ichard Christian Matheson grew up in the shadow of one of the great horror writers of our time: his father, Richard Matheson. No one who has even a passing familiarity with television over the last three decades—or has strolled through the neighborhood bookseller—can confuse the two writing giants, though.
From the cult favorite The Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby, to his upcoming adaptation of Roger Zelazny's Amber series, this Matheson has left his mark on some of the biggest hits in TV history. And, along the way, he's managed to turn out a critically acclaimed novel and hundreds of short stories and collections.
Recently, R.C. found the time to site down to chat about his impact on the genre—past, present and future. Matheson's present includes a project fans have been awaiting for years: the first-ever collaboration between R.C. and Richard Matheson. A short story seen from a unique angle, "Pride" takes readers into the creative process with both authors, as the story grows from raw material to finished, polished product. Where the story goes from there is for R.C. to tell ...
Pride is coming out at a time when its events are tragically relevant. Did current events spark the idea for the story?
Matheson: Well, the idea was my father's. He was watching some kind of a wildlife special, and I think the whole thing just kind of dropped into his head. I'm just along for the ride.
After you and Richard had began to work on the screenplay, what collaboration method did you use? What works best for you?
Matheson: I sat down with both of the short stories typed up, and I just blended them together as well as I could. I took what I thought were the most interesting parts of each story. And, I knew I wanted it to be long enough that it would feel like it actually had some—not only momentum—but that it had some different colors to it, so that it actually would come close to being, with a bit more length, something that you could use as a half-hour script for something like The Twilight Zone.
I wanted it to have more of a beginning, middle and end in the traditional sense of it. And so, I just sat down and blended those together and then I kicked that over to my dad and he took a pass at it and then he gave it back to me and I did one more pass and then that was it.
This is not the first project on which you've collaborated. I think the first was Loose Cannons. How close did the final product come to what you envisioned?
Matheson: I'd sold several films written on spec—10 or 11 of them, so my father and I thought we'd take a crack. Ended up writing three screenplays, sold all three of them.
The first was a script called Face-Off, which ultimately became Loose Cannons. It was about a veteran police detective who gets partnered with this younger detective who's a brilliant criminologist with multiple personality disorder. That was the central idea of the movie: He was brilliant as a partner, but almost impossible to deal with because you never knew when he was going to splinter off into a new, bizarre personality. We wrote the script, sold it.
It went through a succession of creative teams, ultimately ended up being made with Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd. The central idea remained, but the studio bloated it into an incomprehensible, big-budget mess. They run it on television a lot and I watch it here and there. Hackman, is great. Aykroyd has moments. We distanced ourselves, kind of said, "F-ck it." Immediately wrote another spec script, sold it to Richard Donner. Another to Ivan Reitman.
Pride gives readers an excellent opportunity to compare and contrast your writing with Richard's. Your version of the story is more succinct and more sensual, at the same time. What similarities do you think you share as writers?
Matheson: Not sure. Eclectic ideas. Compression. One thing he really taught me was to conceal intentions, and almost always the ending. My father is quite a master at that. There is the moment when the reader understands and you must not go beyond it. Other comparisons between our work and style would be hard to analyze; I'm too close to be objective.
Revealing the meaning with the last word sounds very much like what you did with the story "Red" in Dystopia ...
Matheson: I love "trapdoor" endings. As you're falling, the story becomes expanded, in reverse; they seem to defy intellectual gravity.
Anthology-type TV series are pretty much in hibernation for the moment. Now that Pride is out on the market, what plans are there for the screenplay?
Matheson: We have absolutely none. It's for sale to the highest bidder.
Most authors dream of seeing their work sold to a major commercial publisher, but, lately, you've gone in the opposite direction—moving your fiction to Gauntlet, an indie publisher. What is it about the small press that appeals to you?
Matheson: The specialty press is alluring. Certainly with Barry Hoffman of Gauntlet Press, he works with you and you can design your own book. On every level, pretty hard to resist. With Dystopia, I only wanted Harry O. Morris to do the art. Harry is brilliant and Barry said hire him.
Harry had this painting—you know, we were trying to find a cover for the collection and I said, "What else do you have?" and he sent me this painting he had just done. It's a melange of all the different methods he uses to bring about the look. And it was this one piece, with this man that was holding his hand to his head, and as I was looking at all the other pieces he would send and I had this propped up and I just kept looking at it and saying, "I love that. I love that." And I'd always been kind of intrigued at the thought of dystopia, what a dystopia is and it all just came together.
Now, could I have done that with a mainstream publisher? Probably not.
