Matthew Broderick says he wouldn't be surprised if his and wife Sarah Jessica Parker's 5-year-old son, James, winds up becoming a performer. "He's a very good singer. He's funny. He's very convincing if he wants something. He just has these traits," says the proud dad.

Not that anyone's pushing show business at young James. In fact, Broderick admits, "I'm not too comfortable showing him our movies and stuff yet. I'm avoiding it for now. He's seen 'Bee Movie.' He's seen 'Lion King,' and he knows I'm doing the voice, but he barely understands that it's all actors."

Broderick has just come from soaking up some family time with his wife and son at the Deer Valley ski resort in Utah before diving into tubthumping for "Then She Found Me," opening this Friday (4/25). The film, adapted from Elinor Lipman's novel of the same name, marked a reunion with Helen Hunt, who makes her directing debut with it. They met when they were in their young twenties and made "Project X," then they went on to become a couple, then broke up but stayed friends. Now Matthew is playing the husband who dumps her but then wants her back after she finds love with someone else (Colin Firth) — as she copes with the surprise appearance of her birth mother (Bette Midler) and a pregnancy.

"It was sort of funny to be playing the heel," admits Matthew. "But I think directing is a very good fit for Helen. We have talked about what kind of movies and acting we like for 20 years, so there were no surprises, and she was always very generous."

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: "Desperate Housewives" latest ex-husband hunk, Gary Cole, says his character won't be jumping on and off the bedroom merry-go-round on the ABC prime-time soap. Darn it! "He's pretty isolated," says Cole, who was briefly introduced as Katherine Mayfair's (Dana Delany) thought-to-be-dead, ex-husband Wayne Davis on the show two Sundays ago. "I'm in the last five episodes with only two more to shoot, and I haven't crossed paths with anybody except this family. It's pretty much about how he begins to insert himself into his daughter, Dylan's (Lyndsy Fonseca) life." And quite naturally, something lurks beneath Dad's intentions. "He's less than genuine sometimes in dealing with whoever he's dealing with," says Cole. On Wisteria Lane? Get out!

Cole adds that "DH" creator/exec producer/writer Marc Cherry is still keeping "everyone guessing.

I know very little from week to week where he's going." According to Cole, Cherry gave him a clear idea of what type of person his character is and the way he behaves with other people, "but what you don't know are plot points and how he will put that inside of a story." Prior to joining "DH," Cole says he was more familiar with the players than the play. "I hadn't followed the show, but I did a movie with Nicollette Sheridan quite a while ago, and I've also worked with Brenda Strong. I'd also met Dana before, doing a play reading," he recalls. "I'm a big fan of hers."

HEAR TO THERE: Ira Glass, who has an avid public radio following with his show "This American Life," admits it's taken two seasons to get the hang of balancing his regular gig with its TV counterpart on Showtime. "It's been kind of a hard two years on the staff doing both the radio and the TV. Our goal this year was to be able to do the TV without the radio suffering in quality," says Glass. "During our first year, I feel like we made a really nice TV series, but we ended up doing a lot more reruns on the radio than we normally would. We did decent shows on the radio, but it wasn't our most ambitious work. Whereas this season our radio shows have been just as good as they ever are."

The second season of the TV series returns May 4, and Glass tells us they hope to get more of the radio fans on board. "I think the radio fans had a lot of fear about the TV show, but once they saw it, they seemed to really like it. One of the problems, though, is many public radio listeners just do not get premium cable, so most of our core audience has not seen the show," notes Glass, who is hosting a live "This American Life" event May 1 at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of New York University. "I'll do some radio stories, but most of it is showing our audience what the TV show is."

FROM THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT: Katherine Waterston's performance in the May 9-opening "The Babysitters" is already being heralded as a career maker — and the younger daughter of Sam Waterston is quick to share the credit. "John Leguizamo was an angel. In any stressful situation, you want someone who can make you laugh. He's hilarious. We did almost all-night shoots, and at 4 in the morning, when you're punchy, things that might seem uncomfortable at other times kind of crack you up." Katherine plays a babysitter who has an affair with Leguizamo's character, one of the fathers for whom she works — then turns into a high school madam as she sets up her girlfriends with his buddies.

With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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