you know a centimeter and and and ultimately we had to figure out not how is this show how is this story about me but how is it about the audience and the way that we we discovered it was about the audience is that the that it's a, you know, that it's about, it's about the catharsis you can experience by sharing something that you're very embarrassed about. In my case, having this life-threatening sleep disorder that I was embarrassed about, I thought people would think I'm crazy. It's about the catharsis of opening up and telling people that and how that can make us

Starting point is 01:10:21 feel closer to one another. And so in that sense, this is a roundabout way of saying, I'm always trying to think about how does, how can my, how can what I'm doing be helpful to the audience? How can they go away feeling empowered in their life as opposed to, oh, that was funny. You know, cause, cause walking away going, oh, that was funny you know because because walking away going oh that was funny it's i don't know it's it's it's there's something about it that feels like it's a missed opportunity well i i remember speaking to john favreau on the podcast about writing and his writing and humor and he said i don't and i'm paraphrasing here, but I don't aim for funny. I aim for truth. And then the funny often comes along with it. I think that's absolutely true. There's a, there's a, uh, so on this point, sort of what you can offer of service. So, uh, Brian

Starting point is 01:11:16 Koppelman mentioned something, uh, in our text exchange, which was he, meaning you chooses to be kind. It's a conscious part of who he is. And I'm always interested in how he consistently thinks of other people in whatever engagement and how going through life that way makes him feel. Can you confirm or deny or elaborate on that? Because it's, I mean, it's, I think, an observation worth exploring. If that is a decision you make, has it always been the case? Is it something that you came to a particular way? I think that's from my mother. My mother is a very generous person.

Starting point is 01:12:00 She's a nurse for a whole career, and then she was a school nurse for a while, elementary school. She's very Catholic, which is not something that I've followed in her footsteps with, but yeah, she's just very sweet to everyone. And I try to be, I mean, I don't know if it's true. It's nice to hear that someone says that about me, but I try, yeah, I try to be nice to everyone I meet. I think it's the right thing to do. I think that, you know, I think that peace, you know, on earth is achieved in a micro sense. I think it's peace is achieved through every person who you meet in your day. Is that an opportunity?

Starting point is 01:12:44 It's an opportunity to contribute to peace, uh, everywhere. Right. I mean, I mean, maybe that's, it's naive, but, but I, that's how, that's how I think of it. I don't think it's naive. I mean, I think the, the macro is made up of the micro, right. And that I remember this story I heard, I believe it was from a professor at Stanford named BJ Fogg, who decided to teach a class as professors at Stanford are allowed to do that he effectively made up out of thin air. And I think it was creating world peace or something like that. Had no idea what the syllabus or the curriculum would be whatsoever. And then 30 students show up and he tries to figure out what the class is. And what he realized very quickly is that you had students from, say, Israel, Palestine, all over the place.

Starting point is 01:13:30 No one could even agree on what world peace meant. Like, what does world peace look like? So he said, okay, since we can't agree on world peace, though, and this was the interesting part. He said, let us try to agree on what the antecedents to world peace would be. Like, what are the constituent parts that might make up world peace? Let's start to agree on some of the ingredients. And then he had them work on projects focused on those common ingredients. So it's like, and I do feel like to take something like peace and make it actionable by necessity,

Starting point is 01:14:02 you're going to bring it down to the micro otherwise it's just not actionable it's too abstract yeah i hope by the way i'm i'm fearing as i'm saying this like that someone's listening to this going well i met mike verbiglia and he's an asshole it's also the i have that with q and a's. A lot of times with touring with Don't Think Twice, we'll do Q&As, and I'll be like 20 minutes into it, and it'll hit me like a ton of bricks. What if the people in the audience didn't like the movie? Now they're listening to someone babble on

Starting point is 01:14:38 about how they made the thing that they don't even like? Can you imagine a worse fate than listening to someone talk about a thing that you don't even like? Well, I have to say, and this is not going to get a lot of sympathy from most people listening to this, but I have a lot more empathy for people in the public light than I did say 10 years ago, because you see, like you wonder, like, I wonder if that guy thinks I'm a total dick, but it just so happens like your cat got run over by a car and like your kid pissed on your trousers before he had to go to an important meeting. And then your wife called and was really upset. And then some guy dropped your coffee on the floor and you're just in a shitty mood. And that person happens to come up to you as you're

