interview - WILL SMITH
Will Smith’s on his own for I Am Legend
By Earl Dittman
Will Smith has made plenty of science-fiction movies. Some of his most successful films fall into that genre — Men in Black, Independence Day. But, when Smith dreams big about his career, there’s another sci-fi — one that he had nothing to do with — the actor thinks about. Star Wars.
“I remember when I sat and watched Star Wars for the first time, it really changed my life,” says Smith in a recent New York interview. “I think I might have been 11 or 12. Star Wars really messed me up so bad. I’m sitting and watching, and I couldn’t believe that a human mind actually conceived Star Wars. And, to this day, I still talk about the way Star Wars inspired me. I still get a chill remembering when I first saw it. So I wanted to be able to do that for people. I wanted to be able to inspire people with a movie I was in.”
Star Wars is a pretty high bar to set for yourself. While his December release I Am Legend isn’t likely to have the same effect on movie history, it certainly has the potential to give moviegoers a few chills, and perhaps even inspire them to marvel at the mind that first conceived the story, novelist Richard Matheson.
“I read it straight through, and it absolutely blew me away,” Smith says of the script, which was based on Matheson’s 1954 novel of the same name. “It was a character I felt like I had to play, because he’s pure emotion. He’s basically the last man alive, so you can only imagine the emotions he’s feeling. Even though the story was written in the ’50s and there are a lot of science-fiction elements in it, the film could take place today.”
In fact, the story has been updated from the late 1970s (when Matheson’s tale takes place) to the present day.
Smith plays military scientist Robert Neville, who may be the last human being on Earth. When a manmade virus unexpectedly mutates and escapes the confines of a classified lab it quickly infects the world’s population, transforming its victims into bloodthirsty mutants.
Neville, apparently the only person on Earth not affected by the virus, spends his days transmitting radio messages from his home base in a desolate New York City across the globe in hopes of contacting others who were able to avoid the pandemic. The rest of his daylight hours are spent trying to reverse the effects of the plague by using his own disease-free blood to find a cure. Oh, and hunting down and killing vampire-like creatures.
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Will Smith stars as the lone human
fending off monsters in I Am Legend
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You see, Neville’s sharing Manhattan with an organized group of mutant,
bloodsucking New Yorkers, the Infected, who are determined to rid the
planet of the last true human being. (Hence the film’s eerie tagline
“The Last Man on Earth is Not Alone.”) But as the attacks on Neville’s
heavily barricaded habitat begin to escalate (the vampires have to
avoid the sunlight), he starts to fight back.
This is the third time Matheson’s book has been adapted. It first hit screens in 1964 as the forgettable Vincent Price, B-movie The Last Man on Earth. But its second celluloid incarnation, 1971’s The Omega Man, was a big hit thanks to star Charlton Heston’s performance as a lonely hero on the edge of sanity.
“I’ve
always loved that movie, and I can watch it over and over again,” says
Smith. “It’s one of those kind of movies that you have to stop and
watch, especially if you’re channel surfing. It doesn’t matter what
scene you come in on, you just have to see it until it’s over. The
story just draws you in. Even when you are young, you know that it has
some deep things to say. It’s just that good.”
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Barely three years old when The Omega Man came out, the Philadelphia native had a big life ahead of him — as a platinum-plated recording artist, a TV sitcom star (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) and one of Hollywood’s biggest movers and shakers — before he would become the new Robert Neville.
The project itself also went through a long and complicated history before hooking up with Smith.
In the mid-’90s, after Tom Cruise and Michael Douglas passed on a version of I Am Legend, Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Ridley Scott decided to bring the story back to the screen. In late 1997, they were just about to begin filming in Houston (as a stand-in for L.A.) when the film’s budget ballooned to $108-million (considered pocket change these days) and the moneymen got cold feet.
Several years, directors and permutations later, Smith was approached to star in a version of I Am Legend directed by Frances Lawrence, whose only big-screen credit to date was Constantine. But with a new script penned by Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), Smith needed little convincing.
“I don’t think most people need to be told, but this is a crazy business, you never know what is going to happen,” Smith says with a laugh. “There were so many times that this film could have fallen through — for good.”
Speaking of long-term projects, Smith and his wife, actor Jada Pinkett Smith, celebrate their 10th anniversary this month. Over those 10 years, Smith has developed a reputation for being a family man first, often bringing the couple’s three children, Trey (from a previous marriage), Jaden (his co-star in The Pursuit of Happyness) and Willow, along to movie premieres and other public events. When asked if he ever wonders what his purpose in life is, Smith offers up a surprising answer. “I think that’s something that you can’t really put words to, but I feel that it’s definitely not acting for me,” he says.
“I know that there’s something else. I think that the amount of goodwill that I’ve been able to create and the energy and the hope that people feel watching the movies, I think that there’s absolutely something else for me to do. I feel like acting is kind of a steppingstone at this point to what-ever that greater purpose is. I think that God, Mother Nature, the universe or whoever you believe in will show me the path. I think that my only job is to stay in touch, just to stay in touch with people, feel people and feel the energy, and I think that the universe will call me to wherever.”
A greater purpose? Feel the energy? The universe will call him? Sounds like an idea for Smith’s next sci-fi.
Earl Dittman is a Houston-based writer.