A conversation with Bo Burnham on his film debut

A24

I lingered in the Michigan 
Theater’s main auditorium last 
Thursday after the screening of 
Bo Burnham’s directorial debut, 
“Eighth 
Grade.” 
A 
crowd 
of 
teenagers, young adults and retirees 
had just finished giving Burnham a 
standing ovation after his short Q&A 
and were now streaming out the 
back of the theater while I fought to 
make my way to the front. Not a seat 
in the theater had been empty that 
night. The movie, which marked 
the beginning of the Cinetopia Film 
Festival, had sold out earlier that day 
— and for good reason. 
“Eighth Grade” is a continuation 
of movies like “Lady Bird” and “Call 
Me By Your Name.” While they’re 
not all explicitly similar in genre 
or plot, they evoke a similar feeling 
from their audiences — something 
like nostalgia, but not quite, and like 
nervousness, but more trepid. These 
films zero in on the familiar and 
universal experiences of growing up 
and falling in love, while skillfully 
retaining 
the 
autonomy 
and 
individuality of their characters.
“Lady Bird” and “CMBYN” 
fit nicely into the coming-of-age 
category of films, but “Eighth Grade” 
narrowly avoids this label. While 
the movie introduces an expectedly 
coming-of-age abstract — Kayla 
(Elsie Fisher, “Despicable Me”) 
is a shy middle schooler entering 
her last week of eighth grade who 
decides to put herself out there 
before the school year ends — the 
entire movie is undercut by larger 
anxieties concerning technology, 
social media and problems beyond 
Kayla’s impending high school 
career.

Burnham, who got his start in 
comedy by making Youtube videos 
filmed in his childhood bedroom, 
has always had these concerns 
on his mind. Much of his standup 
challenges our expectations of 
technology and tries to illustrate 
the 
complex 
relationship 
our 
generation has with it. “I’m addicted 
to the internet too,” Burnham 
conceded during the Q&A after the 
screening, but that doesn’t mean he 
still doesn’t share the anxieties we 
all do, especially when looking at 
the effect it could have on younger 
generations.
“There 
is 
a 
much 
subtler 
conversation to be had about 
the internet beyond Russia and 
cyberbullying, 
something 
very 
personal and interior to the internet 
and what it does to people that is not 
okay,” said Burnham earlier that 
night in response to an audience 
member’s 
question 
about 
this 
aspect of the film. “There’s this 
sudden impulse to see yourself as a 
commodity or a character. To sort of 
float above your life and watch other 
people watch you and watch other 
people watch you watch them.”
Much 
of 
“Eighth 
Grade” 
concerns this kind of watching. 
Kayla aimlessly scrolls through her 
Instagram feed, liking pictures and 
videos of other 13 year olds pulling 
pranks and painting their nails. She 
makes videos with survival guide 
tips on how to be more confident, 
while suffering from crippling 
shyness in her day-to-day life. She 
wants to be seen as someone she’s 
not, an expert on relationships 
and “Being Yourself.” Access to 
Instagram and Youtube makes 
this very easy for her to do. Kayla’s 
the eighth grader most of us were: 
Awkward and introverted with 

acne-prone skin. But unlike us, she 
can hide this under Snapchat filters 
and good lighting.
Making my way to the front of the 
Michigan Theater under the massive 
chandelier, 
swarms 
of 
people 
moving in the opposite direction 
of me stared. I found Burnham’s 
representative, who I was directed 
to in an email, and taken backstage 
to wait for him to finish up another 
interview. As I waited, no matter 
who I talked to, be it Ella, the A24 
publicist traveling with Burnham 
on the tour or a 68-year-old male 
Michigan 
Theater 
employee, 
everyone’s reactions stuck on the 
same point: The universality of a 
13-year-old girl’s last week of middle 
school and her efforts to woo the 
cool kids in school.
“What’s the score?” Burnham 
asked Ella as we walked down 
the narrow hallway towards the 
dressing room. He was referring 
to the Cavs and Warriors game 
taking place that night, and I was 
immediately worried I would have 
to make small talk about basketball, 
a subject far from my specialty. But 
Burnham 
barely 
acknowledged 
this pause before sitting down next 
to me. He had been answering 
questions all day; it was 10:45 p.m. 
and he admittedly looked tired.
A question many people have 
fixated on in relation to “Eighth 
Grade” is how Burnham managed 
to perfectly capture the experiences 
of a 13-year-old girl without basing it 
off himself or someone else. Multiple 
years of touring has exposed him 
to the age demographic he was 
trying to paint a picture of but, as 
he pointed out, anything we need to 
know about middle schoolers these 
days is right at our fingertips. They 
put everything online to be seen.

