Ira Glass Charms At Music Box Sleepwalk With Me Screenings
By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 4, 2012 7:20PM
Sleepwalk With me, Mike Birbiglia’s film adaptation of his This American Life essays on fighting a sleep disorder while dealing with stress in his personal and professional life, played to a series of sold out shows at the Music Box Theatre over the weekend. The gate from the Music Box screenings now go toward Birbiglia’s and host Ira Glass’s stated goal for the film to make one dollar more than the gross receipts for Joss Whedon’s The Avengers.
Glass was present at the Music Box all weekend to introduce the film and engage audiences in Q&A's after each screening. Glass proved to be as likeable, funny and self-effacing as Birbiglia’s “Matt Pandamiglio” in the film. The first question posed to glass after the 4:30 p.m. Saturday screening I attended was why the decision to fictionalize Birbiglia’s story was made.
“We fictionalized for two reasons,” Glass said. “One: Mike felt very protective of his parents: the parents in the film were played as very disapproving and more broadly than what happened in real life,” noting that Birbiglia “wanted the freedom Woody Allen had with Alvy Singer in Annie Hall.”
Glass said the second reason to fictionalize Birbiglia’s story was a matter of structure. “To work as a film, the structure of the previous versions was wrong. In real life (Birbiglia) had been sleepwalking from the time he was 14 or 15. That cannot work for a movie. We invented the idea of his sister’s engagement party, with the pressure on him to fix his life. That’s just good storytelling.”
The penultimate scene in Sleepwalk with Me, where Birbiglia-as-Pandamiglio jumps through the window of a hotel room before he seeks help for his sleep disorder, was also fictionalized. “In real life, Mike broke up with (his girlfriend) months before he jumped out the window,” glass said. “That cannot work in a movie.”
Somewhere during the 20-minute session Glass seamlessly turned the tables on the audience and started asking his own questions. He asked if there people in the crowd who suffered from sleeping disorders and seemed as shocked as we at the response. One woman who sat two rows behind me talked of how she also acted out her dreams like Birbiglia and had occasionally woke up hitting her husband.
Glass ended his session by imploring the audience to continue its grassroots campaign for the film. “We don’t have a budget for promotion,” he said. “So we have to rely on word of mouth from people who’ve seen the film.