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" Backup dancers are completely respectable. They're the studio musicians of dance. "
Mike Birbiglia
Dance
Backup
Musicians
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" Film is so immersive. "
Mike Birbiglia
Film
" I always try to attack the most honest issues I can in my comedy. "
Mike Birbiglia
Honest
Comedy
Always
" I always live tweet 'SNL.' "
Mike Birbiglia
Tweet
Live
SNL
" I think serious situations actually make for the best kind of belly laughs. But they're also the hardest to convert into comedy at the outset. "
Mike Birbiglia
Kind
Comedy
Think
" You can't go to medical school and come out and be like, 'I'm going to be a dog catcher.' That would be so pointless. "
Mike Birbiglia
Like
You
Go
" One of my favorite comedies of all time is 'Terms of Endearment;' that's my pace. "
Mike Birbiglia
Comedies
Pace
Terms
" I'm generally so disoriented during the week about what I'm doing and where I am - I travel a lot - that when I'm home on a Sunday, I typically try to sleep in as much as I can. "
Mike Birbiglia
I Am
Home
Week
" The economy of film forces you to make choices. "
Mike Birbiglia
Forces
You
Film
" Growing up, I was discouraged from telling personal stories. My dad often used the phrase 'Don't tell anyone.' But not about creepy things. I don't want to lead you down the wrong path. It would be about insignificant things. Like, I wouldn't make the soccer team, and my father would say, 'Don't tell anyone.' "
Mike Birbiglia
Soccer
Team
Father
" Sometimes, occasionally, people will make out in the audience, completely not aware that there's a human being onstage just yards away from them, who can see them. Sometimes people think that you're on television while you're onstage, so you're not even a person. "
Mike Birbiglia
You
Audience
People
" If you're asked something on a movie set and you say 'I don't know,' you lose confidence in every department. What you need to say is 'I'll have that for you in five minutes.' "
Mike Birbiglia
You
Say
Need
" Every sleep doctor I've talked to said it was an urban legend that you shouldn't wake up a sleepwalker. All that will happen is that you will get condescended to. "
Mike Birbiglia
Legend
Up
Wake Up
" I love Broadway shows. "
Mike Birbiglia
Shows
Love
I Love
" Comedy is tragedy plus time, but the time is different for everybody. "
Mike Birbiglia
Different
Comedy
Plus
" I love Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel. "
Mike Birbiglia
Jimmy
Love
I Love
" In terms of comedy, there was a Seinfeldian era of comedy that I love but got played out. Seinfeld was great, but then after him it was people acting like Seinfeld and making observations that we felt like we'd kind of heard before, and then you're seeing Seinfeldian comedy in commercials. Suddenly everything is observational funniness. "
Mike Birbiglia
Comedy
Acting
You
" I was a screenwriting major at Georgetown, and I was in class with some really strong writers like Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote 'The Dark Knight' with Chris, his brother. He wrote 'The Prestige,' the story for 'Memento.' "
Mike Birbiglia
Strong
Who
Class
" My dad goes through war novels like I go through boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. "
Mike Birbiglia
War
Go
Through
" I just like, when you look at people who have long careers in film, they're able to make films that are far away from themselves, because they're metaphorical. It creates more opportunities, I think. "
Mike Birbiglia
Opportunities
Look
People
" Sometimes I'll go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of groceries as though I knew how to cook, which I don't, and as though I was going to be home for the next six days, which I won't. "
Mike Birbiglia
Go
Sometimes
Cook
" After I perform 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend,' it takes a lot out of me emotionally; and, at the end of it, I feel like I know the audience and the audience knows me. It's this weird unspoken bond that we'll kind of always have with each other. "
Mike Birbiglia
Bond
Know
Feel
" The list of fun and easily-fixed brain diseases is very short. "
Mike Birbiglia
Fun
Short
List
" If I dream that I'm directing, it's not a film, it's like a commercial for cotton candy, and I've got four feet of cotton candy all around me that I've got to break through, like a brick wall or a fortress. "
Mike Birbiglia
Cotton
Feet
Me
" Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is. "
Mike Birbiglia
Ever
You
Want
" When I started out, I really struggled as a comic because no one knew who I was, and sometimes I was telling stories, so it would take a while for people to get on board for things. "
Mike Birbiglia
People
Started
Out
" The thing with film is that it's so wide-reaching compared to comedy. When I release my comedy special, half a million people will see it. If I release a movie, five to ten million people will see it. "
Mike Birbiglia
People
See
Film
" I think your tendency when you play yourself is to accentuate something about you that you think is the funny thing about you. "
Mike Birbiglia
Funny
Yourself
Your
" I was completely unqualified to get into Harvard. But then I went to my interview for Harvard, and the woman asked, 'Why do you want to go here?' And I took out all of my comedy writing samples that I had done. I couldn't have been more delusional in terms of what I thought they wanted in a candidate for college. "
Mike Birbiglia
You
Writing
College
" I think because I've been working in front of audiences for so many years, I'm able to take in the input, good or bad, and just say, 'This is the part I agree with that you're saying, and these are the parts I don't agree with.' "
Mike Birbiglia
Bad
Think
You
" Random people, celebrities of note come to your shows over the years, and I've had some really strange ones. Like the guy from Kiss. Gene Simmons has literally been in the audience at my shows, like, four times. I don't know if he knows me; he's just a big fan of comedy. "
Mike Birbiglia
Comedy
Random
People