There are a lot of people here,” Judd Apatow enthused, looking out from the stage of Alice Tully Hall Tuesday evening at the premiere of Amy Schumer’s romantic comedy, “Trainwreck,” presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
“We’re so proud of ‘Trainwreck,’” said Apatow, describing Schumer as “an amazing writer and an amazing person who blew us away every day and made a beautiful movie and we’re so proud to show it to you.”
Before introducing his writer, producer and star, Apatow brought out the film’s leading man, Bill Hader, who plays Schumer’s love interest, a sports orthopedic surgeon. “We didn’t realize how sexy he was. Give them a sexy look, Bill,” Apatow said. Hader got into what looked like a bodybuilder’s stance. “Two hours of that coming your way,” quipped the director.
“Thank you so much. This is the best day of my life!” said Schumer, who said her mom was in the audience, and that her father, who was ill, watched the red carpet on Skype. The star also thanked her sister and brother for their support.
Schumer introduced cast members Colin Quinn, Vanessa Bayer, Brie Larson, NBA superstar LeBron James and rapper Method Man. “And f…king Tilda Swinton,” Schumer’s new best friend, who is unrecognizable in the film with a long dirty blonde hair, bronzer, and pinched English accent. Several times during the intro, Apatow whispered in Schumer’s ear to remind her to thank Universal Pictures and Lincoln Center.
The romantic comedy received thunderous applause from the audience. Celebrating took place at Central Park’s legendary restaurant Tavern on the Green. The late night celebration featured a lavish spread of lobster, steak and poached chicken.
Schumer was the star of the party with so many cameras flashing that the good-natured comic finally put her hand up to say enough.
At the afterparty, LeBron James, who is hilarious in “Trainwreck” as a Downton-loving basketball player, stood in a corner watched over by a bodyguard who was at least six inches shorter. I also spotted Andrew Rannells chatting with Apatow’s wife, actor Leslie Mann, and her two daughters. Also stopping by the party were Marisa Tomei and Zosia Mamet.
Schumer mostly stuck close with friends and family, including her mom, brother and sister Kim Caramele, who is also a writer.
The day before the premiere, Schumer was at the Apple SoHo store to participate in a Q&A. In “Trainwreck” the comic plays a career woman who is promiscuous and commitment phobic because her father, played by Colin Quinn, told her and her sister when they were children that “monogamy isn’t realistic.”
It was standing room only and the 34-year-old “Trainwreck” star is as funny and candid unscripted as she is in her Comedy Central sketches.
Schumer talked about her first sex scene on a television program, where she played opposite a young man who is losing his virginity to her. “At the same time he’s having his first orgasm, he finds out that his dad dies. So he was scream-crying and drooling and coming, and I’m under him,” she recalled. I was walking down the stairs at the end of a shoot day and I was like, ‘Oh, my acting teacher told us that some days you’ll just be playing the girl who gets f…ked.’”
Then when the show screened, she discovered that her role had been completely cut. “You could tell that somebody was getting rammed, but you couldn’t tell that it was me,” she laughed. “But the sex scenes in the movie (“Trainwreck”) were easier than that — most of them.”
Schumer recalled that she met Apatow after he heard her on Howard Stern and thought she was funny and disarming. He contacted her and told her, “If you ever have an idea, the door is open.’ And I was like, ‘Well I have an idea.’ Seize the day. I’m a lot like Christian Bale in ‘Newsies,’” she said. “’Open the Gates!’ But that idea I wrote was a little broad. And he’s like, ‘Well what’s going on with you right now?’”
“I was falling in love, so the story was happening,” Schumer said. “I wasn’t enjoying it. I was scared. And you’re like chemically altered, you know, when you’re falling in love. It’s not even fun. You just feel sick. You feel sickened. And you’re scared about what you’re going to find out about the other person, and that they’ll catch you in a bad way.”
After Apatow told her this is what the movie should be about, she wrote a draft quickly. “I think it was a little over a month. I’m like a psycho, like I go under and do it.”
“I like telling real personal stories,” Schumer noted. When she began, she was experiencing the love affair and wrote about it as it was happening. “I’ve been in love a couple times but I didn’t remember that’s what it felt like for me,” said Schumer, adding that she writes stories from her life. “I like it to be based on some truth.”
She also wanted to write a character that had a lot of sex and was not judged for it. Schumer noted that the character has a lot more sex than she does.
Schumer was asked if her lover knew she was writing about their relationship. “I don’t know if he knew I was writing about him or what. I mean that lasted a very, very short time after I finished writing the movie. Yeah, and then the fairytale ended.”
At least you got a movie out of it, the interviewer pointed out.
“Worth it!” trilled Schumer.
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