Joel Schumacher
Top director bonded with murdered Sunday Independent reporter Veronica Guerin’s family, writes
WHEN Joel Schumacher arrived in Dublin to film the movie Veronica Guerin, Veronica’s brother Jimmy got a surprising answer when he asked the Hollywood director which of the city’s restaurants he should book for dinner.
“I’d like to go to your house,” answered the Hollywood director, “and I’d like tea and sandwiches.” And that was what he got when he called to Jimmy and Louann Guerin’s home in Howth.
Interestingly, they recalled, when he was there he went upstairs to the toilet and they could hear him going from room to room, getting a feel of an Irish family home — a different experience from the antiseptic glamour of the Hollywood Hills.
“He did that film out of love,” said Jimmy, a businessman and Independent member of Fingal County Council. “The producer of the film, Jerry Bruckheimer, told me without his interest it wouldn’t have been made — he raised the money and he brought people along on the project.”
Jimmy Guerin worked with him during the Hollywood producer’s three months shooting on location in Dublin.
Cate Blanchett and Colin Farrell starred in the biopic based on the life and death of the Sunday Independent investigative journalist Veronica, who was assassinated at traffic lights on the Naas Road in Dublin on the orders of drug dealer John Gilligan 24 years ago last Friday, June 26, 1996.
The mother of one, from Artane, Dublin, who was 37, was a campaigning reporter whose killing caused public outrage in Ireland and internationally, and resonated with Schumacher who was then one of the hottest directors in Hollywood.
“He was a drug addict himself and he was living on the street before he achieved Hollywood success, so he knew about her work exposing those behind the drugs business... he was so passionate about it,” recalled Jimmy.
“He said to me ‘drugs are the same, no matter who you are or where you live in the world’. He was in awe of Veronica’s work. We drove around Dublin to all the locations, including Gilligan’s house.”
Schumacher, who died in New York last Monday aged 80 after a year-long battle with cancer, made a name for himself in Hollywood with films like St Elmo’s Fire (1985), Flatliners (1990), Falling Down with Michael Douglas (1993) and John Grisham’s The Client (1994). But he had a huge catalogue of other work in film and television, including two episodes of House of Cards (2013) and music videos.
“He was terrified of my mother,” recalls Jimmy of Veronica’s redoubtable mother Bernie. “But when a meeting was set up, she insisted that he come to her house alone and they had tea together and talked for hours. He escorted her to the premiere of the film and kept in touch with her afterwards through phone calls and letters.”
Jimmy also recalled bringing his children to meet the director in a top Dublin hotel, and when they asked for burgers, the waiter told him they didn’t do that kind of food. “He said, ‘yes you do, or you won’t be getting my business any longer’ — and burgers appeared.”
Schumacher’s attention to detail in the film was phenomenal, down to the type of earrings Veronica wore.
The writer/director was born in Long Island, New York, on August 29, 1939, an only child to a Swedish Jewish mother and a Baptist father from Tennessee, who both died when he was very young.
“By the time I was seven, I was really out on the streets,” he said in an interview, “I’ve really done everything wrong that a human being can possibly do, except murder. Fast lane, drugs, you know I’m a
survivor of the ’60s who stayed too long at the party.” He gave up drugs and eventually alcohol in 1998.
He worked as a window dresser in department stores before moving to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to get into the movies, starting as a costume designer for Woody Allen, who encouraged him to become a director. He said he was ‘adopted’ by power-couple Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne who knew everyone in Hollywood, which also helped.
He made his debut as a movie director with The Incredible Shrinking Woman
starring Lily Tomlin in 1981. Although his last major film was Phantom of the Opera in 2004, he continued to direct films until 2011.
He also had an ability to recognise young talent and ‘discovered’ Demi Moore, Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez, who were known as leading members of the Hollywood ‘Brat Pack’. He boosted the careers of Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Matthew McConaughey and Dublin’s Colin Farrell. He cast Farrell in the critically acclaimed Vietnam ‘boot camp’ film Tigerland and it is said that Farrell was so grateful that he worked on the Veronica Guerin for nothing.
Schumacher’s handling of the Batman franchise, with Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997) was less assured and the latter was a critical disaster. “I want to apologise to every fan that was disappointed because I think I owe them that,” he said in a 2017 interview.
Joel Schumacher was gay, making no secret of it and he had a tumultuous love life for many years. Whether it was his upbringing or just his personality, he didn’t believe in airs and graces and while he enjoyed the finer things in life, he was as comfortable in a Dublin coffee shop chatting with people if they recognised him, as he was at red carpet events.
He was on a scouting mission for Veronica Guerin in Dublin on September 11, 2001 when the 9/11 atrocity happened in the US. He and Cate Blanchett went to the American Embassy to sign the book of condolences, although the event did not hit him as hard as the pregnant Blanchett, who was devastated.
“He could relate to people, he used to tell me ‘your mother is an amazing woman’ and I know he really meant it,” said Jimmy Guerin.
“Because his parents died when he was very young, maybe that had something to do with it, he had an affinity with Irish family life that I found surprising.”