CRYSTAL SPARKLING BRIGHTER THAN EVER; BILLY AT 49: `I FEEL MORE SETTLED. I'M AROUND, MY HEALTH IS GOOD, THINGS ARE GOING WELL'.

Byline: Jay Carr Boston Globe

``Billy's like the nucleus. I'm like the electron,'' says Robin Williams. He's describing the way he and Billy Crystal play off each other in ``Fathers' Day,'' the new comedy opening Friday, based on Francis Veber's French original, ``Les Comperes.'' On the literal level, they play former lovers of the same woman, who sends them looking for the runaway teen-age son each thinks he has fathered.

The way it breaks down onscreen is that Williams plays a weepy, unstable '60s leftover, a character he describes as ``Freud's grab bag.'' Crystal's aggressive lawyer plays straight man. ``After seven years of `Comic Relief' and 40 hours of live TV,'' says Crystal, interviewed separately, ``Robin trusts me. You know he'll go crazy. I'm basically onstage with Hale-Bopp. But the last thing he'll do is he'll look back to see if it's OK.''

Going straight

Onstage, each did his thing, broadly. Playing straight man in ``Fathers' Day,'' was something new, Crystal says, relaxing after a round of interviews, looking out over Central Park from a hotel suite. ``I started watching a lot of Dean Martin movies with Jerry Lewis, and watched how Dean really controlled the action and was really the daddy. I decided when we rehearsed that I could get a lot of mileage out of looks and double takes. You watch guys like Jack Benny, who, when everything is crazy around him, is still the center of his universe. And Oliver Hardy, who was so brilliant. He'd look at the camera and he was us, he was the audience, letting us know that he knew Stan was screwing up, giving a look like, `Do you believe what I have to put up with?' I loved the patience of playing this character, of getting so much said out of not saying anything.''

For Crystal, at 49, it represents a continuing metamorphosis from stand-up comic to actor. Actually, reactor in this case, if you believe the dictum that acting is reacting. You'd be excused if this year you thought Crystal and Williams had been doing nothing but making movies together. They appear in Kenneth Branagh's ``Hamlet'' - Crystal as an impressively reflective Gravedigger, Williams as the smarmy courtier Osric. This fall, they'll be seen in Woody Allen's new comedy, ``Deconstructing Harry.'' But only in ``Fathers' Day'' do they actually play scenes together. They talked about doing a movie together for years, Crystal says. When ``Fathers' Day'' came along, the package came together fast, says Crystal, who catalyzed it.

Oscar moments

Crystal also catalyzed this year's Oscar telecast, to everyone's relief. He could easily become a permanent fixture as annual host to a global audience of 1 billion. But he's not willing to say whether he'll be back. ``I enjoyed doing it,'' he says, ``but I also enjoyed not doing it. It takes two months out of your life. I don't think I'm ready to say, `Nobody send me anything to do in February or March because I'm doing the Oscars.' We'll see what happens. This one fell in perfectly with scheduling and timing. Coming onstage was great, but the challenge was living up to everyone's expectations, you know? I didn't relax until 1 o'clock the day of the show, when the monologue was set. I did sit-ups and push-ups, a couple of hundred each. I knew the movie was going to work big. But I'm standing behind that screen waiting to take the stage, then I'm running through to match the film. When people greeted me the way they did, it was tremendous - and a relief. I was very scared about coming back.

``What was emotional to me was seeing my 82-year-old mother in the audience, and my wife of 27 years, Janice, and my brother and my kids, and realizing it all started because I wanted to make my mother and my dad laugh. I still feel I just came out of my room in my uncle's clothes, you know, to look funny. That's how I felt. It was so amazing to be on that stage. I know it sounds sappy, but it hits you. A lot of moments stick in your head. I remember the night Hal Roach was introduced from his seat, and he's about 100, and he's not supposed to speak, just take a little bow, but he started to speak, he didn't have a mike but he didn't care, and he's going on and on, and I could feel everybody going, `Say something,' and lines were flying through my head, and finally one went boom, stop, like a slot machine, and I said, `I guess this is very fitting because Mr. Roach got his start in silent films.' Robin was sitting in the front row, and he went wild. I looked at him and he looked at me, and we both winked. I think at that little moment I felt I was a good comedian.''