“I think it would’ve been different 
if it had been sort of polluted by like 
‘Oh this is my little cousin or my 
friend’s sister,’” Burnham responded 
when I asked how he managed to 
draw such a perfect portrait. “When 
I was writing it, it felt like someone 
I knew, but it wasn’t specific.” This 
is how he avoided the nostalgia trap 
this film could’ve easily become. He 
was chasing a feeling, not nonfiction.
“I just wanted to do an intense 
movie about being this person, not 
what it means to be a kid always 
throughout all of time. I was 
feeling very nervous and panicked 
and anxious on the internet, and 
I was looking at the internet and 
meeting people, and I saw all these 
people also feeling very nervous 
and panicked in their lives too. So 
I wanted to explore what it felt like 
to feel anxious, to feel …” Burnham 
paused here, thinking. “Anxious 
is the opposite of nostalgic. It’s the 
opposite of distance at least. You’re 
locked in it and you can’t really 
see outside of yourself. So it was 
important that the movie didn’t 
see outside of her. I didn’t want the 
movie to know any more than she 
did.”
It’s terrifying to think that 
the common thread from one 
generation to the next is anxiety, but 
the internet undeniably doles out 
this feeling of uneasiness from one 
user to the next. And all the details of 
the film lend themselves to creating 
this feeling of uneasiness, but also 
the feeling that we are in Kayla’s 
world where every look, word and 
wink is a life or death situation. 
The audience truly doesn’t see 
outside of Kayla as Anne Meredith’s 
EDM score ropes us into the film, 
dropping a hard-hitting bass drop 
when Fisher’s character sees her 

crush for the first time or confronts 
the mean girl in school.
As far as influences go, Burnham 
didn’t have any but the faces he’s 
come across in life and online. But 
there’s something to be said about 
how the experience of 27-year-old 
Burnham can be easily translated 
to 13-year-old Kayla or 20-year-old 
me. Why did he think that is the 
case? I wondered, and then I asked, 
“What do you think it is about the 
internet that allows you to write 
convincingly from the point of view 
of a 13-year-old and not have the 
audience bat an eye?”
“I think the culture at the 
moment is existing on an eighth-
grade level, you know what I mean?” 
Burnham replied. “The national 
conversation is taking place at an 
eighth-grade level, our president 
has like an eighth-grade reading 
level. So it just feels very true to me. 
I think the internet makes eighth 
graders of us all.”
What struck me about this 
conversation with Burnham, and 
replies like these, was the concern 
and anxiety seeping into his voice 
as he talked about these topics, 
and how starkly it contrasts from 
the Burnham confined to Netflix 
specials and computer screens. 
While his standup drips with vitriol 
and is known for its dramatic flare, 
this movie is entirely different. It’s 
smart and clever and honest, tackles 
similar subject matters as “what.” 
and “Make Happy,” but isn’t the 
least bit arrogant or pretentious.
As Burnham put it, this movie 
is truer to who he is. “I am not 
naturally 
that 
pyrotechnic, 
overridden, cynical thing. It’s what 
the medium called for … and the 
truth was I was onstage terrified 
every night.” Making the move 

from irony to sincerity for Burnham 
was “freeing.” “It was natural. It 
felt more like dropping things like 
finally I can drop all these tools. I’m 
so excited to finally do something 
that isn’t ironic, isn’t satirical.”
When we’re children, we just 
want adults to recognize the 
magnitude of our situation. “Eighth 
Grade” captures the life and death 
feeling attached to being 13 years 
old. Between the music, Elsie 
Fisher’s 
fantastic 
performance 
and Burnham’s attention to the 
most minute details, the audience 
was dragged into this feeling 
and left laughing, squirming and 
occasionally shielding their eyes, 
unable to stand the familiarity of it.
“I didn’t want to make a nostalgic 
movie,” Burnham said during the 
theater’s Q&A session. “I wanted to 
know about what it’s like to be young 
now. I watched hundreds of videos 
of kids online talking about their 
own life and the boys talked about 
minecraft, and the girls talked about 
their souls.”
I don’t think Burnham made a 
nostalgic movie. It’s difficult to feel 
nostalgic about such a confusing, 
anxious, hormonal time in one’s 
life. But he did make a reflective 
movie, an honest one. He made 
a movie that triggers feelings of 
anxiety and terror as we feel them 
in eighth grade and now on a larger 
scale. As Burnham put it, “Sweeping 
decisions about the future of our 
brain’s neurochemistry are being 
made by nine guys with no social 
skills in Silicon Valley.” And while 
being a girl in eighth grade is a 
common experience among many, 
these sweeping decisions make 
every generation’s experience in 
middle school more and more 
unknowable.

