From first-time feature writer/directorBo Burnham, the indie comedyEighth Gradefollows awkward 13-year-old Kayla (in a truly terrific performance and one of the year’s best fromElsie Fisher), as she just tries to make it through her last week of middle school before beginning a new life in high school. The painfully honest look at contemporary suburban adolescence shows that, although there have been no major catastrophes in Kayla’s life, being ignored and overlooked can still be disastrous when you just want someone to see and hear you.
During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, comedian/actor turned filmmaker Bo Burnham talked about whyEighth Gradewould have been dead without Elsie Fisher, finding Kayla’s voice, why he wanted to set this story in eighth grade, what he did to research what eighth grade kids are like now, why he wanted to shoot all of the electronic screens for real and on real devices, the challenge of shooting the big group scenes with the teenagers, cutting the film down from a two-hour version, why he wanted to keep the dialogue feeling spontaneous, and why he wants to treat every story subjectively and treat the characters on their own terms.
Collider: I very much enjoyed this movie and I thought that Elsie Fisher was really tremendous in it, but it must have been such a worry that you weren’t going to find an actress that age who could pull off this material.
BO BURNHAM: Without her, it was dead. It was her or nothing. We shouldn’t have greenlit this movie before we found her, but we did.
Did you ever have a point where you thought, “Oh, my god, I’m not going to find anybody,” or did you find her pretty quickly?
BURNHAM: She was the first person on my list when I was looking at kids. Through the whole audition process, I was looking at kids to see if any other kid was even close, but that was never the case. She was one of the first kids that I auditioned.
What did you see in Elsie Fisher that made her the actress you wanted to do this?
BURNHAM: Every other kid played it like a confident kid pretending to be shy. She was the only person that felt like a shy kid pretending to be confident. She was the only person that felt like she had the vulnerability needed and yet could also carry a movie.
Many writers talk about the fear of facing the blank page. What was it that made you want to sit and stare down the blank page to tell this story?
BURNHAM: I don’t know. I was really just trying to write anything that I was interested in, and when I stumbled on this idea, the pages were not blank for long. I found that I could put her in any situation, and it felt alive and interesting to me. The first draft was done in about two weeks. It went very, very quickly. Sometimes, I will stare at a blank page for a long time, but with this one, it just came very quickly, which felt like a good sign.
Were you surprised that you ended up finding the voice of a 13-year-old girl so easily?
BURNHAM: Yeah. It’s not something that I set out to do. I really just fell into it, but I felt like I understood her very deeply and I felt like we had similarities. It just worked. I was very aware of it, the whole time, to make sure, as my position as a man writing the story, that I felt the connection, and I felt like I understood her.
Why did you choose eighth grade, specifically?
BURNHAM: I just felt like I had seen a lot of stories in high school and I felt, for a long, long time, that our culture was just asking questions of kids much younger. By the time they get to high school, they’re a little bit blasé and over it. I felt like eighth grade was the true battleground for me. It’s a little more chaotic, insane, exciting, dangerous and terrifying. I’ve wanted to do a middle school story, in the back of my mind, for a little while.
You’ve said that to research what eighth grade is like now, you would search eighth-grade vlogs and watch kids that had the least amount of views. What did you learn from watching other kids, talking like that?
BURNHAM: It was just about observing how they are, more than learning specifics. I was observing the way they carry themselves, the way they would self-reflect, how they try to express themselves, how they hear themselves, and then how they adjust themselves, as they hear themselves. It was really just the vibe of how desperate they seem to articulate themselves. That was what I wanted to mimic. I just remember watching these things and going, “If this wasn’t a real kid, but this was a performance in a movie, I would think it was fucking incredible.” There was so much going on in their faces, and what was happening was so complex. I wanted to make a movie that existed at the level of realism that these videos are existing at.
This is obviously so different from anything you’ve done before. Were your own friends and family very surprised that this was the turn you took in your career?
BURNHAM: No. I think my friends and family know that this is probably closer to my actual personality than my stand-up was. I just tend to be an interior, more sensitive person. For the people that knew me, this wasn’t surprising. But for people that have just seen my stand-up, it probably feels a little strange.
What’s it like for you to go from writing this film and making it in your own bubble, and then hearing such a huge response for it, starting with when you screened it at Sundance?
BURNHAM: It’s just really nice. It’s what you hope for, that the movie will be seen in the way that you thought it would, or in the way in which you felt about it. It’s been really, really lovely and lucky, and I already feel like I’ve gotten way more than I ever expected to get out of it. This all feels like extra credit. I’m just trying to enjoy it, but also not bask in it too much, where it becomes a requirement, going forward.
I thought it was so interesting that you set up Instagram accounts and you shot all of the screens on real devices, since it typically never happens that way. Why was that important to you, and how challenging was that to actually do?
BURNHAM: It was very challenging. We were told not to do it because it would be very hard, and it ended up being much harder than even that. I just don’t like the way fake screens look in movies. Even if their screen replacements look good, the ambient light that’s coming off the screen isn’t right. If you scroll through Instagram, the light on your face changes, the light on your thumb changes, and the way the lights reflect changes. Also, the way you stare at the internet when you’re searching is very specific. If she was staring at a green phone that we were going to replace later, I wanted to actually see her with the internet as a real presence. We also knew that, if she logged onto Friendbook.com, we were just totally dead. We wanted it to be the real thing, and I’m very, very happy with the final product, but it was a nightmare, having to do it on set. We had to set up one hundred Instagram accounts. [Elsie] was being DMed, in real time. We had to send the DMs in real time, and then figure out a way to clear the DM, which was a nightmare. We also had to make sure the timestamp was correct, even though we were filming it at 3:00 pm, with the lights blacked out. It was all a nightmare.
