In new York, in his 81st year of life died from cancer of the Joel Schumacher — directed nearly thirty films, including “enough is enough!” (1992), “the Client” (1994), “Time to kill” (1996), “the phantom of the Opera” (2004) and two paintings of the Batman franchise: Batman forever (1995) and “Batman and Robin” (1997). His latest feature film “What lies beneath” was released in 2011 and the most recent work was the two episode series “house of cards”, which Schumacher took at the invitation of his friend David Fincher.Joel Schumacher was born in new York in 1939. He was an only child, and early left an orphan: his father died when Joel was four years old, and the mother died soon after. “Seven years I practically lived on the street, said Schumacher in an interview.— I was doing all the bad things that man did not kill anyone, thank God. Burned the candle at both ends, drugs, everything. I survived the sixties and for too long did not leave the party”.He studied at the Parsons school of design and the fashion Institute of Technology, earning to study fashion design, packaging, cosmetics and decoration of shop Windows. “I was very progressive, so we did shocking, interesting, exciting showcases. We had mannequins suicide. Or — my favorite — I took a piece of unbreakable glass, put it over the window, and then smashed the outer glass so from the street it seemed that the store was looted. Mannequins in horror hiding in the corners. It was fun”. At some point, Schumacher decided that more fun is to work in film, moved to Los Angeles and applied his skills in a new profession — the costume designer, while continuing in parallel to study at the University of California, where it eventually received a master’s degree in fine arts.First, he did the costumes for the television and then for cinema, including two paintings of woody Allen: “Sleeper” (1973) and “Interiors” (1978). What Allen was the first who supported Schumacher in his desire to become a Director. He also started in television, where he wrote scripts for several movies and put them and his directorial debut in the movie took place in 1981: it was a picture of “Incredible shrunken woman” with Lily Tomlin in the title role, characterized by the incredible kitsch design (obviously, he felt the shocking experience of Windows).A real breakthrough for Schumacher was his third feature film “St. Elmo’s fire” (1985) — drama about a group of University graduates beginning adult life and adult relationships. Castes consisted entirely of the brightest young stars of that generation, who were called the Brat Pack: Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, demi Moore, Judd Nelson, ally Sheedy. The film became one of the finest casts of the eighties on the screen, enhance their popularity, and even its title song became a hit.Schumacher could do great R��work with young actors, to find new talent and start careers. He confirmed this in the following of his films: the vampire Comedy “the Lost boys” (1987) and the Thriller “Flatliners” (1990). Both pictures taken on the verge of good taste, with typical Schumacher striking visual images, has become a cult classic.However, the Director’s range of Schumacher was not limited to youth paintings, whether Comedy, horror or drama, but certainly with young beautiful actors of both sexes in the lead roles. In 1992 he released his film “I quit!” about a white middle-aged man over the edge of a nervous breakdown, lost his job, the family, the patient and arrange a bloodbath on the way to his daughter’s birthday. Here again triggered the ability of Schumacher to capture the spirit of the time, and the hero of Michael Douglas became the embodiment of all frustrations of the average American of the era of presidency of George Bush.Among the films Schumacher was a solid legal drama in the books of John Grisham (“the Client” and “Time to kill”), and numerous thrillers of varying quality, and even drama about the Vietnam war (“tiger Country”, 2000), in which he discovered another young actor — Colin Farrell (two years later he again played at Schumacher in the claustrophobic Thriller “Phone booth”). But perhaps the most notable in his filmography are two of the Batman movie in which the Director has given full freedom to his love for unusual design decisions (Yes, it is equipped with a Batman costume infamous nipples). The audience of this not made, “Batman and Robin” with a crash has failed and is still considered the worst film of the franchise, but 20 years later, Schumacher even brought fans of comics apologize.However, his career is quite successfully and continued after “Batman” and the film has collected a good cashier, benevolent criticism and even the Oscar nomination — so, “the phantom of the Opera” has got the whole three. Apparently, Schumacher was nevertheless right when he gave advice to budding filmmakers: “Be bold, take risks, trust your instincts, listen to others, only when a gut feeling that they are right. Hire a great cast. Hire an operator who is not jealous, what Director you. Hire an editor who is not jealous that directed you. You will succeed”.Julia Sigelman
