YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Birbiglia

lines on the record: 103
first: 2016-07-27
most recent: 2016-07-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, no, and as a matter of fact, I would say the same thing for my sort of 20 year old self is like don't waste your time on marketing. Just try to get better.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's bizarrely true. Now in history, when you look at Are in film and television and the internet. I mean, there's this amazing quote. I think it's at the end of Hearts of Darkness, which is the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, where I think it's in the end credits or it's one of the final things Francis Fortola, pretty sure in the 70s said that 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 starts shooting something. Like that's where technology is going to be democratized and is and has been now in a way that's unprecedented for film, certainly.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say write everything down because it's all very fleeting. I would say keep a journal, which I have, but 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two years. Like he tried to get published for like two years. And then he joined the army. And when he got out of the army, because of the GI bill, 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 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, not only that. 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 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 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. 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, 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gave me this piece of advice when I like the moment I started and 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 and that about five minutes of that's worth showing an audience.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That life is short and can end any time. And it's like, and it's in some ways the best thing that ever happened to me was that perspective because I became an absolute workaholic trying to get good fast. Like I wanted to become a really great stand-up comedian really fast. And so I feel like that's the thing that there's this comedian Tommy John again who started in the Midwest. And I remember he opened for me one time when he was in college and now he's been on Letterman a lot of times and he's got a great career. But when he opened for me, like when he was in college, he like had done stand up like once or twice. And he quoted this back to me years later and he said he goes,”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I was 19, I had a bladder tumor and I ended up being, they caught it early. But that at this exact same time that I had this kind of life-threatening ailment happen, I started to do comedy and 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 in the variety actually was really helpful. It's like I saw Larry the Cable guy before he was a stadium act. I saw Dave Chappelle before he was a Chappelle show and George Lopez and Margaret Cho and Kathleen Madigan, Brian Regan, Jake Johansson, Jim Gaffigan, all these people. And I watch all of them and I would try to just bug them with questions. And so 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”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. There's some truth to that. Like when you pitch people, if you pitch stuff to people all the time, after a while, you kind of get the sense of like, are they hooked or are they not? If they're not hooked, you should consider another direction.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I usually do it. I'll tell people bits and jokes over the phone, partly because they can sort of peacefully give feedback in a way that doesn't feel so judgmental. When you're face to face with somebody, it can be hard to say a joke to them and have them feel the pressure of, oh, I should laugh or I should politely respond. On the phone, it's pretty easy to just kind of like skim through stuff, and I can hear when people are interested by what I'm seeing said. You know, Quentin Tarantino often, 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. He can hear in their silence what their interest level is.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I pulled him to the dark side, and he's, yeah, he's an extraordinary writer. And so I run everything by him. But the big thing is also like I run stuff by Ira Glass when we're working on something for this American life. I run stuff by Seth Barrish 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 2,000 people. I mean, you know, 10 people at the comedy cellar two in the morning. I can understand whether a bit is going to work, you know, for five years.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But, anyways, once I saw us even write, 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, 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. But the point is that my brother Joe, and I always would kick around jokes like ever since, you know, I was like 19 years old. And now he's worked for me. or he's 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That exactly, and yeah, yeah. I went to a drive in moving a cab. Movie cost me $95. They're just great. I mean, 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 most familiar with.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I run them by primarily audiences. I go out and I bomb with jokes and see what lives. And then also my brother Joe, my brother Joe took me to introduce me to comedy when I was a kid. 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 into 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 where I can do. And I started writing in my notebook and I wrote all these kind of Stephen Wright ripoff jokes. And then really, and they're 24 hours.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 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, I don't think the F word is effective as a monologist unless you're using it to the right effect to the good effect.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But yeah, and so I'm somewhere in between that. I will say that I don't curse gratuitously more often as word choice than it is to sanitize it for people who object for Christian reasons about words. 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. I think word variety is important. So if you say, I don't know if you curse on the podcast, but I do.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not trying to be the queen of daytime, but it stuck with me because you want to make your parents happy. You want to pursue your goals, but you're also, you know, these people gave you everything. 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. But I do feel conflicted about that sometimes because a lot of comedians I admire most did curse on stage. Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and then some of them who famously don't curse are secretly criminals.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 professions where people help other people and are ashamed of their artistic children. 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And in the recent, and in the recent show, Think of her jokes, I actually dissect why I don't curse gratuitously on stage and why in some ways in the Thank God for Jokes Show, I departed from that a little bit, which I can explain”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 discussions start. You know, a lot of people give their thoughts and they really conflict with other people's thoughts. And those people fight with each other. And I listen to that. It's really helpful.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Brooklyn is basically what they're doing unlike the $100 million level in Hollywood with tons more money and fancier offices. 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. I want writers to give notes and I want actors to give notes. I want collaborators who actually do the things that 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 21 Jump Street and the Lego movie. Like he's just a brilliant, brilliant mind. But who cares? I'm just going to ask him to come if he doesn't want to come. That's fine.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 I think one of the most important things about writing is that people are getting what you're intending. Like I listened to an interview with Ron Howard where he was talking about how he shows his movie to tons of test audiences. 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 how I like to think of the screenplay process. And what I like to do is I like to work out, like what I'm doing essentially in my living room, in my little shabby apartment.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He will listen to, 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 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 non-judgmental way of interfacing with a collaborator. So in other words, 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. And so if that's, if he says that back to me and I think to myself, well, no, it's more than that. It's actually a...”