larry king now it's jason schwartzman on his latest role in the awards contenders saving mr banks i've ever seen the screening going hey this is like a movie right off the telephone like call my friend and say hey there's a movie that i'm in and coming out they'll say i saw that guy up on the screen i thought i had to be up there well i never had that feeling as a kid i never thought i have to be up there i never thought i really could be up there to seem so much larger than life plus becoming so super that you would not return to this show. glendale is never too far away from me that's all ahead on larry king now clearly all ahead on larry king. welcome to larry king now

a pleasure to have as our special guest jason schwartzman the actor writer musician who does it all. from such films as moonrise kingdom and the h.b.o. series bored to death but he'll for ever be remembered as max fisher the ambitious high school with hearts and wes anderson's rushmore now he stars is the musical legend richard sherman in saving mr banks which is sure to be oscar bait when it hits the others this holiday season i met tom hanks so many times sorman new york in a play and at the end of the play told me you're going to love this movie saving mr banks he plays walt disney a dead person you play a living person you know richard wright and i know recession know about bob died yeah but i know richard in fact we had a little house party my father monos and better work with we had a house party with richard played all the music from the old songs talked about working with disney did like a one man stand in this house. amazin oh he's he old is about eighty seven i

believe. and he's just he's the most vibrant optimistic wonderful man i've ever i've ever come across and he he was so kind to me in fact he let me come to his house anytime i wanted to in preparation for the role and he would entertain me you know i would sit we would talk for hours then he would go to the piano and he taught me how to play all of the all of the songs for this is hard to play someone who you know yeah i mean i think it's i was very nervous going into it because. he is a legend you know and and i wanted to i felt responsible to. him correctly and i was quite nervous but he said the greatest thing to me when i went to his house he said actually two things that made it feel less daunting one was he said don't worry i've already done everything so you just be you doing the

things that i did that was very nice and then the other thing he said was just love music and you'll be all right. and you know obviously i think it is more complicated than that but those were really nice things to say to me because the idea behind it was just relax and then maybe feel nicely to the music and. yeah it's interesting though because like i saw an interview with him and his brother bob and they said what comes first lyrics or music and they said neither the idea and they said that they would sit there for hours and hours and hours talking about what the song needed to be and what purpose it served in the movie and i think that's why those songs are so deeply rooted in a sense because they are beyond words and beyond music they are communicating something more profound yet the b.g. uses them up was super cold for a jewish. you do i know there's no other. i know there isn't you play the piano you

sing in the film right yeah. well john lee hancock who is the director of the movie . he is he is thing that he said to me when we first met was i would like you to try to learn all the songs as best as possible and and i'd like to play them live in the room as much as possible some things will have to be to play back but the reason he said that was because well two reasons one is he said inevitably will make some errors and hit some wrong notes which i want in the movie and second of all. a lot of the scenes were i'm playing the piano and we're bob is next to me and we're singing right we're sort of selling our songs to p.l. travers who's played by abba thompson and she is having many issues with us she doesn't want the movie to be a musical and she's cutting us off all the time and john lee hancock felt that if the songs were done to play back then emma would be having to cut us off at the same place every time and it wouldn't feel natural so he said if you can learn the

songs then you just play them and she will cut you off whenever she feels like it's necessary and so what i did was i went on about a mary poppins song book and i started to sort of learn the songs based on that but it was pretty clear early on that like the songbook for the most part is sort of like a novelization is to a movie it's someone who's listened to the final score and they've transcribed it and then sort of like distilled it into they've taken all the arrangements of put it into something that you could play you know if you're having like a mary poppins themed party i guess in your house you can play of songs for people but it wasn't true to the way that richard sherman would have been playing the songs at this time and so i asked richard i said richard what do i do buy these songs you know it doesn't sound like you and he gave me all of his demos for the movie which is amazing because i love demos as well live interviews demos and. he gave me his demos and he gave me all the hours of. of the recorded conversations

with p.l. travers because they were all on tape she insisted and i took the tapes and then i gave them to my piano teacher this guy named elmo peeler and he spent a week transcribing all of the songs as they were played on these in these rough versions and then i learned those versions and really it's not like how high learning is versions of like to be cool or something. if maybe if that isn't even that cool that shows you how dorky i am like how i learned the original over the but. but it was it was for two reasons one. it helped me i think get into the character of richard because like if you're playing walt disney for instance tom hanks it was very necessary that he have the accent of walt disney so i guess in my way this is sort of the accent of richard sherman and the other thing is richard was on set every day and i wanted just just for him to know that the songs were being played correctly. because he was it i was just more like

