Matthew Broderick - Articles: 2005

Matthew Broderick: From Here To Infinity

December 9, 2005

With sex and shrugs they're on a roll

By Peter Howell, Toronto Star

NEW YORK—Let's get the romance out of the way first.

Just how close are Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick?

"It's the sex," Lane insists.

"It's what's kept us together. We never go to bed angry."

This might be news to Broderick's wife Sarah Jessica Parker, even if she did see all manner of couplings during her stint on Sex in the City.

"She likes me to have my other life," Broderick parries. "My dark, gay, showbiz life."

Ba-da-bump-bump!

Did anybody mention that Lane and Broderick play conmen Max Bialystock and Leopold Bloom in The Producers, the most popular Broadway musical since The Great White Way ran on candlepower? Or trumpet that the show has now leapt to the big screen, almost completely intact, opening Dec. 16? Which is going to make creator Mel Brooks even richer than he already is?

Does anybody really need to say all that?

The heavy vibe of déjà vu seems to be the reason for the rather desultory demeanour this day of the Messrs. Lane and Broderick. They arrive for separate press conferences at swank hotel The Regency looking as if Ben Brantley, the notorious New York Times theatre critic, has just shoved a fountain pen between their shoulder blades.

Lane is so lethargic; he must be down a quart on his Red Bull, although he's sipping some sort of hot beverage. He's dressed in a dark suit with a dark green shirt and tie. He sits slightly hunched over, and his usually expressive eyebrows may be on strike.

Broderick is making a bolder fashion statement, with a pink shirt inside a dark sports jacket. But he's not in top form, either. He's sipping hot tea to ease a slightly raspy throat. They've both talked about The Producers a few too many times.

Neither man is biting — not at first — at the lines being lobbed to them by the press jackals, who are looking for banter. Like the guy who wants to know if Lane is "a very loud personality," a rumour started by people who have heard him yelp.

"You have to be loud, it's the theatre," he replies testily.

Lane and Broderick are visibly offended at the suggestion from another scribe that The Producers "reenergized" their careers. True, the musical won a record 12 Tony Awards and earned more money than Croesus (whoever he was) since it debuted in 2001. True, Lane and Broderick are now doing SRO business in their stage revival of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, carrying their magic to a new venue.

"I got the job and so did Nathan because we weren't quite as washed up as you might think before this," Broderick says, forcing a smile. "I was working pretty steadily right up to The Producers."

Lane, 49, has been on the stage, in films and on TV for more than 30 years. Broderick, 43, has more than 20 years under his belt in the same media. Neither actor is a stranger to awards or success — in fact, they met while doing voices for the 1994 Disney smash The Lion King.

"He's shy, he's not unlike me, he's a little shy," Lane recalls. "I think we both thought we hated each other but we were too shy to really talk." (Broderick doesn't remember this meeting; he thinks they might have first crossed paths in the 1980s.)

Both men are reluctant to speculate as to why The Producers has been such a huge stage success. The original 1968 movie, directed by funny man Brooks and starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in the Bialystock and Bloom roles, wasn't an instant hit.

The gag about two Jewish producers making a goose-stepping play called Springtime for Hitler to cash in on the bankruptcy of what they assume will be an instant flop shocked as many as it delighted. The original film's popularity grew over years, primarily by word of mouth.

Yet The Producers stage musical did boffo business right from its previews in Chicago to its triumphant Broadway debut in the winter and spring of 2001. Hopes are high that the movie, directed as on Broadway by Susan Stroman and adding Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell to the team, will do the same.

"I'll tell you, it was the strangest experience sitting there watching the movie," Broderick says.

"I didn't feel like I was really able to see it. I don't know why it's so popular. Some said (it's due to) the silliness of it and that it was politically incorrect, which at that time was a joy to people ... it was an old-fashioned musical comedy. There's just something great about the story of these two guys, but I don't know what it is. It worked great in the original movie and then people ate it up (on stage). I wish I had a better answer, but I don't."

Lane chalks it up to the general ebb and flow of popular favour.

"Everything comes in cycles in show business. First they fall in love with you, and then they get sick of you and then they love you again. Those things, it's sort of a natural evolution in show business."

But both men are savvy enough to know that they really lucked out being chosen to portray the roles they had on stage on film. That rarely happens when Broadway goes to Hollywood. Brooks also chose to stick with Stroman as director, even though she'd never helmed a feature film. And he also allowed Gary Beach and Roger Bart to reprise their roles as stage queens Roger De Bris and Carmen Ghia.

The only major changes made were the casting of Uma Thurman as office vamp Ulla (she replaces Broadway original Cady Huffman) and Will Ferrell as neo-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind (he replaces Brad Oscar, who remains in the stage show as the new Max Bialystock).

Lane had assumed he wouldn't be playing Bialystock in the film version of The Producers.

"Well, Mel first mentioned it while we were recording the cast album. And I joked with him and said, `Danny DeVito and Ben Stiller will be great in the parts.' And then eventually, really thanks to the success of Chicago, it did finally happen. It's unusual for the person who originated the part on stage to do it on film. I'm very grateful and thrilled to be able to do that, because it's a great part, and great parts are hard to come by."

Lane didn't even mind having to lip-sync his songs, a technical requirement for the film that wasn't necessary for the stage. Lip-syncing is actually easier than singing live, he finds.

"It's not as strenuous as doing it eight times a week in the theatre. You don't have the freedom you have when you're on stage. Lip-syncing is a whole art unto itself. They used to have lip-syncing classes at MGM, with someone monitoring your lips."

Broderick has had the experience of taking a role from stage to screen before — he did that with his character from Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues in 1988 — so switching venues with The Producers wasn't a big adjustment.

"In this case, it's a little more like this is very much like the play," he says.

"The script is almost exactly the same. So it was hard not to feel like you were documenting the play. But I tried to look at it as a new thing, because I just think a movie should stand on its own.

"I remember when we were first doing the play, the musical, and the jokes that worked in the original movie didn't work sometimes. And Mel said, `You know, even though we love some of these old jokes, all that matters is does it work in this version in the play?' It doesn't really matter what worked before."

It evidently doesn't matter much what critics think, either. The Producers movie will attract many fans of both the original film and the Broadway musical, as well as many curious newcomers. The current stage revival of The Odd Couple, meanwhile, has drawn few raves and more than a few pans, but the sold-out houses don't seem to care.

Lane can't help crowing about that. He really perks up when a journalist suggests that the bad notices for The Odd Couple have "derailed the Nathan and Matthew Express," as if the two were a runaway train or something.

"Who the hell is that, Ben Brantley?" Lane says, craning his neck to look over the press mob.

"Has it derailed the Nathan and Matthew Express? Not with a $21-million advance, which is unprecedented for a straight play. Producers tend not to care what the critics think when you sell out before the first rehearsal."