Amy Schumer says she’ll return after Trainwreck promo tour

After springing a last-minute gig in Melbourne while promoting Trainwreck, Amy Schumer plans to return to Australia.

Amy Schumer is learning that an acting gig entails plenty of promotional work. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis

Amy Schumer fans need not despair. She tells Reel Time she plans to return to Australia for a stand-up tour soon, after springing a last-minute gig in Melbourne while she was promoting her comedy Trainwreck a week ago. “I love Australia and plan on coming back,” she says. “I really want to do the Sydney Opera House.” She would fit well in the Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas after a promotional tour that caused a little controversy for its occasional derailings. Well, Schumer was fine with Reel Time, and the complaints from journos said more about their experience or expectations than Schumer, methinks. Certainly her comedy, directed by Judd Apatow,has worked, earning $3 million in previews before its official release tomorrow. She says the response is “really strange and really exciting. It’s the best feeling in the world. I feel like I’m having a long orgasm.” She’s certainly in the zone, with her US cable television sketch series Inside Amy Schumer firing on all cylinders and Trainwreck confirming her audience connection on a grand scale. “With stand-up and (TV and film) comedy, I think you just keep getting better the more you do it,” she says. “And I’ve been working hard, I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever been.” She also is coming to terms with the demands of filmmaking — as comedian Chris Rock recently told Reel Time, you’re paid not to make the movie but to promote it. “That’s what I’m learning on this trip,” Schumer says with a sigh. Reel Time didn’t think to ask why she plays a skank in the film, although she says Trainwreck is “very autobiographical”. “There’s a lot of me in there, for sure,” she says. “It’s probably more of a version of myself when I was 19 or 20 but those self-destructive parts of myself are still in there.”

Screen Australia has confirmed production investment of $3.19m in two new feature films and a new Seven drama series that will generate production of $38.4m. Matchbox Pictures and R&R Productions will make Wanted, an adventure drama series starring Rebecca Gibney . The car chase across Australia will be directed by Love Serenade’s Shirley Barrett, produced by Andy Walker and Richard Bell (Gibney is an executive producer) and written by Timothy Hobart, John Ridley and Kirsty Fisher. Matchbox’s owner NBCUniversal will distribute the series internationally. Not Suitable for Children director Peter Templeman will direct the sequel to Stephan Elliott’s 2011 hit A Few Best Men, with Xavier Samuel, Kevin Bishop and Kris Marshall returning in A Few Less Men, in which they transport a coffin through the bush. It is written by Britain’s Dean Craig (Death at a Funeral). And Bait 3D director Kimble Rendall will direct the action adventure The Nest for Arclight Films, in which a mummified emperor from 200BC China is unleashed 2000 years later.

A great scoop by my colleague Garry Maddox at The Sydney Morning Herald this week confirms what we all suspected: the AACTA Awards best film tie between The Water Diviner and The Babadook wasn’t a tie. It also confirms the AACTA Awards management has been making it up as it goes along and calls into question academy chief executive Damian Trewhella,who in January said the result was not engineered and was “a mathematical tie. It’s just a freakish outcome.” It wasn’t, as Maddox reveals, with a mere 304 voters selecting, on “weighted value”, Jennifer Kent’s horror film with 855.5 votes to The Water Diviner’s 838.5. Reel Time has no beef with either film winning but the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts has done both films a disservice. AACTA changed its rules to ensure The Water Diviner was eligible for this year’s awards. It is only coincidental the producer of The Water Diviner, Kerry Stokes’s Seven West Media, is now the official broadcaster of the AACTA Awards. But it was unnecessary to alter dates, again, to squeeze in Crowe’s clout. And it probably presages more rule-changing. The change in the criteria for eligible films — whereby they must have screened during the calendar year, rather than the previous November to November — was confirmed last September to squeeze in Crowe’s Boxing Day release. Now this year’s awards will be broadcast on Seven in early December, not January. More rule changes ahead? Who would know? The only thing clear is AACTA management continues to fumble the goodwill and effort of so many in the industry.

Australians in Film is calling for submissions to the Village Roadshow Entertainment Group/Animal Logic internship, which is open to Australian film business undergraduate students and recent graduates who demonstrate significant potential in their areas of expertise. The internship, valued at $20,000, will run from next January to March; it includes living and travel expenses, and offers great work experience in the Hollywood studio system. For details, visit australiansinfilm.org.

After a successful run as a stage play in Australia, Alex & Eve has been adapted for cinema by one of TV’s best, Peter Andrikidis. The Sydney romantic comedy will premiere as the opening night film of the Greek Film Festival on October 14. And American creative director, composer and innovation specialist Tom Hajdu has joined the international film jury at this year’s Adelaide Film Festival with jury president Christian Jeune, filmmakers Annemarie Jacir and Sophie Hyde, and film critic Maggie Lee. Hajdu co-founded music production company tomandandy, which has produced scores for films such as Natural Born Killers, The Rules of Attraction, The Hills Have Eyes and Brad Pitt’s coming documentary Apex. He is also chief executive of Disrupter. The Adelaide festival runs from October 15 to 25.