In his phenomenally well-regarded comedy special/movie (more on this in a minute) Inside, which he conceived and executed in a year's time during the pandemic while locked inside his house (and his guest house), Burnham sets aside a moment to acknowledge the end of his 20s. Whether it was real or staged is uncertain, but he turns on a light to reveal himself sitting next to a digital lock that reads 11:58. He gives about 90 seconds of explanation that these are his last two minutes of being 29, and he really, really hoped he would not still be cooped up indoors on his 30th birthday (which was last August).
No such luck. He stares at the clock for about the last 15 seconds -- which feel like twice that, almost to the point where you think he's doing a bit, and has manipulated the clock so the red numbers would never flip over to 12:00. But they finally do, and now Bo Burnham is officially old.
This of course makes a 47-year-old laugh -- laugh heartily until he starts coughing, because that's what we 47-year-olds do.
Whether or not Burnham thinks he can be classified as young, there's no debating that he can be classified as promising.
The title of my post is of course a reference to Promising Young Woman, the 2020 best picture nominee in which Burnham plays the love interest for Carey Mulligan's Cassie.
But did you remember that in addition to being a capable actor and concocting genius performance art comedy specials/movies (more on that in a minute), he's also a really good writer and director? And I'm not talking about a comedy writer/director, of material starring himself. Burnham was also the main creative force behind Eighth Grade, which made my top ten of 2018.
Promising indeed.
As hyphenates go, Burnham's list is daunting. Wikipedia describes him as "an American comedian, musician, writer, actor, film director and poet." But that's even selling him short a bit. The term "musician" seems to be encompassing both his instruments (he can play both piano and guitar, in addition to all the "virtual instruments" on your typical music software) and his voice. So they really could have added "singer" to that list. (And by the way, if he's bad at guitar -- as he says in Inside at one point -- then I guess I don't have a very good ear for guitar playing.)
It would probably be useful to go into depth about Burnham's whole career, but today I just want to talk about Inside. (The proper title, I believe, is Bo Burnham: Inside.)
You've probably heard that it is a creative tour de force. You've probably heard that it is the ultimate piece of pandemic art. Both of these statements are true. I cannot stress enough how quickly you should put down what you're doing and watch it. It's on Netflix, if you didn't notice the logo in the poster above. (Wait, there is no logo. Netflix promotional art without a logo? What is the world coming to?)
The first thing I want to talk about, though, is the thing I had not heard about it: That it is actually, probably, a movie.
I never dreamed I'd have the chance to rank this among my 2021 films, and now that I believe I can, it could be very near the top.
You know that the topic of what constitutes a movie and what constitutes, uh, "something else" has interested me a lot lately. There are plenty of attributes you can consider about a film when deciding how to categorize it, such as running time, venue of its first availability, and whether it exists as part of a larger collection of content, possibly making it resemble episodic television more than movies.
But we don't, in making these considerations, want to significantly reduce the content -- a term Burnham uses a number of times in Inside -- that can reasonably fall under the umbrella of the term "movie."
Now, one term Burnham also uses in Inside is "comedy special," which is certainly a valid way to describe what you're watching. It's especially valid for Burnham as this is the type of thing he is more accustomed to making, and a thing that dozens if not hundreds of comedians have made for Netflix during their time as a streaming giant.
With your typical comedy special, though, I am not for a minute considering it a movie. For one, these things usually clock in at about an hour, which brings them in well under feature length. Then they tend not to have an aesthetic agenda of any kind, being content to use about four cameras to capture three different angles on the comedian on stage, and one to capture audience reaction, which is interspersed throughout the comedy. This is not a movie -- it is a filmed version of a live event. (Or in some cases, several live events.) It's the same reason I don't consider the Hamilton on Disney+ to be a "movie."
(But what about concert movies, Vance? What about them?)
(Shut up.)
