Web posted
December 13, 2007
Smith's workman attitude buoys 'Legend'
JOHN ANDERSON
Newsday
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| Coutesy of Warner Bros. Pictures |
 Last man standing: Will Smith stars in the post-apocalypse thriller "I Am Legend." |
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As someone once said, change is inevitable, except from vending machines. In 1959, Harry Belafonte starred in "The World, the Flesh and the Devil," playing a miner who emerges from a cave-in to find himself the last human on Earth - save for a comely blonde, played by the Swedish actress Inger Stevens. The question? Would Eisenhower America accept the outrageous suggestion that a "Day-O"-singing black civil-rights icon and a white woman would be left to perpetuate the human race?
That movie is virtually unknown today. It is now 2007, and Will Smith will be the last human on Earth in "I Am Legend," the post-apocalyptic Warner Bros. thriller based on the celebrated 1953 novel by Richard Matheson ("The Twilight Zone," "Night Gallery"). The question? Can Bush America continue to accept Will Smith as its leading box-office star, perpetuating a collaboration with the film industry that has resulted in a career total of $4.4 billion in worldwide box-office receipts?
Hollywood likes change. At least the kind you get from a vending machine.
But change isn't something audiences particularly spark to. They like questions with reliable answers, and there's no one more reliable than Smith. He is simply the top male American movie star, and a global phenomenon. And while it's safe to say race is always an issue in America, Smith - the biggest thing ever to come out of rap, lest people forget - isn't identified exclusively, or particularly, as anything. His popularity is based on an amiable persona that the actor has parlayed into various manifestations: from confidence man ("Six Degrees of Separation") to desperate parent ("The Pursuit of Happyness"). And he does it all via the same technique used by every major star in the history of Hollywood: by making it seem like he's playing himself.
"Smith gives a performance of mind-boggling range," critic Michael Sragow wrote of "Happyness." Smith himself seems less impressed: "I've never viewed myself as particularly talented. I've viewed myself as ... slightly above average in talent," he told "60 Minutes" in an interview that aired recently. "Where I excel is with a ridiculous, sickening work ethic. While the other guy's sleeping, I'm working. While the other guy's eating, I'm working."
Michael Tadross, executive producer of "I Am Legend" backs that up. "One night during shooting it was cold out, freezing, and I told him 'Will, please, go back to your trailer,'" Tadross said. "He told me, 'No, no, no. This is what I do. And I get paid a lot of money to do it. If everybody else is out here, then I'm out here, too.'"
It got worse during what Tadross called the "evacuation scene." "It was freezing, again," Tadross said. "Three-thirty in the morning, productivity was at an all-time low. Will picks up the microphone, starts laughing and saying, 'I'm going to Miami!!!' and it got everybody up. We got the scenes done. Who else is like that?"
It took a 12-year effort to get Matheson's story on screen again, with such directors as Ridley Scott, Guillermo del Toro and Michael Bay connected to the project at various points. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Douglas and Tom Cruise were mentioned as possible leads. That it should be Smith who has brought the film to realization says a great deal about his star power, and perceived marketability.
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