Matthew Broderick - Interviews: 2008

Matthew Broderick: From Here To Infinity

April 26, 2008

Matthew Broderick’s stage affair

By Stephen Schaefer, Boston Herald

Matthew Broderick currently costars with Helen Hunt and Bette Midler in “And Then She Found Me,” which is Hunt’s directorial debut. Since he became a star as a teenager in Neil Simon’s Broadway hits, “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Biloxi Blues” Broderick, 46, is one of those rare film actors who have never stopped working live, in front of an audience. We talked at New York’s Regency Hotel last Monday about that, the odds of his working with his wife Sarah Jessica Parker again and what you do when you forget your lines or lyrics in an exclusive Herald interview. Here is an excerpt:

QUESTION: YOU STARTED ONSTAGE IN THE NEIL SIMON HITS AND YOU’VE NEVER STOPPED GOING BACK TO THE STAGE. NOT MANY PEOPLE CAN SAY THAT THEY CONTINUE TO DO PLAYS AND HAVE A FULL MOVIE CAREER.

BRODERICK: I think it is a little bit unusual, I suppose. I’m very lucky. It’s miraculous. I did sort of stop plays after ‘Biloxi Blues’…or well, the Horton Foote play is in the middle of there. I don’t know what the longest break has been, maybe four or five years. Then the last bunch of years I’ve done plays almost every season. Now I’m just not doing anything. I need a job now.

QUESTION: I ALWAYS WONDER HOW ACTORS GO FROM EIGHT SHOWS A WEEK TO DOING TWO TAKES AND NEVER REVISITING SOMETHING IN A FILM, IT SEEMS LIKE AN ODD CONTRADICTION.

BRODERICK: I agree. When I think about it they seem very different, but the doing of them doesn’t feel that different to me.

QUESTION: EVERY TIME YOU DO A PERFORMANCE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE GOING OUT THERE AND FINDING SOMETHING FRESH?

BRODERICK: Well, I try to, but that’s certainly not true. The goal is that every performance is fresh and that you’re finding new things all the time, but there’s nobody who after six months in a show doesn’t start going over their laundry, or whatever it is, in their head from time to time. It just happens.

QUESTION: DO YOU EVER GET TO A PLACE WHERE THE LINES START SOUNDING LIKE THEY DON’T MAKE SENSE?

BRODERICK: Yes. I’ve definitely gotten to that that point. I’ve gotten to the point where I forget lines.

QUESTION: WHAT HAPPENS THEN?

BRODERICK: Usually some actor around bails you out. That’s very rare for me, but the only time that I have forgotten lines is when I’ve been in a play for a long time. I’ve never forgotten them in a first preview when you’re thinking that you’re going to forget them. I mean, I might’ve forgotten them but not so that anyone would know. I might have hiccups. It’s the eight month to tenth month variant when it’s time to watch out because you’re not really paying attention.

QUESTION: YOU THINK YOU KNOW IT ALL?

BRODERICK: Yes, and then suddenly someone looks at you saying nothing and you think, ‘Oh, I think I’m meant to speak here.’ And you don’t know what you were up to or barely where you are. I’ve had that happen in songs, which is extremely embarrassing because there’s no, ‘Well, you know I’ve been thinking –’ and the band don’t give a damn about you and are going on like a train. I did that on ‘The Producers’ so poorly that I had to stop twice and say, ‘I don’t know.’ Not only did I not know at what point in the song I was at but I was singing about where I was and who the conductor was. Finally, Patrick gave me the sheet music.

QUESTION: THE CONDUCTOR?

BRODERICK: Yeah. He handed it to me.

QUESTION: SO THAT YOU KNEW WHERE YOU WERE?

BRODERICK: Yeah.

QUESTION: WHAT SONG WAS IT?

BRODERICK: ‘That Face’. It’s a little bit repetitive, the lyrics to that song. No insult to Mel Brooks. It’s ‘The chin, the eyes, the nose, the ears, the mouth,’ the whatever. And after a little bit of months they’re all in one’s mind interchangeable, so if you get lost you think, ‘I know it’s some part of her face. I have no idea what though.’ In movies that doesn’t happen. You don’t get bored, but you do get bored just in the amount of time that you’re waiting.

QUESTION: WHICH DIDN’T HAPPEN, I’M SURE, ON A VERY LOW BUDGET MOVIE LIKE THIS ONE?

