Famed costume designer-turned-director Joel Schumacher has died in New York City on Monday morning. Schumacher passed away after a year-long battle with cancer at the age of 80.
The openly gay Schumacher started out working in the fashion industry before segueing to film first as a costume designer on Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” and “Interiors,” then as a writer on “The Wiz” and “Car Wash” before breaking through as a director.
He had a highly successful run in the late 1980s through 1990s with “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “The Lost Boys,” “Flatliners,” “Falling Down” and two John Grisham adaptations – “The Client” and “A Time to Kill”.
Schumacher helmed numerous episodes of the short lived “2000 Malibu Road,” the Lily Tomlin-led telemovie “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,” several episodes of Netflix’s “House of Cards,” and a handful of music videos for the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins, Seal and INXS.
He also controversially took the helm of the Batman franchise with 1995’s “Batman Forever” and 1997’s infamous terrible “Batman & Robin” which he famously later apologised for. Subsequent to that his films had more of a mixed reception with acclaimed efforts like “Tigerland” and “Phone Booth”, solid efforts like “Veronica Guerin” and “Flawless” while others were panned like “8mm,” “Bad Company,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” and “The Number 23”.
His works helped launch the careers of Colin Farrell, Matthew McConaughey and Kiefer Sutherland and various members of the ‘Brat Pack’. Even those he didn’t launch per se, he had a good eye for casting such as 2009’s horror film “Blood Creek” which teamed a then barely known Michael Fassbender and Henry Cavill.
Source: Variety
