Variety interviewed him: “Schamus doesn’t consider movies with gay themes particularly risky enterprises. After all, he says, any film — even a horror pic — faces its own challenges in the theatrical marketplace. “A lot of movies bomb every weekend,” he points out. He says if he wanted to play it safe, he would only make movies with gay Chinese cowboys since he has had the most success with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Brokeback.” But he’s found that deviating from the norm often works best. “When we’ve parted ways with formula, we’ve done pretty well,” he says. Schamus admits homophobia is an issue, but says it shouldn’t be a deterrent. The problem, he asserts, is not the homophobia itself but “the assumption that homophobia has an effect.”

James Allan Schamus is an American film producer and screenwriter, noted for his work on critically acclaimed independent films such as Safe, The Brothers McMullen and the Academy Award winning film Brokeback Mountain. He is perhaps best known, however, for his longtime collaboration with writer/director Ang Lee, with whom he co-wrote and produced such films as Eat Drink Man Woman, The Ice Storm, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This partnership is notable for having produced eight feature films, no two of which are alike in terms of story.
Schamus is also a published film historian, and currently holds a faculty position at Columbia University. He is currently the head of the film company Focus Features.
He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his bachelor’s degree (1982), master’s degree (1987), and PhD (2003), all in English.
Friends, acquaintances, and even rivals sometimes refer to him as James James, Schamus Schamus, or Seamus Seamus because his first and last names are etymological cognates.