the Amy Schumer thread

she's having a (v undeserved) moment for some reason. let's talk about her here

someone (forks?) said the 12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer episode was the best of the season so I tried to find it on On Demand but it wasn't there so I watched a bit of some other episode where she strips for dogs and uh... yeah that was bad, I couldn't finish it.

aside from her "Cosby trial" sketch i have not directly seen anything by her that i can recall.

Women I know LOVE her. She's like a Lena Dunham folks don't have to feel guilty for being into.

12 angry men ep was not good, but she is funny in general. like last week's whole ep & the sketch w/ justin long 'say fine to the shirt' was solid

I like her. *shrug*

I like her. *shrug*

oh yeah I saw that shirt thing. one joke stretched pretty thin imo.

also every time I see Justin Long now I can't unsee Carrie Brownstein in a moustache

She's like a Lena Dunham folks don't have to feel guilty for being into.

oh they should feel guilty alright

I watched one of her stand-up specials and it was...occasionally funny, mostly painful. Not just the material but also her monotone, blank-stare style that is either natural stiffness or another way to distance herself from the jokes she's telling.

has required me to institute a strict "no schumers" policy at my house

I don't know much about this person but her show was on at the video store (lol "video store") and it was so so soooooooooooooooo bad. I am the most shy and non-confrontational person ever, but felt the need to tell the person watching it how bad it is.

wait, why is "video store" funny? anyways...

I heard some thing on NPR where she described telling a purposely offensive child-molester joke to an audience at a Jewish-specific "event," and i did laugh.

I don't really get what her persona/character is supposed to be beyond a woman that unashamedly talks dirty or whatever, which is just not that compelling. and then there's all the racist bullshit.

providing recap fodder for shit content farms on the reg

i hate amy schumer for making me hat myself for hating amy schumer

anyway fuck correcting a hat

I thought this scetch was pretty hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM2RUVnTlvs

I like her. *shrug*

― polyphonic, Monday, June 8, 2015 5:28 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like her. *shrug*

― example (crüt), Monday, June 8, 2015 5:34 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I like her. *shrug*

xp Even w/o having watched Friday Night Lights, it works great. If you have, it's even better.

I'm not going to begrudge anyone for not liking her, though. It must be akin to hating Bill Hicks (which I do) while the rest of the world sucks his corpse dick (which they do).

I was the one who praised the 12 Angry Men episode. that and the season premiere were, i think, big breakthrough moments for her creatively after the show had been hit and miss in the first 2 seasons and i was pretty underwhelmed by the Trainwreck trailer and her MTV Movie Awards hosting gig.

before I contribute to this thread I should get this full disclosure/humblebrag out of the way: Amy Schumer and I went to the same college, and I starred opposite her in a student film. it's on youtube!

part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f64gjTIDfng

part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aySX41ooH6U

I didn't really know her outside of that experience, she was one of the theater department kids who starred in a bunch of the film department kids' projects, including my roommate, who roped me into that, my only acting experience. she was cool and, like, regular-people funny at the time but i don't think she started doing standup until after college and then one day i was like hey, she's on Last Comic Standing! she's on such-and-such other show! she's on TV all the time! so i definitely have always rooted for her and am biased, although i'm able to think critically about when she's good and when she's not.

She did LCS? I think I only watched that the first year it was on (Kathleen Madigan was on there iirc). I guess I never realized that any of the comics on there actually came out the other side with a higher profile than they went in with.

Doug Benson was no her season as well

*on

yeah she was 4th place in 2007. i think it was the first time i saw her do standup (this was only a few years after we made the movie, in 2003), i was like "woah! i know her! and she's actually good at this!".

i remember being annoyed that Benson was on there because he'd already been on Best Week Ever and other TV shows a ton compared to the legit unknowns that are usually on LCS.

i really DIDN'T like the 12 men episode but she's been so good this season in general it's forgivable. think this is one of the best things on tv now

She's v funny imo, show can be hit or miss and her racial jokes are always kinda one dimensional (racist) but like the 2 girls one cup audition episode from season one is hysterical, the high points are high, when its pointedly politicial it's always in a funny way

her iffy race material usually feels less offensive to me than just kind of a formulaic Sarah Silverman-lite stab at "did i really just say that?" type humor. she's really great at fearlessly making herself the butt of the joke but that's one time when it's just kind of hacky.

is that cabbage head thing some kind of KITH joek
xxxp

not really, my friend just wrote a script about a talking cabbage and i think was only vaguely aware of the KITH sketch and was like "oh, i guess they're a little similar, whatever"

all the moms I know howl with laughter at her show. I love all the moms so she's great afaic

My favorite thing she's done is the Charlie Sheen roast. I'm with the detractors though, I want to like her show but it just doesn't work. A lot of really good ideas. Very poorly executed.

parts of this season of the show have been real lowpoints imo -- that honey boo boo sketch dear god

what other shows do moms love, Joan Crawford Loves Chachi?

ellen

I wrote about it on the other thread earlier and I am too tired to get into it more now but I just started watching her and I fucking love her. No shrug. The last fuckable day sketch was amazing. The boyband makeup sketch was great as is everything she's done about birth control. So was the speech I linked in the other thread. I've only seen 3 eps of this season and none of the others so maybe I need to watch more before commenting further but I'm into her. I am not a mom.

I will say that from the little I've seen I can already tell she recycles material a little too much and can veer towards the I'm being gross purely for the sake of grossness (the discharge joke in the speech) but it's so OTT it's almost like she's gone beyond and is parodying everything ppl criticize modern feminists for in a v smart way.

The movie looks . . . not great but maybe I'm wrong. I do have a new found love for Hader so idk. I'm not going to run to see it in theaters but I'm sure I'll catch it on tv eventually.

She's hilarious. Her show's funny and her stand-up's great.

"Have you found Jesus?"

"Oh, we found Him all right."

I like her.

I like her. I am a mom.

She occupies the same space Chappelle does for me while he was on the air -- a cultural observer who could get dark to the point where you thought it wasn't funny, or you were afraid you couldn't laugh.

Which I guess means the fool doesn't need to be funny; just needs to be true

if that Friday Night Lights sketch is as good as it gets, then yeeesh

she's having a (v undeserved) moment for some reason. let's talk about her here

― Οὖτις, Monday, June 8, 2015 9:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man i would love it if our marc maron thread started like this

or our louis c.k. thread

('b b but louis c.k. is a genius and amy schumer is ...' in 3, 2 ... )

frogsbs disliking her is a Win imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDk5wDBR3hA

i'm a fan. at first i thought she wasn't for me, but so much of what she's doing is so smart and barbed and kind of awesome that i forgive some of the dumber or more obvious stuff.

finally started watching this after just seeing isolated clips. watched about five episodes of season 2 (which was on demand), it's certainly funny enough for me.

tbh the presence of josh charles in her show is enough for me

jaymc otm

I haven't seen any of her stand-up but I'm p excited to now. Also, Jimmy otm too.

Can I call out sick and just watch her all day? Probably not, right? Shit.

I like her, AFAICT, but what I've seen of her show is one hit to a whole lot of misses (which may just be a thing with CC sketch shows, as I feel roughly the same about Key and Peele). The 'women apologizing for everything' sketch was good.

