Bo Burnham | Eighth Grade

0:07Welcome to the Talks at Google Podcast, where great minds meet. I'm Emma, bringing you this episode with Bo Burnham, comedian, musician, actor, filmmaker, and YouTuber. Toxic Google brings the world's most influential thinkers, creators, makers, and doers all to one place. You can watch every episode at youtube.com slash toxic Google. Bo Burnham was one of the earliest YouTube stars, starting his channel in 2006 and growing to nearly 4 million subscribers today. He joins Google to talk about his career trajectory, from YouTuber to multi-hyphenate creator, including his first feature film, Eighth Grade.

0:51Eighth Grade focuses on the struggles and angst of growing up in the digital era, as teenager Elsie navigates her last week of middle school. Originally published in May 2019, here is Bo Burnham. 8th grade.

1:13Thank you for being here. Appreciate you. Hello, everybody. You all looking so actually casual. Very nice. I like the guys sitting on the floor. Typical day at Google. Yeah, 21st century, baby. Yeah. Cool. Well, let's dive in. You made an incredible movie. Congratulations. Appreciate it. Eighth grade. Yeah, I saw it last night. People saw it? Did some people see it here? Cool. Yeah. Really beautiful movie about a teenager with anxiety who seeks connection via the internet. And I wanted to talk to you about your experience with that, Beau. The web, yeah. Yeah, I wanted to talk about the internet and how I was feeling at the time I was writing, which was nervous.

2:00And I felt like my nervousness was connected to the internet in some way. So yeah, I mean, that was the story. And I stumbled on this sort of voice of a 13-year-old girl and just found that I could say what I wanted through her. I watched a lot of videos of kids online talking about themselves. The boys talked about Minecraft and the girls talked about their souls. So I obviously wanted to write about a girl. The boy story would have been like 90 minutes of Fortnite references, which I wasn't as excited about. Yeah, so yeah, I just wanted to talk about a story about the Internet that isn't about, you know, someone going viral or about cyberbullying.

2:38You know what I mean? I don't know. The sort of conversation about the internet that we have in this country is like Russia. And I think there's like a subtler conversation maybe to have about it emotionally. Yeah. And that was the decision to make the protagonist a female instead of a male, which would have been closer to your experience. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't, it just was something that felt right. I mean, I wanted to make something that was not nostalgic and was not my experience because my disconnect from her is twofold. I was never a 13-year-old girl. I was never a 13-year-old right now.

3:05And both of those lend themselves to a specific experience, I think. So it being a girl forced me not to project my own experience on her. But also just I think the type of anxiety I have is shared by my mother, is shared by my sister. I think it's probably more common to women. I mean, I don't know. But yeah, again, it was just like the eighth-grade girls run a little deeper so the movie can get slightly more interesting. Yeah. I think that's an interesting kind of, I don't know about contradiction, but the idea of being stricken with anxiety, but also having the confidence to be able to put yourself out there to millions of people.

3:42Oh, for me, personally. Oh, for you and for the character that you created. Yeah, I don't know. It's a weird thing. I don't know how everyone else feels here, but like, I don't know. No, we live in a culture that sort of requires extroversion. And I don't think all of us are extroverted. And I think some of us are thriving in it, but some of us aren't. And this sort of idea that if you are not expressing yourself, you are not seen. You are not living if you aren't being seen and watched. It's really stressful. And it's something I have struggled with, me being of an age that the internet sort of became ubiquitous.

4:14The social media did when I was 16. I had a little bit of a sense of myself. But the idea of being 13 and not even having an eye, being 13 now to never have known a time before the need to live in front of you on this thing is very strange. And you watch a baby with an iPad and you realize like, oh, these things are being designed to appeal to us before we can even think. It's scary and it's weird. And I just don't think we're taking inventory of what it's doing to us maybe. I don't know. I don't know what you all feel. You guys are all young people working in the tech world, so you probably know more than I do.

4:47Well, I also think it's interesting. You had incredible success with this outlet of putting up videos on the internet, and the character in your film doesn't have that same success. And I'm wondering if there's a sense of connection that is created by gaining viral success, or if that's the thing you're seeking in the first place. Oh, I don't know. I just don't know. I just felt like, for me, it was like, we were only talking about the internet in terms of who is seen on it and who goes viral. But the majority of how the internet is actually used is by people who are not seen and who are not getting that.

