Well, it looks like leftovers of already-reviewed movies are still on the table, after looking at Jackass 4.5 earlier this year, as Bo Burnham has released an outtakes reel for his (in my not-so-quiet opinion) genius production Inside onto his YouTube channel. Seems like a fitting place for this to turn up, given his internet content roots along with the emphatically homespun production values of the special itself. But while this could easily be written off as just a behind-the-scenes scrapbook of the main event, I’d argue that this shows Burnham finding more ways to be creative even in this capacity.
A hefty amount of the run time is taken up by behind-the-scenes footage and alternate takes of songs from Inside, which… look an awful lot like the original material. This is likely a side effect of Inside’s own visual scrapbook layout, with the audience drifting in and out of sketches and songs as they occur, but as a look into the creative process for something like this, it’s still quite interesting. The way he lays out the different takes he needed for segments like Welcome To The Internet is also markedly more watchable than how these blooper reels(?) are typically presented in film extras, adding to the chorus-of-one effect behind a lot of the music.
Not that this is all pre-seen content, though; there’s some definite unique gems to be found here as well. The perplexed dejection of Biden would’ve been palpable at the time of the original’s release, but in light of just how much of a shitshow his presidency has become just a year later (hi, Roe v. Wade erasure), it strikes a much harsher chord as watched right the hell now. There’s also The Future, which really nails down what it feels like to be in the technologically advanced age that past generations only dreamed about… and how mundane and boring it’s become. And then there’s 5 Years, a reggaeton number about a couple’s minor squabbles, which definitely speaks to the reality of being stuck inside with the same person for an extended amount of time. But it's also rather vindicating because, admit it, Bo Burnham just made the best Drake song of the last several years. Not exactly a high achievement, but all the same: Well done.
The smaller sketches find him still taking the almighty piss out of worthy targets, like with his mocked-up ‘free speech warrior’ Podcast segment along with a quite surreal Zoom interview, but as always, he saves the best for last. Put simply, over the course of a four-minute song, he manages to take one of the most classic examples of anti-humour (basically an ancestor for the prevailing style of Internet humour), and bring a poignancy to it that not only shows him doing some serious deconstruction flexing, but fits in perfectly with the mood of both this compilation and the main feature. If only for that inclusion, this release is worthwhile.
But honestly, the best part about this whole venture for me is how Bo Burnham actively plays around with the fact that this has been uploaded onto YouTube specifically. Throughout, he presents fake ads that are remarkably convincing at first glance, and when he gets into proper mid-roll territory, it’s almost shocking how accurate he gets with the inane genericness of a lot of online ad videos, along with how jarring they can be next to the content that advertisers, for some fucking reason, decide to pair their messages with. With how much both this and the main Inside looked at Bo’s come-up on YouTube, it makes his reflective and cringe-induced statements about his past work ring true because he shows the growth he’s made since then.
Now, I can’t say that this has the same devastating emotional effect as Inside proper. Part of that is due to this being part of the aftermath (although that itself has a depressive tinge to it, like when Burnham talks about the circumstances by which the audience is seeing this footage to begin with), but also because of its very nature as an even-looser collection of bits and pieces. But it totally still works, both as comedy and as isolated contemplation, as a companion piece to what I am still convinced is one of the most important pop art exhibits of this generation. And the fact that this kind of iso-vaporpop still feels as relevant right now as it did a year ago… yeah… let’s try not to get too depressed about what that says.
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