MOVIES - Jan. 3, 1999

Jason Schwartzman

Film actor, musician, 18

What he’s done: Growing up in Los Angeles, the son of actress Talia Shire and the late film producer Jack Schwartzman, and nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola, Schwartzman says he spent more time playing Little League than on movie sets. His passion was always music. He started his first band, the New Born Babies, in third grade. At age 14, he formed Phantom Planet. Schwartzman plays drums in the band, which put out its first album last year on Geffen Records. “Our first gig was at the Dragonfly on a Sunday and I had a geology test the next day,” he recalls. “The other bands were totally condescending, saying, ‘We didn’t know they let 10-year-olds in here.’ We went on at midnight and after we starting playing, they shut up pretty fast. ‘Course I failed my geology test.”

Outlook for ‘99: Schwartzman makes his acting debut as the star of “Rushmore,” a comedy about a geeky prep-school impresario who stages theatrical extravaganzas, captains every obscure club in school and battles Bill Murray for the heart of a fetching young teacher. The Disney film, which opens nationwide Feb. 5, has already earned Schwartzman rave reviews. (It opened for a week in December for Oscar consideration.) “I wasn’t looking for the part,” he says. “I’d never acted before in my life. I’d never even read a script before.” A casting director spotted him at a family party in Napa and flew Schwartzman to Los Angeles to audition for director Wes Anderson. He arrived wearing a blazer with a homemade Rushmore Academy patch. “There were 20 other kids there with blazers,” he recalls. “But I was the only one with a patch, so I knew I was home free.” Schwartzman says he has no specific plans for any future films. “But I walked away from the movie with a good taste in my mouth, so I’d do it again.” He first watched the movie with his mother and uncle. “Uncle Francis said, ‘You reminded me a lot of me when I was your age, except you’re a lot skinnier.’ ”

Mike Tollin and Brian Robbins

Film and TV producer-directors,

43 and 35

What they’ve done: Partners for the past five years, Tollin and Robbins teamed up in 1993 to make “Hardwood Dreams,” a documentary Tollin directed about Los Angeles’ Morningside High basketball team. Since then, they have generated a wide array of TV and film projects, inspired by their passion for sports, music and youth culture. After “Dreams,” Tollin directed “Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream,” a documentary that was nominated for an Oscar, while Robbins was at the helm of “The Show,” a documentary about the world of hip-hop. They have five shows airing on TV, including “Arli$$,” a sports-agent satire the duo created with Robert Wuhl that is in its fourth year on HBO. The team also has several shows on Nickelodeon, including “Kenan and Kel” and “Sports Theater,” a series hosted by Shaquille O’Neal about young athletes. Their first feature film, “Good Burger,” was a low-budget hit for Nickelodeon Movies. “We came at the industry from very different places, since I was an actor and Mike was a documentary filmmaker,” says Robbins, who starred on ABC-TV’s “Head of the Class.” “But we have a very similar sensibility--we want to tell stories that have a lot of heart.”

Outlook for ‘99: The duo’s new film, “Varsity Blues,” a lively drama set in the world of Texas high school football, is due Jan. 15 from MTV Films. Directed by Robbins and produced by Tollin, the movie co-stars James Van Der Beek (“Dawson’s Creek”) as a brainy backup quarterback who proves himself by standing up to a tyrannical coach, played by Jon Voight. After Paramount Pictures chief Sherry Lansing saw an early cut of the film, she hired the duo to make “Hardball,” a film due to start shooting later this year about a man whose life is changed by a year spent coaching an inner-city baseball team. They are also developing “Radio,” a film based on a magazine article about a mentally disabled man who is adopted as the mascot of a South Carolina high school football team. “We like telling stories that are from real life,” says Tollin. “Some are comic, some are drama. We end up blurring the lines a lot, because that’s the way it works in real life.”

Malcolm D. Lee

Writer-director, 28

What he’s done: Having worked on his cousin Spike Lee’s movies since his senior year of high school and after getting a master’s degree in film from New York University, not to mention studying for a year on a Disney screenwriting fellowship, Lee thought he knew all he needed to know about making movies. His older cousin begged to differ. “He lit into me like something fierce,” Lee says. “He told me I didn’t know how to make a movie.” The words stung at the time. But now that he’s made his first feature film, he realizes his cousin was right. “You don’t know how hard it is until you do it,” he says. Previously he’d made only a short, “Morning Side Prep,” a partly autobiographical movie about young African Americans trying to walk a line between black and white culture. The movie aired on Showtime and won an award from the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and became Lee’s calling card in Hollywood.

Outlook for ‘99: Universal will release “Best Man” in late summer or early fall. The movie, produced by Spike Lee’s production company, is a romantic comedy inspired by such films as “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” with elements of “The Big Chill,” Lee says. It’s about the predicament that develops when a commitment-shy writer tries to hide that he once had an affair with his best friend’s wife-to-be. The secret is hard to keep, though, because he wrote about it in his about-to-be-released novel. Lee says that in all of the six scripts he has written he looks at serious subjects in a humorous light. And they all deal with what he hopes are universal topics while featuring middle-class characters “who just happen to be black.” “They’re all stories people can certainly relate to,” he says. “At least I hope so.”

Thandie Newton

Actress, 26

What she’s done: A film actress since age 16, when she starred in the Australian film “Flirting,” Newton portrayed the title character in “Beloved,” a performance that polarized critics while winning her the best notices of her career. “I was terrified before I did it,” she says. “Far be it for me to fill in gaps for Toni Morrison.” After she spent months researching the role, she says she still had difficulty until director Jonathan Demme gave her carte blanche to “do whatever I wanted.” That’s when the character took over, she says. “I just became all about instinct.” In one spontaneous bit of improvisation she put a live chick in her mouth. Raised in Zambia and England by a Zimbabwean mother and British father, Newton makes her home in London, where she just bought a house with her husband of six months. Among her other movies are “Jefferson in Paris,” “Interview With the Vampire” and “Gridlock’d.”

Outlook for ‘99: In February, Newton begins shooting “Mission: Impossible 2” with Tom Cruise and director John Woo in Spain and Sydney, Australia. She plays the role of an international thief. In April the Bernardo Bertolucci film “Besieged” will be released in America. The film was shot in Rome originally for Italian television but won theatrical distribution after being well received at festivals. Newton appears in almost every scene and says she speaks Italian, English and Swahili in the movie. David Thewlis co-stars. Newton says she is happy with the international career she’s forging. “People in America think I’m American,” she says, “and people in England think I’m African, which I am, half African, or Australian. . . . I never know which country I’m going to be working in. I just keep my passport up to date.”