LEGENDARY: An Interview with Richard Matheson

richard_matheson1Back in 2005, I spent a couple of hours chatting with the great. and now, alas, late suspense novelist and screenwriter Richard Matheson for an article that ran in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. The following is a slightly longer version of that interview that ran in Mystery Scene Magazine.

It’s hard to believe that anyone interested in suspense or fantasy fiction, film or television would be unfamiliar with the name Richard Matheson. But, for the record, the prolific writer is responsible for  I Am Legend, the seminal science fiction novel about the last human in a world of vampires that has spawned numerous films – official adaptations like The Last Man on Earth, Omega Man and a more recent version starring Will Smith and “homages” like Night of the Living Dead. His Shrinking Man has been filmed several times, too, including one version that starred Lily Tomlin. The romantic fantasy, i_am_legend_2Somewhere in Time, is based on his novel, Bid Time Return.

 Matheson, born in 1926 in Allendale, New Jersey, has worked in a variety of other genres , including westerns (Journal of the Gun), horror (Hell House),  suspense (Ride the Nightmare), metaphysics (What Dreams May Come?)  and even a war novel (The Beardless Warriors) based in part on his experiences as a young infantryman in World War II. He has won Edgar, Hugo, Golden Spur and Bram Stoker Awards. His long list of screenplays include those penned for Roger Corman’s Poe-inspired films, the creepy ones (House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror)  and the comedic (The Comedy of Terrors and The Raven).

ShatHe was one of the select group of writers who helped Rod Serling create The Twilight Zone and was responsible for one of the series’ most fondly recalled episodes, Nightmare at 2,000 Feet, in which a wing-walking gremlin taunts airline passenger William Shatner to distraction.  His television movie script, Duel, in which a hapless motorist engages in a battle for survival with the never-seen driver of a giant semi, launched Steven Spielberg’s directorial career. His teleplays for The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler were turned into two of the medium’s most popular movies and prompted the cult Kolchak the Night Stalker series.

Stephen King cites Matheson as his biggest literary influence. Ray Bradbury calls him “one of the most important writers of the 20th century.”

I met with the author at his home in Southern California, on the occasion of the publication of his then latest novel, Women, an apocalyptic fantasy about what happens when the war between men and women enters the T Zone. I began by asking a basic question: 587953why did he choose the writing profession?

RM: I think creative people are born that way. Depending on the circumstances, I could have gone in any direction. I wrote music when I was in college, the Missouri School of Journalism. If I had come from a family of composers, I undoubtedly would’ve been a composer. If they had been painters, I would’ve been a painter. Since the Depression was on, the family couldn’t afford anything elaborate. What I had to work with was a pad and a pencil.

DL: When did you sell your first short story?

RM:  Born of Man and Woman appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950, the year after I graduated. It was odd enough and different enough to call attention to me and I got an agent through it. Then it was just a matter of putting out the material.

DL: Was that what brought you to the West Coast?

RM: Not exactly.  I had what they used to call trench foot. Frost bitten feet. That gave me an excuse to leave the cold climate for California. I was always fascinated by movies, and I think that was an ulterior motive for coming out here.

DL: How did you break into screenwriting?

RM: I didn’t push it. I figured it would be easier if I had something they wanted. That turned out to be my novel Shrinking Man. It has been erroneously stated in some articles that the film came first. That’s not true. I sold the novel with the stipulation that I write the script. They made changes, of course. Not for the better. I wanted to move right away into the main story and use flashbacks. They changed that and the first part of the movie is a little dull.1957-TheIncredibleShrinkingManGreat1

DL: I’ve heard they’re remaking it.

RM: With Eddie Murphy, I believe.  I suppose it’ll be similar to the version they made with Lily Tomlin.  I didn’t object to the fact that they turned that one into a comedy. I just didn’t think it was very funny. 

DL: I was surprised to see you’d written a script called The Beat Generation. It’s not too often a movie features both Louis Armstrong and Mamie Van Doren.

tumblr_milu3js4lb1qj58uko1_500RM: That was terrible. The producer of that, Al Zugsmith,  had produced The Shrinking Man at Universal. He showed me this article in Cosmopolitan, an interesting account of a man who hitchhiked around the country, a very open and friendly man. While he was talking to people he got all this information about them, when the wives would be at home alone, etc.  He would go to their homes and rape their wives and rob them. Murder them. It was an interesting story, and that’s the way I approached it, as a true crime story. But Al decided he was going to make it about the beat generation. He had a glossary of beat generation words. He went through my script and every place I had ‘police’ he would substitute ‘fuzz.’ Like that.