Most of your fiction has been in short form and screenplays. Which format works the best for your particular style? What draws you to that?
Matheson: I think it's just the hours of the day have to some degree conspired toward certain choices. I have a very active career in Hollywood and it exacts certain time requirements, certain schedules. I suppose part of the reason I was always drawn to short stories is that I've been living this way since I was 20 years old, when I started working at the studios as a staff writer and story editor. And I always was able to sneak a little time to write a short story. A little here. A little there. As time went on it all added up to 60 short stories. I worked on Created By, which was the novel that Bantam published, during a writers' strike.
Your fans would probably be outraged if I didn't ask you about writing for The Incredible Hulk, Knight Rider, The A-Team and Tales From The Crypt. Were those positive experiences?
Matheson: A complete blast for a number of different reasons. With The A-Team, I was working for a man who has since become a close friend, Stephen J. Cannell. A great guy to work for.
He ran what he considered to be a "writers' company." The writers were all treated like gold there. And it was fun. It was a fun show to write. It was schizophrenic, because it had a legitimate story, such as it was, with each script, but then you had insidious surrealism from Murdoch. And the dialogue was often laced with pure silliness. And the mechanisms they would invent were crazy. There was an insanity that made it a lot of fun to write. Also it was the number-one show in the world.
So I was the head writer on the number one show in the world when I was 29 years old. Not a bad gig.
Would you jump into another weekly series, knowing the schedule and the television industry as well as you do now?
Matheson: I actually just co-created a show where it's looking like I'm going to be in that same position. The attractiveness of television is always that the scripts get made quickly. In the film business, you can write a film, and not see it made or wait for years. Whether you write it on spec or they hire you to write something, the process of getting to that moment of "apparent commerce" to a film that actually is made can be three years. Whereas, in television, you could work on three different shows in three years and produce a lot of material. So television, because of the need to supply that much programming, you can do an enormous amount of writing and see an enormous amount of your work produced in a very short period of time.
The last time we talked you brought up "Who's You In America," one of the short stories in Dystopia. What is it about that particular piece that is so haunting?
Matheson: It interweaves irony, loss and hope. That's what I felt when I wrote it. I guess somehow I managed to convey that.
You are pretty stingy with biographical details of a personal nature—no "wife and 12 kids and an English setter in a converted lighthouse on Cape Cod" kind of thing. Is that a desire for privacy, or just a tendency not to update?
Matheson: Privacy. I figure that's a separate part of my life and I usually leave it out. But anyone who really wants to know could make a few calls to questionable types, get the lowdown.
I suppose then that something like playing drums with the band Smash-Cut ends up being the tamest part of your checkered past and present. Smash-Cut is comprised of you, Craig Spector and Preston Sturges Jr. Does the music reflect any of your "dark" side?
Matheson: A bit. We're playing what appeals to us; a blend of rock and blues. But lyrically, there's a darker sensibility at work. It's an unusual situation when you have three authors and screenwriters who are also experienced musicians. Preston and Craig attended The Berklee School Music. Preston has been a professional songwriter. I studied with Ginger Baker. We're serious musicians; all been playing for 35 years. I think it kind of catches people by surprise when they see us. Our first album's going to be out pretty soon here: a live performance from a club here in L.A. called The Mint.
Internet Movie Database lists your most current project as the teleplay from Dean Koontz novel Sole Survivor in 2000. Is there anything they've missed since then? Do you enjoy adapting other writers' work as much as your own?
Matheson: It's challenging to protect the original vision yet not be hostage to it. Many, many choices to make. Dean was one of the executive producers on Sole Survivor, so I worked with him a lot. He was at every meeting, we did a lot of stuff over the phone, kicking things back and forth. I didn't really know Dean before that experience and came away with good feelings. He was charming, sane and enormously helpful. And he's funny. There's a kind of bent silliness. He's also a closet drummer and we talked drumming some.
I'm currently adapting Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber into a four hours mini-series for the SCI FI Channel and I wish he were still alive. I would love to bounce stuff together about the script as I was able to with Dean.
Pride is barely on the shelf, so, of course, it's time to ask you about your next project. Or, considering your prolific nature, next projects, I suppose.
Matheson: As I mentioned, the Zelazny project. Also just finished creating two projects for Showtime, both are original movies and potential series. One will be made this August into a two-hour pilot called Paradise and I'm just leaving town to move to Utah to executive produce that. Both are interesting projects. One is a dark, demonic piece. The other is about organized religion. Sometimes I get them mixed up.
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