I chatted with comic Mike Birbiglia on the phone while he was taking a break from working on a film treatment of his current stage show, “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” coming to Austin’s Paramount Theatre on Friday.

It seems to be the writer/comic/actor’s working model — he turned his previous highly praised, one-man stage effort, “Sleepwalk with Me,” into a multi-character film festival darling (and a book). That work, loosely based on incidents from the comic’s own life, dealt with his beginnings in comedy and difficulty in relationships. Its title came from rapid eye movement behavior disorder, which causes a person to physically act out the movements of his dreams.

The dangerous condition once led Birbiglia, while touring, to dive through a second-story hotel window, just one of the incidents dramatized in the movie. As a result, when he brought “Sleepwalk” to South by Southwest in 2012, Birbiglia stayed at the one-story Hotel San José.

“I tweeted my Twitter followers, ‘Does anyone know any first-floor hotels in Austin?’ and a bunch of them recommended it. It was all sold out, but I emailed them and made a plea for myself as a special hotel case,” he says.

Birbiglia, who considers himself “a writer who performs my own work,” is very active with his fans on social media.

“My show has four jokes about Texas that will be replaced by the words (insert ridiculous state here),” Birbiglia tweeted recently, asking his fans for Texas substitutes. They suggested Arkansas, North Dakota, the South, Florida, Oklahoma and, of course, Bulgaria.

“I’ve actually been telling audiences for a few months that I am going to be performing in Texas in January and I don’t know what I’m going to say when I get to that part of the story,” he said, laughing. “(But) I think Texas has a sense of humor about itself.”

“My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend,” like the stage version of “Sleepwalk,” is a collection of hilarious individual stories that, combined, create a poignant whole that sneaks up on the audience.

“The gist of the show is how I decided to get married despite not believing in marriage,” Birbiglia explains. He recounts incidents from his childhood concerning, among others, his first love, his first kiss and his first breakup — “various embarrassing stories that I wouldn’t really ever want to tell anyone,” he says.

Despite the heartache Birbiglia explores, the show, which has played before audiences in England and Australia as well as Canada and the United States, is ultimately optimistic about love. In fact, during a Bloomington, Ill., performance several weeks ago, a couple got engaged onstage. “Believe it or not,” he says, “that’s not the first time that’s happened. Dare I say this … it’s one of the more romantic comedy shows.”