Friday May 7, 1999

Broderick tough to pigeonhole

But good roles always start with a good script, says versatile actor

By Steve Tilley, Express Writer

From coming face-to-face with the fire-breathing mutant lizard Godzilla in Times Square to stepping into the footlights on a Broadway stage, it seems Matthew Broderick doesn't stray far from his native New York.

But the star of the seminal teen flick Ferris Bueller's Day Off and more than two dozen other movies apparently enjoys taking his career all over the map, figuratively and literally.

Broderick spent several weeks on location in sleepy Omaha, Nebraska, last fall to shoot Election, a dark satiri-comedy also starring Reese Witherspoon. It opens in theatres today.

Thirteen years after breaking into the public spotlight as happy-go-lucky teen conniver Ferris Bueller, he's now on screen as the anti-Ferris - rumpled, naive but ultimately corrupt high school teacher Jim McAllister.

"That's one thing I like about the movie - the characters are not so easily defined," Broderick told The Sun on the phone from his dressing room at New York's Helen Hayes Theatre, where he's starring as the Irish conman Danny in Night Must Fall.

Broderick himself certainly falls into the category of not easily defined. From offbeat comedies (The Freshman) to epic dramas (Glory) to a Disney blockbuster (the voice of the adult Simba in The Lion King) to special-effects bonanzas (Godzilla, the upcoming Inspector Gadget), the 37-year-old actor - who has won two Tony awards for Broadway performances - is impossible to pigeonhole.

The reasons behind his film choices, however, aren't really all that mysterious, Broderick says.

"First off, I just have to like reading the script. That's rare enough," he says.

"Then you think about the role. If it's a role that I feel I could do well and also will challenge me. I do like to try something I haven't done before."

Which is what took him to Nebraska, where Election director and co-writer Alexander Payne (Citizen Ruth) shot the film on location, much of it at suburban Omaha's Papillon-La Vista high school.

Broderick's character is a content, well-respected teacher who goes up against a young, eager-beaver student from hell (Witherspoon) as he tries to thwart her attempt to win the student body president election.

"I think at the beginning of the movie he feels he's totally happy as a teacher, that his marriage is great, and you know none of that is true," says Broderick. "But he's convinced himself of it.

"It takes a kind of crisis in order for him to wake up. I think that's why he gets so obsessed with that stupid election. Like, why should he really care about it? Except that I think he's just kind of fed up."

Broderick himself doesn't appear to get fed up easily. For instance, he takes the critical drubbing that Godzilla took in stride - Broderick starred in the movie as scientist Nick Tatopoulos - though he admits it caught everyone associated with the film off guard.

"I was surprised, certainly," he says. "Nobody really saw it coming.

"I enjoyed making the movie a lot, and I never assume they're going to work out. But that one seemed like everybody was saying it was going to be a monstrous hit."

Financially the movie did big box office, raking in $376 million worldwide. "It was successful," Broderick says, "but it did not live up to what everybody was saying.

"It's funny you mention it, because even today I was walking out of a coffee shop and a woman said, 'Oh I love Sex in the City (starring Broderick's wife, Sarah Jessica Parker) and I loved Godzilla. I'm sorry it wasn't successful.'

"That's the perception. But, what can you do? It couldn't live up to what it was hyped as."

Despite the poor reception Godzilla was granted, Broderick says he's not opposed to doing a sequel if producer Dean Devlin, director Roland Emmerich and co-star Jean Reno are also involved.

"I'm very vaguely signed on, but I don't think I would in any way have to do it," he says. "But if it was Roland and Dean doing it, and Jean Reno, it would be very hard to not do, because I really like those guys."

"But if it's not them, I don't really have too much interest in it."