AMY SCHUMER presented by JFL42 at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts (1 Front East), Friday (September 19), 7 pm. Passes $55.50-$129. jfl42.com. See listing.
A week into the ALS ice bucket challenge, a video appeared of comic Amy Schumer standing in her underwear next to an ice bucket. She reached in and, instead of ice, brought out a big can of New England clam chowder, which she proceeded to pour over herself.
“I know it’s for a great cause, but people’s videos were annoying me, because it’s such a narcissistic act: ‘Here I am! Doing God’s work!'” she says with self-righteous glee on the phone from Manhattan. “So I didn’t want to do it. But when someone challenges you, it’s sort of fucked up not to do it. I painted myself into a corner.”
After her publicist convinced her, she began brainstorming ideas with her sister.
“My mind immediately goes to the most disturbing place,” she says. “I wanted to be even more disturbing than what I did. It was quick. We posted it and started sending it around. I think I made it my own.”
You could say the same about her comedy career. In a few years, Schumer has catapulted from a solid stand-up – edgy observations about sex and relationships contrasting with her snub-nosed, nice-girl image – to someone with even more versatility and crossover potential than a Sarah Silverman or Chelsea Handler.
She begins work soon on season three of the smart, funny and this year Emmy-nominated TV series Inside Amy Schumer, and recently wrapped shooting on Trainwreck, the new Judd Apatow film she wrote and stars in.
“It’s a hard-R comedy,” she says about that film, slotted for a summer 2015 release. “There’s a crazy-unique cast: everyone from Tilda Swinton and Daniel Radcliffe to Method Man and Lebron James. It seems so random. Bill Hader plays ‘my man'” – she says the phrase with a downtown swagger. “I just watched a really rough cut, and it was hilarious. I think it’s going to be special.”
Consider what the Apatow-produced Bridesmaids did for Kristen Wiig and you get an idea of where Schumer could be, career-wise, this time next year.
Let’s hope she taps into the same kind of hilariously awkward truths she exposes in her sketch series, broadcast here on the Comedy Network.
In a sketch in the pilot episode, a woman and man have very different takes on their one-night stand: she’s choosing what kind of cake to serve at their wedding, while he’s playing video games with his bro and can’t remember her name. In another sketch, a group of attractive New York women greet and compliment each other, but none of them can take the praise. When the last woman does accept a compliment, they all proceed to kill themselves.
“These things all come from the media,” says Schumer about that latter sketch, one of the most famous. “A woman’s worth has always been determined, first and foremost, by how she looks – in our culture anyway. And I’m doing my part to change that.”
Call it third-wave feminism through laughter.
Earlier this year, she delivered a speech celebrating Gloria Steinem’s 80th birthday. The text went viral, and someone recently posted video of it, too. In it she describes having her confidence crushed when she went to a college “voted number one… for the hottest freshman girls in Playboy.”
She goes on to talk about having so little self-esteem that she agreed to meet a guy she had a crush on for an 8 am booty call. Then she recounts every gross, painful, nearly soul-killing detail of that experience.
And even though she learned from it, grew up, became older or wiser and now loves herself and her body, an insult about how she looks from a DJ or a Twitter troll can cause a setback.
“I wrote it for Gloria Steinem to resonate with her and the people who love her,” she says. “There’s a lot of that same spirit in my stand-up, but I did enjoy getting to actually say the message without having to sneak it in there.”
That fierce attitude was there from the start of her stand-up act.
“One of my first jokes was about this guy who would always turn the lights on during sex, and I’d shut them off. And he’d say, ‘Why are you so shy? You have a beautiful body.’ And I’d be like, ‘Oh my god, that’s so cute. You think I don’t want you to see me.'”
Clearly her female-centric material is striking a chord. Yet when I ask about whether there’s ever been a better time to be a female comic, she pauses, laughs and tries to deflect the question.
“I don’t know what that means, I guess,” she says. “There have always been funny women around, and funny women making a great living at stand-up. I know the industry was surprised at the box office success of Bridesmaids. But funny women have always made things happen.”
She mentions Gilda Radner, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett and Whoopi Goldberg as artists she was always drawn to. (We talked before Joan Rivers passed away.)
Even with her intense schedule – she tells me she feels like she’s been “going crazy for years” and hasn’t had “a second to breathe” – she’s looking forward to a month to write and do stand-up.
“It’s something you have to keep up,” she says about performing live. “If I don’t perform for a week, I feel rusty. I love the crowds, the immediate response, the instant gratification of knowing if something you thought was funny actually is.
“I can’t imagine not doing stand-up.”
What’s evident from watching Schumer holding a mic or in one of her show’s sketches or interview segments, is just how good an actor she is. On camera, she’s better than most stand-ups-turned-thesps: Seinfeld, Louis C.K., Silverman.
She never mugs for the camera, has an openness and vulnerability about her, and actually seems comfortable playing characters rather than variations on herself.
“I’ve done plays since I was five,” she says. “I studied theatre in college and then continued with the Meisner technique. I was doing training at the same time I started stand-up, so they’re both very much ingrained in me.”
She’s also amazing on her feet. A few years ago, she was one of the lesser-known figures invited to skewer Charlie Sheen at his celebrity roast. She outshone everyone with her below-the-belt jokes, and when Mike Tyson heckled her, she gave it right back to the boxing champ – with a smile.
Schumer acknowledges it was a turning point in her career.
“If you get a chance like that, what you do with it is really important,” she says. “I never like to do just the bare minimum and get by. I think I surprised a lot of people. I haven’t watched the Tyson clip in ages, but I remember seeing it and thinking, ‘Who the fuck did I think I was?'”
Succeeding at comedy sure beats shoplifting, a habit she picked up as a teen growing up in Long Island that eventually got her arrested.
“I haven’t done it since,” she says. “I’m not really interested in Orange Is The New Schumer.”
And if the actual Orange Is The New Black asked her to guest-star in a role, what’d it be?
“Oh, I’d run the place with Crazy Eyes as my girlfriend. We’d be the bosses. But eventually she’d kill me.”
glenns@nowtoronto.com | @glennsumi
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