Judd Apatow和Amy Schumer的访谈，收录在他的书Sick in the Head中。
----
I was sitting in my car one day, listening to The Howard Stern Show, when Amy Schumer came on. I think I had seen her do a little stand-up on television once or twice before, or maybe just some jokes at a roast, but that’s about it. I didn’t have a clear picture in my mind. But sitting there in my car, listening to her talk to Howard, I was blown away by how funny and intimate and fresh she was. You could sense that she had stories to tell and was a lot more than just a comedian. I instantly thought: I need to make a movie with her.
So we did.
Amy and I spent the next few years working on Trainwreck, and I found that she was, indeed, so much more than just a comedian. She is someone who is willing to go emotionally deep, as well as work obsessively hard, and there’s a frankness to her work that I find inspiring. The stories tumble out of her. She is able to make important points about our culture and feminism and relationships and what it’s like to be a woman in America right now, and to do it in a way that is consistently insightful and hysterical. Here is someone at the beginning of a very exciting career.
JUDD APATOW: I was watching a movie about women in comedy recently—I think it was called Are Women Funny? And I noticed that you weren’t in it. Was that by choice?
AMY SCHUMER: I got cut out. Actually, I am in one scene. But I don’t talk.
J.A.: Oh, I thought maybe it was a political choice, a way of saying, We shouldn’t even be debating this anymore.
A.S.: No, that debate is insane to me. It doesn’t even make me mad. It’s like asking, Do Jewish people smell like orange juice? It’s just such a weird question. It’s not even a question. The thing that gets to me is the question “Isn’t this a great time to be a woman in comedy?” I mean, all the TV I watched growing up featured funny women.
J.A.: People said the same thing when Bridesmaids came out. We never thought about that when we were making it. I just thought, Kristen Wiig is funny. It would be fun to make a movie with Kristen Wiig. And then she had this idea to make a movie about bridesmaids. We never thought of it as a female movie. At some point, in the middle of it, it occurred to us: Oh, it’s kind of cool to have so many funny women in one movie. But it wasn’t conscious or anything. At the end of the process, we realized that it meant something to people. But what is shocking to me was that, even after the movie did well, there was almost zero follow-up in the culture.
A.S.: In terms of what?
J.A.: In terms of funny movies that are dominated by women. The studio system didn’t embrace them. They don’t know how to do it.
A.S.: In my experience, there will be a script and you’ll be like, This is funny—I think I’ll audition. And you’ll know other women, who are hilarious, are auditioning, too. And then they give it to, like, some beautiful movie star. They’re great actresses and they’re really pretty, but they’re not funny.
J.A.: When we did Undeclared, the note from Fox was: You need more eye candy.
A.S.: Do you think that’s true? Do people really need more eye candy?
J.A.: I have thought about that a lot. I don’t know. But what if people do want it?
A.S.: I’m not above that. I want to look at Jennifer Lawrence eating cereal.
J.A.: Are you someone who believes that life is easier if you’re attractive?
A.S.: I think that beautiful people are not any happier than people who are not as beautiful. Even with models—there’s always someone who is more beautiful or younger. So no matter what realm you’re operating in, it’s all relative. I didn’t develop my personality, or my sense of humor, because I felt unattractive. I thought I was attractive until I got older. It was probably a defense mechanism for whatever pain was going on around me. But I don’t think that people who feel beautiful feel like “I don’t need to do this other thing.”
J.A.: You’re in a weird area. I would describe it as: Everyone thinks you are beautiful, but maybe you don’t agree with their opinion.
A.S.: Um.
J.A.: I’ll talk about me for a second. I always thought I was right in the middle, looks-wise, and that if I had a good personality it could put me over the top. But it wasn’t like, behind my back, everyone thought I was handsome. I get the sense that you feel like some days you’re looking great, some days you’re not, but the audience sees you in a certain way that maybe you don’t agree with. Does that make sense?
