Jason Schwartzman is a sharp and witty presence onscreen, yet somehow our interview begins with pure old-fashioned slapstick. In a hotel room at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, he is attempting to turn off the television but only succeeds in pushing the volume louder and louder. “GAME TIME,” an announcer booms. “No, it’s not game time,” Schwartzman mutters back, still scrabbling around the set to silence the racket. The remote control has vanished, as remote controls are wont to do. Eventually, he gives up and yanks out the plug. “Pulled the power!” he grins triumphantly. “It’ll probably be a pain in the ass to set that up again, but I had to kill it somehow.”
Now that the recalcitrant device has been dealt with he takes a seat, dapper in a navy blue suit and tie with a pale pink shirt. His hair is slicked back above a neat moustache, as if he might be about to audition to play Clark Gable. A bundle of nervous energy, he still looks younger than his 39 years, but less boyish than he did in his floppy-haired youth. “I’m not cute like you,” Seth Rogen’s character lamented to Schwartzman in Funny People a decade ago, “I don’t look like Jackson Browne.”
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 