‘Eighth Grade’: Bo Burnham On This Generation’s More Affectionate Version Of ‘Welcome To The Dollhouse’ [Interview]

With his raw, tender and heartfelt “Eighth Grade,” comedian-turned-filmmaker Bo Burnham has made one of the very best films of the year. Burnham‘s miracle of a movie is made all the more impressive by the fact this is the feature-length debut for the 27 year-old YouTube comedian known for small parts in movies from Judd Apatow and most recently, “The Big Sick.”

The film follows Kayla (Elsie Fisher), whose constant self-reflectiveness is familiar enough to make you cringe at every stutter. Kayla’s dad (Josh Hamilton) is as good a single dad as you can be, given the fact that he has to contend with his teenage girl entering the most awkward and uncomfortable phase of her life.

READ MORE: Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’ Is A Millennial ‘Welcome To The Dollhouse’ [Review] 

The anxiety Kayla has within her, always in a state of questioning, makes the case for a kind of early-adolescent humanism we haven’t seen depicted on-screen so acutely. In “Eighth Grade” Burnham offers a snapshot of history in the making depicting a millennial generation as a zombie-like student body in are slaves to technology, social media, and their phones.

I spoke to the director about the film, his own personal identifying with Kayla and his transition from YouTube video-maker to, now, one of the most celebrated debut filmmakers of the year.

Your movie is seen through a teenage girl’s perspective, but anyone can relate to the cringe-worthy struggle of adolescence. Did you relate any of your own personal experiences through her character?
It was more based on my experiences now. I initially didn’t set out to make a movie about a young person. In fact, I relate to her more now. There are feelings of nervousness, feelings of loneliness, feelings of wanting to connect with people, feelings of being terrified of people. These are feelings that I have and the idea was that it could be explored more purely through an eighth grader. At that age, all those mechanisms that you’re developing to be able to navigate the world are just so visible and we get a little better at hiding those things as we get older. I wanted to show kind of how it all started and how we became like that.

Where the stress begins to sneak in the self-awareness or loss of innocence.
Yeah, you become more self-aware, you’ve literally just become self-aware.

Where did you find this incredible actress to show all these powerful and scary emotions in such an ultra-realistic way?
I actually found a video of hers online. I was rooting for her right away. So I brought her to audition, and, believe me, we auditioned every kid, but they all felt like confident kids pretending to be shy, but she felt like a shy kid pretending to be confident, and that’s basically the role.

I did review the movie and mention that it was this generation’s “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” which it is in a way, but you’re also not making fun of Kayla like Solondz did with Dawn.
Yeah, but Todd was mean about it.  And, yes, “Welcome to the Dollhouse” was fresh because it was like seeing kids talk for the first time and it was tonally right.