Jason Schwartz­man: ​‘Work­ing with Wes so long, it real­ly has become like we’re brothers’

In 1998 Wes Ander­son cast Jason Schwartz­man as pre­co­cious high school­er Max Fis­ch­er in his break­out com­e­dy Rush­more. Twen­ty-five years lat­er, after remain­ing firm friends and con­stant col­lab­o­ra­tors, they reunite for Aster­oid City, in which Schwartz­man plays the dual role of Augie Steen­beck, a griev­ing hus­band and slight­ly har­ried father, and Jones Hall, a James Dean-esque young actor.

LWLies: Wes wrote Aster­oid City with you in mind. Can you tell me about the first time he told you he was work­ing on it, and how the film devel­oped from there?

Schwartz­man: It would’ve been July 2019 that he men­tioned he was work­ing on some­thing with Roman [Cop­po­la] that he had me in mind for. He didn’t say much about it at that point, but he was excit­ed. Maybe a month or two lat­er – I was read­ing a book about Elia Kazan, and he wrote me an email say­ing, ​‘I can’t say much, but look into Kazan.’ And I said, ​‘That’s crazy, I have a book about him right here next to my bed!’ And then I was in Chica­go, read­ing a book about Stan­ley Kubrick, and Wes said, ​‘Think about Kubrick now, not Kazan,’ and I said, ​‘That’s even cra­zier! I have a book about him right here.’ So there was an odd syn­chronic­i­ty with the ref­er­ences, but I still had no idea. I was like, ​‘Am I going to play a director?’

Then lat­er that year, he sent me the script, and just said, ​‘Here it is! This is what we’ve been work­ing on. Your character’s Augie.’ It does mean so much because not only have I been work­ing with Wes now for a num­ber of years in an act­ing capac­i­ty, but I’ve also joined him on a few of the writ­ing adven­tures, so I know how hard he works on scripts, and how the script itself is meant to be an arte­fact on its own. There’s dif­fer­ent kinds of scripts, some can be very vague or maybe more use­ful just to the direc­tor, but Wes’s are very spe­cif­ic and unique to him, in that they’re very detailed and exact­ly the movie that he’s going to make. So much effort goes into the word­ing and just mak­ing it a won­der­ful read­ing expe­ri­ence as well.

What kind of a col­lab­o­ra­tor is Wes?

Know­ing what kind of work he puts into his scripts, just before I even opened it, I felt this over­whelm­ing moment of excite­ment and grat­i­tude. Read­ing it as a fan is one thing, and read­ing it from the per­spec­tive of, ​‘I’m going to play a part in this movie,’ try­ing to absorb it on that lev­el as well, was just such a thrill. I thought it was just so beau­ti­ful and unique and won­der­ful, and I was laugh­ing so hard at it. I could just imag­ine Wes and Roman writ­ing it. Though it was also real­ly nerve wrack­ing because it’s a great role in a great sto­ry, and imme­di­ate­ly I’m try­ing not to get too pan­icked about doing the best job I can. Know­ing and work­ing with Wes so long, it real­ly has become like we’re broth­ers. And broth­ers can call each oth­er out and they know when the oth­er per­son is not going all the way they can go.

That can be hard, hav­ing that lev­el of per­cep­tion from a col­lab­o­ra­tor and know­ing that they’re going to make you work hard­er than you have in your entire life.

Exact­ly. You know when kids play in sports teams, but their dad is the coach? I always won­der what that expe­ri­ence is like, hav­ing to ride to work with the coach, and call them dad, and then when you get to prac­tise you call them Coach, and they maybe call you by your fam­i­ly name. From what I saw grow­ing up, all the play­ers on the team are held to a cer­tain lev­el. Anoth­er rea­son is it’s such an enjoy­able expe­ri­ence to get to work on these movies because you see that every depart­ment is being chal­lenged in this way. Every­one has a new set of things that they’re try­ing to accom­plish and achieve. This feel­ing of being respon­si­ble is some­thing that every­one who works with Wes feels.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Bob Yeo­man said that you had a whole cre­ative process and mantra when it came to the role of Augie, espe­cial­ly with the Kubrick influence.

Wes and I were try­ing to fig­ure out what it was about Kubrick that we were so tak­en with. Is it his phys­i­cal­i­ty? Is it the sound of his voice? I was try­ing to find the ​‘thing’ that Wes was respond­ing to. There was some­thing about the way that Kubrick speaks that remind­ed me a lot of my father, who was also from New York at a sim­i­lar time. It’s like a rhythm. Imme­di­ate­ly I tried to find audio cas­settes and old fam­i­ly videos where he’s talk­ing from behind the cam­era. I was try­ing to hear the same Kubrick sound.