Were there other production challenges, specific to making this film?
BURNHAM: The big group scenes with the kids. With the pool party, it was about just making sure that they didn’t drown. We had the struggle of logistically wrangling kids. Because they were all actual 13-year-olds, with the child labor laws, we could only shoot nine hours a day with them. We just had to be very efficient, and when we felt like we got it, we had to move on. Time was a challenge.
Do you have any deleted scenes, or is what you shot what we see, especially due to budget and time?
BURNHAM: No, there was a two-hour cut of the movie. There are definitely some deleted scenes. There was a six-minute magic show that Gabe (Jake Ryan) did for Kayla, after the dinner scene, and hopefully that makes the deleted scenes in the DVD extras or something. There are a few things that I really liked, and I hope it will be included in things.
Do you find it hard to cut stuff?
BURNHAM: At first it is, but then you see it play with an audience and you realize that the first thing you’re serving is the pace. This is absolutely the correct cut of the movie, to serve the pace of the film. There were scenes cut that are fun as deleted scenes, but within the movie, the movie just didn’t support them. They slowed the thing down when the movie should be speeding up, or vice versa. You have to serve the thing, as a whole, first.
You did so many different things with this film that we’re not used to seeing, and you also seem to really have paid a lot of attention to all of the details. Did you go into this knowing exactly how you wanted to shoot every scene, or were there things that had to change, along the way?
BURNHAM: Definitely everything had to change. Everything is a compromise. Everything is not gonna be like what you picture. I had shot-listed the whole thing, but I tried not to over process it or over direct it, in my head, before I got there, just so there would be some spontaneity left. It needed to feel fresh, and not overwrought or over-thought. A lot of it was preconceived, but with enough leeway to embrace the chaos of the moment.
Elsie Fisher told me that you let her read the script once, but then she couldn’t read it again because you didn’t want her over preparing and over reading it before you shot it. Why did you make the choice to do that, and how do you feel that helped with her performance?
BURNHAM: It wasn’t really until we met Elsie, and she was just so right. The way she was in her auditions was right and I wanted to preserve that, so I didn’t want her to over prepare. Part of the thing that was exciting was the fact that she barely knew the lines, which kept them fresh. I wanted the words to be fresh and new, and the situations to be new and fresh. It was really about trying to not get things too processed. There were certain scenes that we rehearsed a lot, like the dinner scene and things that were familiar to her, but we were also trying to condition ourselves to be comfortable being unprepared. I wasn’t surprising her with any of the content of the scenes, to freak her out, at all. It was more that the actual words weren’t totally important to memorize before she showed up. I wanted the words to just vaguely be in her mind so that she’d recall them in the moment, but they were not hammered into her head, just to feel spontaneous without being articulated.
There are so many moments to love in this movie, but the ones that really stood out the most for me were the ones that involved Kayla’s relationship with her father. What was it like to work them, as they figured out that relationship?
BURNHAM: It was really pleasant. Elsie and her dad spent a little time with Josh Hamilton, before the shoot, just hanging out. It’s the one relationship in the movie that is incredibly familiar to Kayla, so it was the one relationship that had to seem familiar. They had to really speak a similar language, so it was just about being familiar, being comfortable, and being annoyed with each other. To be comfortable being bored around someone is actually real comfort. They had to be around each other enough to be bored and to feel like they were really struggling for connection, but that they’re incredibly familiar with each other. That was just about getting them together, in the same room, and getting all of the butterflies out of meeting someone and just having it become boring. We ran that dinner scene 100,000 times. By the time we got to dinner, they were both frustrated with that scene. They both hated it, especially [Elsie]. She hated doing that scene, as she should have. Kayla hates when he talks to her. I think you can really feel the frustration of the scene because of it.
I love how inarticulate Kayla is, which makes this seem so real. When you were writing this, did you ever catch yourself being too articulate?
BURNHAM: Yeah. I always had an eye out for that and just tried to make things sound natural and free. Especially with the dad’s speech, I felt like I was being overly articulate, so I would just want to try to make it less and less articulate, as I went through it. The passes were about, “Say less. Be worse at saying what you’re saying.” I wanted the meaning of the movie to be in between the lines and underneath the lines, much more than the words. I wanted to say as much with as little as I possibly could, or try to say the thing by saying the exact opposite ‘cause she doesn’t want to say it.
What’s next for you? How do you follow this up? Have you already thought about or started developing what your next film could be?
BURNHAM: No. I’m not a great multi-tasker, so I’m trying to return to thinking and writing. I’ve been batting some things around, but I’m looking forward to going back to the drawing board.
Do you want to do another one of these small, very human type of stories, or have you thought bigger, too?
BURNHAM: I think so. This is a small story that I’m treating big. I don’t see it as necessarily smaller, and another thing is big. I just attempt to treat it subjectively and make movies that treat the characters on their own terms, very seriously, whatever those terms are.Eighth Gradeopens in theaters on July 13.
