The Man from Earth

The Man from Earth is a 2007 American science fiction drama film directed by Richard Schenkman. It was written by Jerome Bixby, who conceived the screenplay in the early 1960s and completed it on his deathbed in April 1998. It stars David Lee Smith as John Oldman, a departing university professor, who puts forth the notion that he is more than 14,000 years old. The entire film is set in and around Oldman's house during his farewell party and consists almost entirely of dialogue. The plot advances through intellectual arguments between Oldman and his fellow faculty members. The screenplay mirrors similar concepts of longevity which Bixby had introduced in "Requiem for Methuselah", a Star Trek episode he wrote which originally aired in 1969. The Man from Earth gained recognition in part for being widely distributed through Internet peer-to-peer networks, which raised its profile. The film was later adapted by Schenkman into a stage play. Plot Professor John Oldman is packing his belongings onto his truck, preparing to move to a new home. His colleagues show up to give him an impromptu farewell party: Harry, a biologist; Edith, an art history professor and devout Christian; Dan, an anthropologist; Sandy, a historian who is in (unrequited) love with John; Art, an archaeologist; and his younger student Linda. As John's colleagues press him to explain the reason for his departure, he picks up from a reference to Magdalenian cultures by Dan and slowly, and somewhat reluctantly, reveals that he was born in the Paleolithic period. He states that he has lived for more than 14 millennia, and that he relocates every ten years to keep others from realizing that he does not age. He begins his tale under the guise of a possible science-fiction story, but eventually stops speaking in hypotheticals and begins answering questions from a first-person perspective. His colleagues refuse to believe his story but accept it as a working hypothesis in order to glean his true intentions. John relates he was a Sumerian for 2000 years, later a Babylonian, and eventually went east to become a disciple of the Buddha. He claims to have had a chance to sail with Columbus (admitting that at the time he still believed the earth was flat) and to have befriended Van Gogh (one of whose original paintings he apparently owns, a gift from the artist himself).