Did Inside Really Give Us A Look Behind The Scenes?
Craft vs Content // The Best Safdie Brothers Interviews // An Amazing Documentary
Hi, I’m Thomas Flight. This is my ‘bi-monthly’ blog/newsletter where I explore film and media, often going deeper into the topics of recent videos. My latest videos deconstruct Bo Burnham’s genre-breaking comedy special Inside and dive into the tightly controlled chaos of the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems. In this issue, I’m going to talk more about Bo Burnham’s Inside, share some links to some of the great resources I used for research on my Uncut Gems video, and I also have a recommendation for an amazing documentary you’re gonna want to see.
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A central question in a lot of the discussion surrounding Bo Burnham: Inside, including a big portion of my commentary, centers on the question: “How real is it?”
Usually, when asking this, people are speculating about Bo’s portrayal of his own deteriorating mental health, or his outbursts, or the impression that he’s isolated and alone working on the special. (As a side note: how much of a scandal do you think it would be if it came out that Bo had help filming things? I don’t think he did- but it’s just an interesting thought experiment involving our expectations of honesty surrounding the way content is framed).
I want to draw attention to another element that I think is worth mentioning: The illusion that we’re getting a behind-the-scenes view into Bo’s process of making the special.
I say “illusion” because I think that’s what it is. I allude to this in my video, but the segments that give us a “glimpse behind the curtain” are quite limited, and I think are clearly framed as a part of the broader narrative. Think about this- how much of Bo’s process do we just never even get a glimpse of? Bo shows himself fiddling with lights, redoing a take here and there, we see the wreckage of production surrounding his studio. But we never once see his writing process (except for some whiteboards that I highly suspect are more for comedic effect than actual use), we never see him edit, we don’t see him composing the music.
Here’s something else: Bo is constantly deconstructing himself in the special, but think about what specifically Bo deconstructs. Bo questions whether he has anything worth saying. He questions whether he should be doing comedy at all. He questions if he’s funny. He’s constantly examining and turning in on himself, referencing what he just said. But he’s never deconstructing the creative process itself- or questioning his own ability as a musician, cinematographer, or editor within the special.
Bo’s self-aware commentary focuses exclusively on themes and messages and never addresses technique and form. I think this matters when you evaluate the special because it reveals where Bo’s confidence and doubts lie.
In the midst of all the chaos, doubt, and mirrors of self-reflecting critique, the thing that stands strong and unattacked is technique, form, and skill. A huge ongoing theme on my channel is that it’s not just what you say that matters, but how you say it. I.E. Film Form matters just as much or perhaps even more than the “content” itself.
Form over content can matter not just for the audience but also in the act of creating. Working and expressing within the form provides solid ground. We can avoid deconstructing and questioning the form because we can intuitively sense when it’s working and when it’s not.
Craft -technical proficiency- is often overlooked. What most people talk about when approaching a film or a work like Inside is what the artist is saying or appears to be trying to say. But people are only taking what Bo is saying and expressing seriously because he’s demonstrating a level of technical proficiency.
Inside thematically focuses on the creative process on an intellectual level- about philosophically, emotionally, or morally trying to justify what you’re creating, and the pitfalls you can run into when doing that. Bo gives us a glimpse behind that curtain. But it’s not about the creative process as a craft itself. Bo keeps that curtain firmly closed.
Uncut Gems kinda flew under the radar in 2019. But I think it’s one of the most interesting films of that year from a technical standpoint.
People often ask me about my process for analyzing a film. I’m not going to get deep into that here, but one of my favorite ways to do research on a film and develop an understanding of the craft is to listen to interviews with directors and other crew members.
Here are three great longer-form interviews with the Safdie brothers and crew that I really enjoyed:
Paul Thomas Anderson interviews The Safdie Brothers on the A24 podcast.
Q&A with the Safdie Brothers - MoMA FILM.
Safdie Bros and Crew Panel - New York Film Festival Talk.
Recommendation: Some Kind of Heaven (Hulu)
There are two kinds of documentaries:
Documentaries that are interesting because they report on an interesting story, and the style doesn’t matter that much because I’m just here for the facts baby.
Documentaries that are Cinema.
I’m a little joking. But in all seriousness, there are certain documentaries that have such a firm handle on the way they tell their story and the visual form that they just sort of transcend being a sort of journalistic document. (I have a lot more to say about this but I’m not getting into it now).
Some Kind of Heaven is exactly this kind of documentary. I don’t know how to pitch it except imagine Wes Anderson made a documentary about a retirement community in Florida. It’s a debut feature from Lance Oppenheim, and it’s stunning. It’s a very personal and intimate story- but it dovetails into a lot of very relevant cultural themes and ideas re: late capitalism and America 2016-2020. Oppenheim is smart enough though not to draw the connections between the personal stories and the larger themes with too bold of a pen. They’re there clearly enough to pick up on.
Oppenheim captures a time and place with the subjectivity necessary to truly convey it in a universally accessible way. That’s all I have to say about it for now. Go watch it.
One last thing. Big thanks to my supporters on Patreon! I recently passed the milestone of 100 patrons. To mark that milestone I made a video talking about my 25 favorite films of all time, which you can watch here if you become a patron at any level.
Thanks for your attention. Until our digital paths cross again,
-TF