Joel Schumacher will always be remembered for introducing the Bat - nipples to the world ( even he thinks so ) . But the director has also made many , many more movies than his two Batman movie , and is responsible for some of genre celluloid ’s most memorable debut , and he deserves to be remembered for those , too .
Schumacher protrude in show biz as a costume designer before becoming a writer ( of Sparkle , Car Wash , and The genius ) , and then break into directing with 1981’sThe unbelievable Shrinking Woman , a surreal comedy inspired by Richard Matheson ’s The Shrinking Man ; it star Lily Tomlin in multiple roles , let in as the title woman of the house who morph into a scientific curiosity .
The Incredible Shrinking Woman offer up quite the dose of weird scientific discipline , but Schumacher would later delve even deeply into that pool with 1990s Flatliners . “ Some lines should n’t be crossed , ” warned the movie ’s tagline , but try distinguish that to a blackguardly mathematical group of med students who ’ve become obsessed with pop off and then chop-chop reviving themselves . That ’d be wild enough , health - wise , without all the supernatural beasties that comply them back from the other side .
The spooky element of Flatliners reserve Schumacher to mollycoddle his flair for dramatic output pattern — was there ever a medical lab so shrouded in shadows?—and also showcased his ability to identify gift on the rise , as well as his fondness for workplace with the same actors across multiple films . Along with Kevin Bacon and Kiefer Sutherland ( who ’d worked with Schumacher in 1987 ’s The Lost Boys ) , the cast feature Julia Roberts , who was hiredwhile she was filmingPretty Woman . ( The next class , a newly - mint whizz , she re - team with Schumacher for another , much sappier movie about last , the romanticist drama Dying Young . )
Flatliners was a hit , and it struck enough of a cultural chord that it ’s currently being redo . Frankly , it ’s unbelievable that nobody has yet remade The Lost Boys , though Schumacher ’s vampire classic is such a product of the ’ 80s that might be unimaginable . How are you choke to substitute the matching - adept magic of Coreys Haim and Feldman — or this unforgettable look-alike ?
The Lost Boys is full of nerveless stuff like bike , horror comic Word , dilapidate underground resort hotels , Echo and the Bunnymen Sung dynasty , beach boardwalk , possessed Taiwanese food , and taxidermy . And though it set the vampirism - as - a - metaphor - for - drug - revilement on middling quickly , it ’s also a amazingly sweet and funny movie about a family struggling to keep it together after a sudden divorcement . Besides the Coreys and Sutherland , the cast also included the Academy Award - winning Dianne Wiest . A 2012 retrospective in the LA Times , timed for the film ’s twenty-fifth anniversary , recalls the reasons behind its lasting impact :
Schumacher credit the motion picture ’s appeal not only to the level ( with its slight metaphoric nods to teenage alienation , peer pressure and intimate inconvenience ) and the cast but also to the colleagues who surrounded him , include cameraman Michael Chapman ( “ Taxi Driver , ” “ Raging Bull , ” ) and Oscar - winning physical composition artists Ve Neill ( “ Beetlejuice ” ) and Greg Cannom ( “ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ” ) .
Sutherland , however , says Schumacher deserves identification for having “ a sight ” and “ an unbelievable sense of way . ”
“ Joel really is a wonderful music director - music director , ” Sutherland adds , “ and he took all the portion and blended them together perfectly . We were so vernal and innocent , and we had all the energy in the world . We did n’t realise how lucky this was survive to be for us and how much it was sound to matter . There was a kind of wonderful exemption in that . ‘ Lost Boys ’ in a weird way has become a very good acquaintance to all the people who were involved in it . It was so unabashedly fun . ”
Schumacher ’s yield through the nineties and early 2000s was mostly devoted to Batman , Grisham adaptation The Client and A sentence to Kill ( Matthew McConaughey ’s launch pad to mainstream stardom ) , and gritty thrillers like settle Down , 8 mm , and Phone Booth .
In 2004 , though , he finally got his chance to steer a musical , accommodate Andrew Lloyd Webber ’s corny - yet - crowd - pleasing The Phantom of the Opera for the big screen — a undertaking he ’d been plot with Webber for well-nigh two decades . It ’s a gorgeous rendering of the medieval story ( so many gondolas , candles , and cape ! ) but there ’s one oddity that nudges the flick into ever - campier district . That is , of course of action , the casting of Gerard Butler as the Phantom .
In 2004,Schumacher explain to Film Monthlyhe’d first gotten the idea to cast Butler after get him in Dracula 2000 . ( Hey , the guy has a affair for vampires — according to his filmography , he made another flirt flick in 2009 prognosticate Blood Creek , which stars Henry Cavill and Michael Fassbender and yet somehow I ’ve never heard of it . ) But there was a swelled “ if ” attached to the casting :
I just had this inherent aptitude he ’d be a great Phantom . When he talked to me about the purpose , he really was so excited about the loneliness , the disconnectedness . He really understood the part brightly . And I said , ‘ But you have to blab out , you sleep with . ’ And he had tell me he sang in a band in Scotland a duad of year ago . And you know what that stand for : nothing . … I said to Gerry , ‘ You ca n’t have this role unless you’re able to sing it ; it ’s that simple . Can you do it ? ’ And he enjoin , ‘ I could try . ’ And I thought , ‘ Well , if he ’s unforced to do that , we ’ll give him a injection . ’ So he come in and sing for Andrew and me , and he peach ‘ Music of the Night , ’ and he was not bad .
And perhaps Butler was large in that audition — especially without the knowledge that hearing would before long know him proficient as an activeness - movie beefcake eccentric , rendering him an unexpended choice to play a lovesick ghoul with half a face . Schumacher , usually so right - on in his purge choices , made a weird one here .
After Phantom , Schumacher reunited with his Batman Forever Riddler , Jim Carrey , for The Number 23 , which is about paranoia , numerology , hidden content , simple arithmetic , tribal tattoos , and Virginia Madsen ’s power to look equally unspoiled with light-haired ringlet and black clap .
It ’s an singular one ; the New York Times dub it “ an accidental funniness ” while backhandedly complimenting Schumacher by calling him “ a lord craftsman of overwrought pulp fabrication ” and begrudgingly admitting “ no matter how preposterous , Mr. Schumacher ’s films almost always have a sure pop je ne sais quoi . ”
Though The routine 23 never quite hits its target , that inspection summarize up Schumacher ’s collection : his workplace is often over - the - top and can privilege style over means , but his filmmaking choices are always in the help of being as entertaining as potential . recently , his end product has been limited to directing episodes of House of Cards — but for the sake of celluloid and the pleasure of our orb , permit ’s hope he ’s got something in the grapevine for the big cover before long .
Just so long as it is n’t another Batman film .
Batman ForeverJoel SchumacherThe Lost Boys
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