Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
The eccentric rom-com Trainwreck, written by and starring Amy Schumer and directed by Judd Apatow, opened this past weekend to critical and popular acclaim. The movie shot to number 3 in box office earnings – quite an accomplishment for a writer-actor who’s a new face on the big screen. With three seasons of a hit TV sketch comedy show behind her (Inside Amy Schumer), and famously open about private (especially sexual) matters as well as her professional life, Schumer is a natural for the talk shows.
Describing how she got her comedy career in gear, the “fearlessly filthy” Long Islander told Michael Ian Black on Audible.com’s How to be Amazing how she decided that rather than rebel, or do the opposite and try to refashion herself in an unnatural image, “I’m going to play the system the best I can, working with what I’ve got.” The countless fans who have watched already-classic segments from the TV show, like the incisive Twelve Angry Men spoof in which a panel of nervous white men debate “whether Amy Schumer is hot enough for television,” will understand what she’s talking about in the following clip.
As British screen icon Emma Thompson recently told a U.K. magazine, “some forms of sexism and unpleasantness to women have become more entrenched and indeed more prevalent” in the film industry than ever. One way to address this is clearly to engage with the sexual politics of the prevailing culture, and right now no one does that better than Amy Schumer.
As the comic says in the full How to be Amazing interview, “people get annoyed hearing women talk too long…so when I started standup I felt like I had to trick them into listening for longer.” I think it’s working.
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