He had been fighting for over a year against cancer. The director of The Forbidden Experience , the film in which he directed Julia Roberts, has finally given up, as his relatives have just announced. He died in New York where he was born 80 years earlier.
We must not reduce his career to his two Batman , it would be cruel. And much too reductive. But rather see this man, fatherless from the age of 4, as a figure in the thriller of the 90s. And especially as one of the great revealers of talent, from Demi Moore, to Charlie Sheen, by the way by James Spader or Kiefer Sutherland. All the actors of what is called the Brat Pack, this band of dirty kids baptized thus in reference to the famous Rat Pack of Sinatra passed in front of his camera.
After studying fashion design, Joel T. Schumacher, known as Joel Schumacher, discovered the world of television and cinema. Beginnings with a fanfare since he designed the costumes for the films of Herbert Ross and Woody Allen in particular.
But it was not until 1981 that this son of a Protestant of German origin and of a Jewish woman from Sweden made his first film, The Woman Who Shrinks , a science fiction film adapted from a famous novel by Richard Matheson. He had his first success with a comedy, St. Elmore Fire , with Demi Moore and Rob Lowe. Before embarking on the horrific genre with the same band of actors in Génération perdue, a vampiric parable in which Kiefer Sutherland plays the band leaders. Actor whom he will find opposite Julia Roberts in L'Experience interdite , in 1991, produced by Michael Douglas. A public success but not a masterpiece in the eyes of the critics. The beginning especially of psychological thrillers of which Joel Schumacher will become the great specialist. With Free Fall , in which this same Michael Douglas sinks in the skin of an average American. Then through his very effective adaptations of the novels of John Grisham. From the Client , with Susan Sarandon, Tommy Lee Jones and Mary Louise Parker. But also of The right to Kill? with Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson and Sandra Bullock.
After a few detours through romantic comedy and the melody, then the making of clips, notably for the groups INXS and The Samshing Pumpkins, the filmmaker ventures on the side of superheroes. Warner chooses him to replace Tim Burton in Batman Forever . A box at the box office. A disaster for purists. Even more heartbroken in front of the fourth part which is also entrusted to him, Batman and Robin , with George Clooney in Batman, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Mr. Freeze and Uma Thurman in Poison Ivy. The franchise was then reinvigorated by Christopher Nolan in 2005 with Batman Begins . Schumacher will lose, if not his reputation, at least a lot of credit in the unforgiving world of Hollywood.
He then moved away from the studios, making two independent films. An 8-millimeter violent thriller with Nicolas Cage as an investigator against the backdrop of a snuff movie. Before a wacky comedy, Nobody is perfect , with Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The closed-door Phone Game will put him back in the saddle with his minimalist staging. Another psychological thriller. His adaptation, the fifth of Gaston Leroux's novel, from the Phantom of the Opera , marks the beginning of the end of his cinema career. Which ends in a terrible failure in 2007 with Nombre 23, a horrible but especially horrible turnip in which Jim Carrey also sinks.
It was finally on television that Schumacher regained a taste for his profession by signing several episodes of House of Cards , a series produced by his friend David Fincher. In an interview in 2017, Schumacher had made amends. He told Vice that he wanted to "ask forgiveness from all the disappointed fans" by Batman and Robin , adding that he had the impression of having "killed a baby".