Read our roundtable interview with director Joel Schumacher, who helmed the upcoming crime thriller ‘Trespass,’ starring Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman. The film, which is set to hit theaters on October 14, 2011 and is now available to rent On Demand, follows Cage and Kidman’s characters, married couple Kyle and Sarah Miller. On the surface, the two have the perfect marriage, teenage daughter, Avery, played by Liana Liberato and house. But when a group of intruders break into the Millers’ home to steal their money, the couple’s secrets come to light. Schumacher discusses with us, among other things, the working relationship between Cage and Kidman, and why he frequently includes dark characters in his films.

Question (Q): Can you talk about the collaboration working with the screenwriter, Karl Gajdusek?

Joel Schumacher (JS): They never let me meet Karl. Karl had written the script for Irwin Winkler, my producer. I always like to go back to the original writer. But Irwin, who had paid for that writing, said he didn’t want to go there. So I had to respect his opinion. But Eli Richbourg, who had re-written ‘Phone Booth,’ came to visit. He was living in Paris, he fell in love with a French girl. He came down to Shreveport, Louisiana, and worked with the actors and me. He did the re-write. But perhaps Karl would have done it, also. But I was not allowed access to Karl, because my producers did not want that to be so. I don’t know, perhaps they had a conflict with Karl, who knows. But I would have liked to have meet him and worked with him. (laughs)

Q: There’s some concession about the darkly comic aspect of the film. Can you talk about walking that line of where the laughs are, and where the dark side is?

JS: Well, the laughs are what make you laugh. Certainly, people don’t have to (laugh). I mean, if you’ve seen any of my movies. It’s always interesting to me when people talk about, say ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ and ‘Lost Boys,’ that have enormous followings, they have a lot of humor. People don’t remember that. When people think of ‘St. Elmo’s Fire,’ they usually think of the characters, and whatever the movie emotionally meant to them. ‘Lost Boys’ is really a comedy with horror, but it’s really a comedy in many ways.

I think ‘Falling Down’ is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever made. It’s quite tragic, and it’s certainly social and political and psychologically, and all the obvious things there. It’s also in the worst moments a movie that has a lot of dark humor. There’s also ‘8mm,’ one of the darkest subjects I’ve ever done. ‘Phone Booth’ has a lot of laughs in it. I try to put life in the middle of it. Like your significant other is leaving you, and the toilet explodes at the same time. Or the roof caves in, or your cat is lost. All of sudden, you’re in the middle of this human comedy.

Maybe I do it for myself. But if people don’t want to see it that way, that’s fine. I just hope that people will go and see it. I try to put a lot of levels in the movie, but I’m happy if people enjoy it on one level. But I know now, we have such a world of people on the Internet, on the blogs, all over the world, who are film fans or film critics. They analyze film a lot now.

Film doesn’t really belong to the critics anymore, it belongs to the world. Which is exactly where it should be, because we shouldn’t be making films for critics, we should be making films for the people who are going to go see them. I’d much rather get a great review from (Ain’t It Cool News’) Harry Knowles than The New Yorker, which I think has a small readership. So if Harry Knowles thinks my film is cool, it’s cool. (laughs)

Q: With all of your professional and worldly experience, do you think this movie will educate people? Sometimes people let things happen to them when it can be avoided.

JS: I think that’s really, really smart. I think most of us live in a world where we really think that if we close our doors at night, even if you have a really small security system (that we’ll be safe). Well, we have to live that way, because we can’t think all the time that someone’s coming into our home.

Although that’s a primal fear that’s with us all the time. I mean, I think one of the biggest primal fears is that you wake up in the middle of the night, and there’s strangers in your bedroom that is not someone you picked up in a bar and can’t remember, but there’s an invasion. There’s a violation, there’s an intrusion, there’s a perpetrator, and you don’t know if you’re going to live or die at that point. That’s a horrific experience.

