Fools Rush In producer on genuine Matthew Perry after death

Matthew Perry played a slightly fictionalized version of veteran Hollywood producer Doug Draizin in “Fools Rush In,” Perry’s first big-screen movie.

So it was sad that Draizin, who produced the 1997 film with Michael McDonnell — a labor of love that took 10 years — was at the UCLA football game in LA with his son when he heard the news about Perry’s death.

“We’re at the football game and my son looks at me and goes, ‘Matt Perry just died,’” Draizin told The Post. “The irony of it is [that] my son is the reason we made ‘Fools Rush In.’ It was about his birth. That’s the reason how this movie organically got made.”

Perry starred in “Fools Rush In” as Alex Whitman, who’s overseeing the construction of a nightclub in Las Vegas and has a one-night stand with Isabel Fuentes (Salma Hayek) — who shows up on his doorstop three months later to tell him she’s pregnant with his child. Isabel wants Alex to meet her large family without them knowing he’s the expectant father. It’s a true story, other than the name changes. (Isabel was named Anna Maria in real life; Draizin and Anna Maria eventually got divorced after having a son and two daughters.)

“I realized it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we went and got married that night [in a Las Vegas chapel],” Draizin said. “And then the realization of having a baby in six months with somebody I didn’t know, especially coming from completely different sides of the spectrum — a Jew from New York and [Anna Maria] from a small town in Nevada …”

Draizin said that Perry really wanted to get the role right.

“When I first met Matthew for him to do the movie we really got along,” Draizin said. “He said to me, ‘If I do this movie, I want to do you proud.’ And I thought that was very sweet.

“We were at the premiere and he’s surrounded by Jennifer [Aniston] and the ‘Friends’ cast and he comes over to me and gives me a hug and says, ‘I hope I did you proud.’ I looked at him and gave him this big hug and said, ‘Thank you,’ because it was about my family and my life and I knew he really wanted to do a good job.” (Roger Ebert gave the movie a thumbs-up upon its release as “a sweet, entertaining retread of an ancient formula.”)

Draizin is Jewish, so the character that morphed into Alex was originally written differently — a fact of which Perry was aware and to which he was sensitive, Draizin said.

“I got a call from the studio saying, ‘We just met with Matt Perry. The good news is he’s interested in doing the movie, but we have to change the script to make [Alex] Presbyterian,” Draizin recalled. “I said, ‘That’s fine, I’ve got no problem with that.’ So when I met Matt he goes, ‘OK, I’m sorry it’s not exactly the way it was before.’ I said, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it, just have fun and do it.’”

Draizin recalled that Perry really wanted to drill down into the character of Alex to see what made him tick.

“The thing Matthew would ask me about was, ‘What was it like when [Isabel/Anna Maria] showed up and you hadn’t seen her and she’s having this child? What was the deciding factor? Why did you [marry her]?’ He was trying to get into my head.

“I said to him, ‘I went to visit her family, there were like 70 people there, and thought it would be really interesting to have my children grow up in this environment, [that] it’s so different from what I had,” Draizin recalled. “Then I held her niece, who was only four months old, and I realized I wanted to be a father, and that’s what I told Matthew, and that’s when I knew I was going to marry her.”

Draizin said Perry was “really nervous” about making his first big-screen movie. “He didn’t want people coming into his trailer,” he said. “He wanted to be left alone, and his way of releasing tension, he and I would play Wiffle Ball; we’d go into the back lot or, if we were on-location, kids would come running out of their houses because there was Matthew Perry of ‘Friends’ hitting a Wiffle Ball in their street.

“A lot of kids would come and pitch to him,” he said. “He loved having people come around when we were on location. He was really friendly … and he was very genuine.

“His dad, John Bennett Perry, was also in the movie [playing Alex’s father] and I remember they had such a reunion on the set, spending that time together,” Draizin said. “Matt came from a very difficult divorce, so having his father there and working together … I know it really made him proud.”

Draizin said he still keeps a large poster from “Fools Rush In” on his wall.

“I’ve got this beautiful poster of Matt and Salma Hayek and now, when I look at it, instead of elation I feel sadness,” he said. “This kid I’m staring at is dead.”