The New Path to Stand-Up Fame and Fortune With Mike Birbiglia

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by comedian Mike Birbiglia to talk about how the goal of the modern stand-up comedian has changed over the past decade. They discuss whether stand-up alone is no longer enough and how necessary shoulder programming like podcasting and social media is for building a following. They also talk about Netflix's influence on stand-up and whether comedians want to make movies and TV anymore (02:30). Matt finishes the show with a prediction on which movies from the Cannes Film Festival will generate Oscar buzz (30:22). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Mike Birbiglia Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you care about Hollywood, and I assume you do if you're listening to the town, you should really be getting the whole story about Hollywood.
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0:55.1	Breeze agents help you do things in seconds that used to take hours. And Breeze co-pilot keeps you two steps ahead,
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1:04.9	AI. It is Tuesday, May 27th. As recently as about 10 or 15 years ago, there was a pretty clear path to fame and fortune for a stand-up comic.
1:16.0	You work to clubs, hoping to get discovered, and if you were lucky, you get a sitcom or S&L or an HBO special,
1:21.8	or maybe even a late-night TV show if you really broke through.
1:25.8	That was the pinnacle.
1:27.1	These days, that's all gone, or at least it's not necessary or even desirable for the
1:31.5	top comics.
1:32.7	Performers like Nate Burgossey, Shane Gillis, Nikki Glazer, Joe Coy, Kat Williams, Matt
	...

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