the Amy Schumer thread

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".

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.