a sort of respect out of respect for him and also you a perfectionist. sometimes not you know but it was so nice and richard was we had so much fun together when i went to his house like he said like he's the first time we went to his house he said play the piano for me and i said mr schoen i don't play you and he said just play because it will help me get to know you and for the next half hour we just went back and forth showing each other songs that we like beatle songs beach boys songs and i said to him i'm so sorry mr sherman i'm just really i know this is we're just dorking out right now on all of these. court progressions and he said are you kidding me i can dork out with you all afternoon saving mr banks is the story of the making of mary poppins travers wrote it disney produced it you did a lot they did a lot of disneyland yeah we shot at disneyland well i'm not in those scenes was tom

hanks is and apparently it was pretty amazing to shoot there they said that with had to be like military type precision because the they only had so many minutes before the park opened but and then but we shot many of our scenes on the disney lot because in fact it's still as it was in one thousand sixty one they've added a few things but most of it's unchanged and in fact. i have i play music and i've put out some records but i'm not a natural singer. at all and when i read the script the one thing that was like the biggest fear in it was that i would have to sing you know allowed a lot of allowed to these people concert out alone but one particular scene is let me just catch this thing floating in the air i had to sing there's a part where i sing feed the birds just to walt disney played by tom hanks and that was like highlighted in my calendar as a very soon every day those were my favorite songs and really maybe crowell to walt

disney's favorite song and richard told me a great thing which is that walt disney loved it so much that he would have the boys who richard that's what they call them the boys come to his office on friday afternoon like five or six o'clock at night and walt disney would have his favorite drink which was a scotch mist which is crushed ice and scotch and they would talk and catch up and then he would say all right. play richard and then richard would play feed the birds for walt every friday and then richard told me that after walk passed away he still went to the office at five five or six o'clock for a few years and saying feed the birds and waltz office to your family of no mother is. the best person in the world that her name is talia shire for it's one who played rockies wife whose first rocky was on yeah she was in the godfather yes al pacino sr conic corleone not a corner so your uncle is francis ford coppola so if you grew up around all

this you almost had to be in the business right i mean war going to be a plumber well. yeah maybe i mean actually the truth is that my mom. my mom loves movies deeply old movies old musicals. but she's not a hollywood like she never was part of like the you know very much of a homebody and stuff and we weren't really she actually made a real point like we never were raised on sets i never was a kid on set i grew up in a time where i feel like it was you know a lot of actors i hear them or see in interviews they'll say i saw that guy up on the screen i thought i had to be up there while i never had that feeling as a kid i never thought i have to be up there i never thought i really could be up there just seems so much larger than life like lethal weapon and you know kindergarten cop ghostbusters whatever and me music i think i gravitated to earlier

on because it felt more private but no i didn't feel like i had to be in the business at all if. i got into it how it happened was i was my grandfather was a film composer and musician in common coppola and in one nine hundred ninety seven . my uncle fred francis had a party to celebrate a score that he had done for his movie napoleon and it was in san francisco and i was seventeen sixteen have seventeen and i was in los angeles making a record actually with my band and i flew to san francisco with my mom to go to this party to hear the music of the score and there was a casting director there who lived in san francisco who was working on the movie rushmore which at that point as i later came to find out had different casting directors and many scattered to many months many cities in america and this casting

director knew my cousin sophia and they were just chatting about what they were each up to and my cousin said what are you up to now and she said i'm cast in this movie rushmore but we're having a hard time finding the lead and sofia said. what is it and she said it's about a kind of a precocious sixteen year old who's eccentric and into older women and all this stuff and she set up that sounds like kind of like my cousin jason and you know really and he's right over there and i was at the party and i have i had rented a tuxedo with tails a coat and tails and i had you know because i was kind of a clown and anyway they met the woman this casting director and she said would you like i'm cat i'm a casting director named dave you know said i'm casting for a movie rushmore would you like i think you could be this part would you like to audition for it i said you're wasting your time i'm not an actor and she said you should you should come in addition you know you know and be really fun so i did audition and in fact i never it was the first group that ever in my life i had

never been to an audition and i made like an alp at that looked like the main characters outfit in the movie because i called the casting office and i said my name is jason schwartzman i'm coming in on friday what do you wear do and understand and she said just wear whatever makes you feel comfortable which to me i'm never going to feel comfortable because it was you know so i just made this crazy outfit and my idea was i'm not going to get the part of this movie but it's going to be a great experience and i remember like walking into this casting thing and seeing all these other like professional kid actors and and we're sitting in a room with them and they looked like they were just like little killers. anyway but i dish and and then i got a call back and then i got a third callback and then i got the part yeah believe me mate i'm a household name will be read by a small household in the smiles apartment i want smaller parts.

