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Joel Schumacher died on June 22, 2020.
It was a leg day yesterday, he says woefully.
Oh my God, it hurts so much.
But, per usual, Schumacher, reliable survivor, will survive.
I know what leg injuries are, he says.
I was a runner for 30 years.
Ive had skiing accidents.
When youre a very active person and you make movies, shit will happen to you.
What I say to film schools is making movies is not all blow jobs and sunglasses.
Every shot is grunt work.
And happily, theres nothing I would have rather done.
But it was a very small community when I went out [to Hollywood].
You knew the studio heads by their first names.
It was a world where everyone gave dinner parties at their houses.
And people were very generous in inviting me.
Barbra Streisand and Robert Evans and Ryan ONeal Tatum ONeal, when she was very young would be there.
There would also be Brenda Vaccaro, who was a big star then.
She was going with Michael Douglas.
Michael always says, We became friends because we were always at the dinner table with no place cards.
I was a $200-a-week costume designer, and Michael was on TV.
It was Brenda who was the draw.
One of your first breaks in movies was when Woody Allen hired you as a costume designer on 1973sSleeper.
Many times we were both single.
From a small gathering to a huge thing.
Woody taught me, at a very early stage in my career, things that have carried me.
So did everyone Ive ever worked with.
All I know about Woody is he couldnt have been a more generous friend.
And Mia was fantastic to me.
What are your thoughts about whats happened to Woody?I saw the interview with Dylan.
She believes it happened.
Her brother certainly believes it.
Mia absolutely believes it.
And Im not saying it happened.
Im just saying theybelieveit happened.
But she was so young at the time that I dont know.
Are you still in touch?Mm-hmm [affirmative].
They lived at opposite sides of the park.
Woody is one of the smartest people Ive ever known.
And Mia had a key to that apartment.
So he left them out, which is not something Woody would have done.
He had a cook.
I mean, you know, he and Soon-Yi were not the only people in the apartment.
So I think that was his way of telling her.
Does he have a cruel streak like this?
I think its a way of not having to sit down and tell them.
You became a big deal while you were still studying interior design at Parsons.
And I met the whole fashion world, the whole society world, everybody.
I knew everybody, including Mrs. Vreeland, who was the high priestess of fashion atVogueand was very helpful.
I had a car and driver, I had this, I had that.
But then, as everyone predicted, I was not meant for Charles Revson or the corporate life.
Mort negotiated a fantastic deal for me to leave.
And after leaving Revson, you were $50,000 in debt.
Did you just not pay taxes while you were working?I didnt even think of it.
I had no supervision.
So I crashed and burned in fashion, which was well deserved, because I hated it.
You became close togossip columnist Liz Smithduring that period.
Didnt she move in with you in the early 70s?Yes.
I think Id just gotten sober or was about to be.
And I met Nora Ephron there and her husband was Dan Greenburg, also an excellent writer.
And so we didnt have a pot to piss in.
We also accepted every cocktail party and ate the hors doeuvre.
I lived on $2 a day for almost two years.
You and Halston were also close.Were you ever involved?Oh, no, we were never lovers.
He was a great friend, one of the greatest.
And you co-designed his first fashion line?No.
I worked on it with him.
Halston knew what he was doing.
His first collection was an overnight success.
Everything was so glamorous about him.
He maintained his beautiful image all the time.
But I was able to dress people very rich and in incredible clothes.
He did that on a couple of my films.
Armie Hammer should have played Halston.
Oh, thats great casting.
Youre famous for your casting.
I said, Look, theres a lot of parts for guys in this movie.
And you have something special.
Do a little tape and venture to imitate a Texas accent.
When he came in, its like the whole room was filled just with his presence.
There was something about him.
It was like when I first saw Demi [Moore] at a distance.
Kiefer [Sutherland] had like one shot inAt Close Range, just one.
I didnt know he was Donalds son.
Its kind of like falling in love.
You know theres someone out there, but you havent met them yet.
And thenJulia Roberts comes inat 19 or 20, and you say, Thank you, God.
I mean, what were you waiting for?
Jason Patric had it all.
He ran away from fame.
He absolutely turned his back on it when it happened onThe Lost Boys.
And theres a lot of reasons for that, but its not necessary to go into, its private.
His father was the writer and actor Jason Miller, who played Father Damien inThe Exorcist.
I have a feeling he grew up maybe not sensing that fame was a great thing.
But why is it important for people to be movie stars?
Jason Patric, at 18, with those looks and deep acting talent, couldve had it all.
He didnt want it and purposefully ran the other way, and I respect him for that.
Overnight, whenPretty Womanopened, she became the No.
1 female box-office star in the world, and she was not prepared.
Did she drink too much?
Did she meet the wrong boyfriend?
What did she do wrong?
Right afterFlatliners, we were shooting again together [onDying Young].
And she was in my arms in the back of a car, sobbing.
Someone left behind made $1,800 to sell the story.
But you have to become very strong now because youre a phenomenon.
And everything in the world from the highest praise to shit like this is going to happen to you.
