Sorry this is a day late (if not a dollar short); my daughter had oral surgery yesterday, which kind of tended to crowd out less familial concerns such as the penultimate installment of my précis of Matheson’s screen career on Tor.com. This one backtracks to cover his seminal contributions to the original Twilight Zone, including the classic entry “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” while the next post will cover not only his subsequent Zone involvement but also some recent adaptations of his work. Due to the holidays, my editor and I have yet to discuss where the “Richard Matheson—Storyteller” series might then proceed, but you’ll surely be able to read about it here, uh, second.
As longtime BOF readers already know, my Google Alert for Matheson’s name has taken me to some strange places, but perhaps none more so than this post in a “Spielberg Blogathon,” which makes a major contribution to Matheson scholarship by explaining that “Duel is essentially about gay panic inspired by a traumatic car accident.” It refers to “the handlebar mustaches [that] are [part of] the foundation of Spieberg’s gender-coded man’s world,” and its “central preoccupation with transferring fears of being assaulted, in this case rear-ended [!], into objects—leather boots, rear-view mirrors, bumpers…” Joke’s on Richard, who clearly had no idea what he was writing.
Finally, I offer this holiday-themed video with no editorial comment whatsoever. Bradley out…
