ISCHIA GLOBAL FILM & MUSIC FEST INTERVIEW # 6: JOEL SCHUMACHER

Posted by Timothy E. RAW

November 24, 2009

Welcome back! Have you subscribed to my RSS feed yet? Make sure you don't miss anything by getting all Soundtrack Geek posts by Email. Also check out Soundtrack Fans, a new social network for soundtrack fans. Thanks for visiting!

Joel Schumacher is one of Hollywood’s most prolific directors, trying his hand at almost every genre of film and most infamous for his radical and highly successful take on the Batman franchise, with Batman Forever and Batman And Robin. His long line of credits also include the John Grisham adaptations, The Client and A Time To Kill, as well as Falling Down, St Elmo’s Fire, 8mm, Tigerland, Phone Booth, Flawless, The Number 23 and cult favourite The Lost Boys.

TIMOTHY E. RAW: Of all the scores for all your films, 8mm is where I’d like to start.

JOEL SCHUMACHER: Yes, which was Mychael Danna.

RAW: I’d like to start by thanking you. It was because of this film, that I was introduced to my favourite composer.

JS: One of mine too! I had heard his work in my friend Atom Egoyan’s movies. This great Canadian filmmaker. Mychael had done music for him that I absolutely loved. 8mm was a very shocking, daring film. Probably couldn’t be made today in the American movie climate. I doubt anyone would make it today, except maybe as an independent. The film itself was very inexpensive and independent but put out by a big studio. I wanted to have music that was not like a traditional film score. Mychael went to Morocco and recorded a lot of the local instruments. He brings a lot of ethnic elements into his music. It’s also dark and mysterious, the film of course being quite violent and about a very ugly side of the world. He did a brilliant job and was a joy to work with. A great artist.

RAW: I actually think the two of you working together has produced my favourite and I think, best single sequence you’ve directed in your whole career. The part where Nicolas Cage is going on a wild goose chase around Los Angeles looking for the missing persons. (The cue from the score album for that sequence is also entitled “Missing Persons”)

JS: That’s my favourite cue too. And I got so much criticism for this!

RAW: I actually heard the score album before seeing the film. I loved it so much, it made the film critic proof for me. I have the movie poster on a wall at home, right in amongst all the classic and art house films. I get quizzed about that choice every time I have people over!

JS: If you’re making a movie like 8mm and expect to get rave reviews you’re crazy! The whole purpose of it is it being a very disturbing film. And it definitely disturbed a lot of people. But not the audience. The audience understood it. I was watching my friend Francis Ford Coppola on an interview on CNN today, and he was saying that if you put work out there, you figure 50% of the people will love it and 50% of people will hate it! Also, I like to make trouble! I especially like when people are shocked! (laughs)

RAW: How are you planning to shock them next? What of your film here at the festival, Twelve?

JS: I can’t show it. We just finished filming a couple of weeks ago. I had 29 minutes I was going to show. It’s all being cut on the Avid and the transfer from the computer to PAL is horrible! It’s dark, you can’t see anything and also the sound is horrific!

RAW: Don’t you think that when you look back over your career, this new film will stand out as one of the most interesting releases for you, because it doesn’t come with any online hype or big stars. Very unlike your previous films. Even the ones done on a smaller scale had “names” attached.

JS: It’s a lot of unknown actors. I’ve done so many films with unknown actors and actresses.

RAW: Who’ve since gone on to do huge things. (Matthew McConaughey in A Time To Kill and Colin Farrell in Tigerland for example)

JS: And to make a lot more money than I do! And God bless them, they were great! The film is based on a very controversial book, written by a seventeen-year old. It’s about… oh, it’s sexual, it’s violent, there’s a lot of drugs… Really, it’s about the disintegration of the family due to bad parenting. And you hardly ever see the parents. It’s these over-privileged, under loved people. A group of people over a three day period and a lot happens.

RAW: You’ve worked with Harry-Gregson Williams a few times recently. Is he scoring again?

