LOS ANGELES • Joel Schumacher, the director whose visually inventive and sometimes subversive movies – including the coming-of-age drama St Elmo's Fire (1985), the vampire action-comedy The Lost Boys (1987) and the campy superhero caper Batman & Robin (1997) – became cultural mile markers of the 1980s and 1990s, died on Monday in New York City. He was 80.
The cause was cancer, with which he had been struggling for about a year, Ms Bebe Lerner, a spokesman for his family, said in a statement.
After arriving in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, Schumacher worked as a costume designer on films like the crime drama The Last Of Sheila and director Woody Allen's Sleeper (both from 1973), then graduated to directorial assignments for television and motion pictures.
In his movies, Schumacher helped elevate emerging talents, assembling actors like Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez for St Elmo's Fire in a group that came to be called the Brat Pack.
He made bold sartorial choices in his films as well. Some, like the punk-rock outfits of his young vampires in The Lost Boys, advanced fashion trends; others, like the articulated nipples on the Batsuit in Batman & Robin, did not.
Schumacher worked steadily for decades, directing thrillers like A Time To Kill (1996), Phone Booth (2002) and Trespass (2011). Yet he saw himself as dispensable to the industry he served, where a single perceived misstep can end a career.
"Film-making is like mountain climbing," he told The New York Times in 1993. "No matter how many times you've climbed, you can still fall off. Even if you've climbed Everest seven times, the eighth time can be your last."
Schumacher's first feature film, the Lily Tomlin comedy The Incredible Shrinking Woman, opened to mixed reviews in 1981.
After directing the 1983 comedy D.C. Cab, he found greater acclaim with St Elmo's Fire, about the post-college meanderings of a group of friends from Georgetown University. So, too, was The Lost Boys, which pit Jason Patric and Corey Haim against a gang of young bloodsuckers led by Kiefer Sutherland.
After directing Falling Down (1993) with actor Michael Douglas and The Client (1994), adapted from the John Grisham novel, Schumacher was chosen to take over Warner Brothers' then nascent Batman franchise from director Tim Burton, who was perceived to have taken the superhero movies in an increasingly gothic direction.
LOS ANGELES • Joel Schumacher, the director whose visually inventive and sometimes subversive movies – including the coming-of-age drama St Elmo's Fire (1985), the vampire action-comedy The Lost Boys (1987) and the campy superhero caper Batman & Robin (1997) – became cultural mile markers of the 1980s and 1990s, died on Monday in New York City. He was 80.
The cause was cancer, with which he had been struggling for about a year, Ms Bebe Lerner, a spokesman for his family, said in a statement.
After arriving in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, Schumacher worked as a costume designer on films like the crime drama The Last Of Sheila and director Woody Allen's Sleeper (both from 1973), then graduated to directorial assignments for television and motion pictures.
In his movies, Schumacher helped elevate emerging talents, assembling actors like Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez for St Elmo's Fire in a group that came to be called the Brat Pack.
He made bold sartorial choices in his films as well. Some, like the punk-rock outfits of his young vampires in The Lost Boys, advanced fashion trends; others, like the articulated nipples on the Batsuit in Batman & Robin, did not.
Schumacher worked steadily for decades, directing thrillers like A Time To Kill (1996), Phone Booth (2002) and Trespass (2011). Yet he saw himself as dispensable to the industry he served, where a single perceived misstep can end a career.
"Film-making is like mountain climbing," he told The New York Times in 1993. "No matter how many times you've climbed, you can still fall off. Even if you've climbed Everest seven times, the eighth time can be your last."
Schumacher's first feature film, the Lily Tomlin comedy The Incredible Shrinking Woman, opened to mixed reviews in 1981.
After directing the 1983 comedy D.C. Cab, he found greater acclaim with St Elmo's Fire, about the post-college meanderings of a group of friends from Georgetown University. So, too, was The Lost Boys, which pit Jason Patric and Corey Haim against a gang of young bloodsuckers led by Kiefer Sutherland.
After directing Falling Down (1993) with actor Michael Douglas and The Client (1994), adapted from the John Grisham novel, Schumacher was chosen to take over Warner Brothers' then nascent Batman franchise from director Tim Burton, who was perceived to have taken the superhero movies in an increasingly gothic direction.
