As much as TRAINWRECK is about Amy Schumer (she wrote and stars in the Judd Apatow-directed film), much like on her beloved Comedy Central show “Inside Amy Schumer,” she makes herself look even better by surrounded herself with some supremely funny people, including many she’s met on her years on the road as a stand-up comic. TRAINWRECK is fully loaded with comedians and comic actors in nearly every supporting role (many of them very good friends of Amy’s), making it possible for every person in a given scene to deliver an unexpected joke.
Recently, many TRAINWRECK cast members (Shumer, Dave Attell, Colin Quinn, Mike Birbiglia, Vanessa Bayer), as well as Apatow, did a whirlwind national benefit comedy tour, and they came through Chicago a few weeks ago, where I got to talk with them. First up is the pairing of Attell and Quinn, a couple of grizzled, road-weary comics who probably have some of the greatest stories from the road imaginable. Quinn released a well-received book just before I met him called “The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America,” and most of us know him from his years as the “Saturday Night Live” news anchor and from his fantastic Broadway one-man show “Long Story Short,” directed by Jerry Seinfeld. In TRAINWRECK, Quinn plays one of the more pivotal roles, that of Amy’s father, a man with who was that all-too-familiar combination of being a terrible parent and a great guy to hang out with.
Attell plays a homeless man who seems to live right outside Amy’s building. He’s quick to poke fun at her as she comes in after any number of walks of shame, and it’s just great seeing Attell on the big screen again after a winning turn in POOTIE TANG. Attell is probably best known for his TV nightlife reality series “Insomniac” and Showtime’s truly funny “Dave’s Old Porn.” With that, please enjoy my chat with Dave Attell and Colin Quinn…
Capone: I’m going to the show tonight. I actually paid money for a ticket and everything.
Colin Quinn: Wow. They don’t give you a comp for that?
Capone: I bought it before I knew you guys were doing interviews, but I probably would have still bought one. It’s for charity, so…”
CQ: That’s the difference between New York and Chicago. This is still the honest Midwest. New Yorkers would be like, “What? I have to pay for a ticket?” They’d have a heart attack.
Capone: You both have been on Amy’s show at various points. How did you guys first meet her and get to know her work leading up to the movie and TV show?
Dave Attell: Amy’s from my hometown, and she’s way younger than me. I guess I connected with her in the club world in New York. She opened for me a bit on the road. I know her as a comic before she became an actress in a movie. I was a big fan. So, I like to think I was on the win way before everybody else.
CQ: I met her after Dave. She was hanging around and working at the [Comedy] Cellar, so obviously she must be someone good to work there all the time, and everybody was talking about her. And then I saw her and was like, “Oh my god. She’s hilarious.” And she was funny just sitting around the table, too. She’s one of those people. The same thing with Kevin Hart, even though they’re totally different acts. When Kevin Hart first came around, he would sit at the table and Patrice [O’Neal] started harassing him, and he’d come back and go, “This kid is really funny. Same with Amy. She’d just sit at the table and make everybody laugh with these little comments.
DA: Yeah, funny on and off stage. It’s a rarity. That’s the most fun of it, just hanging with the other comics. I like to think we’re all broken toys and anything goes. The good thing about Amy is she’s up for the hang. She’s funny on and off stage, and she’s a sweetheart in between all of that. So she’s the whole package.
Capone: Colin, the character that you play, especially in that initial scene right at the beginning, he really sets the tone for the whole broken film. And she becomes this broken woman because of her father.
CQ: Is she broken, or is she having fun? That’s my question.
Capone: She might be having fun as a result of being broken.
CQ: Broken people have a lot of fun. [laughs and points out the window] Without broken people, half of these bars would be closed.
Capone: That’s true. You really did have to nail that in an acting sense. That’s not just you being funny.
CQ: Thanks. It was the last day. I had already done all the other stuff. The last day for me on the shoot, which to me is the last day of anything [laughs]. There was another month on the movie. But with those little girls it was easy, because they were looking at me, and it was Amy and her sister, and it was just like “Oh my god, just imagine.” Those little girls were enough for me.
Capone: Later in the chronology of the film, the dad develops MS. I read somewhere about a scene involving stitches that went horribly wrong.
CQ: We were worried about stitching my head. Bill Hader practiced, the nice guy he is, for like two hours the day before. He came in and was like, “I worked on this for two hours. I want to make sure I do it right.” And then the real doctor was a cocky guy in an open shirt. Dr. Levine [who doubled for Hader when putting stiches in Quinn’s fake head wound], he was like a swinging-singles guy from the old days. He comes in and he had to put on the prosthetic cut on my head. So I go, “Ow.” When I yelled it was like, “Ow, Colin’s being a baby.” Then later when makeup is coming over, like four hours later, the lady goes, “Hey, this is stitched into your head.” So the real doctor fucked it up.
