“It was the best time of my life” – Jason Schwartz­man on Rush­more at 20

“It’s pret­ty wild that so much time has gone by,” admits Jason Schwartz­man, clear­ly a lit­tle tak­en aback by the real­i­sa­tion that 20 years have passed since he made his screen debut in Wes Anderson’s Rush­more. Then again, it was a piv­otal point in his life. While most of us spend our late teens try­ing our best to sur­vive high-school, a 17-year-old Schwartz­man was poised to catch his big break. Not only that but this key year would also see him forge one of his clos­est and longest friend­ships. Sud­den­ly, 1998 feels like it was only yesterday.

Wes Anderson’s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sec­ond fea­ture is a com­ing-of-age tale with a high­school twist. It fol­lows Max Fish­er (Schwartz­man), an enthu­si­as­tic but fail­ing stu­dent whose life is derailed when he falls for ele­men­tary school teacher Rose­mary Cross (Olivia Williams) and enters into a bit­ter feud with wealthy but mis­er­able indus­tri­al­ist Her­man Bloom (Bill Mur­ray). The film became Anderson’s call­ing card, intro­duc­ing main­stream audi­ences to his trade­mark whim­si­cal flair while kick-start­ing a fruit­ful cre­ative part­ner­ship that has since gone from strength to strength.

But the whole thing very near­ly didn’t hap­pen at all. Back in ​’97, a keen-eyed cast­ing agent spot­ted Schwartz­man at a par­ty in Los Ange­les, iron­i­cal­ly dressed to the nines in a tuxe­do and tails. A meet­ing with Ander­son was quick­ly sched­uled and the rest, as they say, is his­to­ry. Has Schwartz­man giv­en any thought to how things might have played out had he decid­ed to stay home that night? ​“Yes, all the time,” he admits. ​“The par­ty, audi­tion­ing, the very fact that they called me back – it was so remark­able and strange. When I read it my first thought was ​‘Who­ev­er gets to do this is going to have so much fun’. I just remem­ber think­ing, ​‘This is every­thing that I think is fun­ny, in one movie’.”

He con­tin­ues: ​“I could relate to many aspects of the char­ac­ter. When I was 15 I had writ­ten and direct­ed a play. I also wasn’t great at school but I was enthu­si­as­tic for it and falling for some­one much old­er than me. I felt like I was some­how in a love tri­an­gle – I don’t know if the oth­er two peo­ple even realised they were a part of it – but I relat­ed to the char­ac­ter on those lev­els.” Yet despite impress­ing the film’s cast­ing direc­tor, the role wasn’t Schwartzman’s quite yet.

In order to bag it, he had to pull out the big guns. Like mak­ing his own audi­tion cos­tume, com­plete with a makeshift Rush­more Acad­e­my patch. ​“I thought, ​‘I’m not going to get this part but at least I’ll be remem­bered’,” he smiles, ​“but it’s fun­ny, when I went in, there were oth­er kids who had done the same thing which was dis­heart­en­ing – but the one thing I had that the oth­ers didn’t was the patch.

“I’d nev­er audi­tioned for any­thing before in my life and I was quite ner­vous,” remem­bers Schwartz­man, reliv­ing the day he first met Ander­son. ​“I was sit­ting in this room with all these oth­er actors who were going in one by one, almost like how para­troop­ers line-up in an air­plane and jump out. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know how old he would be or what he would look like and all these oth­er peo­ple were so pro­fes­sion­al. I just thought, ​‘Well, let’s go in, show him the patch and get out­ta there’. I cared so much that my defence mech­a­nism was to try to be real­ly fast.”

As soon as he entered the audi­tion room, how­ev­er, things quick­ly changed. ​“When I went in, I remem­ber Wes had on Con­verse One Star san­dals, which I’ve nev­er seen since, on Wes or any­body. We start­ed talk­ing about our shoes, then about ​‘Pinker­ton’, the Weez­er album. I think we must have talked for about 20 min­utes or some­thing and I total­ly for­got about the audi­tion,” laughs Schwartz­man. ​“It was like sit­ting with a new friend, or some­body who I wished could be my friend. Talk­ing with him relaxed me as a per­son. He put me at ease. I real­ly feel like if it was some­body else who had read with me, who knows what would have happened.”

Hav­ing secured the role and made a new friend in the process, Schwartzman’s next task was to meet the co-star of his debut movie, Bill Mur­ray. No big­gie. ​“Well, that was scary,” Schwartz­man reflects. ​“I’d got­ten so com­fort­able around Wes and then Bill arrived, and Bill’s an icon. He’s some­one who I grew up watch­ing. His movies meant so much to me and now all of a sud­den I’m work­ing along­side him. We have the same job now. When Bill got there I remem­ber being very blown away. I think I was starstruck – and I still am. I’ve known him as long as Wes and I still can’t believe he recog­nis­es me. I remem­ber being very ner­vous in the beginning.”

Luck­i­ly, these beginner’s jit­ters quick­ly sub­sided, and as the shoot devel­oped, so did Anderson’s uncon­ven­tion­al film­mak­ing style, as Schwartz­man recalls. ​“We would shoot scenes fast: ​‘Alright we did that one in 56 sec­onds, can we do it in 53?’ Bill was real­ly help­ful with that. I also remem­ber just how much love Wes was putting into every­thing. He was just so excit­ed about the work. There was a day before we were done shoot­ing where we had Go Karts on set. He took them and said ​‘Let’s go, get in!’ so I jumped into a go-kart and we rode off and drove all around the back streets of Hous­ton.” Schwartz­man con­tin­ues, ​“Wes wants to expe­ri­ence these things and for it to be friends and fam­i­ly and he’s excit­ed about every­thing that goes along with his movies, which I think is why he wants to make them. That look on his face when he said ​‘Let’s go!’, I still see that per­son when we’re work­ing. He loves it so much.”

Twen­ty years on, it’s clear that Schwartz­man still holds a spe­cial place in his heart for Rush­more. ​“The movie is every­thing to me,” he says. ​“It was the begin­ning of a whole new life. I got these won­der­ful friends and expe­ri­ences from it. It’s more than a movie for me. To think 20 years have gone by, real­ly what I think about is just that I’m still friends with Wes and work­ing with him and so many of the peo­ple that worked on that film. To be friends with any­body for 20 years is an amaz­ing accom­plish­ment. Wes real­ly came into my life at that time and showed me movies and told me about dif­fer­ent actors and I guess that was the first time that an adult real­ly did that for me and was gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in what I had to say.

“When a 17 year old comes up to me today and says they’ve seen the movie and it means a lot to them, it real­ly res­onates because I was exact­ly that age and the per­son wasn’t even alive when we were mak­ing it. That’s kind of a big deal for me. I remem­ber being a teenag­er and not know­ing what the movie would look like but just think­ing ​‘Wow… We’re mak­ing some­thing here. We’re cre­at­ing some­thing. It was prob­a­bly the best time of my life.”