Judd Apatow is playing for laughs rather than gender
AMY SCHUMER is about to become big business in Hollywood. Already known in her native America for her stand-up appearances and sketch show, Inside Amy Schumer, she’s perhaps best remembered in this part of the world for apprehending Kanye West and Kim Kardashian on the red carpet back in April, by purposefully falling flat on her face in front of them.
But the New York-born 34-year-old is about to find a whole new following, when her first film Trainwreck, which she penned and stars in, hits cinemas.
Directed by Judd Apatow — who also helmed the likes of Knocked Up, The 40 Year-Old Virgin and This Is 40 and worked as a producer on comedy hits Bridesmaids and Superbad — Trainwreck sees Schumer’s character, also called Amy, working as a magazine writer in New York.
Since childhood, it’s been drilled into Amy that monogamy isn’t realistic. And while she is living by that maxim, hard-drinking and promiscuous, deep down, she’s stuck in a rut and unsure what she really wants.
When she finds herself starting to fall for successful sports doctor Aaron, played by Bill Hader, she begins to wonder if other grown-ups might be onto something.
But what else can you expect from the film? Here, Apatow and Hader give a glimpse into the comedy blockbuster.
From the off, Apatow, who is married to Knocked Up actress Leslie Mann, knew he wanted to work with Schumer by directing the film, rather than just producing it.
“It wasn’t hard,” says the 47-year-old filmmaker. “We were enjoying it, and I thought, ‘What if I hire some director and they’re like, I don’t like this script!’ — that happens when people just have a different vision with it. So I thought, ’I’ll take this all the way’.”
Usually, character’s like Schumer’s would be sidelined as the ‘comedy friend’, but everybody involved wanted Amy, who smokes pot and cheats on people in the movie, to take centre stage.
“Those friends are Judd’s speciality,” explains Hader, 37, who is known for his work on long-running comedy series Saturday Night Live. “It’s like that best friend, Anne Hathaway’s friend in a movie who’s drunk... What is she like when she goes home? Does she live alone? What do her parents think about her? It’s the really interesting questions that Judd poses that we explore.”
As producer of Bridesmaids and Lena Dunham’s hit series Girls, Apatow is often credited for championing women on screen. But he doesn’t see it that way.
“I just like funny people,” he says with a shrug. “It takes a long time to get anything going, so when people thought we were championing women with Bridesmaids, I didn’t think about it in those terms. When the movie came out, people were like, ‘This is symbolic of getting more women to be in movies’.
“And I thought, ‘No, this is just me trying to work with the funniest person I know right now’.
“It’s the same thing with Amy. I like to work with anyone who’s funny but I’m happy that there are more women who are having a chance to write, produce and direct.
“Obviously, the business has been awful about having enough movies for women, so it’s fun to be part of changing it, but I only do it because they’re brilliant and fun to collaborate with.”
When he thinks back, there’s one particular Trainwreck moment that stands out in Hader’s mind.
“I’d just moved in with my room-mate when I had my one one-night-stand. We were driving back to my place and I called my room-mate and was like, ‘I’m bringing a girl over’, and he was like, ‘Dude, you don’t have a bed’.
“I turned to her and said, ‘I don’t have a bed. Can we go to your place?’ And she said, ‘I’m moving to San Francisco tomorrow’, then she said, ‘We’ll go to my old apartment’.
“So we went to her old apartment and in front of it, by the trash cans, was her old bed with the box springs and the mattress and everything, so we put it on the top of my car and drove back to my apartment. I came in with a girl and a bed, and my room-mate was in a robe and was like, ‘What the...?’ He couldn’t believe it. I had that bed for a very long time...”
Cameos by sportspeople can often be cringe-inducing to watch, but not so when basketball star LeBron James makes an appearance in Trainwreck.
“He understood the joke, the subtleties and nuances of it, better than most comedians would,” says Hader.
“It was weird he did understand the joke, because the joke was, ‘Wouldn’t it be weird if your best friend was LeBron James?’,” adds Apatow.
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