//Stardom Rests on the Word of Kids// (Hollywood) By Chris Lee(c) 2009, Los Angeles Times HOLLYWOOD -- They were words on which a young man's fate would hinge: 'Dad, you should check this out.' Focus Features chief executive James Schamus was doing homework with his then-15-year-old daughter, Nona, one evening in 2007. When it came time for a break, the two began perusing YouTube videos. Nona wanted her father -- who heads the specialty studio known for making art-house fare such as 'Atonement,' 'Lost in Translation' and 'Brokeback Mountain' -- to watch a clip featuring Demetri Martin, a stand-up comedian. Nerdily dressed, strumming a guitar and delivering deadpan one-liners, Martin performed a routine called 'Jokes With Guitar.' 'I loved how gentle and observant and smart Demetri's voice was,' said Schamus, who had never heard of Martin. 'I called up Demetri's agent and said, `I have no movie to pitch. I'd just like to meet him,'' Schamus recalled. 'The meeting was completely awkward and totally stilted. But it gave me about three minutes of street cred at home.' Half a year later, Schamus' frequent collaborator, Oscar-winning director Ang Lee, presented him the memoir he wanted Schamus to adapt for his next project: 'Taking Woodstock.' As Schamus read the material, he heard Martin's voice in his head. 'I realized I wanted a gentle but really funny kind of humor as the tone for the film,' Schamus said. 'And I really thought Ang should meet Demetri.' Martin, 36, now stars as the central character in Lee's Summer of Love-set dramedy 'Taking Woodstock,' written and produced by Schamus, which reached theaters in August. Aug. 28. The character, a closeted gay artist who shelves his ambitions to help his Jewish parents run their Catskills motel -- and enables an epochal rock fest -- is a breakthrough part for Martin. But the gig came about because of Schamus' daughter. 'Of course, I'm going to do everything she tells me from now on in my career!' Schamus said. The comedian is hardly the only up-and-comer plucked from obscurity by the child of a filmmaker, studio head or actor. These days, the scions of moviedom's elite have increasing sway; they are taken seriously by the establishment as clued-in culture consumers with a keen eye for star power. In Hollywood, where youth reigns supreme and the adage, 'It's not what you know, it's who you know' is gospel, the 'my-kid-discovered-you' phenomenon is hardly new. Joanna Colbert, co-founder of Colbert/Mento Casting who was head of casting at Universal Pictures from 1994 to 2001, worked with studio executives who regularly based important casting decisions on their children's recommendations. 'I rolled my eyes at that,' Colbert said. 'The insidious aspect of this business, the incestuousness of it, is that these kids go to private schools and get cast because of who their friends are.' But that was before Colbert had a child. She admitted the influence of her 8-year-old son has changed her outlook. 'He watches a show called `iCarly' that I never would have heard of,' Colbert said. 'Do I watch it with a casting director's eye? Yes. Jerry Trainor from the show is adorable and I had never seen him before. I brought him in to read for a movie.' The phenomenon can be seen as reflecting an era in which an 'audition' can take on myriad forms. Jonah Hill was Jonah Hill Goldstein before he became a muse to comedy mogul Judd Apatow, starring in 2007's Apatow-produced 'Superbad' and appearing in Apatow-anointed movies 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' and the upcoming 'Get Him to the Greek.' Growing up in Los Angeles, Hill never had anyambition to perform. Instead, he moved to New York to study writing at New School university. Hill also frequented the Black and White, an East Village bar. The bar had an open-mike night: a soapbox for bleeding hearts. Hill was inspired to write a spoof monologue, intending to perform the piece straight. About half the audience was appalled, while the gag killed with the other 50 percent. 'One day, Dustin Hoffman's kids, Jake and Becky, came and saw it and we became fast friends,' Hill recalled in 2006, 'and they were like, `You should meet my dad.' 'I didn't know their dad was an actor or anything, so I was like, `Cool, you should meet my dad. He's an accountant. '' Hoffman caught a performance and took a shine to Hill. 