5:20So I just wanted to portray that. I don't know. I think the internet as it functions for most of us isn't a way for us to connect to millions of people as much as it is sort of like a black void that's sort of like God that we can just kind of project anything into and who knows what it is. And is it there? Is it not? I don't know. It's all very positive talk here as I'm sitting here at the lobby of the Hard Rock Cafe. No, I love the design. Oh, look at this. It's ongoing. And it's one, two, three, four. It's a lot of strings. I don't know what instrument. Yeah, so I don't know. I'm just like, you know, for me, the people that speak with authority on the Internet have no idea what the Internet's actually doing.

6:02In terms of emotion, you know, I didn't want to teach anything about the Internet. I didn't want to be preachy because if I was being honest about my experience on the Internet, I felt like it makes me. It's good. It can be a real source of good or pain. I'm nervous. I feel weird. And if I'm being honest, I feel kind of like a scared kid. And that's why I was able to, you know, because, again, when 13-year-olds grow up and become social scientists, I'll be very curious to hear what they have to say about the internet. But until then, it feels like, as an adult, our job is just to sort of take inventory of what's happening emotionally.

6:34And then, you know, you guys can make what you want of it. You know what I'm saying? Just the people that seem to be floating above the internet looking at the forest, I just don't think they get it. Yeah, well, I wanted to ask you about being on set with dozens and dozens of 13-year-old children. I know actors, sometimes they're 24 and they look 13, and that's sometimes how casting happens. But working with the generation that you're expressing, their story, I wondered how they responded to the content and the characters and the story. Yeah, I mean, it was really just trying to empower them, telling them, like, this movie's coming to you, not the other way around.

7:14You know what it's like to be 13 right now, not us. Show us. Don't worry about being in a movie. And yeah, I mean, it's no surprise that a generation of kids that film themselves is pretty comfortable on camera. And they were all real kids from that area. I mean, the concern day to day was like, let's make sure they don't drown. Like truly, like doing a pool party and just make sure they don't hit their heads. But I would go up in pre-production. I would meet all of them, just meet all the extras. Because the extras were just cold from the area. I'd just meet them so they would feel comfortable on set.

7:42And I'd be like, you know, what's your name? Do you have a special talent? And I met one girl. And I was like, what's your name? And she said her name. I said, do you have a special talent? She goes, I have eczema. So it's all about really just like, can you get the kids into the movie sort of undigested? Because they're already so incredible and alive and great. And it's just like, another kid was like eating a bell pepper like an apple. I'm like, what is this? You know what I mean? So it was like, just really just like, they're already so alive and interesting. So it's just about, can you get them to be comfortable functioning in the movie?

8:13And they were great. I mean, no one cried, no one froze. A couple extras were caught making out, but that was about it. Yeah, that definitely shows the portrayal of kids. Like, when you see some of the children in the movie, oh, I know that kid, or I grew up with that kid. That kid, you know, made those jokes in class behind me. And it's funny, in the theater, when those little shout-outs are made in the classroom, in the auditorium, the whole theater cracks up as if they're a child in that auditorium. Oh, yeah, that's nice. Yeah, that was a very nostalgic kind of throwback. Yeah, I don't even get the references.

8:44I mean, some kids going like, LeBron James. I don't even get it. You know what I mean? Part of it was like, I'm saying, part of it was also, yeah, just trying to get elements of what their life was into the movie without me having to know what it was like, you know, or having to have any authority over it. Just trying to empower them to be authors of the story, you know. Yeah, for sure. I want to talk to you a little bit about the style of the film and your approach to it. I definitely, my interpretation, I got a lot of Charlie Brown vibes. Peanuts, yeah. Yeah, from both the distance created between the kids and the adults in the film, the yellow shirt of our protagonist.

