Broderick in "The Music Man"

If you're going to star in a TV adaptation of a hit musical, you gotta know the territory-territory-territory -- and Matthew Broderick obviously thinks he's up to the task.

Variety reports Broderick will star as Professor Harold Hill in a TV adaptation of "The Music Man," as the flim-flam man who travels to River City, Iowa to sell city fathers on the benefit of equipping a marching band.

The three-hour telecast, expected to air on ABC during next year's sweeps, and Variety said Broderick's wife, "Sex And The City" star Sarah Jessica Parker is in talks to play the town librarian, who captures Hill's heart.

The play debuted on Broadway in 1957 and was adapted as a film in 1962. Robert Preston played Prof. Hill on stage and screen, Variety said.

-- JAM! TV

'Ferris Bueller' sequel in works?

Is Matthew Broderick ready for another "Day Off?"
 
 According to the movie-biz gossip site Ain't-It-Cool-News, John Hughes, who directed to original "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", is writing a sequel to the hit 1986 film, which followed the adventures of an underachieving high school student's determination to skip school.
 
 AICN said Hughes new script would follow Bueller's character 15 years later as he took a job in a large corporation. No word on casting, although the original film helped launch the careers of Broderick, Jennifer Grey and Charlie Sheen.

-- JAM! Movies

According to Matthew

Turnabout is fair play.

That can be the only, karmic explanation why Matthew Broderick, who played a teacher's worst nightmare in the cult favourite Ferris Bueller's Day Off, is on the other side of the desk as a problem-plagued Omaha high school instructor in the dark satire Election from MTV and Paramount Pictures.

Directed by Alexander Payne - the man behind Citizen Ruth, a biting comedy about the pro-life/pro-choice battle starring Laura Dern - Election is an unflinching look at how an annoyingly overachieving student's campaign for school president proves to be civics teacher Jim McAllister's undoing.

McAllister loves his job, and he genuinely likes his students, but something about perky, perserverant Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) drives him around the bend. It's not just the fact that a fellow teacher, his best friend Dave, lost his job over an obsession with her; McAllister feels the Tracy Flicks of the world, who'll do anything and step on anyone to get ahead, need to be be taught a lesson.

When she runs unopposed for president in the school council election, McAllister takes action, beginning a sequence of events that changes his life forever.

Unlike the current crop of teenage high school sex comedies, Election is very adult in its humour and perspective. It doesn't take sides - you often feel sorry for schemer Flick's lonely path in life - and it doesn't pull punches.

"That's Alexander's humour. It's not clowny, it's all supposed to be very real," says Broderick by phone from his dressing room in Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre, where he's appearing in the thriller Night Must Fall.

"It's sarcastic more than broad, I think. Everybody catches the tone from him, and he's a very funny person too.

"It reminds me of studio movies from the '70s, which were a little more individual. This film really is from Alexander, it doesn't feel like there were 18 writers and 14 executives deciding which version of which writer's thing to use. It's not a film made by a committee."

Broderick was considering the Election screenplay by Payne and Citizen Ruth collaborator Jim Taylor when a chance encounter sealed his decision to play the teacher whose own lessons of ethics and morality are sorely tested.

"I read the script, and around the same time I met Laura Dern at a party," he recalls. "She said, 'Oh, those guys are great, you've gotta see Citizen Ruth', so I rented it, and I loved it. All of that made me want the part more and more.

"Its darkness certainly didn't push me away from it. I just thought it was funny, and a really good script. The first thing I look for is something I like reading. If it's dark, light or whatever, that's usually an afterthought. It wasn't like I was looking for a certain type of film, I just thought it was good."

Filmed on location in Payne's hometown of Omaha, Election perfectly captures a feeling of Middle American desperation, with Broderick aptly cast as a nebbishy everyman drowning in his daily existence.

"When they gave me my selection of ties, I knew something was wrong," he laughs, "and I got one short sleeve shirt. And nothing was all-cotton or anything like that either.

"But it was really a pleasure because very often in movies you play a security guard or a college student, and just happen to have $500 Armani pants on, and things get more and more upscale all the time when you're doing sittings.

"It's nice to be so authentic, ugly as it was. It helps the character a lot."

This is a busy summer for Broderick. Aside from Election and playing the villain every night in Night Must Fall ("It's kind of fun. You kill an old lady every night, and then you go home," he says wryly), Broderick will be back on the big screen on July 23 when he pulls on a grey trenchcoat and black fedora to play the comedic cyborg super-agent Inspector Gadget, against My Best Friend's Wedding's Rupert Everett as the nefarious Dr. Claw.

Unlike Broderick's battle last summer against the computer graphic menace of Godzilla, the actor felt like he was a bigger part of the action this time around.