Then the joy­ous expe­ri­ence was work­ing with this dialect coach called Tan­era Mar­shall. I had met her on Far­go – where she had been work­ing on that with Jessie Buck­ley and Ben Whishaw, and I was just blown away by the work that they were doing and the approach to cre­at­ing a voice and how it informs the whole char­ac­ter. So before we even had a start date, I said to Tan­era, ​‘I can’t even tell you any­thing real­ly about the movie yet, but what is it about Kubrick’s voice that makes him talk like this?’ With­out even hav­ing a script she was try­ing to break down his voice, and we start­ed exper­i­ment­ing. I would get a few parts of the script and work on them with Tan­era and then record them and send them to Wes and be like, ​‘What do you think of this?’, because Wes has nev­er asked me to do a voice, so imme­di­ate­ly off the bat that was a whole new ter­ri­to­ry for us. So the thing we land­ed upon is this: Tan­era said, ​‘Stan­ley Kubrick had this thing about how he didn’t move his face a lot.’ And I move my face a lot – like a lot a lot.

Yeah, same.

Watch­ing his videos, I start­ed to notice, his mouth moves but noth­ing else is mov­ing at times. And what is that? How’s he doing that? So I tried all these dif­fer­ent exer­cis­es – it was nuts. But then one time I was sit­ting at my house and my wife had put on a clay facial mask thing and was like, ​‘I can’t talk right now because my face is hard­en­ing,’ and I thought, ​‘Holy smokes! I won­der if that would be help­ful.’ So I took the most intense clay mask I could find and put it all over my face and let it hard­en, then when it hard­ened I had no idea how to move the mus­cles in my face any­more. I was total­ly still, and it all of a sud­den clicked.

So I sent Wes a video of my face with clay all over and said, ​‘Don’t look at the clay obvi­ous­ly, but the sounds – I think that this might be it, this feels great.’ After a while of search­ing, I felt like I was onto some­thing, get­ting close to what Wes want­ed. And also my skin felt so nice after­wards, side note. So Wes agreed, he thought it was real­ly good, so I was try­ing with Tan­era and she was like, ​‘You can achieve this through your exer­cis­es,’ but I was like, ​‘Jeez, I’m strug­gling with­out the clay, what am I gonna do? Is there a way to freeze my face?’

Botox?

Botox! Or Novo­caine or… what can I do? And our incred­i­ble make up depart­ment had this idea, they said, ​‘We can try to get things made for your teeth that kin­da keep your jaw closed.’ And we were like, ​‘Let’s try it.’ It was kind of a long shot but I went and I got these things made for my teeth that you put sor­ta where your molars are – it’s like an Invisalign with a top and a bot­tom, so your back jaw in the left and the right is basi­cal­ly locked, so you can’t open it com­plete­ly. And it worked – it was real­ly help­ful. It just total­ly changed the whole thing, not hav­ing to open my mouth com­plete­ly. I mean a real­ly great actor could’ve done it with­out den­tal assis­tance I’m sure, but…

This is the first time you’ve played a father since you had kids of your own, right?

Yeah, but it’s crazy because I have a teenage son – that one I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced before! Jake Ryan, who plays my son in the movie, is as old as I was when I was doing Rushmore.

Did that feel surreal?

So sur­re­al. But it was won­der­ful, par­tic­u­lar­ly play­ing a father dur­ing a cer­tain era in a made-up time, in a play that’s not real. I spent a lot of time try­ing to fig­ure out what the laws of this world were and try­ing to adhere to them. I’d say I brought some of what I’ve learnt about being a father to it just inher­ent­ly, but it’s a dif­fer­ent kind of dad. I, for instance, prob­a­bly wouldn’t have wait­ed for so long to tell my chil­dren that their moth­er was dead.

Would’ve led with that, maybe?

Yeah I think they would’ve known it was gonna hap­pen. But anoth­er incred­i­ble sim­i­lar­i­ty that I noticed read­ing the script is that when my father’s moth­er passed away, his dad did not tell them until like a month after, and they’d moved to Brook­lyn from LA. And only then did he tell them! And tru­ly Wes did not know that. I was like, ​‘Do you know that this was exact­ly what had hap­pened in my family?’

All the best bits of Wes Ander­son are those that seem absurd, but you as a view­er or, in this case, act­ing in the film, you know that it’s so much clos­er to home than a lot of peo­ple think.

Yeah, there’s none of this that felt far away. Even doing this voice which remind­ed me of how my dad talked, it was so per­son­al. That’s the won­der­ful thing about Wes’s movies – I like the way you can bring your own life expe­ri­ence and per­son­al his­to­ry to these movies with­out it hav­ing to be the whole thing. It’s about bring­ing these pieces of you – and every­one in the movie is bring­ing these pieces. It’s like if some­one said, ​‘Go to your house and look through all the draw­ers, and find five things that fit these mea­sure­ments,’ and every­one would bring some­thing dif­fer­ent, like a bot­tle cap, and a pho­to, and a piece of lace, and their bro­ken glass­es, or what­ev­er, and it’s like that all gets glued togeth­er to become the movie.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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