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The New York Times FROM the outside Robert Neville’s red brick home looks like all
the other stately Greek revival town houses facing Washington Square Park.
But the interior, actually a set inside a Brooklyn armory, is something
else entirely. The kitchen is stacked top to bottom with what seems like
several years’ worth of canned goods and packaged food, and all the
windows have floor-to-ceiling retractable steel doors that can be locked
down at a moment’s notice. Robert Neville, after all, thinks he is the last man alive in a time
when a biological plague has created a race of night-crawling human freaks
who would like nothing better than to penetrate his sanctuary. As played
by Will Smith, he is also one of the few noninfected characters in "I
Am Legend," a Warner Brothers production that has been shooting in
New York for release in December. Directed by Francis Lawrence ("Constantine") and co-written
and co-produced by Akiva Goldsman (an Oscar winner for "A Beautiful
Mind"), "I Am Legend" is testimony to the unexpected durability
of Richard Matheson’s novel of the same name. It is the third film
based on a book whose original impulse was to one-up the screen vampires
of an earlier era.
First published in 1953, the novel is a taut, realistic chiller about
a postapocalyptic world in which germ warfare creates a biological plague
that turns humans into bloodsuckers. The idea was born, said Mr. Matheson,
now 80 and living in the Los Angeles area, "when I was a teenager
and saw Bela Lugosi in ‘Dracula.’ " "I thought if the world was full of vampires, it would be more frightening
than just one," he continued. "And I explained vampires in biological
terms." "I Am Legend" was almost immediately optioned for the movies
(Hammer Films in Britain originally owned the rights), but it wasn’t
until 1964 that Vincent Price appeared in "The Last Man on Earth,"
a low-budget version shot in Italy. Then, in 1971, Warner released "The
Omega Man," a more expensive studio production, starring Charlton
Heston, that made extensive use of Los Angeles’s deserted-looking
downtown. Both versions took certain liberties with Mr. Matheson’s original
concept, largely sidestepping its startlingly prescient, and philosophical,
ending: In the book, some vampires have developed a pill that keeps the
disease in check and allows them to live relatively normal lives. This
element now plays as an AIDS metaphor, though the book was written 30
years before H.I.V. was even identified.
It is this idea of pandemic, along with the concepts of vampirism and
the effects of solitude on the human psyche, that have kept Mr. Matheson’s
slim novel both contemporary and of interest to filmmakers. But the current
version of "I Am Legend" nonetheless had a long road to the
screen.
Warner Brothers has owned the rights to the book since 1970, and first
decided to revive the project in 1994. "I Am Legend" was close
to a start date in 1997, with Ridley Scott directing Arnold Schwarzenegger,
but the studio pulled the plug when the budget climbed over $100 million,
a huge sum at the time. (Studio executives declined to reveal the budget
for the current version.) Then, in 2002, Michael Bay and Will Smith were
set to hook up, but that pairing also fell through.
"There have been issues with the budget, script issues between director
and actors, directors and the studio, even issues with what the creatures
should look like," said Mr. Lawrence, the director.
About two years ago Warner was about to drop the project for good when
the studio’s president for production, Jeff Robinov, asked Mr. Smith
if he would be willing to pair up with Mr. Goldsman to develop a new take
on the material. Mr. Goldsman was one of the credited writers on "I,
Robot," which starred Mr. Smith. And he admired Mr. Lawrence for
his work on "Constantine," the 2005 fantasy-horror film.
Mr. Robinov says it is "the notion of isolation" that makes
"I Am Legend" perennially attractive. "For an actor it
involves a lot of character, the idea of being the last survivor,"
he said. "And for a director it’s the story, the ability to
create a different version of society, of where the world is at that point."
Mr. Lawrence agreed. "I’ve always been fascinated by man’s
isolation in an urban environment," he said. "How someone survives
when they’re by themselves for so long. Physically survives, mentally
and emotionally survives with complete social deprivation."
This time out the story is set in 2009, three years after something called
the KV virus, developed in a laboratory but mutated out of control, has
created a planet of bloodthirsty but still recognizably human freaks.
Mr. Smith’s Neville, a former military scientist, has not been infected
and is trying to find a cure for the pandemic. Manhattan had been quarantined
back in 2006, and as far as Neville knows he is the only human left on
the island, if not the world.
The story’s location was moved from California (the book is set in
Compton) to New York. In addition to the interiors of Neville’s house,
which were erected at the 66,000-square-foot Marcy Avenue Armory in Williamsburg,
the production has shot in TriBeCa and on the aircraft carrier Intrepid.
The filmmakers have also rented the 152,000-square-foot Kingsbridge Armory
in the Bronx, which they are using for a large special-effects-driven
action sequence to be staged next month. And in a particularly brazen
piece of logistics, the production company cleared the area around St.
Patrick’s Cathedral for a ghostly New York-without-humans sequence.
"It’s hard to make Los Angeles feel empty," Mr. Goldsman
said. "Here, you just have to look down Fifth Avenue empty, and you
understand something. There’s a conveyance of information and fantasy
that is wonderful and amazing."
This version of the story also updates it to reflect current concerns.
While the Heston film had a subtext with its roots in the early days of
the environmental movement, the current film moves back toward Mr. Matheson’s
concept of a viral apocalypse.
"There is a little bit of an AIDS metaphor here, especially in terms
of dealing with the infected, because the people Neville deals with are
infected," said Mr. Lawrence. "They’re not dead, they’re
not vampires, they have a chronic disease." For Mr. Goldsman, Mr. Matheson’s seeming ability to foretell an
epidemic reflects the magic of sophisticated fantasy. "People infected with AIDS have been on the forefront of understanding
the truths about how viruses work, contagion works, stigma works, which
is something I think Matheson was finding in that early novel," he
said. "He is like H. G. Wells and William Gibson, people who do a
little leapfrogging imaginatively. And you wait around long enough, and
suddenly you’re in one of their books." © 2007 The New York Times |
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