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."
When Schumacher arrived for the big meeting, Daly and Semel said, more or less, "We'd like to offer you the corporation's biggest asset." There can't be more than a handful of directors who've ever heard those words.
"I thought they were kidding,'" said Schumacher. "So I said, 'You're going to offer me Mel Gibson, and I'm going to rent him out as a gynecologist in Beverly Hills and make a fortune.''' When the laughter subsided. Schumacher said yes, he'd like the assignment, but he'd only take it if Tim Burton (director of the first and second Batman), who didn't want to do another one, wanted Joel to do it.
Why such allegiance to Burton?
"Tim is a friend of mine. He hung out on the set of The Lost Boys, and afterwards, when he directed Beetlejuice, he hired some of my production people. I went to see him and he said he'd really like me to do it. So I started to get excited thinking about how much fun it would be to make a comic book movie. As a former costume designer and set decorator, I was looking forward to flexing those muscles again and creating this world of Gotham City.''
Then the Michael Keaton problem arose. The industry scuttlebutt had Keaton asking for untold millions to do the third installment, and the studio balked. What exactly happened with the actor who'd played Batman in the original and the sequel?
"Do you want the studio version?" asks Schumacher.
"I'd rather have your version," I say.
"Well. I must be elegant about this." says Schumacher.
"Oh, c'mon Joel. Let your hair down."
"We must remain elegant." Schumacher obviously has some strong feelings about the Keaton situation, but he will only smile impishly and say. "The studio and I wanted to go one way, and Michael wanted to go his way, and we wished him well, and we continue to wish him well." Yeah, sure.
Though Schumacher wouldn't say so, he gave me the impression that he was not all that unhappy with Keaton's departure. And certainly, he sounds enthusiastic about landing Val Kilmer instead --though what choice does he have, since he asked for Kilmer? Although Schumacher's pointed insistence on remaining "elegant" about the kissing-off of Keaton tips me that there'll be no use in bringing up the stories I've heard that Kilmer and his director aren't always, strictly speaking, on speaking terms, I cannot help but ask whether it's true that Kilmer's had considerable trouble adjusting to life in the Batsuit--that at one point, he had to have an emergency massage to alleviate the physical pain it inflicted on him.
"Oh, sure. It's like wearing a suit of armor. It's heavy rubber, you can't breathe in it, but he looks fabulous," replies Schumacher. "Have you seen him? And, you know, watching Val running around in his black cape got me thinking about The Phantom of the Opera. I was supposed to direct [the film version], and Andrew Lloyd Webber and I prepped it all. but then [because of Webber's divorce and the resulting settlement] it fell apart. So. now when I see the dark wet streets, and smoke coming up and Val in the cape, I can hear the opening notes to The Phantom of the Opera--da da da da da da da da da--and I think, I got to make Phantom after all And maybe this is a better Phantom for me, because I'm a pop culture sponge, and you can't get more pop culture spongy than doing a comic book."
"Speaking of Phantom and Lloyd Webber, I say, "There's been some hot gossip that Tom Cruise may do the film version of the composer's stage hit Sunset Boulevard, opposite Glenn Close, and that Lloyd Webber thinks you're the perfect director for the job."
"This is the first I've heard about it." he says, "but I'm sure my name has come up often with Andrew's projects. We've remained friends, and it is our intention to do something together."
"Did you see the musical?" I ask. "Would you be interested in the film version?"
"Yes, I was at opening night in L.A. but, since Billy Wilder's almost my favorite director," he says, picking his words carefully, "it's tough to see the show as a movie. I'd have to see it again."
"What about this idea of Tom Cruise singing and dancing in the William Holden role?"
"Tom Cruise," Schumacher informs me, "can do anything."
Since Schumacher is now an A-list director--he's had the right of final cut since Flatliners--I wonder if the studio meddled much with the various drafts of the Batman Forever script or if they left him alone.
