Bo Burnham
Robert Pickering Burnham is an American comedian, actor, musician and filmmaker. Burnham's work combines elements of filmmaking with music, sketch, and stand-up comedy, commonly with a dramatic, satirical, or tragic twist that is often left open to interpretation.
In 2006, Burnham created a YouTube channel, where he uploaded videos of him playing comedic songs that he wrote, often featuring wordplay and taboo or dark subject matter. The videos quickly went viral, making him one of the earliest YouTube stars. He began creating albums featuring his songs, such as Bo fo Sho and the self-titled album Bo Burnham.
Burnham switched his focus from YouTube to performing stand-up comedy routines, which combined his comedy songs with traditional stand-up. He released three comedy specials, Words Words Words, what., and Make Happy. He also worked on the music and script for a comedy film that was ultimately scrapped. Burnham created and starred in the 2013 MTV mockumentary series Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous. He also published the poetry book Egghead: Or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone. In 2016, Burnham announced his intention to step away from performing live, which he later revealed to be due to him suffering from anxiety and experiencing panic attacks on stage. He went on to make his filmmaking debut as the writer and director of the drama film Eighth Grade and began directing other comedians' comedy specials, as well as co-starring in the dark comedy thriller film Promising Young Woman.
Burnham returned to performing with his fourth comedy special, Inside, which he created in his home without a crew or audience during the COVID-19 pandemic; it was released by Netflix to widespread acclaim, including a Peabody Award. The special was nominated in six categories at the 73rd Emmy Awards, winning three. At the 64th Grammy Awards, Inside was nominated for Best Music Film and Best Song Written for Visual Media, winning the latter for “All Eyes on Me”. Three songs from the special appeared also on the Billboard charts and were certified platinum in the United States, as was the accompanying album Inside .
Early life
Burnham was born on August 21, 1990, in Hamilton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. the son of hospice nurse Patricia and construction company owner Scott Burnham. His mother's work was covered in a 2014 episode of This American Life. He has an older sister named Samm and an older brother named Pete, both of whom work for their father's construction company. Burnham was raised Presbyterian and attended St. John's Preparatory School, a Catholic school in Danvers, Massachusetts, where he received a free education as his mother was the school's nurse at the time. He made the honor roll and was involved in theater and the campus ministry program; he graduated in 2008. He was accepted into the New York University Tisch School of the Arts to study experimental theatre, but deferred his admission for a year to pursue a career in comedy and ultimately didn't attend at all.Career
2006–2008: Beginnings on YouTube
Burnham began his career on YouTube in 2006. In December 2006, he wanted to show two songs he had written to his older brother Pete, who had left the family home to attend university in New York City. A friend suggested that he film himself performing the songs in his bedroom and post them on YouTube, which was then a relatively new website. His song "My Whole Family..." quickly became popular when the link to its YouTube video was shared on Break.com, soon leading to it being shared on other sites.Accompanying himself on guitar or digital piano, Burnham continued to release self-described "pubescent musical comedy" songs and videos online as his audience grew. Described in The Boston Globe as "simultaneously wholesome and disturbing, intimate in a folksy-creepy sort of way", Burnham wrote and released songs about white supremacy, Helen Keller's disabilities, homosexuality, and more. All of Burnham's early videos were recorded in and around his family's home, mostly in his bedroom, and had an intentional "do-it-yourself , almost like voyeurism".
Burnham's music and performances tackle such subjects as class, race, gender, human sexuality, sex, and religion. Burnham describes his on-stage persona as a "more arrogant, stuck-up version himself". When speaking with The Detroit News about his rapping, he expressed his intent to honor and respect the perspective and culture of hip-hop music.
Burnham recorded a performance in London for Comedy Central's The World Stands Up in January 2008, making him the youngest person to do so at the age of 17, and signed a four-record deal with Comedy Central Records. Comedy Central Records released Burnham's first EP, the six-song Bo fo Sho, as an online release-only album on June 17, 2008. Burnham's first full album, the self-titled Bo Burnham, was released on March 10, 2009.