I haven't seen that one but I think I need to because it's something I do all the time and I hate it. Even when I try not to I still do it!!!

frogsbs disliking her is a Win imo

sorry I'm not gonna defend someone who jokes about race, rape, and abortion. that stuff just isn't funny to me, but ymmv I guess

why can't she just joke about airplane food and dumb Apple watches?

('b b but louis c.k. is a genius and amy schumer is ...' in 3, 2 ... )

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Monday, June 8, 2015 11:40 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What I've been thinking has been the undercurrent in this thread the whole time.

I don't know that there's any real point in comparing the two. If anything, I'd say Amy Schumer seems to be working at about the same level as early-to-mid-'00s Louis C.K.: solid and showing promise but probably not at her peak yet. She seems to be a pretty strong comic in the context of where she's at in her career.

She's such a racist! vs. "It's only a six-letter word that you're giving power to... Here, let me say it again."

It will be interesting to see how her material evolves over time. Right now, she's writing almost entirely for people like herself - women in their late 20s and early 30s who share the politics and values dominant in the culture industry. (Similarly, Louis CK writes for people like himself - middle-aged men at sea in a world that cares less and less about them with each passing day.) Schumer's material is targeted at an audience that writes lots of thinkpieces for high-profile web outlets, so she's having a moment. The interesting question is, what will a 35- or 40-year-old Amy Schumer talk about? Are there (m)any female comedians aiming at a middle-aged female audience? (I genuinely don't know.)

so off the fucking money

"women in their late 20s and early 30s who share the politics and values dominant in the culture industry" -- her whole schtick is that the politics, values dominant in the culture industry are lame as hell when you're a woman in your 20s, 30s ffs. the idea that oh she might be interesting one day, hm, (tugs at beard,) is frankly patronising af. it's interesting as heck that a mainstream comic is articulating a critique of the p., v. d. in the c. i. as such a front-and-center part of her project!

last week there was a WTF interview with one of Amy Schumer's writers, Kurt Metzger, where he mainly talked about running afoul of Jezebel and other sites, and online campaigns to get Amy to fire him.

My first impression of her was an awful one: "I used to date Hispanic guys, but now I prefer consensual."

But in the same way that older Louie standup was more about the easy porn joke, they both got more nuanced, instead of more dumbed down, after blowing up. It really may have to do with what works in a comedy club when that's your gig (more shock needed) than what you can do in a sketch, and what leeway you have when you're a headliner.

thomp otm

I think what CK and Schumer have in common is that neither is particularly strong technically as a comic. (I have seen a lot more of CK than I have Schumer, so I could be wrong about her.) It's very easy to nod in approval or recognition at their jokes (and I've done it) but hard to imagine actually laughing. Which is fine! Comedy has many mansions nowadays. But I think Schumer and CK live in the same one.

There's a really interesting tension between comics 'privately' pushing boundaries in smaller clubs and the extent to which their existence as transgressive satellites, observing and commenting on polite society from a distance, is challenged once their profiles get bigger. You tend to see a lot of awkward 'growing up in public' as they try to figure out how to speak to a broader audience.

So I mean I guess I shouldn't have said "strong technically as a comic" -- "comic" means a lot of things. I guess I mean I think neither is strong in the classical mode of, you tell a joke, people laugh.

last week there was a WTF interview with one of Amy Schumer's writers, Kurt Metzger, where he mainly talked about running afoul of Jezebel and other sites, and online campaigns to get Amy to fire him.

idk if this was meant to be relevant to the point at hand but i just looked at some of the stuff they ain't like him for and man, he seems like a total dick

prob the relevant thing is that AS knows about that stuff too and seemingly doesn't care. So perhaps she's not working just to feed hip websites

xp yea he seems like a jerk, I turned that interview off maybe halfway through

Schumer has definitely, for better or worse, gotten to where she is partly by gaining the acceptance and friendship of the scuzzy tough guy Comedy Central Roast wing of the standup world, and sometimes it's hard to tell what the disconnect between her material and their more misogynistic stuff means -- does she excuse it, does she tolerate it, does she separate the art from the person, etc.

one funny thing that happened after the Twelve Angry Men episode:

somebody had the amusing idea to rank the men in the episode by attractiveness
http://flavorwire.com/517424/inside-amy-schumers-12-angry-men-ranked

and Nick DiPaolo responded in a way that suggested he kiiiiiinda didn't understand the point of the episode he was a part of
https://twitter.com/pilotbacon/status/596001366910304256

I dont see much of a critique in her material, baffled by that interpretation tbh.

(I dont know any moms that like her fwiw but will conduct more scientific survey and report back)

the p., v. d. in the c.

waht

you don't see any critique of male attitude towards women in Inside Amy Schumer? how much of this show have you watched again?

There's some of that yeah but thomp explicitly claiming a much broader critique

I've seen some posters in the subway, am I entitled to strong opinions about the show?

And i think she indulges and exploits male gaze as much as she critiques it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg

only a little critique here

She's a-ok w the racism dominant in the culture industry, for ex.

Xp

How so?

the p., v. d. in the c.
waht

― example (crüt), Tuesday, June 9, 2015 10:59 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Crut, it took me a while too. ""women in their late 20s and early 30s who share the politics and values dominant in the culture industry".

I misread it initially as "the p., v. c. on the t's."

fair

ohhh, thank you!

dominant values, daring assumptions

lol djp i read it as piv

i think she's kind of basic? like all those mommybloggers who call their sites 'mommy needs vodka' or whatever. but, you know, i might feel differently if all the content mills out there weren't going all hyperbolically nuts on her every move, especially the most norm-reinforcing ones, like the recent speech where she's like 'i'm 160 lbs and i can still get laid!' great, have a cookie? or don't, it might push you to 161.

also, would she have any traction at all if she didn't fit the female beauty norm in every way that wasn't the size of her upper arms? let's be real here.

It will be interesting to see how her material evolves over time. Right now, she's writing almost entirely for people like herself - women in their late 20s and early 30s who share the politics and values dominant in the culture industry. (Similarly, Louis CK writes for people like himself - middle-aged men at sea in a world that cares less and less about them with each passing day.) Schumer's material is targeted at an audience that writes lots of thinkpieces for high-profile web outlets, so she's having a moment. The interesting question is, what will a 35- or 40-year-old Amy Schumer talk about? Are there (m)any female comedians aiming at a middle-aged female audience? (I genuinely don't know.)

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Tuesday, June 9, 2015 8:34 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This post is still killing me, btw.

why? it's not wrong.

at least in its demographic points.

well yes things comedians say sound lame if you take out the parts that make them funny

wait huh? i read that to mean that her brand of comedy is very of a piece with a certain dominant aesthetic in online media.

THE JEZEBEL EFFECT IS REAL.

(lol)

anyway whatever i just feel like she's being hailed for being a lot more revolutionary than she actually is. i'm not so into the slight update of gender norms ('look sexy but with stuff from etsy that says 'KILL ALL MEN' on it !!' that is pop feminism in 2015, so kill me.

It will be interesting to see how her material evolves over time. Right now, she's writing almost entirely for people like herself - women in their late 20s and early 30s who share the politics and values dominant in the culture industry. (Similarly, Louis CK writes for people like himself - middle-aged men at sea in a world that cares less and less about them with each passing day.) Schumer's material is targeted at an audience that writes lots of thinkpieces for high-profile web outlets, so she's having a moment. The interesting question is, what will a 35- or 40-year-old Amy Schumer talk about? Are there (m)any female comedians aiming at a middle-aged female audience? (I genuinely don't know.)