NATALIE ZAK
Daily Arts Wrtier

SAMANTHA NELSON
Daily Arts Writer

‘Tully’ explores modern motherhood with sincerity, boldness

What 
does 
modern 
motherhood 
look 
like? 
The 
spectrum 
of 
cinematic 
depictions of what it means to be 
a mother is seemingly endless, 
ranging 
from 
lighthearted, 
surface-level 
portrayals 
of 
mothers in “Freaky Friday” 
and “Mean Girls” to far darker 
depictions of mothers acting 
‘un-motherly’ in “Carrie” and 
“Ordinary People.” Despite the 
variation in genre, what all these 
films have in common is that 
their portrayals of motherhood 
are 
over-exaggerated 
and 
unrealistic. When it comes to 
interpreting motherhood, the 
film world turns to using a phony 
lens rather than showing the 
grittier and occasionally less-
pleasant truth of the stresses 
and 
anxieties 
that 
mothers 

actually experience. Void of 
unnecessary fluff and over-
dramatization, Jason Reitman’s 
film “Tully” offers audiences 
a fresh and sobering glimpse 
into the rarely revealed side of 
modern-day motherhood and 
its overshadowed intersection 
with mental health, challenging 
the unfair standards that expect 
constant stability and overall 
perfection from mothers.
Marlo 
(Charlize 
Theron, 
“Mad Max: Fury Road”), a 
mother of two elementary-aged 
kids and a newborn baby, is far 
beyond her breaking point. Life 
has become a merry-go-round, 
but instead of spinning around 
and around among colorful 
animals and smiling faces, Marlo 
is rotating through the same 
numbing routine that mainly 
consists of changing diapers, 
breastfeeding 
and 
prepping 
microwave dinners. In a state 

of perpetual sleeplessness and 
with minimal aid from her 
loving yet ridiculously unhelpful 
husband Drew, (Ron Livingston, 
“The 
Conjuring”) 
Marlo 
is 
running 
on 
empty, 
heading 
toward a downward mental 
spiral. However, a beacon of 
light shines down when, eager 
to revive his sister’s spirits, 
Marlo’s wealthy brother Craig 
(Mark Duplass, “Safety Not 
Guaranteed”) offers an unusual 
baby-shower gift: A night nurse.
Desperate for a sliver of R&R, 
Marlo takes her brother up on 
his offer, quickly finding herself 
face-to-face with the youthful, 
enviable and illustrious Tully 
(Mackenzie 
Davis, 
“Blade 
Runner 2049”). Despite Tully’s 
initial purpose of simply caring 
for the baby through the night, 
her 
late-night 
house 
calls 
gradually evolve into gossip-
filled evenings with Marlo. As 

the friendship between the two 
women grows, their bizarre, 
almost 
sister-like 
chemistry 
strengthens and, invigorated 
by Tully’s free-spirit and zest, 
Marlo slowly emerges from her 
state of emotional blankness 
and depression.
Through 
her 
character’s 
feelings 
of 
self-doubt, 
numbness 
and 
inner 
and 
outer 
exhaustion, 
Theron 
brilliantly delivers the powerful 
message that motherhood is 
multifaceted. While, in part, it 
is unconditional love, joy and 
relentless devotion, it can also 
lead to a loss of identity and 
emotional deterioration. Marlo’s 
unsweetened and uncensored 
moments as a mother create the 
tone of realness that persists 
throughout the movie.
Arguably most commendable 
about “Tully” is its boldness in 
tackling the theme of mental 

health, a topic seldom explored 
in adult characters. Throughout 
the film, as audience members, 
it 
is 
clear 
that 
Marlo 
is 
experiencing 
some 
form 
of 
postpartum 
depression 
and 
severe, debilitating insomnia. 
Yet, the other characters in 
the 
film, 
Marlo’s 
husband 
included, are oblivious to her 
struggles. This oblivion speaks 
more broadly to the manner 
in which, until fairly recently, 
mental 
health, 
especially 
postpartum 
depression, 
was 
often 
unacknowledged 
as 
legitimate or relevant by society. 
Still today there exists a skewed 
and ancient notion that mental 
health can be boxed up and 
designated to fit a specific type 
of person, which simply is not 
true. Through the presentation 
of Marlo, a thirty-something 
mother and a character that 
viewers would not expect to 

be suffering from depression, 
“Tully” 
overturns 
the 
false 
assumptions that there is a mold 
of any sort for what mental 
health ‘should’ look like.
More than anything else, 
“Tully” is a film that aims to 
enlighten. Reitman re-evaluates 
the notion of motherhood from 
a more humanistic perspective, 
tearing 
down 
the 
implicit 
and 
outdated 
stereotypical 
standards that expect expert 
childcare, relentless positivity 
and 
endless 
smiles 
from 
mothers. With Mother’s Day fast 
approaching, “Tully” takes an 
unconventional route, exposing 
the reality of motherhood’s 
tribulations, 
honoring 
all 
mothers by challenging the 
illusion of ‘the perfect mother’ 
and beautifully shattering the 
misconception that there is a 
way that mothers are ‘supposed’ 
to be.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
Fall 2018 — 1D