Richard Matheson. His name may not have the same recognition as King, Rowling, and Koontz, but you can bet each of these writers learned something from this guy. He was a master storyteller.
In the late 1950s, when we lived in an oil camp in Venezuela, the weekend entertainment was an English-speaking movie projected onto a wide white screen in the middle of a tennis court. I remember sitting in that court with my friends, to watch The Incredible Shrinking Man, based on Matheson’s novel, The Shrinking Man.
The premise is simple, the emotional resonance is anything but: a man and his girlfriend are on a sailboat one day when a mist or fog envelops the boat. The woman ducks into the cabin, the man stands out there in the mist/fog as its pierces his chest. From this moment forward, he begins to shrink.
The gist of the movie/novel, the core of the storytelling, is about how it feels to physically shrink, as the protagonist does, and what it does to you emotionally, spiritually, and well, how it impacts you closest relationships. I think I was ten at the time. That I can still remember this movie, the story, is a testament to Matheson’s ability to take some outrageous thing- A MAN SHRINKING – and make it so emotionally real that we imagine ourselves as that shrinking man.
Matheson also wrote for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, one of my favorite old time goodies, which was broadcast in both English and Spanish on Venezuelan TV. His specialty, really, was the what if scenario. From the NY Times: “After the unsettling experience of being tailgated by a truck driver, he wrote the short story “Duel,” about a motorist who is relentlessly stalked in a highway chase by a tractor-trailer, its driver unseen. The story became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s first feature film, starring Dennis Weaver.
Other Matheson classics include, Somewhere in Time, What Dreams May Come, and I Am Legend.
Matheson was a writer’s writer, you could read his novels and stories and watch his movies and learn how to construct a story. You could learn about dialogue because he was also a screenwriter, and you could learn about characterization because he understood the human condition.
Back in the 1990s, our friend Ed Gorman asked Matheson to blurb one of my books and he did! I can’t recall which book it was for, but I was floored and humbled that I’d gotten a blurb from one of the writers whose works had been with me since I was just ten.
In What Dreams May Come, a novel and movie based on his research into the Seth material and the work of Raymond Moody and others, Matheson illustrated what the afterlife might be like. I hope he’s experiencing that fluid beauty now – minus the angst that Robin Williams went through!
RIP, Richard Matheson. Thank you for that blurb – and for the many years of what if stories. You impacted my life in ways both small and great. You expanded my idea of what is possible – as a human being but, most of all, as a writer.
I read a good book a while ago –
‘The Force Is with You: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire Our Lives’
by Stephen Simon and it is really worth a read if you are a fan of Matherson.
Here’s the blurb from Amazon on the book –
“Movies are the most electrifying communications medium ever devised and the natural conduit of inspiring ourselves to look into the eternal issues of who we are and why we are here.
So says film executive Stephen Simon, producer of more than thirty films, including Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come. Simon illuminates for the first time, with humor, energy, and passion, this emerging category of Spiritual Cinema; a genre finally being recognized for what it is: a metaphoric pathway to explore such things as the nature of love, the meaning of life and death, the concept of time and space, the visions of our future.
Movies have become our windows to the universe. The sheer imaginative power of the screen has shaped the way humanity views itself, the world, and the cosmos. The increasing technology of cinema has given us the opportunity to see before our eyes images that reflect all that imagination can conjure up—not only to ask the questions plaguing us since humans first contemplated the heavens, but to pose some answers as well.
Through his exploration of more than 70 movies that best represent the genre in all its aspects, Simon gives us his personal interpretation of these films and the extraordinary messages they embody.
Here is a wealth of inspiration, including the inside stories behind the making of many films and the familiar names who participated in their making. This is a book that will break ground for the many visionary storytellers and filmakers to come, and most of all, their audiences. ”
I liked this book ,it was an interesting read.
Here is an interesting write up on the producer of WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
https://www.spiritualcinemacircle.com/about-stephen-simon
Thanks for the link!
This sounds like a great book, so onto my list it goes. Your book recommendations are always good.
an extraordinay writer – i even remember the dennis weaver piece – how wonderful for you to have had that experience with such a talented man – so sorry to hear this news –
I watched “What Dreams May Come” quite a few times, and thought upon the content many times. I feel enriched by the story. Even many years later, again and again, I’ve remembered the scene in which Robin Williams discovers his daughter, and they remember their life on earth.
The eternal nature of the soul mate relationship, and how it transcends death, is the major lesson that comes through quite clearly. It is wisdom that erases karma, and confusion, and leaves us to share love in peace whether in this life, or the hereafter.
It is the beliefs of the major character played by Robin Williams, that ultimately dictated the outcome of his story with his wife. It is the power of that belief over every tradition of the realm he was in, which finally took her out of hell, and into a heavenly place. And, heaven and hell are in the afterlife, as well as here where we are reading this.
My feeling is that this depiction of the afterlife would not be so familiar, and in such harmony with so many insightful people, if it were not, to a great extent, true.
In the afterlife, things change quickly according to thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, but are much slower to show up in this life we live here. However, all that is rapidly changing. Our thoughts are manifesting far more quickly now, than 10 years ago, because the people of the earth are now in a rapidly accelerating spiritual growth cycle.
The Beatles: “Instant Karma’s gonna get you.”
If you have not seen “What Dreams May Come” please watch it. It could be a life changer for the better, so why miss it?
One of the books upon which he based his afterlife depiction was The Seth Material. I felt the screenwriter had a bit too much emphasis on the heaven/hell thing, which Matheson didn’t do in the book.
I’ve got to read that book. Never have, yet. Yes, they often do make changes according their own bias, or what they believe will sell. I’ve read much of the Seth Material, and discussed the material in a group setting (before the internet-in person). I read THE NATURE OF THE PSYCHE, THE UNKNOWN REALITY, SETH SPEAKS, THE NATURE OF PERSONAL REALITY. Even if the screen writer put in more about hell, I still find it to be helpful. There is truth to how beliefs put the woman in hell, and took her out of it.
I read the novel “What Dreams May Come” in 1998 when I happened to be at Barnes and Noble and this novel jumped off the shelf and landed on the floor in front of me. It answered questions I had at the time about what heaven might be like and I felt so inspired. I like that he included a bibliography and urged readers to do personal research, and that it would be a worthwhile study.
When I saw the film, I felt sickened because it was not very loyal to the novel. The vision in my head does not match the movie. In the years since, I’ve had to watch the movie on its own merits. I appreciate it now, but I hope a more loyal adaptation will be made in the future. It’ll be a completely different film.
The movie that comes closest to reflecting Richard Matheson’s vision of heaven is “The Astral City”, a Brazilian film that I discovered two years ago. I highly recommend seeing it.
I don’t think I have read any of his books: must see if I can fit a couple into my reading schedule. It’s interesting how Matheson had an impact on your life – we probably all have people like this but don’t always realise the influence they have had. Always a touch of sadness, or maybe loss when such a person moves on.
Start with What Dreams May Come….it’s a wonderful read.