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Joel
Schumacher was raised in New York City by his Scandanavian
mother after his Knoxville-born father died when Schumacher
was four. He later moved to Miami with his mother. In
1965, Schumacher graduated from the Parson School of
Design. He made piles of money in the clothes-design
business (he worked for Revlon for many years). Personal
problems caused his design business to fail so he began
looking up the showbiz friends he'd made during his
moneyed days and was able to obtain a costumer's job
for the 1972 feature Play It As It Lays.
Turning to screenwriting in 1976 with Sparkle, Schumacher
found himself associated with a hit via his script for
the black-oriented comedy Car Wash (1976). With 1978's
The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Schumacher kicked off
his directing career. The bulk of his work was deliberately
geared to the "youth" market, notably D.C. Cab (1981)
and St. Elmo's Fire (1985). Flatliners (1990) brought
him in contact with up-and-coming star Julia Roberts,
with whom Schumacher became enamored, a fact that clouded
his critical judgment, resulting in the lesser Roberts
vehicle Dying Young (1991). Schumacher has remained
a saleable directorial commodity into the 1990s with
such fingers-on-the-pulse films as Falling Down (1993),
The Client (1994), and Batman Forever (1995).
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