bo burnham: inside transcript

WebOn a budget. Inside, a new Netflix special written, performed, directed, shot, and edited by comedian Bo Burnham, invokes and plays with many forms. Burnham says he had quit live comedy several years ago because of panic attacks and returned in January 2020 before, as he puts it in typical perverse irony, the funniest thing happened. So he has, for example, a song in which he adopts the persona of a kind of horror movie carnival barker, you might call it, who is trying to sell people the internet. Burnham reacts to his reaction of the song, this time saying, Im being a little pretentious. Burnham is an extraordinary actor, and "Inside" often feels like we're watching the intimate, real interior life of an artist. So we broke down each song and sketch and analyzed their meaning and context. Im talking to you. Yes, Bo Burnham posted a trailer via Twitter on April 28, 2021. The penultimate song "All Eyes on Me" makes for a particularly powerful moment. It's a reminder, coming almost exactly halfway through the special, of the toll that this year is taking on Burnham. On the simplest level, Inside is the story of a comic struggling to make a funny show during quarantine and gradually losing his mind. While talking to the audience during the opening section, Burnham takes a sip out of a water bottle. Is he content with its content? Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. The hustle to be a working artist usually means delivering an unending churn of content curated specifically for the demands of an audience that can tell you directly why they are upset with you because they did not actually like the content you gave them, and then they can take away some of your revenue for it. The song's melody is oddly soothing, and the lyrics are a sly manifestation of the way depression convinces you to stay in its abyss ("It's almost over, it's just begun. In another scene, Burnham gives a retroactive disclaimer to discussions of his suicidal ideation by telling the audience, And if youre out there and youre struggling with suicidal thoughts and you want to kill yourself, I just wanna tell you Dont! Look Whos Inside Again is largely a song about being creative during quarantine, but ends with Now come out with your hands up, weve got you surrounded, a reflection on police violence but also being mobbed by his fans. Bo Burnham: Inside is a devastating portrait of the actor-director-singer-comedian's dysfunctional interiority and 2020's unyielding assault on mental and social health. Its easy to see Unpaid Intern as one scene and the reaction videos as another, but in the lens of parasocial relationships, digital media, and workers rights, the song and the reactions work as an analysis for another sort of labor exploitation: content creation. Maybe we'll call it isolation theater. Burnham is especially aware as a creator constantly reflecting on his own life. A part of me loves you, part of me hates you / Part of me needs you, part of me fears you / [. Burnham wrote out: "Does it target those who have been disenfranchised in a historical, political, social, economic and/or psychological context?". This plays almost like a glitch and goes unexplained until later in the special when a sketch plays out with Burnham as a Twitch streamer who is testing out a game called "INSIDE" (in which the player has to have a Bo Burnham video game character do things like cry, play the piano, and find a flashlight in order to complete their day). MARTIN: So Bo Burnham has had a lot of different identities lately. And it's important to remember, you know, this is a piece of theater. He is not talking about it very much. (SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY SPECIAL, "BO BURNHAM: INSIDE"). ", "I do not think my intention was homophobic, but what is the implicit comedy of that song if you chase it all the way down? Not only is this whiteboard a play on the classic comedy rule that "tragedy plus time equals comedy," but it's a callback to Burnham's older work. Not putting a name on parasocial relationships makes the theme less didactic, more blurred while still being astutesuch sharp focus on the eyes, you dont notice the rest of the face fades into shades of blue. Comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham used his time alone during the pandemic to create a one-man show. But, like so many other plans and hopes people had in the early months of the pandemic, that goal proved unattainable. It's like the mental despair of the last year has turned into a comfort. At the end of the song, "Inside" cuts to a shot of Burnham watching his own video on a computer in the dark. Other artists have made works on the wavelength of Repeat Stuff, but few creators with a platform as large as Burnhams return to the topic over and over, touching on it in almost all of their works. So we broke down each song and sketch and analyzed their meaning and context. Tapping on a synthesizer, he sings about the challenges of isolation as he sits on a cluttered floor, two striking squares of sunlight streaming in through the windows of a dark room. Likewise, the finale of Burnhams next special, Make Happy (2016) closes in a song called Handle This (Kanye Rant). The song starts as him venting his hyperbolically small problems, until the tone shifts, and he starts directly addressing the audience, singing: The truth is, my biggest problem is you / [. Likewise. When we see it again towards the end of the special, it's from a new camera angle. "Got it? The Volcano, which touched on labor rights. He takes it, and Burnham cries robotically as a tinny version of the song about being stuck in the room plays. Burnham