“I felt terrible”: the co-star Jason Schwartzman apologised to for being an “asshole”
Jason Schwartzman has such a specific style of humour that’s channelled by Wes Anderson that it is always interesting to see him work with other filmmakers.
The characters played by Schwartzman in Anderson films like Asteroid City, Rushmore, The Darjeeling Limited, and The French Dispatch manage to be eccentric, but not irritating, even if his other roles seem to swing harder in a different direction.
None of the inherent charisma within Schwartzman is present within Listen Up Philip, though, a dark comedy written and directed by Alex Ross Perry. Schwartzman stars as Philip Lewis Friedman, a novelist who is coming off the success of his first book, which has given him an outsized ego. Philip is so convinced of his own genius that he speaks pretentiously and insults the intelligence of everyone he crosses paths with, including his girlfriend, Ashley Kane, played by Elisabeth Moss.
Schwartzman has always been an ambitious actor who has been willing to play “difficult” characters, but he admitted to being apprehensive about having to become so nasty for a role.
“I had the same reaction from reading the script that most people have watching the movie,” Schwartzman said. “The relentlessness of the character is almost claustrophobic, and I wondered, ‘Does there need to be something else here?’, but it was clear very, very quickly that any attempt to lighten him would make him seem worse.”
While Schwartzman understood that he needed to offer no redeeming qualities within his performance, he did admit that it became difficult to say such venomous lines to co-stars whom he genuinely admired. “It was fun in a way because you rarely in your life get to be such an asshole,” Schwartzman said.
“I did keep apologising between takes, especially to Elisabeth Moss. I felt terrible for her.”
Jason Schwartzman
It should be noted that Schwartzman regretted playing an asshole, not being one. While he found it difficult to step into the mindset of someone who speaks so inconsiderately, it was not a trait he carried off-screen. Schwartzman has never shown any interest in method acting, which may be part of why he is so convincing in those roles. Directors know they do not have to worry about him adopting the same persona in real life.
While Moss may have been on the receiving end of this behaviour in Listen Up Philip, she got the opportunity to be an instigator during a different collaboration with Perry. The 2019 music drama Her Smell cast Moss as an eccentric punk rocker who is forced to reconsider her life’s choices after a battle with addiction and the collapse of her family, and like Listen Up Philip, it’s an all-consuming endurance test of a film that forces the viewer to sit with its protagonist’s faults.
The line between being authentic and obnoxious is one that Perry has walked with nearly all of his films, as many focus on characters who are ignorant, lack self-awareness, or have feelings of intellectual superiority. His work is without a doubt an acquired taste, but his consistent ability to get cast members who are as talented as Schwartzman and Moss involved in his films indicates that Perry must be doing something right.
