Director Joel Schumacher Reveals He’s Had Up To 20,000 Sexual Partners

Joel Schumacher is known for directing such films as “The Lost Boys”, “St. Elmo’s Fire”, “The Client”, and arguably the two least popular Batman movies, but thanks to a very revealing interview with Vulture, he may well be remembered for something entirely different.

During the chat, the 80-year-old director was asked a provocative sex question by journalist Andrew Goldman: “Have you ever guessed the number of partners you’ve had?”

He gave a surprising response. “It would be in the double-digit thousands, but that is not unusual,” he stated.

Schumacher prompted Goldman to guess “20,000 or 30,000” with Schumacher estimating he’s had “10 or 20” thousand sexual partners.

When Goldman admitted that was an “amazing” number, Schumacher responded nonchalantly, “It’s not for a gay male, because it’s available.”

Asked if he’s had sex with any celebrities, he admitted that he has — but will never reveal their identities.

“I’ve had sex with famous people, and I’ve had sex with married people, and they go to the grave,” he said. “I’ve never kissed and told about anybody who gives me the favour of sharing a bed with me.”

Promiscuity, he explained, was simply part of gay culture in his day.

“Now, a lot of gay people are getting married, they’re adopting, or they’re having children,” Schumacher said later in the interview. “There wasn’t any of that when I was young. If you went into a gay bar and there were 200 men in there, and you said, ‘Okay, who wants to have a little house with a white picket fence, and a dog, and a child, raise your hands,’ or ‘Who wants to get laid tonight?’ The concept of a lovely suburban life or raising children was not a high concept.”

This puts Schumacher in the company of basketball great Wilt Chamberlain and KISS founder Gene Simmons, who claim to have bedded 20,000 and 4,800 women, respectively.

“The whole thing started as a joke, when I was asked by journalists some question and I said, ‘I’m overpaid, I’m overprivileged, and I’m oversexed.’ That was a joke,” Schumacher said of his promiscuity.

“Most gay men have many partners because it’s not a very ‘no’ culture,” he added. “I started drinking at nine, smoking at 10, and fooling around sexually when I was 11. I had three girlfriends I had sex with, and some of the guys on my baseball team, a couple guys in high school. I had my first love affair when I was 15 to 17, and he was 17 to 19. That was the first time I remembered really being in love with someone, or let’s say, infatuated. But we both had girlfriends.”

You can read the rest of the interview — including why he admits he should never have made “Batman Forever” and “Batman & Robin” — right here.