About Mike Birbiglia: Mike Birbiglia is an American comedian, writer, actor, and director.
You don't really see sleepwalking in films that often. It's weird; I feel like in popular culture we have the perception of sitcom, arms-in-front-of-your-body sleepwalking, and then maybe Olive Oil and Popeye when she sleepwalks through the construct...
What I always studied in screenwriting from my mentor John Glavin was that the most interesting characters are characters with shades of gray.
I have a following, but it's small. I have this level of fame where people spot me in the airport, consistently, but they always think they're the only one who ever has. People will think they win a prize when they recognize me.
Louis C.K. directs his show, which is very much like a series of short films.
Directing your first film is like showing up to the field trip in seventh grade, getting on the bus, and making an announcement, 'So today I'm driving the bus.' And everybody's like, 'What?' And you're like, 'I'm gonna drive the bus.' And they're lik...
I think the thing I had to be careful about while writing a book was not to say anything that was revealing about other people that they would be uncomfortable with. I didn't want to make people angry - that's a real risk.
I feel like people have more in common than the news reports. People getting along doesn't sell very well in the news. I find that to be deeply depressing.
I grew up in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts and went to college in Washington D.C.
I actually wasn't really the class clown growing up. The class clown was always the mean guy who walked up and was like, 'You're fat. You're gay. I'm outta here!' I was always more kind of awkward and introspective.
Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.
Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance.
Starbucks is the last public space with chairs. It's a shower for homeless people. And it's a place you can write all day. The baristas don't glare at you. They don't even look at you.
The one thing you're most reluctant to tell. That's where the comedy is.
I've read that Steven Wright's style was born out of genuine nervousness.
I'm going to end up making twenty films if people let me.
I always try to attack the most honest issues I can in my comedy.
Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is.
If you tried to sell Mike Birbiglia as a concept, no one would buy it.
If I dream that I'm directing, it's not a film, it's like a commercial for cotton candy, and I've got four feet of cotton candy all around me that I've got to break through, like a brick wall or a fortress.
Every sleep doctor I've talked to said it was an urban legend that you shouldn't wake up a sleepwalker. All that will happen is that you will get condescended to.
After I perform 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend,' it takes a lot out of me emotionally; and, at the end of it, I feel like I know the audience and the audience knows me. It's this weird unspoken bond that we'll kind of always have with each other.