Starting point is 01:15:29 running to the gate to catch a flight that you're going to miss. And they have a 30 second exposure to you in a really rare off moment. And they're like, wow, that guy's an asshole. Or you literally just sprain your wrist like grabbing for a suitcase i had that happen on this last trip yeah yeah and it's just like and then someone someone comes up to you right at that moment it's like hey i'm a big fan i'm like ah i'm this is a really strange thing to say i'm in a lot of pain right now they're like yeah i met that guy he made up the most ridiculous story he blamed it on his wrist yeah and i uh i mean and it's it's i mean i had this experience yesterday uh which was hilarious

Starting point is 01:16:13 and infuriating at the same time this is yet another reason to stay off of social media and i saw this guy who's suppose you would call him a journalist or a sort of a media producer who's who'd been pinging me via text message for a while i'd been traveling out of the country this and that to like get together have drinks and like hey buddy how's it going all this and i guess i didn't reply to them and so his tweet was you know tim ferris is like an arrogant self-centered ass but it doesn't mean you can't learn lessons from him and i was like oh so this is what happens when i am out of the country for two months and miss someone's texts. Like they assume, they assume malice. So I remember a piece of advice I was given or read at some point, I mixed those up was, you know, never, never attribute,

Starting point is 01:16:55 and I've modified it a bit, but like never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence. Now, the way I've modified that is never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence or busyness. Oh, busyness. Yeah. Right? It's just like you don't know what battle someone else is fighting. They might come off as a dick and it's like, I'm not going to give away too much in the

Starting point is 01:17:15 movie, but it's like something catastrophic could have happened that they're not being open about because they don't want to be open about it. And just assume that it's not a personal attack. Uh, but I'm getting up on a soapbox. Let me chill myself out. Uh, I think that's, that's good advice. Uh, what is the best meat you've done? You said a hundred, hundred cities, right? Is there, do you have a favorite meal that comes to mind and maybe it's pizza could be, but is there, is there a favorite meal or drink of yours that comes to mind i think that some some combination of like i love great macaroni and cheese

Starting point is 01:17:54 like i like like i like i love going to like the fanciest restaurant you can imagine and just ordering macaroni and cheese or like ordering the hamburger. Like I always, I always find that like, like if you go to some place that some, you know, 50 bucks a plate or something like that, like sure you can order the chicken or the steak or whatever, but man,

Starting point is 01:18:18 can they make a hamburger? Now, are you deliberately, is that for your joy or is it to like remotely flog the kitchen? No, I'm not trying to flank the system. I think... So you're not asking for like super well done because I know that makes chefs completely insane. No, no, no. I think it's a cuisine loophole. I think that it's a great secret in cuisine, which is that to order the kind of inexpensive pedestrian item on a really expensive, fancy menu is more often than not amazing. To go to a fancy restaurant, if you're in a fancy restaurant and for whatever reason there's peanut butter and jelly on the menu, order the

Starting point is 01:19:05 peanut butter and jelly because those people aren't fucking around. Oh God, I love it. No, that's good advice. I remember I had two different pieces of advice from two very good chefs. So one said, if you go out to a restaurant, never have the roast chicken because you can always make roast chicken at home. Like you can always make it at home but i had someone else say if you can get roast chicken on the menu at a fancy restaurant get the roast chicken because everyone can make it at home you think you know roast chicken oh yeah maybe along the lines of the pb and j so if if you maybe it's order the PB&J, if you could have one billboard anywhere

Starting point is 01:19:48 with anything on it, what would it say? It would say, I put it like in Times Square, and it would say, none of these companies care about you. Ooh, I like it. Because I think that that's one of the things that I feel like I've learned over the years, which is like that we've come to trust corporations in a certain sense. And we forget the fact that they actually have no vested interest in us other than our money, which is, you know, which harkens back to the thing I was saying about gatekeepers, which is like, you know, people always say to me like, hey, I have I have a very much of a niche career. I have a career where if people know my work more often than not, they're like, oh, that's that's great.