"The fun part is, the effects are mostly mechanical, like when they attached a special, fake arm to me. The stuff we're reacting to is really happening, so that makes it more fun. It was kind of like doing magic tricks, you try to make the illusion work.

"An amazing amount of care goes into a film like this. I spent two weeks having molds made of different part of my body, and then sculptors work on your hands for two weeks putting on nails and hair. Stan Winston did the effects; it's pretty impressive."

Matthew Broderick grows up for Election

Say it ain't so, Ferris.

Imagine: Ferris Bueller hanging out in the teacher's lounge discussing curriculums and field trips with Ed Rooney?

"It's nice to be on the other side of the fence for a while.

It's interesting," Matthew Broderick says.

Thirteen years after starring in the seminal teen flick

Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Broderick has gone back to school.

This time, in Election, he's working for the man.

"What I want to have is a long career. So if I can play the older roles and people can now accept that, then I'm very happy," Broderick says.

At age 37, the Tony-winning actor still has trouble shaking the hit films he made during the '80s -- the most persistent of which being the devilishly handsome and dashing juvenile delinquent Ferris Bueller.

"They're just parts I play. I guess that gets confusing sometimes," Broderick prudently concedes. "Like, in high school, I did poorly. I ended up fairly popular because I did plays,

but I was never the kind of confident, puckish guy Ferris is.

I didn't get away with anything -- I was always in trouble."

Then again, fans love to talk about Ferris so much, Broderick says, "that movie seemed to overshadow the real thing where it feels like it was my high school!"

Well, Matthew, better you recall Ferris Bueller's antics than those in Election.

The bitterly funny satire which opened in theatres yesterday casts Broderick as Jim McAllister, an unsatisfied teacher in a prosaic Omaha, Neb., high school.

McAllister's personal crisis manifests itself when an eager student (Reese Witherspoon) starts steamrolling her way to victory in the student council election.

For someone who began a career on Broadway as a teenager, Broderick found it easy to relate with the young stars of Election.

"Yeah, it was. Reese is so wonderfully good in the movie -- she was a pleasure to play off," he reports.

"As far as Chris (Klein), Jessica (Campbell) and Frankie (Ingrassia) ... it was their first time and there were just so happy to be there -- it was infectious."

Broderick delivers a knockout performance as the faculty member who stages the Study Hall Putsch. Details of his character will have audiences instantly flashing back to teachers of their own.

"Alexander (director Payne) told me to gain some weight ... that was really easy, I found," Broderick laughs.

"They put grey in my hair and I had really ugly clothes -- the stupid ties and dockers.

"Everybody from the costumers to Alexander had a very good understanding of Jim."

Broderick doesn't just look the part of a teacher.

Mr. McAllister has all the moves of an experienced classroom performer.

"I did think a lot about teachers I had. I also sat in on some classes. What I found most helpful is I spent a little time in the teachers' lounge," he says.

The result of his efforts is a high school movie like no other. Dead Poets Society it ain't.

"Or Lean On Me? It's a little of both. He's a good teacher at the beginning, but as the movie goes on, his heart is not in teaching any more. I don't know where it is -- but it isn't in teaching."

Broderick's heart is still in Hollywood, he insists.

He did Addicted to Love after Cable Guy, Election between Godzilla and Inspector Gadget, but doesn't consciously seek out smaller films and plays to balance the blockbusters.

"It sounds like a good plan, but I can't say it was a plan.

It just worked out that way."

Less and less, though, we are seeing Broderick as the old-fashioned nice guy film-goers grew to know during the '80s.

"You know, I'm not really as nice as sometimes I am perceived to be," he says.

"But I've had more success in those kinds of roles, so I see how people think that."

Broderick tough to pigeonhole

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."

Welcome, Matt

NEW YORK -- In the new monster movie Godzilla, Matthew Broderick plays a biologist who is called upon to explain the sudden emergence of the giant mutant lizard.

Broderick says he has something in common with his gargantuan co-star.

"They just can't seem to get rid of either of us. Granted, Godzilla has been around for 44 years but I've been around for 17.

"I started acting when I was 19. I'm amazed that I've lasted as long as I have and that I've managed to stay viable in a very fickle industry."

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the creative force behind Stargate, Independence Day and now Godzilla, insists they wrote the role of the biologist for Broderick.

Devlin started out as an actor and recalls: "I was always following in Matthew's footsteps. I always seemed to be auditioning for the roles he eventually got.

"He's one of my favorite actors. We tried to get him for Stargate and Independence Day but both times he was already committed. This time I went to him before I wrote the script for Godzilla and got him to commit so I could write the role specifically for his strengths."

Broderick says he came aboard Godzilla because Devlin assured him, "it would not be a spoof. I've always loved monster movies. I grew up watching creature features on TV.

"I didn't want to mock the movies I loved so much."