Bo Burnham: Inside does not have an audience -- not one that we can see, anyway. It has an audience only in the same way that a film has an audience, in that the filmmakers made it for people to watch in a darkened theater. Now of course, Burnham made Inside for Netflix, and I don't think there is a better place to watch it than from your own couch -- preferably if you are also locked down while watching it. (It occurred to me that when we watched it on Friday night, it was a viewing experience most other people wouldn't have had, since Americans haven't really been locked down since it was released. We, on the other hand, just began our sixth lockdown in the state of Victoria on Thursday night). However, I'm reading now that it was also shown in select cinemas in the U.S. from July 22nd to 25th, further cementing it as a film, as something that seemed appropriate for and would benefit from a theatrical setting. (It got nominated for six Emmys, the awards designed to celebrate television, but let's just set that side for a moment.)
Then there's the fact that it's feature length. While most comedy specials run an hour -- he says without really knowing, because he doesn't watch that many comedy specials -- this one runs a full 87 minutes. That means that if you did go to a theater to see it, you would consider your $14 to $18 legitimately spent on content that met your preconceived notions of length.
But here's the coup de grace if you are on the categorization fence. The final words on screen in Inside before it goes dark for the last time are:
"This motion picture is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries. Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution."
Mic drop.
Unable to help myself, I looked at the end of another Netflix comedy special, a Dave Chappelle 63-minute special, and it also refers to it as a motion picture. I just need to leave well enough alone.
Whatever, I'm counting it.
I actually have a number of other comedy specials on my list of all the movies I've ever seen, because there used to be comparatively fewer of them, and when they released them, you went to the theater to see them. From the old days, I have two Eddie Murphy comedy movies listed among my movies, those being Delirious and Raw, as well as Bill Cosby Himself (don't judge, we didn't know back then). More recently after the turn of the century, The Original Kings of Comedy (which was directed by Spike Lee) was also presented to us as a film, as was Martin Lawrence's Runteldat.
Although there is almost no chance I would still consider a comedy special consisting almost entirely of a comic's act on one night, with an audience lapping it up, as a film, Inside is clearly not that. I hardly think I need to spend any more time defending my choice.
In fact I'll spend what time I have left -- before you "TL; DR" me -- on trying to describe the indescribable virtues of Inside.
It's hard to express to you how unlikely it seems that Burnham would have put this whole thing together in a year. Not because it's impossible to write more than a dozen funny and thought-provoking songs that speak perfectly to our moment in time in just a year, but because during that year, he also had to conceive comedy bits that use technology in fascinating ways, figure out a dozen different ways to dress and light the single-room space in which he films, do all sorts of clever things with projection, and even gather all the necessary props during a pandemic.
He had to do all this while still making the movie mostly funny, and laugh out loud funny on multiple occasions, but also acknowledging the extreme darkness of a time of unprecedented loss of life, racial and political disharmony, and the personal intense depression of not being able to see your friends and loved ones and doubting whether it's worth even going on at all.
I wish I were writing a proper review of Inside -- I won't because it's already been out for more than two months, and that goes against my rules on ReelGood -- because that would force me to engage with it more properly, while also condensing my thoughts into about a thousand words. But it's late on a Saturday afternoon and I want a nap before dinner, so I can't hope to do that in the time I've allotted here.
But let's just say that Inside is profoundly funny, profoundly moving, profoundly creative, and the most valuable artistic usage of a lockdown I can imagine anyone someone having. It'll make you cry with laughter (and possibly with sadness), and its songs are also good enough to exist as a distinct album (which, if I bought, I might listen to constantly -- maybe I will buy it. I'll certainly watch it again anyway). It skewers internet culture and white privilege better than anything I may have ever seen, while also acknowledging that Burnham himself is a product of both of those things. It's got tricky balances left and right, and a casual moment-to-moment cleverness that is almost mind-boggling.
Just see it.
And to return to where I started ... I can't wait to see what this promising young man is going to do next.
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