IGN was recently honored to meet the real deal behind Real Steel, writer Richard Matheson, the iconic author of such classic sci-fi and horror tales I Am Legend, What Dreams May Come, The Incredible Shrinking Man and A Stir of Echoes.
Matheson was already an established author of sci-fi, horror and fantasy short stories and novels when he wrote 14 episodes for Rod Serling's groundbreaking TV series The Twilight Zone, including the now-classic William Shatner episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and an adaptation of his 1955 short story "Steel," which is also the basis for this weekend's new release, Real Steel.
We spoke with Matheson at his home outside of Los Angeles about his career, his thoughts on how Hollywood has adapted his work and what he thinks about Real Steel.
IGN Movies: What have you seen of Real Steel so far? Have they shown you the entire picture?
Richard Matheson: Yeah, they brought over a copy of the film here. It's a wonderful piece of work. [Director] Shawn Levy did a really outstanding job.
IGN: Would you say that you're satisfied with it as an overall adaptation of your story?
Matheson: Yeah. As is the case of I Am Legend, they never followed my stories precisely, but they do a decent job of adaptation. I don't mind that. In this case, they did such a wonderful job. Shawn Levy did such an amazing job. I was very pleased.
IGN: How did you feel about some of the changes made, such as the introduction of the relationship between the father and son? That's not in the other versions.
Matheson: No, that's not in my story at all. My son and I, we've just adapted a novel of mine that came out some years ago called Journal of the Gun Years, and because it was too long, it would make a six-hour film. We had to truncate it, which we did, and it doesn't bother us to do it as long as we hold onto the flavor of the original.
IGN: And you feel that Real Steel captures that essence?
Matheson: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
IGN: I ask because I was curious if you felt concerned that by introducing a father/son relationship it might detract from Hugh Jackman's character's relationship with the robot.
Matheson: No, I believe it was well done. I can't really cavil with it.
IGN: What was the genesis of your short story Steel? How did the idea come to you? What inspired you to write it?
Matheson: Well, I had not written prose for some time when I wrote it. I wanted to see if I could capture a feeling of what it was like to write again. So I was deliberately trying to do a Hemingway-type of writing in the beginning. Gradually, that faded away. I regained my own style.
IGN: What about the actual idea of robotic boxers?
Matheson: I know. It was very unusual at that time. I know that a number of my ideas at the time were quite unusual. I Am Legend is quite unusual for its time. I just wanted to write a story about female boxers, and I couldn't get that going in my mind. I don't know exactly where the idea of just a man pitting himself against a robot boxer came from.
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