Joel Schumacher dies at 80; directed many good movies and two Batmans

June 22, 2020 11:12 AM

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.
posted by Etrigan (49 comments total)

A previously from less than a year ago.
posted by chavenet at 11:17 AM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Damn. He really did define a moviemaking era.
posted by happyroach at 11:44 AM on June 22, 2020 [3 favorites]

.

my comment from that thread stands.

Not all of his movies were "good", but they were extremely "him", which we can pause to appreciate.
posted by selfnoise at 11:46 AM on June 22, 2020 [10 favorites]

Having recently rewatched the two Schumacher Batman movies, I will say that they're not great, but are SO much more fun than any franchise superhero film I've watched. They actually do feel like comic books in a lot of ways, and the production design and composition have some real talent behind them, even if the writing is lacking. Schumacher brought a really complete vision to a well established franchise, and did his own thing with it. It just turns out it was a vision that fanboys hated.

Schumacher wasn't a favorite director by any means, but he did seem to have real talent across an incredible number of genres.
posted by codacorolla at 11:49 AM on June 22, 2020 [6 favorites]

As people have said, his body of work isnt GOOD but it does stick in the consciousness.
posted by happyroach at 11:52 AM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

A previously from less than a year ago.

I have almost zero respect for his filmography, but the interview from that post is a fascinating read. So for that alone, I offer my respect.

And you started drinking early, I gather.

At 9. Looking back now, I was born for drugs and alcohol. I had no period of adjustment at all. A lot of people throw up, they have blackouts. I never did. I loved it. I have an enormous tolerance for drugs and alcohol. Bill Maher introduced me when I got an award a few years ago and said, “The reason I love Joel Schumacher is he went to a party when he was 11 and got home when he was 52.”
posted by philip-random at 11:53 AM on June 22, 2020 [10 favorites]

.
posted by Fizz at 11:55 AM on June 22, 2020

We watched The Lost Boys at all of our sleepovers.

Godspeed.

.
posted by pxe2000 at 11:58 AM on June 22, 2020 [5 favorites]

I totally did not think he was as old as that.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:00 PM on June 22, 2020 [5 favorites]

The Schumacher Batman films aren't good, but they are a lot of fun. I remember one site ten years ago or so did a watch of every Batman film up until then, and he said (and I agree) that Batman and Robin is the most coherent in style and tone, where each part of it fits into the rest. (He reportedly reminded folks on set that they were "making a cartoon.") Clooney isn't a great Batman, but he's a good Bruce Wayne (he tools around a bathrobe in two different scenes!) Uma Thurman is so ridiculously vamped up that I impulsive quote her line, "As I told Lady Freeze as I pulled her plug, this is a one woman show!"

It's fun, it's memorable, and in the end, fun and memorable is sometimes more important than "good" and "coherent." Schumacher's other films like The Lost Boys also don't always make sense, but they're fun and memorable. Everything he touched really reflected his style and his personality, and I'm gonna miss that.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 12:22 PM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

I would not trade one half-worn-out VHS copy of Batman and Robin for Zack Snyder's entire oeuvre. Whatever else can be or has been said about Schumacher, the man had style.

🦇(also for The Lost Boys)
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:29 PM on June 22, 2020 [9 favorites]

I have no idea how old I thought Joel Schumacher was, but if you'd asked me, I wouldn't have said 80.
posted by madajb at 12:35 PM on June 22, 2020 [5 favorites]

i feel he'd want us to loudly cheers for things like sexy sax man!
but still:
.
posted by es_de_bah at 12:37 PM on June 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

I was never a fan of his Batman films but whoa, Lost Boys was golden 80s. RIP!
posted by Ber at 12:40 PM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

apparently he wrote the screen play for The Wiz and wrote Car Wash?!?

also... i love Flatliners and Phone Booth is a fine thriller
posted by kokaku at 12:45 PM on June 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

My favorite Joel Schumacher scene.
posted by vibrotronica at 12:46 PM on June 22, 2020

.
posted by myfavoriteband at 1:00 PM on June 22, 2020

So, um, does Falling Down hold up these days? I was a bit too young to watch it when it came out but precocious enough to have read think-pieces about it in Time and Newsweek. But "social issue" movies often don't age well, let alone ones about white male angst. Am I missing anything by not having seen it?
posted by Johnny Assay at 1:00 PM on June 22, 2020

Car Wash script is genius. Caught that at random on TV when I was young, totally not what I was expecting.
posted by ovvl at 1:02 PM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

Johnny Assay: I'm not sure it does. White man goes on morally indignant, lightly violent rampage in order to violate a restraining order... not a good look in 2020.
posted by SansPoint at 1:05 PM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

.
posted by luckynerd at 1:11 PM on June 22, 2020

So, um, does Falling Down hold up these days?