JS: No, it’s going to be Nathan Larson, who did Tigerland. I love Harry and he’s done great for me, but Nathan and I were looking to work together again after that film and this is a very good film for Nathan.

RAW: I’m actually not a huge fan of Gregson Williams, except when he’s working with you. The Number 23, to my mind is the best thing he’s done. I was surprised that no reviews picked up on what I thought was so obvious when I saw the film, the noir flourishes that set a very particular tone.

JS: I know! Do you know the opening of Falling Down? It’s absolutely the opening of 8½ I stole it from that. I was influenced by it, I just stole it.

RAW: That seems so obvious now you’ve said it out loud.

JS: A lot of people don’t notice it. I think film criticism is… I think at one time it was a very small group of people, you knew who they were and it all sort of made sense. Now it’s everybody. Every weather person on TV, everyone’s a critic now and maybe that’s fair. I love it, I hate it, the internet, the blogs. I do know that the most influential for me that’s helped my films – it doesn’t really matter what The New York Times or The London Times, papers like that say, because that really isn’t an audience for me – it’s Harry Knowles and Ain’t It Cool News. Harry Knowles and the internet, they’re the ones who really picked up on Phone Booth right away, when Harry saw it at the Austin Film Festival. It’s those people who will see our research screenings and then do a review or blog on someone like Harry’s site, that’s a great network for me because it’s the audience and people who really go to films. I’m not against the older critics but I often think, “Who they think we’re making films for?” They were so horrified at Batman, when it’s a comic book! I don’t know what they expect. I have friends who start out and they’re the critics’ darling. I’ve never been the critics’ darling, though I’ve certainly had films the critics have praised.

RAW: Don’t you like it that way though?

JS: Yes, because you’re not dependent on it. I have friends who are the critics darlings, then all of a sudden on their next film they’re not and it crushes them! I just had a friend, he was like the darling of the festivals, the darling of the critics and he’s a wonderful director. Then he made a film they’re not enchanted by, they wouldn’t take it at Cannes, they wouldn’t take it at the festivals, people don’t think it’s finished enough, it’s not a “real” film. He’s just destroyed. I don’t know if it will get a release. It is finished but people think it’s unfinished because they don’t think there’s a real story there. The point I’m trying to make is he never had a moment where everybody didn’t love him… and then they don’t. But he’s still the same person, working hard. I keep telling him “You have to get past this”. See I was very lucky because I did costumes and sets, I worked around a lot of directors, most importantly Woody Allen who was great to me and really, still is a very close friend. And he told me not to read anything ever written about me. He said, “If you believe the good, then you believe the bad, and if they hate you, you remember every word until you die and if they love you, they can never love you enough.” It’s such good advice and I would say the same to anyone. For instance, St Elmo’s Fire, which was only my third film and was very, very important in my career, did not get one good review in the United States of America, not one. This was early in my career and I thought those things were important. But some of those same critics now, write about that film as though it’s great.

RAW: Retrospectively.

JS: Yeah, as this important film in American culture. So y’know, it’s like, if you live long enough…

RAW: You can outlive the criticism?

JS: No, I think it’s the audience. You’re basically making films because you hope some people in a theatre or now at home will have an experience of a story your telling. You’re really not making films for festivals. You’re really not making films for critics. You’re hoping that the experience that you have in a dark theatre or a dark room when you see something and it speaks to you, either making you laugh or cry or scares you shitless, or whatever the experience is supposed to be, that someone will enjoy that on some level. Or disturb them, or whatever the point of your film is. Y’know some films, like Michael Haneke’s films, they’re made to upset you. You’re not supposed to walk away going, “Oh I love it, it’s so fabulous!” You’re supposed to go, “Fuck! This is nihilism.” But I love that because it’s very pure.

RAW: Perhaps a little off topic, but since you did bring it up, what did you think of the American re-take of Funny Games?

JS: I think the German one is so perfect. It’s always hard… I think it’s very difficult when foreign directors… maybe if they take another subject, but I think to take a great foreign film and then for them to re-make their own film is very difficult.

