Personal life

Bo Burnham was born on August 21, 1990 to Scott Burnham, a construction company owner, and Patricia, a staff nurse at Burnham's school. He is the youngest of three children; his siblings Pete and Samm attended Cornell University and Suffolk Law School, respectively.

Burnham graduated from St. John's Preparatory School in 2008, where he was on the honor roll and involved in theatre and the campus ministry program. Burnham graduated from St. John's in the spring of 2008.

Burnham applied to University of Southern California, Yale University, and was accepted to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Although expected to begin attending in autumn 2008, he deferred his enrollment for a year to focus on his burgeoning media career.

Home-grown music

In 2006, Burnham videotaped himself performing two songs and posted them on YouTube to share with his family. They became an overnight sensation when they were copied to Break.com, with traffic multiplying over 111 times.

Accompanying himself on guitar or digital piano, Burnham continued to release self-described "pubescent musical comedy" songs and videos online as his audience grew. Described in The Boston Globe as "simultaneously wholesome and disturbing, intimate in a folksy-creepy sort of way", Burnham wrote and released songs about white supremacy, Helen Keller's disabilities, homosexuality, and more. All of Burnham's home-released videos were self-recorded in and around his family's home in Hamilton, Massachusetts, most in his bedroom, videos with an intentional "do-it-yourself, almost like voyeurism".

Career

Burnham's music and performances tackle such subjects as race, gender, human sexuality, sex, and religion. Burnham describes his on-stage persona as a "more arrogant, stuck-up version himself." When speaking with The Detroit News about his rapping, he expressed his intent to honor and respect the perspective and culture of hip-hop music.

Represented by Douglas Edley, Burnham recorded a performance in London for Comedy Central's The World Stands Up in January 2008 (aired June 30, 2008), and signed a four-record deal with Comedy Central Records. Comedy Central Records released Burnham's first EP, the six-song Bo Fo Sho, as an online release-only album on June 17, 2008. Burnham's first full album, the self-titled Bo Burnham, was released on March 10, 2009.

Burnham has performed his music in the United States, including Cobb's Comedy Club, YouTube Live in San Francisco, Caroline's Comedy Club in New York City, and internationally in London and Montreal. In August 2010, Burnham was nominated for "Best Comedy Show" at the 2010 Edinburgh Comedy Awards after his inaugural performance (of Bo Burnham: Words, Words, Words). He instead received the "Panel Prize", a £5,000 prize for "the show or act who has most captured the comedy spirit of the 2010 Fringe."

As Burnham progressed through his initial popularity to more mainstream audiences and venues, he received pushback from fellow comics who viewed his ascension via YouTube popularity as illegitimate.

Burnham's first experience with controversy regarding his music came on March 3, 2009, when fifteen Westminster College students (members of the campus' Gay-Straight Alliance, Black Students Association, International Club, and Cultural Diversity Organization) protested his concert there that evening. Of the controversy, he said, "It's so ironic because gay bashers were the ones labeling me in high school, I try and write satire that's well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can't be completely clear and that's what makes it comedy." Despite the college's admission that they had booked Burnham while ignorant of his show's material, dean of students John Comerford praised the opportunities for discourse the controversy brought the school.

Tours

• Fake I.D. - Autumn 2009
• Bo Burnham and (No) Friends - Autumn 2010
• Bo Burnham Live (UK/US Tour) - June 2011 - July 2012
• Bo Burnham: what. Tour - Summer 2013
• Bo Burnham: 'Make Happy' Tour - Early 2015 & Fall 2015

Film

While performing at the Montreal Just for Laughs festival in 2008, Burnham met with director and producer Judd Apatow. That September, Burnham negotiated with Universal Pictures to write and create the music for an Apatow-produced comedy film which he describes as the "anti-High School Musical", although Burnham insists the script is not a parody of the Disney musicals, but an attempt to emulate the high school he attended. Hoping to star in the film he was writing, Burnham told Wired magazine that he named the star "Bo" in a "not-so-subtle hint want to be in it". In a March 2009 interview with Boston's Weekly Dig, Burnham elaborated on his work with the film. When he is not performing, Burnham spends eight hours a day writing the music, and his nights writing the script, of which he has finished the first draft. Co-writing the screenplay with Burnham was his high school friend Luke Liacos. In an October 2010 interview with MTV, Burnham admitted that he did not know anything about the future of the project, and that it was all effectively up in the air as far as he knew.

In May 2009, viral marketing began appearing for Funny People, in which Burnham stars in a NBC sitcom called Yo Teach!. In the "promo", Burnham stars opposite Jason Schwartzman, as a student in the latter's English class.

On May 21, 2010, Burnham taped his first one-hour stand-up special, entitled Words Words Words, for Comedy Central from the House of Blues in Boston as part of the network's new "House of Comedy" series of stand-up specials; it aired on Comedy Central on October 16, 2010. It was released on October 18, 2010. His new special, titled "what." was released on December 17, 2013. It was released on his YouTube channel and Netflix.

Television

In 2010, Burnham wrote and executive produced Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous alongside Dan Lagana, Luke Liacos, and Dave Becky. The series was not picked up for a second season and officially ended on June 26, 2013.

Awards

At the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, he was nominated for the main Edinburgh Comedy Award and won both the Edinburgh Comedy Awards' panel prize and the Malcolm Hardee "Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid" Award.

Performance credits

Discography

Main article: Bo Burnham discography

• Bo Fo Sho (2008), Comedy Central Records
• Bo Burnham (2009)
• Words Words Words (2010)
• what. (2013)
• Make Happy (2016)

Filmography

• Comedy Central Presents (March 27, 2009), Himself - As of July 2009, Burnham is the youngest comedian to be featured thereon
• American Virgin (2009)
• Funny People (2009) - Yo Teach! Cast Member
• Bo Burnham: Words, Words, Words (2010) - Himself
• Hall Pass (2011) - Bartender
• The Green Room with Paul Provenza (2011) - Himself
• Adventures in the Sin Bin (2012) - Tony
• Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous (2013) - Zach Stone
• Parks and Recreation (2014) - Chipp McCapp
• Key and Peele (2015) Episode: "A Cappella Club" - Lyle
• Kroll Show (2015) 2 episodes - British contestant
• We Bare Bears (2015 - present) Episode: "Nom Nom's Entourage" - Andrew Bangs

[ Source: Wikipedia ]