Mike Birbiglia Film Quotations

In my twenties, I thought it was getting a sitcom. Then I got a sitcom pilot in my early thirties, and realized I didn't want it. It was a rude awakening. When it wasn't picked up, I was crushed, but then in retrospect I've made two films and produced three one-man shows since then. It's the luckiest thing that happened in my life.

I wrote on my desk wall when I was writing the film...'Art is socialism, but life is capitalism.' That's the hard thing in all of it if you expect to make a living.

I was a screenwriting major in college, and really wanted to do that after I graduated, but there are no job listings for that, as we all know. I had many classmates that made it in the business, but stand-up comedy was my way in, and my first film 'Sleepwalk with Me' was based on those autobiographical experiences.

I will say what I aspire to is a consistency in making films, to direct something every couple of years.

I like films that are so funny, dramatic and lifelike simultaneously, that you are laughing and cringing simultaneously all throughout the film.

Elia Kazan. He wrote my favorite book about filmmaking, 'Elia Kazan: On Directing.' There is a thing in the book that I do every time, it's part of my production structure. He said when you're hiring an actor, ask them what draws them to the project, and don't lead them to the answer.

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.

First time films are hard. Even with some of the greatest directors, you look back at their first film, and you are just going, 'That movie is kind of bad.'

You don't really see sleepwalking in films that often. It's weird; I feel like in popular culture we have the perception of sitcom, arms-in-front-of-your-body sleepwalking, and then maybe Olive Oil and Popeye when she sleepwalks through the construction site. But it's all very cartoonish, in some cases literally.

I majored in screenwriting and playwriting in school - and wanted to make films as a career. But when I directed my first short in college - which was called 'Extras' - I lost thousands of dollars and made an unsatisfying and incomplete film.