watching the end of his special on a projector also brings the poioumenon full circle the artist has finished their work and is showing you the end of the process it took to create it. And I think the pandemic was a time when a lot of people were in this do I laugh or cry space in their own minds. It's an instinct that I have where I need everything that I write to have some deeper meaning or something, but it's a stupid song and it doesn't really mean anything, and it's pretty unlikable that I feel this desperate need to be seen as intelligent.". That's a really clever, fun little rhyme in this, you know, kind of heavy song. In the song "That Funny Feeling," Burnham mentions these two year spans without further explanation, but it seems like he's referencing the "critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible. newsletter, On Parasocial Relationships and the Boundaries of Celebrity, Bo Burnham and the Trap of Parasocial Self-Awareness.. Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. Its a visual that signifies a man exposing himself, until you realize hes in a spotlight. But on the other hand, it is lyrically so playful. Some of the things he mentions that give him "that funny feeling" include discount Etsy agitprop (aka communist-themed merchandise) and the Pepsi halftime show. And like unpaid interns, most working artists cant afford a mortgage (and yeah, probably torrent a porn). I'm talking to you, get the f--- up.". The aesthetic telegraphs authenticity and vulnerability, but the specials stunning final shots reveal the misdirection at work, encouraging skepticism of the performativity of such realism. Its an uncanny, dystopian view of Burnham as an instrument in the soulless game of social media. They may still be comical, but they have a different feel. Known as "Art is a Lie, Nothing is Real," there's a bit Burnham did at the start of his 2013 special "what." "All Eyes On Me" starts right after Burnham's outburst of anger and sadness. WebBo Burnham is more than a comedian he's a writer-director-actor who first went viral in 2006. Bo Burnham's new Netflix comedy special "Inside" is jam-packed with references to his previous work. And you know what? Netflix. It's as if Burnham knows there are valid criticisms of him that haven't really stuck in the public discourse around his work. Partway through the song, the battery icon switches to low and starts blinking in warning as if death is imminent. Burnham has said in interviews that his inspiration for the character came from real YouTube videos he had watched, most with just a handful of views, and saw the way young women expressed themselves online. I think this is something we've all been thinking about. At just 20 years old, Burnham was a guest alongside Judd Apatow, Marc Maron, Ray Romano, and Garry Shandling. Theres always been a tension in his comedy between an ironic, smarty-pants cleverness and an often melodramatic point of view. Similarly, Burnham often speaks to the audience by filming himself speaking to himself in a mirror. "And so today I'm gonna try just getting up, sitting down, going back to work. His new Netflix special Inside was directed, written and performed all inside one room. "I'm so worried that criticism will be levied against me that I levy it against myself before anyone else can. The song is like having a religious experience with your own mental disorder. Toward the end, he appears completely naked behind his keyboard. You can tell that he's watched a ton of livestream gamers, and picked up on their intros, the way the talk with people in the chat, the cadence of their commentary on the game, everything. This line comes full circle by the end of the special, so keep it in mind. It chronicles Burnhams life during the pandemic and his journey creating the special. Poioumenon (from the Greek word for "product") is a term created by author Alastair Fowler and usually used to refer to a kind of metafiction. Burnham brings back all the motifs from the earlier songs into his finale, revisiting all the stages of emotion he took us through for the last 90 minutes. Most creator-made content online is available for free, meaning creators usually have to rely on their fans for income via crowdfunding like Patreon. With menacing horror movie sound effects and hectic, dreamy camerawork, what becomes clear is Burnhams title has a double meaning: referring to being inside not just a room, but also his head. On May 30, 2022, Burnham uploaded the video Inside: The Outtakes, to his YouTube channel, marking a rare original upload, similar to how he used his YouTube channel when he was a teenager. jonnyewers 30 May 2021. Later in Inside, Burnham thanks the audience for their support while holding them at knifepoint. To save you the time freeze-framing, here's the complete message: "No pressure by the way at any point we can stop i just want to make sure ur comfortable all this and please dont feel obligated to send anything you dont want to just cuz i want things doesnt mean i should get them and its sometimes confusing because i think you enjoy it when i beg and express how much i want you but i dont ever want that to turn into you feeling pressured into doing something you don't want or feeling like youre disappointing me this is just meant to be fun and if at any point its not fun for you we can stop and im sorry if me saying this is killing the mood i just like ". Years later, the comedian told NPR's Terry Gross that performing the special was so tough that he was having panic attacks on stage. He brushes his teeth, eats a bowl of cereal, and begins editing his videos. The result, a special titled "Inside," shows all of Burnham's