9:22That's funny. Some things. So, yeah, I wanted to kind of get your thought process. It was obviously a very thoughtful movie. You've obviously put a lot of attention to detail into it and consideration to it, and it all showed on screen. So I'd love to hear about your thought process and going into that. Oh, yeah, just trying to make a movie about a kid on a kid's terms. You know, like a regular day to a kid is life and death. Can we portray a regular day and make it feel like life and death? You know, it's like stories like Harry Potter and like, you know, it's like they think like, I think people think it's escapism for kids, but I think it's realistic to them.

9:54Like I think like going over and talking to your crush feels like going over to slay the basilisk or whatever. So it's like, like Fault in Our Stars. It's like, I'm in love and I'm dying. Because like that's what love feels like at that age. It feels that intense. So the idea was, can you just take the sort of mundane, regular experience of their life and make it feel thrilling, make it feel as, can you sync the audience's heart rate with hers? And if you've done that, that's all. So the hope is that you get to the end of the movie and you go, oh, that was so intense. And it's like, well, what happened?

10:23I guess you just went to a pool party, went to the mall, and nothing really happened. But I just think the experience of being a kid is different than how you remember it. We all sit around going like, man, I wish I was young and I didn't have any stress. And it's like, no. Like, I know you have like taxes and shit now. Oh, whatever. I think it's okay. Okay, net neutrality.

10:45But that like, I think your stress and your neurosis sort of expands to fit your container. And when you're in that container and you have no freedom, you have no money, you're just like, you're getting driven from place to place. The only autonomy you have is like the walk from your dad's car to someone else's house. It's miserable, you know? So just trying to, wanting to make a visceral movie. Because young movies can kind of be like, you know, you're hearing like mandolins and it just all feels very cute. And I wanted to feel, I remember childhood being intense, really intense, very sensory.

11:16It's like you're on shrooms or something. So I wanted the movie to feel like that. Yeah, and it did. I mean, there were a lot of extreme close-ups and you really felt like you were in this world and with these characters. you directed Gerard Carmichael's stand-up special Eight, which is one of my favorites of the last few years. Oh, thanks. Really special. And I saw some of those similarities in that opening where you really, I mean, you cut into Gerard where he's just on stage and you don't even realize he's on stage until you pull back and hear the audience. Yeah, yeah. And I saw a lot of those similarities and I just wanted to talk to you about your process in directing, the relationships you have with directors like Judd Apatow or Michael Showalter.

11:56Did you lean on people like that when you set out to make this film because it was your first feature scripted film? Yeah, I mean, truly, you know, my biggest influence would be, you know, my girlfriend of six years is a writer-director that was working before I even had an interest in doing this, and she probably inspired me most to do it. Yeah, and, you know, the relationship with directors I've worked with has been positive, but directors in movies, yeah, you know. No one likes to admit Paul Thomas Anderson because it's not cool, but yeah, I mean, like, you know, But I'm saying it's too embarrassing to admit you're influenced by him because he's just so great.

12:27But Andrea Arnold, also Marissa Silver. Yeah, Catherine Briot's film Amasur was very important to this. The wrestler. I don't know. You know, just trying to do, you know, just trying to be chill. Yeah. No, I definitely caught the wrestler, especially with those following her through her experience. That was the initial impulse. Like, can I make the wrestler with a 13-year-old girl? You know what I mean? And then it was like, it kind of didn't become documentary at a certain point because I realized just to film it naturalistically doesn't do justice to her feeling, which is her feeling is sometimes hyper natural.

13:02But with Gerard and stuff, it's like, same with Chris Rock, you know what I mean? Like their specials, it's like, Gerard especially is like just such a beautiful looking person that it's just, you know, you want to film in close-up. And Elsie is the same way. It's just so vivid. If an actor can maintain the performance there, if you can get that close and you still don't see the actor, you see the character, that's exciting. Yeah. I'd love to hear about how you casted the film and how you met Elsie and how that unfolded. Was it the kind of thing you knew right away or did you go through tons of - Yeah, I saw every 13-year-old actor in the world and they're all like - they'd be great people.

13:39You meet them and they're so interesting and they're nervous and all these things are going on. And then you give them a scene and they become like, they're excited like this and they're sad like that. Like it's all very simplified and they're doing some weird version of what they think a kid in a movie should be. And Elsie was the only one that could kind of, she was the only one that, all the other ones felt like confident kids pretending to be shy. And when she performed, it felt like a shy kid pretending to be confident, which is what the part is. So she's the only one that understood that.

