Bo Burnham: Inside
One weeknight the frequent back and forth about what we should watch happened again. We had just finished our last episode of Murder Among the Mormons and couldn’t decide what we were in the mood for. After scrolling through Netflix and limiting our options, I came across Bo Burnham’s Bo Burnham: Inside. I hadn’t watched much of his comedy before, but I knew him from a few of his movies like The Big Sick and Hall Pass. He wrote and directed Eighth Grade too, which I found out when writing this. The characters he plays are always real and memorable with such a dry delivery, which is why I decided to give his special a try, and shit was I not disappointed.
I’m not sure if you could call it a comedy special because it is so much more than that. At the same time, it isn’t quite a movie or musical either. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s a really impressive piece of work.
Bo Burnham is a stand-up comedian, actor and director. He had been dealing with crippling anxiety induced by his live stand-up and so he stopped stand-up in 2015. After working on himself and his mental health for five years, he decided that he was ready to give it another go in January 2020. Obviously, Covid-19 happened, and he couldn’t get back out there. In the spirit of Covid, he decided to lock himself in his apartment, which looks more like a garden shed, and make a comedy special. He had no idea how long it would take, just like we had no idea how long this pandemic would last. In his solitude, he created something that I found to be mind-blowing. He had no help with any of the filming and lighting and he wrote and composed all the songs. It’s a running commentary on what’s currently going on in our lives in a witty tongue-in-cheek way. He takes you on an emotional rollercoaster and you find yourself laughing at the most tragic things.
I couldn’t believe how one man, locked in his apartment, could hold my attention for an hour and a half with such skill. I was genuinely intrigued and excited about what may come next. He has an amazing ability to turn some tragic realisation about society into a catchy jingle. Each song is so well written, and I found myself humming them a few days after I watched it. On top of it, all the production value is impressive. There are multiple shots from all kinds of angles and lighting to set the mood that tends to change mid-performance. The amount of time and effort put into this piece of art inspires me. You don’t need to wait around for other people to get things done, just do the best you can with what you have. Although throughout the piece it did seem like he became more and more fond of Amazon’s speedy delivery as his apartment get’s fuller by the minute.
He addresses themes like face timing your mum, systemic racism, white girls of Instagram, social media and many more. Most of them are upbeat catchy songs with a few dialogue bits where he imitates a streaming gamer and talks to a sock puppet mid-song. The sock puppet skit really stuck out to me because it was such a good balance between humour and addressing such important issues as systemic racism and white privilege.
Throughout the piece, there are underlying tones of depression, loneliness and isolation. He makes reference to them throughout and it’s almost like you’re keeping tabs on him while he makes this masterpiece. It feels like an experiment where we’re watching in and waiting to see what’s going to happen next. You experience milestones ‘with’ him alone in his apartment. He’s been filming for 6 months, then he has his 30th birthday and all of a sudden, he’s been filming for a year, and he has no idea when it’s going to end. He even says at one point that he doesn’t think this will ever end, he doesn’t even know who he’s talking to because no one will ever see this. He breaks down at one point and I questioned whether it was for real or for entertainment. I’m siding more with a real breakdown and a proper battle with depression. I can only imagine what this might do to your mental state.
There is a high chance that this may offend people and that’s what makes it so good. This is the sweet spot for comedy, he’s bringing awareness to issues while balancing it with relatable things that we all do or that have annoyed us during the pandemic. I have become a huge fan of Bo Burnham’s after watching this and I’m sure there will be many more after me. This is such an intelligent piece of entertainment and I admire the amount of work he put into it. I would suggest that everyone does themself a favour and watches it. The worst that could happen is that you are grossly entertained with a catchy tune stuck in your head for the next few days. So why not?