September 2004

Spotlight on Matthew Broderick:

Matthew Broderick? . . . Broderick? . . . Broderick?

Join us as we chat with Matthew Broderick about his new film, The Last Shot, his early stage career, and how New York has changed since 9/11.

By Jeff Wilser, The Cinema Source

In the year 2030, if Matthew Broderick decides to make a sequel to Ferris Bueller, he’ll still have the boyish looks to pull it off. The man doesn’t age. And the camera doesn’t lie: he looks is as young in person as he does on screen. In his interview with TheCinemaSource, he wears a very adult-like tweed suit, (tweed!), but even with the grandpa-looking getup, he could still be mistaken for an NYU student (okay, maybe a grad student), all dressed up for a job interview.

When asked to reveal the secrets to his youngish looks, he seems modestly—and genuinely—surprised by the question: “I don’t know. I don’t do anything. I don’t have any creams or stuff like that. I don’t sleep in one of those tanks,” he smiles, shrugging, “but I would, if I had one. Genetics, I guess.”

In The Last Shot, Broderick plays Steven Schats, a naïve, wide-eyed, wannabee screenwriter who’s still stuck collecting tickets at a movie theater. After a lifetime of pitching his script and scooping popcorn, he finally gets his big chance to make his movie—an awful-sounding tearjerker about a dying woman’s lonely trip through the Grand Canyon. Little does Steven know that his generous producer (Alec Baldwin) is actually an undercover FBI agent, pretending to make a movie so that he can entrap the mob.

The dry comedy is often dark and certainly satirical, but credit Broderick—and his disarming optimism—for lending it surprising warmth. Broderick says of his character, “He’s too hopeful. Obstacles that should stop him don’t. He just watches his movie get butchered by what he thinks is the studio, but is actually the FBI.”

On why he signed up for the role: “I read the script and it sort of stuck with me. I thought it was funny and I thought it seemed sort of true, in a very heightened way, and then I met the director [Jeff Nathanson] and I liked him. Then Alec came on board and it just got more and more real. Tony Shalhoub, Calista Flockhart, the cast helped a lot. I laughed when I read the script and that was how it happened.”

In the film, his character wears a very un-Broderick-like beard. When ribbed about the scruffiness, he tells us that, “Everyone thought it looked good for the character. It looked film-studentish. We based the look on early Spielberg—this takes place in the middle 80’s—and we thought that’s what a director wannabee would want to look like.”

Given his long trail of success, which spans 39 films and counting, it’s hard to believe that Broderick can identify with the struggles of a character like Steven Schats. “When I was struggling, I was just very worried I would never get any work. I’m reading for a SummerStock production for House of Blue Leaves and I’m not even allowed to finish the audition. I remember that day as a low. It’s funny now. It just wasn’t funny then.”

Broderick lives in downtown New York with wife Sarah Jessica Parker. Like all New Yorkers, he thinks about how the city has changed since 9/11: “I don’t think the city will ever be the same, but it’s amazing how resilient people are. The park along the river is almost finished now and it’s really beautiful. I use the bike path that goes through the park; I take my son there. I love it. I always have. But every now and then it occurs to me that we’re all happily biking past a huge pit where 3,000 people died—I mean, it’s absolutely horrible. But still people roller-blade along. That’s the world, in New York or anywhere. And thank God.”

He pauses, then waits patiently as someone asks if he was in the city on 9/11. Not put off by the question, he says, “Yeah. I was home. I lived on Prince Street, so that was fairly close. I woke up and after that first one hit, I stepped outside my door and we watched. It was horrible. It was a terrible day.”

Broderick can take at least a smidgeon of credit for the city’s recovery, as his triumphant The Producers has led to a resurgent Broadway. His performance earned him a Tony nomination, and he’s visibly excited about the movie adaptation he’s currently filming. He says that, “Nathan Lane and I are pleased and excited we’re in it.”

Excited that he’s in it? We all look at him in confusion.

He flashes that teenage smile and says, “Because we always used to make jokes that it would be played by Chris Rock and Amanda Plummer.”

For once, at least, Hollywood got something right.