14:09And yeah, it was just incredible. And then, you know, the rest of the kids, we got some from some areas, some from others. But yeah, she was the real thing. She was the... I can't... It feels irresponsible that we greenlit the movie before she was attached. I remember writing it for her. I mean, I didn't. She was 11 when I wrote it, but... Yeah, she was incredible. I mean, her emotional intelligence, like you said, you can kind of just get it within that... Yeah, I don't see Elsie playing Kayla. I've seen it a hundred times. I don't see Elsie playing Kayla. I see Kayla playing all the people she thinks she needs to be in every moment, which is just incredible.

14:43It's just a magic trick to me. I think it's just unbelievable. Yeah, absolutely. I also wanted to ask about the writing for the character of the father, Josh Hamilton, was incredible in it. And you've been a teenager and you've gone through those experiences. And I was curious to see your approach to writing a parent. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm pretty much in between them. You know, Elsie was born when, you know, the month before I graduated eighth grade. And, you know, I think I was similar with Josh. And, yeah, it was more, it wasn't a choice. It just felt right why I was a single dad. I mean, like, in retrospect, I can look back and go, like, well, she didn't have an older female presence when she was being written, you know.

15:21So that probably was a way for me to give voice to my own limitations. I felt like a scared kid on the Internet. I also felt like an out-of-touch guy that had no fucking idea what she was going through, you know. So yeah, that was sort of the way to portray that, I guess. I imagine the process of writing the film was cathartic for you. Was it even more so after seeing the final piece and realizing the things that came to maybe subconsciously? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's all good. I mean, I'm saying it's fun to make it. It's just enjoyable. And yeah, it's not cathartic is, I don't know, cathartic implies that like you're good now or something.

15:58I don't know. I mean, I don't think I'm probably good now, but. You know what I mean? Like, oh, that was so cathartic. No, of course it was cathartic. Yeah, it was super cathartic. You've expressed this thing. Yeah, well, yeah, it's always, the whole point of the things is just like, when I was young, I used to think like, oh, man, I'm going to tell people some stuff I figured out. And then as I got older, I realized I wanted to share with people something I was struggling with, which I think is the more true thing. You should believe that the audience is smarter than you are or just as smart or smarter or just as deep or deep as you are.

16:34And that's just been really wonderful. And that was the beautiful part of working with the kids was just to try to have conversations about this really difficult, weird cultural moment we're in and to try to talk about it in a way. And I did with them and they understood it and I learned a lot from them. And I'm less scared about what we're in because of them and more scared. and clearer and more confused. It's a weird time. It's a really weird time. And you guys are obviously in the middle of a world which is, I don't know. I just don't think we're totally processing. I think we're maybe processing on our own internally, but are we processing it as a group, what this thing means, what it's doing to kids, how it changes them, how significant this stuff is.

17:20You want to say the word shit on television, you've got to go to Congress. You want to change the neurochemistry of an entire generation. You got to be five people in a room putting your hands up in Silicon Valley. You know what I mean? And it's crazy. It's really strange. You put a 50 millimeter lens on a camera on a phone and all of a sudden kids can take compressed images that are beautiful portraits of themselves. Is that good? Should we allow that? Does everything need to be streamlined? We can talk to five people now. We can talk to 500. We could talk to 30. Do we need to actualize our social lives in the same way we're actualizing our clean energy and our travel?

17:53I don't know. you know I just worry we're going to look back on this like we looked back on smoking going why are we all doing this and the equivalent of my doctor smoked will be my shrink at a twitter so I just um yeah I just the conversation is changing so rapidly you know and by the time kids get old enough to become the adults that can then change things the paradigm is shifted beyond anything they know you know it's really weird I mean now it's good when I were going way off the rails, but I'm interested in it because you guys are all obviously smart, young, engaged people. And it's, um, this, these conversations I have are every, I, you know, everyone's having them all the time privately.

