The era in which Bo Burnham was reigning over YouTube and Vine with comedic brilliance and scathing (yet joyfully crude) social commentary with “Words, Words, Words” was an era that unfortunately completely bypassed me.
It was therefore the summer of this very year when, after a night of over-imbibing Ben & Jerry’s and indulging in—how shall I put this delicately, the ingredients to make minds fly, which may or may not have happened—a friend of mine introduced me to Bo Burnham’s “What.” I thought he was crude, inappropriate, hilarious and outrageous; in short, I was in awe of his creative powers and absolutely in love.
Bo Burnham’s show in Madison, organized and put together by the Wisconsin Union Theater Oct. 30 was one of the highlights of my year. But what truly inspired within me a high like no other was actually conversing with the man with all the words.
Burnham kicked off the night by diving straight into a satirical musical ode to “Straight White Men” and belting out the burdens they must bear by always being superior to women, the gay community and everyone else imaginable. This was appropriately followed by “Men & Women,” which had some pretty epic one-liners but was anything but appropriate. One of my favorites of the night was a parody of country music, in which Burnham crooned a litany of country music cliches in a velvety voice you wouldn’t think he was capable of producing. The UW crowd screamed along with some of his old pieces, including, “Repeat Stuff,” “Art Is Dead,” “From God’s Perspective” and others.
Although the show ended with everyone on their feet and a pretty spectacular encore, for me the big moment was still ahead. I was able to catch up with Burnham for only a few minutes in his dressing room, where he was finishing up a giant cheese pizza before he hit the road, but it was enough time for us to become best friends—true story.
When inquired about where he found the desire to make people laugh, Burnham said: “I like performing and I think I like to entertain people. Or I like to put on a show, more than it being necessarily funny. I naturally gravitate towards comedy but my first instinct and the thing I get most excited about is the show moment, where usually the climax isn’t a big laugh.
“I did theater all my life,” he added, “and then I started doing comedy on the side in high school before it took off. But since my real passion was the theater, I wasn’t too sure about the comedy thing. I didn’t know if stand-up was going to be fulfilling for me but then I saw a lot of other European and Australian comedians that were doing really theatrical stuff and I was like, oh wow so I can do all this in comedy. The only rule is that I have to get up on stage and be funny so there’s no reason I can’t get up on it then.”
I probed Burnham on if he’d ever dabble in Broadway then, since theater was so important for him. But he believes that won’t ever happen, since he doesn’t have the voice or the ear for it. To him, he’s only talented enough to be a comedian.
I did disagree with Burnham there, but I also let him know that I’ve been told that I’m tone deaf. He was appropriately sympathetic to my plight and we obviously shared a moment then but no big deal.
I asked Burnham how much of a hermit he truly is, since a lot of his work alludes to him being very reserved and introverted.
“I feel like I’m a pretty shy person in general or its more the fact that I’m so not the guy on stage. I definitely identify as an introvert because I never have a need to get on stage, my passion is with the writing. The point is that if I’m at a party, I don’t wanna be the center of attention. But maybe if I didn’t have this outlet, I’d be crazy in my real life.”
I still hadn’t asked Burnham a very important question, one that could possibly make or break him. Therefore, I gave him the crazy eyes and pounced on him with the following: “A zombie apocalypse hits right now outside and you hear your manager being torn to shreds. What do you do?”
Although I was less than impressed with Bo’s wide-eyed suggestion of, “We have pizza here, we could just lock the door and eat pizza. And I could wear my Wisconsin Badgers T-shirt while Googling which religion I should convert to immediately. I’m not gonna try to run. I’m slow and flat footed,” I decided to forgive him when he just suggested clinging to me instead for his survival, since we’re cool like that.
I’ve had time to browse through Burnham’s debut into writing and publishing a poetry book and wanted to know where the name, “Egghead: Or, You Can’t Survive On Ideas Alone” came from.
“Chance, my friend and the artist for the book, sent me a portrait of what he wanted to be the cover. As long as it wasn’t a glossy picture of me—like all comedians and actors do with their books—I was fine with that since that’d be the death of everything! He sent me a sketch of my head with an egg on it that was titled ‘You Can’t Survive on Ideas Alone,’ because you need drawings and visuals. He was only insulting me but I saw it and loved it. It’s a title where people can fill it in with whatever they think it means.”
I already knew The Beatles and Radiohead were particular inspirations of Burnham, but were there more?
“Its hard to say ‘inspire’ because they’re such musical geniuses and I really don’t know how much I can be inspired by them. The Beatles had a bunch of screaming 16-year-old fans and they turned out some of the most progressive art of their time. How Radiohead and they believed that you can really challenge yourself to make an album something different is what I try to do; to make every show different and not just to refine the same thing.
“I’m listening to John Grant these days, not well known, but he was the lead singer for The Czars. But I’m obsessed with him these days since he’s quite the poet. Also, the last concert I saw was Tenacious D’s and they were fucking awesome.”
I threw Burnham for a loop when I asked him, “If you try to fail and succeed, what have you done?” Boy, did he have an answer that was completely bonkers.
“Well you failed but you succeeded at failing. But I think you failed. You succeeded at failing but thats not succeeding. That’s a very small subset of succeeding but you have failed completely. It’s a good conundrum like succeeding or the succession is almost smaller? I don’t know. If you turn the lights off, they stay off, so does your mother hate you?”
Burnham believed that in a perfect world, people would communicate just like we did. A place where everyone would interview each other all the time and use index cards because sometimes he doesn’t make any sense. But in my opinion, that’s precisely what sets him apart. And that’s truly why he has one of the most creative minds I’ve ever had the giddy excitement of interacting with.