i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. to wait substory. this guy would be your doctor i'm still working for the people most missions on the beach were richer right right. steve. probably. didn't read it well. i'm the president and i think a society that case i think corporation kind of can. can do and the bankers try to top it all about money and i'm a fashion i think for a politician writing the laws and regulations that bankers public have. got. just to flood threat is

a diet. that. we're back with jason schwartzman he of course is one of the stars of saving mr banks he plays the legendary still alive richard sherman who along with his brother world all the music for the disney movies and the movie saving mr banks going to be in a major i don't know about who knows about that but i will tell you i remember seeing the screening going hey this is like a movie where i don't have to tell like call my friends and say hey there's a movie that i'm in that's coming out people this is the first time i've been like yeah i'm in this movie called the mismatched people or yeah i know that. you have a soul music called coltrane on records about record yeah coconut records it was just like i wanted to come up with a name that didn't sound like

a band because it's i just wanted to be more like a like a lad was that a fan of the band name quicks quicksilver messenger service the band from the sixty's because it seem like it could be anything so i wanted to be just going to record so it could be just like a more like a film studio usually is your first love. and it is and. as i said earlier like there's just something very private about it and where is. acting is and being on movies it's i love movies i love it all i love just being a part of trying to be a part of as much as they can music the thing that i do love about it is that it is especially now with technology it's so portable that you can really be doing it anywhere so it just feels good to do if i go on a trip you know you can bring a keyboard with you it's this big and at night you know the other day you can just mess around and play music your mother must be very pro. what about these social

issues with. five films with yeah another one tom yeah well the chemistry the two of you have he is he is technically he would be my mentor i mean he did he met me on the audition for rushmore and he put me in rushmore he cast me and he is my my my dearest friend he is you know and i've got two or three my three best friends i've been lucky enough that they've come from work situations and he is like we just i think we collaborate well together we share similar senses ability and we get along well and we're always he's my best friend i mean and i don't i don't know why but we just i'm just so happy for that friendship and i think that it's made the work more and more fun to do because i think in the beginning of working with anyone you're really nervous when you quote unquote what i call him quirky i wouldn't call him quirky only because. you know it means so much of of what he does it's just it's in line with what i find funny and what i

and the things he observes in life are things that i'm like that is i mean i think i share a similar sensibility so i'm going to i'm too close to call him anything but great in which is next movie yeah we have this one called the grand budapest hotel and i'm in it for a little bit but it's stars refines and bill murray edward norton tilda swinton will modify it's a great cat it's a great movie it's so funny and i think that's like the thing when i read it like when i read that script i was laughing it's just i'm i think more than anything i'm a huge fan of wes's so it's an honor to work with him even though i've worked with a many times now and we are best friends then when we go to work it's just like it's in our you used to see it like when you see saving mr banks what is it like when you see yourself up there. i think it's like a combination of awkward uncomfortable and like some and i guess in this

instance a little bit fascinating because like i do have these scenes of tom hanks and tom hanks is someone i grew up watching my whole life as there is a fascinating thing where it's like wow i can't believe i'm really in that thing with tom hanks and i mean i remember just recently we were doing a press q. and a and tom hanks was next to me and like he was talking to someone and i looked down i saw him like his hands under the table and he was kind of twiddling his thumbs and i was thinking wow i'm looking at tom hanks twiddle it like doing something with the fingers right now answering a question this would be a really rare as a regular he is a regular guy he has no affectation at all it's incredible in fact like i am still trying to get used to the like he asked me a question question recently and my answer was like twenty minutes long i think because i was so excited he's like how are you doing with that they are all credo as driving in there was a thing of tornado in moore and then at the end i was like thank you gosh i did he

really want to know i think he does like i think it's true he he's fascinated he's interested in your body and he's the kindest man i ever did agree to nora ephron play in new york yeah and i went backstage and he was doing this play for four months it was sold out i mean first three pitches we got a seminar on twitter well i'm just like regular just. i know i could have pictures b.j. novak who plays my brother in the movie said to me because you know i anticipated him being the nicest guy but what i didn't realize was the thing that happens when i'm with him is i feel like when we go home at the end of the day that our lives are also the same anybody realize that because you said to him when we were making a movie like were you going to watch the oscars this year thinking like you can watch it at someone's house and he's like when i got home i realize he's probably going to be at the oscars it was really funny you recorded lot of capitol records and yeah we record. a lot of the music in two places one place is box studios and

a lot of capitol records which was a real thrill when you were a kid i mean gabble rogers musta been the building yeah to me it still is in fact. my favorite like one of my favorite stretches of driving in los angeles is the one zero one freeway when you're near vine and you can see all of the buildings and especially capitol records it's it's i mean that it just every time i look at it it just kind of gives me goosebumps just night from work and it was for me a dream come true he was in a great television series on h.b.o. bored to death it was so crazy that's link it with. what jonathan ames who created that show he's my other best friend in the world and we met on that show and he married my wife and i in fact he got our deigned and married us and. he that show was the great ted danson zach galifianakis is the thing where lucky to say that those are my dear like all the years here is three years and it's it was the best

