Joel Schumacher and Falling Down to headline the 2019 Cinepocalypse film festival
Chicago’s Cinepocalypse film festival has swiftly emerged as one of the country’s leading purveyors of fresh, nauseating genre fare, the kind that’s best enjoyed in a crowd of likeminded weirdos. The full lineup for the 2019 slate is still being sliced and diced, but the festival has announced a few of its special guests and screenings.
Joel Schumacher will serve this year’s Feature Film Jury president, and will also be on hand for a 35mm screening of his 1993 cult classic Falling Down. Michael Douglas stars in the thriller, playing an unhinged, unemployed defense engineer who, armed with a bag of guns, bucks and barks across one of the worst day of his life. Also screening will be a 70mm print of Schumacher’s Flatliners, which stars a turn-of-the-‘90s Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts as medical students toying with death. Watch it and pretend that remake never happened.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to be heading back to Chicago, where I shot Flatliners and did a play for David Mamet at the Wisdom Bridge Theatre.” Schumacher said in a statement. “I am also very flattered to be asked to be head of the jury, which I have no qualifications for whatsoever.”
Cinepocalypse founder Josh Goldbloom disagrees. “We’ve wanted to honor Joel’s iconic filmography for some time and, as it turns out, he’ll be the one honoring us. To have a filmmaker of his influence presiding over our jury is at once humbling, mind-numbingly rad, and mostly just completely insane. I hope I don’t scare him away by quoting too many lines from Falling Down.”
Joining them will be the one-two punch of GWAR’s BälSäc the Jaws ‘o Death and Sleazy P. Martini, who will do a “career-spanning” Q&A and live-riff on John Fasano’s 1987 heavy metal curiosity Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare.
It all goes down June 13 to 20 at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre. Stay tuned for more guest and lineup announcements next month.