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<\/a><\/p>\n\nEighth Grade<\/i>, directed by 27-year-old Bo Burnham, is about an 8th grade girl during her final week of middle school. It’s extraordinary for many reasons, the main one being Burnham is a man. Normally men have done “coming of age” films about boys. That’s their “way in” because they know it, they’ve lived it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Bo Burnham, though, has said that when he started doing research for the film, watching kids’ videos on Youtube, “The boys were talking about Minecraft and the girls were talking about their souls.” He felt that girls were engaged with deep questions – earlier than boys – and that intrigued him. He ALSO said – and I love this – that he wanted to AVOID being too closely attached to his main subject – this is NOT a movie about his own boyhood. And so making her a girl would help him avoid that, because he knows nothing about being a 13-year-old girl, and BECAUSE of that, all he had to do was listen to how girls talk about themselves, listen to the 13-year-old actress Elsie Fisher playing the lead role. Let HER lead the way. The fact that it works so well – that women are seeing this film and feeling such a queasy recognition of their own Tween years – is a credit to Bo Burnham’s empathy. <\/p>\n
My review of Eighth Grade<\/a> is now up at Rogerebert.com. <\/big><\/p>\n This is a terrific interview with Bo Burnham<\/a> over on Ebert.com, which gives you a real sense of who he is as a person, his interests, his engagement, his generosity. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eighth Grade, directed by 27-year-old Bo Burnham, is about an 8th grade girl during her final week of middle school. It’s extraordinary for many reasons, the main one being Burnham is a man. Normally men have done “coming of age” … Continue reading