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Crazy Like a Fox

Hipster actor Jason Schwartzman gets schooled on his gay fans and the Hollywood closet and reveals why he’s never played a gay role.


JASON SCHWARTZMAN X390 (COURTESY HBO) | ADVOCATE.COM

Since his debut as an eccentric teenage oddball in Wes Anderson’s breakthrough 1998 film Rushmore, Jason Schwartzman has shined as slackers and square pegs in offbeat films such as Shopgirl, Marie Antoinette, and The Darjeeling Limited. Now starring as an awkwardly amateur private dick in HBO’s noirish comedy series Bored to Death, the 29-year-old Coppola kinsman also voices a peculiar pubescent fox in Anderson’s stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book Fantastic Mr. Fox, which opens November 13 in limited release. Because his art imitates his life, Schwartzman, who moonlights as the indie pop-rock act Coconut Records, shares his self-deprecating views on sexuality, style, and surviving high school.

Advocate.com: I can’t believe I’m talking to one of the “10 Most Stylish Men in America,” according to GQ.
Jason Schwartzman: [Laughs] That was very flattering and awesome, but it’s also hysterical. When you felt like I felt in high school, the whole thing that’s occurring right now -- GQ, getting my picture taken, talking to you -- is bizarre. It feels weird to do interviews because I don’t understand why anyone wants to talk to me. There were all these other guys in high school that were bigger, funnier, and more handsome than I was, so why do you care about what I have to say? You should ask them.

I’ll get their contact info later, but let’s explore this low self-esteem of yours. I was going to draw parallels between your misfit characters like Rushmore’s Max Fischer to gay people who grew up feeling like outcasts, but it sounds like you have similar outsider insecurities.
I had friends growing up, but I struggled to feel like I really fit in. If I was invited to a party, I would just end up sitting on a couch or standing in a corner by myself. But it wasn’t like I was getting beat up or anything. I wish I had gotten beaten up, because at least that would’ve justified why I felt so homesick all the time, even though I was home.

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Reader Comments
  • Name: Frank
    Date posted: 11/16/2009 3:21:21 AM
    Hometown: Basel

    Comment:

    "kissing straight ass"...boy, you need to get a life. I f you really want to get something done, then stop reading glossy mags like the Advocate, if they rile you up this much and get out there. And randomly bashing a random straight guy, just because the magazine decided to interview him?..? Fantastic! Well done. I guess you call that "gay activism". I don't side with you. Never with anyone like you. Just because we're both gay doesn't make me relate. Don't tell anyone other gay person what to be interested in, who to like or what to wear, for that matter. Go preach your segregation elsewhere.

  • Name: Big Mike
    Date posted: 11/16/2009 12:21:34 AM
    Hometown: San Diego, California

    Comment:

    I get so sick and tired of the Advocate kissing straight ass I do not know what to do. Especially when homophobia still exist, and much of the straight world still believes it has the right to dictate to us how we live our lives. Do not get me started on gay marriage, and I could go on. So stop with the ass kissing, and get on with advocating for those of us who still struggle for equal rights.

  • Name: sean
    Date posted: 11/14/2009 7:52:46 PM
    Hometown: Nowhere

    Comment:

    wow, lighten up people. What the heck is wrong with the advocate interviewing straight people? I'm gay and like to read about straight celebs and politicians and such though the filter of a gay magazine.

  • Name: JS Fantastic
    Date posted: 11/14/2009 3:50:24 PM
    Hometown: Astoria, NY

    Comment:

    qjersey, please stick to spreading your negativity on queerty, where it belongs. though i'd love to know which new questions you'd have asked. quit telling. this was a fine interview, advocate. don't tell people in other professions how to do theit jobs - no one comes to where you work and knocks the d's out of your mouth.

  • Name: qjersey
    Date posted: 11/14/2009 8:10:12 AM
    Hometown: JERSEY!

    Comment:

    Oh dear, here the Advocate goes again. This interview is so "cut and paste" and typical of Advocate interviews with hetero celebrities over the last 20 years. Give it up, learn to ask new questions already or interview celebrities who clearly ally themselves with the LGBT communities.

  • Name: Frank
    Date posted: 11/14/2009 2:05:59 AM
    Hometown: Basel

    Comment:

    Will you just relax? I can only relate to offbeat guys like Schwartzman and do not care whether they are gay or straight or vegisexual. besides, most of my straight friends think he's gay anyway. Please spare us your definition of who's allowed to get print space in here and who doesn't. It's not for you to say who we're supposed to find attractive either. It's people like you that make me ashamed of being gay.

  • Name: Pat
    Date posted: 11/13/2009 11:34:02 PM
    Hometown: Burlington, VT

    Comment:

    LOL uh, relax, queen. this interview is an online exclusive - so it didn't take up any valuable column space. luckily, there's plenty of room on the Interweb. but maybe you should actually read the article before flipping out, you pug-ugly SOB. This interview was hilarious.

  • Name: Jack
    Date posted: 11/13/2009 9:21:14 PM
    Hometown: San Francisco

    Comment:

    Why is a truly pug-ugly-nerd heterosexual actor like Jason Schwartzman being interviewed when your paper could spend the precious column inches on GLBT men and women pro-actively sweating to beat the media odds in their contributions to the writing, photography, performance art of our culture? Why is "The Advocate" obsessed with TV and not with the written word where GLBT folks voice our tribe's ideas without sucking up to corporate TV culture? I love HBO, but reeee-allllly! Who do you have to eff around here to get covered in "The Advocate"? Shame on you for wasting column inches that could promote our own culture.

  • Name: Geoffrey Cecil
    Date posted: 11/13/2009 1:54:13 PM
    Hometown: Fort Worth

    Comment:

    The point of life from the movie Mame, "Live, Life, Live!"And yes it is nice to read gay frinedly articles from the "biz" in Hollywood.

  • Name: Corey
    Date posted: 11/13/2009 9:29:03 AM
    Hometown: Ottawa

    Comment:

    I find it annoying that the gay press still has this childish obsession with flirting with straight guys. Really? This is journalism?



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