brilliant instincts of parody and meta-commentary on the role of white, male entertainers in the world and of poisons found in internet culture that digital space that gave him a career and fostered a damaging anxiety disorder that led him to quit performing live comedy after 2015. By keeping that reveal until the end of the special, Burnham is dropping a hammer on the actual at-home audience, letting us know why his mental health has hit an ATL, as he calls it ("all time low"). He tries to talk into the microphone, giving his audience a one-year update. He grabs the camera and swings it around in a circle as the song enters another chorus, and a fake audience cheers in the background. The arrogance is taught or it was cultivated. But then, just as Burnham is vowing to always stay inside, and lamenting that he'll be "fully irrelevant and totally broken" in the future, the spotlight turns on him and he's completely naked. MARTIN: You know, about that, because it does move into a deeply serious place at some point. Burnham had no idea that his song would be seen more than 10 million times,nor that it would kick start his career in a niche brand of self-aware musical comedy. Oops. It's so good to hear your voice. Something went wrong. But the lyrics Burnham sings seem to imply that he wants to be held accountable for thoughtless and offensive jokes of his past: "Father please forgive me for I did not realize what I did, or that I'd live to regret it, times are changing and I'm getting old, are you gonna hold me accountable?". and concludes that if it's mean, it's not funny. The frame is intimate, and after such an intense special, something about that intimacy feels almost dangerous, like you should be preparing for some kind of emotional jump scare. Now, hes come a long way since his previous specials titled What. and Make Happy, where his large audiences roared with laughter The tropes he says you may find on a white woman's Instagram page are peppered with cultural appropriation ("a dreamcatcher bought from Urban Outfitters") and ignorant political takes ("a random quote from 'Lord of the Rings' misattributed to Martin Luther King"). BURNHAM: (Singing) Start a rumor, buy a broom or send a death threat to a Boomer. The comedy special perfectly encapsulated the world's collective confusion, frustration, and exhaustion amid ongoing pandemic lockdowns, bringing a quirky spin to the ongoing existential terror that was the year 2020. People experiencing depression often stop doing basic self-care tasks, like showering or laundry or brushing their teeth. Open wide.. @TheWoodMother made a video about how Burnham's "Inside" is its own poioumenon, which led to his first viral video on YouTube, written in 2006, is about how his whole family thinks he's gay, defines depersonalization-derealization disorder, "critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible.". As someone who has devoted time, energy, and years of research into parasocial relationships, I felt almost like this song was made for me, that Burnham and I do have so much in common. And that can be a really - if you're not very good at it, that kind of thing, where there's a balance between sort of the sarcastic and ironic versus the very sincere can be really exhausting. It feels like the ending of a show, a climax, but it's not. Burnham was just 16 years old when he wrote a parody song ("My Whole Family") and filmed himself performing it in his bedroom. One of the most encouraging developments in comedy over the past decade has been the growing directorial ambition of stand-up specials. HOLMES: So, as you'll hear there, on the one hand, there's a lot of sadness in what he's talking about there. I actually felt true mutual empathy with someone for the first time, and with someone Ive never even met, its kinda funny.. For all the ways Burnham had been desperate to leave the confines of his studio, now that he's able to go back out into the world (and onto a real stage), he's terrified. His 2014 song Repeat Stuff and its music video parodies how boy bands and other corporately-owned pop stars prey on young fans desire to feel loved by writing songs with lyrics vague enough anyone can feel like it was written specifically about them. Burnham slaps his leg in frustration and eventually gives a mirthless laugh before he starts slamming objects around him. . Burnham may also be trying to parody the hollow, PR-scripted apologies that celebrities will trot out before they've possibly had the time to self-reflect and really understand what people are trying to hold them accountable for. Some of the narrative of the show can be indulgently overheated, playing into clichs about the process of the brooding artist, but Burnham has anticipated this and other criticisms, and integrated them into the special, including the idea that drawing attention to potential flaws fixes them. Burnham achieved a similar uncanny sense of realism in his movie "Eighth Grade," the protagonist of which is a 13-year-old girl with extreme social anxiety who makes self-help YouTube videos. In this case, it's likely some combination of depression/anxiety/any other mental disorder. I don't think it's perfectly morally defendable.". One comment stuck out to me: Theres something really powerful and painful about, hearing his actual voice singing and breaking at certain points. "Robert's been a little depressed," he sings (referring to himself by his birthname). And I don't think that I can handle this right now. So for our own little slice of the world, Burnham's two time spans seem to be referencing the start and end of an era in our civilization.

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