Capone: How’d they get it out, then?
CQ: They had to cut it off. I was all cut for a couple of days. I’m going to sue the movie. If it’s going to be as big as it’s probably going to be, I should have made the claim
Capone: You had a great little run on “Girls,” too. You’ve been taking these semi-serious acting roles. Where does acting fit in with the rest of your career?
CQ: Just like Dave, I’ve done acting. There’s nothing like what we do. When you’re writing your own stuff and doing your own stuff…we’re so lucky that that’s what we do. I like acting alright, but I’ve never watched a movie and gone, “I would have been great in that part.” But, sometimes I look at a script and go, “I could have re-wrote that and made it sound funny.” I think we think more on those terms—writers first.
DA: On all the auditions I’ve gone on, I always say to them, “I’m the wrong guy for this because I’m not an actor, but I know three comics who would nail this.” It never was one of my goals.
CQ: He said it to Amy for this one.
DA: Yeah, I didn’t want to stink up the movie.
Capone: They use your first scene in all the trailers, when you say “Did church let out early?” I imagine there are 20 versions of that joke. I can’t wait to see what else you say to her.
DA: Oh absolutely. We kept going. It kept going to the point where I thought at any minute somebody’s actually going to go, “Homeless man, leave that woman alone.”
[Everybody laughs]
DA: Like good-samaritan style and take me out. To be honest, I know there are many versions of what we did, but any of the ones— Like, there’s one where I said, “Yeah, that’s the name of my podcast.” We must have done that 50 times. I know it’s Chicago, where everybody has podcasts. But that was a lot of fun, because that was all just riffing on the street as people looked on in horror of an old, scary man talking to a woman.
Capone: The camera is far away, so most people might not have know they were in a movie.
DA: It’s across the street, actually. And Judd was just screaming at us. I would be there actually panhandling, and he would be like, “More. More. Move around.” I felt bad. I was like, maybe I’ll make a buck.
CQ: It’s so funny because Dave is sitting there going, “There are three comics that could do this better than me,” which there aren’t. But you don’t understand that to Amy, you’re such a big part of her life.
DA: Oh, really?
CQ: This movie is her life. It has to be you, and it has to be me, and it has to be all these people. We have to be the ones, because it’s semi-real and semi-movie.
DA: Not to turn this into a stroke fest, which I guess this whole tour is kind of a stroke fest.
CQ: That’s a good name for a fest, by the way: Strokefest.
[laughs]
DA: Every comic on this show, I’ve been watching everybody’s set; he’s such an inspiration to me. When Amy talks about how she would look up to me a little bit, I looked up to this guy for decades. I’ll just say right now, these guys bring their own personal thing into the act, and it just comes out super funny. I’m a dick joke guy. When I look at him, I go, “Wow. That’s amazing how you open yourself up that way.” This whole movie is her basically going “This is who I am; this is who I was—like it or lump it, but I’m proud of it.” And it’s all funny.
Capone: You’re a couple of days into the tour. And I’ve never been to a package show like this before. When you’re playing I’m assuming slightly shorter sets than you usually do, do you watch the other comics and think, “Oh man, that guy just nailed that”? Does it force you to up your game a little bit when when each person is better than the next?
CQ: We’re used to that. That’s what we do in Comedy Cellar. You’re always like, “Oh shit.” You’re in the middle of talking to somebody or relaxing, and you hear this, “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” “What the fuck? I was working on all this new shit, and now I have to fucking bring something extra.”
DA: The difference between this tour and the ones I usually do is: Sold Out. [laughs] People are coming out.
CQ: No chicken wire.
DA: Exactly.
Capone: I didn’t realize until I was doing research that you had a year writing on SNL.
DA: They didn’t realize that either. I’m one of the worst writers they’ve ever had, I think.
Capone: Who was in the cast?
DA: Jay Mohr, Sarah Silverman, Rob Schnider, Adam Sandler, David Spade. They called it a transition year—and Colin done it way longer than me—but it was like new blood was coming in, old blood was getting ready to go out into the movie world. And that was the mid-90s, so it’s a totally different scene than it is now. Now it seems like it’s almost a writing-workshop camp. They’re having a good time. Back then it was super competitive. But he knows that world better than me.
Capone: But you were in that unique Weekend Update position. The news that you did was great for those few years.
