What makes Rod Serling such a compelling story?

Serling’s story, in many ways, parallels the story of television, particularly that of the television writer. Rod Serling was a man who fought hard for quality television, and to this end he wasn’t afraid to remind people of television’s potential. Nor was he afraid to speak out for content, to fight against censorship and interference and meddling from sponsors. I think he was the first writer in television history to take control of his work. He did so by both executive producing and writing The Twilight Zone. Ultimately, however, he lost out to bottom line interests – he sold out to forces he didn’t believe in.

What personal archives did you access during your research?

In addition to his scripts, Serling also wrote an astounding number of letters, speeches and lectures. He was an incredibly prolific writer – to the point that if anybody wrote him a letter, no matter who it was, he answered them. It was fascinating to get to know him through his writings. There was a prolific archive to draw from. The University of Michigan has 80 boxes of his materials. There is also a Serling archive at Ithaca College, one at UCLA, as well as one in his hometown – Binghamton, New York. It was a real challenge going through that material – we literally researched every article and interview he ever did.

What did you learn about Rod Serling that was surprising or unexpected during research for the film?

I had no idea how humble and modest Serling was, or how insecure he was. That’s one of the things, I think, that makes the story so compelling. It’s something many people can relate to – that despite his early success at such a young age, he remained humble and insecure. Serling admired great writing, but on some level he never felt that he really deserved to be part of the club – the great writers’ club, primarily because he wrote for television. He had every reason to feel proud of his accomplishments. Instead, he felt he had been a momentary blip on the television horizon.

Do you think Rod Serling would find a place on public television if he were alive today?

He was a creator and he respected other creators. He respected good ideas and he fought for good ideas. Ultimately, he fought for quality television. During the making of the film, I often thought that he would have been a perfect person to run public television.

What are some of your favorite Twilight Zone episodes?

Part of the fun in making the film was the ability to revisit all these wonderful films that I had watched growing up and that had such enormous influence on me. My favorite one is “Walking Distance” [in which a man finds his hometown has not changed in 25 years]. It’s a perfect piece – perfectly written, perfectly executed. I also loved “Eye of the Beholder” [in which a woman with a “hideous” face undergoes an operation she hopes will make her look like everyone else]. It’s so interestingly shot and the totalitarian premise so bold for its time. And “The Lonely” – what a great story. Jack Warden is a convict who’s been sentenced to lifelong isolation on an asteroid. Ultimately, the authorities take pity on him and send him a life-like robot woman for company. Naturally, he falls in love with the robot, who returns his love as if she were a real woman. Then he gets his pardon and is allowed to go home. They come to take him home on the rocket ship and find that the robot adds too much weight and must be left behind. He is devastated and wants to stay behind. It’s very touching.

Do you think that at the time of his death Serling felt that he had made a valuable artistic contribution?

In the beginning, television had extraordinary potential and Serling was at its center. But it quickly degenerated and I think he felt let down by it. His experience with television never led him to feel that he had distinguished himself in an artistic field. I’m reminded of what he said when he finally realized that the golden era of the live television drama had come to an end, vanquished by commercial interests. He said, “We tilted at the same dragons for seven or eight years, and when the smoke cleared, the dragons had won.”

Known primarily for his role as the host of television’s THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Rod Serling had one of the most exceptional and varied careers in television. As a writer, a producer, and for many years a teacher, Serling challenged the medium of television to reach for loftier artistic goals. The winner of more Emmy Awards for dramatic writing than anyone in history, Serling expressed a deep social conscience in nearly everything he did.

Born in Syracuse, New York in 1924, Rod Serling grew up in the small upstate city of Binghamton. The son of a butcher, he joined the army after graduating from high school in 1942. His experiences of the working-class life of New York, and the horrors of World War II enlivened in him a profound concern for a moral society. After returning from the service, Serling enrolled as a physical education student at Antioch College, but before long realized that he was destined for more creative endeavors.

Changing his major to English literature and drama, Serling began to try his hand at writing. As a senior, after marrying his college sweetheart, Carolyn Kramer, he won an award for a television script he had written. Encouraged by the award, Serling started writing for radio and television. Beginning in Cincinnati, he soon found a home for his unique style of realistic psychological dramas at CBS. By the early 1950s he was writing full-time and had moved his family closer to Manhattan.

Serling had his first big break with a television drama for NBC, called PATTERNS. Dealing with the fast-paced lives and ruthless people within the business world, PATTERNS was so popular it became the first television show to ever be broadcast a second time due to popularity. Throughout the 1950s he continued to write probing investigative dramas about serious issues. He was often hounded by the conservative censors for his uncompromising attention to issues such as lynching, union organizing, and racism. Television dramas including REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT and A TOWN HAS TURNED TO DUST, are still considered some of the best writing ever done for television.

Fed up with the difficulties of writing about serious issues on the conservative networks, Serling turned to science fiction and fantasy. Through an ingenious mixture of morality fable and fantasy writing, he was able to circumvent the timidity and conservatism of the television networks and sponsors. Self-producing a series of vignettes that placed average people in extraordinary situations, Serling could investigate the moral and political questions of his time. He found that he could address controversial subjects if they were cloaked in a veil of fantasy, saying “I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.”

The series was called THE TWILIGHT ZONE and was incredibly popular, winning Serling three Emmy Awards. As the host and narrator of the show, he became a household name and his voice seemed always a creepy reminder of a world beyond our control. The show lasted for five seasons, and during that time Serling wrote more than half of the one hundred and fifty-one episodes. But for Serling, television was an inherently problematic medium—requiring the concessions of commercials and time restrictions.

For much of the 1960s and into the 1970s Serling turned to the big screen, writing films that included a remake of REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT (1962), THE YELLOW CANARY (1963), and ASSAULT ON A QUEEN (1966). His most famous, however, was the classic PLANET OF THE APES (1968), co-written with Michael Wilson. Similar to his early work on THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE PLANET OF THE APES was a moralistic tale of contemporary life told through a science-fiction fantasy in which Apes have taken over the world. Dealing with question of how we act as a society and how we view ourselves as moral beings, PLANET OF THE APES was a culmination of Serling’s career-long interests as a writer.

By the early 1970s, he found a job teaching in Ithaca, New York. Continuing to write for television, he sought to impart a sense of moral responsibility and artistic integrity to the new generation of television writers. In June of 1975, he died of a heart attack. Today, more than twenty-five years after his death, Serling’s legacy continues to grow. His television and cinematic works have reached cult status—enlivening a new interest in one of the great early writers of American television.