Joel Schumacher on His Career, His Critics, and Why It's OK to Laugh During Trespass

Many critics give you and your work a hard time. Do you think you get a fair break as a filmmaker?

I didn't expect any breaks at all. I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to you after 26 movies. I started as a $200-a-week costume designer with a dream of being a director. I think I've gotten nothing but breaks. And I think that I'm the luckiest person I know. First of all, with my personal life, I'm just lucky to be alive, because I've had quite a life. Just to be here, alive and well, I'm the luckiest person in the world. And then to have 26 movies under my belt and to have work with the people I've worked with... I mean, nobody owes me anything. And yes, I know: There are some people who are infuriated with my success. But the truth is that if I knew I was going to be this successful, then I would have been born more talented for them.

Incidentally, can I just ask an existential question?

Sure.

Who are they? Did you ever meet a child who said, "I want to be a critic?"

I don't know. But we do generalize about certain filmmakers.

Are you a critic?

Not... quite?

You'd be the only one in the world who wasn't, because we're all critics, really.

Well, I'm not a professional film critic. That's all I'm saying.

I know my work has angered certain people. But you know what? Another lucky break I had is that I've never been the critics' darling. Now there are some movies where I've been very, very highly praised. And that's great. Is it nice in some ways? Yeah, but a lot of my movies are not so user-friendly sometimes. I remember when I did Falling Down, and it was split right down the middle. Half the journalists and critics all over the world thought we were geniuses, and the other half thought we should be killed. To me, that's a successful work because that's real controversy. It landed us on the cover of Newsweek magazine. And now, as you know, the movies considered to be a classic. St. Elmo's Fire was my third film, and nobody believes this, but it did not get one good review in the United States of America. And people think I'm exaggerating or that it's not true, because the movie's very beloved now. And even some of the critics who hacked it to shreds now talk about it as something they loved, and it was a watershed experience for them. So I wasn't used to being the critics darling to begin with.

I think the biggest criticism is that I do a lot of "pop." I mean, I started out by writing scripts, and my second one was Car Wash, and The Wiz and all those things.

I still remember one of the earliest movie interviews I ever read: You were in Premiere Magazine, maybe around 1987? 1988? And you referred to yourself as a "pop-culture sponge." Do you still consider yourself as such, and if so, how does pop culture influence your filmmaking?

I hope so! I hope so. I think pop culture is culture. I think what lives in museums and film archives are great, and it's great to study that and look at it. But pop culture is the culture, and I don't care what anyone else says about that, because I am a street kid. I am a poor boy who made it beyond all my self-destruction just by pure luck and fate and people giving me a chance. I mean, I love beautifully, artistically made foreign films, and a few that are done in the United States that are extraordinarily artistic. But I'm going to point fingers as to what's "pop" and what's not "pop?" That's not my job. Also, it's a world where people always overinflate everything. And if you ever said, "Do you feel underestimated?" Well, it's better than being overestimated! I don't know where that gets you.

But I have seen directors -- sometimes very fine directors -- come out of the box with their first film, and the critics just come all over them. And then they make a second movie, and they try to destroy them. It's almost as if, "Oh, I went too far. I actually said this person was brilliant, and they're not as brilliant as I said they are. So now I must destroy them for life." It's kind of luck if you're not the critics' darling, because then you have no expectation. Ever. And so when you get rave reviews, or somebody says something nice about your film, then it's just a plus. I don't know if directors sit around and think everything they do should be a big hit and a great masterpiece, and then everyone agrees with them. I hope so?

What's left? What do you want to do next?

I want to do a movie with Halle Berry; hopefully we'll do that. And then there are a couple of very teeny, tiny movies on the head of a pin, which I love. You can do a lot of interesting material that way. The problem is you don't know if you're going to get marketed, and you don't know if you're going to get a proper release. And that's the trade-off.

I presume you're referring to Twelve?

Yeah, exactly. I mean it was great to be closing night at Sundance, and it was great to have people buy your movie. But if they're not going to market it and get it out there... But there's Netflix and DVD; Fox fixed it up for DVD, and Fox knows how to market a movie. And that was good luck for Twelve. It's the number-one most pirated film in Shanghai in the month of May! Friends of mine live over there; they have a list of not the top 10 movies but the top 10 pirated movies. Twelve was number one for the month of May. Actually, it means millions of people have seen your movie, and the people who bought it got fucked because they didn't make a dime.

Congratulations, I guess?

I guess it's a dubious honor. But I make them so that hopefully people will see them. I'm just lucky to be working.

[Top photo of Joel Schumacher: Getty Photos; page 2 photo of Schumacher and Nicolas Cage at TIFF: WireImage]

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