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"One of the perks of being married is you get to introduce each other to the things you&amp;#x27;re into--especially in the realm of pop culture. It was evident early in our relationship that my husband had cooler, smarter and a touch more sophisticated taste than my mainstream (Hi, I unabashedly watch EVERY city of the Real Housewives) must-sees. And as a result he made me a fan of things like the DJ Kid Koala, everything on NPR, shows like Children&amp;#x27;s Hospital on Adult Swim, and my personal favorite: comedian Mike Birbiglia.If you don&amp;#x27;t know who Mike Birbiglia is yet, you will and you should. And at the very least you&amp;#x27;ll recognize him from one of the most cringe worthy scenes on Girls where he interviewed Lena Dunham&amp;#x27;s character Hannah for a job that she almost had&amp;amp;mdash;until she made an awkward date rape joke (really, is there any other kind?) Mike is one of those comedians who draws from his own life in such a heartfelt way that it&amp;#x27;s like you&amp;#x27;re a close friend he&amp;#x27;s chosen to confide in. His deeply personal topics include a sleep disorder that causes him to act out his dreams (and in one terrifying case jump out a hotel window) and not wanting to marry his long-term girlfriend. You basically laugh and cry as he tells these tales on stage and in his book, one man show and new movie&amp;amp;mdash;all called Sleepwalk With Me. The movie Sleepwalk With Me was a Sundance hit and a true labor of love. Mike co-wrote (with This American Life host Ira Glass, who also produced), co-directed and stars in the film that just opened in select theaters across the country. Opening weekend in NYC, Mike stayed after almost every screening for a Q&amp;amp;A with the audience. I saw Sleepwalk With Me (even attended a showing with a Q&amp;amp;A session) and was blown away. It&amp;#x27;s part indie drama and part romantic comedy without the usual &amp;quot;they meet cute and live happily ever after&amp;quot; cliche. It&amp;#x27;s a real story about how some relationships just don&amp;#x27;t always last. I couldn&amp;#x27;t wait to talk to Mike all about it all. Listen in as we go off on tangents about high school, get deep about why his wife doesn&amp;#x27;t mind that&amp;#x27;s he&amp;#x27;s friends with the ex that the movie is about, and why he admires his good friend Lena Dunham! Glamour: How&amp;#x27;s it going? You&amp;#x27;ve had a busy week promoting the movie! Mike Birbiglia: I&amp;#x27;m good. I&amp;#x27;m like so tired from this week that I just tweeted a sentence that is missing words. I wrote &amp;quot;Follow Friday, your dreams unless they are luring through a window.&amp;quot; But I didn&amp;#x27;t say &amp;quot;luring YOU&amp;quot; so there was no object for the verb... Follow Friday: Your dreams. Unless they are luring through a window. #FF @sleepwalkmovie&amp;amp;mdash; Mike Birbiglia (@birbigs) August 31, 2012 Glamour: We&amp;#x27;re sure you&amp;#x27;re fans understand what you were trying to say. MB: I think they understand I&amp;#x27;m an idiot &amp;amp;#133; Glamour: No. They&amp;#x27;re trying to find the hidden humor in it! MB: That&amp;#x27;s right. We can only hope that they&amp;#x27;ll have sort of a David Lynchian sort of mystery to it. &amp;#x27;What did he mean by not including you?&amp;#x27; Glamour: You&amp;#x27;ve also been so busy promoting the movie--does being this busy affect your sleepwalking at all? MB: You know, when I get stressed out I feel like a lot of my dreams just become anxiety dreams, and they&amp;#x27;re work dreams. They&amp;#x27;re just me continuing my day. Like when I was shooting the film, I would have dreams that I was directing the film in my sleep. And so my wife would come in, and I would be adjusting lamps in our bedroom. She would say, &amp;#x27;What are you doing?&amp;#x27; And I&amp;#x27;d say, &amp;#x27;We&amp;#x27;re shooting.&amp;#x27; And she&amp;#x27;d say, &amp;#x27;We&amp;#x27;re not shooting.&amp;#x27; And I&amp;amp;#8217;d say, &amp;#x27;I&amp;#x27;m sorry but we are.