“I love writing jokes about death,” admits Mike Birbiglia. For our recent webchat he continues, “A lot of us became comedians as a coping mechanism. That’s how I think about comedy it’s a coping mechanism for me, and I’m trying to share it.” 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 start swimming at the YMCA after a doctor’s appointment prompted fears of his own mortality. He explains, “I had this vision during the pandemic. What if I could write an entire special with the topic is death? We can laugh about it for 90 minutes and at the end feel somewhat better leaving the theater then when we came in”
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The Netflix special has received an Emmy nomination for variety special writing, the first ever for the comedian. He says, “I think of myself as an admirer of what happens in Hollywood but someone who is somewhat outside of it. I’m going to be very star struck.“
On writing humor that dives deep into heavy subjects, Birbiglia says, “The laughter that comes from dark comedy, at least the jokes that I tell in this show, are based on saying the things that I feel we couldn’t say in polite company.”
In “The Old Man and The Pool,” Birbiglia offers reflections about life from his personal journal. The comedian reveals he also has a journal to keep track of his jokes but “sometimes my joke journal becomes very personal and sometimes my personal journal becomes very jokey. You can find jokes in journals that are six months old or years old. You look back and you go, ‘oh my God, I though my problem was this. I had no idea my problem was this!’ There’s something so funny about that. It’s as funny as the guy scratching these itches on his arms and he doesn’t realize there’s a **** bear behind him.”
On the distinctive conclusion to the show, he explains, “It’s a very specific ending that I’ve never seen in a special before. It occurred to me 2 years into process. We tried it and there was a gasp in the audience. To me that’s always the best thing. You know you’re onto something.”
Birbiglia reflects, “My favorite thing is watching the audience react to what I’m doing. There’s a part of the show where I make a series of jokes scolding the audience for laughing. That literally came out of improvisation one night at the Cherry Lane Theater. I was telling the story about a man who died and I was surprised at how much they were laughing. I thought I could scold them like a school teacher. I absolutely love live performance and seeing what the audience does when they are given these jokes.”
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