May 21--Amy Schumer's brother lives in Chicago, replete with wife, baby and at least one cat that sheds all over his sister. That family visit, Schumer said Wednesday night at the Laugh Factory, explained the mystery of why she had suddenly announced an intimate, one-night show at the North Side comedy venue less than 24 hours before showtime. Well, that and the difficulty of promoting her new comedic movie "Trainwreck," in the face of the real event hitting the news. "Imagine," Schumer said to sympathetic groans. "I didn't want to say anything about it at all."
There was something touching about the family explanation -- something not unlike Taylor Swift showing up a fan's baby shower. Here was Schumer visiting her brother and thinking, hey, why not get up off his couch and do a little, low-key show down the road. She also said Jamie Masada, the owner of the Laugh Factory, had agreed to donate the entire door to one of her favorite charities, A.B.S.
"Aww," went the adoring house.
"You know," Schumer said: 'Amy. Beth. Schumer.'"
The $30 tickets for the show vanished in about five minutes flat. After 11 years on the road, Schumer is blowing up. Her new movie, written by and starring herself, features appearances by everyone from Tilda Swinton to LeBron James. The question for this gifted writer and performer now will be how she maintains her self-deprecating persona as her clout increases as it surely will, her talents being formidable, her timing in the zeitgeist excellent, and her skills at feminist deconstructions of dating mores, body perceptions and the role of women in popular culture without an obvious generational peer.
All that and she also manages to be warm and fuzzy toward "the guys," checking in the level of their gross-out factor when it came to gags about female bodily secretions and worrying about their feelings, to the extent they have them. "I just made Maxim's Hot One Billion list," she crowed at one point. That was an emblematic gag: self-deprecating and oppositional to that magazine's perfidious hierarchy, but nonetheless aware of Maxim, which a certain faction of her crowd appreciates.
Still, the potent Schumer narrative firmly is one of the outsider, the comedian told at auditions that she is neither pretty enough for the lead, nor the fat, funny best friend, and who is thus told by an intern to move along. The woman whose only encounters with the paparazzi are when the photogs think she is Adele. The star-struck girl suddenly courtside for the Lakers and meeting Kate Upton, finding her funny and becoming furious at the limitations of her own perceptions of the level of humor of the average gorgeous model. To some degree, Schumer takes her audience along on a voyage of discovery of the inequality of how the stuff of power and happiness -- attractiveness, eloquence, fitting a brand, confidence -- are dispensed. Some seem to get it all. Her material is born of critical distance. But Schumer is taking her place on that list now, which will likely be the biggest issue of her career.
In the course of a 90-minute set -- much of which appeared to be new material -- Schumer dissected her own body, noting a chin "at risk" for multiplying when photographed, and arms and legs, she said, of a proportion that made some people in Los Angeles wonder why an octopus was walking down Sunset Boulevard. In other words, her persona is of the Target shopper (well, one with a masters in critical studies) wandering down Rodeo Drive and finding, of all things, superficiality. Los Angeles and the hopeless, hapless, reactive biz is so full of easy targets for a woman of Schumer's intelligence. And experience.
"You ever sleep with a friend?" she said at one point, provoking howls of recognition. Schumer shook her head. "It's so sad."
Change is coming, though. Deep into the show, Schumer said that she'd recently taken her longtime girlfriends off to Hawaii to remind them she still is one of them, which is something you do when a big movie might well propel you into a whole other stratosphere of life and you worry about how everything you care about may, will change. And it will. Several times she said she'd yet to make any real money, which is getting harder to believe, but is an understandable statement since that we can't easily think of Schumer as rich unlike ourselves and she knows it. Even her body -- a well of comic material for its owner -- had been whipped into shape for the movie by a personal trainer.
She had, she said, lost 10 pounds. Her trainer, she said, reacted "like he'd just taught Helen Keller how to read."
Then again, maybe Schumer is smart enough to keep riding this train and keep playing both sides of the tracks. One of her funniest riffs involved how she's tried to sleep with her (male) stunt double in the upcoming movie only to find him lacking in interest. "I am the star of the movie," she declared, pointing how male stars don't have to ask twice of their stunt doubles (or wouldn't, if lucky enough to have one of the appropriate desirable gender). Even in celebrity, Schumer can be revealing, empathetic, real. She had those of us who can hardly even imagine being a Hollywood topliner empathizing, tut-tutting at the stunt guy and analyzing the sexism of that scenario.
The other side, though, is emerging. Schumer is probing separation. There was the guy who worries about getting Schumer pregnant. She lit into him, mocking the very notion of letting that scenario happen to herself. "I am doing what I am doing and you are in an improv troupe that performs bi-monthly," she said, scathingly. "No offense to half the audience."
Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@tribpub.com