CQ: Thanks. Two-and-a-half years before I did the news, I loved it. Once I was on news, it’s so funny, because I did what Dave did when he was writing there. Once I started doing the news, it was a lot of toxic shit, most of which I was responsible for—it doesn’t matter. So I ended up going, “I can't wait to get out of here and go to the Cellar” every night. That was fucking therapy. Every night, you felt better. I loved SNL for two-and-a-half years. I loved it. Fucking greatest place ever at that time.
Capone: Does being in a film this high profile help sell out shows when you’re doing them by yourself?
CQ: I will say one thing, I always think no. We think, “Who’s going to see a movie and go ‘Let’s go see that person in the movie.’?” But, I did Irvine, California in like ’99, 2000, and suddenly the whole fucking audience was California Persians. I was like, “What the fuck is this?” They had their black American Express cards, all dressed up. They’re here to see me, but I was in NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY. That’s when it came out.
Capone: Sometimes it reminds people who maybe haven’t seen you in a few years, “He’s funny.”
CQ: But it’s a double-edged sword, because I remember when Tim Allen was doing “Home Improvement” and stand-up, he would go to these shows, and all these young girls would be yelling out shit from the show while he was trying to do his stand-up. Hopefully it will never come back to those days when it’s like, “Listen. This is not the show. This is stand-up.”
DA: He has a book out; he’s working on a one-man special. This stuff should support the good projects that he’s doing. I think Amy is a team player all the way around and so supportive of other comics. You always feel like you’re a comic first, then comes whatever else you do. For me, it’s cool when people come down and like they say, “I remember you from ‘Insomniac’; I remember you from‘Dave’s Old Porn’ show.” That’s the one thing that I really like, Amy rocked out on that. She’ll tell you, for a whole year, Showtime’s like “She isn’t famous yet,” so we had to bank that for like six months. And now, I’m sure she can rub that in my face all the time.
CQ: Hilarious.
DA: When people come to a show, and they go “That was great. I saw your hour special.” I always find that way cooler than any other credit. They’re a comedy fan. I hate to bring it down and be boring, but that’s really what you do the live performance for is the fans. But you do need the other performance stuff to support that now, that’s for sure.
Capone: The porn show, I didn’t even know if I was going to enjoy that, because I have very little history with that era.
DA: [leans forward] Go on! Turn that off; let’s just talk.
Capone: To me, the three scariest words in the world are “Adult Film Legend.”
[Everybody laughs]
Capone: Was that exciting for you to meet those people, play with them a bit? You probably have met them before.
DA: I knew a few of them. With the comedy world, they kind of mesh at some point. It wasn't like, let’s rag out on these poor, pathetic people. It was a tribute, and the vintage stuff is so cool because it’s narrative and dramatic, and it’s got a storyline, and everybody is acting, then they’re fucking, then they’re acting. So it’s easy to make fun of, and the comics, of course, usually know porn from just being on the road and being pathetic, and then the stars were like, “Where’d you find that movie? I forgot I even did it.” I thought it was a great meshing of unscripted funny. I think Colin, who is a writer, on his feet—I’m pretty quick—he’s super quick. He’s Wifi, I’m dial up. He’s that good. Amy can hold her own with almost anybody I’ve ever met. She’s that great. And that’s not just me stroking it. She really is that good.
Capone: You two would probably be the best in this group to talk to this about, but you just put out this book about race relations. What the hell is happening now? I never thought we would have to deal with conversations about being “politically incorrect” ever again, when people are saying you can’t tell jokes about certain things.
CQ: Well, for 200 years it came from the right, all the censorship in this country. For the last 30 years, it’s all from the left.
Capone: Isn’t that weird?
CQ: That’s the way it is. And the more things happen, because social media democratizes, so everybody’s now giving their opinion. And everybody’s jumping on it. If you’re not making fun of them, you’re not making fun of me either.
Capone: Does that motivate you to poke and see how far you can go?
CQ: I think that’s what we like to do is provoke. The major thing is to get laughs, but I think there’s a part of us when people resist, you see Dave gets mad. He’s thinking in his head, “You laugh at this thing. You laugh at that. But this is too much?” There’s a little part of us that’s like, wait a minute. So I think there’s a little part of us that enjoys testing people.