A.S.: I think that’s probably true. I think that’s probably dead-on. I feel, like you just said, that some days I am like a real monster, completely unlovable and unfuckable, and then there’s a moment, every now and then, when I’m more like Elaine on Seinfeld: “Is it possible that I’m not as attractive as I had thought?” Or maybe it’s the opposite of that. Anytime I start feeling better about myself, physically, someone will say something that pushes me right back down. I think every woman feels this way.
J.A.: I ask about it because it is about who you think you’re speaking to.
A.S.: That’s a really good point.
J.A.: I was a year younger than everybody in school. I was the youngest kid in class, always. But I only realized later in life that I was much smaller than everybody.
A.S.: Physically?
J.A.: Yeah. And by the time I caught up a little bit, in sixth or seventh grade, I had been defined. On some level, I guess it made me feel less masculine. And as a result I always feel like a fucking nerd. I have a beautiful wife, I’m successful, but I still feel like the kid who’s picked last in gym class. And that shaped my idea of comedy, being about outsiders. It was a way for me to attack all of these systems that I thought were unfair to me.
A.S.: I would say the same for me.
J.A.: What was your version of that? What happened to you as a kid that made you think and defined your sense of humor?
A.S.: I would say, with the physical stuff, that I was always pretty but not beautiful. And that was something that you were punished for. I was very aware of this stuff early on.
J.A.: With girls, it’s weird because it changes dramatically. In high school, girls don’t look anything like they looked in third grade. Whereas with guys, the handsome third-grade dude is still handsome in high school. Girls blossom and change. That was the kind of girl I always tried to date: the girl who, near the end of high school, got pretty but still acted insecure.
A.S.: Well, that’s the jackpot. That’s my favorite kind of guy too. The guy that blossoms but still sees himself as the fat kid.
J.A.: Al Roker.
A.S.: Al Roker is the perfect example.
J.A.: He lost the weight, but he’s still nice to you.
A.S.: Because he remembers.
J.A.: At what age did you become aware of comedians?
A.S.: Really young, when we would watch the Muppets. And then I discovered stand-ups. I loved Gilda. I was so drawn to funny chicks. I remember watching Rita Rudner and George Carlin and Richard Pryor. My dad must’ve had it on. And Letterman.
J.A.: How old were you?
A.S.: Ten or younger. Stand-up trickled in over the years, but it wasn’t until I was in college, early college, where I discovered Margaret Cho and got really into it.
J.A.: At what point did you think, Stand-up is something I can do?
A.S.: After college. I was 23.
J.A.: What did it take for you to think, O.K., I’m going to try this? Because it’s a crazy leap. The need to show up at an open mike—to even write your first joke. I was a lunatic about it. I was trying to write those jokes at 12.
A.S.: How old were you when you got up for the first time?
J.A.: Seventeen. I had wanted to do it really badly since 14, but I was afraid to admit it to anybody.
A.S.: My experience was like this: I was in an abusive improv troupe after college. This guy set it up to get 50 bucks a month from each of us, but it was not really improv—it was a crazy, schizophrenic, delusional situation. I went one night to see one of the girls do stand-up at Gotham, Bring Your Show. It was like at six P.M., and she was bombing. Everyone was bombing. I thought, I want to try this because I’m not digging the improv, but I like it when I say something and I get a laugh.
J.A.: That’s interesting. Because it’s not about being inspired by watching someone murder. It’s like: Oh, this is as bad as it gets. And I can do better.
A.S.: I still think that all the time. It’s not that I feel like what I’m doing is so amazing, but it’s pretty good compared to what other people are doing. So that same week, I was walking past the club, and it was my birthday, and I was like, I’m from New York, so I can get people in the seats. I had three hours to prepare.
J.A.: You wrote it in one day?
A.S.: I wrote it in two hours.
J.A.: How did you do?
A.S.: Pretty good.
J.A.: Do you remember any of it?
