From Rags to Riches

Lily Tomlin and her frequent collaborator, Jane Wagner, had most recently worked together on a disaster called Moment by Moment, which starred Tomlin and John Travolta as the most unlikely of all ill-starred lovers. Were it not for that excess d'estime, Wagner would have directed Shrinking Woman, but for the moment she had lost her cachet. Schumacher still had to be approved by the women and he says, "I'll always be grateful to Lily and Jane for saying yes." His gratitude ends there, however; the three didn't get on so well during the shooting. "Lily and Jane had always been at the center of their own projects," Schumacher recalls, "and they were used to running the show. As the director, I thought I was running the show. We had conflicts, and we ended up making a movie by compromise--which I now know is the worst way to make a movie."

Still, the picture made money and gave Schumacher an opportunity to show off his visual skills, as the film's sets needed a skewed perspective and very imaginative colors.

Next he was executive producer of a TV film he'd written, Now We're Cookin'; then he got the opportunity to direct another of his screenplays, D.C. Cab. Does Schumacher apologize for subjecting us to this rather unpoetic material? No way. "It was the only job I could get," he says with a laugh. "It wasn't like I was sitting around saying, 'Should I do Out of Africa with Meryl and Bob or D.C. Cab with Mr. T?' I needed the job desperately, and I was thrilled to have it."

Schumacher's next movie, which he coauthored and directed, was the 1985 film St. Elmo's Fire, which showcased the "Brat Pack"--Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy and Andrew McCarthy--at the height of their popularity, winning acclaim from the already converted. Schumacher recalls that, after an industry screening of the film, a studio head pulled Schumacher aside and confided, "You've written a script about seven characters who no one gives a damn about."

Even now, recalling this remark makes Schumacher testy. "Does a character have to give something to poor people in order to be sympathetic?" he asks. "What about two people trapped in a bad marriage? What about an alcoholic? What about kids who've been spit out of college and are trying to find their places in the real world? These are real people with real problems. Do you have to be Mother Teresa in order to be sympathetic?"

I switch subjects and ask Schumacher how he gets together the starry ensemble casts that are the hallmark of his films St. Elmo's Fire, Flatliners and The Lost Boys.

"I get on the phone and make a call and, if an agent turns me down, I call the actor I want directly."

That's how he got lason Patric to star in The Lost Boys, his next film after St. Elmo's Fire: it took "six weeks of three-hour conversations" to land the actor, but Schumacher says, "that's how Jason is on every picture, which is why he rarely works." When I mention to Schumacher that he's widely credited with "discovering" Patric, he says, "I just smelled something that anyone else would have smelled five seconds later."

When I ask whether it's true that Schumacher and the studio had arguments over the direction The Lost Boys should take, he tells me, "At the meetings, the executives kept talking some existential crap about what it was really 'about' until finally, I said, 'This is like a family sitting around, and we've got a sister coming down to breakfast every day and her stomach keeps getting bigger. Someone says, "She's got gas," and someone else says, "She's got her period," and I say, "Folks, she's KNOCKED UP!'" I told the studio people, 'We are just making a teenage vampire movie--period! Now, can we make it the best teenage vampire movie ever made? Well, we're going to die trying.'" Did he succeed? Well, recent teen vampire flicks like Buffy the Vampire Slayer make The Lost Boys look good.

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