Director Joel Schumacher is known for making so many interesting and unique films over his career, including St. Elmo’s Fire, The Lost Boys, Flatliners, Dying Young, The Client, A Time To Kill, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, Falling Down, The Phantom of the Opera, 8mm, Tigerland, The Number 23, Twelve, and Netflix’s House of Cards, which was the last project he worked on before his death in 2020.
He made many films that became fan favorites, but throughout his career, he also went through a lot of tumultuous trials, which sometimes bled into his work, and he regretted it. Schumacher directed the 1987 cult classic teen vampire movie, The Lost Boys, on which he had to wrangle a cast of teen actors. /Film reports that in a 2020 retrospective article for Empire (published two months before the director’s death), Schumacher joked, “There were some troubled youths on the film, […] so maybe a troubled director was perfect!”
There were multiple incidents that went awry in making the film. One was with star of the film, Jason Patric, who played Michael in the film. Though he’d only completed one film at this point in his career, Hollywood had its eye on the young actor. He took the role in “The Lost Boys” under the one condition that he would not have to wear the vampire prosthetics. But due to the fluid nature of the screenplay, during the shoot, he wound up being asked to put on the prosthetics. The furious actor threatened to walk off the movie, but the studio smoothed things over. Still, Schumacher felt awful. “I don’t lie to actors,” he said.
Schumacher felt worse about an incident involving Brooke McCarter, who played, Paul a member of Kiefer Sutherland‘s vampire gang. In the scene where he attacks the Frog brothers (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) in the Emerson’s bathroom, McCarter, who, per Schumacher, had gotten “deep in character” as a psycho surfer dude, couldn’t nail his entrance with the frightening intensity the moment required. Schumacher was up against time limitations with his child actors, and he lost his cool. As he told Empire:
“I was so frustrated, and I just slapped him and pushed the door in front of him. I’d never done it in my life, and never again. I’m ashamed of it. It’s outrageous — he should have reported me, I should have been up on charges. But I’ve apologized many, many times.”
It’s never okay for a director to put hands on anyone on their set, so it’s good that he recognized that and was able to say sorry before the actor’s death in 2015, and his own death in 2020.
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