2009–2016: Stand-up and comedy specials
Burnham has performed his music in the United States, including Cobb's Comedy Club, YouTube Live in San Francisco, and Caroline's Comedy Club in New York City, and internationally in London and Montreal. In August 2010, Burnham was nominated for "Best Comedy Show" at the 2010 Edinburgh Comedy Awards after his inaugural performance. He instead received the "Panel Prize", a £5,000 prize for "the show or act who has most captured the comedy spirit of the 2010 Fringe".While performing at the Montreal Just for Laughs festival in 2008, Burnham met with director and producer Judd Apatow. In September 2008, he negotiated with Universal Pictures to write and create the music for an Apatow-produced comedy film which he described as the "anti-High School Musical", although he insisted that the script is not a parody of the Disney musicals, but rather an attempt to emulate the high school he attended. Hoping to also star in the film, Burnham told Wired that he named the lead character after himself in a "not-so-subtle hint". In a March 2009 interview with Boston's Weekly Dig, he said that he was spending eight hours a day writing the music for the film and spending his evenings writing the script. Burnham's high school friend Luke Liacos was co-writing the screenplay. In an October 2010 interview on MTV, Burnham admitted that he did not know anything about the future of the project, and that it was all effectively up in the air as far as he knew.
On March 3, 2009, fifteen Westminster College students protested his concert there that evening, due to his use of homophobic and racist terms in performances. Of the controversy, he said, "It's so ironic because gay bashers were the ones labeling me in high school.... I try and write satire that's well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can't be completely clear and that's what makes it comedy." Despite the college's admission that they had booked Burnham while ignorant of his show's material, dean of students John Comerford praised the opportunities for discourse the controversy brought the school. In May 2009, viral marketing began appearing for Funny People, in which Burnham starred in an NBC sitcom called Yo Teach! In the promo, he starred opposite Jason Schwartzman as a student in the latter's English class.
On May 21, 2010, Burnham taped his first one-hour stand-up special, entitled Words Words Words, for Comedy Central from the House of Blues in Boston as part of the network's new "House of Comedy" series of stand-up specials; it aired on Comedy Central on October 16, 2010, and was released for purchase two days later. Burnham finished in first place at the 2011 Comedy Central Stand-up Showdown.
In 2013, Burnham wrote, executive-produced, and starred in Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous alongside Dan Lagana, Luke Liacos, and Dave Becky. The series was cancelled after one season. He also released a book of poetry called Egghead: Or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone.
Burnham's second special, what., was released on both Netflix and YouTube on December 17, 2013. His third special, Make Happy, was produced by Netflix and released on June 3, 2016.
2017–2020: Filmmaking and ''Eighth Grade''
Burnham wrote and directed his first feature film, Eighth Grade, which was produced and distributed by A24 and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018. The film has been universally acclaimed; among other accolades, it received the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film. It garnered a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 326 reviews, and holds an average rating of 89 out of 100 on Metacritic.Burnham directed Jerrod Carmichael's comedy special 8 for HBO and Chris Rock's comedy special Tamborine for Netflix. In an interview with Vulture, he discussed his directorial outlook when directing a comedy special: "I approached , which was me taking stock of the feelings that I get out of watching this person perform and asking, 'How can I recreate that for the audience as best as possible? How can I make a good container for the thing?' But the thing is being provided by them, so a lot of directing is just getting out of their way."
In 2019, it was announced Burnham would contribute songs to an upcoming Sesame Street film.
In 2020, Burnham played the protagonist's love interest Ryan Cooper in the black comedy revenge thriller film Promising Young Woman. The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim, and was later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In an interview, Burnham said, "This is a story I could never tell. This is a perspective I don't have. After doing my own things, it's like I really like the idea of, I just want to serve someone else's vision."
In March 2021, Burnham was cast as Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird in Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty from HBO. Due to scheduling conflicts he left the series in August 2021.