In The Good Life, his new Netflix special, Mike Birbiglia regales the audience at New York’s Beacon Theatre with tales of fatherhood and beyond, embodying the warm and witty dad next door. To me, he just about was: My old building is visible from the front stoop of his Brooklyn office and studio, where I plop into a chair—recently warmed by the likes of Jessica Kirson and Questlove during their appearances on Working It Out, Birbiglia’s pandemic-born podcast on which creatives dive into their process—to discuss the special, premiering May 26.
“A lot of times I’ll work out these jokes on the podcast with people. I had [stand-up comedian] Josh Johnson on the podcast recently, and we were riffing on this premise I had. My wife was like, ‘Let’s go in the basement and fix the piping for the water in the building.’ I put my shoes on and my coat, and I go, ‘Let’s go,’ and she goes, ‘I’m afraid of the basement,’ and I go, ‘I think you knew when you said “let’s go,” you meant me.’ Honestly, it’s jotting down observations like that that are really simple,” he told Vanity Fair.
“Then, a lot of times, two things will happen simultaneously: As the series of jokes and stories sculpts into a narrative form that has causality and propulsion to it, do some of these jokes fall away? Which ones fall away, and which ones stay? And then, which ones, honestly, become boring, and which ones are still funny?”
Over the years, the career comedian, writer, director, and actor has veered organically toward storytelling from stand-up, nimbly toggling between media. Hovering above on the wall is the giant bulletin board prominently displayed on the pod, festooned with pinned jokes, cues, and material for his next project—a film he’s writing—hard evidence that Birbiglia’s brain is perpetually scanning for the humanistic observations that comprise his work.
To Birbiglia, collaboration and connection matter: Immediately after live-taping The Good Life, he walked offstage and onto Broadway to hand out cupcakes to the crowd. After all, relationships with neighbors, friends, and family are the nexus of his creative output, as coated with his trademark dry wit. In advance of The Good Life’s release, Vanity Fair spoke with Birbiglia about his creative process, who critiques his jokes, and what he calls “comedy college.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Vanity Fair: There’s the board from Working It Out! Is this to work out the flow of your jokes or projects? Are they placed in a particular order?
Mike Birbiglia: They eventually are, although right now they’re not. I’m writing a movie in the vein of Don’t Think Twice, a movie I made in 2016 about modern friendship. I’m excited about it and am hoping to film it next year. My head is fully in it now that The Good Life is wrapped. Now is the moment where I have to convince people that it’s worth 75 minutes in the attention economy.
The Good Life threads the needle between how you were parented versus how you parent. How did it force you to reckon with your own parenting? And how is your dad [whose health is discussed in the special], by the way?
I came back from visiting him yesterday. Writing this show forced me to try to understand my dad because, if you don’t see the humanity in the characters, it’s not interesting. It’s extraordinarily challenging when someone’s had an acute stroke, but it has calmed him down. In my early specials, my dad would shout, and he wouldn’t even understand why. He’d be like, “Goddamn it! I’m eating pretzels!” I’d be like, Is he angry? Is he hungry? What’s the emotion being expressed? In this special, I forced myself to unpack the emotion being expressed. He oddly doesn’t have the edge or the weight of the world on him. He’s sort of a protagonist—he’s not evil; he’s just a human being. I think that’s my personal journey with him as well.
When putting together a show, would you say you’re an outliner or a channeller?
For the movie I’m writing right now, both. The analysis of the script in outline form forces you to make sure that it’s not meandering so far that the audience loses the thread of the story. The audience can handle a tangent, but they really can’t handle a tangent on a tangent. My mind goes on a tangent, on a tangent, on a tangent. There’s a quote from [poet and critic] Ezra Pound, which I always quote because it’s three words: “Only emotion endures.” I always think about that in relation to the shows. It’s the thing you remember.
How do you consider what you want to share about your life versus what you want to keep to yourself?
The only thing I veer away from currently is politics. Jon Stewart always said everything he did on The Daily Show was disposable. It doesn’t live on. There might be a certain point in my life where I’m going to go all in on politics or culture, but if I’m going to do it, I’m going to go all in.