1.) No, not exactly. No more than Key & Peele are writing for mixed-race men in their late 20s and early 30s.

2.) Her material is targeted at an audience who write lots of thinkpieces? Is that why it's on Comedy Central between the Ashley Madison ads?

3.) I dunno where to start. How about any successful comedian from SNL in the last 10 years who isn't Will Ferrrell?

oh cmon you can't think that 'virality' isn't part of a marketing plan these days

also sketch comedy is a pretty different world than sitcoms!

A John Oliver takedown of Amy Schumer would freeze my Facebook page.

Now THERE'S your online thinkpiece guy.

going to guess you don't read much media 'for women'

(and you shouldn't, it's mostly terrible and patronizing. ask polly is great though)

she made a lengthy sketch piece about income equality with a call to arms to visit the Institute for Women's Policy Research; that seems fairly revolutionary
http://notcoolwithit.com/

i get the "why is she in every thinkpiece all of a sudden" backlash but a lot of her material really is clever and groundbreaking

not comparing her to him, but reading the recent Richard Pryor bio I'm amazed when ppl dismiss comedy purely on the basis of "unfunny subject matter." They'd get the torches out for RP and Carlin today.

(RP of course did terrible things to women offstage, but we can do that another time)

"norm-reinforcing ones, like the recent speech where she's like 'i'm 160 lbs and i can still get laid!' great, have a cookie? or don't, it might push you to 161"

The whole 160 lb. thing was supposedly a boxing metaphor and reference to a comment that Ellie Goulding (who had spoken just before her) made about punching above her weight in reference to whatever dude she's dating. I think people are making way too much about that comment considering it was supposedly just an off the cuff remark to something someone else said.

she made a lengthy sketch piece about income equality with a call to arms to visit the Institute for Women's Policy Research; that seems fairly revolutionary
http://notcoolwithit.com/

― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, June 9, 2015 12:05 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's these sort of things (ass also the birth control stuff) that play a large part in why I like her and think she's pretty great.

The "Milk Milk Lemonade" video worked great in that fundamental way of taking something objectified everywhere in pop music and video and de-objectifying it.

(ass also the birth control stuff)

err I have no idea how that typo happened - I meant to write "see also".

meh. i am bowing out of this discussion. it's ok to be left cold by things.

All great thoughts though, maura - whether she's basic or meta-basic.

it's totally ok to be left cold by things of course and intelligent people disagree. i find her rolling pr campaign and media blitz WAY more annoying than almost anything she's actually done on stage/on tv
i thought the "I'm sorry" bit was excellent too
the amy goes deep segments tend to be really worthwhile imo. conversations with folks in an open relationship, trans women, sex workers done as casual one-on-one bullshit over drinks opens up people outside of that accessible culture in, say, greenbrier tennessee to a big world that they otherwise can't really see.

of course it's ok to be left cold by things!

She seems more important than funny. Glad she is substituting edgy/baiting comedy w important satire but her comedy is a bit heavy handed for me, I prefer a quicker wit a la Sarah Silverman.

i'll admit i haven't been driven to see her recent viral hits because the praise has been more of the "finally! someone said it!" than the "LOL" - and she definitely came off a little eager-to-shock initially. but whether or not she's groundbreaking i think she's funny and think its cool she's getting a little more pointed - just hope it doesn't get to that margaret cho point where there's more applause than laughter. hopeful for that trainwreck movie.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/05/25/amy-schumer-and-the-rise-of-the-woman-crush/

lol cho getting thirsty there

yeah i remember seeing some of her early standup somewhere before all the hoopla and it was reeeally heavy on the racially queasy stuff

The thing that bugs me most about Trainwreck is that they decided a black friend was needed and then they decided to critique the need of a black friend by going all the way and casting Lebron James as himself. I get it. Um, haha.

Probably too off topic for this thread, but something about that seems both "unh, really?" and "try less hard next time."

did you see the movie or read a quote or are you just extrapolating from the trailer?

trailer

definitely wouldn't be shocked if it fell in to that "do the cliche but try to get points for calling out the cliche," was just curious if it had been laid out that bluntly

it's cool that the mere presence of a black face reduces the relationship presented in the trailer between a sports doctor and one of his famous clients to cliche, nothing about that reaction should be reflected upon at all

The thing that bugs me most about Trainwreck is that they decided a black friend was needed and then they decided to critique the need of a black friend by going all the way and casting Lebron James as himself. I get it. Um, haha.

Probably too off topic for this thread, but something about that seems both "unh, really?" and "try less hard next time."
--Johnny Fever

I actually think this is a fairly clever way of poking fun at that cliche! then again I'm also coming at this as a basketball dork inherently loling at bron trying to arrange times to watch prestige TV shows with bill hader

Maura otm

(Many xposts)

I saw Anthony Jeselnik last year at the Soho Theatre in London and he ended his (occasionally very funny) show with a Q&A. Someone shouted something disparaging about Schumer, and Jeselnik got kind of serious and started a little bit of a rant at the guy, going "First of all, she's more talented than you or half the hacks that play this room, you sad piece of shit" and then he kind of caught himself and he was like "sorry, yeah - Amy's amazing and I wish her all the best. And one other thing - if you get the chance to have sex with her - and you will - take that opportunity." It was just a cheap gag but it really seemed like he got kind of emotional for a minute; it was kind of funny

I only saw the trailer once fwiw, probably while watching Schumer's show on Comedy Central. I didn't remember the details. I just remembered Lebron hanging around with Bill Hader doing something in a restaurant emphasizing that he's Lebron James and you should be surprised Lebron does normal things haha. Seemed lazy.

If Hader is a sports doctor, that makes a lot more sense.

xpost I believe they used to date, fyi.

They did.

I just remembered Lebron hanging around with Bill Hader doing something in a restaurant emphasizing that he's Lebron James and you should be surprised Lebron does normal things haha. Seemed lazy.

the potential laziness seems more in tune with the "celebrities are people too!" stuntcasting cliche (bob barker in happy gilmore, lou ferrigno in i love you man, etc) imo

from the same director - eminem in funny people, billie joe in this is 40

when I first heard schumer's stand-up it was prob as part of one of the CC roasts, like her infamous joke about ryan dunn's death and was like "oh, a woman doing jeff ross bullshit, greeaaaaat." or worse, a less openly and unapologetically racist lisa lampanelli.

her sketches since then esp. recently are much more nuanced and interesting and probably valuable

wait, bill hader and lebron james used to date? this explains so much.

that said I also agree w a lot of what maura said in terms of her being jezebel catnip/an easily memeable delivery system for what are obviously important ideas and how that can leave people cold/skeptical

she was great on the bachelorette

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsT8JCHx08U

contestant: "sometimes i think i'm just too smart for 90% of the audience...it gets me in trouble..."

amy: "i wanna make you feel better...you're not"

jezebel catnip/an easily memeable delivery system for what are obviously important ideas

ok yeah but if she plays any part in getting those important ideas out to a wider audience who might not not have been exposed to or thought about them otherwise then i'm all for it

How basic can she be really she was once in a student move with some dude

well the school we went to (Towson University) was full of basics. she seemed cool to me at the time, though i can't say i had any clue she'd develop the comedic voice she has.

cool politics and groundbreaking ideas aside, i feel this show falls victim to the annoying, cringey, mad tv style of filming/editing that all these terrible cc shows are guilty of. kroll show, key and peele, even broad city (do we really need like... dance montages set to dubstep all the fucking time?). like that beauty pageant sketch... that shit is douchechill inducing in its execution.

hah well Kroll show totally does all that on purpose, it's always been part of the joke (and is often the joke)

so like.. he's making fun of funny or die or something? i dont think it's THAT self aware

I think Kroll Show in particular is EXACTLY that self-aware!

well I guess i'm not smart enough to get the hilarious self referential humor of kroll show bcuz i fuckin hate that shit so much but this show just feels like more of the same as far as style and humor idk i will take the maura route and bow out now lol.

