Wednesday, May 27, 1998

Broderick basking in shadow of 'Godzilla'

By Dennis Michael, CNN

HOLLYWOOD (CNN) -- From action hero to everybody's favorite truant, and back to action hero again, actor Matthew Broderick's career has run the gamut.

Broderick gained acclaim and kickstarted his movie career with that Cold War thriller "War Games" (1983), in which he took on a computer bent on starting World War III.

He found greater fame in 1986's "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the story of a school-skipping wise guy with a nose for living life to the fullest.

And now, in his newest release, Broderick is once again fending off evil. In "Godzilla," Broderick plays Dr. Niko Tatopoulos, a biologist who tries to save the Big Apple from being eaten to the core by the 90-foot-tall beast from the land of Japanese television.

The movie raked in over $55 million at the box office over the Memorial Day weekend, and while Sony had hoped for larger figures and some critics give it a thumbs-down, Broderick is still the most watched lead actor of the moment.

Imagining Godzilla

What's it like to stand next to the king of all monsters? Don't ask Broderick. Thanks to computer animation, he and his co-stars never saw the latest version of Godzilla until it appeared on the silver screen.

"This is all happening beyond me. I'm just just watching it like everyone else," Broderick said. "I know his eye is bigger than 15 pizzas lined up side by side."

Hank Azaria, who plays Victor "Animal" Palotti in the movie, says he used his imagination.

"The first two months I imagined Godzilla," Azaria recalled. "Then I got bored of that and I imagined different things. What if my agent was that big? What if my dog was that big?"

Broderick should have had little difficulty visualizing the great beast beside him. After all, recollections of the Godzilla of his childhood got him interested in the 1998 version to begin with.

"When I was little I used to see Godzilla all the time on TV," Broderick said. "I just remember him knocking things over, which was fine with me. I loved monster movies and disaster movies, and this was a good combination."

Matthew Broderick, action figure

From watching a monster wreak havoc in Tokyo, to playing the guy who tries to stop a monster from wrecking New York, Broderick now finds himself getting accustomed to a new title. In this age of marketing madness, Broderick is an "action figure."

"I've done photo shoots where they wanted to put me in a lizard skin suit," Broderick says. "A lot of lizard puns. 'Put on this suit. It's snakeskin.'"

"Regardless, I'm going to have a lot if lizard-ware when this is all through."

And then it's on to his next project, playing the lead role in "Inspector Gadget," a live-action film from Disney.

"So get ready for Gadget toys, which I will also force your children to buy," Broderick said. "And I apologize."