RAW: Do you buy his line about how it was always meant to be specifically intended for American audiences? I went back when the film was released, to a lot of what people were saying about the original and that was never really mentioned when he did press for that. Now he’s saying that the German original was always meant to be for an American audience that’s why he re-made it.

JS: Well, he doesn’t know the American audience very well! I think he’s a great director, I love his work, I love the boldness of it, I love the purity of it. Those are very tough stories for an American audience. Nihilism isn’t a great theme in the United States.

RAW: I can’t see a remake of Cache (Hidden), floating anyone’s boat over there!

JS: Oh, I love that film!

RAW: It’s great isn’t it? I love pretty much all his films except Time Of The Wolf, that didn’t do much for me.

JS: I like it, but Cache especially, that moment at the end of the credits, where you understand the whole film, or you can have your own interpretation of it, I think that’s genius.

RAW: To get back to scores, you were saying how Nathan Larson is scoring your latest film. Even though Tigerland was quite a time ago now, I think you’re the only director in the mainstream to have embraced his compositions. There was an album he put out a few years back, a compilation of various works for indie films like Storytelling and Prozac Nation. Is this another studio film?

JS: No, it’s Gaumont. It was financed in Paris, by the oldest, most prestigious film financier.

RAW: Doing an indie, is that what allowed you to go for somebody like Nathan?

JS: No, no, because Tigerland was a Fox film. I’ve never been questioned in my choices for composers or cinematographers ever. I’ve been questioned about actors of course because every studio would like to guarantee their film with huge stars. I’ve had a great deal of luck and success with unknowns though, So film studios and financiers have had a tendency to give me an opportunity to use new talent. It’s getting harder though, ‘cause people want foreign insurance, they want a name. even if the person’s wrong for the part they want a name. I understand that, they want to cover their bets as we say.

Joel Schumacher: a genius with a small “G.”

RAW: Did you ever talk to Elliot (Goldenthal) about doing another project together after your Batman films? All people ever talk about is “Nipples on Batman” and they forget how great those scores were, I’m surprised you haven’t worked together since.

JS: His Batman music is fantastic! I hate to use this word because it’s so overused, so we’ll use it with a small “G”, but Elliot is a genius. I think that the reason I haven’t asked Elliot to do another film is that he had a huge entourage. Elliot is a very spontaneous, emotional artist and so he needs many people. He’ll write in the middle of the night and then someone has to get that together by the next day when we’re going to record. So I never worked with Elliot where we weren’t able to afford it. Both Batman films and A Time To Kill had very handsome budgets. It was a lot, I had to fly him from New York, plus his producers and all his arrangers. Nathan, like me has done some films that are shot on shoestrings. I’d love to work with Elliot again if he would work with me ‘cause I think he’s a genius but you also have to be able to support his entourage. It’s not an entourage like a “posse”, no they’re artists. Like Andrew Lloyd Webber, he needs his team. You have to be able to afford the team because all those people have to get paid!

RAW: It’s like Marc Forster who I spoke to a couple of days ago. He has his tightly knit crew he works with and he needs those people no matter the film or the subject matter.

JS: I make very different films though and I don’t think every single person I work with is right. In other words I don’t use the same actor every time, I don’t use the same cinematographer every time, although I have worked with some people two or three times. With music I think you have to cast composers like you cast actors, they have to be right. I would love to work with Mychael Danna, but I don’t have the same… Y’know Tim Newman did Lost Boys and he’s brilliant, it’s fabulous but I haven’t really… I don’t know, you have to really experience things… Harry’s score for Veronica Guerin is incredible. He found this little boy street singer in Dublin who sings an old prison song at the end, A cappella, which is beautiful. He was absolutely perfect for that movie and Number 23… As for Nathan, I met him because a friend of mine produced Boys Don’t Cry and he recommended him to me and I loved that score. I met Nathan and I was just crazy about him. Tigerland was one of the most difficult movies I’ve ever had to do a score for. We shot it with old Bolex handheld cameras, so raw – our inspiration was the great Frederick Wiseman’s documentary Titicut Follies. Brilliant, but I can’t recommended it. It’s very tough to watch. It’s set in a mental institution for the criminally insane.

