On a Wing and a Prayer

Fresh from making The Client a hit, director Joel Schumacher bravely undertakes the Batman movie that Tim Burton didn't want to make, that Michael Keaton wound up not starring in, and that Batman lovers hope won't disappoint them.

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Let me tell you what it's like getting director Joel Schumacher on the phone. First I call his office at Warner Bros., and his effervescent assistant, Bettina, tells me that Joel is shooting Batman Forever in Long Beach, but that, to expedite things, she'll put me through to the set. Since the set is closed to the press, I can only imagine the goings-on: Val Kilmer racing around in his Batsuit, Jim Carrey acting wild and crazy. Tommy Lee Jones looking sinister under mounds of makeup, Nicole Kidman and Drew Barrymore looking luscious. I also imagine scads of production people, special effects wizards, aerial stuntmen, technogeeks. studio suits, and assistants to the assistants. And amid this swirl of multimillion dollar action, off in some corner, a phone is ringing, because a writer is trying to set up an interview. Who do you suppose answers the phone? A pesky publicist? A glib girl Friday? Nope. The phone is answered by Joel himself, the majordomo, the pivotal center of this massive undertaking, who, you'd think, would have a few other chores to attend to. I'm flabbergasted.

"Joel, it's like you've been waiting for my call."

"Always, Jeff." I can't imagine there's a more accessible major player in all of Hollywood. "I like to think I have nothing to hide," says Schumacher, "so what's the big fucking deal?"

It's been two years since I interviewed Schumacher for this magazine, and he asks if I remember how to get to his house. Indeed I do, and, on a sunny Sunday, I zip through the Bel Air gate, following the road as it girdles past a golf course and the Hotel Bel-Air. On a side street so hushed that the only sounds I hear are chirping birds and a tennis ball being whacked, I am greeted, in Schumacher's driveway, by a stiff-backed, ponytailed, pistol-packing security guard whose sex is not immediately apparent. ("She's a woman," Joel tells me later. "But a woman of the '90s.") I am asked my business. I am told to get out of my car and to wait. I wonder if I'm to be frisked. Then, after a minute, I'm told to proceed into the house. I walk through the front door, which is wide open. So are all the other doors. One leads to the tennis court, another to the pool. No sign of Schumacher. I walk down a step into the living room. Schumacher's four large dogs rush in, followed by the housekeeper, who takes my drink order.

When, finally, Schumacher makes his entrance, he's dressed in black sweats and high-top basketball shoes, and other than seeming weary--he's been directing Batman Forever for months and still has another few weeks to go--he looks trim and little changed since the last time we spoke.

"Why an armed guard, Joel? It seems like such a safe neighborhood."

"I have some...exotic neighbors who are, perhaps, involved in what one could call exotic lifestyles, and they have some exotic friends. Plus," he adds, "I'm not here a lot. I was in Memphis for three months shooting The Client."

In fact, it was while Schumacher was on location prior to the shoot for The Client in the summer of '93 that he got the call from Bob Daly and Terry Semel, the dynamic duo who run Warner Bros. Schumacher was told that the Warner's corporate jet was coming to pick him up.

Daly and Semel didn't say why he was being whisked back to Burbank, but sources inside the studio told Schumacher that he was going to be offered the third _Batman _movie.

"As I sat on that corporate jet I wondered how my life had ever got-ten me to this point. I started out as a $200-a-week costume designer in '72," Before that Schumacher had been a window dresser at a chic boutique in Manhattan, and during those years, he ran with a fast crowd. By the time he arrived in Hollywood he was a recovering drug addict who had already buried a number of his close friends. The other thing that Schumacher thought about as he sat on that corporate jet was whether or not to take the Batman job.

"Are you kidding?" I ask. "How could you possibly have been ambivalent?"

"I didn't know if anyone would be interested in another Batman" he replies. "You know, now there's so much heat on the project it seems like it should have been an easy decision, but before all this happened I wasn't so sure."

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