Joel Schumacher: Radiance and Shadow

Q: Let's talk about a different kind of cinematic sex. You've had an especially keen eye in casting charismatic actors and making them look devastating on-screen.

A: I know I get a lot of credit for making people look a certain way, but I don't give them a makeover--it's how I see them. I see a lot of sexuality in both males and females.

Q: You directed Demi Moore in St. Elmo's Fire, long before she became a sex symbol. Is it true she wanted to be nude and you stopped her?

A: She did want to be nude, and she had a reason for it. Her character was freezing herself to death in an apartment with huge windows open. If she's freezing herself to death, why would she be wearing something? Well, she's wearing something so the scene can be in the movie. But Demi wanted to be nude, and of course Rob Lowe was happy to drop his clothes at any moment. I had to talk both of them into not being naked.

Q: Demi Moore seemed sexier in St. Elmo's Fire than she did when she got $12.5 million for Striptease.

A: She was 21 years old, extremely approachable, with a little baby fat, very female with that sexy throaty voice, long thick dark hair almost down to her waist, her face maybe not as perfect as it is now, and she was bawdy and vulnerable. She was still a baby, and she didn't know if she was going to -have a career or where her life was going. Sometimes, I come home late and that film is playing on cable and I think she's adorable. What happens with, quote, "sex symbols," is that it becomes their business to be sexy, and sex as a business becomes very unsexy. I was watching Rear Window recently, and Grace Kelly is fully clothed, with gloves on. That beautiful hair, those radiant looks she's burning up the screen she's so sexy, just because of who she is. Marilyn Monroe kept her clothes on for the most part, and so did Marlene Dietrich, Gene Tierney, Veronica Lake. I don't think everybody taking their clothes off is sexy. We've come to accept that males have to be pumped up and women have to have zero body fat with enormous boobs and perfect teeth, right out of Baywatch. I think that Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon are two of the sexiest women on film.

Q: Why are Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon so sexy?

A: They are just born sexy. They're not trying. A lot of it has to do with good acting. If you're lucky genetically, work on your acting. Helen Mirren just has to show up to be sexy, period. Susan Sarandon was 47 or something like that in The Client. The reason she's one of the sexiest people in the world is she hasn't tried so hard. She doesn't try to look like a 30-year-old. She allows her aging to show. Her beautiful breasts are not like a 20-year-old's. She has womanly hips. I think she's much sexier than women her age who try to look like bimbos.

Q: You've done two movies with Julia Roberts, Flatliners and Dying Young. How would you define her sexual appeal?

A: Falling in love with an actor or actress you're going to use in a film is like that very early stage of falling in love, where there's a sweeping infatuation, a chemical reaction. I first saw Julia in Mystic Pizza and thought what was wonderful and extraordinary about her was she had this baby Sophia Loren quality. Both Sophia and Julia have this incredibly incongruous combination of features. If God had made one little mistake, it would have looked a bit grotesque, but God's plan worked here, and the result is something you never get tired of looking at. Julia had this zaftig, full-blown womanness about her in that movie which I hadn't seen in a long time. She didn't look like an anorexic boy with a pixie haircut--she was a girl in the body of a young woman. Sexy, mixed with that humor and charm, is irresistible. She first came to see me at my house when she was shooting Pretty Woman, and had this phenomenal red hair piled on her head, no makeup, an old T-shirt, cutoff jeans and barefoot. I thought, "How have I lived without this person in my life?" And that is how she comes off on-screen.

Q: You've done pretty well with the guys, too. Jason Patric never again looked like he did in The Lost Boys.

A: He was 18 and devastatingly sexy, and I captured that onscreen. It took six weeks for me to talk him into that film. He was a good sport about it. He was one of the first young men I'd met casting The Lost Boys, and I said, "Let's stop right here--there's nobody 18 with his talent and those looks." He's still extraordinarily handsome and there's so much to Jason that I wish he would work more, explore more, because he's so richly talented. But when he was 18, well... Andrew Lloyd Webber once told me that the greatest lyrics in the English language come from the Beatles: "She was just 17, you know what I mean."

Q: Matthew McConaughey is another actor who became an instant sex symbol when you directed him. How did you go about that in A Time to Kill? And why hasn't any director since been able to do it?

A: At heart, Matthew's a genuine Texas shitkicker. He has a white van named Cosmo that plays blaring rock music and has a disco ball and a cooler for his beers. He's a guy who can party till he pukes. I just played that up. He's got an incredible profile, great bone structure, and he worked out. I'm guilty of choosing certain garments that enhanced his looks. I sometimes wonder why actors come off differently with other directors, but I think they just see them in a different way. But let's face it, it would have been inappropriate for him to look that way in Contact or Amistad.

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