Broderick said he put his faith in Devlin and Emmerich not just because Independence Day grossed more than $800 million US but because "in Independence Day, they made me care about the characters.

"You have to care about the people being chased by aliens or monsters for the movie to work. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of explosions and special effects."

The creature in Godzilla is basically a special effect inserted into shots months after Broderick and the rest of the cast had wrapped and gone home.

"Roland would help me pick out a window on a building and that's what I'd stare at when I was interacting with Godzilla.

"The most I ever saw of him was a claw, a foot and a knuckle."

Broderick admits he was surprised when he saw the finished version of the film.

"Boy, has Godzilla been working out since his last (Japanese) films! He's really trim and buff and he's had a lot of plastic surgery."

Because 90% of the film occurs in a rainstorm, Broderick felt a bit waterlogged by the end of the shoot.

"It was uncomfortable but it was also part of the fun. You felt ready to play. It got you in the mood."

In one sequence, Broderick is trapped in a car inside the jaws of the creature.

"They had created the jaws, and it and the car were up on a huge crane that rocked. It was like being on a ride in Disneyland."

This summer, Broderick will begin filming Disney's live-action version of the popular cartoon Inspector Gadget, playing the bumbling bionic detective.

All the major cast members of Godzilla signed a three-picture deal. Broderick says he hopes that if there is a squel, Godzilla chooses to attack Paris.

"I love Paris so I'd love to spend three months there."

Because Godzilla attacks New York in his first American movie, Broderick didn't have far to travel each day for work.

He and his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, live in New York's Soho district, one of the areas ravaged by the creature.

"We cheated a bit actually.

"The wide exterior shots were done in New York but then we moved to Los Angeles for most of the interiors."

Broderick has a whole shelf of action toys modelled after his character.

"There's a grappling Nick and a currying Nick and a brave scientist Nick. They look like me except that the hands are very big so Nick can hold all his weapons."

Reports: Broderick and Parker married

 NEW YORK (AP) -- Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who shared a Broadway stage together, are now reportedly husband and wife.


Broderick, who is starring in a remake of "Godzilla" being filmed in New York City, had recently scoffed at rumors that he was planning to wed.


But the couple were married Monday in Manhattan, according to published reports today by syndicated columnist Liz Smith and the Daily News.


Smith said more than 40 people sang along with an orchestra that serenaded the newlyweds following a ceremony that the News said was held at a synagogue on Manhattan's lower East Side.


Parker, 32, is the star of the Broadway show "Once Upon a Mattress," and Broderick, 35, had starred in the Broadway hit "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" with Parker.


Earlier in the week, Broderick had told a reporter he had no plans to marry.


"These stories seem to come in waves," he said. "I'd think people would be bored of them by now. They're never true."

Broderick well-connected

 BEVERLY HILLS -- Matthew Broderick knows how to succeed in movies without really trying.

Between film projects, Broderick, 34, keeps himself busy doing stage work, television and directing.

His last film was the 1994 art house flick Mrs. Parker And The Vicious Circle. In Cable Guy which opens June 7, Broderick plays the hapless victim to Jim Carrey's cruel prankster.

Between these big-screen appearances, Broderick won a Tony award for starring on Broadway in the musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. He also directed himself and Patricia Arquette in a low-budget romantic drama called Infinity.

Broderick is still singing and dancing up a storm nightly in How To Succeed for another month. For the past three months, he has shared the Broadway spotlight with his live-in partner Sarah Jessica Parker.

"Starring in How To Succeed has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Sharing the stage with Sarah is the icing on a very big cake," admits Broderick.

Parker and Broderick have been a couple for four years but there still isn't a whisper of marriage.

"You'll never know our plans from me. That's one subject I refuse to discuss."

Broderick is certainly not tight-lipped about his Cable Guy co-star.

"Jim Carrey is a charming, wonderful, generous actor. He's so powerful that he could really be a bastard if he wanted to be.

"What was encouraging for me was that Jim wanted to make a good movie and not simply be good in it. He protected all of his co-stars and solicited our input."

Broderick had a small taste of fame in 1986 when he starred in the runaway teen hit Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

"I never actually had trouble walking around. People would smile, wave or call me Ferris but I never feared for my safety.

"I feel sorry for Jim having to live in a compound, be chauffeured around everywhere by body guards and have everyone act is if they were his long lost friend."

When he is asked to sign autographs these days, it's for children who realize he provided the voice of Simba in The Lion King.

"They want me to sign as Simba not Matthew. There are days I'd like to strangle every stuffed lion I come across."

Disney is planning a direct-to-TV sequel to The Lion King but Broderick refuses to acknowledge whether he is going to supply Simba's voice once again, insisting that "marriage and The Lion King are my two taboo subjects."