No, in the exact same way that Fight Club doesn't hold up: the star is clearly the bad guy (even admitting so in the text, in the case of FD), but a cult following has grown up around the opposite interpretation.
posted by Etrigan at 1:12 PM on June 22, 2020 [5 favorites]

.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 1:18 PM on June 22, 2020

I'm going to put together a 'Good, Bad, Unwatchable' article for Schumacher. My initial assessment:

Best: Tigerland
Blurst: Batman & Robin
Good: Lost Boys, Flatliners, Phone Booth, The Client, A Time to Kill,
Midnight Movie Bad: The Number 23, Phantom of the Opera, Falling Down, The Wiz, St. Elmo's Fire
Utterly Meh: Veronica Guerin

Unwatchable: Trespass, 8MM, Bad Company

In Summary, Joel Schumacher was a film-land of many contrasts.....
posted by LeRoienJaune at 1:57 PM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Johnny Assay: I'm not sure it does. White man goes on morally indignant, lightly violent rampage in order to violate a restraining order... not a good look in 2020.

Protagonist ≠ hero. Empathy with character ≠ agreement with character actions. You know he’s not the hero because his violence gets him nothing that he wanted.

Michael Douglas’s character of a white-collar, aging baby boomer standing up for his “beliefs” and preferred world order is very relevant today. Especially in the scene where he denies he is on the same side as white supremacist who shelters him from the police.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 1:59 PM on June 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

So, um, does Falling Down hold up these days?

We just started a discussion about this over on FanFare last month, if anyone wants to chime in over there.
posted by hanov3r at 2:36 PM on June 22, 2020

Johnny Assay: I'm not sure it does. White man goes on morally indignant, lightly violent rampage in order to violate a restraining order... not a good look in 2020.

The film continually points out how D-FENS is just raging against losing his place in the world, but EVERYONE but the 1% feel this! This exchange lays bare his entire rampage:

Sergeant Prendergast: [trying to arrest Foster] Now, let's go meet some nice policemen. They're good guys. Come on, let's go.
Bill Foster: I'm the bad guy?
Sergeant Prendergast: Yeah.
Bill Foster: How'd that happen? I did everything they told me to. Did you know I build missiles? I helped to protect America. You should be rewarded for that. Instead they give it to the plastic surgeons, y'know, they lied to me.
Sergeant Prendergast: Is that what this is about? You're angry because you got lied to? Is that why my chicken dinner is drying out in the oven? Hey, they lie to everyone. They lie to the fish. But that doesn't give you any special right to do what you did today. The only thing that makes you special is that little girl.

While sometimes he rails against real enemies (army surplus Nazis!), he busts up a convenience store because of inflation, because things cost more than they used to. The world is harsh, but his beliefs that he somehow alone deserves more than what 90s capitalism gives us make him into the villain. While watching old movies of him with his family, it reveals even when married and with his kid, he became violent with little provocation and a huge sense of entitlement.

The hero is Prendergast (ACAB, but it's a movie), someone who knows the system is rigged, but refuses to see himself as a special case, one whose empathy and persistence stops D-FENS's reign of terror.

Just because morons ignored the literal text of the film doesn't make it a bad film. In 2020, it's only gained salience and timeliness as we're drowning in white toxic masculinity.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 2:40 PM on June 22, 2020 [6 favorites]

So, um, does Falling Down hold up these days?

for me, it didn't hold up then. Found the basic set up engrossing and Michael Douglas was spot-on ... but talk about a movie that kept pulling its punches. Who does he end up killing but somebody that's worse than him?

I do agree that it's probably useful toward examining white toxic masculinity, but like I said, it pulls its punches.
posted by philip-random at 2:55 PM on June 22, 2020

"Yes they deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell"

Y'know, A Time to Kill is the most perfectly cast movie.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 2:56 PM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

.
posted by Splunge at 3:09 PM on June 22, 2020

.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 4:16 PM on June 22, 2020

The Client scared the HELL out of me as a kid—the tension!

