The director who hated every second of working with Matthew Broderick: “A theatre of cruelty”
Matthew Broderick is stuck with the image of his most famous role – the charming and clever troublemaker Ferris Bueller, though this persona seemingly translated into an arrogant star, according to one director of a film made 35 years ago.
So, Broderick may not deserve to be judged for one set of experiences. Following his career-making turn in John Hughes’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Broderick was a very marketable name.
In 1989, Broderick landed the lead role in Edward Zwick’s Glory, as Robert Gould Shaw, a Union Army officer who leads the first all-Black volunteer company during the US Civil War. In terms of the acting craft, Broderick is overshadowed in the legacy of this film by the fact that it was Denzel Washington’s first Oscar win, for ‘Best Supporting Actor’. Morgan Freeman and Cary Elwes also appear in lead roles.
Despite this feat of cinema, Zwick always fell slightly short of being one of the great modern directors; he is at least not in the same club as those filmmakers constantly showered with Oscars. But Zwick went on to direct additional epic war films, The Last Samurai and Courage Under Fire. Zwick also became an Oscar winner a decade after Glory as a producer on Shakespeare in Love. Looking back on his collaboration with Broderick, Zwick did not have great things to say.
In his memoir Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions, Zwick called working with Broderick a ”theater of cruelty” and a “nightmare from which there seemed to be no waking”. However, the director gives Broderick some credit, saying that he thinks the actor was like this because other people were telling him he should be working with directors of Steven Spielberg’s caliber, and that “he needed to be protected”.
Zwick also says that Broderick has since apologised for “the sh** he pulled,” and the director has forgiven him.
Problems with Broderick on the set of Glory included his quitting for a time, just after accepting the role, because his mother, playwright Patricia Broderick, said that the script was awful. Evidently, Broderick did end up returning to the role. The overall impression that Zwick’s account gives is that Broderick was riding the high of his newfound stardom and that people only encouraged him to believe that he should be getting the best of the best, with no dues left to pay in his career.
Of course, even the most acclaimed actor of all time shouldn’t treat the other cast and crew with anything less than total respect.
Following Glory, Broderick starred in Andrew Bergman’s The Freshman, went on to provide the voice of Simba in Disney’s The Lion King, and secured many more roles in popular movies and TV shows. He has, to date, never worked with Spielberg on a film. However, he shared with PBS that he did meet the legendary filmmaker once, at the opening night party for the actor’s Broadway production, It’s Only a Play. Broderick said, “Steven Spielberg asked me if I wanted to write a screenplay for him. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘what about?’ ‘Good point,’ he said, and he walked away.”
Zwick directed more films, including Legends of the Fall, Love & Other Drugs, and Trial by Fire, and became a producer on the TV series Thirtysomething. He never worked with Broderick again, but at least, despite the difficulties of filming, they made something worthwhile, which propelled the careers of stars whom it seems that Hollywood could not live without.
