Mike Birbiglia and Keegan-Michael Key Open Up About What Makes ‘Don’t Think Twice’ so Personal

Sandra Miska

In the dramedy “Don’t Think Twice,” the second feature written and directed by comedian and actor Mike Birbiglia, a group of thirtysomething improv actors are forced to reevaluate their lives and goals after one of them gets a coveted spot on a late-night sketch comedy show. Keegan-Michael Key plays the lucky one, Jack Mercer, who has his dream come true, or so he thinks. Over a recent lunch at Vintage Enoteca in West Hollywood, Key and Birbiglia spoke about the film and how their past experience played a role in creating such a poignant film.

Keegan-Michael Key, a Detroit native who studied improv at the Second City, got his big break in 2003 when he joined the cast of “MADtv.” There, he met Jordan Peele, and the two of them went on to create their own Comedy Central sketch series, “Key and Peele,” which ran for five seasons. Earlier this year, the duo wrote and starred in a feature, “Keanu.”

No doubt “Don’t Think Twice” is Key’s most personal film to date. “It’s a movie about when you get to a certain point in your life,” Key said. “When you realize that some of the dreams you had are all going in a different direction–what does that mean? And how are you going to navigate that rest of your existence? All of the characters are in their thirties, their mid-thirties, because usually that’s when it happens. You get to this place where you start to think, ‘Uh oh, it hasn’t happen yet, I’ve been doing this for ten years, 15 years…Is there something else I want to do?”

“This film is set in the world of improv,” Key said. “And part of my career has been in the improv world, and for us, the Olympics, or the major league is ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and this film has a [similar] show called ‘Weekend Live,’ so very different [laughs], which Mike did on purpose with a very heavy wink. So, all of the characters at the beginning of the film go, ‘This is what we want,’ and all of a sudden there’s this opportunity for them to get on this show, but it only happens for one of them, and then the interesting thing is, once that trigger gets pulled, all of the rest of them have to go, ‘So, I didn’t get it, now what do I have to do? I’ve been told my dream I’ve had for this amount of time is not going to come true, now what do I do? Now where do I go? Now what do I focus my energy?’ …That’s kind of the general gist.”

Where would Key be if he had chosen a different path? “If I had gone a different direction, and my parents had not encouraged me to do what I wanted to do, I would probably be either a veterinarian or a psychologist. Or I’d be in academia. …I might have gotten into theater as an academic. I would have written papers that no one read and then just taught classes. I’m very fortunate, because I’ve never cared about being poor or having money. In my life, I’ve always had just enough money to do what I want, just enough money to have beer, and just enough money to have food, so, being in theater is a perfect job. If you like money, don’t go into acting [laughs].”

Although Key has long gotten over feeling stage fright, he and his cast mates were met with a unique challenge during filming “Don’t Think Twice.” “It’s second nature now; I’ve been improvising for 20 years. I’ve been an actor now for 28 years, a professional actor, so being in front of people is like breathing, or being like a fish in water. The interesting thing is, the bigger challenge is that there’s a camera running around that gets right in front of your face in the middle of you acting a scene that you’re improvising. There was this Steadicam roaming around because we wanted to have this seventh member of the group with us, to give you guys a sense of what it actually feels like to be improvising on stage with other people.”

Did Key and the others get to work their improve muscles on the set? “Surprisingly, it’s a very, very scripted film for a film about improvisation. Most of the improv shows that you’re witnessing in the film are heavily scripted, because lots of important plot points are made in the scenes, so we can’t improvise. What Mike would do is have us improvise for 10-15 minutes, then we’d start shooting the scene, and throughout the movie there are moments of improve sprinkled in those improv shows.”

Key has formed such a close bond with those he has done improv with over the years, including his “Don’t Think Twice” co-star Tami Sagher, that he counts many of them among her personal heroes. “We all think, ‘Oh, your hero is supposed to be Marlon Brando, your hero is supposed to be Robert DeNiro,’ and they were my heroes. But when I started improvising, these people became my heroes, and to be able to work with them was an amazing experience.”

Although he and Birbiglia had never met prior to the latter’s contacting him to be in this film, Key explains how he almost immediately felt a kinship with the filmmaker/actor. “We were supposed to talk for 15 minutes, and we talked for two hours,” he recalls of their first Skype meeting. “I said to him, ’You have written a movie about my life, and we’ve never met. I don’t understand what’s happening here.’ But he’s had enough experience in that world that it’s drawn on almost all of my professional experience. The only difference is that in the movie, Jack gets a sense of the jealousy from his friends and his castmates and them asking him for help pulling them up, and I haven’t experienced that as much in my real life. I guess, I should say, ‘Thank God.’ It’s a tough place to be. …Everybody was very lovely – To my face [laughs].”

Mike Birbiglia, who grew up in Massachusetts, got his first taste of improv in college at Georgetown University. He has appeared in the films “The Fault in Our Stars,” “Trainwreck,” and “Popstar: Never Stop Stopping.” He is perhaps best known for his recurring role on “Orange is the New Black” as Danny Pearson, a prison employee who becomes reformed. Birbglia, who is a regular contributor to the radio program “This American Life,” first sat in the director’s chair in 2012 for his first feature “Sleepwalk with Me.” For “Don’t Think Twice,” Birbiglia not only wrote and directed, but also plays the character Miles, a single 36-year-old improv performer and instructor he comes to a crossroad after his good friend makes it big and his new girlfriend delivers some possibly life-altering news.

Birbiglia’s first film was set in the world of stand-up comedy, another form of comedy in which he has experience. Is there that much of a difference between those involved in stand-up and improv? “My wife made this observation once, she goes, ‘Your stand-up friends are so mean, and your improve friends are so nice.’ And I always say, ‘It’s true, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s under the surface.’ And that’s what a lot of the movie is about, the competitiveness that’s under the surface of the niceness.”

He went on to speak about the upsides and challenges of directing while acting. “It was so easy. Making movies is so easy,” he joked. “It’s really hard, there’s no doubt about it. It’s challenging, it’s time-consuming. But the other thing is when you have a vision for something, and it’s a really clear vision, the whole crew and cast, if you let them in on that vision, they all want to contribute to that, and, so, everyone is looking out for everybody, and I feel like if my cinematographer, or my first AD, or this person or that person didn’t feel like he had it with one of my takes, they would come over and be like, ‘Yeah, maybe do another one,’ and I’d know what they meant. So there is some of that. There are ups and downs. There are pros and cons to directing yourself. The pros are you’re keeping your cast and crew lean. It’s a small group of people conveying this vision. And then the cons of someone writing, producing, directing and acting is, I’m spread pretty thin at certain points. In some ways, you just kind of give and take.”

How much did Key and the other performers influence his vision? “I wrote what I wrote, and that’s sort of what people signed up for, and then once people were onboard, there were certain things like Kate (Micucci)’s drawings, which were he drawings, where I just was looking online and I said, ‘We should just instead of having your character be a novelist, you should be a graphic novelist, and we’ll use these pictures.’ I love the movie Once, because you don’t know where it begins and ends. It feels more like life than it does a movie, and I feel like that was what I was after. Ultimately with the lines, I would always say, ‘Say the line, and if it doesn’t feel right, say whatever feels right.’ I ultimately want something that feels true, more than I am amused by hearing my words coming out of someone’s mouth.”

“Don’t Think Twice” opens July 29 in Los Angeles and Chicago. The film opened July 22 in New York.  A national release will soon be announced.