Kroll makes fun of the production of the types of shows he parodies by copying them exactly, if that's what you mean.

I totally feel you on the Mad TV-esque nature of these CC sketch shows. It's like people who don't quite understand comedy producing a show based on focus group info ('people really seem to like real-life interstitials!'). There are funny people on the shows, but they don't often feel quite like the shows those funny people would prefer to be making if they had more QC (note: have not seen any Kroll Show).

And while that sort of thing isn't exactly rare in the context of TV as a whole, it feels a bit more noteworthy on a channel with Comedy in the name.

i would put K&P several notches above these other shows, their production is sublime at points. the jazz dance aerobics horror thing last season was one of the best things they've ever done

kroll show on the other hand apes what it's (i guess) parodying so closely it's painful for me to watch period. i can't get into the guy or the material at all

schumer has some good sketches and I even appreciate some of the "OH SHE WENT THERE"/jezebel broadness, but it's hard for me to shake the impressions from that early racist stand-up

Kroll Show might've worked for me more with other leads, but when you hate Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate there's no use in even trying to watch it.

lol see I loved Kroll show but don't get K&P! Admittedly I only watched a couple sketches but just couldn't get into it at all.

k&p has gotten increasingly hit and miss, and the segues were always pandering if occasionally charming. as far as the editing goes if you don't like the "hip" post-mtv house style then yeah...it's a cable network aimed at young people. no denying it. kroll's definitely the most self-aware on that front, though - also the only one to stop itself when it started getting repetitive.

kroll also had the tightest focus of any of these shows - basically a love letter to shitty current tv

the irony is that while its aesthetic was almost identical to sctv, i think the average sctv fan has no interest in reality tv parodies even louder than the real thing

kroll's definitely the most self-aware on that front, though - also the only one to stop itself when it started getting repetitive.

― da croupier, Tuesday, June 9, 2015 3:39 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'stop itself' just means 'got the lowest ratings and wasn't renewed' right

lol no, ratings were pretty good but he said from the start he didn't want to do more than 3 seasons

i mean maybe the line that Kroll chose to end is true, i dunno. his father's a billionaire, he doesn't need to cling to a tv show.

i do have to give Comedy Central some credit, for like 10 years they'd quickly cancel anything that wasn't an instant South Park-level hit, when they finally stopped doing that they were able to foster all these shows that grew in popularity over time.

i mean maybe the line that Kroll chose to end is true

he said so publicly on a podcast he did w/ grantland right before season 3 started

I mean I don't wanna give him TOO much credit for realizing his cult show was running on relative fumes and ending it. Cuz he probably makes more money elsewhere and apparently doesn't need it anyway.

can not even imagine hating my bae jenny slate smh

I can if someone only knows her from snl - just as I can imagine someone hating mulaney if they only know him from his fox show

yeah i didn't like Slate on SNL much but she won me over with Obvious Child/Kroll Show/Married etc

I barely remember her on SNL. It's mostly from Parks & Rec and what I've seen of her on Kroll Show and I also think Marcel the Shell is kind of dumb.

Shit. I keep meaning to watch obvious child.

I loved Tina Tina Chaneuse

dear god Trainwreck is teal and orange

Amy Schumer's show is pretty good, there's something about it that bothers me and I really can't figure out what it is. I wanna say it's narcissism or navel gazing but it's not that.

as far as CC sketch Broad City is the best of the bunch imo.

HAS ANYONE SEEN THAT SHOW WITH CUBA GOODING JR oops caps

it's pretty terrible.

broad city isn't sketch

I've seen the last few minutes of several episodes when I change to CC for The Daily Show. It seems equally ambitious and ridiculous, but not enough make me add it to the dvr. xps

yeah Big Time In Hollywood, FL is just lame. i don't know how those guys got the budget to do a crazy polished-looking action comedy or how they got Ben Stiller in the pilot or anything but they're just never funny ever.

did you see the movie or read a quote or are you just extrapolating from the trailer?

― da croupier, Tuesday, June 9, 2015 4:37 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

trailer

― Johnny Fever, Tuesday, June 9, 2015 4:37 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love that the discussion continued after this

I love that this thread was so usefully spun off from the Comedy Central thread.

yeah Big Time In Hollywood, FL is just lame. i don't know how those guys got the budget to do a crazy polished-looking action comedy or how they got Ben Stiller in the pilot or anything but they're just never funny ever.

is that the show by the Next Time On Lonny guys? Next Time On Lonny was funny and occasionally weirdly expensive-looking. If it is, they probably got Ben Stiller in the pilot because he produces it, like he appeared in a Next Time On Lonny video when he started producing it.

Next Time, On Lonny.

Amy Schumer responded on Sunday via Twitter to allegations of a racial blind spot in her comedy, writing: “Stick with me and trust me that I’m joking. I go in and out of playing an irreverent idiot. That includes making dumb jokes involving race …You can call it a “blind spot for racism” or “lazy” but you are wrong. It is a joke and it is funny … I am not going to start joking about safe material.”

Oh it was a joke! I get it now

I'm not sure irreverence combines all that well with idiocy to produce some very special brand of humor.

Been a bit weaker since the hiatus

After watching 2 long sets of her recent, excellent standup, I'm a big fan.

I bristled against the bits and pieces of her work I'd seen up til now, but maybe every brilliant provocateur provokes this kind of response at first blush.

and there were race jokes aplenty in those sets, but none seemed to have true racism/hate at their core

True Racism Detective

Been a bit weaker since the hiatus

― like a giraffe of nah (forksclovetofu), Sunday, June 28, 2015 5:10 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol they have run 1 episode since taking 2 weeks off

nix the "true" qualifier xp

Xp yeah and that episode was notably weaker

LMFAO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5DSSjTeJZE

teaser for next weeks - the timing of this killed me

"i don't think we should see each other anymore"
"is this about my three buttholes"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/06/dont-believe-her-defenders-amy-schumers-jokes-are-racist/?tid=pm_opinions_pop_b

not a great piece or anything but nice to see her being called on her shit

America’s soil of racism is fed by jokes and incendiary speeches, by stereotypical images and symbols like the Confederate flag. Just as Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump and other members of the Republican Party regularly disparage people of color and claim they are simply telling the truth, Schumer can use comedy as a protective shroud to deny the harm and hurt caused by her jokes. A joke is considered benign especially when told by a supposed white liberal feminist. We can distance ourselves from the anger, from the harm, from the ideology, and from the hatred of the “extreme,” but also find comfort in the same anger, ideology and hatred that is “just a joke.”