A.S.: I have a tape of it. I remember it. I talked about how skywriting annoys me. Don’t you find that when you talk about your early jokes, even though you know they were bad, you’re still trying to sell them? Like, I still want you to think this is funny shit, but I know it’s not. Anyway, I talked about skywriting, how it’s annoying and it fades and you can never read it. I was like, If somebody proposed to me that way, I’d be like, Fuck you. And so like, this summer, do me a favor, keep it at eye level or whatever. So horrible. But it went O.K., I think. People came up to me and asked how long I’d been doing it, which suggested that maybe I could do this if I wanted.
J.A.: What were you doing for a living back then?
A.S.: Waiting tables at Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse.
J.A.: Trying to get acting work?
A.S.: Yeah, auditioning. But one day this woman came into the restaurant and she really liked me. She was like, I’m going to hook you up with my agent. So I went in and I did a one-act play to audition for the agent, and he was like, You’re pretty mediocre, and I have too many girls like you that are better than you.
J.A.: That happened to me and I never acted again. Do you think you have a much different experience, as a woman on the road, than guys are having?
A.S.: Not in terms of the audience or anything, but in terms of fun? Yeah. Like, I’ve never hooked up with somebody after a show.
J.A.: I did.
A.S.: You did?
J.A.: Once. It lasted eight seconds and I looked in her eyes as she realized what a horrible mistake she had made. And then we had sex again, and this time it lasted six seconds, and she really looked like—if she became a nun after that, it wouldn’t have shocked me.
A.S.: Oh my God.
J.A.: And I thought, I’m never going to do this again. This is terrible.
A.S.: I’ve had one one-night stand in my life.
J.A.: And yet people see your act as very sexual.
A.S.: Right.
J.A.: So is that a character you’re playing?
A.S.: Well, it’s a part of me, too. Because the stuff you’re copping to and the saddest, worst moments of your life—that’s the stuff people connect to and appreciate. In reality, I’ve almost always had a boyfriend. Every year, if I have like one or two sexual experiences, they might both be hilarious.
J.A.: And then they add up, and people think, She must be doing this all the time. I have maybe six experiences from my whole life. But if I go onstage and tell three of them, it sounds like I have hundreds of them.
A.S.: Right. But you can get up there and do that, and you’re not the Sex Guy. But if I do it, I am. So I just embraced it.
J.A.: But those experiences are funny. That’s the thing. Your worst sexual experience can be so humiliating and hilarious, both in movies and in stand-up. They’re always the best stories. A guy who has got a lot of terrible sex stories is the best dinner companion of all time.
Not too long ago, you gave a speech at Gloria Steinem’s birthday party. Did people have a strong reaction to that?
A.S.: Yeah. I got asked to do a monologue the year before for some event—I can’t remember what it was called. It was me and all these tiny actresses, and I just felt like I needed to joke about it because we looked like an evolution chart or something. I felt like a big, blonde monster, standing with a bunch of girls who had never seen semen before. But my speech really came off strong because I was actually talking about some real things, bad things that had happened to me—and the other speeches weren’t as hard. And so Gloria asked me to come talk the following year at her birthday party. So I wrote this speech about losing all my self-esteem in college, and a kind of painful night that I tried my best to make funny.
J.A.: What about it do you think connected with people?
A.S.: Just the feeling of losing all your confidence and feeling like you’re worthless because of how other people are treating you. And then having to realize that the real issue is actually how you’re treating yourself. I think that’s something most people have experienced, feeling like they don’t deserve love.
J.A.: Do you ever go back and read your own speech, to cheer yourself up?
A.S.: Yeah, and my friends will quote it to me.
J.A.: That must be a big change, to go from doing stand-up, just trying to get laughs, to realizing that people are paying attention to what you’re saying. And that they’re moved and inspired by certain things you say. It’s not just about being funny.
A.S.: I’m taking this responsibility seriously. I’m looking at it as an opportunity. What do I want to say? What have I really learned? Where am I, really? I’m not interested in just saying something for shock value anymore. I do feel more of a weight about the message that I’m sending because I know what it’s like to be on the other end of that and I don’t want to be in denial about what success means—and like how many people I’m reaching now. I want to make people feel better.
正片
