From Rags to Riches

In 1962, while in art school, Schumacher began designing store windows at Henri Bendel, an upscale boutique in New York City. After three years of working for someone else, he opened his own place, Paraphernalia, which, as the name suggests, had much to do with drug-culture accessories that became popular in the '60s. Then, later in the decade, Schumacher went to work for Revlon, where he designed clothing and packages. He helped Halston design his first collection, did a stint at Vogue, and along the way became, in his words, a "hopeless, miserable drug addict."

Analysis gave him a road back, and he still agrees with what he told Liz Smith back in 1977: "I think the world is divided between people who have had analysis and people who haven't. I don't think my life really began until I had analysis." Schumacher got off drugs and, in 1970, went back to the only job he could get, working again at Bendel. This meant that, at the age of 30, he was doing the same thing he had been doing at 22. He knew he had to make a change, and--through a mutual friend who worked at an ad agency--Schumacher wangled an introduction to writer/producer Dominick Dunne. "I bugged him like crazy for the next six months to get a job on his next film, Play It As It Lays. I said I'd carry lights, get coffee, whatever. I was relentless. Finally Dunne broke down and said that since my background was in fashion, he'd give me a two-week trial as a costume designer on the movie."

So, come Christmas, 1971, Schumacher "came out to Hollywood and got a $60-a-month apartment above Sunset Boulevard. I was a recovering drug addict, so I had to avoid all the parties. I had no phone, no radio, and I didn't know how to drive." Schumacher passed Dunne's two-week trial and began to get work regularly. Aside from a run-in with Raquel Welch on The Last of Sheila--she thought Schumacher was trying to ruin her career by putting her in a costume that did not call attention to itself, and she treated him cruelly--things proceeded smoothly. He moved up the ranks from costume designer to art director and the high point--both topographically and professionally--was Sleeper, which featured the hilarious scene of Woody Allen skimming across a lake in the Rocky Mountains, decked out in a hydrovac suit that made him look like an airborne doughboy.

By 1974, Schumacher realized that, typically, art directors were not offered directing jobs, but writers often were given the chance to direct their own scripts. So Schumacher read some scripts, studied the format ("it wasn't hard") and began turning out TV movies. He did get to direct one of his own scripts, The Virginia Hill Story, with Dyan Cannon and Harvey Keitel in the roles later played by Annette Bening and Warren Beatty in Bugsy.

"They shouldn't have let me have that job," says Schumacher. "I didn't know what I was doing." This is, perhaps, not false modesty: he didn't get to direct again for five years. However, he kept busy as a screenwriter and in 1976, two of his scripts, Sparkle and Car Wash, were made for the big screen.

Director Sidney Lumet saw both and since they had a number of blacks in the cast, he figured that Schumacher was black and asked him to write the screenplay for the 1978 film version of the Broadway musical The Wiz. When he discovered that Schumacher was Caucasian, Lumet was no less persistent. "I didn't really want the assignment," Schumacher recalls. "I wasn't thrilled about tampering with a classic, and I also felt that Dorothy should be played by a child." But Lumet would not take no for an answer, and despite Schumacher's wariness, thirtyish Diana Ross played the part anyway. Though the film was not a success, it was a big-budget extravaganza that brought Schumacher more industry exposure. He designed costumes for one final film--Woody Allen's Interiors, in 1978-- then directed another of his scripts, Amateur Night at the Dixie Bar and Grill, for TV. When it received critical acclaim, Schumacher got an opportunity to direct a feature film, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, at Universal, where The Wiz, had been made.

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