Live Wire Blog

He is legend (not Will Smith)

Posted on Dec. 14, 2007 by Chris Blose

Question: What do Mizzou and a post-apocalyptic vampire movie starring Will Smith have in common? Answer: Richard Matheson.

Matheson, a 1949 J-School graduate, wrote the book I Am Legend, published in 1954. Fifty-three years later, it’s a blockbuster movie starring one of Hollywood’s biggest names as the last man on earth.

I had the pleasure of writing a feature story on Matheson for MIZZOU magazine in 2003 (a scanned version is available). This meant I got to watch a lot of TV and movies (Matheson wrote for The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, among other shows) and read several of his books (I Am Legend among them).

Here’s a little bit about the man and his work:

• Matheson hated the script for an earlier I Am Legend adaptation so much that he invented his pseudonym, Logan Swanson, so he could distance himself from the finished product while still earning residuals. Here’s what Matheson said about Swanson: “He’s had some very poor stuff with his name on it.”
• The first time Matheson met George Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead, Romero threw his hands in the air and said, as a defense, “I didn’t make any money off of it.” That’s because Romero admitted that he had borrowed the basic plot ideas from I Am Legend. He’s not the only one.
• There was an X-Files character named Richard Matheson in his honor.
• Do you remember that classic, iconic Twilight Zone episode in which William Shatner sees a gremlin trying to tear up the plane on which he is flying? That was Matheson’s, too.