8 Great Movies About Stand-Up Comedy

I think the reason the realm of stand-up comedy intrigues me so is because it’s fundamentally about a deeply individual quest to become good at something. There can be collaborative aspects to it but most often it’s one person on a stage with a singular purpose: to cause a group of people to laugh. There are times when that profoundly individual world results in closing oneself off to the world outside, alienating the people in a comedian’s life. Or at least, again, this is what Marc Maron has led me to believe.

Mike Birbiglia’s comedy has come into its own, and he seems to really find a voice that suits him in Sleepwalk With Me, which began as one-man show off-Broadway, then became a book, and then a movie. Though I’ve only seen the movie, this seems to be a story he’s crafted over time, just as his character crafts his act in the movie, and it’s this process that we get to see in a fresh way that makes the film one of the strongest and most endearing and funny to ever be made with a stand-up protagonist.

The trend among narrative movies about stand-up comedy, particularly when they have a comedian at their center like Mike Birbiglia, is that they have to find a balance between the collaborative aspect of moviemaking and the individual, stranded-on-an-island element of stand-up. But this clash between mediums seems to often result in remarkably inspired takes on a subculture that is coming more and more to the fore of artistic expression. Using different media to examine stand-up comedy may not result in as many laughs as the purity of a single act, but allows it to make sense in a way that’s impossible by simple explanation. Like on just about every other front, on this issue, stand-up stands defiant.