Jason
Schwartzman was born . . .
Wait!
Stop!
Jason
Schwartzman? Who the heck is Jason Schwartzman?
It’s a
question that most people are still likely to ask when
the name is mentioned, even though Jason Schwartzman
made his screen debut twelve years ago, playing a major
role in a film that garnered quite a bit of critical
acclaim. He also stems from a family rich in Hollywood
history, and is currently the star of a series on HBO.
Who is
Jason Schwartzman?
He was
born Jason Francisco Schwartzman on June 26, 1980. His
father, the late Jack Schwartzman, was a film producer
who successfully brought Sean Connery back to his
signature role of James Bond for a final time in 1983’s
Never Say Never Again. His mother is Talia Shire
– yes, the same Talia Shire who played Adrian, the shy,
bespectacled girlfriend, and ultimately the wife, of
Rocky Balboa in all those Sylvester Stallone epics.
Shire, as most film buffs know, hails from the House of
Coppola, as in Francis Ford Coppola, her brother,
director of The Godfather trilogy, as well as
Apocalypse Now! Francis Ford Coppola is Jason
Schwartzman’s uncle, and Sofia Coppola and Nicolas Cage
are his cousins.
With a
background like that, success as an actor seems
pre-destined, but Schwartzman first entered the public
eye as the drummer for Phantom Planet, a rock band for
which he was also a songwriter. Schwartzman remembers
that as a kid, “I felt different. I felt littler. I was
interested in things that were considered dorky, and I
liked girls that never liked me back. Not only did they
not like me back, they liked people really close to me.”
His
reaction to feeling different was to make people laugh.
Those feelings probably came in handy when Schwartzman
decided to audition for the role of the obnoxious,
beret-wearing misfit, Max Fischer, in Wes Anderson’s
1998 indie hit, Rushmore, named after the school
at which Fischer is a hyperactive nerd whose failing
grades do not prevent him from being a leader of men.
Now, you
probably know who Jason Schwartzman is, or at least
remember the poster image of a bespectacled Schwartzman,
red beret on his head, and arm thrust skyward with
clenched fist. Ironically, acting was never one of his
goals. He had been on tour with Phantom Planet for nine
months, “and
to tour in a band has always been my dream, whereas I
only auditioned for Rushmore because I thought it
would make a cool story to tell my friends.”
It turned
out to be a cooler story than even he had anticipated.
Despite having no previous acting experience,
Schwartzman won the part over dozens of competitors by
showing up at the audition wearing a fake Rushmore
patch. Such creativity served him well when acting
opposite the great Bill Murray, who, in the film, is a
patron of the school with eyes for a teacher played by
the lovely Olivia Williams. Schwartzman’s Max Fischer
has eyes for her, too, and despite his youth, proves to
be a wickedly scheming rival.
Rushmore was one of the most critically praised
films of 1998, earning favorable comparisons to 1967’s
The Graduate, which made a star of Dustin
Hoffman. The Graduate is one of several films his
mother recommended he watch before his audition. As he
told The Los Angeles Times, he said, “This
is the first time a movie has made me feel what music
has made me feel like. That kind of warm, ‘Yes, this is
what I'm talking about’ kind of thing — like, Rivers
Cuomo or Kurt Cobain are screaming and you're, ‘Yes, I
know that, I feel this.’”
“Zingy
picture is a winner,” Variety observed in its
trademark lingo, “shot and performed with a precision
and confidence that belie the youth and limited
experience of its participants.” The showbiz bible also
singled out Schwartzman for praise, calling him
“sensational in his film debut as a young guy who
refuses to accept that he’s in way over his head.” Even
critics who had reservations about the film praised his
performance. The Chicago Film Critics Association
nominated him as the Most Promising Actor, although
Chicago’s most prominent critic, Roger Ebert, thought
the film was “torn between conflicting possibilities:
It’s structured like a comedy, but there are undertones
of darker themes, and I almost wish they’d allowed the
plot to lead them into those shadows.”
After
Rushmore, Schwartzman wasn’t exactly a star, but he
found himself in demand for other roles, more often than
not in comedies. He is, as one interviewer observed,
“something of a loon,” always looking for a laugh, which
sets him apart from Uncle Francis, whose few attempts at
comedy fizzled, and mother Talia Shire who is often
intense.
In 2002’s
Slackers, Schwartzman was once again an outsider,
a geek who blackmails some college classmates who have
been cheating on exams into helping him win the hand of
the school’s most popular girl. To Roger Ebert, it was a
“dirty movie. Not a sexy, erotic, steamy or even smutty
movie, but a just plain dirty movie.”
Although
audiences (the rather small one that bothered to see the
film) and critics saw similarities between Ethan of
Slackers and Max Fischer of Rushmore,
Schwartzman thought there were major differences between
the characters. As he told Britain’s The Guardian,
“Max
is an inspiring leader who people want to be like, while
Ethan is a horrible geek. But both have tons of energy
and don't know how to focus it, so they pick a
completely unattainable girl and obsess over her. Both
are outsiders, but Max chooses to turn that into
something positive, while Ethan has turned bitter - he's
been picked on so much that he's mean to everyone before
they're mean to him.”
In Simone, he was very much in the
background as Al Pacino took center stage. “I
almost play a mute,” he said. “I'm a reporter. I just
stand in the back and take notes.”
That proved most fortunate for
Schwartzman when the picture, one of Pacino’s mercifully
rare excursions into comedy, proved a disaster in all
respects.
At around this time, he decided to part
ways with Phantom Planet. Eventually, he resumed his
musical career, recording under the name of Coconut
Records, whose debut album, Nighttiming, was
released in 2007.
In the meantime, the acting roles
continued to come his way. He was cast alongside Steve
Martin and Claire Danes in the dreadful 2005 screen
adaptation of Martin’s novel, Shopgirl. For what
it’s worth, he held his own with Lili Tomlin and Dustin
Hoffman in the oddball I Heart Huckabees. He also
appeared as Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette, a film
directed by his cousin, Sofia Coppola. His oddest
appearance to date may have been as Beatle Ringo Starr
in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a comedy in
which John C. Reilly played a fictional rock hero.
For now, he’s busy with Bored to Death,
an HBO series in which he’s cast as Jonathan Ames, a
frustrated novelist who advertises his services as a
private detective on Craig’s List. Schwartzman is
pleased with the show and the reaction he’s received
from its fans. “This guy stopped me on the street the
other day and said, 'Hey, I love your show, man.'
'Thank you so much.' He’s like, 'I don’t know why my
best friend doesn’t want to watch it. He just can’t get
into it.' I was like, 'That’s cool.' We’re hopefully
making a show for people who would like to get something
different.”
Writing at DVD Talk, critic Jamie S. Rich
notes that Schwartzman has “matured as a screen
presence and the Jonathan Ames role suits him perfectly.
It gives him the ability to tweak the neurotic gestures
that have become his stock in trade, but also to show
how charming he is as a comedic leading man.”
Acting
may not have been his original goal, but now that he’s
into it, he hopes to branch out. Like a lot of actors,
he says, “I too would love to write and direct a movie.
I want to do a play, too. I want to do it all.” Those
ambitions don’t mean he has abandoned music, however. “I
always wanted to be a musician and worked really hard at
it, then all of a sudden I did this film and it came out
first. So then people thought I was like Keanu Reeves
and Russell Crowe, doing this side project as a little
hobby, which was really frustrating.”
He can get frustrated on set, too. “I
will say that when I'm working on set and it's not going
well, I wish I could just be alone in my studio.”
And that is Jason Schwartzman.
by
Brian
W. Fairbanks
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