bo burnham: joking at a time like this volume 1 of “the funniest thing” 1 Opening The Book Opening The Book “ D on't worry, I'm hilarious.” Bo Burnham 1 Thank you for opening this book. I hope you enjoy it. But I have to begin with a warning. This book assumes that the reader is familiar with some topics, while it dwells at length on explanations of others. Feel free to pause to google something at any time. This book is written with a diverse audience in mind, and dis - cusses controversial topics, figures, events, and subject matter that may be upsetting to some readers. It is designed to strengthen your curiosity, test your beliefs, challenge your assumptions, open your mind, and change your life. Stay inside 2 ⌂ 3 4 Bo Burnham: “The Funniest Thing ” ( a book on getting better ) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ by jay doyle ⌂ 5 2 nd edition . First published October 10 th , 2023 by Amazon KDP Bo Burnham: Inside © 2021 Attic Bedroom Corp. Bo Burnham: “The Funniest Thing” © 2023, 2024 Jay Doyle Cover photos © 2023 Jay Doyle ISB N: 9798332507106 6 For Aly For Everything 7 Table of Content Table of Content ♫ ♫ Opening The Book .............................................................................. 2 Table of Content .................................................................................. 8 Volume 1: Joking at a Time Like This ................................................ 11 Entering The Room ........................................................................... 13 Netflix Presents ................................................................................. 16 Content, Pt. 1: A Year Ago .............................................................. 17 Content, Pt. 2: Open Wide ............................................................... 30 The INSIDE Waltz, Pt. 1: Title Card ............................................... 40 The INSIDE Waltz, Pt. 2: Opening Credit ..................................... 43 The INSIDE Waltz, Pt. 3: Camera Test .......................................... 44 Comedy, Pt. 1: WTFIGO? ................................................................ 66 Comedy, Pt. 2: The Call To Adventure ......................................... 78 ♫ Ha ha ha. 8 Comedy, Pt. 3: A Jew Walks Into A Bar ........................................ 87 Comedy, Pt. 4: A Special Kind of White Guy ............................... 92 Comedy, Pt. 5: Self-Reflected .......................................................... 95 Comedy, Pt. 6: Privilege For The Good ....................................... 100 Comedy, Pt. 7: American White Guys ......................................... 106 Comedy, Pt. 8: Agent of Change .................................................. 119 Comedy, Pt. 9: Important Jokes .................................................... 138 Interlude From The Outtakes: Comedy BTS .............................. 161 Comedy, Pt. 10: A House Full of Smoke ..................................... 169 Comedy, Final: The Centre of Attention ..................................... 198 An Open Window ........................................................................... 206 In The Mirror (Whatever This Is) ................................................. 208 Incredibly Smooth Transitions ..................................................... 221 FaceTime With My Mom (Tonight) ............................................. 222 Endnotes and Citations .................................................................. 258 ⌂ 9 10 Volume One Joking at a Time Like This “Although of course you end up becoming yourself.” David Foster Wallace Tudum! ⌂ 11 12 Entering The Room Entering The Room “ Oh good, it’s just us.” Bo Burnham 2 I don’t know what it’s going to be like to write this book. I don’t know what it’s going to be like to read it. I know that it's going to be weird. I know that it’s going to change me. And I know that I want to do this so I can find out how it ends. January 1 st , 2022 Who am I? You can call me Jay. I’m a 27 year old White guy from Canada, and I’ve watched Bo Burnham: In - side on Netflix twenty-six times. Once for each letter of the al - phabet. That might seem strange, but there’s a reason. When INSIDE came out on May 30 th last year, I fell under its spell at once. I was already primed to notice its subtle clues, and follow its hidden directions. I was prepared to embark on a secret journey of healing, and learning, and self-discovery. Now I’m ready to tell you all about it. And I’m ready to go a little crazy in the process. So, why did you pick up this book? Most likely, you’re curious. You watched Bo Burnham: Inside yourself. You probably would - n’t be reading this if you hadn’t. Maybe you’ve sat through the Special a hundred times, and maybe you’ve only watched it once. Either way, you were curious enough to open this book. 13 How deep does this rabbit hole go, and what might we find at the bottom of it? What’s all of this going to be about? Well. A little bit of everything that I can think of. As the Special begins, and light slowly fills the Room, like a curtain rising over a stage, what is it we see? A dark hardwood floor. A wall shaped like a ⌂. A dresser, a desk, a keyboard, a chair. An air conditioner. A window. And of course, there’s a door in the Room. Now what is it that we hear in the Room? A soft, eerie, high-pitched ringing sound. A question. What even is the Room? An answer: in the dreamy language of symbols and metaphors, a Room like this contains all the complexity of the human mind, and the simplicity of the entire world. One Room. Empty and clean. Brimming