Stream It or Leave It? Bo Burnham: Inside
A musical of social, cultural commentary, with influences of Weird Al and Stanley Kubrick
Listen now on Spotify and Apple
This week we went back into lockdown, with Bo Burnham’s buzzy Netflix special ‘Inside.’
After a five-year break from the stage, the American comedian obsessively wrote, designed, performed, shot, directed, and edited the whole thing in one room during the pandemic — while going slightly mad himself?
Or did he? Jeff was skeptical. Shindy wasn’t loving going back into the quarantine mindset. Mat, who picked Inside for viewing, felt cheated and got - in his words - a little “shitty” with Burnham’s timing.
With the hype left at the door, would Inside pass the Stream It or Leave It test?
First impressions
Mat: I only knew him from the excellent film Eighth Grade and from Promising Young Woman. But then Inside dropped, and it was just everywhere, overnight. I saw the trailer for it, which was the opening song, and I was instantly hooked. It was literally playing in my head every day until the day I watched this.
Shindy: I wasn't inclined to watch it because I kind of knew what it was about. To me, it was like, “Oh, some guy is filming a special inside, how exciting,” and I didn’t want to be brought back to that world. But I'm glad I was. I felt like I’d watched a musical on a social, cultural commentary for the past year. And after I finished it, I got to know more about who this person is.
Jeff: Man, there was so much to unpack in this special. It's so hard to describe. The guy is like Weird Al and Stanley Kubrick shoved together! I thought there was so much intelligence. It kind of blew me away.
Mat: I didn't realize that most of it was going to be songs. I thought it was going to be a mixture of skits, some songs and some confessional lockdown stuff. And I had no idea that he was this talented. I laughed a lot and I gasped a couple of times—you can’t ask for more from a comedy special, I think.
Spoiler Alert (06:11)
Equipment vs. talent vs. sufficient talent to use the equipment
Burnham’s D-I-Y approach reminded us of multi-talented musicians like KT Tunstall, Imogen Heap, and Beck. While some of the equipment he used, like the fancy 6K camera required by Netflix, is expensive, much of it appeared accessible.
In fact, Shindy had the same party light machine. How much of this success was down to the toys and equipment, and how much to talent?
Shindy: There are people who have been entertaining for years who can't produce and manage their way around equipment as well as he can. I think it’s a different level of creative genius or talent, where you just know all of the equipment you're going to use and you put it together yourself. It's amazing the amount of output and the level of production that one can produce nowadays.
Jeff: The whole equipment load in that room is kind of amazing.
Mat: I think what I was most impressed by was just his creativity and his ingenuity. He did so much with so little in such a confined space. That's what really blew me away.
These days there's a lot of great equipment out there that's not necessarily particularly expensive. You do have to buy a $4,000 camera, and because the image quality is so high, you can zoom in and zoom out and create the impression of movement. So, the quality of the equipment helps the creativity.
Shindy: It helps when you’ve got a spare room in your house. He had a blank canvas which enabled him to have all of those projections of imagery and then all of his recording equipment and lighting equipment, which was so cool to see.
Was he like, living in this room
As the show progresses, so does his anxiety. He films himself lonely, frustrated, and seemingly depressed at times, eating cornflakes in the room, then sleeping in the room.
Mat: I believe that he was exasperated, as we all were to some degree, but he is trying to give the impression that he was living in this room. How much of this was performance and how much was genuine? Is there any kind of reality happening in that room? He's a performer, who is performing for a special, which is meant to mimic life.
Jeff: I don't think it's possible for us to know how depressed he got or his sort of internal thoughts. I'm sure that there's some of that in there. But if you look at the music, if you look at the lighting, if you look at his facility with editing, with directing, with writing songs and lyrics—the moment I realized that, I thought, oh, the whole thing is put together! I just busted out laughing because I was like, this whole thing is so scripted. It's perfect. It's totally on purpose.
Shindy: I think he was trying to evoke the sense that he was living and breathing this. I did feel that he was spending most of his time there, for sure, to create what this was. It mostly did feel genuine.
Mat: I felt a little bit cheated. When the credits said, “dedicated to Lor.” I thought, “Hang on a second, I thought he was on his own?” And then I researched and very quickly, you see he has had this partner (Lorene Scafaria) for many years.
How much was Burnham atoning for past criticism?
For some who are familiar with Burnham’s previous work, which has been accused of being homophobic or misogynistic, the special can be seen as an attempt at atonement after his break away from comedy. For instance, Jeff saw deeper meanings and symbols in the opening song:
Jeff: When he has spun the disco ball, he turns on a headlamp, and the lamp is placed at the third eye chakra. And the third eye chakra, understood correctly, is turning wisdom around and looking at yourself, learning to look within.
There's been this interim of him not doing any comedy. Then in this one, he poses very effeminately in certain parts. He's turning all of this introspection on himself as a white male, and just stripping it, you know? It blew my mind. I loved the way he did it. And I think his delivery is easily misconstrued.
Shindy: He’s been accused of those things. I think comedy is his way of bringing these things to light. It’s right on the edge of whether you’re smart enough of getting what he is trying to say.
Mat: Actually, one of my complaints, if anything, was, he went a little heavy on the white privilege stuff. I think his first three songs mentioned it. I was wondering why he was going so heavy so soon, so I guess Jeff has cleared that up. Some of the themes felt a bit repetitive, but there was obviously some great commentary.
I think he really nailed the internet and current social media overexposure. How we’ve really opened a Pandora’s Box. He kept coming back to that. Even in this day and age, he still managed to say something quite funny and really hit a nerve with all of that.
Shindy: I loved that. On the theme of being like a cultural anthropologist, he's very in touch with what's going on in the moment and the way that people are eroding themselves with technology. They’re succumbing to the worst of it.
I loved “White Woman's Instagram.” That was probably my favorite! I know a girl who posted the exact same thing on Instagram. And, of course, she's a white girl. I thought, he knows my friend!
And the whole Twitch parody, when he was observing himself and then it went into him observing himself observing himself—
Jeff: The whole thing, it’s self-doubt and razor-sharp introspection and self-examination–that’s what I think is what's going on. And as a white male, I'm sort of examining myself along with it.
I think that part of it is so much more than comedy. It's like performance art, really. There’s so much genius going on right there around discussing this subject in a way that's funny, yet forces you to take a look at yourself in relationship to the internet and in relationship to, say, Amazon, and all of the things that were on the rise during the pandemic, including suicide. It just reminded me of commentary on spiritual awakening in a way.
Mat: Absolutely, the medium is the message.
Hangups
The only one with a hang up was Mat, who controversially suggested Burnham maybe could have finished the project a little more quickly.
Mat: This is a bit shitty of me, but… we're back out now. Wouldn’t it have had ten times the impact if we’re watching this guy in lockdown, while in lockdown? Or would it have been too much for us to deal with? I’d be curious to know how long this has been in the can, but I’d guess not very long.
Jeff: I think it might've been too much, it might've been too heavy.
Mat: He could have healed us with comedy, like he said.
Shindy: I think they hit the mark with the release timing, because a lot of people would have been disturbed, especially with all of the tension and just what was going on out in the streets, having to listen to those songs and his political and cultural commentary during very tense moments like that.
Stream it or Leave it? (35:25)
Stream It!
Bonus: What else are we watching? (35:38)
Mat: Girlz5eva, a sitcom on Peacock
Jeff: Spirit Untamed, an animated film on video-on-demand
Shindy: Basic vs. Baller: Travel at any Cost, a series on Hulu