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Bo Burnham Biography (Personal Life, Career)
Bo Burnham is an American comedian, singer, songwriter, musician, actor and Internet celebrity. Burnham writes comedic and satirical songs with a politically incorrect slant. He became famous after his YouTube videos took off, receiving more than 70 million views as of October 2010. The comedian finished #1 overall in voting in 2011’s Comedy Central Stand-up Showdown.Personal Life
Stand-up comedian Robert Burhnam was born on August 21, 1990, in Hamilton, Massachusetts, USA and he is the youngest of three brothers of Patricia and Scott Burnham. Bo attended the all-boys’ Catholic high school, St. John’s Preparatory School in Danvers, Massachusetts, where he was on the school honor roll and was involved in theatre and the campus ministry program. Burnham graduated from St. John’s in Spring 2008.Burnham applied to New York University (NYU), University of Southern California (USC), and Yale University, and was accepted to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.[8] Although expected to begin attending in Autumn 2008, he deferred his enrollment for a year to focus on his burgeoning media career. Burnham later related that his first year on tour while his friends had gone to college made him “[want] to f—–g die. I’d be on the road, in South Dakota, looking on Facebook at all my friends at parties.”
As of August 2010, stand-up comedian Bo Burnham was reported to be dating a girl from “a nearby suburban town”.
Career
Burnham was performing skits (“Bo Shows”) in his home by age three, and grew up listening to boomer-generation stand-up comedians like George Carlin and Richard Pryor. But the year 2006 was the year when he began what he likes to call his musical comedy career. Burnham began writing songs about teenage angst and debuting them to his fellow high school thespians. He then videotaped himself performing two songs and posted them to the video-sharing website YouTube in December 2006, so that his older brother Pete could watch them from college. This developed later into a great success.In Autumn 2007, Douglas Edley, talent agent from The Gersh Agency, had Burnham recommended to him by his assistant, and Burnham became professionally succesfull in music and comedy.
Represented by Douglas Edley, Burnham recorded a performance in London for Comedy Central’s The World Stands Up in January 2008 (aired June 30), 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 by Comedy Central Records on March 10, 2009.
Bo 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—”the world’s most prestigious comedy prize” with a £10,000 cash prize—after his inaugural performance (of Bo Burnham: Words, Words, Words) at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He was instead awarded the “Panel Prize”—carrying 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. He experienced controversy from gay, black people and from other associations as well.
In 2008, while performing at the Montreal Just for Laughs, Bo Burnham met Judd Apatow, the director and producer. In that September, Burnham negociated with Universal Picture to write and create the music for an anti-High School Musical film for Apatow.
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. The special aired on Comedy Central on October 16, 2010. It was released on October 18, 2010.
On September 7, 2010, Variety magazine reported that MTV had ordered a half-hour long television “put pilot” from Burnham “about a kid fresh out of high school who’s pursing the new American dream of being a celebrity without having any talent.” Burnham will write and executive produce alongside Dan Lagana, Luke Liacos, and Dave Becky.
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 Win a Million Quid’ Award.
Quick Info Bo Burnham Biography (Personal Life, Career)
Stand up comedy biography published in: Comedian Biographies
Where there is a will, there is a way.