“I love writing jokes about death,” admits Mike Birbiglia. In our latest webchat, he continues: “A lot of us have become comedians as a way to cope with our situation. That’s how I think about comedy, it’s a coping mechanism for me and I try to pass that on.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Birbiglia’s latest special, “The Old Man and the Pool,” tells the story of how the comedian decided to swim at the YMCA after a doctor’s appointment left him with fears about his own mortality. He explains, “I had this vision during the pandemic. What if I could write an entire special on the topic of death? We can laugh about it for 90 minutes and at the end of it, leave the theater feeling a little better than when we entered.”
SEE Experts’ battle: Our first predictions for the winners of the 2024 Creative Arts Emmy
The Netflix special received an Emmy nomination for writing for a Variety special, the comedian’s first ever nomination. He says: “I consider myself an admirer of what’s happening in Hollywood, but someone who’s a little bit outside of it. I’m going to be very starstruck.”
On writing humor that delves deep into heavy subject matter, Birbiglia says, “The laughter that comes from black comedy, at least from the jokes I tell on this show, comes from saying things that I don’t think we could say in polite company.”
In “The Old Man and The Pool,” Birbiglia reflects on life from his personal diary. The comedian reveals that he also keeps a diary in which he records his jokes, but “sometimes my joke diary gets very personal and sometimes my personal diary gets very funny. You find jokes in diaries that are six months old or years old. You look back and think, ‘Oh my God, I thought my problem was this. I had no idea my problem was this!’ It’s so funny. It’s as funny as the guy who scratches these itchy spots on his arms and doesn’t realize there’s a damn bear behind him.”
He explains the special ending to the show: “It’s a very special ending that I’ve never seen in a special before. It came to me after two years of work. We tried it out and the audience gasped. For me, that’s always the best. You know you’ve hit on something.”
Birbiglia recalls, “My favorite thing is seeing how the audience reacts to what I do. There’s a part of the show where I do a series of jokes where I scold the audience for laughing. That literally came out of an improvisation one night at the Cherry Lane Theater. I was telling the story of a man who had died and was surprised at how much they laughed. I thought I could scold them like a school teacher. I love live performance and seeing what the audience does when they hear these jokes.”
PREDICTIONS the Emmy winners 2024
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