Starting point is 01:20:37 I'm a huge fan. This is great what you do. And but most people don't know who I am. It's the definition of niche. I don't get stopped in the street almost ever, which is great. It's phenomenal. And so in relation to that is I do things that are self-produced. I'm a producer on my movies. I'm a producer on my one-man shows. I produce my tours.

Starting point is 01:21:00 It's all in-house. And I try not to, to kind of bow to the gatekeepers of show business because I, they don't care about me. I mean, they really don't like they, they, the, the, the networks in the studios, all they care about is whether or not my movie or my TV show or whatever it would be would make them money. But, but so why would I try to, why would I try to please those people? I, the people I'm trying to please is my audience. They're the people who, who buy my albums or buy, you know, who go buy, take, buy movie tickets. Those are the people I care about. Those are the people I'm making the movies for. So I would say, so my billboard is these, these companies don't care about you. Do you have any other rules that you've developed for the business side of the art that you're involved with?

Starting point is 01:21:55 Just in terms of managing your life and career, are there any other rules you've set for yourself that have helped you to have the success and longevity that you've had? kind of the system the studio system the network system and just pull it out and replicate the parts that you think work and and then do the rest yourself so so like in other words i when my first off-broadway show was sleepwalk with me and it was very much like by the book and it was you know like it was it was produced in this way that you know it was the off-broadway like system like it was you know it had a you know a general manager general management company that took such and such a fee and it had you know this many people who are on the payroll and all this kind of stuff and my agent and i after the fact because the the show even though it was like this big success and it ran for eight months the show technically this

Starting point is 01:23:12 is a very common thing in hollywood's like um it lost money technically like it wasn't like the i guess the most famous story of this is the simpsons like the Simpsons franchise, I don't know if this is true still, but a few years ago it was. It was not in profit. Have you ever heard that story? I haven't heard the story of the Simpsons, but I've read some articles on Hollywood accounting.

Starting point is 01:23:37 Hollywood accounting is crazy. It's completely bonkers. It's on par with, wait, I'm making this up. I don't know if this is accurate, So don't sue me, GM. But when people are like, oh, yeah, GM paid no taxes last year or like Apple paid no taxes last year. You're like, what? And it's absolutely on par. You're like, oh, the movie grossed a billion dollars, but no one saw any back end participation mysteriously for these various reasons that are detailed in this article but no i haven't heard the simpsons example but yeah so yeah and so and so and so like you know another example like my my last movie sleepwalk with me i won't sort of name the names involved but like it didn't it didn't technically it didn't technically make money even though it did like two and a quarter at the box office,

Starting point is 01:24:25 which is a lot for a small film that was made for a million dollars. And then it did, you know, probably a million, whatever, maybe more digitally on Netflix and iTunes and all these things. And so it may, it couldn't quote made like three,

Starting point is 01:24:40 somewhere between three to $5 million. We made it for a million dollars budget, which is like nothing in the world of independent film. Yeah, super budget. And the movie didn't make money. And it doesn't, I mean, I'm trying not to curse. It doesn't fucking make sense. It doesn't make sense at all.

Starting point is 01:24:58 And so this time around, I was like, all right, well, I'm going to cut out all the people who charged the movie, so to speak, and became like a line item in the budget for the marketing and the distribution of the movie. And I'm just going to do it myself. So like Don't Think Twice is essentially self-distributed in cooperation with this company, the Film Arcade, which is like a small distribution company that I basically told my story to and we're like well let's build this from scratch i'll go from

Starting point is 01:25:30 town to town i'll go to 30 cities um and i'll hand deliver this movie and so like this summer my whole summer has been me going town to town showing sneak previews of the movie and then doing a free improv workshop for, uh, improv theaters in that town. So we're going to IO in Chicago and UCB in New York and the torch theater in Phoenix and the, you know,

Starting point is 01:25:53 all of the planet ant theater in, uh, in Detroit, which is where Keegan, Michael Key started. And we're doing these free workshops just as like an act of goodwill because basically we, we thought like,

