Mike Birbiglia Returns: Comedy, Truth and ‘The Old Man and the Pool’

The Last Laugh

The Daily Beast

Comedy Interviews, Comedy, Interviews, Tv & Film, Society & Culture, Tv, Movies, Film

4.6 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2023

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When a special arrives on Netflix in its finished form, viewers don’t typically get to see all of the excruciating work that went into making it a polished piece. But for anyone who has been listening to Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast over the past couple of years, it’s all there. “I was doing it privately,” he says on this week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast. “I feel like it’s something that’s kind of unspoken about stand-up, that for the most part, we are in communities of comedians who kick around joke tags: ‘Hey, what if you did this with it?’ And ‘I have a similar story about this, and you know you could use that if you want to,’ or whatever it is. And we kind of just put it out there with audio rolling.” In his second appearance on The Last Laugh, Birbiglia talks about how this process helped shape his latest Broadway show-turned-Netflix special ‘The Old Man and the Pool,’ shares his thoughtful response to the “emotional truth” controversy that came for his friend and fellow comic Hasan Minhaj, breaks down how he handles criticism of his own work, and a lot more.

Follow Mike Birbiglia on Twitter @birbigs and Instagram @birbigs

Follow Matt Wilstein on Threads @mattwilstein

Follow The Last Laugh on Instagram @lastlaughpod and Threads @lastlaughpod

Highlights from this episode and others at The Daily Beast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is The Last Laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast.
0:08.5	It was right around Thanksgiving four years ago when I first talked to Mike Barbiglia for this podcast backstage during the Los Angeles run of his first Broadway show, The New One.
0:19.0	This week, his latest show, The Old Man in the Pool, premiered on Netflix, and I'm so glad
0:24.5	that he is back to talk all about it and go even deeper than we did last time into his
0:29.3	very unique process and style as a comedian.
0:32.2	I always knew Mike cared a lot about getting his material as solid as possible before presenting
0:37.3	it in its final form.
0:38.9	But I really had no idea how much he cared until I started listening to his podcast,
0:44.2	working it out, in which he sits down with fellow comedians and talks through new bits in real time.
0:49.5	As I tell Mike in this conversation, it's become one of my absolute favorite podcasts,
0:54.1	because, as he puts
0:55.6	it, it really is like getting to see something in public that has always been a private ritual
1:00.1	between comedians. And then there's the old man in the pool, which is a simultaneously hilarious
1:05.5	and quite moving examination of aging and mortality from the comedian who turned 45 this year and is no longer
1:12.6	the next big thing that he was when he put out shows like sleepwalk with me and my girlfriend's
1:17.3	boyfriend more than a decade ago. In this clip from his new show, Mike notices something weird
1:22.6	about the signs at the YMCA pool where his doctor told him he needed to swim five days a week if he wanted to stay alive.
1:31.1	I'm sort of obsessed with the signs at the Y, because I feel like they tell you the stories of what has occurred at the Y.
1:36.9	You know, there's that one that says, slippery, when wet, and you know some kid went down pretty hard on them tiles.
1:43.4	A frazzled lifeguard grabbed a Sharpie and wrote,
1:45.9	Slippery, when?
1:49.5	You don't see when on a lot of signage.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Daily Beast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Daily Beast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.