The other day my mom told me about a movie she thought I would love – “Don’t Think Twice.” It’s about an improv group, who are also best friends in their 30s, and what happens when one of them has commercial success.

The movie explores what it means to be in your 30s and trying to succeed as an artist.

Here’s the trailer:

There’s a great interview with Mike Birbiglia, the filmmaker, Variety. One of the questions was particularly relevant to being in your 30s. 

Were you interested in depicting how your life changes from your twenties to your thirties? That’s a big shift, and it’s not one that’s often depicted on film. 
Definitely. There’s no way I would have written this in my twenties. I feel like in my twenties, I was chasing this dream of having a sitcom. At a certain point, I realized it wasn’t even my dream. It was everybody else’s dream except for me. I had a sitcom pilot at CBS like eight years ago and when it didn’t get picked up to air, I was left with all this free time. I put my head down and worked on these three one-person shows Off-Broadway and I directed these two feature films, and I feel so lucky that happened. At the time I was crushed. I felt like it was the biggest failure of my life and in retrospect I think it’s the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.

There’s a cultural idea of success in America. Usually people view it as exposure or visibility. You know, being known. In my thirties, I came to realize that success is connecting with people. Helping people. And contributing in some way. It can be for millions of people in TV or in movies, or it could be for twenty people in an improv theater in Minneapolis.