A key point made in the trailers and posters for Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck is that Amy’s life is in shambles. “Everyone knows one,” the poster says, referring to the thousand of ‘trainwrecks’ out there, living their lives in complete disregard for their health, their future, and themselves.
In the film, Amy drinks, she smokes weed, she…has a really good job? She’s demeaning, but in an honest way that demands no retort. She also seems fairly successful, with her shit very much together at the beginning of the film.
Sure, she makes several (entertainingly) awful decisions throughout the course of the film, but does that make her character a “trainwreck?” We wanted to know, so we asked Judd Apatow.
“Amy?” responded Judd. “I think that Amy is the opposite of a trainwreck. She’s an incredibly smart, insightful, nice person who is very ready for this moment that she’s having.”
Whoops. He thinks I’m talking about Amy Schumer. Amy and her Trainwreck character, Amy Townshend, share a first name after all.
We laugh it off and Judd continues. “I think that the character is someone that has intimacy issues, so she deals with them not by avoiding people, but by having meaningless interactions with men. She has a boyfriend she doesn’t really care about and she still sleeps around a little bit, and that’s a way of not being close with people.”
You know, that’s fair. Come to think of it, Amy (Townshend), has a habit of doing and saying terrible terrible things in an effort to distance herself from people, but each of these acts brought her a little closer to the audience.
We asked Apatow, who helped Schumer develop this project over the past few years, when he realized he needed to work with her.
“I heard her on the radio on the Howard Stern show and I was really taken by the way she talked about her family and especially her dad.” said Apatow. “She was raucously funny, but very honest, and it really felt like these were movies. In addition to being a great comedian and writing fantastic jokes, I just noticed that she was a great storyteller, so I encouraged her to write this script.”
Schumer’s first film finds success in the set up of many ad-lib scenarios, including several sex scenes with John Cena, and buddy scenes between Bill Hader and LeBron James.
LeBron James, by the way, goes far beyond a cameo role, and is literally a supporting character in this film. We asked Apatow if it was always going to be LeBron James, and why, of all people, they would choose LeBron James.
“She says she wrote LeBron James into the script because it was the only basketball player she could think of,” said Apatow, laughing. “We never assumed that LeBron would say yes. We were thrilled when he said he was up for doing the movie, and he was as funny as any actor or actress in the movie.”
We agree with Judd, remembering a particular scene that had the audience rolling with laughter. We ask him how he can tell which concepts and which jokes are funny, and will connect with an audience as well as this particular joke did.
“It always works better if you start with a great story and then figure out how to make it funny,” said Apatow. “When you start with a funny idea, it usually doesn’t work because then you’re jamming emotions into a joke. I think that there’s no way to define even what a joke is. Why is it funny when LeBron James forgets his wallet? I don’t know. And in another movie it wouldn’t be funny at all. You never know if any joke will work.”
The film follows a familiar romantic comedy concept that sees the main character attempting to change major aspects of their life in an earnest attempt to better themselves because they like someone that doesn’t jive with that lifestyle. Ever since Sandy put on high heels in Grease and flew off into the sky with Danny, we’ve seen this dance done again and again, sometimes incredibly well and sometimes not so much, and we asked Apatow why he and Schumer decided to take this general approach.
“You never really know when a concept is right for a film,” said Apatow. “Some concepts are big and they work great. Some are big and they don’t work at all. Some small ideas really pop through, and some small ideas feel like nothing at all. It’s really just your gut. Are you interested in this person? Are you interested in this situation? I don’t know. I don’t know how anything works. I try to have my heart in the right place and I think that people’s genuine human struggles are interesting to watch if the characters are unique and the situation is original.”
Indeed, Schumer’s characters read as genuine as her attitude about life, and the set-pieces and smaller in-jokes are what make the film. We were thrilled to see a familiar face in the movie-within-a-movie titled The Walker that our readers in particular will surely recognize.
Apatow has put the spotlight on many female comedians over the years, attaching himself to projects to help the exposure of the likes of Kristen Wiig, Lena Dunham, and now Amy Schumer. We asked him what compels him to produce something, and what type of comedian he would choose if given the opportunity.
“I’m usually looking for an original voice,” said Apatow. “Just someone who has a lot to say and expresses it in a way I find interesting.”
Amy is certainly interesting, and has been ever since she achieved her frequent guest-star status on Comedy Network’s series of celebrity roasts. Now she’s had the opportunity to channel that vitriol into a surprisingly tame, yet nevertheless effective comedic success, and the critics are, for the most part, loving it.
To give a little context to this next bit, we must explain that we had this interview with Judd Apatow just hours after the Supreme Court deemed marriage legal for homosexual couples.
We capped the interview with a smaller, more personal conversation about our happiness over the decision.
“I think it’s been an embarrassment for a really long time that people have had to fight so hard for something so basic and obvious,” said Apatow. “Comedy, I feel, has done a good job of pointing out how wrong it is to discriminate against people. Shows like Modern Family, as well as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and South Park, really made a big difference in terms of teaching the next generation that it is completely insane to not allow people to have the same basic rights. It’s a special day in America.”
Trainwreck hits theaters today, July 17, 2015.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.