US magazine, March 1999
Dork Victory

Jason Schwartzman puts a new spin on geek mythology in the acclaimed "Rushmore"

It takes a really cool guy to play a world class geek. That's one reason Jason Schwartzman is perfect as Max Fisher, the sniveling, romantically obsessed, overly extracurricular 15-year-old nerd hero of the sweetly surreal comedy Rushmore. "To be popular in high school, you're not supposed to be into anything -- you're supposed to be bored with life," says Schwartzman, 18. "That's the deal. But Max loves everything about school."
   Schwartzman, a dead ringer for a young Dustin Hoffman, shares his character's impassioned enthusiasm. When he hears a tune by ELO, his favorite band, he starts gyrating unselfconciously. But he needed more than boyish exuberance for his role in Rushmore. He had never acted before, and he was co-starring with his idol Bill Murray. Schwartzman's genes helped. His mom is Oscar nominee Talia Shire (Rocky, The Godfather), his "Uncle Frank" is Oscar winner Francis Ford Coppola, and one of his cousins is Nicolas Cage.
   It was another cousin, actress Sofia Coppola, who got Schwartzman his big break. During a party at Francis Coppola's Napa Valley home in 1997, Sofia Coppola was talking to another guest, a casting director, who was panicked -- she had searched for nine months and hadn't found the perfect actor to star in Rushmore. Coppola, after hearing the character's description, immediately introduced the woman to Schwartzman. "The casting director said, 'It's a story about this kid -- he's eccentric, he writes plays, he's really horny, and he likes older women,'" Schwartzman says. "And I thought, great, sounds like me! So I gave her my number. When I got home that weekend, there was a script lying on my bed. I wasn't looking for anything, but I guess it was looking for me."
   Schwartzman, who at the time was a student at L.A.'s prestigious Windward High School, was nervous about embarking on an acting career: "I didn't want to blow the family business and be really bad and have people go 'Well here's the next one, and he sucks!'" During filming, he would often call his mom at 4 a.m. for advice. "'Mom,'" he recalls, putting on a whiny, freaked-out little kid's voice, "'I have to do this scene where I tell her I love her. What do I do?'" (His mother charged him only a dollar for her services.) But it was the memory of his father, a lawyer and movie producer who died of cancer four years ago, that really enabled Schwartzman to identify with his character. "Max is really driven by the absence of his mother," he says. "He avoids a lot of things in life. That was one of the things I could draw upon, the absence of a parent."
   Despite having grown up in a show-business family in L.A., Schwartzman seems genuinely amazed by the attention he has recently been getting: "Here I am, all dressed up, posing for a photographer!" In fact, he was hoping that his newfound fame would result in a speedier removal of his braces. Wrong. "Wes Anderson [Rushmore's director] says, 'No, no, no -- we're keeping those braces,'" Schwartzman says. "I looked up at the Lord and said, 'Why?' AT some point, based on Max's clothes, the braces, and his glasses, I figured we weren't going for the same thing that Johnny Depp goes for."
   But then again, Schwartzman is deeply ambivalent about playing the leading man. "Acting is finding yourself," he says. "It's an investigation of a human being, and I'm still trying to figure out who I am." Though college is a possibility, Schwartzman's main focus remains his band, Phantom Planet. "I mean, I'm a drummer, I'm happier hiding behind four other guys." Not that the group is a bunch of kids fooling around in a garage. Its first CD, Phantom Planet is Missing, just came out on Geffen Records, and the band is currently gigging. "I'm 18, with four other guys, going around in a little van, with all the instruments in back, and I'm in a movie?" Schwartzman says. "How much more fun could you have?" Well, a girlfriend would be good. But Schwartzman doesn't think starring in Rushmore is going to help much in that department. "Yeah, right," he says, imagining the reaction of girls at the multiplex. "'That guy's real hot: 5-foot-5, braces, glasses, tight suit. How can you lose?'" Schwartzman pauses, his timing stand-up-comic keen. "Unless," he says, "Bill Gates' daughter is around my age."
Chris Smith


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