JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 294 из 359Recently, when I thought they were going to do a remake of the film and I thought they wanted me to do it, I decided I would revert to the original structure because, in [the film], as in my original manuscript, 'the good stuff' took awhile to get to. But it turned out they were going to make it into a comedy with Lily Tomlin and I wasn't going to write it anyway. John Landis was going to direct it at the time and he wanted all the science-fantasy people out here to play minor parts in the film. He wanted me to play a pharmacist who . . . won't give a prescription to Lily Tomlin who is so small at the time that she is sitting on the shoulder of an intelligent gorilla (shows you how they changed the original idea). I demurred. As a matter of fact, the opening of the script is almost like my original one to the point of actual dialogue.
Later, it deviates wildly . . . . "I don't think the book means anything to me at this time. None of my work does from this distant past. I think I prefer I Am Legend if I had to choose but they are both too far from me to have any significance in particular . . . . Accordingly, I wouldn't change anything about The Shrinking Man . It is a part of my history. I have no reason to change it, only to look at it without much interest and be pleased at whatever stir it made. I just read the first story I ever sold the other day-'Born of Man and Woman'-[and] I cannot relate to the story at all. I remember writing certain phrases but it was someone else who wrote them. I'm sure you feel that way about the early stuff you wrote. **
*Matheson's hero, Scott Carey, also goes down into the cellar every day with his pad and pencil; he too is writing a book (these days, isn't everybody?). Scott's book is about his experiences as the world's only shrinking man, and it provides for his family quite adequately . . . as Matheson's own book and the subsequent film made from it did for Matheson's own family, one supposes.
**As a matter of fact, I do. My first novel, Carrie , was written under difficult personal circumstances, and the book dealt with characters so unpleasant and so alien to my own outlook as to seem almost like Martians. When I pick up the book now-which is seldom-it does not seem as if someone else had written it, but I do get a peculiar sort of feeling from it . . . as if I had written it while suffering from a bad case of mental and emotional flu.
" The Shrinking Man only recently had a hardcover edition. Now it is being printed by the Science Fiction Book Club too. Up to then it was strictly softcover . . . . Actually, I Am Legend is much more science fiction than The Shrinking Man . It has a lot of research in it.
Later, it deviates wildly . . . . "I don't think the book means anything to me at this time. None of my work does from this distant past. I think I prefer I Am Legend if I had to choose but they are both too far from me to have any significance in particular . . . . Accordingly, I wouldn't change anything about The Shrinking Man . It is a part of my history. I have no reason to change it, only to look at it without much interest and be pleased at whatever stir it made. I just read the first story I ever sold the other day-'Born of Man and Woman'-[and] I cannot relate to the story at all. I remember writing certain phrases but it was someone else who wrote them. I'm sure you feel that way about the early stuff you wrote. **
*Matheson's hero, Scott Carey, also goes down into the cellar every day with his pad and pencil; he too is writing a book (these days, isn't everybody?). Scott's book is about his experiences as the world's only shrinking man, and it provides for his family quite adequately . . . as Matheson's own book and the subsequent film made from it did for Matheson's own family, one supposes.
**As a matter of fact, I do. My first novel, Carrie , was written under difficult personal circumstances, and the book dealt with characters so unpleasant and so alien to my own outlook as to seem almost like Martians. When I pick up the book now-which is seldom-it does not seem as if someone else had written it, but I do get a peculiar sort of feeling from it . . . as if I had written it while suffering from a bad case of mental and emotional flu.
" The Shrinking Man only recently had a hardcover edition. Now it is being printed by the Science Fiction Book Club too. Up to then it was strictly softcover . . . . Actually, I Am Legend is much more science fiction than The Shrinking Man . It has a lot of research in it.