Bo Burnham and Won't You Be My Neighbor's Morgan Neville

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2018

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we've got April Wolfe holding things down in the host chair. April is a film critic and panelist on the Maximum Fun podcast Who Shot Ya. She also hosts her own show here at MaxFun - it's called Switchblade Sisters. Every week on Switchblade Sisters, April talks with a female filmmaker about a different genre film - horror, cult, western, all kinds of stuff. What follows is a fascinating and refreshing discussion on theory and craft in filmmaking. This time on Bullseye, you'll hear April talk with Bo Burnham. Bo's one of the original Youtube celebrities - before Justin Bieber, before Rebecca Black, even before Leave Britney Alone! But he's turned that career from novelty into a diverse and really funny body of work - standup specials, albums, TV shows. Now he's gone behind the camera and created his first movie - it's called Eighth Grade. It's a funny and sincere coming of age story told from the POV of an Extremely Online 13 year old girl. You'll also hear a touching interview between Jesse and Morgan Neville. The Academy Award winning documentary director just made a new film that looks into the life of Fred Rogers — Mister Rogers. And finally: April will tell you about the filmmaker and actress who made a brilliant, extremely real movie... and then stopped.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:12.7	I'm April Wolfe. There's a saying in TV and movies, never work with children or animals.
0:18.7	And well you can imagine why that's a saying, right? Kids are kids, animals are animals,
0:24.1	and actors are, you know, trained professional adults who went to school for this kind of
0:28.4	thing. So anyway, Bo Burnham, the comedian, musician and actor, just wrote and directed
0:34.3	a movie. It's called 8th grade. And like you probably guessed from the title, pretty much
0:39.1	everybody in the movie is under 18. And it says first film. And it's great. Elsie Fisher,
0:45.4	the star is vulnerable. She's funny. She's sincere. The entire cast, they all did great.
0:50.6	Bo says he wouldn't have done anything differently. But you know, kids are kids.
0:57.1	Every Saturday I'd go up to the town where he filmed and meet all the extras and talk
1:00.4	to them and just have a little conversation with them. Just so they felt comfortable
1:03.6	enough. So when they showed up on set, they weren't terrified and intimidated. And I'd
1:07.7	say like, what's your name? Do you have a special talent? And one girl, I said, what's
1:11.4	your name? And she goes, she said her name. I said, do you have a special talent? She
1:15.0	goes, I have Exima. It's Bullseye.
1:25.0	Coming up, more from Bo Burnham and his film 8th grade. He'll tell me about the message
1:29.1	he hopes the movie will carry.
1:30.6	Why can't an epic story about the human condition be about a girl going into a pool party?
1:34.8	I'm not a guy with a sword, or whatever. No offense to guys or swords.
1:39.4	After that, Jesse talks with Morgan Neville. The documentary filmmaker made 20 feet from
1:43.5	Stardom, Best of Enemies, and a bunch more. His newest film looks at the life of Fred Rogers,
1:48.4	Mr. Rogers. Somebody he admires for his compassion, honesty, and of course kindness.
	...

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