BRODERICK: No, and that’s kind of nice. Very little [waiting]. But you also don’t have time to fix anything and you have no time to sometimes get coverage that you might want. So you’re also vulnerable in that way. Movie acting, it seems to me, has to be fresh. The good movie acting, the stuff that I really like has to look like it’s happening for the first time. I mean, all acting has to look like that, but movies have a way of really knowing. It really just has to be fresh.

QUESTION: DO YOU FEEL THAT THERE’S A MATTHEW BRODERICK STYLE THAT YOU’VE PANTED, SOMEONE WHO’S GOT A QUIZZICALLY FUNNY WAY OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD? IS THAT A REFLECTION OF YOUR OWN PERSONALITY?

BRODERICK: I don’t know. I like to think that there isn’t that, that I can just do anything but I suppose there is. I bet when I die or when it’s done it will be related to how I see the world. I think my personality is probably more similar to what I play than what I think. That said you get stuck in these personas because you’ll have success in something and you’ll get good at that thing. So it is and it isn’t like me.

QUESTION: DO YOU HAVE A DREAM ROLE THAT YOU WANT TO DO?

BRODERICK: I don’t. I wish I could think of something. I’d like to do something new [on Broadway]. I was going to do a play that Kenny Lonergan [who directed Broderick in the surprise hit, ‘You Can Count on Me’] wrote this past year. We were all set, but he was still editing a movie that he did. He wasn’t quite finished and would’ve had to leave editing in order to direct the play and no one wanted that. I bet we’ll do that at some point. It’s a wonderful play.

QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU DO THEN WHEN YOU’RE NOT WORKING SO THAT YOU DON’T DRIVE YOURSELF CRAZY?

BRODERICK: That’s a big job. I’ve been very into bike riding lately. That’s my latest thing.

QUESTION: IN NEW YORK WHERE YOU CAN GET KILLED BY A TRUCK?

BRODERICK: I go along the river and the beautiful new path there. I go in Central Park when there’s very little traffic. That feels dangerous though because there are people there that can hit you.

QUESTION: DO YOU WEAR A HELMET?

BRODERICK: Yes, absolutely. I think it’s a law. I know it’s a law for kids, but I think it’s for adults too. I always wear a helmet anyway. I have a lot of time with my boy which is good – James.

QUESTION: HE’S ALMOST FIVE?

BRODERICK: He is five. He’s five and a half. He’s getting old. It’s great to have had this time with him, but I’m now at a point where I really want to work again. I finished a movie with my friend Josh Goldin called ‘Wonderful World’ maybe six weeks ago or something.

QUESTION: THAT DOESN’T SEEM LIKE THAT LONG AGO.

BRODERICK: It’s hard to fill your time after a while.

QUESTION: WHAT’S THAT MOVIE ABOUT THEN?

BRODERICK: It’s a movie that Josh who’s a good friend of mine from the Helen Hunt days, or before even, that he wrote, this script. He’s a writer, but he wanted to direct and so he finally directed something. This was his first time. He wrote a beautiful little script and I saw the movie and I was very, very proud of it. I think it’s good, I hope.

QUESTION: IT’S SORT OF FUNNY?

BRODERICK: It’s kind of sad actually, truthfully. It’s a dramedy.

QUESTION: IS IT SET IN NEW YORK?

BRODERICK: It’s set in any town. It feels like L.A. to me, but he says that it’s not meant to be. It was shot in Shreveport, Louisiana. We made it for about a $185. A little more than that, but it was cheap.

QUESTION: DO YOU AND SARAH PLAN TO DO ANYTHING? WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WORKED TOGETHER IN ‘HOW TO SUCCEED’? I KNOW SHE WAS ONLY ON IT FOR TWO WEEKS.

BRODERICK: Yeah. She was there for more than two weeks. Six weeks or something like that. She was in it before I came back for a little while too. We haven’t done anything since that, but that would be nice actually. It’s not something that we really planned on. It’s also with a kid, like she said, you get into this thing where we’re both gone at exactly the same time and in fact, now that you say it, me and her doing a play right now would be a disaster. Maybe we could do a movie together, but even that would be tough, to leave the house at 6:30am every morning and get home late.

QUESTION: KIDS DON’T CARE WHAT THEIR PARENTS DO. THEY JUST WANT MOM AND DAD AROUND.

BRODERICK: Or one of them. Mom. So that wouldn’t be so good. We’ll have to put that off.