In some ways, it’s really healthy to live without fear. But on the other hand, I think you have to start worrying about a world right now, and I can only speak of western culture, but a world right now where there’s too many rich, and too many poor, and the middle is shrinking. I think that when there are too many people that are suffering, and don’t have anything, they’ll want what the haves have. It’s sort of been the history of the world. So I think people may be unconscious about that, to some degree. I also think it depends on what neighborhood you live in.

But it’s also hard to live with fear all the time. I know people have to now with children. I mean, I was born in 1939, and I grew up in Long Island City. We didn’t lock our doors. But we were poor, we didn’t have anything to steal. Us kids were street kids, we did anything we wanted to. That has changed, as everyone knows. Yeah, I think it’s a scary time. But I think there are so many other levels to it.

**Spoiler** In ‘Trespass,’ the haves don’t really have. I always thought of the two families (the Millers, and the intruders, which includes two brothers, Jonah, played by Cam Gigandet, and Elias, portrayed by Ben Mendelsohn) as being very similar. Nic Cage and Ben Mendelshon, the great Ben Mendelshon, they’re both families. They’re both different families, in a sense. But the paternal figures have both overreached. They’ve overreached for the American dream, whether one’s doing it legally or one’s doing it illegally, is a different story. I think it’s lead them to where they are on this particular night. For me, there’s some social warfare here. It’s a class warfare, I should say. We tried to play that out. **End Spoiler**

The problem with movies is like, oh, we’re going to have a guy in a phone booth. The phone rings, and a voice says “If you hang up, I’m going to kill you.” That’s a great premise, but what are you going to do for the next 90 minutes? I think ‘Trespass’ is similar-people break into your house, now what’s going to happen? So what I think what Karl had done, which Eli had enhanced, was the story that’s going on there is really about the people that are in the situation. It’s a pressure cooker, and who’s going to survive, how they’re going to survive, what are the secrets and lies over here, and what are the secrets and lies over here, the cross-connections, etc., etc.

Q: It seems like Nic Cage and Nicole Kidman are very different actors, in terms of their style. Can you talk about what it’s like to have your two leads be very different actors, and how Nicole has changed since you worked with her on ‘Batman Forever?’

JS: Well, I’ve known Nic and Nic since they were teenagers. I met Nicole when she first came over (to the U.S.) after (shooting the Australian film) ‘Dead Calm,’ and we’ve been friends ever since. I met Nic after ‘Valley Girl.’ Even though we’re different generations, our careers have all had similar trajectory, parallel.

I did work with Nicole on ‘Batman Forever.’ We’ve always been social friends, certainly the period of time when Nicole was married to Tom (Cruise), we were together a lot. You know, birthday parties, their wedding party. We would run into each other on press tours in Europe. We were friends.

Nic and I did ‘8mm’ together in 1998. I knew them both as friends, but they did not know each other. So we have a shorthand. It’s very easy when you’ve worked with an actor before, because you know their styles. But of course they’ve grown so much. ‘Batman Forever,’ we shot in ’94, and it came in ’95. I hope I’ve grown as much as they have. When you’re as talented as they are, and as smart as they are, you keep growing in your craft, you do more. I think since ‘Batman Forever,’ Nicole has proven herself as a very, very serious actress.

With Nic, you never know what you’re going to get. Nic is a very spontaneous actor. Nicole is like one of the really fine theater actresses. She’s really precise in planning, but then is really spontaneous when she does it. But every detail of what she’s going to do is planned. (Robert) De Niro is very much like this, also. So they are very different styles, but very similar professionally. They are never late, ever. Nicole takes 25 minutes in hair and make-up, which she is so proud of and brags about it all the time. She should, the guys take longer. They always know their lines, they help the other actors.

Cam and Jordana (Spiro) and Ben and Dash (Mihok) and Liana are not as experienced as Nic and Nic. But they are as enormously talented. Nicole and Nic set the bar very high. The other actors really came up to it. The best tool for an actor is the other actor. So, of course, the better the other actor is, the better they will be. The same thing if you’re talking about someone who’s highly intelligent. With some intelligence, you up your game. You try to reach a little higher.

Q: Since you’ve worked with big names, would you be willing to work with unknowns?

