Jeremy Garelick on Joel Schumacher: 'His Movies Were All His Home Videos'

I was an assistant at CAA and I had always wanted to be a director. Kevin Huvane said, "Well, if you want to be a director, go work for the director." And I said, "Great, I’d love to." I got a call a month later saying that Joel Schumacher needs an assistant on, a movie he was going to direct in Jacksonville, Florida. It was New Years, 2000, and I got in my car and I drove across the country.

I was hired to hold Joel’s glass bottle of Evian water and his Planters peanuts and to drive him around and to answer his phone. The very first day of shooting on, on the first setup, he turned to me and he said, "What do you think?" I was sitting there, thinking, “What?” I'd never been on a movie set before and he's saying, "What do you think?" I was super intimidated, but I assumed he was actually asking for my opinion.

He was incredibly respectful and grateful to be on set, every single day. He survived the AIDS crisis, he survived lots of years as a drug addict, and he was always grateful to be alive. Being on set, that was his win. I think that Joel always felt that as long as he was working and he was on set, he was surrounded by family. He would always say that his movies were all his home videos.

When I came to work for Joel, he was not in a great career spot. He had just come off of a few films that did not do that well. He took a risk withwas like a tiny student film — we shot handheld on a 16 millimeter film. Joel did that movie because he just wanted to tell a great story, which is what got him into directing in the first place. He had been so caught up with the Batman world, where he felt like he was selling toys. He wanted to get back into the filmmaking.

I know there was a part of Joel who wanted to win an Academy Award and wanted to be considered one of the greats. But I think because of the broad spectrum of movies that he's made, it's hard to define the kind of filmmaker Joel was. So, even though I had seen and loved many of his movies before working with him, I didn't know they were Joel Schumacher movies at the time.

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