EIGHTH GRADE (2018, written & directed by Bo Burnham, starring Elsie Fisher)

if a special this successful has a sock giving marxist analysis i'm for it and don't care how cringey it is. also the "get your hands up" song is weirdly effective/sad and i agree that it's a good song and he needs to stop with the musical theatre vibe but also that's who he is, so whatever. he's not doing this for me. also more men should talk about their vulnerabilities around mental health in mainstream media

the only moment i actually laughed was when he said "is the guy big or is the room small" when he was being a twitch streamer playing his own life

Only made it partway through when it first came out. Went back to it tonight, in the middle of Omcrion, and got pulled into the first.

The Phoebe Bridgers cover of "That Funny Feeling" was a good entry point, taking the song without the Burnham persona.

In some specific ways (voice, vulnerability, specificity), parts feel like a mix of Johns Darnielle and Mayer (the Mayer of interviews more than his songs).

Anyway, works well, especially when we're still in that Inside zone for almost two years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEUl4DThSwE

*Went back to it tonight, in the middle of Omcrion, and got pulled into it.

i just realized the guy who did that thing i don't want to see made this. huh.

ignore that. the movie is much better than anything he's directly made as a standup, totally different vibe

Oh I liked it! I just don’t want to see the other thing

yeah... probably better off not seeing Inside. or any of his netflix specials. I don't know why, I watched those trying to convince myself that there was something good there, and... probably not?

Gave my friend's grade 8 daughter a DVD of this for Christmas. She's very much into her Darlene-in-Rosanne incommunicado phase--hope she watches it.

the movie is much better than anything he's directly made as a standup

The movie Eighth Grade is a perfectly fine, very watchable movie about what it feels like to be an eighth grader in a US middle school in the twenty-first century, which rather naturally encompasses the main character feeling not exactly fine throughout the movie, but struggling not to feel much, much worse than fine.

I just watched Inside on Friday and greatly enjoyed it while thinking to myself “I bet most of ILX is falling over themselves to hate this” and then I thought “that’s not particularly charitable, I should look up what the reaction actually was before assuming” and welp

learning (as I did via letterboxd) that BB apparently lived with his partner of several years through all this really did add an extra layer of "fuck off buddy" to my reaction

Just wait 'til you hear about Thoreau and Walden.

so uh this is pretty good especially given the current situation

Wow. Didn’t know Bo Burnham was a real one. Couldn’t be more relevant pic.twitter.com/DOBEcUEVJQ

— Read Jackson Rising by @CooperationJXN (@JoshuaPHilll) November 2, 2022

He's right that the market demands growth and companies that sell your attention must increase their reach into your attention in order to grow. We can only hope that social media will poison their own well so completely by cranking that handle so hard it breaks, and people reject it to give their attention elsewhere.

dang that twitter post took down twitter hardcore

"and yet you participate in society"

"Drink a Haitian guy's blood"

https://genius.com/4355796?

That's a good clip--very much in keeping with what I thought was Eighth Grade's greatest sequence, the girl lost on the internet as "Orinoco Flow" played.