.
posted by sallybrown at 5:24 PM on June 22, 2020

When I moved back to California with my Canadian partner, I made a California film syllabus to better understand our new home. 'The Lost Boys' was the top of the list.

I'm turned and tossed
Upon the waves
When the darkness comes
I feel the grave

But I still believe
I still believe
posted by kaibutsu at 5:26 PM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

I highly recommend his undervalued film Cousins, from 1989. (It's a remake of the French Cousin, Cousine.) It's beautiful and has some absolutely lovely performances, including Lloyd Bridges and a role that was absolutely perfect for Sean Young. Ted Danson never became a romantic leading man but if you see him in this, you'll buy him as the romantic hero for sure.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:01 PM on June 22, 2020

Joel Schumacher wrote Car Wash???? Whoa. #mindblown

The Daddy Rich scene is my favorite, hands down. Between Richard Pryor‘a genius, The Pointer Sisters’ funk, and Schumacher’s fantastic script, you’ve got something truly special.

“Because it's better to have money and not to need it than to need it and not have it. There's a good place in this world for money. And I know where it is ... right here in my pocket!”
posted by zooropa at 7:29 PM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

Falling Down is kinda like a flawed glass ball that gets smashed into pieces, and some of the pieces are interesting. I wouldn't quite say it holds up, maybe some aspects for a critical viewer?
posted by ovvl at 7:47 PM on June 22, 2020

I'm not sure St. Elmo's Fire is "midnight movie" bad. It is though, extremely extremely 1985.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:50 PM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

No mention yet of The Incredible Shrinking Woman? I remember seeing it in the theater when I was maybe 10 or 11, and laughing because Lily Tomlin was funny and awesome and the whole setup was surreal. But I also got – probably for the first time while watching a movie – its anti-consumerism undercurrents and the criticism of women being reduced to housewife stereotypes. (Years later when I saw Todd Haynes' Safe, I thought it was a bit of an homage.)

But I haven't seen The Incredible Shrinking Woman since then, because for years and years and years it was never available to rent or download. I checked every once in a while. But now I see it's finally downloadable, so I'll watch it again. (Maybe there's a reason it was unavailable for so long, but anything with Lily Tomlin can't be too terrible, right?)
posted by lisa g at 10:02 PM on June 22, 2020 [5 favorites]

The Incredible Shrinking Woman gave me a lifelong fear of garbage disposals.
posted by taterpie at 10:34 PM on June 22, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure St. Elmo's Fire is "midnight movie" bad.

I am. Or as I said in that previous thread:

I'd say it's so bad it's good, but that sells it all too short, both the bad and the good of it. I do know that I can always watch it, and no, the soundtrack has nothing to do with it. The soundtrack's just bad, except in the context of the bad, bad greatness of the movie.
posted by philip-random at 10:58 PM on June 22, 2020

.
posted by evilDoug at 11:18 PM on June 22, 2020

.
posted by Faintdreams at 2:58 AM on June 23, 2020

Such a varied career. Such a wonderful meandering filmography.

I'm glad he got to make the films he did.
posted by Faintdreams at 2:59 AM on June 23, 2020

.
posted by dlugoczaj at 9:22 AM on June 23, 2020

.
posted by filtergik at 3:53 PM on June 23, 2020

I'll admit it: I love 8MM.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 4:13 PM on June 23, 2020

I think maybe The Lost Boys is tonight’s late movie.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:11 PM on June 23, 2020

.
posted by detachd at 5:26 AM on June 24, 2020

Paper Faces on Parade Anthony Oliveira

how could I pull quote? read it.


"As an artist, Schumacher recognized there is something important, transformative, and transcendent about joy as resistance; he had as instinct what every poor NYC club kid knows: the revolution, when it comes, must be opulent."
...
"Remembering working with him on Phantom of the Opera (in which she plays the past-her-prime diva), Minnie Driver meanwhile recalled this week that “once, on set, an actress was complaining about me within earshot [about] how I was dreadfully over the top (I was).”

Driver said that Schumacher “barely looked up from his New York Times” and replied: “Oh honey, no one ever paid to see under the top.”"
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:02 PM on June 26, 2020 [3 favorites]