Whitney Cummings Feels the Way You Do About Your Favorite Movies, but She's Funnier About Them

Cummings chose the '80s classic starring Molly Ringwald as relatable teen Sam for its nostalgia factor. "There's so much that's trying to get people's attention these days with media. You've got movies, and Netflix, and YouTube stars, and Tinder, and Snapchat, and Periscope, and Vine. There are so many options, and it's so overwhelming that I felt like [picking] something really classic and that's sort of in our long-term memory that we all can associate with. I feel like there's this longing for classic things . . . At the time, it felt very complicated. In Sixteen Candles, you think the biggest problem in the world you have is the guy won't talk to you, and then you get into the real world and you're like, 'Oh, that's the least of my problems. I've got 99 problems, and a guy ain't one.' But yes, I think we want to go with something nostalgic. There's something oddly fresh about an old movie. There are no monsters or aliens or special effects — and it holds up. Still these days, when you're 16, you still just want a guy to talk to you, even though you have Snapchat and a cell phone. It's still the same problems; they just look different."

On her favorite line of the quotable movie, Cummings says it's Sam's line "I can't get happy." "I just love that, because when you're 16, everyone's like, 'just smile' and 'play sports!' 'Smile for the camera!' You just don't know who you are, and you don't know what happiness means, and you don't know how to satisfy yourself. Everything's so frustrating because your parents want you to be one thing, your friends want you to be one thing, you just want to fit in, and I find that that actually resonates with me now. I know that every morning when I wake up, it's a choice to be happy or not, and I can't be entitled to that. It's not just, 'Everybody figure out a way to make me happy!' I'm like, 'Oh, I have to make myself happy.' I guess I just remember that because as a teenager, I was so uncomfortable and pretending to be something I wasn't, and I remember hearing her say that, and I was like, 'Oh my god! This pretty girl and she's a movie star and she can have anything she wants.' At that time, I didn't understand movies or actresses, and I was like, 'Oh my god, someone else feels this feeling.' That's so comforting."

The Paul Feig modern classic is beloved by Cummings, who recognizes not only its hilarity but its groundbreaking success. What she loves about Bridesmaids, she says, is that "it's great, it's hilarious, and it's emotional, and it's about women and other women. I mean there's a love story within the movie, but it's about two women and a love story between two women. I remember being in the movie theater and seeing guys laughing at it — there were dudes in the theater! I feel like it transcended a female comedy into just a comedy, and I love that. Again, it's my dream to be called a comedian, not a female comedian, and I feel like this movie really just has totally transcended. That's what I loved about it, and it's everything that we want: it's a wedding, a wedding shower, she smashes the cookie, and they poop in the dress. It's so surprising . . . they did all these sacrilegious things that I think were just . . . it was so cool to see girls be like, 'Yeah, sh*t in the dress!' It was just cool. It was very cool that women were into desecrating all these sacred cultural institutions that we all are pressured and brainwashed to want. I love that element of it."

Cummings praises Greta Gerwig's character in the Noah Baumbach film: "I think this is another version of another very authentic person, a character that I really feel like I know, or I've been friends with, or I've been. And the character has fear; she's afraid of change, and she was afraid of her friend leaving her, and I can walk into that because I'm constantly terrified all day. My friends are pregnant, and they're getting married, and they're moving away, and they're busy. That never goes away. I also love that it's between two girls because — and this is Michael Patrick King and I when we were doing 2 Broke Girls — we made a very conscious choice about a friendship because I don't think it's fair. I felt like in every show it was painting this picture — I mean, Twilight was really big at the time, and it was painting a portrait of this girl, who, the only thing she cared about was a guy. I'm like, 'That's not how women are!' I feel like women are being painted as these obsessive psychos where the only thing they think about is a man. My girlfriends are starting businesses, they have websites, they're writing books, they have goals that don't involve men. I really like that there's a movie that's not about a girl losing her mind over a guy because that's just not how it is anymore. So that felt really fresh to me."

Cummings is a huge fan of the 2001 dark comedy starring Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson. "I remember just even seeing the poster and being like, 'Oh my god, Thora Birch has green hair, and Scarlett Johansson is beautiful but awkward!' And I was like, 'Ah, I relate to these girls.' I think that's the first time I was like, OK, everyone doesn't have to look like a Barbie doll, which was nice. And they were kind of cynical and dark and funny, and I remember Thora Birch told some guy to die — she was like, 'Go die!' I f*cking love her. It was so irreverent and honest and awkward and everything that I felt at the time. Thora Birch was like, 'I'm sick of everyone, everyone sucks,' and I was like, 'Yeah!' She just hates everything, which I love. Which I totally relate to. It's like a buddy comedy with girls, and it just felt superfresh, and this girl had a voice. And on 2 Broke Girls, the Kat Dennings character is very outspoken, and we kind of have her talk like a guy. All my girlfriends are comedians; we don't sit around and drink mimosas. We drink beer and have a good time and talk about everything that we hate and anything that pisses us off. We're not giving each other manicures. So I like that it broke a pattern of one-dimensional women."