St. Elmo’s Fire director dies at 80
JOEL Schumacher, the eclectic and brazen filmmaker who dressed New York department store windows before shepherding the Brat Pack to the big screen in St. Elmo’s Fire and steering the Batman franchise into its most baroque territory in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, has died. He was 80.
A representative for Schumacher said the filmmaker died on Monday in New York after a year-long battle with cancer.
A native New Yorker, Schumacher was first a sensation in the fashion world after attending Parsons School of Design and decorating Henri Bendel’s windows.
His entry to film came first as a costume designer.
Schumacher dressed a pair of Woody Allen movies in the 1970s, Interiors and Sleeper.
As a director, he established himself as a filmmaker of great flare, if not often good reviews, in a string of mainstream films in the ’80s and ’90s.
To the frequent frustration of critics but the delight of audiences, Schumacher favoured entertainment over tastefulness – including those infamous sensual Batman & Robin suits with visible nipples – and he did so proudly.
The success of his first hit, St. Elmo’s Fire, with Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy helped make a name for the Brat Pack and also made Schumacher indemand in Hollywood.
He followed it up with The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and a pair of John Grisham adaptations in The Client and A Time to Kill.
Falling Down, with Michael Douglas as a Los Angeles man whose anger from everyday interactions steadily builds in violence, was maybe his most critically acclaimed film.
Schumacher, born on August 29, 1939, to Francis and Marian Schumacher, was raised in Queens by his mother after his father died when he was four years old.
Schumacher would often say he was fortunate to have survived the ’60s at all. He made habits of liquid Methadrine, acid and sex.
Most recently, he directed two episodes of Netflix’s House of Cards in 2013.