We wanted to shoot Tigerland so that it was so raw and real. No proscenium that’s playing out, it’s like the camera is finding the movie all the time. We tried all kinds of score and ideas that didn’t work. Finally, I got this insane idea about the old black and white films. Nathan loved it and he went into the subways in New York where there are these very old Asian musicians, playing for money on these even older instruments that we don’t have in the states. Nathan hired them from the subway to do the music, which is very spare but just right for our film.

RAW: Tell us about working with Elliot Goldenthal on Batman and the direction he took the established soundscape in.

JS: I was hired after Batman Returns to create a whole fresh franchise. So they wanted everything new. I decided to go younger and sexier so we had Val Kilmer, Nicole Kidman and Jim Carrey. I love the Danny Elfman scores, I think they’re great but I think it would have been insulting to Danny and to Tim (Burton) to just have stolen their music and put it in our movie.

RAW: What of the Christopher Nolan films that came after yours?

JS: He got to make the ones I always wanted to make. The dark ones. I never got the dark ones. They wanted family friendly ones that sold a lot of merchandise. And we did. Batman Forever was kind of a lucky one. They’d had trouble with Batman and selling stuff. I think the Penguin scared children! Batman Forever, no-one wanted it at first. We had to go around convincing the movie companies and theatres. I had to fly all over the world to convince them we’d give them a good Batman. Then what happened is we got very lucky and it was a humongous hit. Humongous.

RAW: To get back to Elliot Goldenthal. The way you are when you’ve been talking about him to me suggests that you’re very close.

JS: I love him and I love his wife, also a brilliant, brilliant talent.

RAW: Julie Taymor. (Director of Titus and Across The Universe)

JS: Also a genius with a small “G”. I say small “G” because it’s a word thrown around too much.

RAW: I concur. A relief to hear you say that. So many people when they do these press junkets, whether you’re interviewing or watching them as extras on a DVD, there’s a lot of back-slapping that goes on. For Joe Public it can be more than a little nauseating and a bit, “Please pass the bucket” at times.

JS: I know. We all had the greatest experience we’ve ever had in our lives and everyone’s our best friend, well, they’re all full of shit. We’re workers among workers and everybody works their ass off, we do our jobs.

Woody Allen went through a period where he had no score because he felt that music was barbaric in movies. I’m just the opposite – maybe because I’m such a barbarian – I think film is only half a film without the music.

RAW: Do you listen to film scores outside of shooting? I can’t imagine you have much time for that, given how busily prolific you are.

JS: I go through periods, like I’ll have to hear Blade Runner over and over and over again. I love – oh, there’s so many scores I love! Chinatown is another. The (Gustav) Mahler music in Death In Venice, mind-boggling, the way it’s used. I love John Barry.

RAW: Who doesn’t? Did you hear Mychael Danna’s score for (Atom Egoyan’s) Adoration yet? Love the music, the film on the other hand… took my girlfriend to see it, she still hasn’t forgiven me!

JS: (laughs hysterically)

RAW: The reviews weren’t much kinder. I actually thought it was really quite good, though I seem to be in the minority.

JS: Y’see, that’s why I don’t read reviews. I don’t even read other people’s revies. A lot of times they make me angry, they tell too much of the movie now, which I don’t wanna know before I see a film. I went to see Sam Rami’s new film; I didn’t even know it was Sam Rami’s film! Friends of mine said, “Let’s go see Drag Me To Hell.” I thought they were doing it as sort of camp. With a title like Drag Me To Hell, this has to be a really exploitational horror movie. We’re just going on a Sunday night for a lark, and then it started and I said, “This is a Sam Rami movie?!” They said, “Didn’t you know that, that’s why we took you!” Have you seen it?