DL: It wasn’t long after that that you became one of The Twilight Zone’s most frequent contributors.

RM:  I think the fist call I went on when I started writing for TV was to watch the Twilight Zone pilot.  After that, I’d come in, pitch ideas and they’d send me off to write them.  When CBS did a history of television and, naturally, brought up The Twilight Zone, the sample of it they used was the one with Bill Shatner on the airplane.

DL: That’s the one everybody remembers. Do you recall where the idea came from?

RM: No surprise, I was on an airplane. I looked out of the window and saw clouds like snow and started to wonder: what if I saw a guy skiing there. That wasn’t very scary. So I had to make the image a little grimmer.

DL: They remade it for the movie version.

RM: Yeah. George Miller the director of that segment has done some terrific movies (Mad Max, etc.). In my story, Bill Shatner had had a nervous breakdown and he was afraid that it was recurring. In the movie, John Lithgow was simply afraid of flying. And he started out at 1000% terrified. Where could he go from there?

DL: You’ve worked with Shatner several times.

RM: Two Twilight Zones.

DL: And a Star Trek.

RM: Right. My one Star Trek.

DL: It was one of the better-known episodes, where Kirk undergoes a split personality. Why not another?

RM: I don’t know. I kept submitting ideas to Gene Roddenberry and he didn’t care for them. Maybe he didn’t like it that I disagreed with him. I’m not an advocate of “B” stories. They do it all the time in television: an episode has an “A” story and a “B” story. My feeling is if you have a great “A” story, you stay with it. I wanted to stay with Kirk and his effect on the crew.  Roddenberry wanted me to add that “B” story.

DL: Getting back to the sources for your ideas: I suppose you were out driving when you came up with Duel?

duel-movie-poster-1971-1020230792RM: That’s it. It was the day John Kennedy got shot. A friend of mine, science fiction writer Jerry Sohl, and I were playing golf when we got the news. We were driving home and this crazy truck driver started tailgating us through the canyon. Going faster and faster. I don’t know why. Maybe he was mad about Kennedy being shot. Finally, Jerry zoomed off to a side part of the road, and we spun around in the dirt. Between being furious at the driver and being totally upset and traumatized by Kennedy’s assassination, we were screaming out the window at this guy as he went roaring past.

Then, having a writer’s mind, my fear immediately transcribed itself into a story idea. I grabbed an envelope of Jerry’s and wrote it down. That was ten years before Playboy published it. 

DL: I read somewhere that you’re not too fond of a couple of your  T Zones, even though they’re considered classics. One example is The Invaders (Agnes Morehead is a virtually silent, hard-bitten  country woman whose shack is invaded by tiny space critters.)

RM: I just didn’t like the looks of the invaders. I kept thinking about imgrescartoons where some derelict is on a street corner with little dolls hobbling around. My script indicated that you barely saw them. Just a flash. I always think that less is better, an attitude that instantaneously cost me an important screenwriting job. I was called into Alfred Hitchcock’s office to discuss a script for The Birds. I said, ‘Mr. Hitchcock, I don’t think you should show the birds too much. ‘Oh, no. NO,’ he cried and that was the end of that.

DL: Tell me about Night Stalker, how that came together.

RM: Well, originally (producer) Dan Curtis wanted to make Beardless Warriors (Matheson’s WWII novel). Somehow he’d got a copy of the manuscript and made what I thought was an insultingly low offer for the whole thing, and I got ticked off. So when I met him at ABC to discuss The Night Stalker, which wasn’t called that at the time, I was very rude. That was like risking my life, because Dan had a very volatile temper. He was also a talented man with a big sense of humor, which tends to even things out. Anyway, he showed me the then unpublished novel by Jeff Rice and that was that.

