Amy Schumer Shares That ‘Expecting Amy’ Footage Was Filmed on Their Phones
Comedian Amy Schumer admits that she wasn’t sure if the raw footage she and her family shot using their phones would be a story worth telling. But her chronicles of pregnancy, learning that her husband had Asperger’s, and ultimately her son Gene’s birth made for a heartwarming documentary.
Schumer, husband Chris Fischer, and director Alexander Hammer joined a packed drive-in crowd for the screening of Schumer’s documentary, Expecting Amy on Martha’s Vineyard. The trio offered an introduction before the film began, which is when Schumer offered some insight into how the movie was shot.
Amy Schumer wasn’t sure if she had a story
“I love this place, I’ve been coming here since I was 18 before I met this character,” Schumer said about Martha’s Vineyard. Fischer, who is an award-winning chef, grew up on the island.
“And it’s amazing to get to screen this year,” she said. “And I want to thank Alex [Hammer] who I completely DM’d on Instagram and I said we have all this footage, we just filmed it on our phones. We had a friend film it. There might be no story there. And he said he watched a million hours and he said, ‘I think there’s a story here.’ So this is completely his creation. And he’s a genius.”
Hammer said this was his first time on the island. But he had viewed hours of footage Fischer and Schumer shot while they were on Martha’s Vineyard. “It’s probably been one of the most intense and rewarding projects I’ve worked on,” he told the audience about Expecting Amy.
Schumer originally thought the footage would make a ‘kick-a** home movie
Originally, Schumer anticipated that she simply could have made “a kick-ass home movie,” USA Today reports. “It was just like a lot of things in my life are,” she said. “I just have, like, an instinct, and I just follow it and see if something comes of it, and sometimes it does.”
She wanted the documentary to offer a realistic account of the brutal nature of pregnancy. Schumer had hyperemesis gravidarum, which is an intense form of morning sickness, during her pregnancy. She documented her flurry of hospital visits on Instagram and also tracked them in the documentary.
“All my friends have babies, but I hadn’t been exposed to how hard pregnancy is,” she told USA Today. “It’s really kind of painful, personal, intimate stuff that we – who’ve been friends for 30 years – had never talked about. So, I hope this opens up a conversation for a lot more women.”
The couple also opened up about Chris Fischer’s Asperger’s diagnosis
The film also follows her husband’s Asperger’s diagnosis, which is a high functioning autism spectrum disorder.
“We both wanted to talk about it because it’s been totally positive,” Schumer told Seth Meyers, which was also featured in the documentary. “I think a lot people resist getting diagnosed and even some of their children because of the stigma that comes along with it.”
“The tools we’ve been given have made his life so much better and our marriage and our life much more manageable,” she added. “I just wanted to encourage people to not be afraid of that stigma.”
