In The Good Life, his fresh Netflix special, Mike Birbiglia regales the audience at New York’s Beacon Theatre with tales of fatherhood and beyond, em
In The Good Life, his fresh Netflix special, Mike Birbiglia regales the audience at New York’s Beacon Theatre with tales of fatherhood and beyond, embodying the toasty and witty dad next door. To me, he just about was: My senior building is observable 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 straightforward,” 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—tough 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 innovative output, as coated with his trademark arid wit. In advance of The Good Life’s release, Vanity Fair spoke with Birbiglia about his innovative 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 contemporary 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 engaging. 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 irate? 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.
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