Your podcast, Working It Out, is about creating and critique. How has hosting it inspired your own creative process?
What I’m trying to mimic in the podcast is stand-up comedy culture at its best—people cross-pollinating ideas. It’s just friendly. Originally, I thought, You can’t give away jokes on a podcast because it’ll ruin the surprise. During the pandemic, we had no choice. I thought, Why not perform jokes with comedians to each other, then see what happens? After the pandemic, people wanted to see how the jokes turned out. I’m only processing this now, but it’s a little bit Penn & Teller, in that they would do tricks and then explain how the tricks worked.
Who do you trust to critique your jokes?
Hasan Minhaj is one of our favorite guests. Pete Holmes is one of our favorite guests. Everyone I work with—Mabel Lewis [his assistant and podcast booker], Gary Simons [comedian, associate producer of the pod, and a fellow Georgetown alum who opened for Birbiglia], my brother, Joe, and Peter Salomone—are all people I trust. My director, Seth [Barrish], my wife, Jenny, and Ira Glass are all people I trust.
With your 2012 film, Sleepwalk With Me, you toggled between media with a singular concept, the execution of each similar yet different. What did you learn when that moment happened in your career?
That was the most seminal shift that occurred in my entire career. I went from someone who had comedy specials on Comedy Central to presenting something with a dramatic arc that was staged in a certain way. It allowed me to direct a movie, which is what I’d always wanted to do since I was in college. The catch-22 of becoming a movie director is that no one wants to let you try it the first time, just like no one wants to hire a waiter for their first job. It’s a bold thing to lie your way into a million-dollar budget of someone’s money. You kind of have to be like, “I got it!” You don’t have it.
You won “Funniest Person on Campus” at Georgetown.
I opened for Dave Chappelle at the DC Improv: He was 24; I was 19, I think. After that, I asked if I could open for other people, and they said you can work the door and be a busboy. That was comedy college—I did that for four years—watching nationally touring headlining comedians. In the office, on the weekends, I could see how much people were paid. When I moved to New York, that was the financial model I had in my mind. If I could be an opening act, making $350 a week, or what’s called a middle act or a feature act, making $500, $600, or $700 a week, I thought I could completely live on that.
How do you think being from Massachusetts informed your sense of humor? So many comedians come from there.
There’s just a lot of extremes. Some have said it’s the seasons; the winters are harsh, and the summers are harsh. The blue collar’s really blue collar, and the white collar’s really white collar. People have a combination of being erudite and rough around the edges, and that is helpful in comedy.
You wrote an essay called “6 Tips for Making It Small in Hollywood. Or Anywhere” for The New York Times back in 2016. What’s your TikTok-era addendum?
You can make it smaller and, accidentally, it could be bigger. I used to say people make movies for $10,000 that get seen by millions of people. Now I say people are making videos that are made for $100 that are being seen by 100 million people. The media era has exponentialized the possibilities, so there’s no excuses. There’s also a lot of garbage and clutter to cut through. Keeping work off of social media until it’s better is smart.
In that essay, you wrote: “It will take years for your taste and the quality of your work to intersect.” Do you feel like you’ve gotten there?
This special is closest. People will see it and they’ll go, “That is how you talk.” That’s a big compliment, because it’s hard to get to a point where it has jokes, it has a narrative, it has a story, it’s personal, and it’s connecting with people. Another time I got close was Don’t Think Twice—that’s part of the reason why I’m writing this next movie right now. I’m trying to zero in on what I could do better in that space. When I look at what Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig do, that’s the gold standard—just these interpersonal-relationship stories that are so funny. Jenny and I quote lines from The Squid and the Whale all the time. At the same time, it’s heartbreaking.
If your daughter, Oona, was to write a show about you one day, what would you want her to say about your parenting?
Whatever she wants. When I was in college and was working at the DC Improv, my dad was furious. He was like, “Comedy club? You’re working at a comedy club? What do they do? Strip?” He didn’t understand they’d evolved past burlesque. So I just want her to do what she’s interested in doing, and if that’s satirizing me, that’s fine too. I couldn’t care less.
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