'So we all started hanging out and he thought I was really funny and he introduced me to a director, David O. Russell, and I auditioned for his movie,' Hill said. 'That was my first movie, `I (heart) Huckabees.' ' His small part as the excitable son of a family hosting a Sudanese exchange student led to him being cast on the TV show 'Undeclared' and fortuitous 'discovery' by 'Freaks & Geeks' writer-executive producer Apatow, who was preparing his directing debut feature, 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin.' Apatow cast the baby-faced actor in the movie. Hill has since appeared in every film Apatow has directed, including 'Knocked Up' and 'Funny People.' Auditioning actors in Mumbai, India, for the central role in 'Slumdog Millionaire,' British director Danny Boyle had run into a problem. 'I had been looking at all these guys in Bollywood, where we had found the rest of the cast,' Boyle said in 2008. 'There were some really good lads for the part, but they all had the wrong look for me ... I wanted a guy who didn't look like a potential hero; I wanted him to earn that in the film.' Boyle's then-17-year-old daughter, Caitlin, was an avid fan of 'Skins,' the popular television series that follows drug-taking, sex-obsessed teenagers -- a British equivalent to 'Gossip Girl.' She suggested one of the program's stars, a gangly 17-year-old with soulful eyes named Dev Patel, for the part. 'While I hadn't really thought about Dev, as soon as she said that, I thought, `Yeah,'' said Boyle. Although it was only his second audition, Patel, the British-born son of parents of Indian descent, iced it. He went on to be nominated for a host of awards, including an MTV Movie Award, a BAFTA Award and an Image Award, and won several film critics' awards for his breakthrough performance. At age 14, Alden Ehrenreich was enrolled in a theater program and was making his own short films. When it came time for a friend's bat mitzvah, Ehrenreich shot and starred in a short film -- 'a ridiculous, jokey thing' -- with two friends and screened it at the friend's party. 'In it, I ran around as a skinny little punk, trying on girls' clothes and eating dirt,' Ehrenreich recalled in New York magazine. 'My mom was like, `I really don't know if you want to present yourself that way. It's not the best portrait, and there are a lot of people who will be watching this.' To be honest, you go to a bat mitzvah in Los Angeles and you can count on a few industry people to be there. But it wasn't like we thought of that.' Steven Spielberg happened to be among those in attendance and soon Ehrenreich was hearing that he 'really liked the movie.' Spielberg arranged to have executives from DreamWorks, the studio he co-founded, procure an agent for Ehrenreich. From there, by his own description, the actor went on 'hundreds and hundreds and hundreds' of auditions, which led to TV spots. He then caught the eye of Fred Roos, a longtime right-hand man of Francis Ford Coppola who was executive producing the 'Godfather' auteur's semiautobiographical indie feature 'Tetro.' The writer-director put Ehrenreich through six months of screen tests at his Napa vineyard before handing him the part: the youngest brother in an Italian-American family who travels to Argentina in search of his brother (Vincent Gallo). 'Tetro' barely caused a ripple at the box office upon its release in June, grossing just over $450,000. While reviews were mixed, critics warmed to the actor's performance. Still,Colbert said that input from the kids of Hollywood heavyweights hasn't fundamentally altered the way she or the town operates. 'It doesn't affect the way I cast,' Colbert said. 'It's certainly not interfering. And it's not that prevalent.' Although Schamus credits his daughter with pointing out Martin (who has landed his own Comedy Central show, 'Important Things With Demetri Martin,' and lined up several projects as a writer-actor), Schamus scoffs at the notion that he's using his children as a 'teenage focus group for my business. It's not a calculated thing.' But Schamus admits to some apprehension about maintaining his cultural currency without his daughters' help. 'Nona is 17 now, and my other daughter, Djuna, is 13,' Schamus said. 'I'm starting to panic now about what I'm going to do when they go to college. I'm going to be completely out of it!' End adv sun sep 06 