This rhetoric isn’t just ugly. It contributes to a worldview that justifies a broken immigration system, mass incarceration, divestment from inner city communities, that rationalizes inequality and buttresses persistent segregation and violence. Yet nobody wants to take responsibility for spewing rhetoric that breeds the fear that results in soaring gun purchases, that “inspires” monsters like Dylann Roof to craft a manifesto with deadly consequences.

I am no one's Amy Schumer expert but the one standup bit I saw that was being passed around as super racist seemed to me to pretty obviously point towards her as the avatar making the racist statement as the butt of the joke. Everything else I've seen has been funny feminist stuff.

which bit was that

one of these?

for all things Comedy Central

ftr i have't worked out a clear response to the argument i quoted above

yeah there's a billion examples of shitty racism covered up with "but it's a joke"

lots of great comedy (or just art in general) done by inhabiting loathsome characters or amplifying the worst aspects of the self

and there are a whooole lot of audiences out there who are looking for the former who will happily enjoy the latter, without "getting it," your old archie bunker problem

She wrote this response on the 'used to date hispanics, now I prefer consensual' joke:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJQN2ijWsAAenRu.jpg

much better answer, imo.

Shakey, I think it was one of those links but none of them are ringing any bells. It seems pretty unambiguous to me though that she as the joketeller is supposed to come across as a terrible person, though?

that is a much better answer/apology yes

xp

isnt this basically the Sarah Silverman persona all over again? haven't heard enough Schumer yet to tell firsthand.

went over that comparison on the Comedy Central thread but I think Sarah was much less ambiguous about racists/racism being the butt of her jokes. That may just come down to her being better at writing jokes though. I don't really see how some of the Mexican jokes like "nothing works all the time, except Mexicans!" etc. are on the speaker and not the minority.

struggling to think of an instance where Silverman used such a lazy cliched setup as "utters generic racial stereotype" and tried to pass it off as being on her and not the race being stereotyped. Her material always circled around to implicating the ridiculousness of the stereotype itself.

I don't see how the "I used to date Hispanic men but now I prefer consensual" makes any sense as a self-aware dig on a "dumb white girl character".

i was hoping that was just an anomaly

it's not the bulk of her material but it is in there, primarily about latinos and asians

this sounds considerably less sophisticated than Archie Bunker... i don't know how much old Lenny Bruce y'all have heard, but his bit "How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties," along with eg All in the Family, are clearly meant to roast the bigot. That yutzes willfully don't 'get it' is not the comic/writer's responsibility.

it's an ~interesting~ question whose responsibility it is

I don't see how the "I used to date Hispanic men but now I prefer consensual" makes any sense as a self-aware dig on a "dumb white girl character".

As a standalone joke, it doesn't. As part of a set where a dumb white girl character has been built up, yes I can absolutely see it.

You could similarly take Chris Rock's "A book is like kryptonite to a nigger!" joke out of the context of his "black people vs niggers" piece and claim he is saying that black people are afraid of reading, which wouldn't strictly be true.

I don't think Amy Schumer is operating on Chris Rock's level of sophistication when she talks about race and I'm certain she has jokes that don't work because I'm not familiar with all of her material. I just want to know what the context behind these jokes was because that does actually matter.

the "can't compete with an asian girl" thing seems like a self-contained bit, I don't see how context could really salvage that one

yeah i think it's a little both... many of her jokes are effectively jokes at the expense of the persona she's inhabiting. but other of her jokes don't make much sense in that context; it's just a riff on a negative stereotype. i'm guessing that like a lot of comedians she was benefiting from, and is now sort-of suffering for, the slippage that makes both of those things possible.

that said, sometimes i think the people who spend a lot of time 'calling out' comedians for their racist/sexist/whatever jokes maybe have a kind of low opinion of people in general/audiences. is it not possible to find a racist joke funny--because of the structure of the joke, the way it inverts a cliche or plays with language or whatever--but still recognize it is racist and not subscribe to the worldview it plays on?

(IMO schumer is extremely hit-and-miss and i think the way she slips between the-joke's-on-this-racist-persona and this-joke-is-just-racist is symptomatic of the laziness of her writing)

i mean (speaking as a jew) i find some anti-semitic jokes funny and it's only in certain contexts that i'm actually troubled by them

sometimes i think the people who spend a lot of time 'calling out' comedians for their racist/sexist/whatever jokes maybe have a kind of low opinion of people in general/audiences

Yep. This type of horseshit always comes from a perspective of "let me explain to you why that thing you like is loathsome and wrong and you should be ashamed of liking it." (It also almost always comes from the pen of someone I've never seen praise anything, but the whole find-a-thing-to-get-mad-about-for-800-words/$100 life plan is a separate issue.)

ooh strawmanning well done

really? there's a big market for outrage online.

I'm of "Hispanic" descent and I don't like white people making Hispanic men are rapist jokes. And "she's making this joke on this dumb racist character that she's doing" is a shitty excuse. Old fashioned earnest racist comedy is less reprehensible to me than contemporary "oh I know better this is just a joke" cop-out bullshit.

I have caught like 2 episodes of this show and both had some sort of egregious "edgy" bit of ironic racism.

i find some anti-semitic jokes funny

the only time I've ever found these funny is when it's a bunch of Jews sitting around telling them to each other, which places them in a context of both reveling in our own foibles/failures but also a bit of "can you believe this shit other people think about us".

Which is completely different from hearing them from, say, a cheery fresh-faced German girl.

xxp

the way she slips between the-joke's-on-this-racist-persona and this-joke-is-just-racist is symptomatic of the laziness of her writing

I agree this is the real problem: poor writing. If she was a sharper writer she would know that making jokes about race/racism require more than simply repeating or reinforcing tired stereotypes.

I sort of wish Eddie Murphy were still doing stand-up so we could see if he's moved past all the horrible gay jokes in his routine when he was young. (At the same time, I'm glad we can't because I don't think Eddie Murphy would be all the funny anymore.) Some comics work past this stuff or, if they're determined to stick with it, frame it in better and more intelligent ways. Others don't. Schumer is still a comedy baby, and everything she says when she's called out on some of this stuff makes me think she's on her way to a better understanding of why.

I'm of "Hispanic" descent and I don't like white people making Hispanic men are rapist jokes. And "she's making this joke on this dumb racist character that she's doing" is a shitty excuse. Old fashioned earnest racist comedy is less reprehensible to me than contemporary "oh I know better this is just a joke" cop-out bullshit.

― Rave Van Donk (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, July 7, 2015 6:20 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have caught like 2 episodes of this show and both had some sort of egregious "edgy" bit of ironic racism.

― Rave Van Donk (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, July 7, 2015 6:24 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fwiw i basically agree w/ this. but i still get tired of the outrage-machine-that-must-be-fed. i should probably just stay off the internet for a few years.

OK I watched the "can't compete with an asian" clip and it was just so absurdly terrible. Like, literally, there is an "asians like math" joke, or not even really a joke, just "i will refer to the conventional wisdom that asians like math and you will laugh."

I've liked the pieces of her show that I've seen, but if I'd never heard of her and watched this piece of standup I would never feel the need to see her again.