"You always get notes from studio execs. When I was at Columbia doing Flatliners, Mike Nichols was doing Postcards From the Edge. And I would get these long notes that said, 'We think this should be changed and that should be changed and so on,' and so after a number of these, I wrote one back saying, 'Who the hell is we? Why can't you announce yourself? Who are you?" and at the bottom I wrote, 'P.S. Does Mike Nichols get these notes?' I figured that since he's one of the handful of geniuses in this business and I'm not, that maybe he doesn't. Later I found out from him that he does get notes, too. I used to hate getting notes, but when you're in a mass media, you have to listen. One hard truth about life is, even assholes are right sometimes."
"On your first day of shooting Batman Forever," I ask, "did you walk onto the set thinking, 'This movie has to make $100 million, or people are going to say Schumacher screwed up?"'
"Woody Allen [with whom Schumacher worked on Sleeper and Interiors] told me. 'You can't succeed unless you have the willingness to fail.' Of course I can fail with Batman Forever. It can be a complete disaster. But I've felt that way about everything I've ever made."
It helps Schumacher's chances enormously to have such an appealing cast. "You've caught Jim Carrey riding the big wave," I say. "What a break."
"It's not the first time this has happened on a shoot of mine. We started filming The Client _with Tommy [Lee Jones] the same week _The Fugitive came out. and we were shooting Flattiners with Julia [Roberts] immediately after Pretty Woman wrapped. I lived through that frenzy with Julia, the same kind of frenzy that Brad Pitt and Jim Carrey are going through now. and I remember Julia, at the height of it all. said to me, 'I never needed to be this famous.' A magazine called me recently and asked me why Julia and Tom Cruise had made it while some other young actors hadn't, and I said you can't put it in those terms. Just because some young actor is not Tom Cruise, he's not a loser. These people still do interesting roles and make more money than most people on the planet. These people aren't losers. And if Julia won. I'm not sure what she won. And I'm not sure what's going to happen to Nicole [Kidman] after Batman Forever, but I don't wish [that kind of fame frenzy] on her."
At this point in our interview, three people walk into the house: Bruce Berman, president of Worldwide Production at Warner Bros, Pictures, his wife Nancy and their young boy, who is Joel's godson. Nancy runs over, apologizes for interrupting, but says she has to give Joel a hug. She tells me what a mensch he is. and then the three Bermans go out and play on Joel's tennis court while we continue to chat.
"They're over all the time," says Joel. And I gather that they're among a small group of Joel's friends and colleagues who are able to help keep things in perspective. Of the others, Joel says, "I'm surrounded by people in the top level of the movie industry who are unhappy and ungrateful even though they make millions and have perks like royalty. And I'm quick to tell them that they're tragic. I'm not too big on the victim thing." No doubt because, for years, that's what Schumacher himself was. "I started drinking when I was nine years old. and later I was doing hard drugs. By the time I got back to New York from Florida in the early '60s, I was ignorant about everything except the ways of decadence. And during the '70s, in Hollywood, with all the cocaine and freebasing madness going on, I knew that if I went one step too close to the wrong person or the wrong party. I was gone. So I put on blinders and I worked. Don't get me wrong. I had my nights. Don't think that I was Brother Teresa. But I didn't see drug use as glamorous or fun. It scared me. It scares me now."
"What are you still learning as a director?" I ask.
"I go to see a lot of movies, and every once in a while. I see one that's brilliant, like Red _ or _Ladybird, Ladybird or GoodFellas. And seeing films like those makes me want to do better. And I hope that by working harder and taking on bigger challenges, I'll learn more and the work will get better and the audience will get a better product."
What's next on the agenda?
"I'm going to be directing John Grisham's first book, A Time to Kill, in Oxford, Mississippi, in September. It's about a black man who murders two rednecks after they rape and almost kill his daughter."
Our time is coming to a close--the battling Bermans need him to even the teams--so I turn off the tape recorder and say, "May you continue to age like fine wine."
"I think I've aged already," volleys Schumacher, "More like moonshine."
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Jeffrey Lantos profiled David Koeppfor the March Movieline.