DA: If I could be his publicist for a second about his book, everybody has their take about race relations and what’s wrong and how we need to like start a dialogue. He grew up in a rarified time when there really was this crossover from the ’70s when like all those movies—the DEATH WISH, all those crazy Charles Bronson movies, DIRTY HARRY—were out in the real Brooklyn, not the Trader Joe’s/let’s-buy a-baby-crib Brooklyn. The real Brooklyn. And I’m from Long Island. I find it fascinating, that time, and he has the real-deal stories, and he knows all these amazing characters of every race, creed, and color. To wash over that whole time like, “Oh, those were the battle days.” There were some really amazing things that happened, and connections that will never happen again, because everybody’s so afraid to talk.
CQ: It’s almost like—to connect it with “Dave’s Old Porn”—now all the porn stars are shaved and perfect and flawless, and it’s a little antiseptic, even though it does look better. There’s something real going on, when they had stories, acting. There was something organic that was not preconceived. It was spontaneous.
DA: That’s true. Can I half quote one of your bits last night? When you’re in a deli, and the guy is basically announcing everybody as they come in, and he names their ethnicity. He’s like, “Have you been in New York Deli now? It’s like awkward quietness. There will be a guy wearing a flag of a country that no longer exists and babbling. Back then everybody would have yelled at him saying ‘Hey, go back there. We beat you in baseball. You’ll never get back the Panama Canal,’ or whatever it is. Now it’s like, “He has a the point; let him finish!” And I blame Powerball. It’s the great equalizer.
[Everybody laughs]
Capone: Is there stuff you know in your head you’re going to stay away from because you’re afraid of the reaction?
DA: I second guess. I’m a coward.
CQ: He acts like he’s this dick-joke artist. First of all, he said like eight things during this conversation that I’d like to steal. You’re a film guy. You’re watching the Fellini of stand-up. It’s this weird combinations. It’s like Tim Burton and Fellini; he sets up this world. You’ve got like ogres, dwarfs, all these people in these great humanizing situations. So for him to call himself dick-joke artist, it bugs me.
DA: I’m most proud of my dick jokes.
CQ: Well, he has brilliant dick jokes? There’s these 20 things going on. It’s this crazy world. But it’s a world. He’s being reductive.
DA: That’s big props coming from him.
Capone: So what are the things you stay away from?
DA: I just second guess everything now, especially as a white male. It’s definitely payback time. We had it so one way for a long time, so now I think everyone is trying to figure out what to do. When I look at the guys in the crowd—and he’ll back me up on this—it could be at the Comedy Cellar in New York City or anywhere on the road, you’ll see a couple in their 20s, and I’ll say a sex joke, and the boyfriend or husband will look at the wife and see if it’s okay to laugh. And I don’t care where we’re living, reverse Pakistan or something like that, that’s wrong, anywhere where you have to look at somebody you’re with and go, “Is it okay to laugh?” That’s not good for comedy. It’s not good for life. You should be able to laugh at what you like, and if the person doesn’t think it’s good, then dump them, get back on Tinder and start again. I really do hate when they look at each other like, “Is it okay if I laugh at that masturbation bit?” It bothers me.
CQ: Since we started in comedy, every comedian used to make jokes about this, when they’d make a racial joke, everybody looks at the black guy, and if he laughs, they laugh. That’s the oldest one. That’s been since the ’80s.
Capone: That’s every Lisa Lampanelli show I’ve ever been to. [Everybody laughs] It’s gay jokes and black jokes, and you’re just looking around making sure those folks are cool with it. Back to the movie for a second. You’ve both worked with Judd in various capacities before this film. What does he bring to facilitating whatever it is you’re doing—the comedy and the acting? What does he do differently?
CQ: I think because we know he loves us and he loves comedians. A lot of directors, they’re great directors, but they’ll be looking like, “Oh, now he’s doing his comedian thing”
DA: That’s very true.
[Everybody laughs]
CQ: And Judd’s like, “More! More! More one liners!” So that’s what he brings. He makes us feel secure because he’s not judging us like “:These guys are very glib. This is not behavioral.”
DA: He’s very passionate about stand up, and the fact that he really does it… He’s on this tour.
Capone: How’s he been doing in front of the crowds?
DA: He’s doing great.
CQ: He’s the most curious one to watch.
DA: Exactly. I think he brings a lot of that mutual respect. He’s the director of the movie. He’s the god of the movie. He could totally be “No eye contact; nobody eats green M&Ms.” He could set down all these crazy laws. He’s not like that at all. He really wants your input. For me, I’m just lucky to be there and about to be fired. The fact that he looks at you and goes like, “So what do you think we should do? This is my idea.” I think that’s called “balls.” It’s just going for the true funny. I really like Judd.
Capone: Well, great to meet you. And I’m looking forward to tonight.