Jokes need to be funny, she isn't funny.

she's pretty funny

That's what she said.

i think she's not funny and as far as i can tell also not racist

re Murphy, I heard Chris Rock tell Terry Gross about 6 months ago "I'm the only black comedian who's never gaybashed. Ever."

maybe of his generation, but there are certainly younger comics who haven't

Hard to believe Trainwreck still hasn't opened yet.

Was Chris Rock including Cosby?

You mean the pervert who slept with his brother Russell?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xEpSdy99vg
Cosby in 1969, a good four minutes of homophobic bullshit starts at 2.38

Thanks - I'd never heard that.

she's usually very funny. she's had some jokes that are definitely racist in nature and they are her less funny material and I think she's aware of that now.

http://www.gq.com/gallery/amy-schumer-photos-star-wars-trainwreck

reviews for the movie are p good, Zacharek a dissenter.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/the-taming-of-amy-schumer-trainwreck-has-laughs-but-at-what-cost-7353708

a certain ilxor's pan p convincing

... you could have just linked it without mentioning that

She looks like a cross between an angel on a Victorian greeting card and a Campbell's Soup Kid

This description made me laugh.

You know, I like her, but I have very serious don't want to see it vibes from this. Especially the Apatow factor. I used to like him, too, but his last two have been the worst kind of make-me-angry indulgent. Especially "Funny People."

Stephanie Zacharek posts here?

ugh colin quinn, why do people put him in things

the Zacharek review ends up focusing on the old Apatow "secret" conservatism thing, which I'm not entirely sure is a problem with his films

but, Funny People WAS dreadful, i didn't even see the one after that

I used to like him, too, but his last two have been the worst kind of make-me-angry indulgent.

I'll defend his better stuff but yeah Funny People is p unforgivable. what was the other one you're referring to?

oh yeah Life at 40 or whatever. god that was horrible

this is 40 is one of the worst movies ever made by anybody. there are like 3 jokes thanks to chris o'dowd and the rest is hideous classist aggressively milquetoast bullshit

Colin Quinn rules

im interested in trainwreck tho. it looks sufficiently different from whatever the fuck his last two movies are or were attempting to be (prob because schumer is writing) - like i still cant possible imagine what the fuck he thought he was doing with funny people and this is 40

I liked the audacity of this is 40: how they lived in a multimillion dollar house in Pasadena but we were supposed to sympathize with the fact that, due to paul rudd's vanity record label failing, they might have to downsize.

I did laugh when melissa mccarhy said "this is what happens when you corner a rat"

yeah it was so tone deaf, so removed from any reality

xp

Sounds like it has some of the same problem that Funny People did, in desperately trying to get you to sympathize with rich assholes (who just happen to be really similar to Apatow and his friends and family)

I used to like him, too,

Embrace your fate; you're all going to catch up to my POV eventually.

as referred to above:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/trainwreck

I can understand people having a problem with the "rich people have problems too!" element of This Is 40 but there was a frankness and honesty to the marraige/raising kids scenes that I liked.

This Is 40 was great

Albert Brooks and Melissa McCarthy were great. Could've done without the rest of it.

you're all going to catch up to my POV eventually.

nah, Freaks & Geeks is all-time, and Knocked Up/40yo Virgin def hold up (I would throw Forgetting Sarah Marshall in there too altho he was only tangentially involved)

the trailers I've seen for this make it look like a LeBron James film with some other people in it. Is that accurate?

I hope so!

xp yeah, Apatow (and Feig) will basically get a lifetime pass for me for creating Freaks and Geeks. even anything their collaborators do will merit some interest
pretty much agree with your rankings there Οὖτις. I will catch This is 40 at some point when I can remember to...

I think Apatow is, qualitatively, very similar to Cameron Crowe (nb: have not seen the last two Cameron Crowe movies). People champion some of his films and trash others but they all seem similarly MOR-ish and not bad to me.

What I saw of This Is 40 seemed pretty decent but I was watching from a hotel hot tub so I was probably just vibing with the onscreen opulence.

nah, Freaks & Geeks is all-time, and Knocked Up/40yo Virgin def hold up (I would throw Forgetting Sarah Marshall in there too altho he was only tangentially involved)

― Οὖτις, Thursday, July 16, 2015 12:05 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. I think the ending of 40-Year-Old Virgin is the hardest I've laughed in a movie theater. They're actually ending the movie with this! And they're committing to it! And Rudd's doing the scat-singing part!

i think comedies about rich assholes only work when they're also narcissists and misanthropists, i.e. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, Seinfeld (not that he was supposed to be especially rich in the sitcom, but i find his real life rich asshole character amusing).

(who just happen to be really similar to Apatow and his friends and family)

I think him casting his actual friends and family makes those last two films so much worse.

in Funny People the rich assholes ARE meant to be narcissists and misanthropes though, right? I liked Funny People, I've never seen any other Apatow films

Sandler's character in Funny People is clearly meant to be p unsympathetic/narcissistic/mysanthropic but it still doesn't work imo - way too long, with an unnecessary third act, and all sorts of sequences that are kind of gross (playing the Beatles, the shit w Apatow's children, etc.)

Would've preferred a film about the Yo Teach! subplot

the ending is weird, like the bit in the car where Sandler tells Rogen that he isn't funny and Rogen tells him he's glad if it means he's not like Sandler seems like the natural conclusion- like the message of the movie is basically that comedians are assholes- but then there's this odd tagged on scene where the two of them are reconciled.

the bit with Sandler playing the John Lennon song is kind of perfect, even if it probably wasn't intended to make his character look like a jerk

i saw it on tv while house-sitting and don't remember much...i assume that the rich assholes have a turn toward sincerity, selflessness, and redemption at some point?

xp

actually no

Best part about Sandler playing the Beatles song with session pros is that, for a week, my local theater was showing TWO films that James Gadson was in (the other being Soul Power...even though the Bill Withers segment was drumless).

soref otm about the tacked on ending, which feels v unearned

xp

Anthony Lane's review for The New Yorker pretty much confirms everything I feared this would be:

Are there any modern comedies that hold their nerve, and pursue their radical options to a bitter end? More than eighty years ago, the censor Joseph Breen was so appalled by the carnal candor of Barbara Stanwyck, in “Baby Face,” that he strong-armed Warner Bros. into cleaning up the ending and teaching the heroine a lesson, but Breen would not be needed these days. Though a movie like “Trainwreck” sounds filthy enough, it cleans itself up as it goes along—setting off at a rough lick, yet soon displaying signs of moral decency. As in previous Apatow films, the temptations of togetherness eventually drown the siren call of the boudoir. Amy, though informed by Steven, “You’re not nice,” is nice enough to befriend a homeless man outside her apartment; her philandering is not that of a genuine free spirit but of a conscience wrenched out of joint by an equally faithless father (Colin Quinn), who now, as if paying for his sins, suffers from multiple sclerosis and resides in an assisted-living facility. Amy has a sister (Brie Larson), who has a husband and a stepson, and, fiercely though Amy mocks their domestic harmony, they have much to teach her, the end result being a long shot, late in the proceedings, of all four of them gathered for a group hug. And that, as it were, is Amy’s final instruction: “Be happy for me, fuckers.” So much for the promise of the title. “Trainwreck” sticks to the rails.

i saw it yesterday and liked it a lot!!

i only just figured out that despite the title this is not a sequel to pineapple express

Lefsetz, he has Schumer opinions: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2015/07/18/trainwreck/

Just call me a constant warning to avoid the industrial hype complex. With standards so low it cannot be trusted. It’s a bandwagon of low-level taste that cannot be respected, you have to be brain-dead to pay attention to it.