And she looked up at me, crying, and said, I never needed to be this famous.
Its not up to you.
You now belong to them.
I think she did eventually become very strong.
She had to be.
What was her other choice?
Another one of your talents has always been your respect for actors.
You very infrequently said terrible things about them in the press.No, I saidTommy Lee Jones was an assholeinPeoplemagazine.
But you hired him twice, inThe Clientand thenBatman Forever.He was fabulous onThe Client.
I said he was psychotic.
Tommy Lee Jones played Two-Face; Jim Carrey played the Riddler.
Well, you cant steal the scene from Jim Carrey.
And, I think it irked Tommy.
So did Tommy attempt to steal the scenes?No, he wasnt kind to Jim.
But what happens on the set stays on the set.
And how was Val psychotic?You should look up the huge article thatEntertainment Weeklydid.
I thinkRichard Stanleytold me he had a nervous breakdown.
Heres the difference between Val Kilmer and Tommy Lee Jones.
Val is a different story.
But he was a fabulous Batman.
No, its not.
First of all, Batman has survived since 1939 were the same age.
Nothing has ever stopped Batman.
Your father died when you were 4, and your mother brought you up in Long Island City.
I was on my own.
The street was my education.
You could ride your bike over the 59th Street Bridge then.
So I rode my bike everywhere.
I was in Manhattan all the time and all over Queens.
I looked very innocent, but I wasnt.
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 have an enormous tolerance for drugs and alcohol.
That says it all.
But I did not do it when I got to Hollywood.
I never would do it when I was on a job.
She saw a lot of praise for me.
She knew I got the scholarship to Parsons, and she knew I got the job at Bendels.
I was getting photographed forVogueand all over the place.
And those were very big.
She worked in a dress store, so she could show the other ladies, This is my son.
When you have diabetes, it can turn to gangrene very rapidly and go straight to your heart.
And then it all seemed so futile.
How old was she?Ive blocked all of this.
I dont know how old she was, and I dont know what year it was.
When I went to see a shrink, she asked me those questions and I said the same thing.
And she said, So, we have a problem with loss.
That was a joke.
Most gay men have many partners because its not a very no culture.
I started drinking at 9, smoking at 10, and fooling around sexually when I was 11.
This was in the 1950s in New York, where you grew up.
I had my first love affair when I was 15 to 17, and he was 17 to 19.
That was the first time I remembered really being in love with someone, or lets say, infatuated.
But we both had girlfriends.
Did you have sex with older people?Mm-hmm.
When I was a kid, I didnt like very young people at all.
There was a married man in our neighborhood, but we werent having missionary-style sex.
We were, as we would say now, messing around.
I just was who I was.
Looking back on it, do you think you were abused by men?I never felt abused.
I know what other people have suffered.
I have friends that were molested at early ages.
I have a friend who was raped at a very early age.
Thats horrific for them.
I mean, off with their heads, the adults that did this, as far as Im concerned.
I believe that a person knows when theyve been molested, and certainly knows when theyve been raped.
But those things didnt happen to me.
They thought I was an innocent young boy, but I was a wiseass.
I matured very young.
I was one of them.
I was very seductive at a very young age.
I found the Michael Jackson documentary,Leaving Neverland, very affecting.
These guys didnt initially consider themselves victims.
But it took them years to process this.
I have not seen the documentary, and Im not planning to.
We had many phone conversations.
I dont know anything about what happened.
I dont know enough about what youre asking me to give you an educated statement.
Why dont you plan on seeing the documentary?Well, to what end?
But I dont know.
The Atlanticran a big story about Bryan Singertaking advantage of young kids.
Am I looking at the issue the wrong way?I never went to one of those parties.
I dont know what happened.
I know certain things that are accurate.
Bryan was so talented at a very young age, and socially, Bryan was always so charming.
He had young boyfriends, but I dont know what age they were.
And I dont know if they were taken advantage of or if they were thrilled.
You directed both of them inThe Lost Boys.
He went out of his way.
This kids a genius, all right?
And I saw that movie, and we gave him the part over the phone and never regretted it.
And now Im not sure that was the greatest thing.
Corey Feldman survived, but let me tell you, both these boys had very, very rough childhoods.
Corey Feldman said nothing but good things about you and Spielberg, but it was a loaded question.
What was that [book about] Jim Morrison called?No One Here Gets Out Alive.
But I cant stop the hate.
BuzzFeedrecently did a big story, How Hollywood Failed Brad Renfro.
You do think about that?Yes.
But if you knew Brads background in Knoxville …
I know his mother had been a heroin addict.
And, like me, he was the scourge of his neighborhood.
I didnt want a child actor forThe Client.
[Casting director] Mali Finn had been to nine cities and auditioned 6,000 boys.
I wanted a real kid with the real accent to do this part.
I said to Mali, Well, what about kids that are in trouble for this?
And his audition is un-fucking-real.
Susan Sarandon and I got him into a very good school.
We did everything we could.