DL: How closely did you adhere to the novel?

castRM: It was good enough that I didn’t try to change it much. The main difference was in the character of Kolchak. In the book, he’s sorta like an old boy Hungarian who believes in vampires. I didn’t want to do that, so I changed him to a Front Page type. And Darren McGavin took it from there. He was wonderful.

 DL: Was the sequel, The Night Strangler, also based on a novel?

RM:  No. It was based on a trip my family took to Seattle. We went on an underground tour and that’s where I got the idea. It was perfect for Kolchak, but McGavin wasn’t anxious  to do it, because he thought it was just a rehash of the first one. Which it was, of course. Bill Nolan and I wrote a third script that was never made.

DL: But there was a series. Why weren’t you involved in that?

RM: I would have done it if Dan had produced it, but he didn’t. In fact, with the second movie, I remember a bunch of us sitting in an office at ABC, trying to come up with a monster. At one point, I said, “Isn’t this ridiculous? Five grown men sitting in this elaborate office, trying to come up with a monster. How about a vampire? Or a mummy?” No, that’s not good.

I wanted to use Jack the Ripper – the original Jack the Ripper who had survived after all those years. So I called my friend Robert Bloch, who’d written the short story, Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper, to see if he’d mind. He said it was okay, but I could hear in his voice it would have disturbed him, so I made it something else.

Anyway, I didn’t see how they could come up with a new monster every week. Strain their brains.

DL: Tell me a little about the Poe movies.

RM: I did the first one (The Fall of the House of Usher) and everybody assumed I was an ardent fan of Edgar Alan Poe, which I wasn’t.  But I tried very hard to catch the flavor of Poe’s story. I had to add a character, a suitor for the sister, or there would have been no story. It starred Vincent Price. I have said before, and it’s true, he’s the most charming man I ever met in the business. Generous and warm-hearted.

One of those films rarely gets mentioned, A Comedy of Terrors. comedy_of_terrors_posterJacques Tourneur just took the script and shot it. The actors all liked that one, especially Basil Rathbone, who hadn’t had a good script in ages. He was a marvelous man, too. He was older than Boris Karloff, but they had to switch roles, because Karloff couldn’t do all the physical moves the role called for. 

DL: The stories you’ve written – about vampires, haunted houses, shrinking man, etc – have become standards of a sort. They’ve influenced so many filmmakers. George Romero, for example.

RM: I was watching television one night and caught a section of Night of the Living Dead and wondered, ‘When did they do this version of I Am Legend? Later, when I was a consultant for Amazing Stories , there was one I felt might be right for George Romero. So I met him for lunch at Delmonico’s. The first thing he said when he saw me was, “It didn’t make any money.” I guess he thought I was going to punch him out. But I wasn’t that upset. That sort of thing happens out here all the time.

DL: Not long ago Gauntlet Press brought out three collections of yours.  Some of the stories seemed unfamiliar. Are they recent?

RM:  No. Since 1970, I haven’t had any desire to write short stories. In that form, I mean. But Barry (Hoffman, Gauntlet publisher) is always asking if I have anything more in my file cabinet. There were stories I wrote long ago that had never even been submitted.  Having grown up in the Depression, it’s hard for me to say no. Especially when Barry does such a beautiful, physical job of presentation. But they were written a thousand years ago.

DL: Any more in the cabinet?

RM: I’ve come to the bottom of the drawer. Nothing left.

DL: Not even ideas?

RM: Oh, yes. I have a novel laid out in file cards that I’ll probably get to sometime. I haven’t written in a while. I had a heart valve replacement surgery. I had back surgeries. You just don’t feel like sitting down and writing.  But that can and probably will change.

 

 

2 thoughts on “LEGENDARY: An Interview with Richard Matheson

  1. Elizabeth Foxwell

    Dick, _Clues_ 30.2 (2012, a theme issue on paranormal mysteries) features an article on the film _Stir of Echoes_ (adapted from Matheson’s 1959 book); Kevin Bacon (from the film) is on the cover. http://elizabethfoxwell.blogspot.com/2012/10/clues302-paranormal.html

    Matheson has a cameo appearance in _Somewhere in Time_; he’s the fellow saying “astonishing” after encountering a freshly shaven Christopher Reeve with toilet paper on his face.

    Reply
  2. Pingback: The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) | Midnight Only

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