Seal Remembers How Joel Schumacher Helped Boost His Career
When we think of Seal’s hits, ‘Kiss From a Rose’ is often the first to come to mind. But that would never have been the case if it wasn’t for the famous director, Joel Schumacher. In fact, if Schumacher hadn’t stepped in and placed the song on the Batman Forever soundtrack, it’s likely none of us would have even heard of Seal at all.
Image Credit: Billboard.com
Yesterday, the sad news came in about Schumacher’s death. He died at the age of 80 after a year-long battle with cancer. As a tribute, Seal remembers the man who kick-started his career.
Seal memorialized Schumacher with a video he posted on his Instagram account. He opened the video with a short, acoustic version of Kiss From a Rose. Then he went on to explain how the song was the fourth and final single from his 1994 Seal II album; and it was tanking on the charts.
Schumacher reached out to Seal to ask him if he had a song that would fit a love scene in the Batman Forever movie. The scene was to feature Val Kilmer as Bruce Wayne and Nicole Kidman as Dr. Chase Meridian. Seal told Schumacher he didn’t have anything that would fit, but his manager, Bruch Cavalo, took it upon himself to send the director a copy of Seal’s album with an asterisk next to the ‘Kiss from a Rose’ track.
The next day Schumacher came back to tell Cavalo that the song really didn’t work in the scene, but he loved it so much, he would add it to the ending credits. And four Grammys later and another 8 million albums, we always knew,” Seal joked, before adding: “Well, the reality of the situation is, nobody knew, except I guess for Joel, who had faith in the song.”
In addition to adding the song to the movie’s ending credits, Schumacher also made a video of the song for Seal using leftover footage of the film and featuring Seal under a Batman light. “He didn’t even charge me for it,” Seal remembers. “Subsequently, kids thought I was Batman because the song was so big!”
Seal closed out the video with the following sentiments. “I owe my career I guess in large part to Joel Schumacher, who took a chance. Who took a song that was always a good song, but a kind of unconventional one, so it wasn’t immediately palatable. But the difference was that everyone who went to see that movie, when they came out of that theater, the last they heard was, ‘Baby!’ And I guess it kind of stuck.”
“I just want to say, I love you, Joel, thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me and the joy and the love that you brought to millions of people around the world. One day we’ll all meet again back home.”
Schumacher died in New York City yesterday. He is best known for films like, “The Lost Boys”, “Falling Down”, “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Batman Forever”. He is fondly remembered by the film and music industry alike.
