HOLLYWOOD DREAMER (REMEMBERING JOEL SCHUMACHER)

Joel Schumacher wanted to be involved in movies from the age of seven.

Realising his ambition as a costume designer, he eventually became a writer and would go on to direct some of Hollywood's best known films of the 1980s and 90s.

'St Elmo's Fire,' 'The Lost Boys', 'Flatliners,' and 'Phone Booth' saw him work with some of Hollywood's up and coming names.

He was rarely the darling of film critics.

But his film, television and music video work was notable for its heightened sense of a striking image and a tendency not to shy away from material that explored the darker recesses of the soul.

Born to a Southern Baptist father from Tennessee and a Swedish Jewish mother in New York in 1939, Schumacher suffered loss at an early age.

His father passed away when he was four.

Schumacher's first interest was design and he studied at Parsons The New School for Design and New York's Fashion Institute of Technology.

However his ambition was to design for the movies and so he headed west to Los Angeles.

It wasn't long before he found work, designing costumes on Frank Perry's 1972 drama 'Play It As It Lays' with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins, Herbert Ross's 1973 neo noir 'The Last of Sheila' with Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn and James Mason, Paul Mazursky's romantic comedy 'Blume in Love' with George Segal and Kris Kristofferson and Neil Simon's 1975 comedy 'The Prisoner of Second Avenue' with Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft.

He also worked twice with Woody Allen, designing the costumes for his 1973 futuristic slapstick comedy 'Sleeper' and his more serious 1978 drama 'Interiors'.

There was also a brief stint as a production designer on Curtis Harrington's TV movie 'Killer Bees' with Gloria Swanson and Kate Jackson for ABC.

However Schumacher's ambitions lay beyond design and he started to write screenplays and direct TV movies.

He wrote and directed in 1974 'Virginia Hill' with Dyan Cannon, a TV movie about the mistress of the infamous gangster Bugsy Siegel and who would go on to be portrayed by Annette Bening in the Barry Levinson movie 'Bugsy'. 

His first screenplay to be optioned was for Sam O'Steen's 1976 musical 'Sparkle' which he co-wrote with the producer Howard Rosenman and was based loosely on the career of the girl group,  The Supremes.

Starring Irene Cara, Lonette McKee and Philip M Thomas, with music from Curtis Mayfield, the film was panned by the critics and laboured to make a slight profit.

Schumacher also wrote the screenplay that year for Michael Schultz's Universal Pictures hit 'Car Wash', an episodic comedy set in Los Angeles that featured the iconic Rose Royce disco track.

With Franklin Ajaye, Bill Duke, George Carlin, Antonio Fargas, Lorraine Gary, The Pointer Sisters and Richard Pryor in the cast, the film was a hit with critics and quickly developed a cult following as well as picking up prizes in Cannes and at the Emmys.

Veteran director Sidney Lumet directed his next screenplay, the 1978 fantasy adventure 'The Wiz' - an update of 'The Wizard of Oz' with an African American cast that was adapted from the hit Broadway musical.

With Quincy Jones and Luther Vandross involved in the music, Diana Ross as Dorothy, Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow and Richard Pryor as The Wiz, the film took a critical hammering and failed to ignite the box office but picked up Oscar nominations for its costume design, art direction, musical score and cinematography.

Schumacher gained more experience as the writer and director of the 1979 TV movie 'Amateur Night at the Dixie Bar and Grill' about a talent contest in a roadhouse with Victor French, Don Johnson and Dennis Quaid. 

Schumacher was ready though to graduate as a director on the big screen and got his first shot in 1981 with the Universal Pictures' comedy 'The Incredible Shrinking Woman' with Lily Tomlin, Charles Grodin and Ned Beatty.

A reworking of Jack Arnold's 1957 sci-fi classic 'The Incredible Shrinking Man', it received lukewarm reviews but performed okay at the box office.

However it set Schumacher on a successful path as a Hollywood filmmaker.

Schumacher's follow-up for Universal in 1983 was the self-scripted comedy 'DC Cab' about a Washington taxi firm with Adam Baldwin, Irene Cara and Mr T and while it was lambasted by some critics for its vulgar humour, it scored a minor box office success.

In 1985 he was one of the co-creators of the TV series 'Code Name: Foxfire' with Joanna Cassidy, Sheryl Lee Ralph and John McCook about a female team of US counter-intelligence operatives.

A female version of 'The A Team,' it aired on NBC but lasted only for eight episodes.

Schumacher also in 1985 directed a coming of age drama for Columbia Pictures with Hollywood's Brat Pack.

'St Elmo's Fire' with Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson told the story of recent Georgetown University graduates adjusting to life.

Battered by critics, it was a hit with audiences drawn to its young cast.

A year later, Schumacher directed for the Showtime channel a neo-noir TV movie 'Slow Burn' about a private eye drawn into a dysfunctional family drama with Eric Roberts, Beverly d'Angelo, Raymond J Barry and a young Johnny Depp.

Warner Bros released Schumacher's next movie, 'The Lost Boys' - a teen vampire comedy that cemented his reputation as a director who could make films that appealed to young auduenxes.