Diplomatic flair

``There's a centered quality about him,'' says Williams, later, of his friend Crystal. Just a look from Crystal, adds Williams, and he'll know if he's gone too far. ``That's why he does the Academy Awards and I can't get near them. I can just hear Gregory Peck saying (disapprovingly), `You didn't need to go there, Robin.' It's a rough room. I'd rather hang-glide over the Grand Canyon nude. ... Billy knows how to make fun of it, but still walk the line.''

As if to prove the point, Crystal wants his interviewer to recognize that he did not slam Barbra Streisand for not singing her song on the Oscar telecast. ``You know, Madonna'' - who did sing, though she wasn't even nominated - ``and I did not know that the director cut to Barbra sitting in the audience, so it was perceived that way. I think it was not a kind thing. But, you know, I wish she had sung.''

At 49, Crystal is calmer, more comfortable than when he was 39. ``I feel more settled. I'm around, my health is good, things are going well. My older daughter, Jenny (who plays a small part in the film), is on her own and Lindsay (who has a production credit) goes to school, so the house is quiet. My wife and I are youngish, we still have a lot ahead of us. I notice I'm not as preoccupied with those thoughts that really used to scare me, that it's all going too fast. I'm somehow enjoying things more.'' He doesn't play in a softball league any longer, Crystal says, adding that he's a marked man - too many stuntmen came hard into second base when he was playing that position. Still, he has worked out with his beloved Yankees, most recently in Anaheim. ``I wore a uniform - a road uniform, but it still said `New York.' ''

He would never have foreseen doing Shakespeare, he says, but when Branagh called, he said yes. ``I said, `You want my whiny little Bronx voice?' He said, `Absolutely.' I hung up and called Janice and said, `I'm gonna sound like Tony Curtis in ``Spartacus.'' ' So every night after dinner we'd go into the library and Janice would be Hamlet and I'd be the Gravedigger. Ken was good. She was better. I don't know what the Woody Allen movie is about. We're rivals, and I'm married to Elisabeth Shue, and the rest is a blur. We all sat around - Robin's in it, and Demi Moore, Kirstie Alley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Dick Benjamin - we're all in this youth hostel on Amsterdam Avenue, sitting in the hallway. Everyone has different pages, and we're trying to piece the movie together and nobody knew. The only people who get the whole script are the lighting director, the cinematographer and the makeup and hair people.

The quiet moments

``On this one,'' he says, returning to the topic of ``Fathers' Day,'' ``I knew the fun part would be fun, but I enjoyed the quiet moments, the little stuff. I liked this one because it was different for me. Even though it's funny, there's a different tone. The next one is another different challenge. It's called `Giant.' It's about an agent and a giant and it's going to be filmed in the Czech Republic. It was inspired by my brief relationship with Andre the Giant, who I only spent four days with when we filmed `The Princess Bride.' He was very open about the fact that he was not going to live a very long life. He took my breath away with his honesty. He died, I think, about 2-1/2 years ago. When I saw his obituary, I felt really sad and started to write a story for him, basically because he so moved me.''

Crystal's favorite film remains the insufficiently appreciated ``Mr. Saturday Night,'' an honest, unflinching look at the life of a professional comedian. The public did not embrace it, possibly because fans didn't want to see Crystal age onscreen into a bitter old man. Right now, he's inches away from firming up a project with Robert De Niro: ``Analyze This.'' ``I play a psychiatrist. He plays a Mafia chief having a nervous breakdown,'' Crystal adds. ``It's really funny. But you know, in all my stand-up work, I've always said I'd sacrifice a laugh for a real emotion in an audience anytime. I don't have to fill space with a bit. That would be mugging. It's better not to do anything. I'm a very good listener, a very good reactor. If you look at the orgasm scene in `Harry Met Sally,' the reactions get screams. I like doing that. Jack Benny was a big hero doing that. Sometimes the bigger laugh is on the one doing the listening. You know, it's the Magic Johnson approach; I'll score when I have to.''

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Photo: ``There's a centered quality about him,'' says Robin Williams, left, of his friend and co-star, Billy Crystal.