Starting point is 01:26:04 well, why don't we, instead of like buying a ton of TV ads and this and that, all the traditional marketing, why don't we spend that money just, just having me be a walking billboard for the movie and go town to town and spread goodwill, say, Hey, we're going to do free improv workshops. We're going to do, we're going to give out free tickets to local improv theaters and, and we're going to do q and a's and i so anyway so to get back to what you're saying in a business sense i would say steal the ideas that corporations use that work and then fill in the rest yourself yeah steal the thunder from the gods yeah exactly she doesn't actually belong to them anyway in a lot of senses i'm really excited about uh that i'm i'm continually excited about this type of experiment and particularly

Starting point is 01:26:55 given my experience with the podcast which after many many years is really the first, in a sense, aside from the blog and so on, the first free agent enterprise that I've had complete unilateral creative control over. Yeah. The democratization of podcasts has been incredible for radio. Oh, it's just such a boon and such a joy. And for that reason, I'm going to be experimenting with a lot of different approaches with publishing as it relates to books and otherwise, because every time I have in the past let someone pay for something, which is usually bloated in some capacity, as you mentioned. Well, the whole publishing industry is bloated. Yeah. You will not have the control of the protections that you would want as a doer. So how can people see the film? And of course,

Starting point is 01:27:51 it's kind of contingent, I suppose, upon when people are hearing this, but how would you like people to check it out? And I have really been enjoying it. Chris Saka loved it. I've heard great things from a number of different people, and I certainly recommend people check it out. But where can they learn more and see more? There's a site called don'tthinktwicemovie.com, the Twitter handle at don'tthink. My Twitter handle is at berbigs, B-I-R-B-I-G-S. And you can see that I'm traveling around the country to 30 cities. It's going to, with people's help, Don't Think Twice will get into 300 to 500 theaters across the country and maybe more. But it's entirely contingent on the people listening to this.

Starting point is 01:28:48 I'm at Nantucket Film Festival right now, and there's great movies. There's this documentary called Tickle that's phenomenal. There's this movie called Other People that Chris Kelly made. There's Captain Fantastic, which I was telling you about. There's a Norman Lear documentary. There's so many great independent films. And what I urge people to do is go to the theaters,

Starting point is 01:29:13 go to your local cinema and see small films that, you know, read a few reviews and go to the ones that you think might work for you. But it really does help for there to be more of them. No one's getting rich on independent film, but if the movie makes a few million dollars, I'll get to make another movie and I'll put my heart and soul into it. And so that's what I would ask. And just for people who are wondering, I mean, I obviously, I shouldn't say obviously, but I'll say those people who've been listening to me or following me long enough know this, that I take endorsing things very, very seriously.

Starting point is 01:29:48 I don't. It's very easy to destroy a reputation that takes a long time to build. And I feel very comfortable recommending this movie. When I was watching it earlier with Cal, at one point, a few minutes into it, he said, wait a second, is this documentary or script? And I mean, that is just about the highest compliment as it relates to acting that appears completely natural. And I thought to myself, wow, like that is a very rare comment. And this is coming from someone who's had a lot of immersion in the arts and entertainment also. That's a huge compliment. Thank you. Yeah. So everybody definitely check it out. And I will put all of the links in the show notes

Starting point is 01:30:32 as usual at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. One last question, actually two last questions. This one is what is the best or most worthwhile investment you've ever made? That could be time, money, energy. And just as an example to buy a little bit of time. So Amelia Boone, who's been on the podcast, she's won the world's toughest mudder three times and is the most successful female obstacle course racer in the world. Her answer was to me, paying her first $450 entrance fee, which was a stretch at the time for world's Toughest Mudder. So it seemed like a huge stretch, but it completely set her on, pun intended, this course in her

Starting point is 01:31:12 life. And she's also a power attorney at Apple and is just a complete machine. But what would you offer as your answer to that? I would say spend 15 bucks on a yoga class. I started doing yoga two years ago. And I think that I, if I hadn't started, I feel like my body would have broken down completely. And I'd be, you know, in a sling, like I feel in my wife, my wife convinced me to do yoga after years of telling me that I should do yoga, which is, you know, it's hilarious if you people don't have the visual picture of me. But like the or they might.