So this was 35% hilarity and 65% tedium. Schumer has some great physical comedy and there are a bunch of funny asides, but whenever they try to be raunchy (toilet scene) it's just dull.

Worst was the 180 from eulogy to haranguing her sister out of nowhere.

most of the flaws people say are there are there, but i'm glad i came at it from a "hopefully it's better than This Is 40" angle than a "hopefully it's as good as her show" angle

any word on whether the inclusion of matthew broderick was a failed, intentionally random moment or was it a call-back to a deleted scene?

apatow was doing so well with the lebron plot and then just blew his meta wad all over the place

So much for the promise of the title. “Trainwreck” sticks to the rails.
― The New Gay Sadness (cryptosicko), Thursday, July 16, 2015 9:10 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well so does Schumer's comedy, ultimately.

She looks like a cross between an angel on a Victorian greeting card and a Campbell's Soup Kid

This description made me laugh.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, July 16, 2015 11:32 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think she looks like these plus cabbage patch kid! Last week my dad asked me why Amy Shumacher was so raunchy and was telling me how he tried to explain to my mom that despite looking like a "corn-fed Midwestern angel" she was really filthy.

actually that is just the way corn-fed midwestern angels are

we know that in the midwest, which is why we stay here

amy is raunchy bc instead of being a corn-fed midwestern angel she's a NY-born jew

or like my mom says - she's just the heir to joan rivers' shtick

x-post - *I* know that but he didn't.

http://i.imgur.com/qTGckgq.gif

Are there any modern comedies that hold their nerve, and pursue their radical options to a bitter end?

Bad Santa? Observe and Report?

I thought this was pretty harsh but at the same time convinced me to just skip getting a sitter for this movie: http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/chastened-amy-trainwreck-ant-man-review/

Bad Santa doesn't really

Observe and Report def in a class all its own, no wonder it tanked Jody Hill's movie career

Oh, come on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7YU2WI_HQE

I'd say the "happy" ending is earned by the kid, whose dad is in jail, being gifted a bloody stuffed animal while alcoholic Bad Santa recovers from 8 gun shots, then heading out in his "Shit Happens When You Party Naked" shirt and espousing his life lesson by kicking the bully in the nuts.

probably some of those Bobcat Goldthwait movies

she's just the heir to joan rivers' shtick

she's not even close to Joan's level

oh plz joan doesn't need hagiography she wasn't worlds better than amy

by the simplest yardstick, Joan made me laugh and could construct wickedly funny one liners and Amy does neither

Election stays with it through the end

Are there any modern comedies that hold their nerve, and pursue their radical options to a bitter end?

Citizen Ruth ended with the "pro-choice" and "pro-life" sides in deadlock. Ruth makes off with the bag of money, but does anyone imagine her actually buying a house and turning her life around?

As for Trainwreck, beneath the Apatow Raunch(TM) it's a gender-flipped take on the trope of a playboy converted to monogamy for the love of a patient and virtuous woman.

Election is the modern template to which all contemporary satires should aspire. Even the almost great Dear White People, the best example of cinematic satire in the last few years that I've seen, goes soft at the end.

Trainwreck was fine. Was it world-changing cinema? No but it was an amusing 2 hours. Lebron James was surprisingly really good.

btw if morbs is still on the fence:

Her father is second cousin to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer.[9][10][11]

So, I watched her TV show finally because frankly i was getting sick of the weird fanboy/girl veneration the Aus media tonguebathed her with on her recent visit.

I dont get it, and didnt find it terribly funny. Is the racism supposed to be edgy?

she's done a joint appearance or two with Cousin Schmuck since the latest armed&crazy shot up a theater where Trainwreck was playing.

which season did you watch of her show? because the second and thir seasons are markedly better than the first and the racial stuff was tempered down a lot.

Yeah the first season. Compared to the youtube stuff I'd seen, it felt really awkward.

Are there any modern comedies that hold their nerve, and pursue their radical options to a bitter end?

Penn and Teller Get Killed!

Obvious child, but i wish it were a better movie

Or appropriate behavior which i just finished and enjoyed
Or tiny furniture which is probably the second best thing lena dunham has done

other than Girls, what else has she done?

buncha stuff of middle level import but i actually meant the "one man's trash" episode of Girls as opposed to the whole series.

Dunham's short film Creative Nonfiction, which is included on the Criterion disc of Tiny Furniture, is easily the best thing I've ever seen from her.

it's on youtube, i'll give it a watch
when dunham is on and focussed, i think she's great; it's just that she's been distracted by becoming an industry and has eighty collaborators and an unrealistic schedule to pump new work out and appears to be having her voice demolished by celebrity

Dunham also (co-)wrote this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1907731/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Haven't seen tho.

i saw trainwreck - most lols are in the first 30 mins, its def too long and idk lots felt off and like sum 4-quadrant pandering but mostly watchable

124 minutes! it's amazing that nobody can ever convince Apatow to cut a comedy down to a suitable running time. at least it's a good 20 minutes shorter than Funny People.

yeah i was gonna say your description of trainwreck is applicable to more or less every apatow movie

oh boy her HBO special was not very good. I like her show just fine, but her stand up was 60 minutes of self-effacing "hey I don't take very good care of herself GET IT?" I mean most comics rely heavily on that schtick, but I expected more from her. Also, there's one bit that borrows really generously from a similar Louis CK bit.

Good, pretty low-key interview with Alec Baldwin.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/htt-amy-schumer/

I like Amy Schemer, but "Trainwreck" - or at least the first half I've seen so far - is a drag. The tone is just off, imo, as it was in "Bridesmaids," which basically plays out like a drama but awkwardly shoehorns in these bits and gags that seem better suited to silly comedies a la "Anchorman." So you (or I) get this weird disconnect, where you hear the jokes, and see the jokes, and recognize them as jokes, but they're sort of not funny. Kind of a bummer.

Trainwreck and Bridesmaids both all-time classic

TW is a little long tho it's true. but both crack me the f up

All time classic in the sense that if it isn't already it'll soon be on cable all the time, and every time you come across it you'll be like eh OK?

I liked Bridesmaids and would watch that again before this, but I don't think I'd ever see either again. Just ... movies. With movie people and movie lighting saying movie things.

Trainwreck doesn't get better.

I laughed twice I think, by the end. It was too long and also felt like it had been cut by a third, which is not a good combination.

As I was more or less watching it, I perked up when some character mentioned that six weeks had passed. I assumed it was taking place over the course of a week! So she went six weeks without introducing her celebrity surgeon boyfriend to her sister? He went six weeks without realizing she was a borderline sociopath with substance abuse issues? And then out of nowhere they bring it back to her magazine story, which was ridiculous to begin with, but which I totally forgot about.

Also, what was up with the fascinating with gore? Close-up shots of knee surgery, her dad getting stitches over his eye, the doctor getting sprayed in the face with the basketball player's blood ... were they supposed to be funny? Gross? Subversions of gross-out humor by being gross but not funny?