with potential. A soft, eerie ringing fills the air. Curiosity builds within us, welling up as we stare at the screen, waiting for something to happen. Our eyes move from the dresser, to the desk, to the keyboard, to the empty chair, to the wall shaped like a ⌂ . And then, to the door. The door opens. Bo Burnham is the master of misdirection. Everything he writes always has some deeper meaning. When this show is categor - ized as “stand-up comedy,” we’re primed to have certain ex - pectations. Our brains automatically produce a cognitive blind spot, and anything that doesn’t fit into that neat category slips under the radar and into the realm of the unconscious. In this book, I’m going to tell you what I saw behind the misdirection. INSIDE is obviously not really stand-up comedy. That’s just what we’re told to expect when we open the show on Netflix. But Bo Burnham's other comedy specials weren’t really stand- up either. They were meticulously choreographed musical theatre. They were deconstructions and reconstructions of genre and form. They were art. INSIDE is all of that, and much more. INSIDE is maybe better understood as a guided medita - tion. A solipsistic psychic roller coaster. An electronically-medi - 14 ated shamanic experience that plunges us into the depths of our own souls. It’s a winding path through the Room, and through the world, that we walk, metaphorically, with Bo at our sides. What is the Room? It’s the guest house in the backyard of Bo Burnham and Lorene Scafaria’s Los Angeles home ♫ . It’s Bo’s workshop. It’s where the epilogue of his previous special, Make Happy , was recorded. There was a film crew then, immortaliz - ing his last moments of professional musical performance, be - fore he crossed the backyard, and went home to his girlfriend and his dog. Now it’s just him, alone in the Room with a cam - era. Alone in the Room with all of us. What is the Room? It’s the setting of the film. It’s a symbol of Bo’s mind, unravelling as he works to create the Special. It’s a reflection of the world, trapped and afraid, vibrating with chaos and opportunity. And it’s a symbol of our minds; the minds of the individual audience members, and the work that Bo does deep within them. We will watch him create the Spe - cial, and achieve self-actualization. And when he’s finished, and the Room is empty and clean again, our own selves can be comforted, and healed, and strengthened, and realized. When we’re healed as individuals, we become capable of heal - ing those around us. First our families and friends. Then our communities. Our towns and cities. Our nations and our broken systems. The whole entire world. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be simple. It won’t happen overnight. It won't happen all at the same time. But we ought to believe that we can do it anyway. If that’s something that you’re ready for, all you have to do is keep reading. With a sound like wings, Bo steps into the Room and closes the door. ⌂ ♫ That house, built in 1919, and located at 1428 North Genesee Ave, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A., is also where A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) was filmed . Lorene and Bo no longer live there; they sold the place in January of 2022. 15 Netflix Presents Netflix Presents “I misdirect the audience, so they have no idea where they are or who they're listening to.” Bo Burnham 3 And the show begins. The nondescript words “netflix presents” appear in a white sans-serif font amid a black background. The eerie ringing that we heard a moment ago served a subtle pur - pose: to carve subconscious channels and dig subliminal grooves into our impressionable brains. Now, like canals filling up with water, those grooves are flooded with the steady elec - tronic beat of the opening number. ⌂ 16 Content, Pt. 1 Content, Pt. 1 A Year Ago A Year Ago “I'm the guy that, you know, is already kind of shut in in his head, and now that I'm like encouraged by the government to be in my own head, that feels like not the ideal ... ” Bo Burnham 4 When Robert ♫ Pickering Burnham entered the Room in March of 2020, he did so embodying the archetype of the Heroic Trick - ster ☺ . Fresh-faced and open-minded, Bo took a leap of faith and began his adventure. The adventure of creating INSIDE : of fin - ishing the Special and escaping from the Room. Now in this cold open, this prologue of sorts, we come to him in medias res ; partway through his journey, but with a long road still ahead of him. We open with Bo sitting in the middle of the Room, the camer - a's view close up to fill the screen with his presence, illumin - ated by a single bright screen set up on a tripod beside him. At ♫ From the Old German Hrodebert , meaning “bright fame.” Robert is Bo's legal name, and with its use, we're already establishing the blurry divide between Bo's many selves: the writer/director/editor of the movie, the performer playing his parts, and the character and persona that we actually watch on the screen. ☺ He does much the same thing at the beginning of Make Happy , when he begins the show by rising from a hotel room bed in full clown makeup, complete with a big red nose. In mythological terms, the Fool is the precursor to the Hero. 17 this flash-forward point in the narrative, Bo is already display - ing the effects of prolonged isolation. His hair and beard are artfully unkempt, and his plain white T-shirt and shorts speak of somebody who's stopped caring what they look like. But we never forget that this is a performance. Even though Bo appears to be being brutally honest, it's a cultivated