Mike Birbigliaās 6 Tips for Making it Small in Hollywood. Or Anywhere.
Write. Make a short film. Go to an open mike. Take an improv class. Thereās no substitute for actually doing something. Donāt talk about it anymore. Maybe donāt even finish reading this essay.
Donāt worry about failing. Thereās a great video where Ira Glass explains that when you start in a new field, your work wonāt be as good as your taste. It will take years for your taste and the quality of your work to intersect. (If ever!) Failure is essential. Thereās no substitute for it. Itās not just encouraged but required.
The bedrock of all good pieces of writing is 10 bad drafts. Maybe 20. I wrote 12 drafts of āDonāt Think Twice,ā 14 drafts of my first movie, āSleepwalk With Me,ā and worked on my first one-man show for six years. My first five-minute set on āLate Show With David Lettermanā in 2002 was mined from three hours of so-so material that I had tried and failed with for six years.
3. LEARN FROM THE FAILURE
This is where it becomes important to find a community of people you respect. People who have good taste. People who might not be good at something themselves but know what good is. They might be in a theater company, at an improv school, or live in your dorm. They arenāt the easiest thing to find. When I was in college, every Wednesday I drove my girlfriend Maggieās Ford Taurus to an open mike at a Best Western 40 minutes away, to enter a lottery of 30 comedians trying to win one of the nine spots to perform in front of the other angry 21 comedians.
It sucked. People didnāt like my comedy there. I didnāt love theirs. It wasnāt a fit. But then I got a job working as a door person at the DC Improv comedy club in Washington, and that was a fit. Around the same time, I was cast in my college improv group. So all at once, I met people whom I could bounce jokes and ideas off of. Theyād give me candid feedback, and I tried to listen. I wasnāt great at it at first. Itās hard to hear criticism. But Iāve learned that harsh feedback, constructive feedback, even weird, random feedback, is all helpful, if you know the essence of what youāre trying to convey.
I once heard an interview where Ron Howard said that he tests the rough cuts of his movies with a ton of audiences. He doesnāt do it to be told what the movieās vision should be, but to understand whether his vision is coming across. If not, he makes changes. Your vision is not being conveyed a majority of the time. With āDonāt Think Twice,ā I workshopped the script like the way I workshop my standup: I invited friends over to read it out loud in my living room and then fed them pizza. The pizza was excellent. The script often wasnāt. So Iād get my friends all drunk on pizza and then ask them hard questions like: āWhat do you like least about the script? Be honest. I can take it.ā Thatās where I learned the most.
You might not be meant to be a writer or performer or improviser. You might be meant to teach kids math or raise money for a food bank or start a company that makes Rubikās Cubes for babies. Donāt rule out quitting. There is going to be an insane amount of work ahead, and your time might be spent better elsewhere. There was a great column in The New York Times recently where Angela Duckworth writes, āRather than ask, āWhat do I want to be when I grow up?ā ask, āIn what way do I wish the world were different? What problem can I help solve?ā This puts the focus where it should be ā on how you can serve other people.ā
5. BE BOLD ENOUGH TO MAKE STUFF THATāS SMALL BUT GREAT
Eight years ago, I made a network sitcom pilot based on my life. It was a dream come true. A sitcom about my life? What could be better than that for a standup comedian? Well, it didnāt get picked up. I was devastated. But hereās the kicker: Failing to get that sitcom was the single greatest stroke of luck thatās happened in my entire career. The show wasnāt truly my comedic voice. It was watered down by network and studio notes to the point of being like dozens of other bland sitcoms.
After that, I no longer wanted to create projects for the Hollywood gatekeepers. The networks. The studios. Since then, Iāve created a handful of pieces for āThis American Life,ā self-produced three Off Broadway one-person shows, toured hundreds of cities around the world, and written, directed and starred in two feature films. All outside the system. Based on that work, Iāve been offered small movie roles by people who work inside the system. Which is to say: Leaving the system behind and creating something of your own may actually be thing that gets you into the system, hopefully on your own terms.
The point is, forget the gatekeepers. As far as Iām concerned, what you create in a 30-seat, hole-in-the-wall improv theater in Phoenix can be far more meaningful than a mediocre sitcom being half-watched by seven million people. America doesnāt need more stuff. We need more great stuff. You could make that.
6. CLEVERNESS IS OVERRATED, AND HEART IS UNDERRATED
Plus, there are fewer people competing for heart, so you have a better chance of getting noticed. Sometimes people say, āOne thing you have to offer in your work is yourself.ā I disagree. I think itās the only thing.
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