RAW: Yes.

JS: I loooved it! I loved every second of it. So, I don’t read reviews because it was so serendipitous. I didn’t know anything about it and I don’t want to know things about films. When people start to tell me about a movie, I’ll say “Don’t tell me, don’t, no, no.” I read nothing because I want to have the experience myself. But reviews, I don’t read reviews because I don’t want to have a moment of schadenfreude where you are getting excited ‘cause they’re just cremating a film or director. I know it’s bad karma and that if I enjoy it, I’m next! So I don’t like to enjoy the savagery of criticism. Now with the blogs it’s gotten very ugly. If you go on the internet for even an hour, you will ultimately come to just hate. Not about yourself but about any subject. There was some movie that lost its financing with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel. A friend of mine sent me the article, because we had been offered the film.

RAW: That’s Nailed by David O’Russell.

JS: Right. I don’t know if they got there money back but the person who was financing it had approached me about doing a film. I don’t read the trades, so a friend of mine cut and pasted the article from Variety and sent it to me, saying, “Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t go into business with this company.” So the whole point of my friend sending me the article was that maybe this person who was financing their film had run out of money and maybe we could have been in the same situation. And then, underneath it, there were comments. It turned into this “hate Jessica Biel” thing. All these people who hate Jessica Biel.

RAW: Did you see her in Easy Virtue? She was wonderful.

JS: She was also in The Illusionist, you fall in love with her. But also I thought, this is a girl, she has not had scandals, she’s not driving drunk and stoned every night, she’s not been in jail, she’s tried to keep her love life private. I know her, she’s a lovely girl. What is this “hate Jessica Biel” thing about? I wanted to punch every person who wrote on this, they don’t know her. Who knows what their tragic lives are like that they have to destroy Jessica, I don’t know what she’s done to them. So I try to stay away from those, it’s ugly, it’s an ugly way for people to express their angry, unhappy lives and I don’t like it. It does not give me any pleasure, or any sense of pleasure about the human spirit at all. And we all have this in us, I’ve certainly been guilty of judging and criticizing, so I’m not a saint, but I don’t need to have it reminded to me everyday.

RAW: Whatever the detractors are saying, she’s starting to find work now that proves she’s a more than capable actress.

JS: I don’t care what they’re saying! She’s beautiful, she’s young and she’s working hard. I don’t care if they have a problem!

RAW: She is working hard. If she hasn’t proven herself to a lot of people yet, she soon will.

JS: Who are these people that she has to prove herself to?!

RAW: Just in terms of the work she’d done previous to films like The Illusionist and Easy Virtue. She was seen a certain way before, but now she’s starting to branch out and show us a bigger range.

JS: Marilyn Monroe was a pin-up and now she’s revered like she was a saint. Not that she doesn’t deserve it but you know what I mean. You’ll be remembered long after the critics have stopped. They did a very interesting show in London at the National Gallery. They had all of these phenomenal paintings of Winslow Homer and (John Singer) Sargent. Gorgeous paintings. And next to it they had the leading critic of the day, who destroyed these artists and said that these pictures were of no importance, that they were nothing but trash. It was interesting because, I was with my friends in London and they said, “What’s great about this is that no-one knows the name of these critics” Now if they read this, they’re gonna really hate me!

To read the other interviews in the series, go to one of these pages:

Soundtrack Geek Goes To The Ischia Global Film & Music Fest!
ISCHIA GLOBAL FILM & MUSIC FEST INTERVIEW # 1: MARC FORSTER
ISCHIA GLOBAL FILM & MUSIC FEST INTERVIEW # 2: PAUL HAGGIS
ISCHIA GLOBAL FILM & MUSIC FEST INTERVIEW # 3: BILLE AUGUST
ISCHIA GLOBAL FILM & MUSIC FEST INTERVIEW # 4: STEVEN ZAILLIAN
ISCHIA GLOBAL FILM & MUSIC FEST INTERVIEW # 5: DITO MONTIEL