Director made beloved films in ’80s, ’90s
LOS ANGELES Joel Schumacher, costume designer-turned-director of films including St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys and Falling Down, as well as two Batman films, died in New York City on Monday morning after a year-long battle with cancer. He was 80.
Schumacher brought his fashion background to directing a run of stylish films throughout the 1980s and 1990s that were not always critically acclaimed, but continue to be well-loved by audiences for capturing the feel of the era.
Schumacher was handed the reins of the Batman franchise when Tim Burton exited Warner Bros.’ Caped Crusader series after two enormously successful films. The first movie by Schumacher, Batman Forever, starring Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey and Nicole Kidman, grossed more than US$300 million worldwide.
Schumacher’s second and last film in the franchise was 1997’s Batman & Robin, with George Clooney as Batman and Arnold Schwarzenegger as villain Mr. Freeze. For Batman Forever, the openly gay Schumacher introduced nipples to the costumes Batman and Robin wear, leaning into the long-standing latent homoeroticism between the two characters. (In 2006, Clooney told Barbara Walters he had played Batman as gay.)
Schumacher struck gold in 1985 with his third feature film, St. Elmo’s Fire, which he directed and co-wrote. Brat Packers including Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, as well as a young Demi Moore, starred in the story of Georgetown grads making their way through life and love. Even the theme song was a hit and is still played to evoke the era. The film offers a smart take on the complexities of post-university life.
His next film was a big hit as well: horror comedy The Lost Boys, about a group of young vampires who dominate a small town, starred Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim. It became a cult favourite.
While those hits captured the era well, others during that period were misfires, such as the 1989 remake of the French hit Cousin/cousine called Cousins and starring Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini and the sentimental Dying Young, starring Roberts and Campbell Scott.
But in 1993 he showed what he was capable of with the critically hailed Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas as a defence worker who’s lost it all and decides to take it out on whomever he comes across. The film played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
The New York Times said the film “exemplifies a quintessentially American kind of pop movie making that, with skill and wit, sends up stereotypical attitudes while also exploiting them with insidious effect. Falling Down is glitzy, casually cruel, hip and grim. It’s sometimes very funny, and often nasty in the way it manipulates one’s darkest feelings.”
Born Aug. 29, 1939 in New York City, Schumacher studied at Parsons the New School for Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. He worked in the fashion industry, but decided to instead pursue a career in filmmaking. After moving to Los Angeles, he applied his fashion background to working first as a costume designer and worked in TV while earning an master’s of fine art from UCLA.