I guess I liked all the (easy) Lebron stuff, though it was weird that no one recognized him wherever he went. Or that he was always in NYC. Or that a celebrity sports surgeon would make so much money that Lebron would be more of a financial peer than he is made out to be. I looked up "celebrity sports surgeon" and found a real life analog to Bill Hader, and this dude is worth $100 million: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Andrews_(physician)

And oh man, that final intervention with those sports figures and Matthew Broderick? WTF? They thought that was a good idea? I could barely endure.

I dunno. Apatow is weird and has a weird thing going on.

i don't think of TW as an apatow movie, it's just like watching an hourlong episode of her show with a plot weaving it together. also i think i am better at suspending disbelief at trivial inconsistencies than you are lol

two-hourlong*

It's not just trivial inconsistencies, though! Unlike her show, here the comedy is the inconsistency. Mostly it's like a pretty run of the mill brightly lit rom-com, but like I said before, these random bits are just awkwardly shoehorned in. It's like they had a boilerplate script, and a formulaic story, but then every once in a while it just goes on hold so they can riff on some stuff, with really erratic results. Vs. a movie like, I dunno, Anchorman, which is the opposite - all riffs and silly bits and gags, with a story that occasionally pops up, but not really. (I thought Bridesmaids sort of had the same problem; I still think it would have made a good drama, and probably would still be a solid drama, minus, say, long scenes of everyone shitting themselves.) But this ... maybe it was funny in the theaters, with a de facto laugh track? 'Cause it was a struggle at home. If I had to tell someone the funniest scene, I'd say ... what? I have no idea. It's just there. And I like Schumer.

Bridesmaids works for me although it's a bit long and the cop romance is p snoozeworthy - really the relationships between the women are the interesting parts. Wiig is a sympathetic failure type character and her redemption arc serves as a good framework for all the extended gags/setpieces.

That being said I don't like Schumer at all and Apatow should probably stop making movies (I have a bit more faith in Feig at this point), so I won't be seeing this.

yeah feig is pretty artless as a director but he's capable of delivering the goods on some level, like i would never tell someone 'you have to see the heat' or 'you have to see spy' but his comedies don't forget to be funny (how much they succeed is arguable i guess, but it's still their primary goal) and he's capable of depicting friendships between women in a way that doesn't feel like him patting himself on the back for passing the bechdel test. i like schumer and there were some dark places this was willing to go that i credit to the combination of her and apatow but this was still tedious and just ridiculously overlong. apatow's got this weird 'i have daughters so i understand women, i get this feminism thing now', he's not quite as far up his ass here as he was w/ this is 40 but still, dude is cooked. i was a fan of the dude for a long time, loved ben stiller show, love larry sanders, loved freaks and geeks obv, even loved undeclared, and was very happy when he finally actually had some success but man it has been a while since i've come away from one of his movies or even his interviews w/o thinking 'what a tedious schmuck'.

The Heat and Spy are fucking great. Spy had a couple of clearly improvised scenes that dragged, but overall it was hilarious, especially the interaction between McCarthy and Jason Statham. I even liked a lot of Tammy; that one was way darker than I expected it to be, McCarthy was willing to take that character into a really stupid and hostile space where if you met someone like that in real life you'd just be waiting for the racial slurs to start falling out of her mouth. But at the same time it felt class-authentic in a way movies almost always get wrong.

The Heat passed an hour and a half in a small town with a large single-screen that sold craft beer. Spy was very very funny and also structurally functioned almost perfectly as an action movie. Spectre should have been embarrassed out of being released in the same year.

I don't know anything about her or this movie, but I'm trying to work out why this poster bothers me SO MUCH:

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/dxnooKU42qpCY9ROJbLIow--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9NTEyO2g9ODEwO2lsPXBsYW5l/http://l.yimg.com/cd/resizer/2.0/FIT_TO_WIDTH-w512/74eae5adb32efd999d3130c1802f9ccf00dcc5c7.jpg

She's saying "wait a minute" right? Or "no no no, don't speak"? or "don't become a trainwreck like me"? And Hader is so photoshopped. And he's surprised by... her hair? And he's in a tux. And it's all about her, but you can't even see her face. And her left eye looks sleepy. And don't get me started on the font.

i think she's saying hold on a minute let me finish drinking this booze and he's like what have i gotten myself into this woman is really into drinking

Ok, thanks. I guess it would help to know whether she's wagging her finger or not.

mordy otm.

i saw trainwreck - most lols are in the first 30 mins, its def too long and idk lots felt off and like sum 4-quadrant pandering but mostly watchable

interesting that on this seasons first ep rachel feinstein came out to being in a 9yr relationship w judy gold (i think?)

& judy gold reteweeted this btw https://twitter.com/trishbendix/status/723549132216930305

& a day later rachel has a new cc special that is like ~50% jokes abt relationships w dudes &c. i feel like they were def largely old jokes

idk honestly w/e standup doesnt have to be real life i just think this was all kinda odd

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/books/amy-schumers-head-writer-on-comedy-and-her-new-book.html?_r=0

supposedly too dark to air on cc (but really? it's not that bad)

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/94dj5u/inside-amy-schumer-exclusive---the-law-firm-of-shrak---murphy

man that's labored, I couldn't even make it to the end

I thought this season was terrible, and I'm a fan. Felt like most of the skits were Amy playing herself and were about her being famous, which even played ironically or at her own expense got tired really fast.

Unexpectedly, Hilton Als on Schumer:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/the-limits-of-perversity-in-amy-schumers-standup

Huh. There are some serious, questionable parallels with his takedown of Beyonce in that review.

New Netflix special was forced at times but still brought the laughs.

I doubt I'll see her new movie, but I'm very ashamed to admit that I LOL'd pretty hard at the "whale cum" joke in the trailer.

her 15 minutes are up, right?

Let's hope so

she'll get revival sympathy as a "pioneering feminist icon" in 10-20 years

Counterpoint: maybe the number of roles available for female comedians at the peak of their popularity are no better or more numerous than for any other actresses. I somehow doubt Goldie Hawn hasn't worked in 15 years just cuz she didn't feel like it. Though who knows?

That said, I think she is pretty hit-or-miss even on her own terms. On her show for instance.

movie sucked

there was a weird PSA at the beginning of amy schumer and goldie hawn in front of a white backdrop thanking the audience for seeing the movie in a theater. it was really odd, out of place, kind of disturbing and unnecessarily desperate - if movie theaters disappear like tower records i'm leaving this planet. i don't remember the organization that the video was sponsored by

We saw the first ep of the new season of "Inside" and, with the exception of a few moments (the punchline of the Hallmark movie parody, maybe) I thought it was dire, like half-baked C-list end of the night "SNL" skits that all went on too long. Oof.

the very mention of her triggers a ton of right wing trolls and for that reason it's hard for me to talk shit but man I just have never found anything she's done to be funny. the one standup of hers I saw was pretty racist too. I really do not get what's made her such a big star all of the sudden.

i liked about 45% of her original series a lot, will give this a try.

Dud.

she's someone i see and i wonder why she thought she should be a performer. or why other people thought she should be. like leelee sobieski or patrick swayze's brother.