authenticity. Like every other facet of the Special, each aesthetic decision that he makes, consciously or by coincidence, seems to have a purpose. Also, uhhh ... It looks like he might be going a little crazy. Bo begins the opening number, “Content,” by having us cast our minds back in time, imagining how we would have reacted to a spoiler alert of the pandemic. “ If you'd have told me A year ago That I'd be locked inside of my home... (Ah-ah-ah!) I would've told you A year ago Interesting, now leave me alone .” The costuming for this scene brings us back to the depths of the Covid-19 lockdowns, when it felt like there was no point in get - ting dressed in the morning. It hits a little different for me than it might for others. I was already on the edge of my seat in December of 2019, abreast of every conspiracy theory under the moon. I was swal - lowing every piece of esoteric trivia that I could find, from the wildest alt-history to the most mundane commercial schemes. Like what? Well, did you know? When you walk into a grocery store, the fruits and vegetables are found at the front of the shop, so as to prime us into unconsciously assuming that everything else in the store is fresh. And then, the everyday es - sentials like milk and eggs are hidden away in the back corner, 18 so we're forced to walk through the whole store, giving in to impulse buys along the way. Just like a casino, there are no windows or clocks in those stores, so we forget our connection to the outside world, waste more time, and spend more money. What else? I heard that the mirrors in department store chan - ging rooms are specially rigged to make us look slimmer when trying on clothes. How about hostile architecture? Those benches with the jagged, uncomfortable designs that make it impossible for a homeless guy to spend the night on them? Yeah, just because the city painted a Pride flag on them doesn't mean the status quo isn't being rigidly enforced. I also read of deeper, darker, more unbelievable things. How the Flat Earth conspiracy theory could itself be the product of a psy-op to discredit other, more credible, more interesting con - spiracy theories. Kennedy and the CIA. The Titanic , insurance fraud and the Federal Reserve. How General Motors killed the first electric cars. Pizza and comets. Space lasers blasting wild - fires into the California landscape. ♫ Tesla. September Eleventh. The conspiracy content began to take an unexpected, more ur - gent turn. There were viral videos of people in China passing out on the street. Rumours of a laboratory, a wet market, and memes of bat soup. Uncomfortable memories of playing Plague Inc. on my old iPod Touch. A Great Reset. As the 2010s came to a close, I could feel something indescribable approaching. An ending, or a beginning. It would be almost three months before I finally acted on this feeling of anticipation, and made a trip to Walmart for beans and rice, and toilet paper, and canned ravi - oli. Just in case. For once, I wasn't wrong to listen to strangers on the Internet. As it happened, I wasn't stuck inside. I got up early every day like normal, and walked to work through Ottawa's silent post- apocalyptic streets. I had a humble but steady job in the sea - food department of a grocery store called Farm Boy, which is a ♫ This one obviously has no basis in anything even remotely approaching fact, but I think it's funny to think about. 19 local chain with a vibe somewhere between Whole Foods and an actual farmer's market. Meanwhile, my wife Aly (who was still my fiancée at the time) was laid off from her job at a popu - lar café called the Scone Witch. Languishing on the couch in an apartment even smaller than the Room, sick with worry, she suffered as much as anybody else. But my job was deemed an essential service. For me, beyond the frustration and heartache I felt for my partner, life was, if not normal, then at least consist - ent. Exciting, even. Different. Something was finally happening Even so, I often wished that I had to stay inside as well. I could subsist on the Canadian government's generous handouts, and be free to spend the whole day writing. I was envious of every - body and their shared experience of baking bread and binging Netflix. But I knew I wouldn't really have traded places with anyone. I knew damn well that I was one of the lucky ones. To stay in our tiny apartment, slowly going insane, realizing that even with all that free time, I probably still wouldn't have got - ten any writing done ... I'm just glad to have avoided that. I was lucky to have the job that I did. For some reason, selling fish to the traumatized residents of downtown Ottawa was con - sidered an indispensable service. I was a hero , counted among the nurses and truck drivers who were really keeping society afloat. People thanked me just for living my life and going with the flow. And I was paid more or less a living wage for it too, as the store scrambled to retain its terrified workforce. Thank - fully, Farm Boy wasn't so patronizing as to call it Hero Pay. Grocery giants like Loblaws were that condescending, and then did away with their pay bonuses as soon as they could get away with it. But I was paid quite a bit extra for several more months, which is better than nothing. My parents would like to hear that I put that money away, wisely and prudently, into a tax-free savings account. The fact is that, with expenses like rent and food and beer and legal weed squared away, I pro - ceeded to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on books. They were the sorts of books that I should have already read. 20