JS: I actually built my career on unknowns-‘St. Elmo’s Fire,’ ‘Lost Boys,’ ‘Flatliners,’ ‘The Client,’ ‘A Time to Kill.’ Certainly Colin Farrell in all the movies I did with him. I still try to work with newcomers.

Q: One of the most important characters in ‘Trespass’ is the house. How important was it for you to work with (Director of Photography) Andrze (Bartkowiak) to get the look of the house that you wanted, and to make it look larger than life in the film?

JS: It was crucial. Andrze and I worked together on ‘Falling Down.’ We have a shorthand also. The truth is, you just have to get the set big. Not only is it big, it’s not cluttered a lot, because we have to run around with cameras and steadicam. Yes, it’s a very important character. I think it might also stand as a house that people might think of as their dream house. For who? For what? Suddenly, if your whole life is on the line, those things are meaningless. Whenever you see people interviewed who have been in a flood or a fire, what they say is, “I lost my photographs.” They never say “I lost my Louis Vuitton knock-off purse.” They say they lost their photographs, because their photographs are their lives. It’s the representation of their lives.

Q: In a lot of your films, from ‘Phone Booth’ to ‘Trespass’ to ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ you have a dark force, a protagonist and antagonist. You expose those humanistic qualities of the dark force. What is the appeal of that to you?

JS: I think I always tell stories of flawed people. I put them in situations that are going to put them in a pressure cooker. I think one of the problems in western culture is that there are a lot of things in human nature that are invalidated, and other things that are evaluated as good and bad. The truth is, we’re all the same. In other words, in order to be great in life, you have to experience cowardice. No one’s brave all the time. If you think of the more noble emotions that we have, you have to experience the others. To be compassionate, you must be selfish, or else compassion would not be something we admire. If we were all compassionate all the time, it wouldn’t be noble. It would just be the way we are.

I think there’s a dark side to everybody, and I think people are ashamed to admit it, which is sad to me. I don’t think everybody should be walking around, talking about their dark force. But we all know what it’s like to feel depressed and insecure and down, perhaps resentful, perhaps jealous, perhaps want to have revenge. I think we deny that, and I think we go through our life with the Judeo-Christian mantel over our head. I find that people are constantly telling me they’re not who they are. You know, I’m not jealous, I don’t have a jealous bone in my body. I would say you’re the one, because everyone else does. Or, money means nothing to me. Or, I’m happy for everyone’s success. Or whatever they are. I call them good citizen responses, because they’re what you think your mother would want you to say. Or your priest or your rabbi and your children, and what you would want them to say.

Or I’m color-blind. This is a great one. First of all, I don’t think people of color want you to be color-blind. I think they want to be accepted for who they are. We want to be recognized for who we are. I think there are little lies that go on all the time. I don’t read reviews, but someone told me that Roger Ebert, who’s been very, very kind to my movies, wrote once that I dare to make movies about people who people don’t like.

Q: Do you think you’ll ever do anything musical-based again, sort of like ‘Phantom of the Opera?’

JS: Well, with ‘Phantom,’ Andrew Lloyd Weber was trying to get me to do it since ‘Lost Boys.’ I had been doing smaller and smaller movies, like ‘Flawless,’ ‘Phone Booth,’ ‘Tigerland’ and ‘Veronica Guerin,’ Andrew asked me to do ‘Phantom’ again. It was a chance to get out of the phone booth, and use all different muscles. I never made a musical before, and it was really fun. It was so over-the-top, and so luscious and gorgeous and dark, it was very dark. I also think the Phantom represents the thing in all of us that we feel is unlovable. His is just a physical manistification. The truth is, everyone, especially women, want her (Christine Daae) to stay with the Phantom at the end, even though he’s murdered a lot of people. So there’s something about the Phantom, it’s been a success. There aren’t many forms of ‘Phantom’ that haven’t been successful. Andrew’s show is still running. Every time the movie runs on TV, the sales go up. So there’s something about it. Also, the music is very popular.

Written by: Karen Benardello