Jason Schwartzman recalls spooky surprise encounter with Oasis' Noel Gallagher: 'The eeriest thing'
"I felt like I was in a scene from a movie," he said of his sighting of the singer, which happened right after a conversation about Britpop with a cab driver.
Jason Schwartzman is an actor, screenwriter, and multi-instrumentalist — but his greatest talent might be his ability to summon members of Oasis out of thin air.
The Rushmore star recently recalled a strange surprise encounter he had with legendary Britpop musician Noel Gallagher, which he called "the spookiest thing that's happened" to him.
"I was in England in 2004, 2005, in this cab, asking all these Britpop questions to the driver," Schwartzman said, setting the scene that day in a new interview with The Guardian. "I'm such a Britpop geek; I love it."
The driver wasn't particularly thrilled with Schwartzman's line of questioning. "He said: 'You know that was the '90s. It's not really like that any more,'" Schwartzman recalled. "I said: 'I guess I'm sort of living in the past.' He said: 'It's not like you're going to see Noel Gallagher getting into the back of a car with a guitar.'"
Then something extraordinary happened. "As I got out in that street with all the guitar shops [Denmark Street in central London], Noel Gallagher was across the street with a guitar case in his hand, getting into the back of the car," Schwartzman said. "I felt like I was in a scene from a movie."
Related: Hey now! Oasis announce reunion tour after 15-year-long split
The sighting was a particularly big deal for Schwartzman given that his Britpop fandom seemed limitless as a teenager. In the interview, he also discussed his love for the Oasis documentary Supersonic.
"I saw them live a few times," he said of the group. "The first was at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas festival in 1995 when Oasis were touring Morning Glory on the same bill as Radiohead doing The Bends. I saw them when Travis opened for them on the Standing on the Shoulder of Giants tour. I was the kid driving around all the record stores buying all the Blur and Oasis singles just so I could hear the B-sides like 'Rockin' Chair.'"
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However, Schwartzman's fondness for the '90s genre doesn't extend to making movies about it. "I don't think I'd want to play Thom Yorke," he said of the Radiohead frontman. "I'd like to see someone try, but I'd like it just to be a movie of his daily routine, like making his dinner."
After a massive 2023 that included memorable turns in Asteroid City, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and Quiz Lady, Schwartzman has an equally stacked series of projects this year. He recently starred in the indie dramedy Between the Temples opposite Carol Kane, and is set to appear in Alex Ross Perry's Pavement documentary-slash-biopic, Pavements. He also has a supporting role in Luca Guadagnino's buzzy period drama Queer alongside Daniel Craig and Lesley Manville, and will collaborate with his uncle Francis Ford Coppola for the first time on his epic film Megalopolis, which also features *deep breath* Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, and Schwartzman's mom, Talia Shire.
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