A critical and commercial success, the film starring Keifer Sutherland, Jason Patric, Corey Haim and Dianne Wiest, looked slick and paved the way for other teenage horror cult films like 'Buffy, the Vampire Slayer' and the 'Twilight' series.

In 1988, the Australian rock band INXS persuaded him to direct the video for their hit single 'Devil Inside'.

Schumacher would occasionally return to making pop and rock videos for Seal, Soundgarden, Bush, Lenny Kravitz and The Smashing Pumpkins.

In the hours after the director's death, Seal would credit Schumacher's video for his 'Batman and Robin' single 'Rose from A Flame' for bring pivotal to its success.

His next movie in 1989 saw Schumacher dive into the world of the romantic comedy with 'Cousins' in which Ted Danson's character and Isabella Rosselllini's pretend to be having an affair after they discover their respective partners, played by Sean Young and Kevin Anderson, are cheating on them.

While most critics had a sniffy reaction to the film, the Paramount Pictures film attracted respectable box office returns.

The director teamed up again with Keifer Sutherland with the striking 1990 sci-fi psychological horror 'Flatliners' about a group of medical students who try to experiment with what it is like to experience death.

Also starring the emerging Hollywood force Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt and William Baldwin, he delivered another hit for Columbia despite divided critical opinion.

In 2017, the Danish director Niels Arden Oplev would remake 'Flatliners' as a sequel, with Ellen Page, James Norton and Sutherland reprising his role but it was deemed worse than the original.

Regarded as an astute handler of young talent, Schumacher was talked into directing Julia Roberts again at 20th Century Fox for the teary romance 'Dying Young' in which her nurse falls for Campbell Scott's leukemia patient.

Critics hated the film which also starred Ellen Burstyn and Vincent D'Onofrio but it was a huge hit, propelled by Roberts' increasing star power.

Veteran TV producer Aaron Spelling lured Schumacher into directing in 1992 a CBS soap opera '2000 Malibu Road' about four women - a young lawyer with a dodgy past, an ex-prostitute, a young actress trying to secure a break and her manipulative sister - sharing an apartment.

Starring Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Beals, Lisa Hartman and Tuesday Knight, the premiere earned strong ratings but it only lasted six episodes as audiences drifted away and Spelling began to realise he was competing with his other hit soap 'Melrose Place'.

Dusting himself down from the disappointment of '2000 Malibu Road', Schumacher would direct arguably his best and most prescient film in 1993.

'Falling Down' with Michael Douglas as a disillusioned, divorced, unemployed man going on the rampage in LA and Robert Duvall as the detective who tries to stop him, tapped into the culture of outrage that had started to infect America, particularly among whites.

Douglas' D-Fens snaps during a morning traffic jam and rants and raves against inflated prices, gang culture, corporate mendacity and ridiculous bureaucracy and in many ways appeared to anticipate the rage that would drive Donald Trump into the White House.

With a blistering performance from Douglas, veering into black comedy, it attracted many rave reviews but was also a hit for Warner Bros, although it faced some criticism over allegations that it was politically incorrect, toying with racism towards Koreans and Hispanics.

In the decades since, 'Falling Down,' which was a contender for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, has come to be viewed as one of the most morally complex films ever made in Hollywood.

His next movie in 1994, an adaptation of John Grisham's legal thriller 'The Client' with Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones, Anthony La Paglia and Ossie Davis about an alcoholic lawyer representing an 11 year old boy caught up in an investigation into a Mob murder was also a commercial and critical success for Warner Bros.

Now riding high, the studio hired Schumacher to take over the reins from Tim Burton on the Batman franchise with 1995's 'Batman Forever' and 1997's 'Batman and Robin'.

Opting for more campy, neon visuals, the first of his 'Batman' films was a hit with Val Kilmer taking over from Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight, Jim Carrey as The Riddler, Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face and Nicole Kidman as Dr Chase Meridian.

With a theme song 'Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me' by U2, it divided critics.

However, the second film with George Clooney replacing Kilmer, Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr Freeze was a critical and commercial disaster.

Many of those involved blamed Schumacher for being too obsessed with recreating the camp spirit of the 1960s TV series, with one member of the cast John Glover recalling: "Joel would sit on a crane with a megaphone and yell before each take: 'Remember everyone, this is a cartoon'. It was hard to act because that kind of set the tone for the film."

Schumacher would later admit his film deserved its drubbing.

"I mean if you get a pummeling, you deserved it," he commented.

"But isn't it wonderful to remember a time that America was once so innocent that all we had to worry about was the next 'Batman' movie?"

In between both films, Schumacher directed another John Grisham adaptation.

'A Time To Kill' cast up and coming actor Matthew McConaghey as a lawyer defending Samuel L Jackson's father accused of killing those who raped his daughter.

Reuniting him with Keifer Sutherland and Oliver Platt and also starring Sandra Bullock, Donald Sutherland, Ashley Judd, Brenda Fricker and Kevin Spacey, the stylish film was a success with audiences and critics - although it was condemned by some in France for glorifying the death penalty and vigilantes.