Starting point is 01:31:56 But, you know, you wouldn't think of me as someone who does yoga and I certainly don't do it well. But but it is if you can find a good place for beginners, oh my God, it's, I find it to be completely, uh, how it's very helpful for being productive and being healthy. And you are, I think people are as old as their joints feel. So if you sit down a lot, it is good to stretch. And I've been doing a lot of acro yoga for the last two years and my hips and back have never felt better. So I would encourage people to also, if for whatever reason you can't manage to get tickets to stand-up comedy by Mr. Burbiggs, if you see him in line for a yoga class and want to get some indirect comedy by

Starting point is 01:32:46 watching his downward dog and cobra poses, then that is much like the culinary loophole we talked about earlier. I'll tell you, this is going to sound like I'm kissing up, but my wife urged me to wedge this in somehow, which is if the people just listen to the podcast they don't have your book uh get your uh work for our work week your i believe your first book that's the first book which is how i was introduced to it your work is um because i i have a completely different outlook on vacation now. The way that you talk about how the, like essentially we're working these 80 hour weeks, let's say for this pie in the sky idea of retirement at the end of our lives,

Starting point is 01:33:38 that God knows what the hell that even is anyway. And live that retirement in fits and spurts in the middle of your life so you understand the perspective of what that even is. And because of that, my wife and I took a vacation to Laguna Beach where I shut off my computer for five days at the beginning of June. And it's literally because of your book. Well, thank you for sharing that. That makes my day. And Laguna Beach is a great choice. That's a beautiful spot. I looked, I searched all over it.

Starting point is 01:34:12 That's, yeah, that's, I'm an amateur travel agent. Yeah, for those people who haven't read the book, the balloon payment at the end for the deferred life plan is far from guaranteed. Far from guaranteed. Far from guaranteed. So it's good to break up the work with mini retirements for sure. Is there any ask or request as we wrap up? Any parting comments or asks or requests from my audience? No, just that, you know, follow,

Starting point is 01:34:45 you know, follow the movie on, uh, don't think I don't think movie on Twitter or follow me at for bigs on Twitter. And, and so, and if you,

Starting point is 01:34:54 you know, like, trust me that the movie's really good. And I, I think you'll laugh and I think you might cry, which is, which for, you know,

Starting point is 01:35:01 take someone on a date, take, take a few of your friends. And, um, yeah, it's a there's a lot of love that went into making something that a lot of people so far have liked and so yeah it would just mean a lot to me yeah and it also and it also supports an ecosystem of creators creating uh which which uh i'm extremely passionate about and I think pretty well informed regarding. And I would just tell people, every time I have to or choose to review something,

Starting point is 01:35:32 whether it's a book or a movie or anything else, right before an interview, I'm always nervous. And I'm just like, oh God, am I going to have to tap dance around the fact that I didn't like something by the glaring omission of mentioning it or anything like that. And within five minutes of putting this on, I was like, oh, thank fucking God. Okay. I don't have to deal with any of that. It was such a wash of relief. So I do encourage people to check it out. And Mike, I know you got a lot going on right now. You are juggling all of the activities that go with taking matters into your own hands with a creative endeavor like this. And so I certainly send good vibes to you for the endurance and courage and strength

Starting point is 01:36:20 that you will need on the road. And this is great fun. So I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks. And as a disclaimer to anybody who's listening to this and going like, but I don't even like Mike Birbiglia's comedy. Why am I listening to him talk about it? Just know on a lot of days, I don't like it either. I might be wrong about everything I've just said, but I'm just trying my best like anybody else. That's all we can ask, man. Everybody's just trying to get by one day at a time.

Starting point is 01:36:55 Mike, well, best of luck with everything. And to everyone listening, as always, I'll mention it again. You can find links to everything, including the movie, including social, including books and DVDs and so on that came up in the show notes, as well as those notes for every other episode at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And until next time, and as always, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a

Starting point is 01:37:32 short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out.

Starting point is 01:38:11 Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.