time going to work every day was it was that could be a movie they're trying to make it a movie right now in fact it's being worked on jonathan's writing it so you know you never on these things go but let's hope. there's an about mozart in the jungle a t.v. movie with roman yeah mozart in the jungle is a. show that roman coppola and alex timbers is a great new york playwright and director three of us wrote it it's a it's a show that we shot for amazon who are now making movies movies and shows and it's a it's based loosely based on a book called mozart the jungle sex drugs and classical music and it's a show that sort of is looks into the. underbelly of the world of classical music in new york and you know the symphony and the orchestra and all the different levels of. musicians and what it takes to sort of ascend in the world of classical music and and the highs and the lows you know because i think growing up i was

fascinated you know you look at an orchestra and they're all in tuxedo they all look so nice and it has a sheen on it that looks like well this is very expensive luxury is life and in fact it's not high paying for a lot of people and really difficult and you know some of those tuxedoes are rented and but they're playing instruments that are worth you know a million dollars a time to them it was just very complicated in and i love the music and so this opportunity came along to show the different facets of the world and i love it and we have a great cast malcolm mcdowell all over this great actor guy i'll go see a burn all in this new great actress named lola kirk and bernadette peters is in it you know busy manages and. you know what i'm not that busy i like it's funny as we've seen the stuff i sound quite busy but in fact you wouldn't know it by the amount of sweat pants that i'm wearing. ok we will get into the little game you if

you only knew these are quick questions quick answers all right first yes. the first girl i kissed her name was jackie temptin that was in kindergarten it was very quick. it was there was a mission here and he was here in los angeles i went to a school support that i was i'm on a story school she was the supply monitor of that day she was putting away glue sticks i was sitting down cross-legged on the rug i had a big crush on her we were all singing a song i looked over at her she was on the back of the room i thought it's now or never so i got up and i went i tapped on the shoulders she was taller than me i remember her turning around i went oh my tippy toes zapped her with the kiss and then walked away and just return to the song you find i would have a problem in her yes she in fact let years later she i used to be in a band called phantom planet she dated the bass player in my band sam for our for many many years in the band and i wouldn't say it was. love triangle because my thing was very quick but there were times where i felt like remember she grew up

tall did she got off and she got we evened out we evened out i caught up to her what's your favorite mary poppins tune feed the birds mind to dreams elaborate a dead or alive dream collaborator oh my gosh i can't even i can't think of a collaborator this this is a collaboration that i had dreamed of characteristic you value most in other people what do you call it when they are not easily offended like i love it when someone just gets they they can take a joke and there are lots of it i don't know if there's a word for that yeah i like that because if you were to know what would you be. a. an interviewer you know i'm you're on a desert island what three things you want with you. all my music. a guitar and i would say my family but that would mean that they're with me stuck so i would wish them well for some music a guitar and. a. towel the.

biggest misconception about hollywood. that it's just about show business goes a soft more yeah favorite interview are. you really yeah i love all i grew up while i mean i know i'm in the mine you are not here i mean i'm not i mean this microphone this is inside on a legendary right kick to me as it is the i.r.s. that's how i came from is no of the r.c.a. seventy seven this was my first mike years ago and reveal that exact one no but it does have it yeah they don't make them in america anymore yeah so that no r.c.a. anymore they're right number his master's voice wow wow the said well that's the seventy seven and yes so this is this is a big one so supposing saving mr banks explodes explodes which it could

and you now become a major star you really for that jason schwartzman yes. and no becoming so super that you would not return to the show. glendale is never too far away from me thank you jason i'll be here any time cheers . feed the birds thanks to my guest jason schwartzman this film is saving mr banks out in select theaters this friday and nationwide december twenty eighth and you can find me on twitter at kings things i'll see you next time. i know c.n.n.

m s n b c news have taken some knocks lightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be. that was funny but it's close and for the truth from the mike think. it's because one call attention and the mainstream media works side by side with you is actually on here. at our team we have a different thread. because the news of the world is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not how. you guys talk to the jokes i will hand over the stuff that i'm.

well if you will come are going to like the hall of fame just like you know. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i.

feel the love i keep these prisoners to be not even nice and they did the best interesting for us i'm not sure this is the right place and. they quoted. just these particular people we're working with who the fuck all that why why why do they do anything. why would they work with these chemicals why would they not work with these kind of mold many of them for money yes and this needs to be said they do this for the money yeah but the why is why everybody has one thing well known whatever the words it's why are you judging this hearing this for the first day that i was judging. and the man you are judging no no no it is the good thing this movie is charging that it's ok i'm just saying in issue b. we need to be concerned that we're not going around places saying we're better than you are because i've heard.