&amp;#x27; And I would actually patronize her. Like, the thing that&amp;#x27;s most insulting when you&amp;#x27;re sleep walking is telling the person that their reality isn&amp;#x27;t true. That your reality is true, and they&amp;#x27;re so stupid to think otherwise. Glamour: You&amp;#x27;re wife was a big part of the film--even serving as an associate producer--but this movie is about an ex-girlfriend. Was she really okay with that? MB: We actually didn&amp;#x27;t have many issues with that. My other one-man show, My Girlfriend&amp;#x27;s Boyfriend, that I&amp;#x27;m adapting into a film right now is all about how my wife and I decided to get married just by not believing in the idea of marriage. How neither of us ever thought we&amp;#x27;d get married and how we decided to get married despite that. I talk about how my ex-girlfriend and I are still good friends. And my wife and her long time ex-boyfriend are still good friends, too. I don&amp;#x27;t know if this is specific to our era or our generation, but I feel like that&amp;#x27;s OK. I feel like it&amp;#x27;s just sort of how things are these days. Glamour: On that note, what did your ex-girlfriend (played by Lauren Ambrose in the movie) think of Sleepwalk With Me? MB: She came to the opening night in Brooklyn and was actually really moved by it. Like I say in the film, we&amp;#x27;re very good friends. She couldn&amp;#x27;t believe how accurate it was. She found it oddly reassuring of the fact that breaking up was the right thing to do. And that&amp;#x27;s a lot of what the film is about. It seems like this counter-intuitive thing that&amp;#x27;s is a [SPOILER ALERT!!!] &amp;amp;#8220;sad ending&amp;amp;#8221; to have them break up, but in fact it&amp;#x27;s a happy ending. It&amp;#x27;s a good ending. Glamour: With all the writing and stand-up and now acting you do about your relationships, do you feel like a relationship expert now? MB: NO. Oh my god--No! So far from it. I just think I made a comedy and it&amp;amp;#8217;s about relationships, and it&amp;amp;#8217;s about a breakup. And I just tried to be as honest about the material as I could be. And I don&amp;amp;#8217;t think I&amp;#x27;m an expert, but I feel like in my life I try to learn from my mistakes and that&amp;#x27;s kind of all we can all do. Glamour: Was it hard being the director of the movie? Like you were basically giving people notes and direction on your own life... MB: Directing a movie is a little bit like being back in student government and putting on the homecoming dance. You&amp;#x27;re like, &amp;#x27;You put up the streamers, and you hire the DJ, and you get the punch bowl.&amp;#x27; Some people are just like, &amp;#x27;This dance sucks.&amp;#x27; And you&amp;#x27;re like, &amp;#x27;No no, this dance is awesome!&amp;#x27; You have to be really positive. That&amp;amp;#8217;s what&amp;amp;#8217;s funny is you always have to be positive in the states of adversity at all times. And I really was in student government so that actually is personal to me. Glamour: Me too! And there was always so much drama! MB: It was always dramatic. That&amp;amp;#8217;s why the movie Election is so relatable because it&amp;#x27;s SO important when you&amp;#x27;re that age. In real life, I first started sleep walking in high school because that was when this concept of getting into college first appeared. I had this moment of, &amp;#x27;Oh! This is going to affect the rest of my life.&amp;#x27; When you&amp;#x27;re in high school, you can&amp;#x27;t even imagine the concept of what the rest of your life even means. But it&amp;#x27;s still the first time where someone says that to you. What&amp;#x27;s funny, is that in retrospect, I don&amp;#x27;t think high school does [affect the rest of your life]. Glamour: You had such a memorable scene on Girls this season. We heard Lena is a good friend of yours--how did you guys meet? MB: I met Lena an early screening of her film Tiny Furniture. I had one of those moments where I was like, &amp;#x27;Wow!&amp;#x27; I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t know this person, and I was like, &amp;#x27;She did it.&amp;#x27; She made a movie for essentially no money that made me laugh hard and feel hard in the best possible way. I said to my agent, &amp;#x27;I just have to meet this person.&amp;#x27; This was long before Girls and her deal with HBO. She was just a struggling filmmaker in NYC, and I was a comedian in NYC. So we went for coffee and hit it off. We became really good friends and started having a weekly coffee in the West Village that we called our &amp;#x27;Weekly Roast.&amp;#x27; What we wouldn&amp;#x27;t give to be a fly on the table at those surely hilarious meet ups! Tell us why you too loved Sleepwalk With Me (or the book or one-man show it was based on) or why you just love Mike too! More fun interviews! * Sofia Vergara Tells Us About Gloria&amp;#x27;s Pregnancy and More Modern Family Scoop! * Exclusive: Lea Michele Talks Season 4 Glee Scoop, Stealing Toilet Paper From the White House, and More * Lake Bell Talks Smack On Her Children&amp;#x27;s Hospital Co-Stars P.S. Want more Obsessed? Sign up for our awesome daily newsletter that features the latest celebrity gossip, TV news, hilarious Internet sensations, and more! Photos and Video: IFC Films and YouTube "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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