What happened was, a lot of people took advantage of him from that moment on.
Suddenly, he was a star making money.
But it breaks your heart.
You mean like 2,000 or 3,000?Thats not double digits, thats single digits.
So 20,000 or 30,000.
Somewhere in there.Or 10, or 20.
Thats really amazing.Its not for a gay male, because its available.
Ive never kissed and told about anybody who gives me the favor of sharing a bed with me.
Ive read about what sounds like your lost summer in the Pines.Lost summer?
There was a lost five years.
From 65 to 70.
I was so stoned I wore a Speedo through the whole summer.
I was so stoned all the time on speed, Im lucky to be here.
Its so hard to explain the 60s.
Cause you never know where youre gonna find another one.
Did you wake up in the morning and immediately shoot speed?There were pills involved too.
This was liquid Methedrine, which must have been stolen from trucks or something.
Methedrine is sort of the mother drug of meth.
They were capsules that you snapped the top off, so they had to be clinical.
Im not going to tell you the whole process you go through to shoot drugs.
Youve probably seen it in movies.
I didnt have those things where you shoot the wrong way.
In many cases, vanity saved my life.
And fortunately, it was quite available.
Youre just starving for sex all the time.
Every drug, in my mind, was a pathway to sex.
There was an adventure going on, and sex would be the cherry on that sundae.
Now, a lot of gay people are getting married, theyre adopting, or theyre having children.
There wasnt any of that when I was young.
The concept of a lovely suburban life or raising children was not a high concept.
I assume you lost a lot of friends.Oh, God, yes, too many.
One is too many.
I think he was diagnosed in 83.
I went to get tested.
I was sure I had it, I was planning my death.
In those days, the test had to be done by the Centers for Disease Control.
So it was sent away, and it took three weeks or more until you got the answer.
I thought that would be a nice place to …
But after [the negative test] I think I got wilder.
What my psychiatrist said that was really fascinating was, No, you are desperately afraid of death.
So you werent careful?I used condoms.
And there was a lot of drug taking, a lot going on then.
Much has been written about how your Batman movies, especiallyBatman & Robin, made the franchise gayer.
That the one-liners were campy.If I wasnt gay, they would never say those things.
I shouldnt have made a sequel, and thats all there is to it.
I learned that sequels are only made for one reason.
They also said you redesigned the Batmobile to be phallic.This all started way before me.
Snow White was all about having bad stepmothers.
AndBatman and Robin are two homosexual menliving in a cave, living together.
Theres always been this thing about Batman and Robin being gay.
So you didnt address this inBatman & Robinin a kind of a winking, knowing way?No.
Nor do I ever think Batman and Robin are gay.
Are you talking about the gay community at large?
Or specific people?Well, the only people who ever said that to me were definitely gay men.
I think it happens with people that are romantic sex symbols who are on somebodys wish list.
There do seem to always be rumors about so many actors being gay.I know.
I get asked it to this day.
About Clooney?No.
No, now that George has gotten married and has [children], hes okay.
George has the most wicked sense of humor.
I think he enjoyed every second of it.
I mean, George is an incredible human being.
But you once said of it something that I thought was quite poignant.
You said, Its very hard to realize you have a calling and realize youre not gifted.
Visual effects were not at that level.
It was so technically complicated.
It took hours and hours and hours to get each shot.
The critics did not like it,but it was successful.
The audience loved it.Because ofadvice Woody gave me,I didnt read reviews.
But you just knew the audience loved it.
I was never out of the box as the critics darling.St.
Elmos Firehad not one good review in the United States of America.
Because it reminds you who you made the movie for.
And if you want to make movies just for the critics, they will fuck you anyway.
Its like people who have a genius first novel.
Soderbergh, at a very young age, didSex, Lies, and Videotape.
It was like you are Jesus come off the cross.
Maybe they thought I didnt deserve it.
Youre going to be burned for even doing an interview with me.
Why?Because people will say, He doesnt deserve an interview.Siskel and Ebert were so outragedbySt.
Elmos Firethey did it two Sundays in a row.
They were in such umbrage about the behavior of these young people.
And I screamed at the TV, This movies about people who got laid, okay?
Why were those adults all getting so worked up about a movie?Well, they always are.
Thats how you know you have a success.
And then you get sued.
Someone will sue and say you stole everything from them.
It happens to everybody who has a hit.
People are infuriated by success.
I just didnt understand why a comic-book movie was treated as such a danger to society.
Did you know he was going to play that?He sandbagged me with that.
Because we were friends.
I remember laughing at David Denby.
David Denby was so fat, and he had this big black beard.
He looked like a character in Chekhov who never got to Moscow.
Didnt I say, Was he expectingLong Days Journey Into Gotham City?
I think you saidBattleship Potemkin.Can you imagine if Id made a Batman for David Denby?
Both Whistler and Sargent were despised by the art critics, and they did a brilliant thing.
Who remembers these reviews?
This interview has been edited and condensed from three conversations.
Andrew Goldman is a writer and host ofThe Originalspodcast.
