Bo Burnham: The Inside Outtakes

Bo Burnham begins by addressing his camera from inside a single room, stating that he has been "stuck inside like all of you for the last couple of weeks" and plans to record a song. Shortly afterward, he looks into the lens and reports that after a month of work, latestnetflix.com contends, "I don't really have anything that's even kinda close to usable yet."

Burnham tests camera gear, cycles through ISO settings, and sets up lights while rehearsing bits. He delivers a deadpan advertisement declaring, "Jeans don't read Twitter. Jeans are just jeans." He also speaks to a sock puppet named Socko and vents about people who dislike the word "moist," identifying "injustice" as his own least favorite term.

He records a voicemail intended for his partner ahead of an anniversary, explaining that he wants the voice recording to play at the beginning of a new song. He directs her to download the audio file and text it to him, concluding, "You're an adult, you can figure it out."

Burnham recalls his past years touring as a stand-up comic, noting that live audiences provided immediate feedback through laughter. He contrasts that environment with his current isolation, vocalizing a brief "Ooh, hoo-woo!" to complete silence.

In a split-screen sketch, Burnham plays both host and co-host of a podcast. The two figures complain about "PC culture," reminisce about vintage club performers, and insist that comedy is a serious art form before arguing over allowable language.

Turning to career advice for younger viewers, Burnham tells them, "Be yourself." He then adds that if an individual's personality proves unwatchable, they should instead "be somebody else."

Looking back at his teenage years, Burnham recalls uploading videos from his childhood bedroom in 2006. He describes his early material as embarrassing and cringe-inducing, though he notes that without it he would not have arrived at the point he reached "before I locked myself in this room and lost my mind."

Examining his face and a birth scar in the camera monitor, Burnham remarks that "the future is in front of now." He explains that after months of solitary filming, he has "now committed myself to never finishing this thing and just being in this room".

Burnham records a staged culinary tutorial on how to make a peanut butter sandwich. Using paper plates and a plastic fork because he would rather "put a gun in my mouth than do another dish," he glares into the lens and dares critical viewers to "Step up, you fucking pussies!"

Between lighting adjustments and rehearsals for "Welcome to the Internet!", Burnham stages an online press junket for a fictional site called The Dump. Acting simultaneously as the moderator and every member of his production crew, he fields a question concerning the lack of racial and gender diversity among his duplicates.

Standing before projected slides, Burnham delivers a mock keynote speech concerning digital media platforms and technology executives. He outlines a mounting cultural tension that is "rising forever, like a Shepard's tone, an endless and pointless climb towards a terrible and dense nothing."

After additional abandoned takes and lighting tests, Burnham provides another brief status check. He notes the steady passage of time and states simply, "I've lost."

Burnham sits directly before the lens to halt the production. Burnham explains that "the thing that I'm writing about is an ending" and concludes that "the only way this thing is going to stop is if I stop doing it, so I'm gonna stop."

He returns to the frame to offer a final musical number, announcing it as "a song about a chicken." In an epilogue, Burnham wears a baseball cap to portray the head of Inside Studios, announcing plans for an "Inside Cinematic Universe" before cutting off.