GETTING OFF THE FERRIS WHEEL

He's approaching middle age, but fans persist in seeing Matthew   
Broderick as the teenaged title character in a 1986 high-school comedy.  
Now the New York native is starring simultaneously in a Broadway hit and 
the critically acclaimed new movie Election.  Can undisputed adulthood be 
far behind?

 Matthew Broderick thinks he's going to have a heart attack.  He's sitting 
in a booth at an old Jewish deli just off Times Square, staring down a 
sloppy plate of pastrami on rye and you can see him trying to gauge just 
how much fat he'll be able to consume before keeling over from clogged 
arteries.

  "Terrifying, isn't it?  I'm going to die if I eat that," he says, 
holding out a piece of gristled meat with his fork.  "But I'm half Jewish, 
so I have some genes that will hopefully break this all down."

  "It's another Wednesday afternoon in the middle of a two-show day on 
Broadway, and as Broderick movies through his postmatinee meal at this old 
theatre haunt, you notice the furtive glances of the tourists around the 
room.  With his puppy-dog brown eyes and short, wavy dark hair, there's no 
mistaking the puckish Broderick.  He's starring on Broadway in the creaky 
1930s Emlyn Williams thriller Night Must Fall, and programs for the play 
are sitting conspicuously on a few tables around the deli.  But late, when 
the actor has gone, a man in his 60s will approach and asks if that was, 
you know, the fellow who played that kid in that movie.  The news of once 
again being remembered as Ferris Bueller wouldn't exactly cheer Broderick, 
but he does say, "It's happened for so long and for so much that it 
doesn't actually bother me."

  Still, it would be nice to think his newest movie, Election - which was 
released across Canada yesterday to grateful reviews from critics starved 
for an intelligent comedy - might help finally snap the spectre of Ferris 
that has hung over his career for the last 13 years.

  For despite making more that 20 films and winning two Tonys on Broadway 
since then, Broderick is forever Ferris.  There's something about that 
character's youthful insouciance and his seductive, warm-hearted 
cheekiness that stuck to him.  He knows it, and he also knows he's got to 
be prudent when choosing roles not to stray too far from what audiences 
expect.

  His part in Night Must Fall, for example, casts him notably against type 
as a cunning murderer.  "It's okay," he explains, "because he's a killer 
but he's a charming guy, so I suit the role in some way."  He is dressed 
in new blue jeans, a light-blue dress shirt, and North Star runners.  At 
37, he may be a little larger around the middle than in his younger days, 
but the whole outfit still reinforces that famously youthful appearance.  
"But I think you have to be a little bit careful.  You have to go baby 
steps sometimes, you don't want to go so far against your perceived type 
that you hurt The Thing."

  The Thing - that disarming boyishness that is Broderick's ticket to ride 
- is also what lets him ramble undisturbed through Greenwich Village, 
where he lives with his wife, the actress Sarah Jessica Parker.  People, 
you see, "are very hostile with some actors because of the characters they 
play," he notes.  "There are ones who play tough guys who everybody 
challenges to a fight. I usually just get, 'Hi!'"

  The Thing is what lets tourist in Times Square stop him and ask in a 
familiar manner, "How's Sarah?," even though he's never met them before.  
The Thing is also what causes him to hold a Camel cigarette behind his 
back during a sidewalk photo shoot, aware of the influence a published 
photograph of him smoking might have on kids.

  But The Thing also means, with folks like Tom Hanks hogging the boyish 
nice-guy niche, that Broderick doesn't get the pick of the litter in 
Hollywood.  "I'm not quite in a position where I can strategically plan my 
career," he allows.  "It's not like I'm fielding 25 offers, deciding this 
is the best step for my career.  It's more like I get a few offers and 
three of them just suck, I can't even get through the scripts and one I 
sort of like, and I haven't worked in a while and I think, maybe this is 
good.  It's not like I'm orchestrating it so carefully."

  It's a happy accident, then, that the receptions for Election and Night 
Must Fall are together making for an upbeat spring season for Broderick.  
A few weeks ago, the play transferred to a for-profit run on the strength 
of an unexpected rave from The New York Times.  The critic singled out 
Broderick's "terrifically smart, fully engaged portrait of a sociopath."

  Election, too, is winning unexpected raves.  The movie is a product of 
MTV Films, a new teen-oriented division of Paramount Pictures that has 
made a tawdry name for itself releasing juvenile fare like Dead Man on 
Campus and Varsity Blues.


Article written by Simon Houpt
(c) The Globe and Mail, New York 1999