Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
PeacocksGood One: A Show About Jokesis not your average comedy-documentary special.
In an interview with the elusive Fox for Vulture (how on earth did we nab him?
), he gets into what it takes to make a podcast a streaming special.
Its more about food than you think.
Youve been making theGood Onepodcast since 2017.
That was exactly five years ago.
The format of the special departs from the podcast.
How did you figure out the format?We had a million conversations.
Early on, the podcast was not guaranteed to last more than, like, ten episodes.
OrChefs Table,butChefs Tableis too serious.
So a documentary made the most sense.
Maybe well edit things out, but the flow of the interview stays as is.
Do we need narration?
Do we need more talking heads?
How did you land on Birbiglia as a subject?Ive interviewed Mike before.
I knew he was a process guy, and he has the most visual process possible.
There was so much of hisstuffaround his offices.
Its not just a guy going, What if we change this word to that word?
Theres some of that, but its not only that.
Its really emotionally exhausting.
But Birbiglia was game to have us around.
Was he self-conscious about you filming his joke-writing process?Yeah, I think he was.
They werent having fake meetings; these were meetings that they needed to have.
Thats how he writes.
He is so unique in how he has essentially writing staffers involved.
But Mike has this little crew, and it helps that one of them is his brother.
Its helpful when youre trying to tell a personal story to have family members involved.
Like, his sister was selling merch at the Rhode Island shows with his nephews and nieces.
You cant put it all onscreen, but all of that stuff is texture.
You get the feeling, even if youre not capturing every part of it.
Good Onefeatures a lot of backstage footage and even some clips of his sets.
Some of those shows, hes reading stories out loud off of printer paper.
Thats not how he intends on shooting it for a special.
When you watch a special, its almost impossible to imagine that it started from nothing.
And Birbiglias finished product is more finished than anyone elses currently working.
Theyre so intricately put together.
He really has a good bullshit barometer.
Im a zealot about how not true that is.
Mikes process makes a lot of sense.
But we could find someone whose process is much more instinctual.
And they were like, Oh, we already have lunch plans.
But then they arranged for us to have Nandos at the after-party-throw in thing.
Thats so great, Jesse.It was cool!
