THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412290040
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
WHEN IT COMES to playing a comic grouch, Walter Matthau has a corner on the market.
Now he's out to let us know that Albert Einstein was really an absent-minded professor with an interest in romance.
The great physicist plays cupid in ``I.Q.,'' a romantic comedy at Lynnhaven Mall, Surf-N-Sand and Pembroke Cinemas in Virginia Beach, Janaf in Norfolk and Movies 10 and Greenbrier in Chesapeake.
``I did no research. I feel research is the worst possible thing you could do. It twists your imagination,'' Matthau said from Alabama, where he is being directed by his son, Charlie, in a new adaptation of Truman Capote's ``The Glass Harp.''
``I put on the wig and I felt Einstein,'' he said.
But Matthau contradicts himself by adding, ``I read several books and I looked at some old newsreels. Some people thought Einstein was an arrogant conniver. Whatever he was, he was also a genius in physics.''
The movie was filmed on location at Princeton University, where Einstein taught for 20 years after fleeing persecution in Europe. It is the fictional comedy of how he tried to encourage a romance between his brilliant niece (Meg Ryan) and an automobile mechanic (played by Tim Robbins). Einstein thinks his niece will be making a mistake if she marries the aggressive psychologist to whom she is engaged.
``It's perfectly believable,'' Matthau said. ``If I were trapped on a deserted island, I'd rather be with someone who could build a raft than someone who could explain how it floats on water. I think Meg should have gone for the mechanic.''
Matthau learned about the physicist's human side from Princeton locals. ``Everybody in the town seems to have known Einstein,'' Matthau said. ``They kept coming at me and making suggestions. One woman told me I wasn't walking fast enough. Another said, `I worked for Albert Einstein, and he never had shoes that good.' I was wearing $12 shoes supplied by this company. I asked, `You think these shoes are good?' ''
``One woman told me her daughter Lydia, when she was 12 years old, used to go over to the Einstein house all the time. Einstein said later that they had a wonderful relationship because he did her arithmetic homework and she gave him cookies.''
The filmmakers tried to film in the actual house where Einstein lived, on Mercer Street in Princeton, but the physicist who lives there now would allow them to shoot only in the back yard. Most of the scenes were shot in a house down the street. In the classroom, Matthau actually sat in seat No. 11 at Palmer Hall, the same one Einstein always occupied.
``I don't know that it helped me,'' the irreverent actor said. ``I was after laughs. He was after relativity. We had different goals.''
Fred Schepisi, the Australian director who last scored in the romantic comedy genre with ``Roxanne,'' admits that he wasn't sure about having Matthau play Einstein. Even though the star has appeared in everything from ``The Odd Couple'' to ``Grumpy Old Men,'' Schepisi asked that Matthau film a screen test.
``I didn't mind,'' Matthau said. ``I wanted to see what I'd look like - if I was anywhere close.'' He was worried that he is 6-feet-2 and Einstein was a mere 5-feet-7. ``I stooped over a lot, but it helped most that the other actors were tall. That made me look shorter. Tim is six feet six.''
Jowls are the first thing you notice about Matthau. They frame the crumpled face. One critic once claimed that he looks like a ``bloodhound with a head cold.''
Initially, Hollywood didn't know what to do with him. For years, he was cast as a villain - he stalked Audrey Hepburn in ``Charade.'' It was playwright Neil Simon who first saw comic possibilities in Matthau's slouch and grouch. He wrote the role of Oscar for him in ``The Odd Couple.'' Matthau then won an Oscar for playing a swindler in ``The Fortune Cookie.''
At 73, he still managed to pull off one of the biggest surprise hits of the past year, the comedy ``Grumpy Old Men'' with his perennial co-star Jack Lemmon. ``It was a hit,'' Matthau said, ``because young kids liked to see two old codgers bickering and fighting even though they liked each other. It was really a love story. Probably most marriages are that way. It was a signal that you could bicker and fight with your spouse and still be in love.''
Asked what he would have talked about had he met the real Einstein, Matthau said: ``I'd have told him some jokes in Yiddish. I worked in the Yiddish theater for seven years.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
[Walter Matthau as Einstein]
Photo by DEMMIE TODD / Paramount
Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau) plays Cupid for his niece Catherine
(Meg Ryan) in ``I.Q.''
by CNB