April 15, 2001

BRODERICK UNBOUND:

THE ACTOR IS POISED FOR HIS BIGGEST HIT YET IN 'THE PRODUCERS'

By Barbara Hoffman, New York Post

Matthew Broderick says the very thought of auditioning for "The Producers" --the $10.5 million musical version of Mel Brooks' film - - made him queasy.

"I heard they made you sing a song and tell a joke," he said, blanching.

"I would have just turned it down, 'cause I'd never go into a room and tell a joke -- especially to Mel Brooks."

Happily, Broderick didn't have to audition: The role was his before he knew it.

And it suits him, too, especially as the show appears set to become the biggest Broadway hit in some time -- and further propel Broderick's blooming indie film career. (He's had two critical successes recently in the Oscar-nominated "You Can Count on Me" and 1999's "Election.")

As the fragile accountant Leo Bloom -- the role Gene Wilder created in the 1968 film -- Broderick plays the nebbishy dreamer to Nathan Lane's manipulative Max Bialystock. At a recent preview, the audience erupted the instant Broderick walked onstage.

To hear him tell it, though, he was the last to know he'd been cast.

"I kept reading in, like, Page Six that I was being considered -- that it was Nathan and me, but no one had actually approached me," he said the other day, blinking through eye drops ("Allergies!") backstage at the St. James Theatre, where the show opens Thursday.

"One day I ran into Tom Meehan, who wrote the book with Mel, and he told me, 'Mel's serious -- he wants to meet with you.' And I said, 'Well, I'm in the book. Call me!'"

But the phone never rang. It was only later -- after a meeting about a movie whose title Broderick can't remember, but which was to feature Brooks and himself-- that the 2,000-year-old Man made his move.

"We went into a nook and he told me a detailed history of the project . . . and said he wanted me to come to [musical arranger] Glen Kelly's apartment to listen to the score.

"I said, 'Now is this where I come and listen to the music and everybody says, "Hey, why don't you sing a few bars?" Is this a secret audition?'

"And Mel said, 'No, that's very smart -- but you just listen.'"

So Broderick listened, and liked what he heard.

"Then Mel kept asking me where did I live, how long was I married, and when I told him we were buying a little house" -- "we" being Broderick and his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker -- "he told me to rent out the bottom.

"Then he walked me out and said, 'So what do you think? Do you want to do it?'"

Broderick said yes -- and he's been Bloom ever since. Which suits him fine, considering the 39-year-old practically majored in "Young Frankenstein."

"Ken Lonergan can quote more of it than me," Broderick says of his friend the director, whom he met at prep school. "'Blazing Saddles,' 'Young Frankenstein' -- they're all great.

"But if you're in show business, 'The Producers' is particularly powerful."

In case you didn't know, "The Producers" is the story of Leo Bloom and Max Bialystock, a failing Broadway producer with a knack for making backers out of rich old ladies.

After Leo checks Max's books and finds something crooked, Max has a brainstorm. Before you can shout "Springtime for Hitler!" the two have teamed up to find a flop that will make them rich.

That number -- in fact, the whole idea of "The Producers" -- has brought Brooks his share of letters from rabbis. "What can I say?" he's said. "I'm not politically correct. Whenever I can get a laugh, I go for it." Broderick, who has the film on tape and laser disc, concedes it was a little intimidating to follow Wilder -- the man Brooks told The Post was his "Alberto Sordi and [Marcello] Mastroianni rolled into one."

Then again, he says, the material's different and he has to do what Wilder didn't: that is, dance.

And with two bum knees, no less.

"I'm missing a lot of the underside of this kneecap from racquetball," he says, rolling up his pants to show the scar, "and the other one I'm missing a little bit of the femur from soccer.

"I can move around fine. They're just not quite as sprightly as they were. So cut me some slack, everybody."

He says he was thrilled the other night when Wilder came backstage one night to say hello.

"He was very, very gracious and sweet," Broderick says. "He said I was wonderful, and he told me to rest." He smiles, tiredly.

Then again, acting is what he's always wanted to do. He grew up in the city, the son of the late actor James Broderick and his playwright and director wife, Patricia, and went to the now-defunct Walden School, because it had a great theater program. He didn't even think about college.

"I knew I'd just end up drinking beer, smoking pot and weaseling by," he says.

Instead, fresh out of Walden, he made his off-Broadway debut in Horton Foote's "On Valentine's Day" -- playing opposite his father.

A few years later he snagged the role of Neil Simon's alter ego, Eugene Jerome, in "Brighton Beach Memoirs" -- and his first Tony. "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" -- in which Broderick at one point played opposite his future wife -- won him a second.

But as busy as Broderick's been, his path had yet to cross Lane's - - though both did voices for "The Lion King."

"I saw him there once, but mostly he was with Ernie Sabella, the Warthog," says Broderick, voice of Simba. "I was alone in a glass booth. I never met anybody."

On stage, Lane keeps him on his toes, he says -- thanks to his ability to ad-lib anything, any time.

"One thing about Nathan is that if you change something, he'll go," Broderick says. "It's like hitting a ball back at you harder than you hit it at him, so it's very stimulating."

Once, during a preview in Chicago, some water got into Broderick's mike, so everything Bloom said echoed.

"I kept speaking and looking around," Broderick says. "Nathan stuck his head by a speaker and said, 'It seems to be coming from here.'"

The show's a little shorter than it was in Chicago, he says, but not by much. It clocks in at about 2 hours, but "it's 90 bucks, so I don't see why it shouldn't be a fairly full evening," he shrugs.

Parker, no stranger to Broadway herself -- she starred in "Once Upon A Mattress" before turning to TV's "Sex and the City" -- has seen the show "dozens" of times and isn't afraid to make suggestions.

Broderick isn't too proud to take them.

"She has a good eye," he says. Even so, she may have trouble seeing him.

"We have the weekend, but it's hard," he concedes. "It will be weird in the summer, because she'll probably go away for the weekend and I'll get there Sunday night as she's leaving, so we're basically a pretend couple at that point. But that's not so bad."

He'd been quoted as saying he'd signed on to "The Producers" for only six months. True or false?

"Turns out I'm very, very misinformed," he says, ruefully.

"After six months I'm out to do a movie or something, then I'm back for six months, so I'm in for a year. But from Chicago or New York? I have a team of lawyers pouring over the contract to figure it out.

"But I'm in no rush to leave," he adds. "Despite all the stressing, every now and then I realize, 'This is a rare, good thing. This is Mel Brooks, and here I am.'"