Robert Schwartzman on How Opening for ELO Inspired New Rooney Album (Exclusive)

In the early aughts, Robert Schwartzman was synonymous with Mia’s quirky, down-to-earth, pizza and M&M-loving crush Michael Moscovitz and as the frontman of the indie-rock band Rooney. But before he starred in the hit film and toured internationally, he had other ambitions.

“A lot of Rooney fans see me as a musician who turned into a filmmaker,” Schwartzman says over Zoom from his office in Los Angeles. “I saw myself as a filmmaker turned into a musician and turned back into a filmmaker.”

The 42-year-old multi-hyphenate, who was born in Los Angeles to actress Talia Shire and film producer Jack Schwartzman, hails from the prolific Coppola family. Naturally, being an independent artist was ingrained in him. “I grew up with the idea of, ‘Let’s just walk to the beat of our own drums as creators of things,” he recalls.

While roles in The Virgin Suicides and The Princess Diaries, as well as being the frontman of Rooney, kickstarted his career, Schwartzman, at heart, really wanted to make movies. “That was my goal. I really wanted direct movies, so I was writing movies,” he says of his time growing up.

And he had the experience to back it up: He attended Oxford Media School, where he studied film editing and worked on movie sets.

With his artistic endeavors, he was in good company: his brother Jason became an actor, starring in films like I Heart Huckabees, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and several Wes Anderson flicks; his older brother Matthew became a screenwriter; his half-brother John is a cinematographer; and his half-sister Stephanie is a set designer.

“We were very much a family working in the same industry because we all loved it very much, and we just found different aspects of it that really called to us,” he says. But Schwartzman was thrilled by designing and creating an idea and ultimately turning it into something tangible.

It was directing that initially captivated him before he got swept up in the idea of being a professional musician when he created Rooney in high school. “That overtook my love of making movies,” he recalls. But after three albums, Schwartzman took a step back from music and began to shift this focus to directing and producing in 2015. Working on his 2016 directorial debut Dreamland, a modern take on the sex comedy, ignited that spark for filmmaking once again.

At the same time, Schwartzman was raised in a family of independent artists and filmmakers — and he couldn’t ignore his own entrepreneurial spirit. By 2018, he launched Utopia — a part-tech, part-traditional distribution company that has evolved into a production company —with co-founder Cole Harper.

“The ultimate entrepreneurial endeavor as a filmmaker is to create distribution, because distribution is really difficult to get. If you’re a filmmaker, filmmakers watching or reading what you’re talking to me about are going to go, “Oh yeah, it sucks. I made a movie three years ago and no one ever bought it,” he explains.

With Utopia, Schwartzman aimed to “create a buyer opportunity for independent movies like my own.” His time spent as an indie artist also informed the business. “I was of the generation where technology was introduced to music distribution in my lifetime as a musician. There was no such thing as iTunes when I started Rooney, believe it or not,” he explains.

Schwartzman keenly observed the change in technology and its influence on the music industry as an artist. “I wanted to create an offering to filmmakers to have their own access to distribution that I had as a musician,” he says. That led to the creation of a platform called AltaVod — or Alta Video on Demand — which he describes as “Bandcamp for films.”

Since launching, Utopia has acquired the rights to films including Shiva Baby, Gaspar Noé’s Vortex or Holy Spider, Meet Me In The Bathroom and more.

Now, not only has Utopia created a distribution pipeline, but they also produce movies in-house, originate them and offer technologies like the platform Powerflix to filmmakers who are looking to self-distribute their work.

Meanwhile, Schwartzman has been padding his resume with a slew of producing and directing projects. In recent years, he directed The Good Half (2023), produced cousin Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl (2024) and most recently directed and produced Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary, which was released in May.

His most recent project, which captures the English rock band’s friendship and pivot to fame, came from his own passion for the scene from which they emerged. “I’m a huge British invasion person. I lived physically through the ’90s one, and I lived in my mind in the sixties one. I fantasize about being there,” he says. Schwartzman was ultimately drawn to the band’s “true underdog story.”

To him, the film mirrors that ethos. “We’re an underdog doc in a very noisy world trying to cut through the noise,” he says. “But if you’re making a film about a really great artist and they’re great catalog, hopefully that rises above.”

As he’s been continuing to expand Utopia and build his robust filmography, Schwartzman’s love for music has never waned. In fact, last year, Rooney was recruited as the opening act of Jeff Lynne’s ELO The Over and Out Tour, which he calls a “pinch-me” moment.

“I felt like I woke up in a dream,” he says of the experience. “[Jeff] had one band he could pick to do his farewell tour in arenas around the country. He picked Rooney, and that’s insane to me that we were chosen to go on the road with ELO.”

The tour was more than just a bucket-list experience — it reinvigorated him to make music himself. “I was so proud to be a part of the ELO’s history, it really got me feeling like I got to go make another record,” he says. In fact, the experience kick-started Schwartzman into “writing and putting together the pieces for a new Rooney album for next year,” which will be the first since 2016’s Washed Away.

It also inspired him to crave his own headlining tour as well. “I started playing live when I was 17 years old, and I never thought I would ever play live because I had stage fright, but something happened, some breakthrough emotionally for me, where I felt comfortable on stage. Now, when I get up on stage to play a show, I feel really good about getting up there,” he explains.

Music, for him, has always been a necessary outlet. “I can’t imagine a world where I’m just like, ‘I’m going to make movies and never play a show again.’ That’s not really my personality. I have to have music as a part of my annual scope of work,” he adds.

Schwartzman plans to release a few songs before the end of 2025, “which I haven’t announced yet, but now I am with you right now.” With his new music, he’s found himself inspired by an array of bands like Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing, Yumi Zouma, Small Black, STRFKR, Cut Copy and Parcels.

“It’s not an album, it’s just a couple songs, but it’s really cool to get it out, so I’m excited about that,” he says. ” And then I started to write and pull together songs I love for a potential album for next year.”

In terms of directing and producing, he’s also looking ahead at what’s next. “I’ve kind of made movies in the same-ish kind of world for a little while, and I’d love to try something new,” he says. While he loves comedies and dramedies, Schwartzman is enticed by a new challenge — working in the horror/thriller space. One of said projects is a spin on the 1986 classic Sorority House Massacre.

“Roger Corman was a famous producer who had breakthroughs in the indie world of championing this indie studio model,” he says. “There was a film that was called Sorority House Massacre that was in his catalog, and we’re doing sort of a remake of it for television.”

While he can’t reveal much about the project, Schwartzman is thrilled to be challenging himself in a new way. “It really gets your imagination going,” he says, “and pulls on your emotions.”