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Joel Schumacher death: Director of The Lost Boys and two Batman films dies aged 80 after battle with cancer



Hollywood director Joel Schumacher, whose films included St Elmo’s Fire and The Lost Boys, has died at the age of 80.

A representative for Schumacher said the filmmaker died Monday in New York after a year-long battle with cancer.

Schumacher was behind two Batman sequels as well as a string of big films in the 1980s and 1990s, including The Client and A Time to Kill.


Producer Bryan Fuller and director Kevin Smith were among those to pay tribute after news of his death emerged.

“He couldn’t have been nicer or more hospitable,” Smith tweeted.

“I distinctly remember feeling hopeful when I learned he was gay and out and that there may be a place for me yet,” wrote Fuller.

And Kiefer Sutherland, who starred in The Lost Boys, said that Schumacher’s “joy, spirit and talent will live on”.

A native New Yorker, Schumacher was first a sensation in the fashion world after attending Parsons School of Design and decorating Henri Bendel’s windows.

As a director, he established himself as a filmmaker with a string of mainstream films in the ’80s and ’90s.

The success of his first film St. Elmo’s Fire, with Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, helped make a name for the Brat Pack and made Schumacher in demand in Hollywood.

He followed it up with the 1987 vampire horror comedy The Lost Boys.

After films including Flatliners and A Time to Kill, Schumacher inherited the DC universe from Tim Burton.

His garish take on Batman resulted in two of the the franchise’s most cartoonish movies in 1995’s Batman Forever and 1997’s Batman & Robin.

Schumacher also directed the thrillers Tigerland and Phone Booth, as well as The Phantom of the Opera.

Most recently, he directed two episodes of Netflix’s “House of Cards” in 2013.

Schumacher was raised in Queens by his mother after his father died when he was four-years-old. As a teenager, he quickly became enmeshed in the city’s nightlife.

“The street was my education,” Schumacher told New York magazine earlier this year.

“You could ride your bike over the 59th Street Bridge then. So I rode my bike everywhere. I was in Manhattan all the time and all over Queens.

“If you’re a kid on a bike, anything can happen, and predators come out of the woodwork, my God. I looked very innocent, but I wasn’t.”



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