Bo Burnham has created a modern masterpiece with his new special INSIDE. And I don’t know about you but I for one can’t get it out of my head.

Nowadays, we are presented with a perpetual onslaught of entertainment released all day, every day. We doggy paddle our way through a sea of music, tv shows, films, music videos, Instagram photos, tweets, and everything in between. We all bow down to the almighty avalanche of content, the tsunami of entertainment which threatens to drown us if we don’t keep paddling, don’t keep watching, don’t keep consuming. With this massive, almost incomprehensible influx of media being delivered straight to us as though on a nonstop IV drip, it’s next to impossible for a piece of content to rise above the masses, stand out, and shine for longer than the time it takes us to tweet a review and then move on to whatever’s next.

It takes something truly special to make us slow down, even for a moment, and pay attention to a thing for more than the amount of time it takes to consume it. Films and albums are devoured and digested then largely excreted from the brain in order to make room for the next film or album. Even great artistic achievements are often skipped past in a matter of minutes, figuratively speaking. Great works like this year’s Best Picture winner Nomadland are doomed to escape the public consciousness as soon as the next spectacle arrives. As soon as Godzilla vs. Kong hit the big screen, audiences largely moved on from last year’s biggest hits. When the next thing is here, it’s time to move on. Due to this modern phenomenon, it feels somewhat momentous when something comes along and demands my attention long past an initial viewing.

I love when something comes along, completely blows me away, and forces me to sit with it for days or weeks after seeing it. I live for those moments of sheer exuberance, awe, and reflection that emerge when a piece of content utterly astounds you on an artistic level. I’m talking about those moments when you’re left completely speechless, when you can’t believe what you just saw, completely sucker-punched by the artist, when you feel full of emotion and overcome by the power and potential of art. This doesn’t happen all that often, perhaps a couple of times each year, if we’re lucky. It happened to me when I saw Get Out in the theater for the first time and it happened when I heard Kendrick Lamar’s Damn. for the first time. It happened when I saw Portrait of a Lady On Fire and then again when I saw the finale of Devs last year (read my article about that here). It’s a beautiful feeling to be overcome by art and affected by it on a deep, penetrating level. 

It’s different for everyone, of course. We all react more strongly to what we’re predisposed to. That said, it happens to all of us. You know that feeling. It’s that moment when a piece of media leaves you slightly nauseous because it made you feel so many emotions. The ones that make you sit back in your chair when the credits roll and say, “how in the f*** did they DO THAT?” Well, that’s what Bo Burnham’s INSIDE made me feel.

So, without further ado, here are five reasons why my little chimpanzee brain simply cannot stop thinking about Bo Burnham’s INSIDE:

1. I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It

Comedy as a musical genre is certainly nothing new. Weird Al comes to mind when discussing Burnham and I can only assume there was a lot of inspiration there in Bo’s early days. However, the music in INSIDE is something different. It’s unique in its conception in that it set out not with a singular goal, one of inspiring laughter, but a multifarious goal of infusing socio-political-emotional commentary into the humor. I genuinely can’t recall hearing so many songs that have made me laugh, then introspect, then laugh, then question the meaning of life. It’s one thing to make a political song and it’s one thing to make a funny song, but to do both is something special. 

INSIDE is also unique in its filmic construction. It blew my mind right out the gate by presenting itself more like a movie or a visual album than a stand-up special. It bears as much resemblance to something like Frank Ocean’s ENDLESS as it does Eddie Murphy’s Raw. It’s more like a movie musical than it is a comedy act. Burnham adeptly weaves together musical numbers (with overwhelmingly thoughtful composition, lighting, and choreography given the whole one-room gambit) and comedy skits, creating a distinctive brew unlike anything I’ve ever sipped. 

Burnham is wildly creative in his direction and editing. He creates laughs with his cuts and gut checks when he holds on shots for a little longer than you’d like. He meanders from bit to bit in seemingly random ways while somehow making each transition flow organically. Sequences such as “Unpaid Intern”, which leads into a meta-satire of YouTube review videos, demonstrate how well constructed the special really is. When “Unpaid Intern” erupts into song, it feels random. However, it then justifies itself by becoming the subject for review in the following bit. It’s these moments, these setups and pay-offs, these directorial choices and editing techniques, and the balance between music and comedy sketches, that make INSIDE one of the most original pieces of content I’ve seen in ages.

2. The Messages, Ideas, and Themes

Perhaps the most immediate response people seem to be having to INSIDE is how comically, painfully, and sometimes horrifyingly relatable it is. Songs such as “Facetime With My Mom” and “Sexting” might be two of the most down-the-middle comedy songs but they are also two of the most relatable. Almost everyone can relate to having a mediocre Facetime conversation with a loved one. Far too many people know the tribulations of sexting. Songs like these are brilliant because they are somewhat crass, raunchy, and goofy while simultaneously adding oddly profound commentary on how deeply tied we all are to our cell phones.

It doesn’t take a scientist to see that social media and the internet are doing some ~questionable~ things to our brains. Burnham uses this special as a platform to speak on it. He chastises social media and technology addiction both humorously, such as in the “White Woman’s Instagram” song, and with a sense of scornful menace, acting as a beacon of warning, in songs like “Welcome to the Internet”. He identifies the inequities and shortcomings (to put it kindly) of our modern social landscape, ones which pretty much all of us can relate to on one level or another. 

Burnham’s cynical critique of social media is poignant and powerful but not altogether unique. Most of us, even those who use social media constantly, recognize its flaws and dangerous neurological effects. So while these sequences are terrifically insightful, they are somewhat common in their proposed ideas. We all know someone with a classic “white woman’s Instagram”. More than most of us have used FaceTime. We all bear witness to PC culture and the concept of celebrities being labeled as “Problematic”. Sure, those are easy enough to relate to. For me, it’s when he tackles topics such as suicide, loneliness, and self-criticism that the hair begins to stand up on my neck. INSIDE isn’t afraid to address the taboo topics that most of us avoid talking about, despite the fact that almost all of us deal with them. 

In the end, we see how social media and the internet inevitably go hand-in-hand with loneliness, self-doubt, and depression. The mental and emotional toll that creating INSIDE took on Burnham reflects precisely how life on the internet affects people every day. The small room he traps himself inside of becomes a symbol for the internet itself. We are trapped inside it, subservient to it, anesthetized by it. By living “inside” of social media and by living “inside” corporate America, we are all more-or-less doomed to experience self-doubt and depression lest we grapple with it head-on and talk about it. The fact that Burnham wasn’t afraid to talk about all this on a national stage, in a hilariously sardonic manner, is one of the primary reasons I can’t stop thinking about INSIDE. 

3. The Raw, Candid Moments

All throughout INSIDE, Burnham offers up unprecedentedly candid moments. He shows himself between takes, adjusting lighting, going for another take, or being unable to get the right take and succumbing to intense frustration. Some of his shot choices, such as the shot where he projects video of himself speaking about suicide across his chest, are mesmerizing in their candidness. It’s nearly impossible to look away in the presence of the artist mid-process as he pulls back the curtain to show us glimpses of behind-the-scenes. The simple fact that he allowed light stands and other equipment to be visible within the frame speaks to how INSIDE was entirely designed to feel raw and authentic. He shows us moments like him setting up lights and knocking the camera over because he wants us to empathize with him. He wants us to feel what it must have been like to be trapped in there, in a cramped space, slowly going insane by oneself.

These uncontrived instances become more potent and venomous as the special goes on. It’s when he reveals how he is “not doing… great” and “feeling like a bag of s**t” that we begin to see how vulnerable he is truly being. Even though the song “S**t” is really funny, it identifies mental health as one of the primary themes of INSIDE. Later on, he allows himself to cry on camera and offers a speech about how he quit performing comedy for five years due to severe panic attacks. These are a major piece of what makes INSIDE so profound. He is relentlessly self-flagellating and self-aware; he repeatedly points out that he’s a privileged white man who is getting paid for this. He offers himself up as a guinea pig, as a crash dummy and a symbolic representation of everyone who experiences depression at the hand of isolation, social media, the internet, and the creative process.  

People can (and likely will) debate for eternity whether all of these “candid” moments were truly candid. Did he actually film the exact moment that he turned 30 years old? Skeptics will likely say that he staged that moment. He could have set the clock to whatever time he wanted and done multiple takes for performance. Sure, he certainly could have. However, to me, it hardly matters whether these moments were staged or not. The way I see it, these moments either indicate how fearless and vulnerable he is as a performer or how truly brilliant he is as an actor and director. Either way, he’s putting on a spectacular show that gives the impression of candidness unlike anything we are accustomed to seeing. Even if most of it is fully staged, this impression of candidness will in turn inspire more artists to be vulnerable and candid in their future work. 

4. It Made Me Feel An Entire Spectrum of Emotions

I’ve had plenty of conversations where people describe their favorite genre as the “dramedy”. This often strikes film geeks as a cop-out way of saying you love dramas that are funny and comedies with some earnestness. It’s a cop-out because the dramedy is sort of like a cinematic version of having your cake and eating it too. Dramedy can be a tough nut to crack so it’s especially exciting when a good one comes along. I think INSIDE is truly masterful in this respect. There isn’t a vast wealth of films that do it all that well, balancing the two genres and tones without leaning too far toward one and inevitably sacrificing the other. 

When I think of a successful dramedy, my mind goes to films such as Lady Bird, BlackKklansman, or The Squid and The Whale. Films like those incessantly tug at us because of their ability to borderline destroy you emotionally due to their social commentary and/or woefully poignant relatability, then turn around and make you laugh out loud so hard that you almost feel guilty, like you shouldn’t be allowed to laugh in the face of the serious drama you just faced a moment ago. This is where INSIDE truly excels. It ebbs and flows between such a wide spectrum of tones and emotions that it can be slightly dizzying upon first watch. 

Burnham appears to be a master at the dramedy. He keyed in on it in his directorial debut Eighth Grade (2018) and took it to new heights for INSIDE. The songs are, as I’ve already stated, about as dramedic (dramatic + comedic) as anything I’ve ever heard. But it extends far past the songs. It’s in the non-musical sequences that Burnham really kicks you in the teeth. The scene where he speaks on suicide is one of the most harrowing in the entire special yet he speaks on it with his signature acid-dipped, wry humor in such a way that you have to stop yourself from chuckling. He then projects the video of this suicide speech across his chest as he mindlessly scrolls on his phone. This is Burnham knowingly inviting you to smirk at a painful irony: the fact that most of us can’t even be bothered to look up from our phones long enough to discuss suicide. This is just one example in a long list of sequences that adeptly balances multiple tones, emotions, and sensibilities.

INSIDE uses its 87-minute runtime to put you through a washing machine. It tumbles you around and spits you out the other side with a cleaner ego and sensibility, all the while leaving you vaguely nauseous from being shaken and spun. It oscillates back and forth between humor and social criticism at a breakneck pace, taking you to highs and lows like an emotional roller coaster. Not many pieces of art (or should I say Content?) can do that so effectively. Many films with deep social commentary and depressing themes aren’t ones most people rush to watch a second time. Despite being powerful and affecting, films like Fruitvale Station, or An Inconvenient Truth aren’t exactly comfort movies you want to rewatch over and over. I can’t stop thinking about INSIDE because it left me with a gnawing pit in my stomach and yet, somehow, I absolutely couldn’t wait to revisit it.

5. He Never Mentions Covid or The Pandemic

Bo Burnham obviously must have known how well the title “Inside” would function as a double entendre when he chose it. It spotlights the surface-level fact he is literally inside one room for the entirety of the special while also gesturing at a figurative “inside” in the form of his emotional journey this project took him on. The entire special revolves around themes of emotional-isolationism, depression, self-worth, etc. It’s quite earnestly about what goes on inside all of us on a daily basis. 

However, I don’t think he could have known just how poignant the title would prove in relation to the year we all just lived through. Burnham confessed to thinking about beginning to perform live again in January 2020, so it seems reasonable that he began filming for INSIDE right around when the Covid-19 pandemic struck. While he likely knew about the pandemic already, and maybe saw people going into quarantine already, I don’t think he could have had any idea just how much of 2020 we would all end up spending “inside”. Either way, he filmed this special throughout the year that was (and continues to be) interminably Covid centric. He could have taken that as a sign to lean in and relate the special to what Covid did to us, to draw comparisons to quarantine and the intense isolation that many of us felt in 2020. 

But he didn’t. Nowhere in the special does Burnham so much as mention Covid-19, the pandemic, or quarantine. He does at one point feint to it when telling his story about quitting live performances for five years and he simply says, “then something crazy happened.” This implication is as close as he ever comes to mentioning the pandemic. This, to me, is one of the greatest artistic choices made while creating INSIDE. By avoiding the subject of Covid, Burnham avoids a potential misstep in his thesis. To have done so would have posited that Covid was responsible for the inner trauma, isolationism, and social media addiction that plagues modern America. This would have done a disservice to Burnham’s ideas and his biting indictment of modern life because, in truth, it wasn’t Covid that caused any of those, it was us. Quarantine may have increased the amount of social isolationism and depression in America, but it certainly isn’t responsible for it. The topics that he chose to highlight and sing about were prevalent before Covid and they will continue, if not get worse, long after Covid. 

In the long run, be it five or ten years from now, INSIDE will endure as a stronger piece of art because it didn’t pay lip service to the pandemic. It in no way seeks to explain away our detachments, anxieties, and shortcomings by saying “2020 was a crazy year”. Bo knows all too well that social media, capitalism, and the internet will continue to pose threats to our mental health, our “inside”, long after Covid becomes a history lesson. And I for one applaud him for leaving Covid out of the conversation.

Random Moments and Things I Loved About INSIDE

I know that I said this would be five reasons I can’t stop thinking about INSIDE. But ya know what? I have almost too many reasons to count so I’m going to throw down a list of things that have been bouncing around in my head ever since seeing it for the first time. This special is just too good not to pay respect to some of the specific moments.

1. How insanely good his performance and lip-syncing is. Like, honestly, how did he do this?
2. When he sings “I made you some content. Daddy made you your favorite, open wide.” That absolutely cracks me up every time. 
3. Literally every single aspect of the Socko bit and performance of “How The World Works”. The dialogue with Socko is brilliant and the ending is devastating.
4. Using a projector to project emojis during “Sexting”.
5. On “Bezos I” when he sings “Zuckerburg, Gates and Buffet. Amateurs can f**kin suck it” I laugh out loud uncontrollably. Everything about both Bezos bits is incredible but that lyric in particular gets me every time.
6. On “Facetime with My Mom” when he sings about his dad and says “that’s the deepest conversation that we’ve ever had.” Oof. 
7. How unreasonably blue his eyes are in the parka photo during  “White Woman’s Instagram”.
8. During “30” when he holds a light and flashes it in time with the snare hits. So cool and creative. 
9. The squeegee transition coming out of the intermission.
10. During the sketch when he controls himself with a video game controller and he says “So is the dude big or is the room small?”
11. The way he apologizes for being bad at playing guitar before performing “That Funny Feeling”. Such a subtle little jab at the way so many of us are insecure.
12. When he does multiple takes of saying he “has been working on this special for a year now” and he freaks out on himself.
13. The transition after he says he’s not well and begins to cry, then we slowly push into the blackness of the camera lens. I love how it transitions into him speaking on stage, creating a comment on how he has lived most of his life either on stage or in the eyes of a camera.
14. The lyrics in “All Eyes On Me”. Pretty much all of them but specifically “Don’t be scared, don’t be shy, come on in the water’s fine.” It gives me chills. Honestly, everything about the “All Eyes On Me” sequence is just incredible. The camera choices are fantastic and I adore how he takes the camera handheld at the end.
15. Any time that he watches something he has previously filmed and we get to see him silently judge himself. Including but certainly not limited to the final shot of the special.

There are truly too many impressive elements in INSIDE to list. There are so many microscopic creative choices made all throughout it that my mind struggles to comprehend how one man put this together. As soon as you begin to analyze the lyrical content of the songs, you get distracted by noticing how astounding the video editing is. Then once you stop to appreciate how hilarious a certain joke is you get interrupted by a brilliant shot choice. Thank you for humoring my list if you’ve made it this far. It isn’t often that something this profoundly creative comes along and, in our modern landscape, I find it important to slow down, stop, and pay appreciation whenever it happens.

Taking Time To Appreciate

It takes something truly special to stand out and rise above the daily deluge of content. Movies are released so constantly that even the best ones will often be forgotten or neglected in conversation after a week because the next topic of conversation has already been released. Music albums are a dime a dozen with dozens (if not hundreds) being released every day. Films and television shows go straight to streamers, catch a buzz for a few days, then disappear into the void as something else emerges only days later. Only the best of the best of the best stands out anymore. With this rinse-and-repeat entertainment cycle so prevalent and pervasive, it becomes a beautiful and significant event when a piece of content sticks in your mind for more than a day or two. 

Bo Burnham achieved something momentous with his latest special INSIDE. He created a piece of film unlike anything I had ever seen before and unlike anything I’m likely to see again soon. From the originally composed and performed songs to the astoundingly intentional direction and editing, and from the somewhat-shockingly beautiful cinematography to the devastating poignant moments of human vulnerability, Burnham defies the modern media cycle. He crafted something built of his own sweat (literally, as in the “Problematic” sequence) and emotional vulnerability that seeks not only to comment on our culture and hyper-paced internet consumption habits, but stand up to them. It is at once hilarious and heartbreaking, poignant and ridiculous, depressing and uplifting. He sculpted a work of art that, thanks to all these qualities, will live on in my mind for days, weeks, and, most likely, years to come. 

— Michael