18:31Um, but it's very hard to have it, um, in public, you know, because maybe it's slightly critical of the exact medium that the conversations are being had on. And probably the mediums have a vested interest for these conversations not to take place. He says, as the audio feed cuts out. And that's all the time we have. No, I wanted to ask you about YouTube. And you were so early to YouTube in creating and putting your art out there and expressing yourself on this platform. Since then, it has changed so much. And you're in a different stage of your artistic expression. And I'm wondering, in terms of making films, what does that look like for filmmakers of today or people who, you know, expressing yourself?

19:17Yeah.

19:22For real, like, you know, it's a bummer. There's a bummer to it. You know what I mean? I don't know if I could be discovered now. You know what I mean? I'll be honest. I look in the trending videos, and it's Tonight Show clips, and movie trailers, and music videos. And I don't know if a little kid in his bedroom with something special gets seen anymore. I don't know. So that's one part of it. The other part is, you know, I was a YouTuber that posted 13 three-minute videos over the course of three years. I mean, that was my presence on YouTube, you know. And now being a YouTuber is posting 15-minute videos every other day of your life.

19:52You know, it's wild. And it sort of felt like what YouTube asked of you 10 years ago was, you got a little funny thing to post? Post it. And now it's like, live, reflect yourself, be there. And it's weird, you know. It's the same thing like, you know, you used to be on Facebook and you make a little website. And it's like, oh, my little picture and my interests. And now it's like Instagram and Twitter. What do you think? What do you look like? What do you think? Those are base, weird, deep questions. So yeah, it's interesting. But again, the conversation and the movie itself is just meant to...

20:25The movie's not about and then she threw her phone in the ocean and she was happy. It's beautiful that she has YouTube as a place to express herself and to think out loud and to be a place, a little time capsule for her to see herself at this point. It's just more that it's so vast and rapid that it's just a lot to be in the middle of. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. Well, I guess part of that also I wanted to explore is the idea of making films. We were talking earlier about A24 and the interesting stuff they're making where they're really finding unique artists who have a story to tell and want to tell it and have this platform for it and you know you um you've been lucky enough to use that platform and all of us are lucky enough to have your film because of it yeah and i'm wondering um in terms of where creation is going in terms of making content yeah um it used to be or you know it used to be one way and now it's another way and i guess i'm wondering uh your hope or vision of it of the future where it's going yeah right yeah i will say just just as a like a caveat to all this the conversation Like I feel slightly self-conscious getting up and rambling to you guys about this stuff Like I really feel like I'd be much I feel like I'd come up with really good questions for you guys better than I would come up For with answers for you guys in terms of like I'd be much more interested in Hearing what you guys have to say, you know knowing it at the ground level more than yeah Because I mean, but this is not a test what I promise it's not a test Oh, no, no, no, no I know I'm just saying like I'm just hearing myself a little bit And this is actually the problem of the internet, that you float above your head and watch yourself live instead of actually living in the moment.

22:03And you're just worried about how you're being perceived and seen and how people are going to react to how you're seen. So you never get anywhere. So every moment of your life lives like this, which is every conversation then becomes an interview with 300 people in front of you. You know what I mean? And I've weirdly become more comfortable with something like this and less comfortable with my normal life. I've sort of met in the middle. Anyway. Anyway, once we open to questions, I'm interested to hear what you guys think about this stuff. I don't know where content is going. My general thing is like, what is the threshold of content?

22:36How much content do we need? There's obviously a finite time of just how many hours are there in the day. But it's interesting. I do think movies will stick around. I do think it's very precious to be in a movie theater. like that we have an there's just an excuse not to look at your phone and pay attention to something it is ironic that the only thing that gets us away from a small screen is a giant screen I don't know sort of my stress you guys can see what you think my stress creatively in terms of that is sort of sometimes when you're engaging with the internet the line between making something or conceiving something working on it, putting it out seeing it received and reacting to the reception is kind of condensed into a single point.

23:19So it's really hard to work on something long form. And I think the only things of substance kind of come from long form as opposed to just this like IV drip of content that ages like milk. So that's my, you know, for example, you know, I took a year off just to make a movie and I get tweets every day saying, are you dead? You know what I mean? And it's like, that's just a really stressful place for young creative people coming up in the field to be in. And I just hope people know that it's OK to take the time. And that if you're being in a creative field, or any field, that I would think, I'll just stick in creative.