In 1998, Schumacher appeared as himself in Adam Rifkin's HBO mockumentary 'Welcome to Hollywood' in which the director played an actor struggling to make his mark in LA and which was packed with cameos from the likes of John Travolta, Dennis Hopper, Glenn Close, Wes Craven, Will Smith, Roger Ebert, Cameron Crowe, Salma Hayek, Mike Leigh, Ron Howard, Mira Sorvino, John Waters and the cast of 'Baywatch'.

A year later, he explored the world of snuff films in the dark thriller '8mm' in which Nicolas Cage's private eye is hired by an elderly widow who stumbles across a film in her deceased husband's collection which appears to depict a girl being killed and asks him to establish if it is real.

The Columbia Pictures film, which also featured James Gandolfini, Joaquin Phoenix and Peter Stormare, restored his reputation as a commercially successful filmmaker and tapped into an audience appetite for darker, viokent films in the wake of Jonathan Demme's 'The Silence of the Lambs' and David Fincher's 'Seven'.

However some critics were repulsed by its sadistic tone.

Schumacher paired Robert de Niro with Philip Seymour Hoffman in the 1999 comedy drama 'Flawless' about a police officer recovering from a stroke who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a drag queen seeking gender realignment.

The film received mixed reviews but failed to attract audiences.

Up and coming Irish actor Colin Farrell was cast as the lead of Schumacher's acclaimed 2000 military drama 'Tigerland' about US soldiers undergoing training before being sent to Vietnam.

A modest film about bullying in the Army with Matthew Davis and Shea Whigham, it was a star making vehicle for Farrell.

They teamed up again for the taut 2002 New York thriller 'Phone Booth' in which Farrell's oily publicist is tormented by Keifer Sutherland's unseen assassin when he picks up a call on a Manhattan pay phone.

Also starring Forest Whittaker, Katie Holmes and Radha Mitchell, the 81 minute film was a critical and commercial success.

That same year Schumacher directed Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins in the CIA action comedy 'Bad Company' which was the last movie to be shot in New York's World Trade Center and coincidentally dealt with a plot to launch a terror attack in the city.

Walloped by the critics, the film with Kerry Washington and Peter Stormare failed to recoup it's $70 million budget.

In 2003, the director was persuaded by Jerry Bruckheimer to shoot a film with a largely Irish cast in Dublin and Kildare about a high profile, real life crime journalist gunned down by gangsters.

'Veronica Guerin' starred Cate Blanchett as the Sunday Independent reporter, with Gerard McSorley, Ciaran Hinds, Brenda Fricker, Laurence Kinlan and Colin Farrell in the cast.

But while the film picked up a Golden Globe nominations for Blanchett for Best Actress in a Drama, it received mixed reviews with some critics describing it as flat footed and others praising it.

The following year, Schumacher took on filming Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical 'The Phantom of the Opera' with Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Miranda Richardson, Patrick Wilson and Minnie Driver.

Co-written with Lloyd Webber, the handsome film picked up Oscar nominations for John Mathieson's cinematography, its production design and Best Original Song.

While critics acknowledged the high production values and the commitment of the cast, many had problems with the source material but that did not stop 'The Phantom of the Opera' from making a comfortable profit for Warner Bros.

It would be three years before another Schumacher movie would surface, reuniting him with Jim Carrey for the critically mauled potboiler thriller 'The Number 23' with Virginia Madsen, Logan Lerman and Danny Huston.

His next cinematic outing was the 2008 horror film 'Blood Creek' in which Michael Fassbender played a German professor visiting an emigrant family in West Virginia who turns out to be a Nazi occultist.

The film with Henry Cavill and Shea Whigham again got mixed reviews and struggled to reach an audience.

Schumacher continued to struggle with the 2010 French-US co-production 'Twelve,' a drama about a pot dealer whose life falls apart when his cousin is murdered and best friend is accused of the crime.

Starring Chace Crawford, Rory Culkin and Curtis Jackson, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival but received brutal reviews, struggling to find an audience on wider release.

Schumacher's final movie in 2011 saw him team up again with Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage in 'Trespass' - a by the book crime thriller with Ben Mendelssohn about a diamond dealer whose home is invaded by robbers.

In 2013, David Fincher coaxed Schumacher into directing two episodes of the first season of Netflix's cynical, flagship political drama 'House of Cards' with Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, Kate Mara and Mahershala Ali.

The episodes he directed in which Spacey's Frank Underwood manipulates Corey Stoll's screwed uo Congressman Peter Russo into sobering up and running for the Governor of Pennsylvania were tslick and well acted.

In 2015, Schumacher produced the ID channel's three-episode documentary series 'Do Not Disturb: Hotel Horrors' about the salacious secrets of some of the world's hotels.

Schumacher made little secret for much of his life of the fact that he was gay but little is known about his relationships.

In recent years, he battled cancer which would eventually claim his life.

However he leaves behind a collection of films that will live long after his passing and will be admired for their visual flair.

Not shy of tackling dark stories about the American nightmare, some of his movies will continue to spark debate.

It is to his credit that he sunk his teeth into uncomfortable subject matter that others working in the Hollywood system may have showed away from.

In fact, it was no mean feat.

(Joel Schumacher passed away at the age of 80 on June 22, 2020)