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no. So I have them read it aloud. And 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 what it made us feel like. The director of my one person shows is this guy named Seth Barra. She's really brilliant theater director. And he always does this thing dramaturgically, which is”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About two months, and it was, yeah, I started writing two years ago 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 preface it. I say it might not be good and thanks for coming. And it was ended up. I had like 10 or 12 of those at my house. 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 that. There's something fun about it.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. And so, and so with this movie, it was really about what is this about? It's about friends. And so 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 about like whenever it would veer into something that was like a cultural reference, I would be like, no, no, no, let's pull it 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 when my wife made the observation about how everyone's equal on stage, but off stage, they're completely unequal. I wrote on the wall this thing I made up, which is art is socialism, but life is capitalism. And that was like a guy.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In relation to the story. In other words, if you get too hung up on sort of making jokes or your sort of cultural jokes about things that might go away, then that whole five minutes of the movie is sort of dead in a way”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Joke about a cultural reference that literally will be gone in four years or five years. 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, you always have to think in those terms like there's a part of sleepwalk with me, the movie where my character is figuring out how to drive to one of his gigs 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?”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What it means is a lot of times as a writer you get hung up on cultural references. A lot of times if you see a comedian, a lot of times the way that I lose interest in comedians, for example, or sitcoms or movies or whatever is that it gets hung, like they get hung up on a cultural reference.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's mind writing quotes. They're just these kind of, 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 there's like you look around and there's like lines from Hemingway and there's lines from George Orwell and Jack Herowak and it was funny because it was something that Elna Baker 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 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's real I find it to be really really helpful”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, 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 a cork board my walls. Like it's silly when you see my office. It's just like a wall of corkboard. And one of 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 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 her writing. Only emotion endures. And I always try to keep that in mind when I'm writing because I think that's just a really crucial idea.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's 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 7 a.m. with your mind, which is so stupid. It's so embarrassing to admit, but it works. But if it works, it works. 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what? I always mix those up. But anyway, a few years ago I stumbled across movie magic and I like it. And 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, 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 having lunch with Brian Koppelman or having...”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“God, it's so stupid. I mean, I'm a real wonk with screenwriting. And I listen to the script notes podcast with Craig Mason and John August. And those guys just, they despise Final Cut. They just despise it. Or I'm sorry, final draft.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think of it as like it's blessed. 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 who's a musician who's in the band Fun, he came to see my off-Broadway show thing after jokes.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, one of the greats. And I asked him if he would sign it just in the back somewhere. And so I have a Devatelle notebook. Signature”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do a cappuccino and I do magic movie magic screenwriter is the program I use or I write in a notebook by hand. I try to write as much by hand in a nice notebook that I'll, you know, that has some meaning to me. Sometimes I'll have my friends once I was on last summer I was on tour for the movie Train Wreck and with Dave Attell and Amy Schumer and Vanessa Bayer and it was my birthday. And Dave Attell got me a journal. Like it was really sweet. He just like gave me a little gift for my birthday. We were in Seattle on tour. Gave me a nice journal. That's really cool. And I said, one of my favorites.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And 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 are the things that I publish.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always say right because I'm an actor as well. I always say write in a trance and act in a trance. 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Real life, that person's a TV 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. 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. And then I would.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Directing a film, which was the hardest thing by far I've ever done in my entire life. And 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 brilliant, came to one of my improv shows, and she made this observation. And I thought it was wonderful, which is because I think on that given night, it was like, it guest improvisers sit in with me, this show called Mike Robiglio's Dream. And any given week, it'll be like AD Bryant from SNL or Ellie Kemper, 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I conceived this idea. My first film was called Sleepwalk with Me, and people want to see it. It's on Netflix. It's easy to find. And after I made it, I went back to improvising at UCB Theater after years of kind of taking time off from improv. I'd studied it in college, et cetera. And the reason I went back to it is because”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to act one. Yeah, it's nice that you haven't seen the whole thing because I can dance around things and so that the listeners aren't spoiled on things. But yeah, it gets better.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dylan Grace was, but it's a I always urge people, I always urge screenwriters or anyone who needs feedback on their work to just invite people to something where you give them something, to 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever reason, New York pizza is better, in my opinion, than most places. And actually, the reason complement 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 workshop my standup. And I would always, I would have over people like Brian Koppelman, Michael Weber, like Phil Lord came to one of Nicole House Center. And I would always have the best pizza. I could have Luca, or I'd have Lutzo. And I would say at the beginning of the reading, the script might be bad.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Greeks? Is it the same ingredients or do they do anything particularly? No, no, it's same ingredients. It's just sort of a medium-sized crust pizza. And there's a million theories on pizza. Most people say it's based on the water. I mean, there's books and books written about pizza, but people say it's water-based, what makes it good, which is why...”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Thin Crust, Coloven, and places like Arturos and Lucali, Lutzo. And then I have this odd, you know, from my childhood just in Massachusetts, there's a ton of Greek pizza. There's all these sort of greasy Greek pizzerias that I grew up on. 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 a suburb of Connecticut and just get pizza. And the other one, the other pit stop there is New Haven has extraordinary.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She really kind of gave up on parenting and ordered pizza a lot, you know, like 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. 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.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know of outside of comedy. And one word back, pizza. Yeah, that's correct. So can you elaborate on this, please? It's such an embarrassing obsession because it's simple, you know, it's bread and cheese and sauce. I mean, hearing you say that makes me realize how simple of a human being I am. I have a joke from my first album to 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, that's Freudian saying that because I was raised by my mother and father, but my mother was around more often.”
2016-07-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #176: Mike Birbiglia, The Sleepwalking Comedy Giant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT